Is The Wall Of Silence Around Scott Rudin Cracking?; HFPA Disarray; Netflix’s Big Miss; THR Oscar Issue

[The Hollywood Reporter]( Today In Entertainment APRIL 21, 2021 What's news: Is Hollywood's wall of silence on Scott Rudin beginning to crack? More trouble for the HFPA, a Searchlight stunner, Netflix's big miss, ex-staff decry "heartbreaking" treatment at Abigail Disney's Level Forward, ArcLight employees mourn the theater chain's closure, Derek Chauvin trial aftermath, Euro Super League goes up in flames. Plus: The overdue rise of Asians in Hollywood, the mystery greatest mystery in Oscar history, and more from THR's Oscars issue. --Alex Weprin [THR's Oscars Issue] THR's Oscars Issue ►From punchline to Oscar contenders: The overdue rise of Asians in Hollywood. Five years ago, a joke about Asian kids as Oscar accountants and iPhone sweatshop workers landed during an otherwise racially conscious telecast, galvanizing a community that since has raised its collective voice in the industry, Rebecca Sun reports. --"Sometimes you need this galvanizing force," says producer Janet Yang, recalling the shock of hearing the jokes [at the 2016 Oscars] and their implication that Asians were considered such a nonfactor in the conversation... Up till then, "we were so buried in our own things and had not really thought too much about how the Asian American community could have an impact on the industry," says Yang, whose credits include The Joy Luck Club and Netflix's Over the Moon. "We all went on this massive reconnaissance trip to call people, and we found there were so many more than I was aware of." --"Incumbent power loves fragmentation," says Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE) board chair Sanjay Sharma, and that's one of many reasons why beneath individual official bodies like CAPE, Gold House and The Salon is a vast, interconnected network of people embedded throughout the industry who as they form bonds and amass strength are looking to help uplift other marginalized groups. Asian American industry organizers are all quick to credit coalition-building among Black Hollywood as a model and inspiration, and there are conversations about how to apply lessons learned to empower the Latino diaspora next. [The story](. ►Oscars: Who will win, who should win. In a year unlike any other, THR's awards expert Scott Feinberg and chief film critic David Rooney hash out the likely winners and the most deserving ahead of Sunday's show. [Their thoughts](. ►Dalton Trumbo, The Brave One and the greatest mystery in Oscar history. How Robert Rich's 1957 story win for the film (despite the fact that he didn't write a word) kicked off one of Hollywood's most intriguing credit battles — and why it remains unsolved. --"The saga of Trumbo's Brave One Oscar, now a forgotten footnote of the blacklist era, is more complicated than a neat story arc of final-act redemption. An examination of the historical record, including previously unreported documentation, reveals that other writers might also have deserved their due — and Oscar — for the film but never received it. It's a fable of good deeds, bad politics, motives high and low — and, not incidentally, the perennial creative-business hazard of getting screwed." [Gary Baum and Scott Feinberg have the full story](. [Scott Rudin Update] Scott Rudin Update ►Is Hollywood's wall of silence on Scott Rudin beginning to crack? As the mega-producer begins to cut ties with Broadway shows and film projects amid abuse claims, financial backer Barry Diller stays mum and key decision-makers have stayed out of the fray so far, Tatiana Siegel reports. --On April 12, Walking Dead producer Gale Anne Hurd contacted the Producers Guild and urged leadership to take a stand on Rudin. So far, the PGA has said nothing, nor has the Academy, which counts Rudin as a member. “Scott Rudin’s behavior toward his staff is not only an open secret, but one that has been tolerated for far too long,” Hurd tells THR. “Given the deafening silence from the industry to these recent accusations, it appears that nothing is likely to change. It’s heartbreaking that none of the film/TV studios, networks or unions has come out with a statement in support of victims of his alleged criminally abusive behavior.” [The story](. +Rudin is now stepping back from his film projects: “When I commented over the weekend, I was focused on Broadway reopening successfully and not wanting my previous behavior to detract from everyone’s efforts to return,” Rudin said. “It’s clear to me I should take the same path in film and streaming. I am profoundly sorry for the pain my behavior has caused and I take this step with a commitment to grow and change.” [The story](. ►HFPA backlash: Philip Berk, a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for the past 44 years and an eight-term past president of the group behind the Golden Globe Awards, has been expelled from its membership two days after emailing an article to his fellow members that described Black Lives Matter as a "racist hate movement" and slammed its co-founder, Patrisse Cullors, for purchasing a home in Topanga Canyon. "Effective immediately, Phil Berk is no longer a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association," read a statement on Tuesday afternoon. [The story](. +Meanwhile: The Berk situation proved to be the last straw for Smith & Company, the strategic advisory and crisis communications firm run by famed "fixer" Judy Smith, the real-life inspiration for Scandal's Olivia Pope, which had been retained by the HFPA's law firm of Lathan & Watkins to