Hollywood

A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the blockbuster deal would crush Latino workers and small businesses that support Hollywood.

In an open letter to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the League of United Latin American Citizens urged the state’s top prosecutor to continue his legal fight to block Paramount’s proposed $111-billion takeover of the media company that owns HBO, CNN, HGTV and the Warner Bros. film and television studios.

“No state has more to lose from this disastrous merger … than California,” LULAC National President Roman Palomares and Chief Executive Juan Proaño wrote in the six-page letter sent to Bonta late Sunday.

Thousands of jobs would be lost, and Latino voices could be squelched should the deal go through as it is drawn, the LULAC leaders said.

“The current form of the consolidation would have a devastating and unacceptable impact on Latinos, including those who reside in the Los Angeles community,” they wrote, noting Latinos make up 40% of the state’s population and nearly half of Los Angeles County, where HBO and the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios are based.

At least 4,500 jobs in Southern California would be lost if the merger goes through, according to a 120-page report last week from Los Angeles County’s economic office.

Paramount’s proposed merger has carved deep divisions and become increasingly contentious.

In recent days, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra publicly pressured Bonta to settle the lawsuit to avoid a drawn-out court fight.

Politicians have been reacting to Paramount’s threat to move its studio, and potentially Warner Bros., from Hollywood to Tennessee or Texas unless Bonta backs down.

Theater owners and two major Hollywood unions — the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — have joined the parade pleading for a settlement. But the Writers Guild of America and Teamsters have steadfastly opposed the merger, warning about its potential impact on working writers and film crews.

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison was set Monday to meet Bonta and others representing the 12 states that sued to block the transaction. But Bonta abruptly canceled the mediation session, accusing Paramount of “playing games,” leaking details and making misrepresentations about the talks despite agreeing to keep them confidential.

Paramount later denied that it was the source of the leaks.

Paramount didn’t immediately comment on the LULAC letter, but previously has touted the merger as a way to build a stronger competitor amid a pullback in local production. The company said it would “invest $30 billion annually in production and release at least 30 films a year,” a commitment that would lead to “more jobs over time, and ultimately, a stronger, more durable entertainment industry for generations to come.”

“To have it thrown in your face that Paramount will leave Los Angeles if they don’t get what they want is really just tantamount to a threat … one that will be devastating to Latinos,” Proaño said in an interview with The Times.

“There is a significant number of small businesses — Latino small businesses — and Latino residents, employees and workers that support this industry,” Proaño said. “We’ve been invisible, we’ve been silent — but we wanted to make sure that LULAC is not silent in this moment.”

In its letter, LULAC pointed to Hollywood’s most recent mergers, including Discovery’s 2022 acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, saying such tie-ups underscore how media consolidation tramples over Latino voices, particularly when companies resort to job eliminations and other cost cuts to balance the expense of a corporate takeover.

After Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav took the helm, his company plodded through years of turmoil and massive layoffs. The movie “Batgirl,” which was set to feature a young Afro-Latina as lead actor, was shelved to gain tax benefits. Warner also canceled “Gordita Chronicles,” a TV show about an immigrant Dominican family, despite solid viewership.

Latino families make up “a significant portion of the film and television industry audience,” the letter said, adding that Motion Picture Assn. data show Latinos annually attend more movies per person in theaters than any other demographic group.

“Hollywood returns almost nothing for that loyalty,” the letter said. “Latino characters filled only 5 percent of speaking roles across 1,300 top-grossing films.”

“These and other harms are not collateral to the antitrust case,” LULAC’s letter said. “They are consequences of the diminished competition that will result. Every studio absorbed by a rival is one fewer buyer for a script, one fewer employer for a crew and one fewer distributor willing to bet on a story its franchise slate does not need.”

Warner Bros. Discovery nearly drowned in debt that it took on to finance its $43-billion buyout from AT&T in 2022. Ellison’s proposed Warner Bros. takeover also will be heavily leveraged with nearly twice the debt that resulted from Zaslav’s previous deal.

David Ellison has lined up nearly $80 billion in debt financing to buy out Warner investors. The tech scion is relying on a guarantee from his billionaire father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and $24 billion in equity financing from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, representing the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The deal comes one year after the Ellison family bought Paramount, which had been on the ropes because of significant under-investment over the years.

“Paramount followed the same script: within months of closing its Skydance merger in August 2025, it laid off roughly 2,000 employees, about ten percent of its workforce, just after dismantling its diversity programs earlier that year,” the LULAC letter reads.

“This time, Zaslav’s going to walk away with a billion-dollar parachute and Paramount may end up with these crown jewels assets when it comes to movie-making and television programming,” Proaño said.

It was a television show tailor-made for Los Angeles: a highly anticipated Netflix crime drama about a team of ex-special forces operators who outsource their skills to criminals in the city.

The production was backed by a prominent indie studio and had a critically acclaimed lead actor attached. And with a budget of more than $100 million and a crew of 350, the series seemed like a shoo-in for California’s film tax and TV credit.

But last month, shortly before filming was set to begin, producers were stunned to learn the film didn’t make the cut based on a formula the state uses to rank projects by the number of jobs they produce and their spending levels. After two applications for a tax credit had been rejected, they opted to shoot the series in New Jersey, where it was much easier to qualify for film incentives.

“We were shocked,” said a producer on the project who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter. “This is the birthplace of entertainment. It shouldn’t be so hard to shoot here.”

Despite improvements to the state’s tax incentive program, Los Angeles and California continue to struggle to keep movies, television series and even game shows from fleeing elsewhere. Production levels have failed to bounce back since the pandemic and the labor strikes by writers and actors, and they remain at historic lows.

Film activity in the L.A. region plummeted in the second quarter of this year, with shoot days for feature films and TV productions falling 20% and 30%, respectively, compared with already anemic levels from a year ago, according to FilmLA.

The fallout has been devastating for local film crews and businesses. L.A.’s signature industry has shed some 57,000 jobs in the past four years, while more than 80 film and television production services businesses have closed since 2022. The production crisis has even become a political flashpoint alongside affordability, crime and homelessness in the race for mayor and governor.

The story of how L.A. steadily lost much of its homegrown industry to other locales is a tale of hubris, escalating costs, political inaction and fierce competition from states and countries hungry for a piece of the Hollywood pie. California eventually adopted a very limited film tax credit plan in 2009, but even then production had already gone elsewhere.

Filmmaker Jonathan Nolan, on the set of “Fallout,” has been at the forefront of efforts to keep Hollywood at the center of the entertainment industry.

(Lorenzo Sisti / Prime Video)

This account is based on interviews with more than a dozen producers, studio executives, lawmakers and film industry veterans.

Despite warning signs that runaway production was causing an exodus of talent and jobs, many took for granted that L.A. would remain the epicenter of film and television.

Film activity in Los Angeles has plummeted to historic lows, with devastating consequences for crews and vendors. This series examines how L.A. lost its dominant perch as a film and TV destination and what can be done to bring Hollywood back home.

“I’ve been around long enough … to realize that things kind of die slowly and then they die quickly,” said Jonathan Nolan, a writer, director and producer, whose credits include the HBO series “Westworld” and “Fallout” on Amazon.

Nolan, who championed efforts to get the state to expand its tax incentives, lamented that L.A. once “stood in for everywhere. Now L.A. doesn’t even stand in for itself.”

‘The X-Files’ and the birth of Hollywood North

Like the fall of Rome and the decline of Detroit, Hollywood’s spiral did not happen in a single day, but rather unfolded over decades.

Before World War II, Los Angeles’ production hegemony was uncontested. An abundance of sunny weather and a range of landscapes, along with highly skilled artisans, from set designers to scenic painters, re-created the entire world on Hollywood soundstages and backlots.

That began to change during the late 1940s and early 1950s when studios broke with tradition and filmed abroad, attracted by Europe’s cheap labor and the desire among directors for more realism in movies.

William Wyler’s 1953 classic “Roman Holiday,” starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, was one of the first, shot entirely overseas on the streets of the Italian capital and at Cinecittà studios.

Still, as productions went on location, often for creative reasons, Hollywood remained the center of entertainment gravity.

“Roman Holiday,” starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck, was one of the first big American studio films to be shot entirely overseas.

(Paramount Pictures)

In 1993, when there were four broadcast networks, cable TV relied on set-top boxes and streamers were, well, party decorations, a relatively unknown television writer named Chris Carter began pre-production on a new supernatural drama series that he had created.

For the pilot’s opening scenes, he needed a forest, one that was dark and moody. There, a terrified teenage girl would be filmed fleeing before she was consumed by a blinding flash of light and then found dead, bearing unexplained marks on her body.

“It became clear that not only were there not great forests in the ‘zone,’” said Carter, referring to the 30-mile-zone (TMZ) around L.A. that producers try to shoot within to avoid mandatory union surcharges. “But there were better forests in Vancouver.”

As it happened, during the 14-day shoot, Carter, who was working with a tight budget, discovered that Vancouver supplied numerous benefits.

The grim weather naturally provided a spooky atmospheric backdrop while the city “beautifully doubled for almost any place in the U.S. without having to pretend too much,” he said.

Carter’s pilot became “The X-Files,” the wildly popular and groundbreaking 1990s TV series that ran for nine seasons (plus two revival seasons), redefined the science fiction genre and spawned two feature films.

The success of “The X-Files” propelled Vancouver’s reputation as “Hollywood North.”

(Associated Press)

“As David Duchovny said, ‘two weeks became five years,’” quipped Carter.

While other productions such as “Wiseguy” had filmed in British Columbia years earlier, “The X-Files” unintentionally cemented Vancouver’s reputation as “Hollywood North,” fueled by Canada’s favorable exchange rates, skilled crews, lower labor costs and, eventually, tax credits.

The show’s colossal success helped create the model still in play 33 years later for outsourcing movie and television production to regions where tax incentives are higher and production costs are lower.

“It was simply a choice I made for the location, not for the financial benefit,” said Carter. “It wasn’t part of my calculus, but it ended up being a fact of life.”

Throughout the 1990s a steady stream of TV shows and movies shot in Canada. The 1994 adaptation of “Little Women” starring Winona Ryder was largely filmed in Vancouver, with a stand-in for Orchard House, Louisa May Alcott’s home in Concord, Mass., built in a local forest.

But, at the time, few saw what was happening as an existential crisis in the making.

For one thing, L.A. was in the midst of a production boom, prompting the development of the $77-million Manhattan Beach Studios, a 22-acre production facility in 1996. (The studio is now fielding offers by its bank lenders after its owner, the real estate investment firm Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on over $2 billion in mortgages on several studio facilities it had acquired in recent years.)

Losing the ‘golden goose’

Canada’s booming film business inspired other U.S. states to get in on the action. Louisiana became the first to pass a film tax incentive, enhancing it in 2002; New Mexico and Georgia followed with their own programs.

Helping to fuel the film tax credit frenzy was none other than the Motion Picture Assn. The Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group for the major film studios and streamers for years aggressively lobbied lawmakers and even governors in other states to adopt their own film programs.

Eventually, nearly 40 states and some 80 countries and territories were offering film incentives in the form of transferable tax credits, grants or rebates.

