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Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
MSNBC star Rachel Maddow loses her right-hand man as bloodbath at liberal network escalates
Rachel Maddow's trusted right-hand man, Andrew Dallos, has announced his departure after nearly 25 years at MSNBC, underscoring growing instability within the embattled network. Dallos, 59, who was instrumental in launching The Rachel Maddow Show in 2008, confirmed his exit on Wednesday with an emotional Instagram post. 'After nearly 25 years, my time at MSNBC has come to an end. I've made the difficult decision to leave the company I've called home for nearly a quarter of a century,' he wrote. In the post, accompanied by a photo of NBC Studios in New York, Dallos expressed gratitude for the experience. 'During my time here, I've been privileged to work alongside some amazing colleagues. Special thanks to Rachel Maddow for the opportunity to join her team on the very first day of her show and giving me the journey of a lifetime. Special thanks to Cory Gnazzo for his steady leadership.' Dallos also acknowledged the broader shakeup at MSNBC, which has included sweeping layoffs and restructuring amid its corporate spinoff. 'As many of you are preparing to move to SpinCo, please know that I'll be cheering you on every step of the way,' he wrote, referencing the newly formed independent media entity Comcast is creating out of NBCUniversal's cable and digital assets. Even though Dallos is exiting, the veteran producer celebrated a 'full-circle' moment, noting that his daughter will soon follow in his footsteps. 'Although today is my last day with TRMS, it's only the beginning for my daughter, Ashley, who will be interning for The 11th Hour starting in June, following in her dad's footsteps. Funny how life has come full circle,' he added. 'I hope our paths cross again down the line. Until then, I wish you all the best.' Dallos' departure coincides with a major transition for Maddow's show, which is set to return to airing just one night a week on Mondays after briefly expanding to five nights to cover President Trump's first 100 days back in office, according to TheWrap. His exit also comes amid deep cuts across the network. According to The Guardian, most producers for Maddow's and Joy Reid's shows - including high-profile figures like Katie Phang, Jonathan Capehart, Ayman Mohyeldin, and José Díaz-Balart - have been let go, with the option to reapply or take severance. While, Maddow's executive producer Cory Gnazzo and several senior producers will remain. Though Dallos is exiting, the veteran producer celebrated a 'full-circle' moment, noting that his daughter will soon follow in his footsteps View this post on Instagram A post shared by Andrew Dallos (@andrewdallos) The star host however has not shied away from criticizing the network's actions. Maddow expressed concern for the dozens of producers and staff who work behind the scenes, saying that they were 'really being put through the wringer', facing potential layoffs and being 'invited to reapply for new jobs'. 'That has never happened at this scale, in this way before when it comes to programming changes, presumably because it's not the right way to treat people, and it's inefficient and it's unnecessary and it kind of drops the bottom out of whether or not people feel like this is a good place to work, and so we don't generally do things that way,' Maddow said on air. 'Personally, I think it is a bad mistake to let her [Reid] walk out the door… It is also unnerving… both of our non-white hosts in prime time are losing their shows, as is Katie Phang on the weekend. That feels worse than bad… That feels indefensible and I do not defend it.'
