Time for an interesting and informative article (if you can get past the all-too-trendy references to TV production as “television content creation”) in the most populous market for, well, everything, in the world today.
Hmm, after reading this we’re wondering when the call will go out for tariffs on Chinese TV…
Just when you thought it was safe to embrace the newest tech:
Movie theatres, as usual, are jam-packed with sequels this summer.
Hollywood is addicted to sequels for one reason: A proven concept can reduce the risk of failure in a business where hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake.
Winging it with the future of TV – well, all of us out here are winging it, but the data brokers have a whole ‘nuther perspective:
“What do you think about gas in the tank for the long term?” asks Cindy Holland, Netflix’s vice-president of original content. It’s a Tuesday morning in May, and Holland and a handful of her direct reports are meeting in the 14th-floor San Junipero conference room of the company’s Hollywood headquarters. They’ve come to discuss renewal decisions for two existing shows, the Drew Barrymore–Timothy Olyphant zombie comedy, Santa Clarita Diet, and the recently launched remake of Lost in Space.
As Holland goes around the room, she stares at a laptop screen filled with the memos her team has prepared. She notes the mixed reviews for Lost in Space. “Do we care?” Not that much, it turns out. The show is renewed for a second season.
From almost the very beginning of TVWriter™, Herbie J Pilato has been part of our family. In fact, Herbie J was our first Contributing Editor.
For the last year and a half or so, Herbie J’s appearances on this site have been far too few because he has been working on his own TV series. We’re hoping to get him to give us the inside scoop on the process, but until we can corral him (as in tie him up and sit him down with his hands to the keyboard and his feet to the fire), here’s a little bit showbiz insider-ness, a sampling of several already shot episodes that, in keeping with the metaphor above is known to insiders as:
Herbie J Pilato’s Now & Then Sizzle Reel
How do you spot a successful TV drama showrunner? Look for somebody “on the verge of bad health and insanity.” We’re guessing that isn’t what the folks who bring us “Writers on the Verge” mean. Or is it?
A gathering of top showrunners can quickly devolve into a type of therapy session about dealing with audience pressures and network demands. But when this sextet — The Looming Tower’s Dan Futterman, 50; Power’s Courtney Kemp, 41; The Crown’s Peter Morgan, 55; The Handmaid‘s Tale’s Bruce Miller, 53; The Good Doctor’s David Shore, 58; and The Chi’sLena Waithe, 33 — gathered on a late-April morning for The Hollywood Reporter‘s annual Drama Showrunner Roundtable, it managed to avoid the usual subjects of writerly angst, save some musings from Morgan, who lamented a U.K. system that doesn’t nurture writers rooms as well as U.S. shows do.