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    The Most Adventurous Comedy Right Now Is Also the Most Real

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    John Wilson, Eric Andre and others are drawing on unscripted encounters to elicit deeper laughs but also more vulnerable moments.At the start of the second season of the HBO series “How To With John Wilson,” the titular star, a stammering innocent, visits a mortgage broker to get a loan. Asked his occupation, he sounds stumped. “I’m an, uh, documentarian,” he says, struggling to categorize his work. “Like, uh, it’s kind of like memoir, essay, um.”Pity him. It’s not easy to define this singular show. But one tip-off comes when Wilson offers as collateral a collection of printed-out reactions (including a Mindy Kaling tweet) inside a folder labeled “good reviews.” The exasperated look on the face of the lender operates as a punchline.Wilson, who writes, stars and narrates this self-portrait of sorts, is the quietly radical auteur of a rapidly ascendant branch of comedy that uses the raw materials of unscripted slices of the real world to make jokes. The latest Dave Chappelle controversy or topical “Saturday Night Live” sketch get more headlines, but in a less heralded corner of comedy, a quiet revolution is taking place.Chris (Eric André), center, and Bud (Lil Rel Howery) ask a woman for advice in “Bad Trip.”NetflixThe best gross-out comedy of the year was Eric André’s “Bad Trip,” a movie that blended public interactions between actors and real people into its fiction. The most biting political film in recent memory was not made by Oliver Stone or Adam McKay. It was the 2020 sequel to “Borat.” And the most innovative portrait of New York was not cooked up by Martin Scorsese. It was the HBO series “How To With John Wilson.” I’m not sure if this group of documentary comedy artists, who have elevated a legacy still connected to lowbrow prank humor, can be considered a scene, but they are cross-pollinating and growing in ambition.At the top of this family tree is Sacha Baron Cohen (“Borat”), whose blockbuster comedies take planned narratives and weave in ridiculous interactions between his outlandish characters and unsuspecting, real people. His heirs includes Jena Friedman, one of the writers of “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” who in her “Soft Focus” Adult Swim specials added savvy feminist punch to daring documentary comedy, integrating scenes with real frat boys and online gamers into a comic exposé of our sexist culture. Her recent follow-up is the superb spoof of murder documentaries, “Indefensible” on Sundance TV. “Bad Trip” (2021) belongs to a broader strain, tied to the raucous juvenile stunts of “Jackass,” whose co-creator Jeff Tremaine produced the feature.Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova hit the streets in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.”Amazon StudiosNathan Fielder, who has also worked with Baron Cohen, pioneered a more personal, emotionally tender strain in “Nathan for You” (which ended in 2017) playing a mild-mannered consultant who helps small-business owners achieve their dreams. His cringe comedy often began as a spoof of the hustle of American entrepreneurs, but invariably spun off into melancholy, oddly poetic moments. This set the stage for the most ambitious and cerebral example of the genre, “How To With John Wilson,” whose executive producers include Fielder.Wilson builds every episode around teaching some new skill before getting interrupted by a diversion that seems to stumble into a philosophical meditation on a broader theme. An episode on appreciating wine asks how to engage with society without becoming conformist; one about finding a parking spot is a brief for the virtue of boredom. (“Maybe life is just circling just waiting for a spot.”) It’s a show that gathers loose parts (a montage of shots of personalized license plates, say) and somehow turns them into wildly eccentric, oddly poignant comedy.Wilson, our intrepid guide, is incredibly smart at playing dumb, alert to moments of minor revelation, disturbing oddness and layered meanings. But unlike most of the great deadpan comics, he stays off camera, telling his stories through narration, interviews with strangers and carefully curated scenes of New York. The show shares elements with critical video essays by the likes of Matt Zoller Seitz and with Thom Andersen’s fascinating documentary “Los Angeles Plays Itself,” which also invites you to see a city through new eyes. But the new season of “How to,” written by a staff that includes the author Susan Orlean and the comic Conner O’Malley, is much more autobiographical. New York isn’t the main character, as the cliché goes, so much as shots of it are the language used to describe Wilson.Detours take us into his checkered early filmmaking career, including a disastrous early film, “Jingle Berry,” he has stashed away but can’t quite destroy, and brief video of old roommates and a girlfriend. The most surreal (and chilling) personal revelation is a story of organizing a failed rebellion in college when his a cappella group attended a conference hosted by