“Everybody thought, ‘We are Hollywood. Why do we have to do anything?,’” said Lori Balton, a top location manager, whose list of credits spans nearly 40 years and includes such films as “Heat” and “Once Upon a Time in … Hollywood.”

“They always thought that they had the golden goose. And it was going to keep laying eggs and instead, it packed up its bags and moved.”

Earlier this year, while speaking at Burbank City Hall chambers, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) dropped some sobering data: 45% of all U.S. films and scripted television shows were shot abroad in 2025, up from 33% in 2022.

Like most filmmakers, Miles Millar would prefer to work in Los Angeles, where he lives, but he hasn’t done so for 25 years, since he was a co-producer and writer on the CBS action series “Martial Law.”

“It is not financially viable to shoot the kinds of shows we do here,” said Millar, whose work includes “Smallville” and “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

It was too expensive to film in Los Angeles, so the Netflix hit “Wednesday” shot its first season in Romania before relocating the show to Ireland.

(Netflix)

When Millar and his “Wednesday” co-creator and co-showrunner Alfred Gough began pre-production on the first season of the Netflix hit series about five years ago, L.A. as a location wasn’t even discussed.

They settled on Romania. Tim Burton, “Wednesday’s” executive producer and primary director, “loved the idea,” said Millar, noting that the director was predisposed to its gloomy and gothic wonders, having once visited Dracula’s castle in a Transylvanian mountain village with rocker Alice Cooper.

“We built the whole town of Jericho and six standing sets at a huge scale. There was no way you could even begin to construct the level and scale of sets that we did, in L.A.,” he said. “We’re talking about the difference of tens of millions of dollars.”

Still, the former Eastern Bloc country had its challenges. The crew didn’t speak English and its promised tax rebates never materialized.

When “Wednesday” was picked up for a second season (it is now filming its third), the show moved to Ireland, where it received more than $23 million in tax credits last year, according to the country’s Tax and Customs office.

“The last thing I want to do is shoot thousands of miles away from my family for nine months, year after year,” Millar said. But it has come down to “where do we get the most bang for the buck?”

Outsourcing scores and VFX

Other critical components of filmmaking, including visual effects and musical scoring, have also been outsourced over several years.

L.A. was once home to 18 film scoring stages that could accommodate full symphony orchestras. Today only three remain, driven away partly by high labor costs and cheaper overseas competition.

Similarly, many visual effects studios have moved elsewhere. Vancouver alone has dozens of visual effects studios, including Sony Pictures Imageworks and a major branch of Industrial Light & Magic.

“We’ve allowed that piece of the market to leave,” said Marielle Abaunza, president of the California Post Alliance, an advocacy group backing a state bill offering post-production firms their own tax breaks, similar to what New York offers.

“For 16 years, places like New York have slowly been building up their talent, their facilities, their relationships with filmmakers and their relationships with studios,” Abaunza said.

Even as other states and foreign governments invested in their own film industries and began luring away productions from California, lawmakers in Sacramento were initially skeptical of giving tax breaks to producers. Some critics saw them as little more than a handout that diverted resources from more pressing needs such as healthcare and education.

“If you’re on the outside looking in, there is this false sense that everyone who works in Hollywood has to be rich whether you’re crew or not,” said Amy Baer, a producer and former Sony executive who now runs Artists Equity, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company.

As production losses mounted in L.A., a coalition of labor and industry groups lobbied then governor and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger to take action.

Schwarzenegger, a longtime champion of tax credits, was able to get a program passed as part of an economic stimulus provision of the state’s 2009 budget. It was dubbed “The Ugly Betty” bill, named after the ABC show that had relocated from L.A. to New York.

Though hailed as a significant step, the new film sweeteners had some key limitations. The pool of money was small — capped at $100 million annually over five years. And it couldn’t be applied to offset the cost of actors’ salaries, a key driver of budgets.

In reality, the program was too small and restrictive to compete with a growing crop of rivals that had larger tax breaks and fewer restrictions.

Chief among them was the United Kingdom, which soon began to attract a number of big-budget movies thanks to a hugely popular 25% cash rebate on production expenses, including money spent on actors’ salaries and other above-the-line costs.

In a paradigm-shifting move, Warner Bros. purchased Leavesden Studios outside of London in 2010, investing more than $160 million into the facility. Much of the blockbusters “Wonder Woman” and “Barbie” were filmed there.

Although the California program was tripled to $330 million annually starting in 2014, it did little to halt the continued exodus of film work. Marvel Studios began moving its production operations to Georgia, enticed by the state’s uncapped tax credits that could be used for actors’ salaries. Both “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War” were filmed largely at Trilith Studios in Fayetteville, Ga. Another historic town east of Atlanta attracted so many movies and TV shows it became known as “Hollywood of the South.” (Last year, Marvel shifted most of its operations to the U.K. in search of even bigger cost savings.)

Marvel Studios, which filmed blockbusters such as “Black Panther” in Georgia, has since shifted operations to the U.K.

(Film Frame / Marvel Studios)

While numerous studio facilities lay empty here, streamers and studios have built major production hubs outside of L.A. Though it still shoots dozens of productions in L.A., Netflix has spent billions to operate production hubs abroad while constructing massive facilities in places like New Jersey and New Mexico.

“Everyone kept saying, if we have more tax credits, then at least we’ll be able to bring production back,” said Monica Levinson, a veteran producer who has worked on FX’s “Love Story” and the movie “Zoolander.” “Well, that didn’t happen. And the crews got better and better out of the country.”

Rising costs

As the rest of the world courted Hollywood, L.A. did little to help itself.

Despite recent improvements to streamline and reduce costs, the city’s film approval system remains a maze of multi-layered permitting, fees and complex logistics, location managers say. The Greater L.A. area has more than 100 jurisdictions, many of which have their own rules, regulations and permitting fees for filming.

Filming in L.A. also has become more expensive compared with other film hubs due in part to higher labor costs and mandatory staffing requirements, such as paid on-set fire safety monitors, and traffic and parking controls.

What’s more, unlike New York, the city doesn’t have its own film commissioner who could advocate for the industry.

An L.A. commissioner would be “somebody that is beating the drum 365 days a year that is not aligned with a special interest other than creating more production in California, which makes our state and our people prosperous,” said Scott Budnick, a producer on the wildly successful “The Hangover” franchise who lobbied for the state’s enhanced film tax credits.

For a time, the loss of market share was masked by a surge in local TV shoots as studios spent heavily to supply content to their new streaming platforms.

But the pandemic and back-to-back strikes by actors and writers roiled the industry. Studios laid off thousands, cut back on films slates and slashed TV spending and it never rebounded. Film incentives became even more critical for those deciding where to shoot.

By the time Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan in October 2024 to more than double funding for the film and TV tax credit program, to $750 million annually (closer to New York’s annual allocation of $800 million, although it retained annual caps and doesn’t count actors’ salaries), the industry outlook was bleak.

“I think there was a tipping point between COVID and the strikes that shone a very bright light on the fact that the majority of production had fled the state,” said Baer, the producer.

There are a few bright spots, however.

The critically acclaimed HBO hit medical drama “The Pitt” is filmed almost entirely on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, and has injected tens of millions into the local economy while sustaining nearly 1,000 jobs. Two other Emmy-award winning series, Apple TV’s “The Studio” and HBO’s “Hacks,” which just ended, also shot locally.

At Jonathan Nolan‘s urging, Amazon agreed to relocate his post-apocalyptic series “Fallout” to Los Angeles in 2024 after filming its first season in New York, Utah and Namibia. The show received $67 million in California tax credits for its second and third seasons.

Walton Goggins plays the dual role of Cooper Howard and The Ghoul in Amazon’s post-apocalyptic series “Fallout.”

(Courtesy of Prime Video)

“We want to keep shooting here,” Nolan said. “I don’t want to pack my kids off to the back end of beyond just for the privilege of being able to continue doing what I’m doing.”

To build support for the expanded credits, Nolan last year allowed state lawmakers to visit the sets of “Fallout,” including at the Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita.

“I think they were struck by just how big an endeavor this is,” said Nolan, whose brother Christopher is director of “The Odyssey,” (The epic film was shot across Greece, Sicily and several other countries.) “These are hundreds or thousands of jobs on one production alone, hundreds of millions of dollars being put in the local economy.”

Nolan and others in the industry admit the California program is imperfect.

Mayor Karen Bass, who backed the tax credit program in 2009 when she was speaker of the California Assembly, has touted the success of the expanded incentives, saying they’ve created “thousands of good-paying union jobs … right here in Los Angeles, bringing direct investment to our community.”

Since the expanded program went into effect last July, 179 projects have generated $7.2 billion in direct production spending, bringing nearly 38,000 cast and crew jobs to the state, according to the California Film Commission.

“We remain committed to supporting the entertainment industry here and feel optimistic and energized by the response from the community to the program’s modernization and enhancements,” Colleen Bell, the commission’s executive director, said in a statement.

Bass, who is up for reelection, said she would redouble efforts to remove tax credit caps and further reduce film permitting fees “because this industry is core to the history, culture and economic power of Los Angeles.”

The question, however, is whether L.A. is still core to the film industry.

Earlier this year, writer and director Ryan Coogler, who won an Oscar for his “Sinners” screenplay, began filming the pilot for a reboot of “The X-Files.”

During the “Happy Sad Confused” podcast, Coogler called the drama “one of the most beautiful American television shows ever made” and assured fans that while he planned to put his own stamp on the seminal series, his version would pay homage to the original.

“We intend on having both monsters of the week and also the overarching conspiracy,” he said.

And like the original series, it was shot in Vancouver.

Final voting for the 78th Emmys is now underway, which means The Envelope is bidding adieu to the TV awards season — and already gearing up for the film one.

This year, I’ll be in Venice while columnist Glenn Whipp heads to Telluride and movies editor Joshua Rothkopf leads our team at the Toronto International Film Festival. You can catch a daily roundup of our TIFF coverage, including exclusive photo and video highlights from our studio activation, right here in the Envelope Sept. 11-14.

Until then, enjoy highlights from this week’s issue below, and Glenn’s last newsletter of Emmy season on Friday.

Digital cover: Dakota Fanning

(David Urbanke / For The Times)

This week’s digital coverline is inspired by Dakota Fanning’s busy, busy schedule — with two Emmy-nominated shows, a film with sister Elle in the can, an Apple TV thriller in production and more — and, among her many credits, the one fans still bring up to her the most: “Man on Fire.”

“When people ask, ‘Do you even remember doing “Man on Fire”?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, of course I do. What do you mean?’” she tells contributor Kara Warner of Tony Scott’s 2004 thriller, starring Denzel Washington as the bodyguard to Fanning’s 9-year-old kidnapping target. “I think about the memories with Denzel and with Tony, and getting to live in Mexico City for six months when you’re 9 years old is pretty spectacular.”

‘The Comeback’

(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)

For those of us who’ve been following the peaks and valleys of Valerie Cherish’s career since 2005, the end of “The Comeback” is bittersweet at best: While the series has achieved greatness by adhering to the old showbiz adage “always leave them wanting more,” I’d be happy to visit with the fictional actress for another two decades (or more).

