Eliana Willis

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    As N.B.A. TV Deal Nears, Warner Bros. Discovery Is on the Outside

    The company’s TNT channel and the N.B.A. have long been inextricably linked, but that may end after next season. Plus, Charles Barkley is retiring.Warner Bros. Discovery executives thought they had given the National Basketball Association a proposal it would accept.In April, after months of negotiations, the company made an offer to pay billions of dollars to the league for the rights to continue showing its games on TNT, as well as its Max streaming service. TNT has shown N.B.A. games since the 1980s, and its “Inside the NBA” is widely considered one of the best-ever sports studio shows.But with the end of Warner Bros. Discovery’s exclusive negotiating window looming, the N.B.A. insisted on changing the package of games the company would receive, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private dealings. Warner Bros. Discovery balked, and while the two sides have continued negotiating, the company now finds itself on the verge of losing the rights to televise the sport with which it has become inextricably linked. And on Friday night, the beating heart of “Inside the NBA,” the Hall of Famer Charles Barkley, said he would be retiring from TV after next season.“The first thing anybody thinks about when you say TNT is the N.B.A.,” said John Skipper, the former president of ESPN.Media companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, were prepared for bruising negotiations with the N.B.A. Sports rights remain an extremely valuable commodity for traditional TV networks, and companies increasingly also see them as a way to attract more subscribers to their streaming services.The league made clear it wanted a sizable increase on the roughly $2.66 billion in total it receives annually, on average, from Warner Bros. Discovery and ESPN under its current rights agreements, which went into effect in 2016. Executives at those companies knew if they wanted to retain N.B.A. rights they would have to pay more for fewer games so that the N.B.A. could create a third package of games to sell.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    5 Ways This Year’s Tony Awards Reveal That Theater Is Changing

    As Broadway prepares to celebrate the best of the season, our theater reporter explores what the nominations tell us about the industry and the art form.Tonight’s Tony Awards ceremony will celebrate the best work on Broadway. For those of us who spend a lot of time in and around theater, the event is also a prompt, encouraging us to reflect on what the current crop of shows tells us about how the industry and the art form are doing.Here are some things I’ve been thinking about as this awards season unfolded:Nonprofit theaters are struggling. They’re also developing the most-praised work.Short of money, nonprofit theaters around the country are staging fewer shows, shedding jobs, and in a few cases, closing. Some observers worry that the model that has sustained regional theater for the last half-century is broken.But, at the same time, this year’s Tony Awards tell an amazing success story: 100 percent of the nominees for best new musical, and 100 percent of the nominees for best new play, were developed at nonprofit theaters.Among plays, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” and “Prayer for the French Republic” were all staged on Broadway by the nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club. (“Mary Jane” had an earlier Off Broadway run at another nonprofit, New York Theater Workshop.) “Stereophonic” was transferred to Broadway by commercial producers after an enthusiastically received Off Broadway run at the nonprofit Playwrights Horizons, while “Mother Play” opened directly on Broadway, presented by the nonprofit Second Stage Theater.Among musicals, “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Suffs” were first staged at the nonprofit Public Theater before being transferred to Broadway by commercial producers. “Water for Elephants” had a pre-Broadway run at the nonprofit Alliance Theater in Atlanta, and “The Outsiders” did the same at the nonprofit La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. “Illinoise,” a dance musical, had a particularly nonprofit nurturing: it was staged at Bard’s Fisher Center, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, and the Park Avenue Armory before commercial producers took it to Broadway.The season was also a big one for American artists.Broadway often frets about the perceived advantages of British productions, which have historically received more government support, cost less to develop, and can benefit from the Anglophilia of some American theater fans. The last five winners of the best play Tony Award all transferred from London (though one of those, “The Inheritance,” was written by an American).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren to Star in ‘Last Five Years’ on Broadway