Keith Raniere, the convicted sex trafficker who founded the cult Nxivm.All great comedy reveals the artist, but these intimate new episodes dig deeper, making Wilson more vulnerable than you’d expect. Wilson comes off as an anguished subject, anxious and afraid of confrontation but struggling to connect. This tension is reflected in the form: We only actually see him in quick glances in mirrors or old clips, but the stories are told entirely from the perspective of his camera. Most of his emotional reactions are illuminated by street scenes. When he talks about feeling shock, he shows an image of a Gothic building whose windows resemble a face with a mouth agape.The roots of this brand of comedy date to the pranks of “Candid Camera.” Another touchstone is the late-night talk show tradition of turning interactions with strangers into comedy, from Steve Allen in the 1950s to the literate remote segments by Merrill Markoe on “Late Night With David Letterman” in the 1980s. It’s a strain of comedy that inspired artists like Billy Eichner. The recent documentary comedy examples stretch the canvas created by their forerunners, offering a wider emotional landscape and more complicated ideas.“How To With John Wilson” turns to Quick Evic to get advice about tenant-landlord relations.HBOBut a dark undercurrent remains, one that exploits the humiliation of unsuspecting foils for cheap laughs. Wilson is clearly aware of this and even cops to it. The first episode of this season begins with him buying a building from his landlord. Describing his online real-estate hunt, he says: “You feel like the invisible man. Getting to be a voyeur without any consequences.” His self-awareness doesn’t erase the smirking pleasures of his show, which emerge in the handling of characters like the person who claims to be the reincarnation of President John Adams or the businessman who makes car-shaped caskets. But Wilson rarely mocks. And he isn’t aiming for quick laughs as much as compassionate consideration. His camera treats the figures it encounters with loving attention and usually a lack of judgment.His shows are a reminder of how rarely you see banal details of city denizens doing their jobs on prestige television: The unglamorous everyday of real estate agents, construction workers, commuters. Wilson balances the mundane with the extraordinary (every episode has a moment or two that you can’t believe really happened), heavy subjects with light jokes. He introduces us to people who look like targets (a fan group of “Avatar” obsessives) and makes us see the beauty in their community. This isn’t a show of heroes and villains, but quick portraits of real, complicated people, and its foundational faith is that they are funnier than anything performed by actors. There’s plenty of evidence.Consider a recent viral video of the Fox host Laura Ingraham having a frustrated conversation with a guest talking about the Netflix show “You.” Every time he mentioned the show, she thought he was referring to her, and the dialogue came to seem like a cable-news update of an Abbott and Costello routine. Almost immediately, this minute-long misunderstanding went viral with people of all political stripes retweeting and praising it. One of the only dissents came from Andy Richter, who tweeted: “The fact that people are actually laughing at that Laura Ingraham thing makes me feel like I’ve wasted the last 35 years of my life.”Why did people love this? It was delivered with spot-on comic rhythm, and of course, people love to laugh at cable hosts embarrassing themselves. But part of the reason it worked is because it seemed like a genuine moment, a true burst of spontaneity in a media climate filled with predictable narratives. As soon as the participants confessed it was fake, the interest online vanished.To take another example, the Sacha Baron Cohen comedies that forgo unscripted encounters with real people, “The Dictator” and “The Brothers Grimsby,” did not have the urgency and verve of his documentary comedies.Authenticity has been rightly picked apart by critics, who argue that it’s easily manufactured and so vaguely defined as to be meaningless. And yet, its power and influence on audiences remains undeniable. Authenticity is part of the popularity of stand-up, with comics performing in characters bearing their names and likenesses. And when a standup does something that seems at odds with his persona, the public’s fascination is intense. See John Mulaney, a squeaky-clean comic who recently became a staple of tabloid coverage after drug rehab, divorce and news of a new girlfriend and baby on the way. “You know your life has gone a little downhill when you announce that you’re having a baby, and you get mixed reviews,” he joked at a recent show.Wilson gets at the enduring power of the real in an origin story of sorts in which he describes being denied entry into a Dungeons and Dragons group as a kid and rebelling against fantasy. “When I watched fiction, I could never suspend disbelief and fully immerse myself in the world.” I suspect he’s not the only one.And yet, in the same episode, he tries to change, searching out the value in fantasy (“If you only think about stuff that already exists, the world will never change”) and even recording his dreams. One is of a laundromat where the washers and dryers are replaced by stoves. In one oddly magical coup de théâtre, he actually builds this business, then trains his camera on New Yorkers cracking up and marveling at this bizarre new addition to the neighborhood.It’s a bizarre stunt, proudly random, but also, what a perfect joke for this boundary-blurring genre: Actually making your dream come true. More

