EXEC SUMMARY: Scroll down for Gannett's new talks, Jeff Glor's new role, Disney/Pixar's new "Onward" trailer, my podcast with Bill Nye, and more...
Leaving Y'allywood?
Virtually every major Hollywood studio has now expressed reservations about producing shows and films in Georgia if the state's new anti-abortion law takes effect.
Netflix's Ted Sarandos spoke out on Tuesday, and Disney's Bob Iger was asked about the issue on Wednesday. Iger told Reuters that it would be "very difficult" to keep making films like "Black Panther" and "Avengers: Endgame" in Georgia if abortions were effectively banned. He wasn't meaning to make news -- he was speaking at the "Star Wars" land opening at Disneyland -- but the combo of Netflix and Disney led reporters to reach out to all of their competitors on Thursday. By the end of the day, "WarnerMedia, CBS, Showtime, NBCUniversal, AMC Networks, Sony Pictures, STX and Viacom all said they would consider withdrawing from the state if the law survives legal challenges," Deadline's Dade Hayes reported.
Georgia has embraced the nickname Y'allywood to celebrate its entertainment biz bonafides. But the so-called "heartbeat" bill is putting all of that at risk...
What's going on here
The companies are flexing their financial muscles -- warning that they might have to give up Georgia's generous tax incentives and leave the state -- citing the concerns of the predominantly liberal-leaning stars and producers who make their comedies, dramas and other productions.
Georgia is the epicenter for TV and movie production in the south, but other states have also passed similar bills this year -- bills that are designed in part to provoke a court fight, potentially leading to a Supreme Court reexamination of abortion rights. NBCUniversal cited this legal reality in its statement on Thursday. "We fully expect that the heartbeat bills and similar laws in various states will face serious legal challenges and will not go into effect while the process proceeds in court," the company said. "If any of these laws are upheld, it would strongly impact our decision-making on where we produce our content in the future."
"We will watch the situation closely"
AT&T's WarnerMedia, the parent company of CNN along with HBO, TNT, the Warner Bros. studio and other entities, said Thursday that the company may stop making "new productions" in the state if the bill takes effect. "We operate and produce work in many states and within several countries at any given time and while that doesn't mean we agree with every position taken by a state or a country and their leaders, we do respect due process," WarnerMedia said. "We will watch the situation closely and if the new law holds we will reconsider Georgia as the home to any new productions. As is always the case, we will work closely with our production partners and talent to determine how and where to shoot any given project."
--> Context for the statement, via THR: "WarnerMedia is currently filming 'The Conjuring 3' in the state and will soon shoot the 'Suicide Squad' sequel there. On the television side, Jordan Peele and J.J. Abrams' show Lovecraft County and The Outsider, executive produced by Jason Bateman, are both in production in Georgia for HBO..."
--> And: WarnerMedia has thousands of employees in Georgia, including at the headquarters of CNN in Atlanta. One distinction between existing operations and one-off movie and TV productions is that employees are generally eligible to vote and engage in state politics, while actors and producers who fly in for a few months to shoot a movie are not...
What about "The Walking Dead?"
I was interested in seeing AMC Networks' statement because "The Walking Dead" has been based in Atlanta for ten seasons. "If this highly restrictive legislation goes into effect, we will reevaluate our activity in Georgia," AMC said. "Similar bills – some even more restrictive – have passed in multiple states and have been challenged. This is likely to be a long and complicated fight and we are watching it all very closely."
Dobbs says the "other side" will retaliate
On Fox Business Thursday night, Lou Dobbs warned that execs at Disney, Netflix, etc would be "violating their fiduciary duties" by withdrawing from Georgia. "If Iger and Sarandos carry out their threats," he said, "retaliation from the other side will follow. And it will escalate -- to the disadvantage and destruction of all." I wish Dobbs would've elaborated, but he didn't...
The big picture
Via TheWrap's Sharon Waxman: "Initially, the major entertainment companies were slow to react after Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in early May signed into law a so-called 'heartbeat' bill..." But "Hollywood started to feel the heat from its own community." And that "clearly led to the avalanche of opposition this week."
