ICYMI: What TV Buyers Want; Paramount Whispers
Catch up on our recent best
A couple of quick things: We announced our first documentary event in Los Angeles in the New Year, in partnership with the great Thom Powers, and hope to see you there. It will be a good one!
Separately, it was fun to see so many of you last Sunday night at our event for Netflix’s World War II limited series, All the Light We Cannot See, directed by Shawn Levy, at the Academy’s Linwood Dunn theater (fittingly, former Academy CEO Dawn Hudson came backstage to say hi beforehand). Janice interviewed stars Hugh Laurie, Mark Ruffalo, Louis Hoffman and Aria Mia Loberti, a Fulbright scholar and PhD candidate who is also legally blind. In between the cast’s laughs (they clearly like each other), Loberti didn’t leave a dry eye in the house. Full video will be coming to The Ankler soon.
And now, ICYMI, our best of the week in the Ankler:
Decoding What TV Buyers Want
Elaine Low on what’s selling and who’s buying in a scarred post-strike, post-Peak TV marketplace, including specific feedback being given agents and writers around drama and comedy, the format everyone suddenly wants, the genres they definitely don’t, and the appetite for procedurals:
Paramount: Who’s Bragging… and is Anyone Buying?
In a Jamboree edition, Richard airs thoughts on the Skydance-Paramount whisper campaign, and why the silliness we’ve seen so far around it already reveal how incredibly unlikely it is to happen:
How to Navigate a Fractured Hollywood
Richard’s five ground rules for how our industry ought to navigate conversation as war in the Middle East war tears Hollywood apart:
Election + Oscars, Two Things That Don’t Go Together
In the inaugural edition of Prestige Junkie, our new awards columnist Gregg Kilday discusses how our heated political climate threatens to eclipse a potentially strong awards season:
🎧 And Speaking of an Election Year…
Rob Long joins to talk Norman Lear, and Janice shares snippets from her live interview with Melissa DeRosa, Andrew Cuomo’s former top aide, who declares that President Biden should dump Kamala Harris, zings RFK Jr., and decries the “total lack of leadership” over antisemitism. Fun fact: Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, RFK Jr.’s niece, was in the audience…
☀️THE WAKEUP
🎧 PODCASTS
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NEW THIS WEEK: ART & CRAFTS
Christopher Nolan counted on production designer Ruth De Jong and costume designer Ellen Mirojnik to bring his vision to life — all without CGI — as the two below-the-line stars join our new podcast:
MARTINI SHOT
'Breaking Bad' as a comedy? How Hollywood reduces, reuses and recycles ideas:
👓 THE OPTIONIST
IP Picks🔎: Jane Austen Goes to Maine Plus, a mystery in Havana and a moving story about grief
FINAL HOUSEKEEPING!
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