    Whitney White will direct the first Broadway production of Jason Robert Brown’s popular musical, which plans to open next spring.Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren are planning to star in a production of “The Last Five Years” on Broadway next spring.Jonas appeared in several Broadway shows as a child; his one starring role was in 2012, when he stepped into a production of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” and his most recent appearance on Broadway was for a Jonas Brothers concert stand last year.Warren is a Tony Award winner for playing the title role in “Tina.” She also had roles in Broadway productions of “Shuffle Along, or the Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed” and “Bring It On.”“The Last Five Years,” by Jason Robert Brown, is about the breakup of a marriage. Critics have rarely warmed to it, but it has a huge fan base, and is widely staged. It has never been on Broadway, in part because it is so small — just two characters and one act. The show also has an unusual structure: the male protagonist, a novelist named Jamie, tells the story from beginning to end, while the female protagonist, an actress named Cathy, tells it in reverse chronological order.It was first staged in Illinois, at Northlight Theater, in 2001, with Norbert Leo Butz and Lauren Kennedy, and then had an Off Broadway run at the Minetta Lane Theater in 2002, with Butz and Sherie Rene Scott. In the decades since, there have been numerous national and international productions and adaptations. There was a film adaptation, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, in 2015. More recently, Cynthia Erivo and Joshua Henry starred in a concert version in 2016, and at the height of the pandemic Out of the Box Theatrics and Holmdel Theater Company staged a memorable streaming production filmed inside an apartment with Nicholas Edwards and Nasia Thomas. (The number of licensed productions of the show doubled during the pandemic because the small cast and idiosyncratic narrative structure made it conducive to social distancing.)The Broadway production, directed by Whitney White (a Tony nominee for “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”), will be produced by Seaview, an increasingly prolific producing entity run by Greg Nobile; ATG Productions, a subsidiary of British theater owner ATG Entertainment; and the Season, which is the new producing entity of theater marketers Mike Karns and Steven Tartick. More

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    Nick Mavar, ‘Deadliest Catch’ Star, Dies at 59

    Mr. Mavar, who ran a fishing operation in Alaska, starred in the reality television show for 16 years and captained his own boat.Nick Mavar, a commercial salmon fisherman known for his tenacity and resourcefulness who was also a deckhand on the Discovery Channel’s extreme fishing reality show “Deadliest Catch,” died on Thursday at a hospital in King Salmon, Alaska. He was 59.His death was confirmed by his wife, Julie (Hanson) Mavar. His nephew Jake Anderson said that Mr. Mavar had a heart attack on Thursday while on a ladder at a boatyard in Naknek, Alaska, where he ran his fishing operation, and fell onto a dry dock.He was pronounced dead at a hospital, Mr. Anderson said.The Bristol Bay Borough Police Department in Naknek confirmed that Mr. Mavar had died but declined on Friday evening to share additional details.“Deadliest Catch,” which follows crab fishermen on their strenuous and sometimes brutal job off the Alaskan coast, is one of the top-rated programs on basic cable, drawing millions of viewers.The show premiered in 2005, and Mr. Mavar appeared in 98 episodes, working on a fishing boat called the F/V Northwestern until 2021.Mr. Mavar left the show while filming an expedition in 2020 after his appendix ruptured, revealing a cancerous tumor, Mr. Anderson said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘House of the Dragon’ Is Back on Sunday. Here Are Season 1’s Biggest Moments.

    Need a reminder of all the events that went down in Season 1 between the Greens and the Blacks? We’ve got you.The civil war known as the Dance of the Dragons is almost here after an explosive Season 1 of “House of the Dragon.” Now, nearly two years later, HBO’s other popular show about succession returns this weekend as the (mostly) white-blond Targaryens from across the family tree harness alliances, resources and dragons toward an ever-escalating cycle of vengeance and cruelty.Based on the George R.R. Martin book “Fire & Blood,” “House of the Dragon” is a “Game of Thrones” prequel occurring roughly 200 years before the events in the original series. The new season will cover some of the many plotlines of the Dance within only eight episodes, compared to the first season’s 10. (Martin, who serves as the show’s co-creator and co-writer, stated on his blog in 2022 that it would “take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons.” Are the writers getting enough runway to do it right? Time will tell.)With Season 2, the Blacks and the Greens — opposing factions led by their matriarchs, Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) — have reached a point of no return. Rhaenyra is the firstborn child and chosen heir of the newly dead King Viserys (Paddy Considine); Alicent was Viserys’s second wife and is the mother of the freshly anointed King Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney). Both factions have legitimate claims. Neither wants to share.“War is coming, and neither of us may win,” Rhaenyra says in a trailer. Here’s a look back at Season 1’s pivotal moments that turned childhood best friends into mortal enemies hurtling toward mutual destruction.This article discusses the plot details of “House of the Dragon,” Season 1.A tragic childbirthViserys (Paddy Considine) and Aemma (Sian Brooke) in happier times, before he had her killed in attempts to save his son (who also died).Ollie Upton/HBOBattle scenes, dragons and beheadings are par for the course in the “Thrones” universe. But “House of the Dragon” is also a story about women and mothers, and how they contort themselves to survive in a patriarchal society. Primogeniture, in which inheritance goes to the eldest son, urges women of the highest station to secure an heir, and depictions of childbirth prove to be among the season’s most harrowing scenes. Queen Aemma (Sian Brooke) is the first casualty during a breech birth, with her husband secretly making the call to cut the infant from her womb. Their one and only son becomes the “heir for a day.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    James Phoon, a New Face on ‘Bridgerton,’ Is Team Ariana Grande

