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      Disney’s Iger Returns to Familiar Stage, but With Different Challenges

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      The company reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday, and Wall Street is expecting it to lay out a new streaming strategy and operating structure.When it comes to reporting quarterly earnings, Robert A. Iger is an old pro. He has done it 58 times as Disney’s chief executive. But the next one, scheduled for Wednesday, will require him to give a performance for the corporate ages.“It has to be an impactful, meaningful, tone-setting, agenda-changing day,” said Michael Nathanson, an analyst at SVB MoffettNathanson who has followed Disney for 18 years.Another veteran Disney analyst, Jessica Reif Ehrlich of BofA Securities, agreed. “I don’t know that we’re going to see answers to everything, but Iger’s overall messaging is going to be critical,” she said.So, no pressure.On Wednesday, Mr. Iger will publicly face Wall Street and Hollywood for the first time since he came out of retirement to retake the reins of a deeply troubled Disney. In late November, the Disney board fired Bob Chapek as chief executive and rehired Mr. Iger, 71, who ran the company from late 2005 to early 2020. He is also contending with Nelson Peltz, the corporate raider turned activist investor. Mr. Peltz, 80, whose Trian Partners has amassed roughly $1 billion in Disney stock and is fighting for a board seat for himself or his son, wants the world’s largest entertainment company to revamp its streaming business, refocus on profit growth, cut costs, reinstate its dividend and do a much better job at succession planning.Most of those things were in motion at Disney before Mr. Peltz started his proxy battle, and analysts expect Mr. Iger to provide updates on at least some fronts on Wednesday.More on the Walt Disney CompanyLabor Tensions: Unions that represent about 32,000 full-time workers at Disney World said that members had voted overwhelmingly to reject the company’s offer for a new five-year contract.Splash Mountain’s Closure: As Disney takes steps to erase the racist back story of the Walt Disney World ride, some are claiming to be selling water from the attraction online.Return to Office: Starting on March 1, the Walt Disney Company will require employees to report to the office four days a week, a relatively strict policy among large companies.Pricing Policies: After complaints by visitors about the costs at its domestic theme parks, Disney revised policies related to ticketing, hotel parking, ride photos and annual passes.How are the content pipelines to Disney’s streaming services (Disney+, Hulu and Disney+) going to be managed? At 6:30 a.m. on his first day back, Mr. Iger ousted Disney’s top streaming executive and ordered a restructuring of a restructuring that Mr. Chapek had put into place.For months, Disney has been talking about cost cutting and layoffs. Where are they? “This can’t drag on,” Ms. Ehrlich said. “It’s not good for company morale.” (Speaking of morale, some Disney employees have been circulating a petition to protest Mr. Iger’s decision last month to require everyone to report to the office four days a week.)Shareholders are increasingly worried about the decline of Disney’s traditional television business, which includes ABC and 15 cable networks, led by ESPN, Disney Channel, FX, Freeform and National Geographic. Disney’s cable portfolio has held up better than those owned by some rival companies (notably NBCUniversal), but Americans have been cutting the cable cord at an alarming pace — total hookups declined by a record 6.2 percent from October to December.“We need an honest and appropriate view of the future of Disney’s television business,” Mr. Nathanson said. “Is there an asset change? Does spending change? Under Chapek, the messaging was never very clear.”Even in decline, traditional television remains Disney’s largest business, delivering $8.5 billion in operating income in the fiscal year that ended in October.Disney and other old-line media companies are facing a simple equation that has proved astoundingly difficult to solve: Profit from traditional television is declining at a faster rate than streaming losses are moderating. In Disney’s case, traditional television earnings are expected to decline by $1.6 billion in 2023, while losses from streaming will abate by only about $900 million, according to Mr. Nathanson.In November, Disney said that losses from its streaming portfolio totaled $1.5 billion from July through September, compared with $630 million a year earlier.But Mr. Chapek, who led the company’s November earnings call, reiterated a promise that Disney+ would turn a profit by next October. Wall Street has been skeptical of that assertion, and Mr. Iger may revise it on Wednesday, along with guidance that Disney+ would have 215 million to 245 million global subscriptions