advise the organization just over a month ago. [More](. ►Searchlight stunner: In a stunning development on the eve of the Academy Awards, Disney announced Tuesday that longtime Searchlight Pictures as Chairmen Nancy Utley and Steve Gilula will be retiring from the specialty division, home of numerous Oscars. Searchlight veterans Matthew Greenfield and David Greenbaum, the studio’s longtime heads of production, have both been promoted to President, Searchlight, and will jointly run the company. Greenbaum and Greenfield will report to Disney Studios Content Chairman Alan Bergman and Disney Studios Content Chief Creative Officer Alan Horn. [The story](. ►Ex-staff decry "heartbreaking" treatment at Abigail Disney's Level Forward. The company, co-founded with Adrienne Becker to back inclusive projects and promote an equitable workplace, now finds itself reckoning with internal missteps, Rebecca Keegan reports. Says Disney: "We own the ways in which we've messed up." --"Tracie Dean Ponder worked with Level Forward for 11 months in 2019 and 2020, building an online job networking platform for women in entertainment. 'The most heartbreaking part is to have a company that says, 'I'm about equity, fairness, women, women of color,' ' says Ponder, who is African American. 'You feel like there's hope, there's a haven. You think you found this kind of oasis for women, and particularly those like myself, only to discover it's all an illusion.'" [The story](. [Netflix's Big Miss] Netflix's Big Miss ►Netflix earnings: Netflix shares fell on Tuesday, after the streaming giant disclosed that it had added only 3.98 million subscribers worldwide during the first quarter of 2021. The company says it expects to add only 1 million new subscribers for the current quarter. Its management team, led by co-CEOs Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, had forecast a gain of 6 million, compared with an increase of 15.8 million in the year-ago quarter, which had been fueled in part by stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic. "We had those 10 years that were smooth as silk, and we are just a little bit wobbly right now," co-CEO Reed Hastings said on the company's earnings call. --On the content front, the company says it expects to spend more than $17 billion on content this year, and that productions are up and running in every country in the world except Brazil and India, which are seeing new coronavirus waves. For comparison, Netflix spent $11.8 billion on content last year, with the pandemic shuttering many productions, and $13.9 billion in 2019. [The story](. +About that password sharing crackdown: On he call Fidelity's Nidhi Gupta asked about the size of the opportunity to increase the company's revenue with the effort and why now is the right time to start "tightening the screws on that." --"Nidhi, we test many things, but we would never roll something out that feels like 'turning the screws,' as you said," co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings said. "It has got to feel like it makes sense to consumers, that they understand. And Greg's been doing a lot of great research trying variants that harmonize with the way consumers think about it." [The story](. +The "ratings": French heist drama Lupin stole its way to the top of Netflix's viewership charts for the first quarter of 2021. Series Fate: The Winx Saga and Who Killed Sara? also racked up sizable view counts, as did feature films Yes Day and Outside the Wire. The company says 76 million member accounts worldwide watched at least a couple minutes of the series, over its first four weeks of release. [The numbers](. +In other streaming news: Roku is giving the series it acquired from defunct short-form streamer Quibi a new name. The streaming device maker will rebrand the Quibi library, which it bought in January, as Roku Originals in the run-up to debuting them on its free, ad-supported Roku Channel later in the year. Any future original programming will fall under that banner as well. [More](. ►ArcLight employees mourn theater closure: "No one was expecting this." Former staffers speak out about working at one of the last great jobs for a Hollywood newcomer: “Everybody viewed this chapter in their life as their Tarantino moment working in the video store.” [The story](. +A broad coalition of theater owners are staging Cinema Week, a six-day event in June designed to re-energize moviegoing as the film business emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of cinemas across the country will showcase exclusive content, offer exclusive merchandise and arrange for special guests, including filmmakers and talent. The event runs June 22-27. [The story](. ►Ava DuVernay's ARRAY is getting into the animation business. The prolific producer behind Netflix's Selma, 13th and When They See Us is adding an animated event series based on author Tui T. Sutherland's best-selling book series Wings of Fire. The series, which will consist of 10, 40-minute episodes, is described as an epic fantasy saga that appeals to the whole family. [The story](. ►Apple news: As Hollywood continues to adopt remote workflows requiring review-and-approval for everything from dailies to edits, Apple unwrapped a new iPad Pro with an eye toward such applications. During its virtual event on Tuesday, the tech giant's [flurry of announcements]( also included a new iMac and new version of Apple TV 4K... Apple, which helped popularize the podcast format (including its name, which was in part derived from the iPod), is also [making another major play in the audio