Waxman said the companies "hope that the courts will solve the problem for them" -- by rejecting the strict laws -- but "for the moment, Hollywood and the red states are headed for a showdown."
BTW: Explaining Reed Hastings' donations to anti-abortion legislators
In his Popular Information newsletter, Judd Legum pointed out that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has "donated $143,000 to 73 Republican members of the Missouri legislature (and Governor Mike Parsons) who just passed an abortion ban nearly as restrictive as Georgia."
A source close to Hastings told CNN Business that Hastings donated the money for education purposes: "All of these personal donations from Reed, on both sides of the aisle, were made in support of a specific piece of legislation aimed at improving the availability and quality of charter schools in Missouri. Reed's private support of educational causes is well known and these personal donations stem directly from that."
| | 🎧 Bill Nye hops on the "Reliable" podcast 🎧
Fresh off the release of his new podcast, "Science Rules!," Bill Nye unpacked the pressing questions of our day, and how the press is faring in covering them, on this week's "Reliable Sources" pod. Nye spoke with me about climate science, deniers, dinosaurs, vaccinations, and the new NYT reporting about UFOs... Listen via Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, or your preferred app...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Ronan Farrow made a surprise appearance at BookExpo on Thursday... and shared a little bit more about his forthcoming book "Catch and Kill," about Harvey Weinstein and NBC and his own reporting... (Vulture)
-- Joe Pompeo's latest: "The New York Times is lately advising reporters not to go on opinionated/partisan cable news shows like Maddow, in a reinforcement of their guidelines governing broadcast media appearances..." (VF)
-- Vox's Dara Lind and Future Tense's Kirsten Berg are joining ProPublica... (ProPublica)
Jeff Glor is staying at CBS
When Jeff Glor was pulled off the "CBS Evening News," there was speculation that he'd leave CBS altogether... But he has decided to stay with the network: He will co-host the Saturday morning show and be a "special correspondent, reporting feature stories and investigative reports for the network," CBS said Thursday evening...
GATEHOUSE AND GANNETT...
Two newspaper chains sharing a life raft?
After successfully rejecting a takeover bid from Digital First Media, Gannett has recently held talks with GateHouse Media about a merger that would "bring together the nation's two largest newspaper groups by circulation," the WSJ's Lukas I. Alpert and Cara Lombardo reported Thursday.
Gannett has "also been speaking recently with others about potential deals, including Tribune Publishing and McClatchy..."
The Doctor's analysis
Ken Doctor's latest for NiemanLab ends with this: "Is this good for journalism, or for the communities that daily journalism serves? That's what we should care about most in all of this, and it can get lost. This move — like the other consolidations batted around so far this year — is financially strategic. It is not journalistically strategic." He says Gannett + GateHouse "would buy some time," but "how that time, and the money saved, gets reinvested into a longer-term solution to local journalism's woes remains a hanging question. Still required: More capital and a better vision."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- "The combined revenues for Netflix and Amazon Prime in the U.K. amounted to more than double the total revenue generated by the streaming services of Britain's five biggest broadcasters in 2018, a new report has found..." (Variety)
-- "Fact checks couldn't contain the virality of that altered Pelosi video. But that doesn't mean we should give up on them," Daniel Funke writes... (Poynter)
-- A new study suggests that behavioral ad targeting is "not paying off for publishers..." (WSJ)
First the Obamas, now the Clintons?
Lucas Shaw's Thursday afternoon scoop for Bloomberg: "Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea are forming a production company to pursue film and television projects... The two have spoken to studios about financing a pipeline of programs, said people familiar with the matter. They would give a studio first crack at releasing the projects..."
This seems similar to the Obamas' deal with Netflix, per Shaw: "The family hopes to use film and television to influence culture and society now that Hillary Clinton is out of politics. They plan to focus on stories by and about women..."
| | "Fact-checking Trump's flurry of falsehoods and lies..."
One day after Robert Mueller publicly refused to exonerate President Trump and hinted at potential impeachment, Trump responded on-camera with ridiculous claims. "There were so many lies, so many lies -- one on top of the other," CNN's Jeffrey Toobin said. The lies "have to be the headline."
