Marketing Execs Tout Hollywood's Embrace of Brand Integration

www.thewrap.com: Hollywood’s leading marketing executives praised the shifting tides around product placement and advertising in film and television, as the creative community embraces brand collaborations to offset industrywide cost-cutting.

City Council Greenlights Measures to Boost Hollywood Production in LA

www.hollywoodreporter.com: The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday voted to greenlight proposals aimed at improving filming conditions in the city as a room packed with Hollywood workers and union representatives erupted in applause.

Anthropic Is a $350 Billion Problem for Hollywood About to Strike

theankler.com: Anthropic is not a movie studio, a streamer or even a consumer tech product — but it may pose a greater long-term threat to Hollywood than anything we currently talk about.

AI Slips In Where Hollywood Is Weakest

www.forbes.com: Hollywood fears AI might threaten prestige films and award-season scripts. The first real shift is happening somewhere else. The fastest-growing category in filmed entertainment is the one-minute vertical soap opera, the micro-drama. Viewers enter these stories the way they enter social feeds, without intention or commitment.

Ruth E Carter Becomes Only 2nd Costume Designer to Get Star on Hollywood Walk of Fame

www.thewrap.com: Ruth E. Carter, the legendary costume designer known for working on films like “Malcolm X,” “Amistad” and “Black Panther,” will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Thursday, making her only the second costume designer to ever be recognized.

Hollywood's COVID Restrictions Are Not Easing Up Just Yet

Variety: The omicron wave has peaked across the country, and states including New York and California are once again easing up on their COVID restrictions. But in the entertainment industry, there is no rush to get back to “normal.” The studios and unions are largely holding firm on the set of COVID production protocols that has been in place since the summer of 2020.

Peter Dinklage Faces Backlash to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

IndieWire: Emmy-winning actor Peter Dinklage has made a point of refusing to take stereotypical roles commonly reserved for little people (LP), but he’s never been one to address the challenges that he and other LP actors face in Hollywood. That changed during an interview on Marc Maron’s January 24 “WTF” podcast. During a conversation regarding Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” Dinklage praised Disney for casting a Latina actress as Snow White but condemned them for continuing to present what he believed were outdated stereotypes.

Behind Hollywood glamour, an Instagram account highlights darker side for workers

www.msn.com: Last month, Ben Gottlieb, a 27-year-old set lighting technician, wanted to show his support for his union's campaign to improve working conditions on film sets so he wrote an Instagram post calling for an end to 12- to 14-hour shifts.

Cinerama Technology Is Owned By Pacific Theatres - What Happens to It?

Variety: Angelenos are still processing their grief about the closure of the ArcLight theaters. Pacific Theatres announced on Monday that it would close all of its locations, which include the ArcLight Hollywood and the historic Cinerama Dome. Not as well known is that the theater chain also owns the Cinerama technology.

Helen Uffner's private vintage collection outfits Hollywood

nypost.com: Her enormous costume-rental warehouse, in Long Island City, boasts some 100,000 pieces spanning the 1860s to the 1980s, from gowns and workwear to shoes, hats and all matter of undergarments, including corsets, bustiers and bustles. One mannequin wears the sparkly emerald sheath donned by Beyoncé in “Cadillac Records”; another sports the flirty brown lace and chiffon number worn throughout “Ma Rainey’s” by Taylour Paige, who plays Ma’s much younger girlfriend, Dussie Mae.

Adrian: The Costume Designer Who Made Hollywood High Fashion

www.lofficielusa.com: We often look to television and Hollywood stars to define the style of the times. Famed American costume designer Adrian Adolph Greenburg, known as Gilbert Adrian or most often simply Adrian, didn't just design the costumes for hundreds of the most legendary films and actresses—he transformed the world of film and fashion both on and off screen.

‘Hamilton’ Was Just the Beginning. Hollywood Loves Broadway, Again.

