Michael Cieply Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

The film Academy’s annual membership survey hit email in-boxes on Monday.

At first, I was shocked by the news that Participant Media was dying. Such an appealing company. Smart. Mindful. Vibrant. Forward-thinking. The producer of intelligent films like Spotlight and Green Book, with a distinctly progressive message.

I’m not overly fond of politics. Given a choice, I’d rather talk food, or faraway places.

All due respect to Godzilla, but the first quarter of this year was a bust for Hollywood. There’s no getting around it. The news read like an April Fool’s joke without a punchline.

We’ve raised a cheer for the March 10 Oscar broadcast’s audience bump, up 4 percent, to 19.5 million viewers from 18.8 million a year ago. The total should stretch toward 21 million when digital viewers over seven days are finally added in. (Social media presence will also have grown.)

Truth be told, I’m not crazy about Oscar night. The shoes pinch. Security’s a bother. All the red-carpet nattering unnerves me.

I share my colleague Pete Hammond’s fascination with Cord Jefferson’s BAFTA win for his screenplay adaptation, American Fiction. It is no small thing for a self-consciously American story to win a very British award against competition as formidable as Christopher Nolan, especially for a debut film.

It’s a fact of life, people love the Oscars most when the film Academy or its members are doing something dumb. Slapping a host. Naming the wrong winner. Singing about bare breasts. That sort of thing.

I’m trying to stay optimistic. It takes some effort, as just about everyone seems to think the film business is a mess–strike-thinned schedule, cultural chaos, streaming models in flux. But, hey, the Golden Globes audience was up by half, never mind critical reaction to the show. There are still signs of life out there.

Last week, I had another very occasional lunch with a friend who was a power in indie film when that meant something. We worked through the usual stuff—aches and pains, dead colleagues, favorite restaurants closed. Then came that increasingly difficult movie question: “Seen anything you liked?”

As my colleague Anthony D’Alessandro has noted, the domestic movie box office, starved of product by overlapping strikes, will likely be trimmed by a billion dollars in 2024.

Is it too early for a New Year’s wish? Well, I’m going to make one anyway.

Here they come again, those holiday perennials. Movies, both good and bad, that year after year find their way back into theaters, onto small screens and deep into stockings that still get stuffed with digital discs.

Six months in, the strikes are over. Ten days out, the holidays begin. As for the movies—unfortunately, the most exciting part of the year is already behind us.

As actors continue to struggle in negotiations with the entertainment companies, it’s probably worth noting a point that doesn’t get advertised much.

The writers have settled. Actors and companies return to the table this week. The awards season is saved (almost, we hope).

This week, the big story is a presumed return to talks between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and the striking Writers Guild of America. May things go well.

Everyone’s gone to the festivals. But here on the home front, one thing still leads to another.

You can usually count on bond disclosure documents–assuming good eyesight and infinite patience–for fresh tidbits about the inner workings of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the latest round is no exception.

Whoa, here it comes, just like Hurricane Hilary, an off-kilter, sidewinder of a movie awards season that’s tearing up the rule book even before it starts.

The late film executive Bingham Ray, God bless him, once (over lunch at Orso, in 2009) pointed out something so obvious I had completely missed it. The wiliest movie marketers, explained Ray, try to own a color scheme.

It was a magnificent movie weekend. Barbie, Oppenheimer, Sound of Freedom. All hits, a blow-out!

What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.

I have just two words for producer Lawrence Turman, who died Saturday at 96. “Thank you.”

There it was in my email, right on the dot, at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning– the digital equivalent of a dreaded question that follows every industry screening. As the old joke puts it: “How did you love my movie?”

Two years ago, during the lockdown, I wrote that I had become addicted to those little bird-box libraries that make walking here something of a literary pilgrimage.

One month into the writers strike, there’s little for a bystander to add about the issues, prospects or relative staying power of the opponents. Deadline’s reporters and contributors have done an admirable job on that score.

For those who treasure a sense of place in movies, the new trailer for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a film set for release by Paramount in October, brings a flicker of hope. (Pete Hammond’s Cannes review is here.)

Comedy is back; Super Mario Bros has proved that laughs are good for a half billion dollars.

Will there ever be a great book about the film business as it is now?

Editors Note: Bill Mechanic is chairman and CEO of Pandemonium Films and a former top executive at Paramount, Disney and chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment when that studio generated Titanic, X-Men, Independence Day and Braveheart. He is also a former producer of the Oscars and Oscar-nominated films like Hacksaw Ridge and Coraline, and was a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors before resigning in 2018. He weighs in on that body’s upcoming elections.

Michael Cieply Executive EditorIn a little-noticed court filing last week, producer Michael Shamberg amended his existing complaint against the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, arguing that Academy governors improperly deprived members of rights in June by restricting their ability to propose bylaws changes.Shamberg had earlier sued the Academy and its governing board, asking the Los Angeles County Superior Court to compel a vote on his own proposed bylaws amendments.

Michael Cieply Executive EditorIf you want a little scare for Halloween—not as big as the election, civil unrest, or coronavirus—take a look at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences job listings on Oscars.org.Last week, the Academy posted its call for a new Executive Vice-President, Member Relations and Awards, to replace Lorenza Muñoz, who recently left for Amazon. It’s quite a listing.

Michael Cieply Executive EditorLast week, just before the President’s diagnosis consumed us, Hollywood leaders joined in asking that Congress send coronavirus relief funds to exhibitors. Those were described as a life-and-death issue for theaters.  A mortal threat.

Michael Cieply Executive EditorWatching Wayne Wang’s Coming Home Again, set for a virtual release (online, but through individual theaters) by Outsider Pictures on Oct. 23, delivered a jolt.

Michael Cieply Executive EditorAs Deadline’s Tom Tapp reported last week, Los Angeles County isn’t quite ready to join other parts of California and the nation at large in allowing movie theaters to reopen, even with restrictions. So the coronavirus-beset movie capital remains closed to indoor movies.Which isn’t entirely bad.