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      ‘Promising Young Woman’ and ‘Borat’ Win at Writers Guild Awards

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      In three of the last five years WGA winners have gone on to take the screenplay Oscars. But union rules mean that not all of the Academy Award nominees were eligible here.Two of this award season’s most unique contenders triumphed Sunday night, as the dark dramedy “Promising Young Woman” and the heavily improvised “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” took honors at the Writers Guild of America ceremony.In the original-screenplay category, the “Promising Young Woman” writer-director Emerald Fennell faced stiff competition in the form of 13-time WGA Award nominee Aaron Sorkin, whose “The Trial of the Chicago 7” is also considered a top Oscar contender. But Fennell was nominated for a best-director Oscar while Sorkin was snubbed, and the WGA win for “Promising Young Woman” is another key laurel for that film as it heads into the homestretch of the season.In his acceptance speech for “Borat,” Sacha Baron Cohen joked that the improvised movie may have won a screenplay award because it “employed 60 percent of the Writers Guild.” The large team of writers included Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Dan Swimer, Peter Baynham, Erica Rivinoja, Dan Mazer, Jena Friedman and Lee Kern, with a story by Baron Cohen, Hines, Swimer and Nina Pedrad. Because the movie is a sequel based on a pre-existing character, it won in the adapted screenplay category.In three of the last five years — including 2020, when “Jojo Rabbit” and “Parasite” triumphed — the two films that won the WGA Awards also went on to win their respective Oscar races. But two years ago, the guild gave its original-screenplay prize to “Eighth Grade,” a script that Oscar voters had failed to even nominate.And narrow rules of guild eligibility often preclude Oscar front-runners from taking part in the WGA Awards at all: This year, “Nomadland,” “Minari” and “The Father” were all ruled ineligible, since they were not written under a bargaining agreement from the WGA or its sister guilds. Still, if Fennell and the “Nomadland” writer Chloé Zhao go on to win the original and adapted screenplay Oscars, it will be the first year when both script races were won by women who were the sole credited writers of their films.WGA nominees were asked to send acceptance speeches ahead of time; only the winner’s would be played during the ceremony, which was pretaped and hosted by Kal Penn. Here are some of the night’s other top winners:Documentary screenplay: “The Dissident,” Mark Monroe, Bryan FogelDrama series: “The Crown,” Peter Morgan, Jonathan WilsonComedy series: “Ted Lasso,” Jane Becker, Leann Bowen, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly, Bill Lawrence, Jamie Lee, Jason Sudeikis, Phoebe Walsh, Bill Wrubel. (“Ted Lasso” also won best new series.)Original long form: “Mrs. America,” Tanya Barfield, Joshua Griffith, Sharon Hoffman, Boo Killebrew, Micah Schraft, April Shih, Dahvi WallerAdapted long form: “The Queen’s Gambit,” Scott Frank, Allan Scott, based on the novel by Walter Tevis More

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      The Swag Must Go On: Hollywood’s Pandemic Oscar Campaign

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonOscar Nomination PredictionsOscars Dos and Don’tsOscars DiversityDirectors Guild NominationsBAFTA NominationsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Swag Must Go On: Hollywood’s Pandemic Oscar Campaign“There is a why-are-we-even-doing-this feeling,” one industry insider said of jockeying for nominations, to be announced on Monday.Billboards like this one in Los Angeles are recommending films for Oscars as usual, but Hollywood is feeling its way through other promotions.Credit…Tag Christof for The New York TimesBrooks Barnes and March 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETLOS ANGELES — As a potential Oscar nominee for film editing, William Goldenberg should be feeling dizzy right about now. So many tastemaker cocktail parties to attend. So many panel discussions to participate in.So much flesh to press.Instead, his tuxedo has been gathering dust. Mr. Goldenberg, who stitched together the Tom Hanks western “News of the World,” has participated in get-out-the-vote screenings on Zoom, and that’s about it. During afternoon walks with his dog, a handful of neighbors have called out from windows and driveways to say they liked the film. Mr. Goldenberg, an Oscar winner in 2013 for “Argo,” described those impromptu encounters as “really fun.”Such is life on Hollywood’s virtual awards scene, where