Tag: Warner Bros. Television

Posted on in News

Robert Pattinson Signs Overall First-Look Deal With Warner Bros. – Will Include Future Film & Television Projects

British actor Robert Pattinson has been having a huge career resurgence lately with a large role in Christopher Nolan’s time-bending action film Tenet that was released last summer and landed the titular role in Matt Reeves new Batman movie, The Batman.

It sounds like Warner Bros. wants to continue to work with Robert Pattinson for the foreseeable future as The Hollywood Reporter reveals that the actor has singed a first-look deal that will allow him to be considered for projects at Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Television/HBO, and the streaming service HBO Max.

The deal could allow Pattinson to appear on the HBO Max spinoff series Gotham PD, a prequel that will take place during the first year of Bruce Wayne acting as the vigilante known as The Batman. However, they might be more interested in having the British actor leading other original projects other than things connected to the DC Comics franchise because his Batman contract likely has him attached to sequels and Matt Reeves has talked-up his plans to make a trilogy.

Most people first noticed Pattinson when he appeared as Cedric Diggory in Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire back in 2005 and led the popular Twilight films. Since then, he’s developed as an actor working with filmmakers such as David Cronenberg, The Safie Brothers, Robert Eggers, Christopher Nolan, James Gray, Claire Denis, and David Michod.

Having Robert Pattinson has the face of WarnerMedia could help them after heavy-weights such as Christopher Nolan and Denis Villeneuve signaled their frustration after the day-and-date announcement, Nolan has been signaling that he won’t work with the studio again and might already be looking for a new home.

The WarnerMedia-Discovery merger has led to rumblings within the business news community that this could be the beginning of a sale, although, this is unconfirmed as potential buyers haven’t been mentioned.

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Posted on in Television News

Chloe Grace Moretz To Lead Amazon’s Sci-Fi Mystery Series ‘The Peripheral’ – Based On Novel By William Gibson

A while ago it was announced that Westworld’s Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan would be producing a brand new science fiction series The Peripheral, based on the William Gibson novel for Warner Bros. Television and Amazon Studios that will air on Prime Video with Scott B. Smith and Greg Plageman set to showrun.

Variety reports that Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass, Let Me In) has nabbed the role of Flynne Fisher in the show.

The series centers on Flynne Fisher (Moretz), a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken family in a forgotten corner of tomorrow’s America. Flynne is smart, ambitious and doomed. She has no future – until the future comes calling for her.

It’s certain one of the upcoming adaptations at Amazon I’m very interested in seeing come together.

William Gibson is credited as creating the cyberpunk genre as we know it starting with his seminal novel Neuromancer and his work has gone to influence things like The Matrix franchise, Altered Carbon, and the upcoming video game Cyberpunk 2077.

Chloe recently joined Miramax’s upcoming sci-fi flick Mother/ Android that will be written and directed by Mattson Tomlin (The Batman, Project Power).

SOURCE: VARIETY

Posted on in News

Massive Layoffs At WarnerMedia Will Directly Impact Warner Bros., DC Comics, and DC Universe

Another blow to the entertainment industry is on the way. 

On Monday, it was revealed that WarnerMedia would be moving forward with massive layoffs with the “first wave” said to be around 600 according to a report from THR. 

The layoffs are being attributed to the damage inflicted by the Coronavirus pandemic. 

The laid-off employees include Warner Bros. CFO Kim Williams, Warner Bros. Worldwide Television Distribution president Jeff Schlesinger and Ron Sanders, Warner Bros. president, Worldwide Theatrical Distribution & Home Entertainment and Executive Vice President, International Business Operations.

Yesterday, news hit that the comics side of the company would be taking a huge hit as well. 

The Hollywood Reporter included a list of people at DC Comics publishing that are expected to go as well such as editor-in-chief Bob Harris, Hank Kanalz, Jonah Weiland, Bobbie Chase, Brian Cunningham, and Mark Doyle. 

Among those said to be losing their positions are editor-in-chief Bob Harris, senior VP of publishing strategy and support services Hank Kanalz, VP of marketing and creative services Jonah Weiland, VP global publishing initiatives and digital strategy Bobbie Chase, senior story editor Brian Cunningham, and executive editor Mark Doyle, who oversaw the rollout of the Black Label graphic novels. Jim Lee remains the CCO.

They also point out that a “majority” of people at the DC Comics centric streaming service DC Universe will also see layoffs. 

There had been plenty of signs recently that DC Universe was on borrowed time after their talk show The Daily DC was canceled and multiple shows moved to other WarnerMedia services slowly making the streaming service less relevant. 

This news comes days before WarnerMedia’s big star-studded DC Fandome event on August 22nd is likely going to leave fans a little sour given the state DC Comics and DC Universe will be in. 

We had previously seen a bunch of layoffs at 20th Century Studios (formerly 20th Century Fox) because of some job redundancies post-merger with the Walt Disney Company, which regularly happens when media companies combine. Equally as sad but that was slightly more expected in the wake of the merger and was one of the reasons many Fox employees were quitting before the merger had even completed. 

WarnerMedia recently launched HBO Max back on May 27th and seemingly hasn’t seen the growth they expected alongside the pandemic essentially stalling a majority of their various productions around the globe making. 

I’m sure everyone is interested to see if AT&T/WarnerMedia will keep divisions after the cuts to staffing or instead attempt to sell them off. There had been reports that they were trying to offload Warner Bros. Interactive, their profitable video games division, but some have had the assumption that these layoffs may delay that sale. 

SOURCE: THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER