Over the Weekend 1/11/20: HBO Max Sex and the City Revival, Sex Pistols Mini-Series and More News
It was a relatively quiet weekend following the announcement of Director Michael Apted‘s death on Friday. Los Angeles baseball fans were also mourning the death of Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. Still, here’s a quick update of some of the announcements. The big news seemed to be the fact that HBO‘s popular series Sex and the City was going... »
End of Week Production Notes 1/8/21: Spike in L.A. Covid Cases Creates Dilemma for Production and More News
Phew! It’s a good thing that the first week of 2021 was quiet with no major happenings, huh? We can only wish. While a lot was happening in Washington, DC and across the country this week, we instead want to focus on a situation that hits far closer to home, and that’s the situation with... »
Over the Weekend 1/4/21: Television Production Start-Up Delayed, Resident Evil Wraps and More News
Happy New Year! In this case, this week’s “Over the Weekend” is more like “Over the Past Two Weeks” because as is the case every year — pandemic or no pandemic — Hollywood has mostly been shut down over the past few weeks. Agencies haven’t been trying to put together projects for their clients,... »
DIRECTOR SERIES: Paul Greengrass Goes West(ern) for News of the World
Although filmmaker Paul Greengrass has been directing movies and television since the mid-80s, his 2002 film Bloody Sunday, about the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, was what finally got him notice as a filmmaker. That led to a fairly large leap into studio movies, directing Universal Pictures’ action sequel, The Bourne Supremacy – Greengrass would... »
Over the Weekend 12/21/20: NY and LA Critics Make Their Picks, Fox’ The Big Leap Paused and More News
It’s the last “Over the Weekend” before Christmas, and hopefully, everyone has been good for Santa. There haven’t been any further developments in the Tom Cruise flame-out on the set of Mission: Impossible 7, so we can focus on other things today. Unfortunately, many of the other news items today also involve COVID-19 as the Chicago-based production on... »
End of Week Production Notes 12/18: Tom Cruise’s COVID Rant, Netflix Series Hit by Covid and More News
We’re just one week away from Christmas Day — this Friday column will be taking a few weeks off, in case it wasn’t obvious — but it was still a crazy week in the world of television and film production. Anyone who has been reading this column or our “Back to Work” pieces over... »
Over the Weekend 12/14/20: SAG-AFTRA Shuts Down Lumina and More News
It was a slower-than-normal weekend, which may be since we’re getting closer to the holidays and productions have either wrapped or are getting ready to wrap for the holiday break. The biggest production-related news from the weekend is that a project called Lumina has essentially been shut down by SAG-AFTRA who put out a “DO NOT WORK” order... »
End of Week Production Notes 12/11/20: Walt Disney Announces Upcoming Plans, HBO Max Backlash and More News
It’s been a pretty crazy week that began with almost unanimous backlash to last week’s decision by Warner Media to put its 2021 releases day-and-date onto its streamer HBO Max at the same time they open in theaters. We’ll get to that in a sec, because the biggest news that broke yesterday was about Walt Disney Pictures‘ “2020 Investor... »
Over the Weekend 12/7/20: New Emmy Rules, Young Sheldon Pauses Again and More
Welcome back from the weekend, and we hope that everyone was able to relax a bit despite the pall of COVID hanging over all of us as number continue to increase. That’s a cheery way to start today’s news, isn’t it? Many states are starting to crackdown and reinstating lockdowns that we thought we... »
End of Week Production Notes 12/4/20: Warner Media Triples Down on HBO Max, Possible In-Person Oscars and More News
It’s the first End of Week Production Notes for the last month of 2020, and it’s been quite a crazy week. The biggest news could have been that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences planned to hold the April 2021 Oscars ceremony in-person (more on that later), but then Warner Bros. decided to take... »