the pandemic has vaporized the froth (Champagne toasts! Standing ovations! Red-carpet reunions!) and created an atmosphere more akin to a dirge. There is a dearth of buzz because people aren’t congregating. Screenings and voter-focused Q. and A. sessions have moved online, adding to existential worries about the future of cinema in the streaming age.And some film insiders are privately asking an uncomfortable question: How do you tastefully campaign for trophies when more than 1,000 Americans a day are still dying from the coronavirus?Oscar nominations will be announced on Monday, but almost none of the movies in the running have even played in theaters, with entire multiplex chains struggling to stay afloat. “In terms of campaigning, there is a why-are-we-even-doing-this feeling,” said Matthew Belloni, a former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and co-host of “The Business,” an entertainment industry podcast.Ever since Harvey Weinstein turned Oscar electioneering into a blood sport in the 1990s, the three-month period leading up to the Academy Awards has been a surreal time in the movie capital, with film distributors only ever seeming to push harder — and spend more — in pursuit of golden statuettes. In 2019, for instance, Netflix popped eyeballs by laying out an estimated $30 million to evangelize for “Roma,” a film that cost only $15 million to make.But it’s not as easy to influence voters and create awards momentum during a pandemic. Roughly 9,100 film professionals worldwide are eligible to vote for Oscars. All are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has nine pages of regulations that campaigners must follow. Film companies, for instance, “may not send a member more than one email and one hard-copy mailing” per week. Telephone lobbying is forbidden.The 93rd Academy Awards will take place on April 25, pushed back by two months because of the pandemic.Calling off the campaigns is not an option for Hollywood, where jockeying for awards has become an industry unto itself. Stars and their agents (and publicists) also pay keen attention to campaign parity: Hey, Netflix, if you are going to back up the Brink’s trucks to barnstorm for “Mank,” you’d better do it for us, too.“There are so many egos to serve,” said Sasha Stone, who runs AwardsDaily, an entertainment honors site.Contenders, wary of tone-deaf missteps, have been feeling their way.Sacha Baron Cohen, for one, has been openly mocking the process, even as he has participated in Zoom events to support “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (Netflix) and “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” (Amazon). Asked by phone how the virtual campaign trail was going, he quipped, “I imagine it’s much better than being on an actual one.”At least no one has pushed him to break into song, he said, recounting how, in 2013, he was asked to belt out a number from “Les Miserables” at a campaign stop. (He declined.)At times, however, Mr. Cohen has been willing to play along. In a skit on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” this month, he pretended to be moonlighting as a black-market vaccine procurer for desperate celebrities. “It seems like you should be focused on your Oscar campaign,” Mr. Kimmel said at one point. Mr. Cohen responded dryly, “This is my Oscar campaign.”There is business logic to the seasonal insanity. The spotlight generates interest from the news media, potentially increasing viewership. For streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, Apple TV+ and Netflix, awards bring legitimacy and a greater ability to compete for top filmmakers.“The business benefit is that we will win deals that we wouldn’t have otherwise,” Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive, told analysts on a conference call last year.Because in-person events have been scuttled this time around, less money has been flowing into the Oscar race.“In a good year, the awards season represents 40 percent of our annual business,” said Toni Kilicoglu, the chief executive of Red Carpet Systems. “And it’s gone. Just gone.” Last year, Red Carpet Systems handled more than 125 awards-season events, including Golden Globes parties and the SAG Awards.Caterers, chauffeurs, florists and D.J.s have also suffered major losses. All after a year when more than 36,000 motion picture and sound-recording jobs were lost in Los Angeles County, according to a county report that was released last month.At the same time, studios and streaming services are still spending heavily on “for your consideration” spreads in trade publications. For $80,000 to $90,000, for instance, campaigners can cover Variety’s cover with voter-focused ads. Hulu recently promoted “The United States vs. Billie Holiday” that way. (“For your consideration in all categories including BEST PICTURE.”) Netflix and Amazon have given films like “Da 5 Bloods” and “One Night in Miami” similar treatment.“It has been a huge, really strong season for us,” said Sharon Waxman, the founder and chief executive of The Wrap, a Hollywood news site. The Wrap hosted 40 virtual awards-oriented screenings in January, underwritten by film companies.