There’s some solace, I suppose, in knowing creators Lisa Kudrow and Michael Patrick King feel the same way. In a moving essay for The Envelope, the pair share how the spirit of Robert Michael Morris, who played Valerie’s friend and hairdresser Mickey in Seasons 1 and 2, aided them during a crucial moment in production on Season 3. RIP, Mickey — and “The Comeback.” You are, and will be, sorely missed.

Viva Las Vegas!

Perhaps even more than Hollywood — and thanks in large part to Hollywood — Las Vegas is subject to cliched depictions in popular culture. But a new wave of Emmy-nominated series are showing a different side of Sin City,” writes contributor Whitney Friedlander.

“The Vegas we wanted to show and explore was Shyanne’s Vegas, which is so specific to her,” “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” director of photography Tari Segal tells Friedlander, referring to Michelle Pfeiffer’s character. “It would have that more aged, timeless quality of downtown Vegas, [and] it would have the income bracket of a Vegas that she would be comfortable in.”

More stories from our Aug. 20 issue

“Wonder Man” star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II has addressed the recent discussions regarding Marvel’s track record on projects led by Black actors after the abrupt cancellation of his show.

“I think the optics are obvious,” the Emmy award-winning actor told Vanity Fair in an interview published Thursday. “If I’m a big business, if I’m Disney, if I’m Marvel, I don’t want to be attached to these optics. So it should be a priority to change that narrative and to do what it takes to responsibly change that narrative with quality stories, with quality resources.”

In “Wonder Man,” Abdul-Mateen portrayed Simon Williams, a struggling actor with superpowers that he had to keep secret so he could work in Hollywood. The grounded series — more a love letter to Hollywood than superhero spectacle — was well-received by critics and fans. But just weeks after Abdul-Mateen was nominated for an Emmy for his work on the show, “Wonder Man” was canceled despite the announcement that the series had been picked up for a second season back in March.

Abdul-Mateen was told that the decision “had something to do with the viewership numbers.”

“I wasn’t told what those numbers were, but ultimately, for whatever reason it was, I think they decided that it didn’t make sense for business, and that’s the decision that we live with and we keep on marching forward,” the actor said to Vanity Fair.

Marvel’s abrupt reversal on “Wonder Man” invited scrutiny from fans who had also noted how “Blade” had been stuck in development for years. The film, which had been announced in 2019, was set to star Mahershala Ali as the titular human-vampire hybrid.

“If they wanted to do it, we would’ve done it,” Ali said to GQ in a recent interview, confirming he had “moved on” from the project. (Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige said during a recent podcast appearance that he felt like “a gigantic loser and failure” for not getting “Blade” made.)

Fans have also pointed to other Black characters whose storylines have been sidelined or left unresolved over the years, such as Ironheart and Monica Rambeau.

There is one Black-led project for which Marvel has ambitions plans, though.

Marvel recently stoked excitement for the “Black Panther” franchise at San Diego Comic-Con with the announcement that David Jonsson has been cast as T’Challa’s son and the new King of Wakanda. “Black Panther 3,” from filmmaker Ryan Cooger, will be released on Dec. 15, 2028.

Despite his disappointment, Abdul-Mateen said in his Vanity Fair interview that he understands “business and life move on.” But he also believes there are things Marvel and the industry can learn from “Wonder Man.”

“I felt that our show did have quality story, did have quality resources, did have quality actors and people, and did produce quality results that the viewers responded to positively, that the [Emmy] voters responded to positively,” he said. “So our show does deserve some study and some real, hard information about why a show like this did not continue forward, because it had all of the ingredients that one would want in a show.”

A wonderful Oval Office perk is what Thomas Jefferson dubbed “The President’s Own.” At the president’s beck and call is the United States Marine Band, created by an act of Congress in 1798.

But for an acquisitive current occupant of the White House, the oldest continuously active musical organization hasn’t seemed enough. In his appropriating the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, also created and officially named by Congress, the president obtained the National Symphony Orchestra. Unlike its “President’s Own” sibling, which is supported by the Defense Department annual allotment of some $400 million for military bands, the NSO is administered, funded (between a third and half of its $35-million budget) and lately threatened by what are now the whims of the Kennedy Center.

The NSO appeared at the Hollywood Bowl on Tuesday night, however, with a collective sigh of relief. A week earlier the Kennedy Center Board, without congressional input or legal approval, approved an imminent, two-year closure of the venue for repairs and remodeling, with little word about the homeless or economic future of its artist affiliate. By early August, no new NSO season, which would begin in September, had been announced.

But Tuesday morning, the NSO, in fact, did lay out a full and musically substantial season, the 10th for its music director, Gianandrea Noseda. Not taking a chance on the courts preventing a Kennedy Center closure, the NSO will become next season a peripatetic ensemble performing in various venues in and around D.C., as well undertake a national tour in the spring. Uncertainty remains, but for now all is as well as can be expected.

The NSO, however, offered little of what to expect. I can only find one program next season as unimaginative as Tuesday’s at the Bowl. The orchestra looks forward to several premieres of new works by lively composers and a variety of significant guest conductors, including the venturesome Teddy Abrams (who will lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s season-opening gala) and eclectic former NSO music director Leonard Slatkin (who is also the former L.A. Phil principal guest conductor for the Hollywood Bowl). Noseda’s only other bland program will be the one he brings on tour to The Soraya in April.

Hearing the NSO at the Bowl, moreover, is an act of guess work. With the new immersive sound system, orchestra impact becomes a matter of technology, giving individual instruments paranormal prominence and turning full orchestra glory into a sensual sound bath. Still, with its smooth strings, creamy brass, pungent winds and friendly percussion, Noseda’s NSO came across as a gracious orchestra meant to please, and, consequently, a seemingly marvelous anomaly in an otherwise divisive present-day D.C.

But that offered few favors for Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story” or Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” where the Bowl has regularly hosted far more idiomatic, swinging performances. Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” in the second half was, on the other hand, satisfyingly full-bodied. While Noseda sometimes practices likability to a fault, his sense of drama is ever sure, and it is hard to get enough of the lyrical sweetness he conveys. As an encore, Noseda led the overture to Bernstein’s “Candide” with real flair.

But why commonplace “Candide” and “West Side Story,” when Bernstein wrote “Slava! A Political Overture,” for the NSO as tribute in 1977 to its Russian music director, Mstislav Rostropovich? Might not the NSO make a point with “Three Mediations” from “MASS,” Bernstein’s multimedia masterpiece that controversially opened Kennedy Center in 1974. Bernstein also wrote a major late work for the NSO, “Songfest.” Bernstein, himself, conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the West Coast premiere at the Bowl in 1983, which had special significance because his collaborator on “Songfest,” Tom Cothran, who happened to have grown up in Pasadena.

For his part, Noseda has done an exceptional job in championing major Black composers at home and on record. Carlos Simon has been the NSO’s composer in residence for the last five years, and Noseda has revived and recorded an essential album of works by George Walker. In October, Noseda and the NSO will release a recording of two symphonies by William Grant Still, who lived in L.A. Deeply evocative of a post-Dvorak new world, they are beautifully played on the new recording and would have been ideal for the Bowl.

The NSO has given up on the Kennedy Center, but must we? There are many questions that have not been considered. The current plan for infrastructure improvements and slapdash redecorating at the cost of $250 million. In fact, the facility’s playhouse, opera theater and concert hall are due for major renovations. But that requires significant planning, the hiring of a major architecture firm with concert hall experience, a first-rate acoustician and, ideally, four times the allotted budget.

This is clearly a long-term job for Congress and consultants who would do well to study the approach of the Salzburg Festival. It has been planning for several years to rehabilitate its large concert hall (which is of similar vintage to the Kennedy Center), which will require five years and a cost of around $600 million. It is also carefully examining alternate performance sites to be used during construction.

The Kennedy Center is a memorial, and before another new idea is allowed out, let the Kennedy Center board visit Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool for a moment of reflection on how and why to bring the NSO, America’s Own, back home. In the background, the U.S. Marine Band could offer its kin moral support by playing in the background Ives’ mysteriously transcendental “Unanswered Question.”

The head of one of Hollywood’s largest talent agencies warned state leaders that a new budget bill threatens job gains from California’s film and TV credit program.

Legislators earlier this year passed a provision in the state budget that extends limitations on corporate tax credits, including a $5-million state tax credit cap each year.

But film industry advocates say the corporate tax credit cap will hurt film producers and undercut the effectiveness of the state’s expanded film and TV tax credits.

Lawmakers more than doubled annual funding for the program last year to $750 million in an effort to boost jobs and stem the exodus of film work from California.

CAA Chief Executive Bryan Lourd called for state leaders to create an exemption for tax credits earned under the expanded film and TV program.

“Without this fix, we risk destabilizing a program that is critical to keeping film and television production in California and the thousands of jobs it supports,” Lourd wrote in an Aug. 11 letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom, California State Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and President Pro Tempore Monique Limón (D-Santa Barbara).

“California must make itself competitive with the rest of the country and the world if it hopes to have a thriving entertainment ecosystem,” Lourd wrote. “Honoring commitments that have already been made to the entertainment industry is an essential step in achieving that goal.”

Film industry advocates expected producers would be exempted from the tax credit cap.

“It’s a reversal of California economic policy as it relates to the entertainment industry in an unhelpful and uncompetitive direction,” said Hilary Krane, CAA’s chief legal officer, in an interview. . “It undermines people’s ability to plan for the economics of the program because they all counted on a certain amount coming in under the previous rules that they were entitled to and had, but now can’t use.”

Last month, more than three dozen California lawmakers signed a letter calling attention to the issue. Hollywood unions also have raised alarm.

“The result of the changes is that production companies will lose the full value of credits already earned in exchange for creating middle-class entertainment industry jobs and other economic benefits to the State,” the Entertainment Union Coalition said last month.

Nick Miller, Rivas’ spokesperson, said the state Assembly is taking a hard look at the issue.

“Our lawmakers strengthened California’s film and TV jobs program last year and will keep fighting for creative industry workers,” Miller said in an email.

Newsom’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

Time is running out for a fix to happen this session, which ends in less than two weeks.

State Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles) said state leaders are working on introducing legislation soon to address the issue.

Already, tens of thousands of jobs have come back to Southern California due to the modernization of the film and TV tax credit program, he said.

“We just saw the beginning of that resurgence and we don’t want to nip that in the bud,” Zbur said in an interview.

THE daughter of one of Hollywood’s most famous faces has posted a rap video to TikTok.

The aspiring actress took to TikTok and lip synced in pyjamas to a hit song with lyrics about “strippers’ t**s” – but can you guess who she is?

Sunny Sandler is the youngest daughter of comedian Adam Sandler and his wife of 23 years, Jackie Sandler.

Sunny posed with her brunette hair down around her shoulder in the striped pyjamas as she mimed along to the song Prada by cassö featuring Raye and D-Block Europe.

She danced and flipped her hair in the TikTok as she mouthed the lyrics of Raye’s verse in the chart topper.

The lyrics included: “I feel like I’m in Prince’s house/Purple paint all on the walls/Sittin’ down on this fancy couch.

