The Hollywood Reporter

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Colin Kaepernick The football star and activist teams with Ava DuVernay for a Netflix series on his formative years and then inks an overall first-look deal with Disney. Kevin Mayer The CEO of TikTok faces multiple setbacks as the U.S. government scrutinizes Chinese apps and India bans the social media giant from its fast-growing market. Dana Canedy Simon & Schuster, up for sale by ViacomCBS, hires the former New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize administrator July 6 as its new senior vp and publisher. Peter Lenkov The network fires the showrunner of Hawaii Five-0, MacGyver and Magnum P.I. following an investigation into multiple claims he created a toxic work environment. Showbiz Stocks $240.86 (+9.2%) FACEBOOK (FB) Despite the activist-led boycott effort causing major brands such as P&G and Ford to pull their ads, the company’s stock boomed. $32.68 (-0.9%) DISH…

reality tv grapples with racial reckoning amid firings

Over one week in June, the dismissals came almost daily. Eight castmembers from five popular reality TV franchises were expeditiously fired over racist social media posts and, in one particularly damning revelation, news of a malicious act toward their lone Black co-star. Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute, longtime stars of Real Housewives spinoff Vanderpump Rules, called the police on former castmate Faith Stowers in 2018 in an attempt to implicate her in a crime she did not commit. Bravo axed the pair, along with two co-stars with a history of racist tweets, Max Boyens and Brett Caprioni, days after Stowers recounted the event during a June 2 Instagram Live — but the need for such a purge on a nearly exclusively white series highlights a pervasive problem facing TV’s most prolific…

why johnny depp should fire his lawyers

As Johnny Depp appears in a London courtroom throughout July to take on the U.K. publisher of The Sun for characterizing him as a “wife beater,” the actor finds himself facing what Hollywood observers increasingly regard to be a no-win situation. Consider what happened in the run-up to the defamation trial that will explore Depp’s 2015 to 2017 marriage to Amber Heard. A U.K. judge ruled that Depp had violated a court order when his attorneys failed to turn over a series of text messages between himself and his assistant over the procurement of drugs while staying in Australia, during which time an incident of domestic abuse is alleged to have occurred. The judge ruled that the trial would move forward anyway, but in the midst of these deliberations, word came…

weinstein’s prison life

One case is behind him, but Harvey Weinstein faces a slew of legal hurdles, including an appeal of his February conviction for third-degree rape and first-degree sexual assault in New York and criminal charges in Los Angeles. On June 30, a group of women settled a 2017 class action lawsuit against the imprisoned mogul and The Weinstein Co. The $18.875 million settlement also resolved a 2018 lawsuit filed by former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman that alleged Weinstein created a hostile work environment. Weinstein, who is serving a 23-year sentence in Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, won’t be paying out of his own pocket. Instead, insurance will cover the global settlement, which totals more than $46.7 million. Spokesperson Juda Engelmayer, who talked to the producer after the…

‘it’s not just about including black characters’

Within days in late June, four animated TV shows that featured white actors voicing characters of color pledged to make changes, all with the actors’ support. Netflix’s Big Mouth creators said June 24 that they would cast a Black actor for the role of Missy, currently performed by Jenny Slate, while Apple TV+’s Central Park creative team said it will recast biracial character Molly, voiced by Kristen Bell. Meanwhile, Fox’s long-running The Simpsons, which had faced criticism for years over the portrayal of the Indian character Apu (Hank Azaria announced he was stepping away from the role in January), said June 26 that the show “will no longer have white actors voice non-white characters.” And Mike Henry, who portrayed the Black character Cleveland on Family Guy, said he would stop…

which struggling stocks have an upside?

While it was a brutal first half of the year for most media stocks, Wall Street observers are bullish on a few Hollywood firms for the second half of 2020. Despite concerns about the impact of the novel coronavirus on advertising, production, moviegoing and theme park operation, analysts are seeing a near-term upside for a few entertainment giants whose stocks have taken a beating: Fox Corp. “The only media ‘buy’ here is Fox based on the presumption that the NFL will come back in the fall and that Fox News is a share gainer,” forecasts Moffett Nathanson analyst Michael Nathanson, noting that he “moderately” raised his earnings forecast for Fox amid commentary from industry executives that U.S. overall advertising trends were “not as bad as feared.” Comcast The fact that the vertically…