by 2024. Disney+ currently has about 164 million worldwide.Companies always try to put the rosiest spin possible on numbers when talking to analysts, shareholders and the news media on quarterly earnings conference calls. But the upbeat tone struck by Mr. Chapek in the November session did not sit well given the numbers that Disney was reporting. Along with widening losses in streaming, Disney had disappointing profit margins at its theme park business and missed Wall Street’s overall expectations for both revenue and net income, a rarity for the company. (When one senior Disney executive privately told Mr. Chapek before the call that his planned remarks were too positive, he called her Eeyore, the gloomy donkey from “Winnie the Pooh.”)Mr. Iger will undoubtedly highlight some of Disney’s recent achievements. “Avatar: The Way of Water,” released by Walt Disney Studios, has generated $2.2 billion worldwide since it arrived in theaters on Dec. 16. Disney received more Oscar nominations last month (23) than any other company. Over the end-of-year holidays, Disney’s theme parks were gridlocked, easing fears about consumer belt-tightening.“Despite the macro headwinds, the parks still feel incredibly strong,” Ms. Ehrlich said.But Mr. Iger will also need to contend with a lackluster set of overall numbers, at least if analysts’ forecasts are correct. Analysts are expecting per-share earnings of about 79 cents from Disney, down from $1.06 for the same period a year ago, and revenue of $23.4 billion, up from $21.8 billion a year ago.Analysts polled by FactSet estimate that Disney+ will have 163 million subscribers, a slight erosion from the previous quarter.Mr. Iger will probably not directly address Mr. Peltz’s proxy battle, unless an analyst prods him about it. Disney has already made its position clear, saying in a Jan. 17 securities filing that Mr. Peltz had “no strategy, no operating initiatives, no new ideas and no plan.” In a fresh eruption late last week, Trian said there was an “urgent need” for Disney shareholders to drop Michael B.G. Froman from the company’s board and give the seat to Mr. Peltz or his son. In response, Disney aggressively defended Mr. Froman, a senior Mastercard executive and former U.S. trade representative who has been a Disney director since 2018.Some prominent analysts have taken Disney’s side.“He hasn’t made a good enough case for why he needs a seat on the board,” Mr. Nathanson said, referring to Mr. Peltz.Richard Greenfield, a founder of the LightShed Partners research firm, was one of Mr. Iger’s most ardent critics during his previous tenure at Disney — so much so that Mr. Iger blocked him on Twitter and refused to take questions from him on earnings calls. Mr. Greenfield, however, recently published an aggressive defense of Disney titled “Disney Would Be Wise to Keep Peltz Off the Jedi Council.”Perhaps Mr. Iger will take a question from Mr. Greenfield on Wednesday. More

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      ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ at 50: Those Are Magic Numbers

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      The educational snippets are the ultimate font of Gen X nostalgia. But what is it we’re nostalgic for?When I was in second grade, my teacher held a contest: The first students to memorize their multiplication tables would get dinner at McDonald’s. I was one of them. I’d like to credit hard work or the motivation of those golden fries, but in truth it was easy. I learned it from “Schoolhouse Rock.”It was not the last time that watching too much TV would pay off for me, but it was perhaps the sweetest.If you were an American kid around when I was (nineteen-seventy-cough), you probably have “Schoolhouse Rock” hard-wired into your brain too. The musical shorts, which began airing on ABC in 1973, taught Generation X multiplication, grammar, history and, eventually, nostalgia.That last lesson stuck best. Winona Ryder and company crooned “Conjunction Junction” and “I’m Just a Bill” in the 1994 generational-statement film “Reality Bites.” De La Soul borrowed “Three Is a Magic Number” as the backbone for their buoyant self-introduction, “The Magic Number,” in 1989. Nostalgia for “Schoolhouse Rock” is now itself old enough to be nostalgic for.On Wednesday, ABC will tap into that spirit with a prime time “50th Anniversary Singalong,” in which the Black Eyed Peas, the Muppets, Shaquille O’Neal and others will hook up the words, phrases and clauses of the Saturday-morning favorites.The Muppets are among the many guest stars who will appear in the ABC special “Schoolhouse Rock! 50th Anniversary Singalong.”Christopher Willard/ABCThe special promises wholesome family fun, and I can think of worse things to do on a weeknight than musically unpacking my adjectives in the judgment-free zone of my living room. But nostalgia is not just a fun emotion. Like some of the best “Schoolhouse Rock” songs, it carries