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
For better or worse: In 'The Four Seasons,' Tina Fey and Will Forte depict a relatable marriage
Tina Fey and Will Forte are fuzzy on the details, but somewhere inside NBC Studios at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City is where, in 2002, they first crossed paths. Fey was a few seasons into her stint on "Saturday Night Live" as a head writer and performer. And Forte was just beginning his eight-season run on the sketch comedy series. "So much of 'SNL' for me is a blur," Fey says. "Seth Meyers has this kind of encyclopedic memory of meeting everyone. He'll be like, 'Remember we did this ...?' And I'm like, 'What are you talking about?' If you ask me, I could probably remember every salad I got from Tossed or every sandwich I got from Cosi, but I can't remember human interactions." "I am the exact same way," says Forte, seated next to Fey, on a recent day in April. "Somebody asked me the other day, 'Have you ever met the Rock?' I'm a huge fan of the Rock. I was in an episode of 'SNL' with the Rock. And I just couldn't remember." "'SNL' friendships are just this cumulative thing," Fey says. "You're just always around each other, all day and night. You eat family-style meals. I said to him the other day, 'I don't know how I know you. I just know you." Two decades after they entered each other's orbit, the duo is back together, this time in "The Four Seasons," a TV adaptation of Alan Alda's 1981 big-screen romantic comedy of the same name. It explores the dynamics of longtime relationships — both romantic and platonic — over a year. They've worked together previously post-"SNL" — Forte had a recurring role in Fey's "30 Rock" and appeared in the 2008 feature "Baby Mama," which was headlined by Fey and Amy Poehler. Read more: 'The Four Seasons' tackles marriage at midlife, with its relatable ups and downs The new series, which launched Thursday on Netflix, follows three couples who are decades-long friends — Kate (Fey) and Jack (Forte), Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), and Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani) — who, as they've settled into their lives, stay connected by vacationing together. But the dynamic shifts when Nick decides to leave Anne and begins a relationship with a younger woman, testing loyalties and aggravating weaknesses or conflicts within the other marriages. Though it's a comedy at its heart, the story has the bittersweet candor and moments of earnestness that one might expect from characters confronting their lives at middle age. In addition to her starring role, Fey created and wrote this reimagined version of "Four Seasons" with fellow "30 Rock" writers-producers Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield. Fey was a fan of the original, recalling her introduction to it during the early days of cable television when it was in heavy rotation: "There was something so aspirational and cozy about it," she says. "One of the things I love most was it had people I loved from other things in it — Alan Alda from 'MASH,' Carol Burnett from 'The Carol Burnett Show,' Rita Moreno from 'The Electric Company.' My mind was blown. It was like my 'Avengers' universe then." (Alda makes a cameo in the series.) More fundamentally, the trio of creators were invigorated by the idea of looking at the ebbs and flows of significant relationships in adulthood and how they can bloom, bend or break across different life stages. "We wanted this to be a love letter to long marriages, to long friendships, to relationships that you've had for a really long time that are easy to take for granted, but are — when you look at it — the most precious thing in your life," Wigfield says. Kate and Jack quickly emerge as the anchor couple. They are a realistic portrayal of what it means to love someone for better and for worse ... and the many annoying moments in between. There's tenderness and frustration, playfulness and sarcasm; respect and fatigue. They seem to like each other and love each other and, just as crucially, deal with the muck of life by each other's side. "They hold it together," Fey says. "They think they have got it all figured out more so than the other couples." "And I think that's a lot of couples in the world," Forte adds. "It takes very little to turn you off the path and spin you out and you have to course-correct right away or else you can spin out even further. And then it gets really tough." The pair are seated in a suite, fittingly, at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and, for a moment, they shift their focus toward the two jumbo blueberry muffins in front of them. Fey had been hyping them up all morning, Forte says as he reaches for his own. "It's got some compote in the middle — we may need forks to get in there," Fey says with glee as she reaches for some. "That's kind of what the best part is. If this interview results in me getting one free blueberry muffin, we've done our job." "Oh, my God, what is happening here?" Forte says as blueberry goo oozes out of his pastry. Similarly simple but endearing slice of life details bring humorous depth to their depiction of the ordinary parts of married life within the series. There's a moment late in the season — during a trip to visit their daughter at college — when Kate, in an attempt to do a nice gesture after an off night, makes a two-hour drive to get Jack his favorite sandwich. Only it's not his favorite