WILDEST DREAMS

Taylor Swift wedding insiders dish on Travis Kelce’s sweet gesture & gifts

TAY’D THE KNOT

Taylor & Travis MARRIED by Adam Sandler as singer walked aisle to own song

“And I can’t see straight, I’m a state/Twenty-two, I’m in Paris, baby/Got strippers t**s in my face/Pull up in a Bentley, I want Christian [Dior], I want Fendi.”

Sunny, her older sister Sadie, 20, and their mum have appeared in all of Adam’s projects in some form or another.

Sunny’s first role was in her dad’s movie Grown Ups in 2010 where she played the daughter of one of Adam’s friends in the movie.

Most recently she played Vienna Gilmore in the Netflix sequel Happy Gilmore 2.

Vienna was the daughter of her dad’s iconic character, Happy Gilmore, the failed hockey player turned professional golfer.

In a 2020 interview on The Drew Barrymore Show, Adam joked: “They make it look like I’m forcing them to do it

“Drew, you would think the kids would be very excited to be in a movie.

“I hear sometimes in the house, ‘I wanna be in a movie’ and I say, ‘You are, you were in this, this, and this.’

“Then they go, ‘Not yours.’ I go, ‘Oh, Daddy’s not good enough!’

“They wanna do their own thing one day. Meanwhile, they were asking me the whole damn year, ‘Can I be in your next movie, Daddy?’”

It’s no secret that Hollywood has dealt with a significant production downturn since the end of the streaming content boom three years ago. But the programs that have stuck to the Southland have reaped the benefits. And that goes for a slew of major-category Emmy nominees such as “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which has filmed on stages all over L.A. County since its inception.

“First and foremost, it’s the people. I love the local people, but the people that come to Hollywood with a dream, with a drive, and their dreams sometimes get all twisted and turned, but they still have that ambition,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” executive producer Tom Campbell says. “That’s why I love working with L.A. crews, and I love L.A. We’ve got 19 seasons in the can right now, and we’re about to start our 20th in not too long. To be with people that get to go home to their pets, or wives, or husbands, or children, makes for a different vibe on set. That’s kind of an incredible [bonus]. It’s a quality-of-life thing.”

Other iterations of the franchise have filmed all over the globe, from Colombia to Portugal to the Philippines, but Campbell doesn’t see how a hub in South America would allow guest judges such as Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Teyana Taylor or Cardi B to appear in person. He notes, “The celebrities don’t make or break the show, but the stars have to align that they have a day off when we’re shooting. And I think that kind of access and availability could only happen in L.A. I don’t think we’d get Cardi B for a day if she had to leave L.A.”

For “Drag Race” production designer Jen Chu, the ability to acquire raw materials in a short period of time is game-changing. She bluntly observes, “Sometimes you just need the assurance that you can go down the street and get that unusual prop or get that super-specific acrylic Plexi or anything that we could possibly need. It is somewhere in the city.”

Michelle Visage, left, RuPaul, Jamal Sims and Carson Kressley in “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

(Jordin Althaus / World of Wonder)

Chu’s 15-person team also has an encyclopedic knowledge about where to get what they need and whom to ask at a moment’s notice. “It’s very, very common for somebody to be like, ‘Can you make a giant six-foot-tall pill bottle by tomorrow?’” she adds. “I think in those situations, we’re definitely calling on our resources and our friends and colleagues that we’ve known for so long. So, it could be anything from calling your laminate dealer that you’ve had in your phone for 20 years, or it’s literally like calling another dresser because you know that they have a life-size teapot in their backyard for some weird reason. It’s not uncommon for somebody to be like, ‘I know a guy that has a giant pickle or a huge frying pan’ or something like that.”

Veteran “Abbott Elementary” producer Patrick Schumacker is about to shoot a new Netflix series in L.A. and says it’s where to find the “most skilled, most experienced and best of the best” in all aspects of production. A lot of the onscreen talent happen to be pretty darn funny too.

“Honestly, so many hysterical actors are based out of here, and it makes it so much easier with regard to guest cast in a comedy,” Schumacker admits. “Casting becomes infinitely easier versus trying to get people to fly in from L.A. to a production elsewhere.”

Quinta Brunson’s landmark series is set in Philadelphia, but Schumacker credits location manager David Lyons for finding “outstanding places” that double for the city. He recalls, “We had a whole mall arc when the school had to relocate, and that was based on Franklin Mills, which is a real mall in Philadelphia that has the giant Ben Franklin head in it. The other part of the two-pronged attack is Michael Whetstone, Suzan Wexler and our entire art department, who have transformed the back lot at Warner Brothers into West Philly. They keep building out more and more of it every year.”

Sheryl Lee Ralph, right, in “Abbott Elementary.”

(Gilles Mingasson / Disney)

It’s also incredibly difficult to fake another city for Los Angeles. Can you imagine the L.A. romance “Nobody Wants This” trying to duplicate Silver Lake, Los Feliz or Koreatown in Atlanta?

“A real location helps the dialogue sound better. It looks better. It helps the actors know they’re in a real place. It helps the audience feel like they’re watching a real scene,” series creator and executive producer Erin Foster says. “When you think about ‘Sex and the City’ in its heyday, you would recognize the places that they’re at. You would recognize that they are actually authentic, real places that are cool. And it mattered. It made you take the characters seriously.”

Executive producer Jenni Konner adds, “And it sometimes informs story. We shot at Max & Helen’s, a notoriously difficult-to-get-into restaurant, and we had a story point where they weren’t able to get in because they didn’t realize how competitive it was. That was really fun to be able to highlight that truth of L.A.”

And not to take shots at Hollywood’s East Coast rival, but after the Netflix show recently shot scenes in New York for its upcoming third season, executive producer Bruce Eric Kaplan observed that the Big Apple presents drawbacks L.A. doesn’t. “It feels like the Los Angeles crew is a lot more concerned about our safety,” says the onetime “Girls” producer, lightheartedly. “I don’t remember ever having this many safety conversations, but you could shoot in the middle of anything in New York, and no one’s telling you to be safe.”

“Might be a sign of the times,” Foster wonders.

“Erin, I think you’re right,” Konner replies. “At first, I was like, ‘Oh, but it’s 10 or 15 years later, so safety rules have changed.’ But the truth is we shot in New York, and it did feel scary again. We were in the middle of the street in SoHo …”

Foster adds, laughing, “And they were just like, ‘We’ll just figure it out.’”

Netflix said it is in the process of closing two of its gaming studios, as the division is making another round of organizational changes.

The Los Gatos, Calif., streamer said it closed the Hollywood-based gaming studio Night School, the maker of narrative games like “Oxenfree,” on Thursday and has proposed to close Helsinki, Finland-based gaming studio Moonloot. Night School was the first game developer Netflix purchased in 2021 as it expanded into gaming. At the time, the streamer was under pressure by investors to diversify its content to attract more customers, after experiencing two quarters of subscriber losses in 2022.

Night School viewed the acquisition at the time as “such a natural pairing” as the gaming studio wanted to stretch its narrative aspirations on original games and Netflix has a reputation of giving TV and film creators an “unprecedented canvas” to bring entertainment to millions of people, according to a blog post on its website.

In an email, a Netflix spokesperson said it is eliminating roles because the company believes it can operate more strategically and efficiently in its games business. The spokesperson declined to provide the number of workers affected.

Last year, the company shut down Boss Fight Entertainment, one of the gaming studios it acquired in 2022.

Games on Netflix have had mixed results. At the end of 2024, Epic Games executive Alain Tascan joined Netflix as president of the division and under his leadership, it has focused on key areas including kids, party games like “Netflix Minigolf,” narrative games and mainstream games like “FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition.” The company also removed games in part because they did not have high engagement from its library.

Last year, Netflix unveiled several party games including “Boggle Party” and “Pictionary: Game Night.”

In June, Netflix released a narrative game made by Night School called “Unhinged” about a woman who is trapped inside her apartment during a hurricane and is trying to find safety. Voice actors in the game include Zoë Kravitz and Sadie Sink.

In a July earnings presentation, Co-CEO Greg Peters reminded analysts of the market opportunity for games, with $150 billion in consumer spending not including ad revenue or markets in China and Russia. He said the streamer is seeing solid numbers from its cloud games such as FIFA and “Unhinged” and higher adoption and retention in the cloud games than mobile games. He also said there has been strong engagement and growth from kid games.

“We’re just getting started here,” Peters said. “We’re scratching the surface in terms of what we think the total potential of the space offers for us.”

The layoffs come as Netflix stock has declined 37% from a year ago. Investors are concerned about how much time people are spending on Netflix compared to rivals like YouTube. YouTube represents about 14% of streaming-watch time by U.S. viewers on TVs, compared to Netflix’s 8% in May, according to Nielsen.

In addition to games, Netflix has added other types of content to its streaming service over the years including live events like NFL football games and video podcasts.

Citing Hollywood’s already struggling production economy, two influential industry unions have jointly called on Paramount Skydance Chairman David Ellison and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to settle their antitrust fight.

The Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — which represent a combined 200,000 union members — are turning up the political pressure to try to resolve the clash over the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, which has already carved deep divisions throughout the industry.

The DGA and IATSE’s unusual missive comes as Paramount has been trying to drum up support for the deal and while
development projects reportedly are being put on hold. Paramount executives and others have decried the delay in deciding whether the deal moves forward. Bonta and Paramount are now poised to slug it out in an Oakland courtroom next spring.

“Our collective members are concerned about their futures, and the future of the industry,” DGA Executive Director Russell Hollander and IATSE President Matthew D. Loeb wrote Thursday in their three-page letter to Ellison and Bonta.

“We are aware of productions that have been put on hold or canceled altogether, leading to further reductions in available work for our members and other industry workers,” the letter reads in part.

The effort adds heat to a growing campaign urging Bonta to bend in his fight to block the industry- reshaping deal that would combine the Warner Bros. and Paramount film and television studios, HBO, CBS, CNN, HGTV and Comedy Central.

Earlier this week, California’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Xavier Becerra, said he favored a settlement. Republican Steve Hilton has decried the antitrust lawsuit as being politically motivated.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who leaves office next year, has stayed above the fray.

Paramount and Bonta’s office didn’t immediately comment.

The Writers Guild of America last month joined Bonta’s coalition of state attorneys general in filing lawsuits to upend the $111-billion transaction, saying the Paramount-Warner combination violates U.S. antitrust laws and would decimate the entertainment industry by erasing jobs and reducing pay.

At issue is the $81 billion in debt that Ellison would have to take on to pay Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders for the keys to the studios and HBO.

WGA leaders and others have warned that level of debt would choke the two historic studios, creating a more devastating sequel to 2019‘s combination of the Disney and Fox studios, and the 2022 takeover of Warner Bros. by Discovery.

The union leaders conceded they weren’t merger fans, and they stopped well short of asking Bonta to throw in the towel.

Instead, they listed nine conditions — including requiring Paramount to maintain its operations in Hollywood and a commitment to make film and television shows in the U.S. — as part of any settlement.

The unions want Ellison to make an enforceable commitment that Paramount and Warner Bros. studios each release 15 films into theaters a year. They also want a 45-day theatrical window so that cinema chains can continue their rebound.