    “She seems to approach the world with kindness and understanding,” said the actor, who has joined the Netflix series for its latest season.James Phoon couldn’t quite imagine himself cavorting among the 19th-century bon tons of “Bridgerton.” Then he read that the first Chinese person gained British citizenship in 1805.“As someone who’s mixed East Asian — I’m part Chinese, part English — up until very recently I never thought that I would be working on a period piece,” he said.Phoon joined the hit series in Season 3, whose second half began streaming on Netflix on Thursday, playing Harry Dankworth, the new husband of Prudence Featherington.“To be able to take up that space and represent people who are watching at home, it really means a lot,” he said.In a video call from London, where he was finishing the run of “Underdog: The Other Brontë” at the National Theater before moving with the show to Newcastle, Phoon, 30, discussed why his iPad and Apple Pencil, X-Men comics and Ariana Grande are among his cultural must-haves. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1My JournalEvery year I buy a blank scrapbook and turn it into this wellness journal. I decorate it with watercolors, and each month has a different aesthetic theme. At the beginning of the month, I write my goals, and at the end of the month I write a list of happy moments. And then I have This Month’s Win, which is one thing — work-related or personal, or just something that made you smile — that you want to hold onto.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Ariana DeBose, Tonys Host, Just Might Be the Busiest Woman on Broadway

    Back in New York City after filming a movie, the actress has been racing to shows while also rehearsing for Sunday night’s ceremony.“Baby,” Ariana DeBose confided, “you are always on.”DeBose, an Oscar winner and a longtime Broadway phenom, was speaking of herself, in the second person, last Saturday evening. Dressed in a beige ribbed tank, athletic shorts and chunky heeled boots, she was still glistening from a rehearsal for Sunday’s Tony Awards broadcast. “On” is an understatement: This will be her third time hosting the ceremony, and her first time producing and choreographing.“Why I did that, I’ll never know,” she said. “Dear lord, the Tonys is just one giant learning experience. You have to be humble.”Humble. And very busy. DeBose is 33 but still very much a theater kid. Her speech was fast, excitable, and when not vaping from a hot pink pen, she had a tendency to reach out to pat my arm or leg, an intimate form of emphasis. Soon, she would take herself out for a hurried plate of pasta before racing to an evening show. For the past two weeks, DeBose has been on a mission, however implausible, to see all of the nominated plays and musicals.Until the end of May, DeBose had been in Winnipeg, Manitoba, shooting an action film, “With Love.” She arrived in New York City the Saturday before Memorial Day and saw her first show that Sunday. On the day we spoke, a week before the broadcast, she had just three shows remaining. (One, “Water for Elephants,” she would see that night.) And this was in addition to arduous rehearsal days.DeBose has said that she will take a break as Tonys host, in large part because she hopes to return to Broadway. OK McCausland for The New York Times“These are opposite processes,” she said of hosting and spectating. “They’re very different disciplines, but you can’t host if you don’t know who’s involved. So to me, it’s a requirement.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How to Watch the Tony Awards 2024: Date, Time, Streaming

    The main event will be broadcast on CBS and livestreamed for Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers. A simulcast will also air at Damrosch Park in Manhattan.OK, Broadway fans: It’s showtime.The Tony Awards — the annual celebration of Broadway’s best — are on Sunday evening, with performances and prizes and who-knows-what-they’ll-say acceptance speeches.Here’s what you might want to know:When is the ceremony, and how can I watch it?The main event, featuring songs from most of the nominated musicals and the announcement of most of the big winners, is scheduled to start Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern and to end at 11.The ceremony will be broadcast live on CBS, and can be streamed live by Paramount+ with Showtime subscribers. (Paramount+ Essential subscribers can watch the next day.)A preshow ceremony, at which a number of awards for design and other crafts will be handed out, will take place from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Eastern and will be streamed on Pluto TV, a free service. (Go to Pluto TV on whatever device you’re using, and then click on the ET channel.)If you’re in New York, you can also watch from Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center. That’s a seated area, outdoors, where a simulcast will play. Skylar Astin will host, and there will be some performances and guest appearances. The free event begins at 6:30 p.m. Eastern; the simulcast begins at 8. Capacity is limited, and American Express cardholders are given priority seating.There are also a variety of ticketed watch parties taking place at bars and other venues. Here’s a list from BroadwayWorld.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More