“We have another whole round on the way,” Ms. Waxman said.The price for events can be steep. A virtual panel discussion, hosted by Vanity Fair or The Hollywood Reporter, costs around $30,000, the same as last year, when receptions accompanied the events. Studios normally pay $15,000 to $25,000 for a table of eight at the Critics Choice Awards, an additional opportunity to solidify a film’s place in the awards conversation. This year, each guest was charged $5,000 for a “virtual seat,” which some saw as an exorbitant price for a square on a computer screen. (Joey Berlin, chief operating officer of the Critics Choice Association, said it was needed to produce a three-hour TV special and come out even.)With fewer people out on the roads, the billboards don’t appear to be hitting the eyes of as many Oscar voters this year.Credit…Tag Christof for The New York TimesAnd don’t forget the for-your-consideration billboards. One eight-block stretch of Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles has nine of them, with Netflix pushing “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” and Warner Bros. extolling “Judas and the Black Messiah.”Those blocks are typically brimming with voters; Paramount Pictures is there, as is Raleigh Studios, where Netflix rents production space. With most people in Los Angeles still holed up at home, however, the thoroughfare was eerily quiet last Monday at 5:30 p.m. Actual crickets were chirping at Paramount’s closed Bronson Gate, which bore a sign reading, “Per government direction, access to the studio is now restricted.”Comical at best, absurd at worst?“The public must be so confused,” Ms. Stone said.None of the studios or streaming services angling for awards would comment for this article. Campaigning, while commonplace, remains a taboo subject. No film company wants to look as if it is trying to manipulate voters.It is easy to understand where they are coming from, though.“Like a political campaign, you have to crest at the right moment,” said Paul Hardart, director of the entertainment, media and technology program at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “You need the maximum exposure at that time. And that’s a hard thing to do. How do you become top of mind at the right time?”So the swag must go on.As part of its promotional effort for “Nomadland,” about an impoverished van dweller, Searchlight Pictures sent a bound copy of the screenplay to awards voters. The Hollywood press corps received “Nomadland” wine glasses, a “Nomadland” license plate, “Nomadland” keychains, a “Nomadland” T-shirt and a 5-by-2-foot “Nomadland” windshield sunshade.To celebrate the film’s Feb. 18 virtual premiere, Searchlight teamed with local small businesses to have a “curated concessions crate” delivered to the homes of invitees. It included artisanal beef jerky, wild berry jam, oranges, pears, dried apricots, dill pickle slices, banana bread, salami (“humanely raised”) and a canister of chocolates.Still, it is hard for publicists to know if such buzz-building efforts are working. They don’t know what academy members are talking about with one another because academy members aren’t talking to one another.“People are relying more on what the critics are saying than what their friends are saying, because people aren’t congregating,” Mr. Goldenberg, the “News of the World” editor, said.On the bright side, the pandemic has made it easier for studios and streaming services to attract voters to awards-oriented screenings, which are followed by Q. and A. sessions focused on various specialties: art design, editing, song composing.In years past, when attendance obstacles included Los Angeles traffic, filling the 468-seat Writers Guild Theater for such an event involved sending out more than 5,000 invitations. Similar events — held virtually — have recently had a higher turnout rate: 1,000 invitations might yield 200 attendees, most of whom even stick around for the post-screening discussion, organizers said.Campaigners have been generating interest with celebrity moderators. Oprah Winfrey interviewed Viola Davis (“Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”) at one. Former President Barack Obama participated in a chat to support the A24/Apple documentary “Boys State.”Netflix paired Amanda Seyfried (“Mank”) with Cher. It may not sound like an intuitive coupling, but even if you weren’t terribly interested in “Mank,” wouldn’t you tune in just to get a peek into Cher’s living room?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Golden Globes: The Projectionist’s Takeaways

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      Golden Globes: The Projectionist’s TakeawaysSacha Baron Cohen with his wife, Isla Fisher.Christopher Polk/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWant a catch-up on last night’s Golden Globes? It was a weird one — and considering how weird a typical Globes ceremony is, that’s saying something.Watch the standout moments → More

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      Amazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the Mainstream