Some of the DGA and IATSE terms may be difficult for Ellison to swallow. Already, Paramount is looking to shave expenses to come up with the $81 billion promised to Warner Bros. shareholders. Sources have said Ellison’s suggestion to move Paramount from its picturesque Hollywood campus is designed, in part, to attract financial incentives from another state, such as Tennessee, eager to help with a relocation.

Among the conditions, the DGA and IATSE asked that Paramount’s and Warner Bros.’ motion picture units be kept as “as separate studios, with each studio maintaining its own production, distribution, marketing and exhibition groups as distinct divisions.”

One of the goals of the merger is to shave costs by consolidating overlapping business divisions and back-office functions.

The union leaders also want Warner Bros. television studio to operate independent from the Paramount and CBS production arms. They called on HBO to remain a linear television channel and available on third-party platforms, including Amazon.

Loeb and Hollander’s requests are designed to keep production jobs in the U.S.

They asked Ellison to commit to producing films and TV shows in the U.S. “at no less than the average percentage produced in the United States during the last five years” excluding 2020, the pandemic year, and 2023, when two strikes idled production.

“Our goal, with respect to the proposed merger, has always been to achieve an outcome that ensures a vibrant, competitive marketplace for the production, distribution, and licensing of film and television programming that serves the interests of consumers and filmmakers alike,” Hollander and Loeb wrote.

“We believe that these conditions, if secured through a binding agreement, will largely serve this purpose,” the said.

Bonta previously has said his preference would be structural remedies — divesting key business units — rather than “behavioral” compromises that could evaporate soon after the merger closed.

Should the two sides fail to hash out a settlement with conditions, Loeb and Hollander asked Ellison and Bonta to seek an earlier trial date for the legal showdown.

A federal judge set a March 2 date — despite Paramount’s request to hold the proceedings in November.

A British travel content creator has shared her thoughts after visiting Los Angeles admitting she should have a listened to a warning she received when exchanging her currency

A British woman who visited Hollywood recently has explained how the “reality” surrounding Tinseltown is “definitely not what you think”.

Travel content creator Jasmine admitted she had been warned about Los Angeles by her local Post Office’s staff when she changed her pounds to dollars. “A lady on the counter asked if I was going anywhere nice and I told her was going to LA and she looked at me a bit gone out,” she began in a TikTok video. “I was a bit confused at this point and she asked if I had ever been before and that it would not be what I thought it’d be.”

And as Jasmine’s clip continued in California, it appeared the Post Office clerk clearly wasn’t wrong. “As soon as I got there I understood exactly what she meant,” she said.

On a dreary looking day, Jasmine headed to Mel’s Drive-In Celebrity Bar to order French toast. There, she continued: “It was exactly what she said it’d be and absolutely nothing like I had imagined.”

While Jasmine acknowledging Hollywood does boast some “fantastic places to go”, she couldn’t help but highlight other “really run-down places” as she strolled the Walk of Fame.

“There’s definitely a misconception of what LA actually is, especially when you are from the UK,” she mused. “If I had known what it was really like, I probably would have planned my trip a whole lot differently and missed Hollywood completely.”

Jasmine added that on her return to the UK she was regularly asked if she visited the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “It actually makes zero sense because it’s probably the worst place in LA to go,” she said as she ate a hot dog. “Just be mindful if you are going there from the UK, it’s not going to be how you imagine.”

In a follow-up video, Jasmine headed out for an early morning walk where she showcased little more than “all the cleaning crew out” and areas that were “dealing with homelessness”.

“There was rubbish and human waste on the floor, which can be a real issue,” she slammed. “It definitely gave me a bit of a reality check.”

Jasmine did offer praise for Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, however. “We tried so much amazing food there and experienced so many different sides of the city,” she enthused. “I guess what surprised me the most about LA is that every area feels so different. You can go from Hollywood to beaches to food spots all in one trip.”

Writing in response, a frustrated local asked: “No one in LA cares for Hollywood. Why do you guys always come to Hollywood? That’s like the last place we ever go to!”

A second person agreed with Jasmine: “I went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was absolutely shocked.” A third fumed: “Totally agree, I was massively disappointed, especially Hollywood, that was like a crack den.”

However, a fourth TikTok user exclaimed: “Los Angeles is gorgeous. You just need to have realistic expectations and stay slightly off the beaten track to see the real LA Hollywood and Downtown are must avoids.”

It will take someone better versed in finance, corporate law, family psychology and, perhaps, the impact of great wealth on brain chemistry than I to analyze the recent actions of Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison.

To a cultural journalist, however, it seems like he continues to make himself the best argument yet for opposing his company’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Mere days after taking to the media to insist that he is a misunderstood film buff who just wants to save Hollywood, he threatened to help destroy it.

If California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and state attorneys general from 11 other states, including New York, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado, refuse to negotiate a settlement of their antitrust lawsuit, Ellison said he will yank Paramount Studios, and potentially Warner Bros., out of California.

Um, OK, Ultron.

So that’s how Ellison wants to prove that he will be a steward of the flailing entertainment industry — by threatening to rip out a big part of its still-beating heart and implant it in Texas or Tennessee?

Will he be taking the Hollywood sign as well, to stick atop the Grand Ole Opry or, better yet, the Alamo?

Not only does this grant Bonta VIP access to the moral highground, it all but negates Ellison’s recent New York Times guest essay. Especially the part in which he wrote: “The states claim this deal will give one company too much influence over theatrical releases and cable operators, while the W.G.A. argues that our combined market power will hurt writers.”

If one man can decide, in a fit of pique, to scoop up a huge portion of the entertainment industry and float it thousands of miles away, I’d say that’s a decent argument for “too much influence.”

Also, good luck with the landing. Texas and Tennessee are both fine states with vibrant cities, undeniable corporate incentives and lower costs of living, but their draconian abortion laws and restrictive LGBTQ+ legislation may give many in the entertainment industry pause.

Still, according to Ellison, it’s Bonta and his gang who are trying to make things political, not him; in his essay, Ellison claimed that the suit is mostly about preventing his ownership of CNN, despite his insistence that (the hiring of Bari Weiss to oversee CBS News to the contrary) the news network would remain autonomous.

As a journalist, I would love to believe that Bonta and the other attorneys general are simply going to bat for the Fourth Estate; with President Trump openly longing for the day when Ellison controls CNN, it is no doubt a concern. But as Ellison seems intent on personally underscoring, the bigger issue is how to prevent a dwindling number of individuals from controlling enormous portions of an industry that not only employs millions, but also plays a vital role in shaping the nature of art and culture in this country and the world.

(Never mind the queasy fact that Ellison is being bankrolled by his billionaire father Larry, who is putting many, if not all, of his eggs in the AI basket, to the detriment of his employees.)

Shaping art and culture is, of course, precisely why Ellison wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, almost literally at all costs. When he first lost the bid for Warner Bros. to Netflix, he (and his dad) responded by offering enough money (including a $7-billion payout should the deal not clear antitrust regulation) to make Ted Sarandos blink. Money has always been a ladder to power and influence in this country, and the widening wealth gap, not to mention the current administration, has turned the ladder into a rocket ship. (See please Elon Musk.)

Ellison has continually stressed his love of cinematic storytelling. Under the proposed Paramount Warner, he promises to produce 30 theatrical films and 170 television series a year and create more work for everyone.

That would be lovely (if fiscally difficult) to believe. If only he hadn’t just tried to hold the state that gave birth to cinematic storytelling hostage by threatening to kidnap one of its kids.

As negotiating tactics go, it certainly undermines whatever public approval he hoped to gain with his “I’m just a guy, standing in front of the movie biz asking it to love me” bit.

Change is coming for Paramount Studios — the lot on Melrose Avenue — either way. If Paramount Skydance acquires Warner Bros., production will likely shift to the Warner Bros. lot, with Paramount leased or sold.

Now, it seems, Ellison is willing to have a fire sale — he’ll certainly need to raise a bunch of cash if he’s going to quickly flee to redder pastures. As for the thousands of local workers who depend on Paramount production to make a living, well, Ellison and his executives may be able to afford to relocate or (more probably) commute out of state, but most of the people who actually make movies and television cannot.

Business, of course, is business and it has become financially and politically fashionable to desert California to avoid whatever local law, regulation or tax you now find unfair. Tech mavens, including Musk, have ditched California for the Lone Star State. Ellison’s father recently took Oracle out of Redwood City, first to Austin, Texas, then to Nashville, workers be damned.

But Ellison taking Paramount and potentially Warner Bros. out of Los Angeles isn’t about business. It’s pure politics, of the savage, oligarchical variety.

Given the stakes, it’s difficult to imagine that some sort of deal won’t be struck that allows the sale to go through. But Ellison isn’t saving the entertainment industry, he’s leveraging it.

And if he has to spit in Hollywood’s face to save his own, well, apparently that’s fine too.

AN A-list Hollywood actor was spotted shopping at a Pokémon market in Brighton – but would you have been able to recognise him in the crowds?

A TikTok user shared a snap of the star, 48, looking around a gymnasium in a white cap and glasses.

Molly Wheatley, user name @xo_mxlly_ox, captioned the snap: “That’s just a random man in a white hat…”

But then in the next slide she revealed exactly who it was, as she posed for a picture with none other than Tom Hardy.

Fans rushed to the comments section to swoon over the Venom star, with one writing: “WOAH.”

Another said: “my jaw hit the floor.”

PIK ‘N’ CHUSE

I took my son to Lego festival with Pokemon ‘battles’ and F1 brick car racing

PIKA-CHEW

Brit nettle eating champ takes on world in bizarre contest to be Pokemon megastar

“I knew it was him before the second picture. I KNOW THAT HANDSOME MAN FROM A MILE OFF,” a third chimed in.

A fourth added: “Idk you but I hate you!!”

A fifth chimed in: “I would simply keel over.”

A sixth joked: “He is a pretty good tom hardy look alike tbf.”

Tom, who was born in Hammersmith, London, is a well known English actor who has starred in a number of popular films and TV shows since shooting to fame in the late 90s.

Some of his movie roles include in Star Trek: Nemesis, RocknRolla, Bronson, Warrior, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dunkirk, Venom, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Bikeriders and Havoc.

Meanwhile he’s also been in Wuthering Heights, Peaky Blinders, Taboo, Oliver Twist, and most recently MobLand.

He has also won the Rising Star Award at the British Academy Film Awards in 2011, as well as the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor in an Action Movie in 2015.

And fans will be over the moon to know that Tom is reprising his role as Harry Da Souza on MobLand, after it was said that the hunky actor had been fired from the Paramount+ hit.

Deadline confirmed the integral cast – which is also made up of Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren – will remain for the third instalment, and that includes Tom.

And last month The Sun exclusively revealed a world-exclusive first look at the upcoming action.

In less than a month, Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison has exhibited a dizzying range of emotions as the goal line for the coveted $111-billion Warner Bros. Discovery deal has moved farther away.