"Over a few hours Thursday morning," CNN's Marshall Cohen wrote, "Trump spread at least 21 lies and falsehoods about the Russia investigation, Mueller's findings, the cost of the probe, and the legal restrictions that Mueller faced when grappling with the possibility of a President who broke the law." Read on...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Thanks to Mueller's on-camera statement, "The Mueller Report" is back at No. 1 on Amazon's best seller chart. Several versions of the report are in the top 20... (Amazon)
--The latest from CNN's DOJ and W.H. teams: "Mueller speaks, but he's still an enigma..." (CNN)
-- The title of James Poniewozik's newest column: "Why Robert Mueller Should Testify on TV" (NYT)
Michael Wolff talks "Siege"
Oliver Darcy emails: Michael Wolff sat down earlier this week with the NYT's Michael Grynbaum to talk about his "Fire & Fury" sequel "Siege," which hits bookstores next Tuesday. Some highlights/lowlights...
>> Wolff asserted that he was not excommunicated from Trumpworld following the release of "Fire and Fury." In fact, Wolf said, "Everybody continued to talk to me. When 'Fire and Fury' came out, I thought Steve Bannon would certainly never speak to me again, and the truth is, he never stoped talking."
>> Wolff said he did not seek an interview with Trump. When asked why not, Wolff responded, "He tried to stop the publication last time. I think that would be a fool's errand, to invite the president of the United States to come down on you."
>> Wolff said he did not necessarily reach out to subjects of the book. Asked why not, Wolff said, "I actually don't believe, if you know the answer, it is necessary to go through the motions of getting an answer that you are absolutely certain of." Wolff added, "They put you in the position in which you're potentially having to negotiate what you know. In some curious way, that's what much journalism is about. It's about a negotiated truth."
Fox calls one of his claims "total fiction"
Darcy adds: One of the subjects Wolff says he did not reach out to... is Fox News. According to Grynbaum, Wolff reports in his book that Fox provided questions to Brett Kavanaugh for the interview he did with Martha MacCallum amid his Supreme Court nomination fight. Grynbaum said that when he contacted the network for comment, a Fox spokesperson called the claim "pure fiction."
Wolff said he never reached out to Fox because he isn't bound by the same rules of an "institutional reporter." Huh?! He even suggested that asking Fox for comment would have been a silly endeavor, asking, "Can you imagine a circumstance under the sun in which Fox would come clean on that?"
Checking on pre-orders...
Darcy emails: I checked this evening to see where "Siege" was ranking on the Amazon best seller list, and was surprised to see that it was not in the top 50, coming in at #59. That's quite the contrast to "Fire and Fury," which had generated significantly more buzz in the week preceding its release.
It is noteworthy that there hasn't been an official "first serial" excerpt of "Siege" yet. But the book has been reviewed by WaPo and NYT, and The Guardian and VF published some of the book's biggest claims. And still, it does not seem that there's as much interest for Wolff's book this time around...
>> Related tweet from Asawin Suebsaeng: "Funniest part of his media rollout to me is I've asked people in & out of admin & they all said WH / Trumpworld has not prepped any real or serious comms strategy to handle fallout of Wolff's new book, simply cuz they don't expect any. Damning indictment of his relevance perhaps..."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Before she defended her rejection of Fox News on "The View" Thursday, Elizabeth Warren stopped by Power 105.1's "The Breakfast Club." The interview airs Friday at 8 a.m. ET, and will be on YouTube shortly after...
-- Simon & Schuster will no longer publish a book Tony Robbins was set to co-author... This news came one week after BuzzFeed's bombshell report detailing various allegations of misconduct... (BuzzFeed News)
-- The Trust Project will "spin off" from Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and convert to an independent nonprofit, following an "infusion of $2.25 million from Facebook, Craig Newmark Philanthropies and the Democracy Fund..." (Adweek)
Time for CBS and Viacom to talk again?
"The CBS board is preparing for merger talks with Viacom," CNBC's David Faber reported Thursday, citing sources. The story came just one day after a meeting of the CBS directors.