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Moves From Film Industry’s Margins to the MainstreamWith several films competing for Golden Globes on Sunday and a number of high-priced movies coming this year, the streaming service has altered its reputation in Hollywood.“Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” nominated for three Golden Globes, is one of several Amazon films competing on Sunday night. Credit…Amazon StudiosFeb. 26, 2021Updated 3:02 p.m. ETSacha Baron Cohen may have been going a little mad. It was August, the pandemic was raging, and his secret production had shut down. He was determined to reprise his role as Borat in a feature film designed to satirize the Trump administration ahead of the November election.But how?First he persuaded Universal Studios to allow him to shop his incomplete movie. Then he cobbled together an hour of footage. (The infamous scene with Rudolph W. Giuliani had yet to be filmed.) Hulu was interested. So was Netflix. But Amazon Studios was the one most committed to getting the movie out in time, no matter the cost.Amazon spent $80 million to acquire “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,” a decision that incurred extra expenses because of Covid-19 protocols, test screenings in New Zealand — one of the few places in the world at the time where the company could gather a group of people in a dark movie theater — and a last-minute dash to incorporate all the gonzo footage before the film’s release on Oct. 23. (Mr. Cohen was cutting it close, still shooting three weeks before he had to deliver the movie.)“They broke every rule for us,” Mr. Cohen said in a phone interview. “There was a certain delivery schedule that they felt was necessary, and they halved that time. They realized the imperative of getting this out before the election. And they changed their procedures completely to help us do this. I’m really, really grateful.”Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is committed to spending upward of $100 million on a production if necessary.Credit…Rozette Rago for The New York TimesJennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios, is also grateful. When the Golden Globes air on Sunday, “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” will be competing for three awards: best comedy or musical, best actor and best supporting actress (Maria Bakalova). Other Amazon acquisitions, including Regina King’s directorial debut, “One Night in Miami,” and “Sound of Metal,” starring Riz Ahmed, are also contending for prizes.Those accolades, coupled with the cultural impact “Borat” has enjoyed across the globe, have significantly altered the perception of Amazon Studios’ film division in Hollywood and among Amazon’s more than 150 million Prime subscribers. (The studio, which does not disclose viewer numbers, will say only that tens of millions of subscribers watched “Borat.”)Once a home for indie darlings such as “Manchester by the Sea” and “The Big Sick,” Amazon Prime Video is transforming itself into a place for commercial films with broad appeal that can travel internationally. It’s all part of Ms. Salke’s plan to turn Prime into a service people subscribe to for more than free shipping for their paper towels.“We had seen firsthand, when Amazon gets behind a piece of content, just how big the muscle is that they are capable of flexing,” said David Ellison, chief executive of Skydance Media and the producer of Amazon’s “Jack Ryan” series. He recently sold the films “Without Remorse” and “The Tomorrow War” to Amazon. “With ‘Borat,’ they showed they could do that with films, too.”Amazon has thrived in the last year, with profits increasing some 200 percent since the pandemic began. That success has extended to its film business. Like other streaming services, it has been able to snatch up big-budget, star-driven films that studios have been forced to shelve in response to the closing of movie theaters.Netflix, Apple, Disney+ and Hulu have all benefited from the studios’ woes, but Amazon has been one of the most aggressive in acquiring new movies.Michael B. Jordan has an overall content deal with Amazon that will allow him to explore areas like fashion, music and podcasts. Credit…Nadja Klier/Paramount PicturesIn September, Ms. Salke acquired “Without Remorse” — starring Michael B. Jordan and based on a Tom Clancy series — for $105 million. It will debut at the end of April. The next month, it paid $125 million for the rights to “Coming 2 America,” which will premiere next Friday. Eddie Murphy was initially hesitant about taking the sequel to his much-beloved film to Amazon, but Ms. Salke and others say he was reassured by the performance of “Borat.”In January, the company made its biggest bet yet, paying $200 million to acquire the Chris Pratt-led action film “The Tomorrow War,” which Paramount was set to release. It stands as Amazon’s largest financial commitment in acquiring a feature film. The company hopes to debut it on Prime Video this summer.