Category: media

Disney will have the use of almost every bit of Pinewood Studios, outside of London for at least 10 years – and that comes just after Netflix did a similar deal for Shepperton Studios. Those two deals “are sure to deepen concern that studios space in Britain, already in scarce supply, will now be even tougher for smaller companies and indies to secure.” – Variety

Constance Wu is about to star in the movie Hustlers alongside Jennifer Lopez, Cardi B, Lizzo, and some rising stars on the film scene – and it’s a film directed by a woman and written by a woman. Wu wishes none of this were a big deal though – not because it isn’t, but because things should be better: “Part of us should stop being grateful for scraps from the table and demand the whole table. Because it shouldn’t have been history that I was the first in that TV show or movie. It shouldn’t be historic that Hollywood made a story that gives an Asian American a full human experience. That should be regular.” – NPR

The latest in a long line of cinema that makes critics and others walk out in the middle of a film? The Painted Bird, a new adaptation of the Jerzy Kozinski novel. “Cinema seats don’t tend to flip back anymore, but it sounds as if the drama within the auditorium was impressive enough without those percussive thuds.” – The Irish Times

Er, what were you doing, British Pathé? “At the height of the Blitz, the British government made the bold decision to communicate Nazi air raid safety tips to the population the only way they knew how: the art of ventriloquism.” – Slate

Bryce Dallas Howard is a little fed up with watching actresses constantly being asked about parenting, and actors never getting asked. “It’s dangerous, because the assumption is a father doesn’t need to balance it because someone else is.” – Los Angeles Times

“Time and again, the money extracted from the tech giants amounts to a pittance. The structural remedies that accompany those fines—the part where companies agree to change the offending parts of their behavior—can arguably have greater effect. But blaming the FTC for inadequately bringing Silicon Valley to heel on its own is like blaming a fork for not holding soup. Could it do more? Should it? Just don’t expect real privacy change without strong privacy laws in place.” – Wired

Many people today take television seriously. Instead, Nussbaum’s contribution has been to argue for what precisely about television merits our serious attention. – Los Angeles Review of Books

“According to the 22nd annual Boxed In report from the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film …, female characters comprised 45% of all speaking characters across comedies, dramas, and reality shows on broadcast, cable, and streaming. That is up from 40% in 2017-2018. … Off-screen, 31% of all creators, directors, writers, executive producers, producers, editors, and directors of photography in television were women, beating the previous high of 28% set in 2016-2017.” – Variety

“Co-writer Peter Chiarelli, as an experienced feature scribe who broke out with 2009’s The Proposal, was to be paid a significantly higher fee than [Adele] Lim, a veteran TV writer who never had penned a feature until [director John M.] Chu hired her to work on the screenplay.” – The Hollywood Reporter