a note of wistfulness.More on U.S. Schools and EducationHeavy Losses: A new global analysis suggests that children experienced learning deficits during the Covid-19 pandemic that amounted to about one-third of a school year’s worth of knowledge and skills.Police in Schools: Footage of a student’s violent arrest by a school resource officer has raised questions about the role of armed officers on campuses.Transgender Youth: Educators are facing new tensions over whether they should tell parents when students change their name, pronouns or gender expression at school.In Florida: The state will not allow a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies to be offered in its high schools, citing examples of what it calls “woke indoctrination.”In this case, it’s a reminder of a time when network TV gave us a common culture, language and lyrics, before we were sliced into subcultures and demographics. Pre-internet, pre-cable, pre-DVD — pre-VHS, even — “Schoolhouse Rock” convened a classroom of millions for three-minute servings of revolutionary art alongside installments of “The Great Grape Ape Show.”Like much classic kids’ TV, “Schoolhouse Rock” was brought to you by Madison Avenue. The ad executive David McCall, who noticed that his son could memorize pop songs but struggled with arithmetic, suggested to George Newall, a creative director, and Thomas Yohe, an art director, that they figure out how to set math to music.As Newell told the Times in 1994, they pitched the idea to Michael Eisner, then the director of children’s programming at ABC, who happened to be meeting with the legendary Looney Tunes animator Chuck Jones. “I think you should buy it right away,” Jones said.Unlike the dutiful news interstitials that vitamin-fortified other Saturday-morning cartoon lineups, “Schoolhouse Rock” harnessed the power of comedy and ear worms. The facts and figures made it educational. But they weren’t what made it art.That was the animation, psychedelically colorful and chock-full of rapid-fire slapstick gags. Above all, there was the sophisticated music. The jazz composer Bob Dorough wrote the banger-filled first season, “Multiplication Rock,” surveying a range of styles from the duodecimal prog-rock of “Little Twelvetoes” to the spiraling lullaby of “Figure Eight.”The lyrics were sly and funny but could also detour, like a fidgety schoolkid sitting by the window, into daydreams. The blissful “Three Is a Magic Number” isn’t just a primer on multiples; it’s a rumination on the triad foundations of the universe, from geometry to love. (If your voice does not break singing, “A man and a woman had a little baby,” you’re doing something wrong.)The following seasons, about grammar, American history and science, added other contributors, including Lynn Ahrens, the future Broadway songwriter thanks to whom an entire generation cannot recite the preamble to the Constitution without breaking into song.The short “Conjunction Junction” was referenced in the 1994 film “Reality Bites,” a sign that nostalgia for “Schoolhouse Rock” is now itself old enough to be nostalgic for.ABC, via Everett CollectionThe words and numbers in “Schoolhouse Rock” were never just words and numbers. Like the early years of “Sesame Street,” the shorts had an anarchic spirit and a pluralistic sensibility. “I Got Six” is a funk explosion whose Afrocentric animation includes a dashiki-ed African prince with six rings on all 10 fingers. “Verb: That’s What’s Happening” — imagine if Curtis Mayfield taught your English class — depicts a Black superhero long before Black Panther made it to the movie screen.When my kids were school-aged, I got the full “Schoolhouse Rock” DVD set for them, which is to say, I got it for me. (You can now stream the ’70s seasons, plus a brief 1980s series about computers and a clunky 1990s revival, “Money Rock,” through Disney+.)Rewatching the series taught me about a new subject: Time.The songs are as catchy as ever. But to screen “Schoolhouse Rock” as an adult is to visit a different period in cultural history, and not just because of the bell-bottoms. The America of “Schoolhouse Rock” was divided by Vietnam and Watergate, but it could at least subscribe to basic common facts and civic principles.Consider Bill, the underdog paper hero of “I’m Just a Bill,” longing to become a law that would keep that cartoon school bus safe at railroad crossings. Now he’s a time traveler, from a pre-Reagan age when government activism, however imperfect, was considered a force for good.Today, with culture-warring politicians like the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, red-penciling school curriculums, weaponizing pronouns and hammering history teachers for “indoctrination,” the potential land mines add up. “The Great American Melting Pot” did not imagine a future president telling asylum seekers, “Our country is full.” When “Interjections” depicted a doctor giving a child a shot, it did not anticipate