“We don’t have a huge bench of big blockbuster movies in the works,” Ms. Salke said with a laugh. “So for us it was opportunistic to be able to lean into that.”With more players than ever joining the streaming fray (Paramount+, anyone?), the pace of delivering new content is an issue that every service worries about. Netflix threw down the gauntlet in January when it announced its 2021 strategy of delivering one new movie per week, which followed WarnerMedia’s announcement that all of Warner Bros.’s 2021 theatrical films will debut in theaters and on its HBO Max streaming service at the same time.With so much volume being offered by those two companies, along with Disney’s recent announcement that at least 80 percent of its 100 new projects will be earmarked for Disney+, the only way to compete is to go big.“It’s going to be really interesting over the next three years,” said Roeg Sutherland, one of the heads of media finance for Creative Artists Agency. “With platforms programming one new movie a week, this is fueling a competitive marketplace for high-end, independently financed films.”At the Sundance Film Festival last month, Apple paid a record $25 million for rights to the independent film “Coda.”Ms. Salke pushes back on the idea that her plans to broaden her offerings are a reaction to her competitors. Rather, she said, it’s the culmination of a strategy that began at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, when as a newcomer to the film world she spent $46 million to acquire four films, including “Late Night” with Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling, and the feel-good movie “Brittany Runs a Marathon.”Before joining Amazon, Ms. Salke spent her career in television, shepherding hits like “Modern Family” and “Glee” at 20th Century Fox and “This Is Us” at NBCUniversal. After her Sundance shopping spree, she was mocked by some film insiders as an out-of-touch television executive overspending to acquire niche movies.She was criticized for paying $13 million for “Late Night,” when it grossed $15.4 million at the box office. “Brittany Runs a Marathon” earned just $7 million. That commentary still seems to sting Ms. Salke, though she argues that she released the films theatrically only to appease the filmmakers. The movies’ real metric of success, she said, was how they played on the streaming service.Regina King on the set of “One Night in Miami” with Kingsley Ben-Adir. The actress turned director says she was amazed at how often she saw ads for her film while shopping on Amazon.Credit…Patti Perret/Amazon Studios, via Associated Press“Those movies all kept coming out as No. 1,” said Ms. Salke, referring to the films’ performances on Amazon Prime. “Every time we launched one, the next one would eclipse the next one. We were training our audience to know that we would have big original films that were more commercial on Prime Video. It’s a little bit of an ‘If you build it, they will come’ strategy.”But what happens to that plan once the pandemic is over and studios are no longer willing to sell their movies to streaming platforms?Amazon has some 34 films in various stages of production around the world, and Ms. Salke said the company was committed to spending upward of $100 million on a production if merited. (Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, is stepping down as the company’s chief executive this year, but the studio isn’t expecting any big changes when Andy Jassy takes the reins.)The Culver City, Calif., complex is still being built, and, if anything, investment has increased. Ms. Salke points to Aaron Sorkin’s upcoming film about Lucy and Desi Arnaz, starring Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem, as a potential hit. There’s also George Clooney’s film “The Tender Bar,” starring Ben Affleck, and an L.G.B.T.Q. romantic drama, “My Policeman,” featuring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin (“The Crown”).“The new news is that you will see us embrace some bigger projects going forward that are self-generated,” she said.In Ms. Salke’s mind, this was always the place where Amazon Film was going to land. And there is a newfound confidence to her outlook as she celebrates her third anniversary as the head of the studio. In addition to her recent acquisition spree, she has made overall content deals with Mr. Jordan and the actor and musician Donald Glover, which she says will reinforce her mission to burnish Amazon’s reputation as a talent-friendly place.With its healthy subscription base, Amazon is attracting those in Hollywood who are interested in the company’s global reach but also curious about the company’s other businesses that have the potential to expand a star’s brand beyond film and television.Mr. Jordan, for one, said his overall content deal would allow him to explore areas other studios couldn’t offer: specifically fashion, music and podcasts. His portrayal of the physical incarnation of Amazon’s Alexa during a Super Bowl ad was an example.And Ms. King got a kick out of just how pervasive Amazon’s marketing of her film was whenever she logged into the company’s e-commerce site.“When I’m on Amazon, buying doggy bags, and my film pops up at the top, that’s pretty amazing,” she said. “That’s like, wow! Every single day I am getting a text from someone who saw the movie that probably wouldn’t have seen it if it didn’t pop up in their shopping queue.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More