space](, rolling out a podcast subscription service... ►Derek Chauvin trial aftermath: The former Minneapolis officer [was convicted Tuesday]( of murder and manslaughter for pinning George Floyd to the pavement with his knee on the Black man's neck in a case that touched off worldwide protests, violence and a furious reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S. +Hollywood reacts: Kerry Washington, Shonda Rhimes and Hillary Clinton were among those who shared messages after the result was read in court Tuesday afternoon. [More](. +Kendrick Sampson tells THR that while he thought that "anything can happen — 2020 and 2021 have been super unpredictable," the Insecure star felt fairly certain of how things would turn out. "I was leaning heavily toward this being a guilty verdict," he says. [More](. +Travon Free, the writer and co-director of Two Distant Strangers, an Oscar-nominated short about police brutality which was directly inspired by the killing of Floyd, shared this reaction with THR following the conviction of Chauvin:[More](. ►About that European soccer "Super League": Just over 48 hours after the plan for a new European Super League featuring the world's most glitzy and gilded soccer clubs was announced, the whole endeavor collapsed under the weight of its own hubris. Late on a dramatic Tuesday, the 'Big Six' English teams— Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur— who had signed up as one of the 12 founding members of the ESL had all announced they were pulling out of the project before a ball had been kicked. The withdrawal of the English sextet had effectively kneecapped the tournament and left the remaining clubs, Spain's Real Madrid and Barcelona and the Italian trio of AC Milan, Internazionale and Juventus, stranded. [More](. Casting roundup: Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson [has come aboard]( to star in and executive produce Free Agents, a sports heist thriller that Deon Taylor will direct for Lionsgate... Dakota Johnson [has signed on]( to star in Persuasion, Netflix and MRC Entertainment’s modern take on the Jane Austen novel... Marvel's upcoming Secret Invasion is heating up, with Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke [in talks to join]( the Disney+ series... ►Film review: David Rooney reviews The Mitchells vs. The Machines, writing that "whether you find it more frantic or fun will probably depend on your age. The best animated features manage to keep kids entertained while slyly charming the adults. This one tips heavily toward the junior end of the dial with a hyperactive pop sensibility weaned on social media and candy-colored visuals awash in video filters, emojis and wacky retro comic-book graphics." [The review](. ►TV review: Inkoo Kang reviews peacock's Rutherford Falls, writing that it "is the kind of show one immediately wants to root for — not only because of its representational aims, but because of its excellent Native supporting cast, its intellectual ambitions and its character-driven storylines. But based on the first four episodes (the portion sent to critics), the series isn’t quite root-worthy yet." [The review](. In other news... --The 2021 Tribeca Film Festival has [revealed its feature-film lineup](, highlights of which include the world premiere of Hulu's Ilana Glazer-starrer False Positive and the New York premiere of Sony's based on a true story Depression-era football story 12 Mighty Orphans. --Hulu has [acquired the U.S. rights]( to Peter Nicks’ 2021 Sundance documentary Homeroom, which captures a year of institutional struggle in Oakland's public school system. --The NFL has [inked one more TV deal](. Following its blockbuster 10-year $100 billion rights deal with Disney, Fox, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS and Amazon, the league has signed a less valuable but still strategically significant agreement with Hulu. --After nearly hitting the Supreme Court, the long-running antitrust lawsuit concerning how out-of-market NFL games are distributed [is going to arbitration](. --Canada is [set to start collecting]( a new 3 percent "digital services tax" on foreign tech platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Spotify from Jan. 2, 2022. --WME has [signed a management deal]( with the estate of The Notorious B.I.G. --Telecom giant Verizon [on Wednesday reported]( that it lost 82,000 net pay TV subscribers for its FiOS consumer video service in the first quarter, compared with a loss of 84,000 in the year-ago period and a loss of 72,000 in the fourth quarter. As it has done in the past, the company cited "the ongoing shift from traditional linear video to over-the-top offerings." --New York University's Black List-inspired annual selection of the best production-ready screenplays from its Tisch School of the Arts graduate film students and recent alumni, known as The Purple List, [has revealed]( its 2021 picks. --Vice President Kamala Harris [is joining forces]( with Discovery+ and mobile news brand NowThis to take part in an Earth Day climate special, Action Planet: Meeting the Climate Challenge. What else we're reading... --"As network news leadership shuffles, doubts about future loom" [[NBC News](] --"Seth Rogen and the secret to happiness" [[NY Times Magazine](] --"NBCUniversal hires Nielsen executive to expand its measurement work" [[WSJ](] --"Music executives are dominating the industry again" [[Bloomberg](] Today's birthdays: Queen Elizabeth II, 95, Andie MacDowell, 63, James McAvoy, 42, Rob Riggle, 51, Tony Danza, 70. 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