The tech scion initially exuded confidence that Hollywood’s biggest merger in decades was on a fast track to completion by September. Ellison and others downplayed efforts by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to challenge the acquisition — until Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general gained momentum in their antitrust lawsuit, which now threatens to derail Paramount’s Warner Bros. deal or, at least, make it significantly more expensive.

Ellison and his executives have vacillated from anger to acceptance. Last week, Ellison attempted a high-profile reputation reboot, extolling his love for movies and blaming politics for opposition to the deal.

The mogul has told investors the company is willing to negotiate a settlement with Bonta in hopes of completing the massive merger as soon as possible.

But Ellison also is making contingency plans to shift Paramount’s historic home base from Melrose Avenue to Tennessee — or perhaps Texas — as early as this fall.

Paramount’s board has approved Ellison’s relocation plans, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly. Ellison shared the concept with his executive leadership team in a meeting last Wednesday but said his preference was to remain in California, these people said.

The proposal includes potentially selling the 65-acre Paramount lot in Hollywood — as well as the larger Warner Bros. campus in Burbank, should Paramount prevail in the merger battle. Such sales would generate revenue to help pay merger costs, one of the knowledgeable sources said.

Paramount’s sudden relocation plan has further rattled Hollywood, which already is reeling from thousands of job losses in recent years.

Bonta, in a statement Tuesday, blasted Paramount’s latest strategy, calling it “another attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through.”

“Paramount has lost the plot as it continues to lose in court,” Bonta said. “My office remains committed to stopping illegal consolidation and protecting a vibrant California economy for businesses that play by the rules.”

Behind Paramount’s pivot is a desperate scramble to bolster its legal case and muster funds to help finance a deal Warner shareholders approved in April.

Paramount offered to pay Warner investors $31 a share as well as so-called “ticking fees” of 25 cents per share for every quarter after Sept. 30 until the transaction closes.

That sweetener was intended as a show of confidence that Paramount’s deal would sail through its regulatory reviews, unlike a Netflix acquisition that faced more regulatory scrutiny. Netflix subsequently dropped its bid.

Paramount was banking on the swift approval of the U.S. Department of Justice, which arrived in June. President Trump is friendly with the Ellison family, and he has been eager for a shakeup at CNN, one of Warner’s properties.

“Ellison thought he had an ace in the hole with Trump [and] the DOJ, but it backfired on him because the clearance was so obviously rubber-stamping,” London-based media analyst Alice Enders said. “Now, the issues have resurfaced and it’s a costly potential delay.”

The ticking fees could add $7 million a day — or $650 million a quarter — to the $81 billion that Paramount had already anticipated paying Warner shareholders. (Paramount also agreed to absorb about $30 billion of Warner Bros. debt left over from last merger, in 2022.)

Ellison has repeatedly defended his proposed purchase, saying the tie-up does not threaten competition because Hollywood has been transformed by Netflix and other deep-pocketed tech giants.

Already, Paramount has received clearances from 65 foreign regulators, including Britain and the European Commission.

To accelerate California approvals, Paramount requested a November trial date for Bonta’s suit. Instead, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín scheduled a March 2 trial — dealing another blow to Paramount.

Ticking fees alone could add $2.1 billion to the cost of buying Warner Bros. In addition, Paramount said that delaying the transaction until next spring will add $190 million in bridge loan financing costs.

Paramount disclosed that it had $1.6 billion in cash on hand and a revolving loan of $3.2 billion available for its use.

If the deal fails to close by June 4, Paramount would have to pay Warner Bros. a $7-billion breakup fee. That’s when Warner’s board could pull the plug on the Paramount deal.

Puck News first reported Ellison’s latest plan to quickly move Paramount’s operations as soon as October.

“This is a plan — not a threat,” said a person who was in the room when Ellison discussed his plans but who was not authorized to comment.

The relocation campaign echoes a tactic employed by software giant Oracle Corp., co-founded by Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison.

Oracle was based in Redwood City for three decades, but in late 2020, the company moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas, joining other California tech firms leaving in protest of the state’s high taxes and steep cost of living.

Then, two years ago, the elder Ellison announced that Nashville would host Oracle’s new headquarters. At the time, Oracle saw that state’s healthcare industry as a promising growth business. Oracle since has bet heavily on artificial intelligence.

In contrast, it would be difficult for Paramount to pack up its operations because it depends on producers, directors, writers and stars to make its TV shows and movies. The two studio lots also boast dozens of soundstages; century-old fortresses that would not be easily duplicated. And many Paramount executives are not eager to leave Los Angeles.

Some observers questioned Paramount’s willingness to carry out a move, which surfaced a week after David Ellison’s guest essay in the New York Times, which described his love of Hollywood and movies ever since he was a boy.

Ellison believes the proposed Warner merger is the best way to save Hollywood, saying the combination of two storied studios would strengthen not harm the film industry.

“One moment he’s promising to reinvigorate theatrical releases. The next he’s talking about uprooting two historic companies and moving them 2,000 miles away in order to avoid a lawsuit,” said Gabriel Kahn, journalism professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication.

Paramount’s corporate headquarters are in New York but after the Ellison family’s acquisition last year, the center of gravity shifted west. Ellison and other top executives live in Los Angeles.

Another corporate move wouldn’t disrupt Bonta’s lawsuit, experts say.

Instead, they suggested Paramount’s flurry of recent activities — including winning the support of two large theater chains, AMC and Regal, with promises of a robust movie pipeline post-merger — appeared to be part of a public relations and pressure campaign.

“They lost a lot of leverage now that the trial is set for March,” said Abiel Garcia, a former prosecutor and partner at the Manhattan Beach firm Kesselman Brantly Stockinger.

“And when you don’t have leverage in court, you go the political route,” he said, adding that Paramount seems to be angling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to join the fight.

Newsom, who has presidential ambitions, has been sensitive to the flight of companies from California. However, he has avoided picking a side in the messy merger squabble.

What’s more, the governor lacks authority to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general.

“All I know is that if I was governor, I wouldn’t want to lose Hollywood from this state, I wouldn’t want to lose a major company like Paramount to another state,” Paramount Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim said late Tuesday at a Politico Live conference in Sacramento. He had been asked about the stances of Newsom and his potential successor, Xavier Becerra, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

“I hope it settles before court,” Becerra said at the conference. “It is easier to stand in a conference room and settle than it is to stand in a courtroom.”

Delaying the trial until March has been “devastating,” Delrahim said, adding that Paramount proposed settlement terms on May 19 — but the state attorneys general instead moved forward with their suit.

“It’s costing jobs. It’s costing a lot of uncertainty for a lot of our employees, for Warner Bros. employees,” Delrahim said.

Still, Garcia and others expressed doubts about Paramount’s full-court press.

“It just feels a little over the top. It feels like a PR blitz,” Garcia said. “It suggests to me that they think their case is weaker than I even thought.”

The show will go on for ZZ Top.

Last week, the blues rock band canceled its Hollywood Bowl concert because longtime drummer Frank Beard had health issues, Rolling Stone first reported.

That Aug. 5 Los Angeles concert was supposed to be the kickoff for the band’s the Big One tour. But a spokesperson for the band says that frontman Billy Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis will continue the tour.

Michael Monahan will substitute for Beard for the remainder of the Big One, which will conclude its U.S. run on Oct. 9 in Port Wentworth, Ga.

The band has not said that it will reschedule the L.A. show, and all tickets, including transportation and parking passes, were being automatically refunded, according to the Hollywood Bowl.

Gibbons previously posted on Instagram that there were unexplained “insurmountable obstacles” leading to the band’s sudden cancellation at the Hollywood Bowl.

The band has released no details on Beard’s condition, although this is not the first time the drummer, 77, has faced health-related issues in his long tenure with the band. Beard joined ZZ Top in 1969, soon after the band formed, replacing founding drummer Dan Mitchell.

In March 2025, the Texan trio announced via its Instagram that Beard would temporarily step away from the band’s Elevation tour to tend to a health issue, which was later revealed to be foot and ankle problems. John Douglas — a longtime tech member, percussionist and drummer — replaced Beard in the interim, having done so previously when the veteran drummer underwent an emergency appendectomy in 2002.

In ZZ Top’s early days — following the release of the 1976 album “Tejas” — Beard dealt with issues related to substance abuse that led to the band’s three-year hiatus, which he and his bandmates opened up about in the 2019 documentary “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”

“Frank goes all out on what he does and that includes the bad things,” bandmate Dusty Hill, who died in 2021, said in the documentary. “He was sick. If you’re a very good friend, you love a guy, you don’t want to see him die. You just want to see your brother get well.”

The Grammy-nominated band, which formed in Houston, is known for its edgy blues twang in popular singles including “La Grange” and “Tush” and across 15 studio albums. In November, ZZ Top will close out the Big One tour with eight performances across Mexico and South America.

A HOLLYWOOD icon looks incredible as she dances in a swimsuit with a bottle of rosé in her hand – but would you have clocked her?

The legendary actress, 80, has been spending some quality time with her family while on holiday across Europe.

In the short clip, Goldie Hawn is seen pulling out some dance moves while wearing the black bathing suit embroidered with silver crystals.

Her daughter Kate Hudson took to her Instagram feed to share a video of her mother being as fabulous as ever.

Stylish Goldie wore a grey cardigan over the top and accessorised with a silver necklace and a clip in her hair.

The Overboard actress held a nearly-finished bottle in her hand as she sashayed her way out of the shot.

TOMDAYA

How Tom & Zendaya became Hollywood’s ‘It’ couple with most important role to come

stars aligned

Hollywood A-listers sign up for big budget new BBC drama based on hit book

Kate, 47, also shared a whole host of other snaps and videos as the family were pictured having the best time.

She captioned it: “A few love letters from Europe.”

Her followers flocked to the comments section to compliment Goldie in particular.

One person gushed: “Omg your Mom!! I love her energy!!”

Another Instagram user enthused: “I want to be @goldiehawn in my next life.”

Somebody else commented: “Love you and your mom!! I’m sure your kids are just as amazing.”

While a fourth added: “I love your mum. She’s always dancing and being happy.”

Goldie started out in Hollywood back in 1966 with her career spanning over six-decades.

Her most famous roles include The First Wives Club, Private Benjamin, Overboard and Death Becomes Her.

Goldie has won several awards over the years, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for a BAFTA and two primetime Emmy Awards.

She married musician Bill Hudson in 1976, before welcoming daughter Kate and son Oliver into the world.

However, the pair got divorced after just four-years of marriage.

Goldie began dating actor Kurt Russell in 1983 and although they never got married, they welcomed son Wyatt in 1986.

Kate began her own career in 1996 and has become a staple in Hollywood in her own right.

She’s appeared in iconic films including How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days, You, Me and Dupree, Bride Wars and Raising Helen.

Kate is mum to three children, with her eldest son Ryder, 22, from her former marriage to musician Chris Robinson.

She shares 15-year-old son Bingham with ex-fiance and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy.

The Hollywood star is also mum to seven-year-old daughter Rani with her fiance Danny Fujikawa.

She and Danny first met in 2016 and got engaged in 2021.

The ongoing explosion of revival screenings in Los Angeles is an opportunity not just to revisit accepted classics, but also to give a spotlight to undersung oddball picks deserving of broader attention.

