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Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Wide Shot, a new weekly newsletter about the future of Hollywood.
Where do we even start? The entertainment business would love to put the problems of 2020 behind it, with box office down 80%, theaters on the brink of insolvency and productions still touch-and-go.
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The Wide Shot brings you news, analysis and insights on everything from streaming wars to production and what it all means for the future.
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But the chaos isn’t over yet. In the short term, many studios have paused production amid ballooning COVID-19 cases and an ICU capacity crunch in Southern California. As my colleague Anousha Sakoui reported late last week, a lot of folks want to keep working through the surge. The Grammys were postponed from January until March just weeks before they were scheduled to go on, in an
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen and welcome to our first 2021 edition of the newsletter companion to “The Envelope: The Podcast,” where my cohost Yvonne Villarreal and I bring you highlights from each week’s episode.
As pieces looking back on 2020 give way to thinking about what’s ahead for 2021, Ashley Lee wrote a thoughtful essay on the relationship between the theater world and Hollywood and what one owes the other.
Countless projects have roots in theater, whether it be adaptations of stage pieces like “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” or pinching performers with roots in the theater.
And now, Lee proposes, it is time for Hollywood to give back, to find ways to support the institutions of the theater at a time when many of them are struggling. As she writes, “if Hollywood is going to continue reaping the creative benefits of the theater the actors’ training, the ambitious storytelling, the characters fleshed out over countless rewrites it bears an obligation, artistic
The Golden Globes drew
criticism last week when it was reported that Lee Isaac Chung’s
“Minari,” one of this year’s most acclaimed American films, would be classified as a foreign-language film because its dialogue is primarily in Korean. The move means the film, a festival darling that tells the story of a Korean American family that moves to an Arkansas farm in the 1980s, will not compete in best picture categories. Stars Steven Yeun and Yeri Han will still be eligible in the leading drama actor categories.
You might remember a similar outcry erupted last year when Lulu Wang’s
(Acorn TV)
If you’re going to commit to a binge it’s good to choose a show with multiple seasons to keep you busy and characters real enough to become family. This British series, which ran six nonconsecutive years in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and starred Ian McShane as a roguish antique dealer in and out of trouble and love in semi-pastoral East Anglia, is just the sort of thing to take one far away from present-day troubles and, indeed, the present day itself. A cast of lovable and sometimes exasperating characters none more lovable and exasperating than Lovejoy himself, liable to do the wrong thing on the way to the right result (not quite the same as doing the right thing) makes for a reliably lively visit. (Available on: Acorn TV)
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen and welcome to another edition of the newsletter companion to the recently launched “The Envelope: The Podcast,” where my cohost Yvonne Villarreal and I will bring you highlights from each week’s episode.
The Sundance Film Festival released the 2021 program last week. Considering how many films from their 2020 slate including “Minari,” “Time,” “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” “Dick Johnson Is Dead,” “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and many more are now firmly a part of the ongoing awards conversation, it is worth taking special note of the festival’s upcoming titles.
The festival will be transitioning to a mostly online format, with drive-in screenings in Los Angeles and events at satellite venues around the country.