Latest in Reopening Hollywood

With more than 50% of the U.S. adult population at least half vaccinated and studios plotting start dates, visions of a return to normalcy abound. So what's the prognosis for independent film, when insurers and bank lenders remain on the sidelines even as production perks up? Mark Gill, CEO of Solstice Studios, said…

Fremantle, the RTL-owned global production empire behind shows including American Idol, Too Hot To Handle, and We Are Who We Are, suffered a 39% drop in earnings as the coronavirus pandemic wiped out TV shoots across the world. Fremantle’s adjusted earnings before interest, tax, and amortization (EBITA) stood at €87…

Discovery Inc. is the latest company to update employees on a shift from remote work, telling its global staff of more than 10,000 they can plan to be back in their offices on September 1 instead of a start date previously set for June. In a memo sent Thursday, the company’s Chief People and Culture Officer Adria…

Updated: Deadline has learned that WarnerMedia employees have been notified that a slow return is being eyed for their offices worldwide during early September as Covid cases quell and vaccinations increase. Each division within WarnerMedia communicated with their respective employees directly about today’s news, i.e…

The story is part of Deadline’s Reopening Hollywood series.  After months of brainstorming and negotiations, the Hollywood studios and unions adopted rigorous safety protocols to get TV production going again. And, with fits and starts, it has been going, churning out fresh content with original episodes hitting the…

New York Rep. Carolyn Maloney said Thursday that the nation desperately needs pandemic insurance, a "public private partnership that has a mechanism in place that you can depend on," and hopes some version of it will pass early in the Biden administration. "There are a number of proposals out there. People who are…

EXCLUSIVE: Allen Hughes has resumed work on Outlaw: The Saga of Afeni and Tupac Shakur, the five-part FX documentary series about the volatile life and legacy of the late hip hip icon/poet, and the Black Panther member mother who raised him with the values that infused his socially conscious music. The pandemic…

EXCLUSIVE: In a development that will chill those roaming the halls of the virtual American Film Market and putting film deals together, Lionsgate has exited The Plane, the Christian Gudegast-directed action film set to star Gerard Butler. The film was the big acquisition title at last year’s AFM, and it sold out to…

FilmLA reports that monthly film permit applications saw a 23.7% surge in October to 880 permits over September’s 711 permits. Since film and TV productions commenced during the pandemic in June on-location, FilmLA has received roughly 2,565 film permit applications spanning 1,967 unique projects over the last 20…

What a great time not to be a movie marketer. Theaters half-closed, with COVID-19 again rising. Pipeline dried up. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences asking, in a survey that was due last week, how the pandemic is affecting your craft. Or what's left of it. But movie promoters on the whole are an optimistic…

EXCLUSIVE: Let's Make A Deal is the latest long-running daytime gameshow returning to production. The show, which has aired on CBS since its latest revival began in 2009, is back in the studio from today and is returning with a mix of virtual and in-person contestants. This comes as the network sets three primetime…

Three more Vancouver-based series — the CW’s Riverdale and Batwoman and Netflix’s Maid, all from Warner Bros TV — have been cleared to resume production tomorrow after receiving the delayed COVID-19 tests for their casts and crews. The trio, which had been dark for more than a week, are the first WBTV series impacted…