sandwich — she ordered the No. 17; he gets the No. 7. But he rolls with it, tenderly taking out the ingredients he doesn't like (nearly all), painstakingly wiping off the condiments spread across the bread and then, after reassembling what's left, biting into the sub sideways like a maniac as Kate watches on with disapproving marvel just as the room service he ordered, as his act of kindness, arrives. She can't help but notice he ordered two full pitchers of juice. It's a moment, which happens so often in marriage, where you have good intentions, but you don't quite get it right. "Kate and Jack were my favorite to write," Wigfield says. "They were also the hardest to write a little bit because we really wanted it to be a relatable story about marriage. When you're married, it is so high stakes. It can always end in divorce. Your life could explode. But living in the day to day, it doesn't feel like that. It's not always people screaming all the time." Rather, she says it's about patterns that play out over and over again that get bigger when they're not addressed. "We didn't just want this to be, like, everyone should do what Nick did," Wigfield adds. "We wanted this to also be about marriage[, which] is often worth fighting for, but it's never going to be easy." It's also a decidedly less intense portrayal of a weathered marriage compared with depictions like "A Marriage Story" or "Scenes From a Marriage." "We wanted it to be subtle and we were trying to find the right levels," Fisher says. "Married couples get in real big fights, but a lot of times, you get in that fight and then you have to go to a kid's play afterwards or you have to do something else; then the next day, you're having fun together. It was about calibrating the levels of passive aggressiveness versus anger versus love." Fey and Forte are in different stages of their respective marriages — Fey has been married to composer and producer Jeff Richmond since 2001; Forte has been married to his wife, Olivia Modling, since 2021 — but both understand how a union can be challenged by life's big turns and its everyday irritations. "Through making this show, I kept saying to Lang and Tracey and the writers, 'My character is such a bitch.' It did make me think, 'Am I this much of a bitch all the time? I don't think I am. Not at home, anyway. But I do think the micro-aggressions between a couple, that kind of constant rebooting and being like, 'sorry, let's start over,' that is relatable because I think there's a real thing of just constantly making tiny mistakes that, if you don't address in the moment, can build up to be something bad." "I just got married four or five years ago," Forte adds. "It doesn't matter how new the relationship is, everything that people go through who have been in it for 20 years, you're going through it at year four or five. What I've learned is just, at every step of the way, you always have to work on it. You always have to make the decision to course-correct as early as possible. Don't stew on things." That's often easier said than done, of course. It leads Forte to acknowledge there are elements of Jack that felt like himself: "I always think I am doing the right thing and you see how that can be annoying and problematic," he says. "I'm probably the annoying version of Jack —" "I don't think so," Fey interjects. "We'll have to ask Olivia." It leads to Forte to acknowledging how, like Jack, he sometimes does avoid addressing small things. He shares a hypothetical that very quickly, and funnily, seems like it's not a hypothetical. (Olivia can set the record straight.) "It's that tricky thing where you're like, 'OK, I'm going to be honest. I don't like it when you leave this light on all the time.' And the next time, the light's on. And you're like, 'Remember the light I talked about?' Then the third time, it's like 'the light.' Then the fourth time, it's like, 'What's wrong?' 'Nothing,'" he explains. "You can't really say it because I'll get in trouble if I say, 'that freaking light I keep talking about is on.' But I'm still allowed to get emotionally upset about this, not being heard." "We have the same exact issue," Fey interjects, referring to her marriage. "You may be making it up about the light, but my closet door, if you open it, the light comes on. And so sometimes the doors don't close right and my husband's like, 'You left that light on again.' I'm like, 'Pull the doors close.' I'll be like, 'The room that you just came out of, you left the light on and that has a light switch and you leave that light on all the time.' He's like, 'No, I do not.' He does! By the way, this is why we can't have lights." "I do a million things like that too," Forte says, ready to shoulder his faults with humor. "But, in a way, that's my excuse to not do the things. I'll be like, 'Remember the light? That's why I haven't put my stuff in the calendar — because you keep leaving the light on.' Then you learn to just put your stuff in the calendar and maybe the light will be off." "Those two things are actually unrelated," Fey quips. "Maybe you could get a remote or a really passive aggressive clapper." "I'm married to a saint — she's wonderful and a great mom. And she leaves the light on," Forte deadpans. The pair think it's that kind of lightheartedness that keeps Kate and Jack intact and grounded. "They're one of the lucky couples who keep finding their way back to each other," Fey says. How's that for a happily ever after? Sign up for Screen Gab, a free newsletter about the TV and movies everyone's talking about from the L.A. Times. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