legislators denouncing Big Bird for advocating childhood vaccination.A scene from the anniversary special. Whatever its flaws, “Schoolhouse Rock” told children that they counted with the same numbers and were entitled to the same rights.Christopher Willard/ABC(Likewise, when “Elementary, My Dear” taught counting by twos with a gospel-style Noah’s Ark song, it didn’t fear repercussions for bringing religion into kids’ TV.)And that’s before you even get to “Science Rock.” “The Energy Blues” makes a matter-of-fact pitch for conservation that would cause smoke eruptions today. (In 2009, a climate-focused season, “Earth Rock” went straight to DVD.) When “Schoolhouse Rock” showed kids a three-minute video on how the body worked, there was no internet algorithm to suggest a rebuttal by someone who “did his own research.”That said, I wouldn’t romanticize the “Schoolhouse Rock” era as a paradise of educational consensus. In 1974, the year before the “America Rock” season began, protesters against desegregation in Boston threw rocks at buses carrying Black students. And the series had its own blind spots, which historians and educators have since pointed out.In particular, “America Rock,” an upbeat celebration of the bicentennial, covers the American Revolution and women’s suffrage but skips over the Civil War and slavery. (The Roots filled in this hole in a 2017 episode of “black-ish” with “I Am a Slave,” about Juneteenth.) “Elbow Room” is a jaunty story of westward expansion from the point of view of white settlers, with little note of who got elbowed out. (One scene shows a settler taking a toy arrow through his hat.) America’s unflattering history didn’t make the cut because mass broadcasting meant not alienating the masses.But whatever its limits, “Schoolhouse Rock” at least told us we were equal: We counted with the same numbers, our hearts pumped the same blood, we were entitled to the same inalienable rights.And it operated in a period when people saw the same media and accepted the same facts. Months after its premiere, the Watergate hearings also aired on national TV. They were able eventually to turn even many Republicans against President Nixon, in part because Americans watched the same story together, without a partisan cable and internet ecosystem to spin the investigation as a witch hunt.It’s tempting to say that you couldn’t make “Schoolhouse Rock” again today. But I’m sure you could, even if it would be slightly different. Current kids’ shows like Netflix’s “We the People” are in a way exactly that. What you couldn’t create again today is the mass audience, or the context in which we assembled, one nation, sitting cross-legged in front of our cathode-ray teacher.Instead, we have “Schoolhouse Rock” binge-watches and sing-alongs, which, like all exercises in nostalgia, offer the tantalizing pleasure of stretching to touch yesterday, though we know we can’t. The past is like infinity, a concept that “Schoolhouse Rock” also introduced to my generation. “No one ever gets there,” as “My Hero, Zero” taught us. “But you could try.” More

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      in Television

      D.I.Y. Sci-Fi: A Talk With Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead

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      The filmmaking and acting team discuss their latest low-budget science fiction movie, “Something in the Dirt,” and their work on the Marvel Disney+ series “Moon Knight.”The writing-directing-acting duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s latest film, the science fiction satire “Something in the Dirt,” follows John (Moorhead) and Levi (Benson), neighboring tenants in a ramshackle Los Angeles apartment complex. After observing inexplicable supernatural phenomena in Levi’s flat, they attempt to capture the event on camera for personal gain, but meet disaster instead.Since releasing their feature debut, “Resolution” (2013), Benson and Moorhead have made movies their way, exercising full creative control over their malleable, genre-fluid aesthetic. Referred to in reviews as their “most personal” movie after its Sundance premiere, “Something in the Dirt” (in theaters) is a distillation of their sensibilities, striking a lopsided contrast with their directing contributions to the Marvel Disney+ series “Moon Knight,” an atypically weird superhero show involving dissociative identity disorder, Egyptian gods and Oscar Isaac.In an interview via Zoom, the two discussed nuances in personal filmmaking, the line between virtue and villainy, and how directing for an entertainment giant crystallized their filmmaking identities. