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Last week, Lions Gate announced it was buying the Starz Channel and its library and TV shows. The effect on LGF stock hasn’t been so great. It’s hovered around $18.59 ever since. A year ago LGF was at $36.02.
Meantime, Lions Gate keeps releasing movies no one wants to see and shouldn’t have been made. Case in point: today, “Cell,” based on a Stephen King story, directed by Tod Williams (good movies– “Door in the Floor,” “Adventures of Sebastian Cole”).
“Cell” has a ZERO on Rotten Tomatoes. Twenty negative reviews, none positive. Saban Films, which also probably shouldn’t exist, owned by Haim Saban, made it and paid for it. Their most recent release was “A Hologram for the King” starring Tom Hanks, which made $4 million. Lions Gate had that one too through their deal with Roadside Attractions. (There’s a search party trying to find RAtt’s “Genius” right now. It’s made $1 million in 5 weeks.)
“Cell” has two great leads– Samuel L. Jackson and John Cusack. It doesn’t matter. It’s a soft cell at best.
The United States is getting a female president whether we like it or not. Showtime’s award winning “Homeland” is casting for some new characters as the show moves locale to New York. One of them is a newly elected female president. Her name is Elizabeth Keane. She’s 59 and described as “President-elect of the United States. Former junior Senator from NY. Bright, charming, lively – can be blunt. A natural politician.” Keane will a series regular.
Imagine the number of actresses lining up for that role. I’d get Melanie Griffith or Dana Delany. Either one would be perfect.
“Homeland” is also casting Keane’s chief of staff, who will be male and black. Also being cast is the 4 year old daughter of main character, Carrie. Her father was Brody, now deceased and played by Damian Lewis– star of Showtime’s “Billions.”
So even though the show is supposed to be set in New York, it does sound like Carrie (Claire Danes) and Saul (Mandy Patinkin) will be spending some time at the White House.
John McMartin is a face you know, and a voice, too. He was a journeyman actor who moved easily to from TV to movies to Broadway as a significant supporting player. His death at 86 was announced this morning in a typical low profile listing in the New York Times obits.
McMartin was known for playing patrician characters, often in conflict with their surroundings. He was the foreign editor in “All the President’s Men” and a regular presence on nearly every TV series of the 1970s. He played everything from Mary Tyler Moore’s lawyer when Mary Richards went to jail and Jane Wyman’s foe on “Falcon Crest.” He could be alternately heroic, noble or sniveling.
McMartin’s greatest successes came on Broadway and in theater. With dozens of credits and many nominations for awards, McMartin’s last two shows — the musical “Anything Goes” with Sutton Foster, and the play “All the Way” with Bryan Cranston– were huge hits with long runs and many accolades for McMartin. He originated key roles in the premiere productions of “Sweet Charity” and “Follies.”
Cloris Leachman, 90, Oscar winner and eight time Emmy winner, sure does not hold back. She’s as salty and honest as ever. At the recent Women in Film Legacy Film Series, “Tales From The Trenches,” presented at the Ebell in Los Angeles, mega talented Cloris was the subject of the film which was produced by Emmy Award winning producer Ilene Kahn Power, a former longtime HBO Exec ( “Gia,” Elvis” and more) and directed by award winning Linda Feferman.
Cloris held nothing back, including who she slept with back in the day. When talking about her fellow actors and friends she exclaimed, “I remembering those I didn’t “bleep“: Marlon Brando, I didn’t, Paul Newman I didn’t. Sean Connery I didn’t. But there was one I did.” Then she laughed and didn’t say.
I asked her after the screening how it felt to be so beloved. Cloris answered, “Well it’s a turnabout. I’m here; you’re there, I’m doing work that people love. Then they tell me about how much they love it. What could be better?“
Does she ever speak to her “Mary Tyler Moore”co-stars?She replied, “I never talk to Mary, she’s back east.We hug if we meet so nothing bad, but she’s far away.Valerie and I talk and see.” What about her ex-husband George Englund — with whom she had a 26-year marriage that produced five children, which wasn’t always easy but to whom she’s still devoted. She answered, “George is 90 also, we’re not married but still love each other. I’m going to see him this weekend.”
Joan Collins famously had an affair with George while he and Cloris were still married. Cloris said: “I liked her back then, we were friends. Not friends anymore. I think she’s embarrassed to be friends with me. After all I was with George when they had the affair. Such is life.”
Her devoted daughter Dinah told me, “My mother and father are soul mates who can’t live in this physical plane together.”