For better or worse: In ‘The Four Seasons,' Tina Fey and Will Forte depict a relatable marriage
Tina Fey and Will Forte are fuzzy on the details, but somewhere inside NBC Studios at Rockefeller Plaza in New York City is where, in 2002, they first crossed paths. Fey was a few seasons into her stint on 'Saturday Night Live' as a head writer and performer. And Forte was just beginning his eight-season run on the sketch comedy series. 'So much of 'SNL' for me is a blur,' Fey says. 'Seth Meyers has this kind of encyclopedic memory of meeting everyone. He'll be like, 'Remember we did this ...?' And I'm like, 'What are you talking about?' If you ask me, I could probably remember every salad I got from Tossed or every sandwich I got from Cosi, but I can't remember human interactions.' 'I am the exact same way,' says Forte, seated next to Fey, on a recent day in April. 'Somebody asked me the other day, 'Have you ever met the Rock?' I'm a huge fan of the Rock. I was in an episode of 'SNL' with the Rock. And I just couldn't remember.' ''SNL' friendships are just this cumulative thing,' Fey says. 'You're just always around each other, all day and night. You eat family-style meals. I said to him the other day, 'I don't know how I know you. I just know you.' Two decades after they entered each other's orbit, the duo is back together, this time in 'The Four Seasons,' a TV adaptation of Alan Alda's 1981 big-screen romantic comedy of the same name. It explores the dynamics of longtime relationships — both romantic and platonic — over a year. They've worked together previously post-'SNL' — Forte had a recurring role in Fey's '30 Rock' and appeared in the 2008 feature 'Baby Mama,' which was headlined by Fey and Amy Poehler. The new series, which launched Thursday on Netflix, follows three couples who are decades-long friends — Kate (Fey) and Jack (Forte), Nick (Steve Carell) and Anne (Kerri Kenney-Silver), and Danny (Colman Domingo) and Claude (Marco Calvani) — who, as they've settled into their lives, stay connected by vacationing together. But the dynamic shifts when Nick decides to leave Anne and begins a relationship with a younger woman, testing loyalties and aggravating weaknesses or conflicts within the other marriages. Though it's a comedy at its heart, the story has the bittersweet candor and moments of earnestness that one might expect from characters confronting their lives at middle age. In addition to her starring role, Fey created and wrote this reimagined version of 'Four Seasons' with fellow '30 Rock' writers-producers Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield. Fey was a fan of the original, recalling her introduction to it during the early days of cable television when it was in heavy rotation: 'There was something so aspirational and cozy about it,' she says. 'One of the things I love most was it had people I loved from other things in it — Alan Alda from 'MASH,' Carol Burnett from 'The Carol Burnett Show,' Rita Moreno from 'The Electric Company.' My mind was blown. It was like my 'Avengers' universe then.' (Alda makes a cameo in the series.) More fundamentally, the trio of creators were invigorated by the idea of looking at the ebbs and flows of significant relationships in adulthood and how they can bloom, bend or break across different life stages. 'We wanted this to be a love letter to long marriages, to long friendships, to relationships that you've had for a really long time that are easy to take for granted, but are — when you look at it — the most precious thing in your life,' Wigfield says. Kate and Jack quickly emerge as the anchor couple. They are a realistic portrayal of what it means to love someone for better and for worse ... and the many annoying moments in between. There's tenderness and frustration, playfulness and sarcasm; respect and fatigue. They seem to like each other and love each other and, just as crucially, deal with the muck of life by each other's side. 'They hold it together,' Fey says. 'They think they have got it all figured out more so than the other couples.' 'And I think that's a lot of couples in the world,' Forte adds. 'It takes very little to turn you off the path and spin you out and you have to course-correct right away or else you can spin out even further. And then it gets really tough.' The pair are seated in a suite, fittingly, at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and, for a moment, they shift their focus toward the two jumbo blueberry muffins in front of them. Fey had been hyping them up all morning, Forte says as he reaches for his own. 'It's got some compote in the middle — we may need forks to get in there,' Fey says with glee as she reaches for some. 'That's kind of what the best part is. If this interview results in me getting one free blueberry muffin, we've done our job.' 