When Christopher Nolan set out to adapt American Prometheus, a sprawling biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, he got an early warning not to make it too wonky.
“Hollywood has struggled often with the portrayal of different forms of genius. It's a difficult thing to get the audience into this mindset,” says Nolan. “And so I think early on, one of my sons I was talking to about the film said, ‘You're not really going to try to explain quantum physics in this film, are you dad? Because that won't work.’ And I said, ‘No, point well taken.’”
Nolan is joined by Kai Bird, who won a Pulitzer for his work on American Prometheus, a project that took him and his co-author 25 years to complete. Nolan explains why, when negotiating with Universal, he felt confident insisting that Oppenheimer had to be a three-hour-long, R-rated depiction of “people talking in rooms,” as he puts it.
Director Reinaldo Marcus Green’s latest project is the biopic Bob Marley: One Love which stars Kingsley Ben-Adir as the late reggae star. The film covers a brief, yet intense, time in Marley’s life and examines how the artist dealt with fame, violence, and family conflict. One Love is Green’s follow-up to his Best Picture-nominated 2021 film King Richard.
He tells The Treatment why he believes he got the blessing from Marley’s family to make the biopic after other filmmakers’ attempts proved unsuccessful. He talks about the balancing act of portraying Marley’s greatness as a musician alongside his flawed humanity. And he reflects on the deeper understanding of Marley’s work he was left with once the film wrapped.
When Morgan reflects on their career prospects in reality TV, they feel “terrified,” after spending nearly 10 years working their way up from executive assistant to producer. Morgan, who wants to only go by their first name to protect job prospects, says they increasingly rely on unemployment and credit card debt to get by between gigs.
“We feel incredibly unprotected and very vulnerable,” Morgan says of their colleagues.
Morgan is one of more than a dozen people who work in reality and nonfiction TV who are telling KCRW that as Hollywood studios and streamers continue to tighten budgets, their working conditions are becoming unsustainable.
They describe a tight job market, lower wages, smaller teams, and punishing hours due to shortened production schedules.
This year, John Williams’ score for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny earned him his 54th Oscar nomination. At 92, he’s the oldest nominee ever, breaking his own record last year for his score for The Fablemans. In total, he’s won five Academy Awards.
The composer is often associated with theme music for big blockbusters such as Star Wars, Jaws, and Harry Potter. But his seven-decade career includes a bevy of lesser-known works.
KCRW gets a breakdown from Frank Lehman, a professor of music at Tufts University and author ofHollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema. He says some of Williams’ best works are smaller scale and grab less attention from the Academy.
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[WATCH] Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein Carey Mulligan (Felicia Montealegre Bernstein), Sarah Silverman (Shirley Bernstein), Matt Bomer (David Oppenheim), Maya Hawke (Jamie Bernstein) and the Bernstein family discuss the incredible performance and transformation by Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein in Maestro.
Nelson Peltz and his band of dissident shareholders continue to wage war on Disney, including sending a letterto shareholders that criticizes the current leadership of the company. Plus, FX head John Landgraf says that peak TV is over. What does that really mean? Kim Masters and Matt Belloni investigate.
A Mickey Mouse clapback? Following Peltz and company’s attempts to sway shareholders, Disney released an animated videofeaturing several of the studio’s characters instructing voters to select company nominees. “It was a very Disney presentation they sent around. It was basically saying check out all of our creative wins for the past year. They're even using Professor Ludwig Von Drake, a Disney character, to walk shareholders through their voting card,” Belloni says.
Has peak TV finally ended? After years of sounding the alarm, FX Chairman John Landgraf says peak television is dead. “Now the strike is a big reason for that. A lot of shows either paused or didn't get off the ground because of the strike. But this retraction was happening before the strike. And I think it's going to continue into this year, despite the fact that now the strikes are over,” Belloni speculates.
Netflix belt-tightening to blame? Landgraf saysthat it all started with the streamer’s decision to “change their public-facing Wall Street metric from global subscribers and ARPU [average revenue per user] to profit.” “It had to focus on profitability rather than just growing subscriber numbers, which necessarily translates into pulling back on the volume of content, and then everybody followed,” Belloni explains.
Entertainment news and updates for the…
… award tracker: Christopher Nolan Breaks the BAFTA Curse With Two Oppenheimer Trophies from The Hollywood Reporter.
… late-night TV fan: Jimmy Kimmel Might Be Ready to Retire From Late-Night TV For Real This Time by Rolling Stone.
-4.webp?upscale=true&width=1200&upscale=true&name=page-header%20(1)-4.webp "Director Reinaldo Marcus Green. Photo credit: E.G.P. Hershman")
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-Feb-20-2024-11-20-52-0232-PM.webp?upscale=true&width=1200&upscale=true&name=page-header%20(2)-Feb-20-2024-11-20-52-0232-PM.webp "Reality and nonfiction TV workers say the changing economics of Hollywood are hitting this largely non-unionized part of the industry hard. Photo by Shutterstock.")
-Feb-20-2024-11-27-36-7868-PM.webp?upscale=true&width=1200&upscale=true&name=page-header%20(3)-Feb-20-2024-11-27-36-7868-PM.webp "FX head John Landgraf says that peak TV is over. But what does that really mean? Photo credit: REUTERS/David McNew/File Photo")