Cloris doesn’t stop working. Always in demand. She’s in the middle of shooting “American Gods” for Starz and she just wrapped up her next project, a film with Robert DeNiro and directed by Taylor Hackford called “The Comedian.“ “I can’t tell you a damn thing about it,” she told me, “I couldn’t even take a picture on the set. But it was a love fest between us, that’s for sure.”
Speaking about love fests I couldn’t help but ask her daughter if she would ask her mother who was the mystery man that Cloris had an affair with? Dinah came back and quite matter of factly said to me, “My Mom said she slept with Gene Hackman, and you can write that!” (Leachman did write all about it in her 2009 autobiography — a one night stand in San Francisco.)
Producer Ilene Kahn Power then summed up Cloris’s singularly unique talents. “Her ability to be a great dramatic actress and an equally great comedienne is astonishing. From “The Last Picture Show” to “Young Frankenstein’s” Frau Blucher with the mole on her face, and everything else she has done and continues to do. She has the best sense of humor, she’s truly lovely and vibrant and part of our Hollywood history. Every time I see that scene, “he vas my boyfriend,” I collapse.” Watch that classic scene now:
The Oscar winning director of “Erin Brockovich,” “Traffic” and many other good films has signed to direct a film about the Panama Papers.
The film about the world’s largest data leak will be produced by Lawrence Grey’s Grey Matter Productions. It’s based on the forthcoming book called “Secrecy World,” being written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jake Bernstein and published by Henry Holt and Company. Anonymous Content (“The Revenant,” “Spotlight,” “Babel”) is joining to develop, finance and produce the film, according to a press release that everyone got tonight.
Soderbergh has “The Girlfriend Experience” running on the Starz channel, plus he’s finished filming “Logan Lucky” with Riley Keough, Daniel Craig, and Channing Tatum. After a flop in 2013 with “Side Effects,” Soderbergh indicated he was taking a break.
This was interpreted as a “retirement.” But it didn’t last long. He’s also directed 20 episodes of “The Knick” for TV, and won awards for the Michael Douglas-Matt Damon Liberace movie “Behind the Candelabra.” He also has a mysterious project called “Mosaic” for 2017 with Sharon Stone and Garret Hedlund.
UPDATE Fox News says it’s conducting an internal review of the Ailes-Doocy situation. But Fox News isn’t reporting the story or the review.
EARLIER Many hours have passed. Every news organization and blog in the world has reported the sexual harassment lawsuit filed by former anchor Gretchen Carlson against Roger Ailes.
Every one except Fox News and the New York Post, the beachheads of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. And there’s no word from Rupert Murdoch himself, who’s been radio silent since he married Jerry Hall on March 4th.
Surprisingly: the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch’s only respected paper, has reported the story with a stealth headline. They just mention a lawsuit but don’t say it’s about Ailes or the company.
Some reports indicate that Carlson may add Fox News to the lawsuit. Right now Ailes is the sole defendant in the case, filed in New Jersey.
I’ll update when the Post or Fox News figures out how to say one of their stars until two weeks ago is suing their boss for something fairly serious.
PS No word on the other News Corp sites like Heat St. or Fox Nation.
Now we know why Gretchen Carlson left “Fox and Friends,” was moved to the blah afternoon slot from 2 to 4pm on Fox News, and was eventually dismissed on June 23rd without cause. She claims in a lawsuit that Steve Doocy harassed her on the morning show, Fox News chief Roger Ailes demoted her and harassed her some more, and now she is gone.
Carlson– a Stanford University graduate and former Miss America– says Ailes propositioned her when she went to him to discuss her demotions. She says he said, “I think you and I should have had a sexual relationship a long time ago, and then you’d be good and better and I’d be good and better.”
The lawsuit– filled with detail and pretty grim– is the talk of the New York media world this afternoon. It comes at a tricky time for Ailes, who spent the better part of the year fighting with Donald Trump over the coverage he received from Megyn Kelly.
It also comes as James and Lachlan Murdoch have wrested power of News Corp from their doddering father, Rupert Murdoch. They got rid of the NY Post’s long time editor, Col Allan. The word is they’d like to do the same to Ailes. A couple of years ago in the New York Times, their sister Elisabeth’s now former husband Matthew Freud said of Ailes: “I am by no means alone within the family or the company in being ashamed and sickened by Roger Ailes’s horrendous and sustained disregard of the journalistic standards that News Corporation, its founder and every other global media business aspires to.”