'Oh, my God, what is happening here?' Forte says as blueberry goo oozes out of his pastry. Similarly simple but endearing slice of life details bring humorous depth to their depiction of the ordinary parts of married life within the series. There's a moment late in the season — during a trip to visit their daughter at college — when Kate, in an attempt to do a nice gesture after an off night, makes a two-hour drive to get Jack his favorite sandwich. Only it's not his favorite sandwich — she ordered the No. 17; he gets the No. 7. But he rolls with it, tenderly taking out the ingredients he doesn't like (nearly all), painstakingly wiping off the condiments spread across the bread and then, after reassembling what's left, biting into the sub sideways like a maniac as Kate watches on with disapproving marvel just as the room service he ordered, as his act of kindness, arrives. She can't help but notice he ordered two full pitchers of juice. It's a moment, which happens so often in marriage, where you have good intentions, but you don't quite get it right. 'Kate and Jack were my favorite to write,' Wigfield says. 'They were also the hardest to write a little bit because we really wanted it to be a relatable story about marriage. When you're married, it is so high stakes. It can always end in divorce. Your life could explode. But living in the day to day, it doesn't feel like that. It's not always people screaming all the time.' Rather, she says it's about patterns that play out over and over again that get bigger when they're not addressed. 'We didn't just want this to be, like, everyone should do what Nick did,' Wigfield adds. 'We wanted this to also be about marriage[, which] is often worth fighting for, but it's never going to be easy.' It's also a decidedly less intense portrayal of a weathered marriage compared with depictions like 'A Marriage Story' or 'Scenes From a Marriage.' 'We wanted it to be subtle and we were trying to find the right levels,' Fisher says. 'Married couples get in real big fights, but a lot of times, you get in that fight and then you have to go to a kid's play afterwards or you have to do something else; then the next day, you're having fun together. It was about calibrating the levels of passive aggressiveness versus anger versus love.' Fey and Forte are in different stages of their respective marriages — Fey has been married to composer and producer Jeff Richmond since 2001; Forte has been married to his wife, Olivia Modling, since 2021 — but both understand how a union can be challenged by life's big turns and its everyday irritations. 'Through making this show, I kept saying to Lang and Tracey and the writers, 'My character is such a bitch.' It did make me think, 'Am I this much of a bitch all the time? I don't think I am. Not at home, anyway. But I do think the micro-aggressions between a couple, that kind of constant rebooting and being like, 'sorry, let's start over,' that is relatable because I think there's a real thing of just constantly making tiny mistakes that, if you don't address in the moment, can build up to be something bad.' 'I just got married four or five years ago,' Forte adds. 'It doesn't matter how new the relationship is, everything that people go through who have been in it for 20 years, you're going through it at year four or five. What I've learned is just, at every step of the way, you always have to work on it. You always have to make the decision to course-correct as early as possible. Don't stew on things.' That's often easier said than done, of course. It leads Forte to acknowledge there are elements of Jack that felt like himself: 'I always think I am doing the right thing and you see how that can be annoying and problematic,' he says. 'I'm probably the annoying version of Jack —' 'I don't think so,' Fey interjects. 'We'll have to ask Olivia.' It leads to Forte to acknowledging how, like Jack, he sometimes does avoid addressing small things. He shares a hypothetical that very quickly, and funnily, seems like it's not a hypothetical. (Olivia can set the record straight.) 'It's that tricky thing where you're like, 'OK, I'm going to be honest. I don't like it when you leave this light on all the time.' And the next time, the light's on. And you're like, 'Remember the light I talked about?' Then the third time, it's like 'the light.' Then the fourth time, it's like, 'What's wrong?' 'Nothing,'' he explains. 'You can't really say it because I'll get in trouble if I say, 'that freaking light I keep talking about is on.' But I'm still allowed to get emotionally upset about this, not being heard.' 'We have the same exact issue,' Fey interjects, referring to her marriage. 'You may be making it up about the light, but my closet door, if you open it, the light comes on. And so sometimes the doors don't close right and my husband's like, 'You left that light on again.' I'm like, 'Pull the doors close.' I'll be like, 'The room that you just came out of, you left the light on and that has a light switch and you leave that light on all the time.' He's like, 'No, I do not.' He does! By the way, this is why we can't have lights.' 'I do a million things like that too,' Forte says, ready to shoulder his faults with humor. 'But, in a way, that's my excuse to not do the things. I'll be like, 'Remember the light? That's why I haven't put my stuff in the calendar — because you keep leaving the light on.' Then you learn to just put your stuff in the calendar and maybe the light will be off.' 'Those two things are actually unrelated,' Fey quips. 'Maybe you could get a remote or a really passive aggressive clapper.' 'I'm married to a saint — she's wonderful and a great mom. And she leaves the light on,' Forte deadpans. The pair think it's that kind of lightheartedness that keeps Kate and Jack intact and grounded. 'They're one of the lucky couples who keep finding their way back to each other,' Fey says. How's that for a happily ever after?