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“Something in the Dirt” is about two guys making a movie. Did the way that you make movies and collaborate wind up echoing in the story?Justin Benson: What’s strange is our dynamic and our filmmaking process and our relationship couldn’t be more different than John and Levi’s. Obviously we’ve seen it described as “their most personal film.” There is probably some truth to that, but you’ve got to get into this oddly precise definition of “personal,” because it’s the farthest thing from autobiographical. The characters were intentionally constructed to be wildly different from who we are.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and TV series continues to expand.‘She-Hulk: Attorney at Law’: Tatiana Maslany described the giant, green character making her television debut on Disney+ as “weirdly, the closest thing to my own experience I’ve done ever.”‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’: The trailer for the long-awaited sequel was unveiled at Comic-Con International in San Diego. The film will be released on Nov. 11.‘Thor: Love and Thunder’: The fourth “Thor” movie in 11 years, directed by Taika Waititi, embraces wholesale self-parody and is sillier than any of its predecessors.‘Ms. Marvel’: This Disney+ series introduces a new character: Kamala Khan, a Muslim high schooler in Jersey City who is mysteriously granted superpowers.Aaron Moorhead: For the most part we were interested in these characters because we were exploring stuff we don’t believe. That’s not just in our films. That’s our free time, our conversations. The stuff that’s interesting feels a little dangerous. It’s on a razor’s edge of being mockable, but still can hold resonance in our minds and hearts.Benson: The only similarity between Aaron and I and John and Levi is we spend a lot of time talking about science fiction. But that’s the point. The huge difference for us is that John and Levi are quick to believe, and we never believe in anything.Moorhead and Benson in “Something in the Dirt.”XYZ/Rustic FilmsJohn and Levi trade stories with each other that either are not true or are dubious. It feels like there’s a bit of you in that dynamic. Was it gratifying to play that in this fictional, very fractured environment?Benson: There’s a cut line from the movie — Levi accuses John of being a liar, and John says, “You lie more than anyone I’ve ever met!” They lie in different ways. Levi works at a bar and wants to put his best foot forward. He’s probably got half a dozen different stories, and once you run out of them, you end up with this sad, lonely soul. John lies for other reasons, but the way they lie was part of fleshing them out as real human beings.Moorhead: We were dedicated to this idea of: you sympathize with one character and suspect the other is a villain, and then it slowly swaps through the movie, and by the end, you realize they’re both flawed human beings, neither villain nor hero. Neither of us ever believed the characters we were playing were bad people, but while we were performing, we believed in the virtue of what they were doing. There’s a part of me deep down that says it isn’t villainous if you’re virtuous, but you don’t know if you’re virtuous or not. You just hope you are.Benson: The different ways John and Levi lie connects them to us as creators, hopefully as characters with humanity. You hope that in the way science fiction operates, people don’t think you’re lying, that they understand it’s science fiction storytelling — that people don’t think you’re expressing a viewpoint one would call a lie.Moorhead: It was part of the conception of this movie to examine your own relationship with pop culture and what you put out in the world. Sometimes lies enter the zeitgeist in a way you didn’t intend. What exactly is the responsibility of the person who’s creating these things whole cloth? It is terrifying as a filmmaker to think someone might actually believe that what you are showing them is real.“Something in the Dirt” premiered at Sundance. “Moon Knight” premiered in March. This isn’t a knock against “Moon Knight,” but it comparatively feels impersonal because it’s a Marvel production. There’s a big leap from your movies “Spring” and “The Endless” to Marvel. Did that personal quality remain intact in that framework?Moorhead: When we faced a decade of being completely unemployable, we walked into every single studio pitch room on every single project, pitched our hearts out and wouldn’t be able to make it happen. We now realize that was for the better, because our alternative was to make a personal independent film. That solidified in our own minds, but also in the minds of what you call the industry, what exactly we’re doing. Now, when people ask us if we want to do something, it’s in that niche — not broadly horror, broadly sci-fi. There’s mystery afoot, and something dark and cosmic about it.It isn’t that we have to erase our personality and work within the machine. What [Marvel] wanted from us was our voice. It comes out mostly in the visuals, because scripts are separate from direction, but we put a lot of ourselves into it. But your thesis is definitely correct. There’s by definition nothing more personal than an independent