Ailes and Fox News are not strangers to the land of sexual harassment. In 2004, Fox News settled a multi-million lawsuit brought against Bill O’Reilly by producer Andrea Mackris. O’Reilly has since generated headlines about his own marriage. Since divorced, he lost a custody battle this past winter.
Carlson, however, is not an unknown entity like Mackris. And times have changed since 2004. Carlson is respected and high profile. Nothing explained her departure from “Fox and Friends” where she was the only level head among jackals. Ailes lured her to Fox from CBS News, not the National Enquirer. She’s no airhead. Carlson says that when she complained to Ailes in 2009 that co-anchor Steve Doocy was harassing her, Ailes told her she was a “man hater” and a “killer” and “needed to get along with the boys.”
Even if (and it’s likely) Carlson settles with Fox News, the damage has been to Ailes. My sources say that the Murdoch brothers knew about this last week, and allowed it to go public. If that’s the case, Ailes may be headed to early retirement before the presidential election. And that would be quite an irony after everything else that has transpired this year.
And who would run Fox News in Ailes’s absence? That, my friends, is the $64 million question.
A new report says streaming of pop music was up 58% in the first half of 2016. Everything else is in the toilet. Album sales were down 14%. Song sales were down 24.2%.
On demand audio streams were up 107.8%.
Fans don’t need to keep or own the current music. They’d rather just listen to it on a service on their phones.
What we can infer: The days of buying music, owning it, playing it at home, having an album collection — that’s over. Since the music is meaningless, and it’s all similar, there’s no feeling that it’s important.
There are some exceptions: Beyonce’s “Lemonade.” Adele’s “25.” Or “Hamilton,” which people buy and memorize. But for the most part, music by today’s poplets from Drake to Bieber to Selena– it’s been reduced to a ring tone.
Kanye West didn’t think enough of his “Life of Pablo” to release it properly in any form.
In the first six months, Prince landed two albums in the top 25 thanks to his untimely death.
Vinyl sales were up, although I don’t know why. I was so glad to get rid of warped records that skipped back in 1982. And it’s not like vinyl is still $5.98. These records sell for an average of twenty two bucks! How crazy is that? What’s next? Raccoon coats?
The top vinyl albums were David Bowie’s “Blackstar” (33K), Adele “25,” and “Purple Rain.” The Beatles sold just over 12,000 copies of “Abbey Road,” and Miles Davis made money from just over 12K of “Kind of Blue.” Kind of weird.
All the numbers come from a service call BuzzAngle Music.
Broadway: “Hamilton” is has eaten everything in its path at the box office. “Bright Star” is gone, and other shows are suffering.
But the biggest collapse has to be “Shuffle Along.” On May 29th, the musical starring Audra McDonald and Brian Stokes Mitchell took in $985,656. That was two weeks before the Tony Awards.
For the week ending this past Sunday, the total was just $787,622. It’s no surprise then that producer Scott Rudin has decided to close the show on July 24th. The steady downward spiral can be attributed not so much to McDonald’s announced departure but to the wipe out at the Tony Awards.
Interestingly, the total number of tickets sold hasn’t dropped much. But the average ticket price has really dipped. The potential gross last week was $1,125,028. The gap between what the show could make and does make it getting bigger.
Rudin isn’t used to this. “The Book of Mormon” continues to be a top 3 hit at the Broadway box office. Last week that show did 98% of its capacity.
Smokey Robinson will receive the Gershwin Prize from the Library of Congress this November. He joins Paul McCartney, Carole King, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Willie Nelson and his Motown compadre Stevie Wonder.
Smokey wrote what is undeniably Motown’s anthem, “My Girl,” for the Temptations. His huge catalog of songs for his own group, the Miracles, for himself, for the Temps and all the other Motown groups is staggering. It’s everything from “Tracks of My Tears” to “Shop Around” to “Cruisin'” and “Tears of a Clown.” Without Smokey there would have been no Motown. A whole radio format is named for his song “Quiet Storm.” He wrote “Beaten to the Punch” and “Two Lovers” for Mary Wells, and countless hits for Marvin Faye including “Ain’t that Peculiar.”
No one deserves the Gershwin prize more than Smokey, that’s for sure. Congrats!
![Cloris Leachman, 90, Bawdy as Ever, Making Movies: “I Never [Bleeped] Brando or Paul Newman”](https://www.showbiz411.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Cloris-Leachman-2013.jpg "Cloris Leachman, 90, Bawdy as Ever, Making Movies: “I Never [Bleeped] Brando or Paul Newman”")