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Blake Lively's excruciating exchange with Seth Meyers comes back to haunt her as she prepares for a return to the TV circuit on his show - nine years after their awkward encounter
Blake Lively will return to NBC Studios for a reunion with chat show host Seth Meyers on Thursday evening, nine years after their last meeting got off to a less than promising start. The beleaguered actress is returning to the talk show circuit - ostensibly to promote the release of her new film, A Simple Favor - after a tumultuous six month fallout from the release of her last. Lively, 37, is currently embroiled in an ongoing and highly publicised legal battle with her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni - which began when she sued him for sexual harassment and launching a smear campaign against her in December. Ongoing proceedings have been exacerbated by a rumoured fallout with A Simple Favor co-star Anna Kendrick, who is understood to be concerned by the impact Lively's public spat is having on promotional duties for their latest film. Just how impactful might be reflected in her forthcoming chat with Meyers, her first TV interview since dividing fans by initiating legal proceedings against Baldoni. She may well be hoping for an easier ride, after her last chat with Meyers began with the host congratulating her on her pregnancy - before she'd even confirmed it And she may well be hoping for an easier ride, after her last chat with Meyers began with the host congratulating her on her pregnancy - before she'd even confirmed it. Lively - now a mother-of-four - was in the early stages of her second pregnancy while appearing on the show in 2016, and was yet to publicly announce she and husband Ryan Reynolds were expecting another baby. Seemingly unaware of his imminent faux-pas, Meyers began: 'You have a baby at home, and you have another baby on the way, congratulations.' 'What makes you say that?' asked a stunned Lively as nervous laughter rippled through the studio audience. 'You know, you're not supposed to say that to a woman.' Confirming the pregnancy, she added: 'Yes, you're guessing correctly. This is not brownies - I'll let you off the hook.' Her imminent TV appearance comes after Marvel asked to be removed from legal proceedings and to quash a subpoena over the Nicepool character in Reynolds' Deadpool & Wolverine - which Baldoni previously claimed was 'bullying.' Marvel has also asked for 'a protective order prohibiting the disclosure of Marvel's confidential documents by any party or other non-party in this action. 'Alternatively, Marvel requests that the Court stay the return date of the Subpoena and related document requests until after the Court decides the pending motion to dismiss of Counterclaim Defendant Ryan Reynolds.' In the film Deadpool & Wolverine, Reynolds notably portrayed the character of Nicepool alongside other stars such as Hugh Jackman. Nicepool was a 'variant' who sported a man-bun - which was also similar to a past hairstyle that Baldoni had worn. In a scene, Nicepool makes a comment about Ladypool (played by Lively) and said, 'Oh my goodness, wait til you've seen Ladypool. She is gorgeous. She just had a baby too and [you] can't even tell.' Deadpool responded, 'I don't think you're supposed to say that,' to which Nicepool added, 'That's okay I identify as a feminist.' The comments seemingly referenced Baldoni referring to himself as a feminist in the past. Lively had also given birth to her fourth child shortly before filming It Ends With Us - which Baldoni both starred in and directed. In her lawsuit, the actress claimed that he had 'criticised her body and weight.' Lively is currently embroiled in an ongoing legal battle with her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni - which began when she sued him for sexual harassment and launching a smear campaign against her in December. On Monday, Baldoni's own legal team sent in a response to Marvel's recent request. In a letter to the judge, obtained by PEOPLE, his lawyers stated that Marvel 'did not meet and confer with us "in a good faith effort to resolve this dispute."' Baldoni's legal team wrote: 'On April 2, 2025, Marvel sent the Wayfarer Parties a letter containing its objections to the Subpoena, which are the same objections set forth in its recent letter-motion. 'On April 7, 2025, my office met and conferred with Marvel's counsel via telephone about the objections, and although we attempted in good faith to address Marvel's purported concerns about confidentiality and relevancy, Marvel's counsel interrupted us, refusing to engage in that discussion.' They added, 'Instead, Marvel's counsel interjected and stated he merely wanted to know what documents the Wayfarer Parties "really" needed, regardless of the Subpoena's demand for all documents concerning: (a) the creation, development, modification or portrayal of Ryan Reynolds' "Nicepool" character from Deadpool & Wolverine; and (b) Justin Baldoni.' Lively has slowly been stepping back into the spotlight and recently made an appearance at the star-studded Time100 Gala in New York City.