Per Faber, "the long-anticipated talks between the two companies controlled by the Redstone family's National Amusements are expected to begin in mid-June, though discussions could begin even sooner, the sources said. Viacom CEO Robert Bakish would likely run the combined entity."
>> CBS stock closed up 3.2%... Viacom closed up 5.5%...
"Apple's Hire of a Disney+ Video Executive Highlights Talent Rivalry"
That's the headline on Anousha Sakoui and Mark Gurman's latest: "Chiara Cipriani started with Apple as a director of video services earlier this month in London, according to her LinkedIn bio, after about a decade at Disney. She previously was an executive working on the new Disney+ service and had managed DisneyLife, its international predecessor..."
| | Time to "See"
Brian Lowry emails: On Friday Netflix will debut "When They See Us," Ava DuVernay's powerful four-part miniseries about the Central Park Five case, which, yes, addresses Donald Trump's involvement in advocating for the death penalty for those wrongly convicted. It counts Oprah Winfrey and Robert De Niro among the big names behind the camera. And it makes a powerful case to be seen, and heard. Read on...
More to watch this weekend
Lowry adds: Season two of David Letterman's "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" starts streaming on Netflix on Friday... And so does "Always Be My Maybe," continuing a steady stream of romantic comedies, this one starring, co-written and produced by Ali Wong and Randall Park.
Plus, Amazon weighs in with "Good Omens," which prolific author Neil Gaiman has adapted, starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant as an angel and demon, respectively, whose middle-management headaches include the prospect of Armageddon...
FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE
By Lisa Respers France:
-- Sophie Turner had some things to say about that now famous coffee cup and why she's done with Sansa Stark...
-- Moby has canceled his book tour after the Natalie Portman controversy. He says he's going away for awhile...
-- Joe Jonas says his friend, the DJ/producer Diplo, "ruined" his wedding to the aforementioned Sophie Turner...
Writers v. agents
Brian Lowry emails: Former WGA president Chris Keyser has been a leading figure in the battle between the guild and talent agencies, so eyebrows were raised, at the very least, to see him taking out a new project that would be produced in conjunction with one of the agencies' production arms, Endeavor Content. The "Party of Five" co-creator issued a lengthy explanation defending the deal, saying, "This is in no way antithetical to the goals of the agency campaign, which is entirely focused on eliminating the conflicted practices of the agencies themselves."
Separately, the agencies -- in their PR campaign -- have circulated a THR article warning of possible legal risks that writers are inviting, in the form of opening themselves to claims of having stolen material, in their efforts to bypass agents...
Chloe interviews Lamar Odom
Chloe Melas emails: I got a chance to sit down with Lamar Odom who has been making the rounds on his book tour for his memoir "Darkness to Light." The former NBA star tells me his drug addiction is a daily struggle and he still has nightmares about overdosing at Dennis Hof's Nevada brothel the Love Ranch in 2015. But he says he still hopes to play professional basketball and even win back his ex wife Khloe Kardashian. Here's the full interview...
Three weeks til "Toy Story 4"
Brian Lowry emails: In the rich-get-richer dept., early tracking indicates Disney/Pixar's "Toy Story 4" could be heading to a huge $150 million or more for its opening weekend, per THR. which would put it behind only "Incredibles 2" among animated movies...
FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX
-- Anonymous Content, the production company behind "True Detective," has signed a first-look agreement with The Atlantic. Anonymous "will have the initial crack at developing and making scripted and unscripted content from the Atlantic's past and present articles and content..." (Variety)
-- Meg James tells the story of Seth MacFarlane and Tim Winter, his one-time nemesis at the conservative Parents Television Council. The twist: "Now they're friends..." (LAT)
-- The "Miss America" telecast will move from ABC to NBC in 2020... (Variety)
-- Just before I was about to hit send on this letter, Disney/Pixar released the teaser trailer for "Onward" during game one of the NBA Finals... (YouTube)
| | | Thank you for reading! Send me your feedback, tips, ideas here. See you tomorrow... | | | |
