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NY Production Revving Up to 100% - Regal Cinemas Closing - Pilot Season? - TV Trends - Theatre Financial Relief

By Abigail Hardin, October 06, 2020

Eye852
The Future of Cinema

The first major movie theatre casualty was announced this week. Cineworld announced they are temporarily closing all 536 Regal Theatres in the U.S. It is estimated that over 40,000 employees will be laid off. In an interview with Deadline, Cineworld CEO Mooky Greidinger said the decision primarily came down to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s "inflexibility" in allowing cinemas to reopen, which in turn has led Hollywood studios to recoil; and is also a means to increase liquidity. This announcement was made on the heels of the new James Bond film NO TIME TO DIE pushing back it's theatrical release date from November 2020 to Easter 2021. After Cineworld made their announcement, another major theatrical release has been pushed back again - DUNE, starring Timothée Chalamet, has pushed back until October 2021.

Regal is second to AMC as the largest movie theatre chain in the U.S. AMC has also sounded an alarm, calculating it has six months of cash left unless things materially improve. All of this has Hollywood leaders joining forces and begging Congress for coronavirus relief funds for exhibitors. Without such financial assistance, the foreseeable future for cineplexes looks pretty dark.

Theatre Financial Relief

The House voted Thursday to approve the revised Heroes Act, which contains a provision to help the live venue (including theatre) industry. The new version of the Heroes Act includes the Save Our Stages provision, which would provide $10 billion in grants to live venue operators, producers, promoters and talent representatives, including those in the theater industry. However, the $2.2 trillion stimulus package is not expected to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.

When Broadway and theaters across the country went dark in March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS moved to be a light for those in the industry and beyond facing immediate health and economic hardship. Thanks to the generosity of the theatrical community and dedicated supporters, Broadway Cares has announced a record $18.1 million was provided in grants in the fiscal year ending September 30, 2020. This marks the most ever awarded in the organization's 32-year history. Any enthusiasm about that record, though, is tempered with the recognition that continued fundraising is essential to ensure healthy meals, lifesaving medication, and emergency assistance are still available as the country faces an uncertain future.

Production Starts & Stops

New York City is expected to have 40+ productions actively filming by year end, bringing it decisively back to pre-COVID-19 levels as an industry ramp-up that started in September gathers steam into the fall. "I would say in the last few weeks, people are a lot more optimistic than they ever have been since this started. They are going back to work and cameras are starting to roll," said Flo Mitchell-Brown, chair of the industry group New York Production Alliance.

The majority of new projects filming are TV series, mostly on sound stages where safety protocols, pods, and PPE can be well monitored according to industry standards. Location shoots are more complex now as productions must share crowded city streets with restaurants offering outdoor dining and rules that limit parking, outsized vehicles, and access. Indoor dining in the city began September 30th and location restrictions are expected to loosen significantly at the end of October.

During the eighth episode of Variety’s Rebooting The Entertainment Industry series, "Success in Entertainment Production During COVID-19," panelists discussed how halting or reconfiguring production on their respective shows — which were either already filmed, underway or in pre-production in March and had great momentum — threw a wrench into season plotlines and financial plans. Each had to navigate protecting its employees’ safety while ensuring audience engagement.

Production in Canada resumed in August, yet The CW's Vancouver-based shows have had to shut down due to delays in processing COVID-19 tests. The filming stoppages are assumed to be temporary, sources say. According to one source, there is a single lab company approved to oversee coronavirus testing, and the company is prioritizing schools, which have reopened in the province, and local businesses.

What's Left of Pilot Season

Back in May and June, the broadcast networks made decisions on their pilots that had been grounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Some projects went straight to series, some pilots were rolled, some were passed on, and the rest got commitments to film in 2020 when safety conditions allow. Because pilot cast options traditionally expire on June 30, the options on the actors from pilots earmarked for production were extended through September 30.

Three months later, only one pilot from that list has been shot: NBC’s comedy NIGHT SCHOOL. The networks were faced with the same dilemma and, overwhelmingly, asked the studios to extend the options on the pilots. The length of the extensions vary project by project, with most actors secured through June 2021, and some pilots going for a hold through December 2020.