The New York Times: On a sun-nuzzled February morning earlier this year, “The Prom,” Ryan Murphy’s film adaptation of the Tony-nominated musical, prepared for a location shoot in a high school gym on the eastern edge of Hollywood. Basketball hoops kissed the ceiling. Rubber matting and webs of cables carpeted the floor. Beside the snack tables, James Corden, Kerry Washington and Meryl Streep, in a wig the red of a cocktail cherry, practiced a dance number, sashaying through the same steps at not quite the same time.

New Study Finds Hollywood Studios Could Lose Money From Movies That Lack Diversity

Deadline: It’s been said before, but it is worth saying again: diversity pays — but not in terms of checking boxes and tokenism. In a new report from the UCLA-based Center for Scholars and Storytellers titled “Beyond Checking A Box: A Lack of Authentically Inclusive Representation Has Costs at the Box Office”, researchers found that bringing authentic diversity to film improves financial performance at the box office while a lack of diversity can result in losses for studios.

How Women in Hollywood Are Pushing for Inclusivity on and off Screen

Variety: With Hollywood’s growing appetite for diverse stories, women of color are beginning to make a bigger mark on the big and small screens. Alice Wu wrote “The Half of It,” a coming-of-age drama about a lesbian Chinese-American teen, as a love letter to her own mother. Starring Chinese American Leah Lewis, it debuted on Netflix in May.

What is Covid-19 compliance supervisor? Hollywood's new gig

Los Angeles Times: The pandemic has spawned a new job on Hollywood sets — the COVID-19 compliance supervisor. The role was created under an agreement last month between entertainment unions and an alliance of producers as part of the terms for Hollywood’s return to production. Already, an industry is emerging around this important position. Some companies are offering training and certification, others are providing consulting services to productions.

Sexual Harassment Still Prevalent In Hollywood Even After The #MeToo Movement, Survey Finds

www.forbes.com: A recent survey by the Anita Hill-led Hollywood Commission on sexual harassment found that one in five women who responded said they had been sexually assaulted or harassed at work over the course of their careers and 1 in 20 reported that they had been sexually assaulted or harassed on the job in just the 12 months prior to taking the survey.

Hollywood's inclusion problems still run deep, study finds

CANVAS Arts: As Hollywood searches for a response to the reckoning brought on by the death of George Floyd and the Academy Awards move to make Oscar nominees more inclusive, a new study captures how the film industry has improved in diversity and how it still lags.

In the most popular films of 2019, protagonists were more diverse than ever, and there were more women were behind the camera. But in many other areas — speaking roles, behind-the-scenes jobs, LGBTQ representation, parts for people with disability — Hollywood remains far from reflecting the makeup of its American audiences

New USC Inclusion Study Proves Hollywood Is Taking Its Sweet Time On Diversity

www.forbes.com: Diversity has been a hotly contested issue in filmmaking, as years of all-white award shows prompted backlash over the lack of inclusion in Hollywood. While the Academy and several other film institutions have announced diversity initiatives, many have been criticized for their slow response to the blatant lack of inclusion in Hollywood. A recent report from the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative says those criticisms are valid, as little has changed in Hollywood in the past thirteen years.

Hollywood's Reopening Dilemma: "We Can't Afford to Get This Wrong"

Hollywood Reporter: In mid-June, unions representing an estimated 17,000 Disneyland Resort employees banded together to delay Disney's plan to reopen its theme park July 17. In a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom dated June 17, the Coalition of Resort Labor Unions, which reps Anaheim workers, expressed concern about "Disney's rapid timetable" for reopening, claiming "there are numerous questions about safety which Disney has not yet answered," including the logistics of routine virus testing for employees.

Dear Hollywood: We Don’t Want to “Go Back to Normal." Normal Wasn’t Working.

optimizeyourself.me: Dear Hollywood, I have something I desperately need to share with you. You might find it surprising coming from a 20-year veteran who owes his livelihood to you. But it needs to be said. I apologize if this upsets you (actually…sorry not sorry).
Your shows are not worth dying for.