Yahoo
04-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
What Trump's Tariffs Mean for Hollywood as New Recession Looms
The entertainment industry woke up on Thursday to the reality that its turn of the economic corner is more elusive than ever. President Donald Trump's reciprocal tariffs against 180 countries sent global markets reeling, with U.S. stocks seeing their biggest one-day plunge since 2020 and unleashing dire predictions for the economy, including a looming recession. For Hollywood, which has been trying to right itself since the pandemic, the actors and writers' strikes and more recently the wildfires, it was one more plunge into the unknown. Intellectual property like films and TV shows will not be directly subjected to tariffs as a 'service,' which instead hit consumer goods including cars, iPhones, clothing, wine, coffee and chocolate. But make no mistake, that doesn't mean the entertainment industry escapes a world of hurt as movie and television production, live entertainment and theater upgrades will likely take a hit. 'These tariffs are just going to underline and highlight the already vulnerable parts of our entertainment industry,' veteran producer Tom Nunan, the former president of NBC Studios and founder of Bull's Eye Entertainment, told TheWrap. 'They're just going to expedite some of the more troubling developments that we've all feared since COVID, since the strikes.' Trump's moves come as Hollywood faces continued contraction and a lack of work in Los Angeles, as productions continue to shift elsewhere for tax breaks — including Canada and the U.K. 'The question will become whether this is going to [accelerate] these other events that seem to be on the horizon, which is more consolidation and possibly just certain companies just hanging up the towel when it comes to some of the legacy businesses like linear networks and ad-supported cable networks,' Nunan added. Indeed, look no further than what the tariffs mean for advertisers, a main artery that sustains media and entertainment. A recent survey conducted by Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) shows that of 100 advertising decision-makers, 94% of them are concerned about the impact of tariffs on ad spending. Of those, 57% are 'extremely concerned' and 37% are 'somewhat concerned.' If that's not chilling enough, look at these numbers. The IAB says most advertisers anticipate these declines in 2025 ad budgets due to 'tariff-related pressures': More than 20% decrease – 4% 0-5% decrease – 14% 6-10% decrease – 60% 11-20% decrease – 22% Here are the sectors of media where that becomes a reality: Of course, the tariff hammer comes down as TV networks are preparing for their annual upfronts, where they will pitch to advertisers starting this month. Brian Wieser, CEO of Madison & Wall, which analyzes advertising, said of the current mood on Madison Avenue: 'There's a proper understanding of the chaos that the current administration intends to bring. So you can kind of play out how everyone will be feeling in a couple months and it won't be good. It will be even worse than it is right now.' Consumers have not felt much relief from grocery bills and other higher costs of living during these first months of the Trump administration. They also have fears about Social Security, health care and retirement funds, if they have any. These are the folks who buy movie tickets, streaming subscriptions and all the other products the industry sells to them — T-shirts, video games, theme park tickets, etc. During past cataclysmic downturns, these consumers leaned into movies and TV as 'escapism,' but 2025 is a different world, and Hollywood is more aware how many Americans these days live paycheck to paycheck — many believe the price of eggs helped sway the election. Earlier this year, consulting giant McKinsey reported that three-quarters of consumers across the board were planning to 'trade down' in the first quarter this year, more so among Gen Z and Gen Xers. Not great news for the studios and TV networks and streamers. 'It's going to impact subscriptions and box office first,' producer Nunan said, 'because that's disposable income and people are going to be hit right away.' At CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Thursday, the conversation among movie theater executives amid the tariff news was primarily focused on industry issues like ticket pricing, theatrical windowing and updating theaters with infrastructure investments. It couldn't come at a worse time for the box office — domestic totals for the first quarter are set to finish at approximately $1.4 billion, down around 12% from last year's $1.6 billion and 19% from the $1.72 billion of 2023. While trade organization Cinema United has proudly touted the $2.2 billion pledged by various theater chains to refurbish their