Take for example 1988’s “Tapeheads.” An offbeat comedy about two friends trying to break into the then-emergent world of music videos, the film stars John Cusack and Tim Robbins just as their careers were starting to take off. A snapshot of a specific moment in Los Angeles — some shots of downtown’s skyline at sundown have an unexpected beauty — the film has never been lost exactly, but it is deserving of renewed interest.

The movie will show on Monday as part of the American Cinematheque’s Cinematic Void program at Los Feliz Theatre, screening from a rare 35mm print provided by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Director and co-writer Bill Fishman will be there along with producer and co-writer Peter McCarthy, producer Eric Barrett and production designer (later turned director) Catherine Hardwicke.

Cusack and Robbins star as Ivan and Josh, friends since childhood now working as nighttime security guards until they figure out their future. Cusack’s Ivan has ambition and drive while Robbins’ Josh is sensitive and creative. Together they launch a music video business and take it upon themselves to revive the careers of their favorite soul singers, the fictional Swanky Modes (played by real-life soul legends Sam Moore and Junior Walker). Josh and Ivan soon find themselves accidentally wrapped up in a blackmail scheme involving a sex tape and a conservative politician, complicating everything.

“It was a hustler and an artist and the merging of the two, trying to get some sort of balance with your creative side and what you needed to do to make a living,” explains Fishman, now 68, during a recent video interview from Venice, Calif. “We came up with the credo ‘You do what you gotta till you can do what you wanna.’ And that was really where it came from.”

Before making his feature debut with “Tapeheads,” the native New Yorker had already found success in his 20s as a music video director himself, creating clips for songs such as Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized” and the Georgia Satellites’ No. 2 hit “Keep Your Hands to Yourself.” Straddling the music scene and Hollywood, Fishman found that a satire of conservative politics came to him naturally.

“Music videos seemed to be an easy thing for me to do because I knew that world,” he says. “Even though the story was what we thought would be completely ludicrous, it ended up being much more realistic than we believed.”

John Cusack, left, and Tim Robbins in the movie “Tapeheads.”

(American Cinematheque)

James Branscome, who programs the Cinematic Void series for the American Cinematheque, calls the rare chance to show the film a bucket-list experience.

“It was a weird movie that felt lost, especially when it stars John Cusack and Tim Robbins being zany in a way they don’t often get to be,” he says by phone. “It felt like this very organic, perfect movie, like: This checks so many boxes for me.”

Among the producers on the film is Michael Nesmith, a former member of the Monkees, and through him the project fell under the production umbrella of NBC. Fishman remembers being invited to the home of Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment and a green-lighter of titles including “Miami Vice” and “Seinfeld.” What he thought was going to be a relatively brief meeting was instead hours of Tartikoff patiently going through the script page by page.

“I did not know anything,” remembers Fishman, whose most recent credit is the 2024 film “Waltzing With Brando,” starring Billy Zane. “I thought Hollywood was always going to be like this. But I didn’t realize that my best experience was my first and then we were going to have to fight and claw for the rest of it.”

It was young casting director Victoria Thomas (lately of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and “Michael”) who brought in Cusack and Robbins. Cusack, a Chicagoan, was in Los Angeles to appear onstage with Robbins’ theater group the Actors’ Gang and the two of them came in to audition together.

“They had really prepared,” says Fishman. “And after an hour or more of the interview, which went great, I said, ‘I want you guys to switch roles.’ And that freaked them out. They were like, ‘We can’t do that. We rehearsed. We can’t just throw this together for you.’ I said, ‘I really think you should.’ And they said, ‘OK, give us 15 minutes.’ And they walked out onto the street in Venice and they came back in as the other characters, redid the audition and that’s how they were cast.”

Mary Crosby and John Cusack in the movie “Tapeheads.”

(American Cinematheque)

Fishman made sure to show Cusack the 1957 film “Sweet Smell of Success,” with Tony Curtis’ smarmy press agent an influence on his character. Fishman also says Cusack’s greased-back hair and pencil mustache were partly inspired by Eric Roberts in “Star 80.”

“Tapeheads” captures a specific moment in Los Angeles history, sure to be nostalgic for some, from a desolate downtown to a percolating music scene. Legendary local party band Fishbone provided music for the score and appears briefly as a country-and-western bar combo. Devo rerecorded a version of their song “Baby Doll” in Swedish to stand in for an international boy band’s hit. The film is also full of cameo appearances by real-life music figures, including “Soul Train” host Don Cornelius, MTV’s Martha Quinn, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, rapper Doug E. Fresh and musicians “Weird Al” Yankovic, Ted Nugent and Stiv Bators. (A then-largely unknown Courtney Love has an uncredited appearance as a dominatrix on a sex tape.)

“The soundtrack and the people we used in the film were reflective of the wide spectrum of what was unifying, I thought, for the counterculture in specifically L.A.,” says Fishman. “It wasn’t a film about punk rock, it wasn’t a film about rhythm and blues or hip-hop. It was a film about young people expressing themselves.

“When you would go out in Los Angeles at that time, you would go to nightclubs and all these bands would be playing in the same club,” he says. “If you were part of the counterculture you could play anything or dress any way and you were sort of accepted. It was a creative scene and that’s what the film was about.”

One highlight of the movie is a commercial Ivan and Josh make for local L.A. eatery Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘N Waffles (still going strong), featuring a memorable rap by blues singer King Cotton and done with a bold yellow and black look.

“I grew up in New York City and chicken and waffles was not a thing,” says Fishman. “People here would go get it late night in Hollywood and when I was looking for some business that they could do a video for, it just struck me as an absurd combination, which was all about what the film was about: absurd combinations. And it happens to be delicious.”

“That Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle commercial is incredible,” says programmer Branscome. “Which is the most California thing because outside of L.A. no one knows what a Roscoe’s is unless you’ve been here. It’s full of very niche stuff that is elevated. It works on one level, but if you know exactly what it is, it gives it a different dynamic.”

Tim Robbins in the movie “Tapeheads.”

(American Cinematheque)

When “Tapeheads” was released in October 1988 (after a berth at the film festival that would be later renamed Sundance), it struggled to find theaters. Moore and Walker performed on “Late Night With David Letterman” as the Swanky Modes. According to Fishman, Cusack and Robbins were both reluctant to do press for the film at the time “because they thought it was uncool.”

It was not until it hit the VHS market that the movie truly began to find its audience. That said, it has never been on Blu-ray and is available to stream from only a few scattered sites. Perhaps this sold-out L.A. screening, with the support of some of the key behind-scenes-team, will help spur the film toward a broader renaissance. It deserves to be seen as more than just a cult curio.

“As soon as people saw the film, they said, ‘Oh, this is a cult film’ and I always hated that,” says Fishman. “I was like, ‘No, it’s not a cult film — it’s a pop movie.’ We wrote it to play to everybody.”

Paramount Chairman David Ellison believes the tug-of-war over his proposed $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery comes down to a single question: whether he can be trusted to control CNN.

“I believe this fight is not really about market share,” Ellison wrote in a Tuesday op-ed in the New York Times, noting that regulators around the world, including the U.S. Justice Department, have approved the deal that has been temporarily blocked by an antitrust lawsuit brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his coalition of Democrat state attorneys general.

“I believe a plainer worry sits beneath the briefs and the news releases … The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN,” Ellison wrote.

The rare opinion piece serves as Ellison’s acknowledgment that his family’s close association with President Trump has sullied his standing in Hollywood and beyond.

Shakeups at CBS News, which is part of Paramount, the departure of CBS late night host Stephen Colbert, and a visible presidential lobbying effort — including hosting a dinner for Trump in Washington in late April and attending Trump’s birthday extravaganza in June with UFC fights on the White House lawn — have come with a cost.

More than 5,000 entertainment industry workers, including such high-profile stars as Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston and Mark Ruffalo, signed an open letter early this year, calling on Bonta to try to block the merger.

Bonta and the other state attorneys general sued, saying the merger of two of the major film studios would give Paramount-Warner Bros. more than 25% of the wide-release theatrical film market. Their lawsuit also alleged the combined company would own too many cable TV channels — more than 50, including CNN, TBS, HGTV and Comedy Central.

Many in Hollywood fear that the consolidation of two historic studios will bring thousands of layoffs and contribute to a bleaker employment picture. Ellison’s Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount a year ago resulted in the loss of 2,000 jobs.

Some have opposed the Warner Bros. deal, saying one family shouldn’t be allowed to control two significant news operations: CBS News and CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.

“There has been speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions,” Ellison wrote.

“Unfortunately, I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind, but I can share this: I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans,” Ellison said. “And when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth.”

“Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle,” he said. “That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it. And it requires independence. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause.”

“These were founding principles for both CNN and CBS News, for legends like Ted Turner and Edward R. Murrow, and it is exactly that kind of independence that has always fueled the greatness of “60 Minutes,” Ellison wrote.

Fired “60 Minutes” correspondents, including Cecilia Vega, have complained that since Bari Weiss became editor-in-chief of CBS News last fall, journalists have been asked to tilt the presentation of controversial news events, including protests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions earlier this year in Minnesota, which led to the deaths of two Americans.

Paramount has pushed back saying the plaintiff states have defined markets that fail to factor in the rise of technology companies, including Netflix, Google’s YouTube and Amazon Studios, which also attract significant swaths of viewership.

The Writers Guild of America has separately sued to block the merger, saying the deal would lead to less opportunities and lower pay for writers struggling to stay in the industry.

U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, who is overseeing the high-profile case, issued a temporary restraining order to block the merger from finalizing while the two sides hash out the evidence. Late last month, Paramount agreed to delay the merger until after a trial — or until June 1, whichever date comes first.

In court documents filed Friday, Bonta and his coalition of 11 other Democratic attorneys general proposed having a two- to three-week trial in April to weigh the evidence.

Ellison’s Paramount pushed back, saying the media company would like to start the courtroom action on Nov. 4.

Now the judge must schedule the court date.

“The states claim this deal will give one company too much influence over theatrical releases and cable operators, while the W.G.A. argues that our combined market power will hurt writers,” Ellison said in the opinion piece. “Both suits imagine a Hollywood that no longer exists — an industry ruled by a handful of legacy studios.”

Do we still call it a “heat wave” if it never ends?

Maybe my Texas and Arizona friends can help me out here on proper nomenclature because, while everybody loves the sunshine, I’m starting to dream of the time when autumn leaves start to fall.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. My birthday’s still a few months away. Is it OK if I have a slice of this cake, anyway? Maybe the Television Academy can send it to the Emmy nominees who are no longer invited to the ceremony this year.

Read on for more …

Awards show adaptation or mere party foul?

What if you were invited to a party and then nine days later that invitation is rescinded? A party in your honor, no less, or at least one where you are among the honorees. How would you feel? Would you be tempted to take that birthday cake I just mentioned and smash it into the face of your host?

Maybe I’ve watched the pie fight in “Blazing Saddles” one too many times. (Happy 100th birthday, Mel Brooks!) Still, if I were among the Emmy nominees in the five categories that the Television Academy shuttled off the Primetime Emmy Awards to the untelevised Creative Arts Emmy Awards, I might be reaching for some baked goods and taking aim.