Read more on each network's pilot status.

For a full list of what is casting and shooting at each network use the filters on the Projects page on the Up-To-Date Actor!

TV Trends

The recent iteration of the Variety Streaming Room, "Staying Ahead of Modern Audiences," explored how trends are influencing the way entertainment platforms are evolving to engage their audiences. The speakers discussed the increasing occurrence of multigenerational viewing, where families co-view content, which amplifies togetherness and offers producers a chance to broaden their audience bases. Furthermore, people want to access supplemental content, such as behind the scenes exclusives or interviews with talent, and spend more time reflecting on social media to culturally connect with others.

Keep Laughing

Variety released their 2020 Comedy Impact Report which highlights 31 comedy creatives who are keeping us laughing. The list includes comedians, showrunners, writers, producers, directors, etc. If you've got a funny bone in you, make sure you are familiar with all of these names!

Diversity / Inclusion
Film

Dozens of stunt performers have signed a letter sent today to the leadership of SAG-AFTRA calling for an end to "wigging" – the age-old practice of putting wigs and dresses on stuntmen so they can double for actresses – and "paint-downs," in which dark make-up is applied to white stunt performers so that they can double for actors of color. "In the stunt industry, diversity and inclusion have long been overlooked and discouraged, and it’s long past time for these practices to end," said stuntwoman Crystal Santos, who spearheaded the campaign. Read SAG-AFTRA's response.

TV

According to a new study by CAA and Parrot Analytics, TV shows are a lot more diverse than they were three years ago — and one would hope so considering the slow changes being made by the industry during that time. The study found that the audience demand for diverse U.S. scripted debuts has more than doubled since 2017. To add to that, diverse debuts overtook non-diverse debuts in 2019 for the first time. Although there seems to be an increase in diversity, upon further unpacking of the details of the study, not all racial and ethnic groups were equally well represented in scripted debuts. Latinos and Hispanics remain significantly underrepresented despite being one of the fastest-growing demographics in the country. While 18% of the U.S. population is Hispanic or Latino, this group is underrepresented with only 5% of actors in scripted debuts for the period 2017-2019. As expected, the study found that whites were overrepresented with 60% of the population per the census and 65% of talent.

In a bid to create a "further catalyst for real and sustained change," ABC Entertainment has set forth a slate of new inclusion standards for all primetime series to "ensure multidimensional representation across the entire creative and production process." The initiative is meant to increase diversity both on screen and behind the scenes. In a letter to creatives and colleagues, ABC executive vice president of development and content strategy Simran Sethi laid out the new inclusion guidelines and offered up a database of diverse and underrepresented talent and crew, as well as a list of vendors owned by members of underrepresented groups.

Theatre

The Asian American Performers Action Collection (AAPAC) has released its annual report, "The Visibility Report: Racial Representation on New York City Stages." The report details the employment statistics by race for actors, playwrights, composers, librettists, and directors for the 2017-18 season for the 18 largest nonprofit theatre companies in New York City and on Broadway. "The 2017-18 season saw the first Asian American woman playwright produced on Broadway, Young Jean Lee, and a story set entirely in the Middle East, THE BAND'S VISIT, which went on to win the Tony Award for Best Musical," AAPAC released in a statement. "Such examples often serve as the poster child of diversity for a particular season, encouraging a false sense of progress. But when we look at the season as a whole, larger patterns of inequities are revealed, deeply entrenched within the system: White actors continued to overrepresent by almost double their respective population size; writers and directors were almost exclusively white—nearly 80 percent of writers and 85.5 percent of directors. White supremacy has been so normalized that inequities aren’t even perceived as such." Read more on the study's detailed findings.

Concord has launched a $10 million Impact Investment Initiative to deploy capital into projects, businesses, and organizations in the music and theater industries that serve or are led by members of underrepresented and marginalized communities. As its first investment, Concord is announcing a partnership with global investment and innovation platform Techstars and its music accelerator program, of which it has been a member since 2018. "The intent of this initiative is to do what we do best - provide access and support - and to invest incrementally in communities which historically have not had that access and support," commented Concord CEO Scott Pascucci.

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