multiplexes, that money is likely to not go as far. Theaters that need to upgrade sound and picture in particular may have to recalibrate their plans, as digital cinema projectors are entirely manufactured outside of the U.S. Hollywood productions will face new scrutiny. Noted Nunan: 'Suddenly Netflix or Disney will take a second look and say, 'Can we really afford our production plans that we had projected for 2026, 2027 and 2028?' We can all agree we're going into a recession. The question is are we going into a depression? And if that's the case, what are these big studios, what are these big media companies going to do?' And at a time when moviegoers are far more selective about what films they buy movie tickets for, turnout from audiences may become more infrequent if overall entertainment spending scales back. 'We have as an industry emphasized for years that moviegoing is the most affordable form of a night out,' an industry consultant who asked to remain anonymous told TheWrap. 'We're now going to have to fight even harder to convey that message because so many no longer see it that way.' Beyond movies, Morningstar senior equity analyst Matthew Dolgin in a Thursday research note said Disney and Live Nation were particularly vulnerable to a pullback on consumer spending in theme parks and live entertainment. 'Disney's parks and experiences generate most of its profit,' Dolgin wrote. 'A recession would likely depress tourism and reduce attendance at Disney's parks. Apart from economic weakness, Disney is at risk of less international tourism to the U.S,. particularly from Canada, due to chilled foreign relations.' And concert promoter Live Nation is also at risk 'as concert attendance is a luxury that consumers could pull back from if needed,' Dolgin added. Disney CEO Bob Iger reportedly attended an ABC News editorial meeting on Thursday and outlined how the tariffs could impact the company in indirect ways. According to Oliver Darcy, Iger cited the example that rising steel prices could drive up the costs for two new Disney cruise ships under construction, and warned against a notion that companies could just pick up and move manufacturing overnight. His presence and straight talk was a reminder how deep the worry is penetrating the media C-suite. The tariff wallop will reach from the broadest impact of theme park tickets to the most specific of products, such as lumber, which is massively used on sets. Production crews use millions of tons of lumber each year to construct sound and production stages. Canada is the number one importer of lumber to the U.S. and faces tariffs of 40% or higher under Trump's plan. Most common among the materials are so-called Hollywood flats, which are built with a wooden frame, typically using 3'x1′ timber on as the edge, and then covered with a plywood skin. Even before tariffs, the price of a sheet of plywood doubled in a year to $80. At the top end, a major movie set can cost tens of millions of dollars, and as little as tens of thousands of dollars for commercial sets. Mike Orth, senior project manager and product designer with North Hollywood's 41 Sets, which does as many as 100 set projects a year, said the company will just have to bake the tariffs into 'the cost of doing business.' He said he estimates the cost for all materials for sets, not just lumber, like plastic and metals, could go higher by 30% under Trump's tariffs. 'What's concerning is if and when [studios] stop projects because of costs.' Orth isn't kidding himself either about how this will trickle down to his labor costs for his five full-timers and 20 or so workers he hires in addition by project. 'Their costs and their families' costs are going to spike under tariffs across the board. It's going to cost them more just to live.' For Kevin Klowden, an economist and executive director of the Milken Finance Institute, the tariffs are not the problem for Hollywood but place a heavy thumb down on all its other issues that have been plaguing the industry the last few years. 'As far as I'm concerned, the tariffs' impact for Hollywood are not nearly as significant an issue as several of the others, namely the strong dollar, the overall cost of filming in the U.S., not just California, between labor costs, between the overall production costs, everything [for why] productions have been consistently moving overseas because they're cheaper. 'The combination of the incentive packages in places like the U.K. and Australia and Canada, lower labor and materials costs, and everything else — the tariff will just serve to exacerbate that. The 'tariffs,' if you will, that are most significant in many ways already happened.' Jeremy Fuster contributed to this report. The post What Trump's Tariffs Mean for Hollywood as New Recession Looms | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.