The five categories excised from the show include four from the limited series/movie group — supporting actor and actress, writing and directing. (Variety series writing was also cut.) When I wrote a few weeks ago that the limited series boom had gone bust, it wasn’t my intention that the TV Academy remove more than half of the categories from the show. It could have just been a down year, people! Television was pretty meh across the board the last 12 months. Why pick on one division?

In doing so, the Television Academy effectively disenfranchised HBO’s “DTF St. Louis,” the best limited series of the season, from the ceremony. Steven Conrad’s dark comedy about suburban loneliness earned 13 nominations, including supporting acting nods for each member of its stellar ensemble — Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Linda Cardellini, Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday. Conrad was nominated for three — writing, directing and producing the series.

But now only Harbour, Bateman and Conrad will receive tickets to the show as executive producers of the nominated series. The other actors can attend the Creative Arts Emmys, held the weekend before the Primetime Emmys. And of course, HBO will be happy to buy them tickets if they want to go to the televised ceremony too.

The question is: Will they and other nominees, which include the likes of Nick Offerman (“Death by Lightning”), Charles Melton (“Beef”) and Dakota Fanning (“All Her Fault”), want to get dressed up two weekends in a row? (First-world problems, I know.)

“It really did manifest as a disinvite for all these people,” says one awards consultant who, like other sources for this story, requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the move. “Had the Television Academy done it before nominations came out, then at least people’s expectations would have been managed. But now it’s sort of like you got invited to the party and now you can’t come. It’s not a very nice feeling.”

“Beef” star Charles Melton’s category, supporting actor in a limited series or TV movie, will be presented at the untelevised Creative Arts Emmys the weekend before the Primetime Emmys ceremony.

(Netflix)

Why did the TV Academy wait to shift the categories until after the nominations were announced? Why focus on limited series and not, say, spread the cuts across drama and comedy categories too? Are these changes permanent?

I asked these questions to the Television Academy and the answers were, basically: We announced as soon as possible. We’re going to sidestep that second query. And we’ll see how it goes!

What this comes down to is a desire to create a show that, in the words of a TV Academy spokesperson, is “driven by the need to innovate while delivering a three-hour broadcast, keeping audience expectations and the creative structure of the ceremony in mind.”

Translation: fewer awards, fewer speeches, more throwback segments that have a chance to go viral and get people talking.

The Oscars tried this in 2022, moving eight categories off the telecast, handing them out before the broadcast began. Members hated the idea and order was restored the following year with all 23 awards being presented during the live telecast. (In 2019, when the motion picture academy announced a similar move, saying that four categories would be handed out during commercial breaks, the blowback was so fierce that the decision was almost immediately reversed.)

Emmy ratings were up 8% last year, the highest since 2021. An average of 7.42 million viewers watched. Not NFL numbers, but a continued indication that the audience level for major awards ceremonies has stabilized after steep declines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Still, there is a feeling among some that awards shows need to adapt and pick up the pace in a time when viewers’ attention spans have shortened. Is there an appetite for a three-hour ceremony when you can simply watch the highlights the next day on social media platforms?

“If people don’t want to see actors winning awards, then the days of televised awards shows should just be over,” gripes another Emmy consultant.

One thing that might be over — or at least greatly diminished — will be submissions for the supporting acting categories for limited series/movie next year if the academy makes this revision permanent.

“I think everyone will be going lead,” one network executive joked, “even if they have just five minutes an episode.”

After a year and half of research and interviews, the BBC on Wednesday aired an explosive new documentary in which multiple women accused Oscar winner Jared Leto of sexual assault.

Directed by Alice McShane, “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret,” which debuted Wednesday in the U.K., revealed new claims of criminal sexual conduct by the 54-year-old actor and musician from four women, including a possible instance of statutory rape in California. In the film, a total of 10 women recount allegations of sexual assault, along with inappropriate text messages, phone calls and behavior that occurred from 2002 to 2016. Leto has denied the allegations.

To ensure the integrity of the documentary, the hour-long program was not announced ahead of time.

“Everything came out at once,” says producer Jessica Sartenaer, speaking from London over Zoom alongside McShane on Friday morning. “That was all very much part of the strategy because we didn’t want to leak anything before the investigation came out.”

McShane began working on the film after Los Angeles-based DJ Allie Teilz reshared in April 2025 her Facebook post from 2012 in which she accused Leto of trying to “force himself” onto her backstage at a concert. Teilz described the actor as “Hollywood’s most persistent predator.” About 40 women contacted Teilz with their own allegations, according to Sartenaer. In June 2025, weekly newsletter Air Mail published accusations of impropriety against Leto by nine women, which he denied.

“I began ringing around trying to find the women who’d written into Allie,” McShane says. “When I was speaking to women, I realized there were other journalists on the trail. So I did think there was going to be something published relatively quickly, which we can’t compete with because we have a whole different set of considerations. It takes a lot longer to make.”

Social media was the main resource for finding people willing to speak on the record. The filmmakers say they discovered more than 120 separate allegations online.

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean these are all women who want to speak about their experiences,” McShane says. “They’ve posted anonymously for a reason. It was a lot of hours spent digging through hundreds of people from across Leto’s life and career — people who had worked with the band, people in his acting life, his fashion life. We had an enormous spreadsheet. It was a really in-depth process.”

Ultimately, 10 women agreed to be interviewed on camera. The filmmakers offered each various options of anonymity depending on their level of comfort. None are completely anonymous, although only three used their real names. All of their real voices are heard, which McShane says is unusual.

Sartenaer adds, “The courage it takes to come forward and come up against a powerful man like Leto is immeasurable. It’s absolutely incredible what these women have done, and the anonymity decision is a very personal one. Right away, [the women had] this gut instinct about the level of anonymity that they would like.”

McShane drew on her past experiences, including making the 2023 Channel 4 documentary “Russell Brand: In Plain Sight,” which investigated comedian Russell Brand’s treatment of women, to guide the interview process.

“You really learn from a duty-of-care perspective how to best look after the women,” she says. “There’s always this balance of wanting to investigate the story, but also understanding these are people who have gone through incredibly painful experiences and they’re sharing very personal things with you. You never want to push. They are in control. You can never make these things happen. It has to come from the women.”

The initial investigation began in London and the filmmakers visited Los Angeles twice in the months that followed. The first interview was with a woman named Alex last fall. In the documentary, the former model recalls being invited to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert at London’s O2 in 2013 (Leto is the band’s frontman). She says his female assistant then brought her to an afterparty at the members’ club Shoreditch House. Although she was 19 at the time, she told Leto she was 17 to protect herself. She says the musician, then 41, replied, “Age is just a number, and, anyway, we’re in Europe.”

Alex was sent by Leto’s assistant to another afterparty at a nearby hotel, but Leto was the only one there, she says. Alex asked for a phone charger and cash for a taxi home, but was denied. When she asked if she could crash on the sofa in the hotel room, she says Leto threatened to rape her.

“Right from when we started investigating and started hearing from these women, [we were] noticing these patterns of behavior,” McShane says. “[Alex] is an extraordinary communicator. The women we were speaking to, all of them, are amazing storytellers, and resolute about telling their stories. Each time we spoke to somebody it reinforced the importance of getting it out.”

An explosive new documentary revealed new claims of criminal sexual conduct by actor and musician Jared Leto.

(Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images)

Sartenaer says Leto’s seeming fixation with women of a young age was something “we were interested in investigating right off because of the pattern we noticed in the reposts from Allie Teilz.”

“Many of them did mention that they were teenagers at the time of the alleged offenses,” she says. “We knew that was a thread to follow right from the beginning.”

One woman, named Clara in the documentary, spoke about having sex with Leto for the first time when she was 17 and he was 34. The encounter took place at his home in California. In the film, she describes having a conversation with Leto about the age of consent in the state. “He just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn’t a huge concern for him,” she says.

As the documentary points out, the age of consent in California is 18. An adult having sex with someone underage can constitute statutory rape. The filmmakers can’t comment on the law or whether there will be any legal repercussions for Leto. However, Mike Radford, executive producer at BBC Current Affairs, says what distinguishes “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” from prior investigations is that the film showcases alleged criminal conduct.

“That’s a different level of potential wrongdoing,” Radford says, speaking on the phone from London. “From that point of view, it becomes a more serious story, and it goes beyond misunderstanding to something more worrying.”

The filmmakers sent a “lengthy right of reply” letter to Leto and gave him two weeks to respond. They followed up several times with his team to no avail. It wasn’t until after the documentary aired that Leto denied the allegations in a statement, which was shared Wednesday with The Times.

“I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life,” he said. “These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”

The documentary combines the interviews with reenactments and archival footage. Sartenaer says they had a “wealth of material” to pull from.

“There is so much content about him,” McShane adds. “And he’s so overtly sexual on the public stage. We’ve got examples in the film of him, like when he’s in the press room at the Oscars. Everything is packed with innuendo. There are examples where he’s being very inappropriate with young women on the stage. All of that placed next to these interviews can be so chilling and there were countless examples of that available to us.”

The filmmakers worked with a limited budget and a small team of three: McShane, Sartenaer and cinematographer Theo Tennant. In total, they spent a year and half working full time on “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.”

Alice McShane, left, and Jessica Sartenaer interview entertainment journalist Maureen Ryan for “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.”

(Theo Tennant / BBC)

The biggest challenge was the fact that “Hollywood is an impenetrable world,” Sartenaer says. The documentary features interviews with two people who worked with Leto speaking completely anonymously, but they were difficult to find and get on the record.

“It really took a very, very long time to have a breakthrough on the insider front [and] to actually get people to start talking with us,” Sartenaer says. “Hollywood is such a precarious place and it’s difficult to get into Hollywood, and I think once people are in, it’s probably a terrifying prospect. One foot stepped wrong could see them catapulted out of it again. We saw that nervousness in trying to speak with people. There’s a real culture of secrecy.”

Despite that, there are hopes that “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” will encourage other potential victims to speak out.

“The investigation is ongoing,” Sartenaer says. “What these women have done by coming forward [is commendable]. We think their courage will encourage other women to speak their truth, whoever it is about.”

Radford says the BBC is continuing its investigation into the allegations surrounding Leto.

“We would hope that should our investigation continue we would have enough material to make a subsequent documentary,” he says. “We’re not working on a documentary now because I’m not commissioned to do so. But it is our intention.”

At present, the BBC doesn’t have plans to air “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” in the U.S. It was offered to the U.S. market while in production, according to Radford, but not picked up for distribution.

“There was no legal reason it isn’t airing there,” Radford says. “In fact, the legal threat is much greater in the U.K. because the libel laws are tougher in the U.K. So there was no fear around putting it out in the U.S.”

McShane and Sartenaer have been heartened by the immediate response to the documentary. But they also hope the momentum will continue.

“I hope we keep seeing the reverberations and I hope the conversation doesn’t die,” McShane says. “Ten years ago at the height of #MeToo this would have really punched through. The general outrage has cooled a little bit when stories of this nature are published. But we hope the conversations stay strong because it’s really important people keep talking about this.”