film.Benson: [“Moon Knight”] has given us opportunities to work with collaborators we wouldn’t otherwise, which has expanded our creative worlds. These opportunities have also given us time on set in a compressed period that’s been like a second film school in some ways — though being a filmmaker is continuously being in film school, because every day is never planned for, really.Moorhead: The greatest terror we both hold is losing our curiosity and ability to grow. It can happen, and it can sneak up on you. If you only ever make your own films, you might start to repeat yourself because you think you’ve got a bunch of great ideas, but they’re all the same idea. We only want to make stuff that expresses ourselves purely. Right now, doing something big and doing something indie, they feed each other very nicely. More

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      in Movies

      Streaming Services Want to Fill the Family Movie Void

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      With theatrical releases way down, the streaming giants have been pumping out multigenerational fare, including a number of live-action films.Sony Pictures unleashed the singing reptile “Lyle, Lyle Crocodile” in 4,350 theaters across the country this weekend to the tune of an estimated $12 million to $13 million.It was the first wide theatrical release for a family film since “DC League of Super-Pets” from Warner Bros. in July, and only the 12th family film to hit theaters this year. Just two more are expected before the end of December.That’s a far cry from the prepandemic days of 2019, when 24 family movies came to theaters. They accounted for $8.9 billion in box office receipts, a whopping 32 percent of the worldwide total for Hollywood studios that year.The decline today is due to a combination of factors: a hangover from the pandemic, efforts by studios like Disney and Paramount to bolster their own streaming services with fresh content and the risks of greenlighting family films that aren’t based on well-known intellectual property.It’s affecting the health of the theatrical business.“The movie industry needs a big and thriving family moviegoing business to return to strength,” David Gross, a box office analyst, said. He’s predicting that gross profits for family films in 2022 will total $2.75 billion to $2.8 billion. “Success with families is essential to the long-term health of the business. We consider this to be the biggest production challenge ahead.”So where have all the family movies gone?To streaming, of course. While last month was the worst September at the box office since 1996 — excluding the pandemic year of 2020 — Netflix, Disney and others have been pumping family films to their services. “The Adam Project” arrived on Netflix in March and the animated “The Sea Beast” in June, while Disney+ released “Pinocchio” in September and just announced that “Hocus Pocus 2,” which debuted Sept. 30, was streamed for more hours over its first three days than any previous premiere on the service.And the streaming giants are just getting started. While both remaining theatrical releases of family films this year are animated — Disney’s “Strange World” and Universal’s “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” — Netflix plans an onslaught of the kind of live-action family fare that studios are producing less and less. The titles include “The School for Good and Evil,” starring Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington; “Slumberland,” from the “Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence; the sequel to “Enola Holmes”; and “Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical,” starring Emma Thompson as Miss Trunchbull.Disney+ will debut the “Enchanted” remake “Disenchanted” on Thanksgiving weekend, and Apple TV + plans to make “Spirited,” its holiday musical-comedy starring Will Ferrell and Ryan Reynolds, available on Nov. 18.The majority of the Netflix projects look expensive, with “Slumberland” costing around $90 million. Contrast that with the budget in the $50 million range for “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile,” which is based on a children’s book and stars Javier Bardem, Constance Wu and Shawn Mendes (as the voice of Lyle).The Race to Rule Streaming TVApple’s Will Smith Problem: The actor is the star of a $120 million Civil War drama that finished filming earlier this year. Apple envisioned the film as a surefire Oscar contender. But that was before the slap.Cable Cowboy: The media mogul John Malone opened up about the streaming wars, the fast-changing news business and the future of his own career.Warner Bros. Discovery: The recently formed media colossus announced plans for a free streaming service and a paid subscription streaming service combining HBO Max and Discovery+.Turmoil at Netflix: Despite a loss of subscribers, job cuts and a steep stock drop, the streaming giant has said it is staying the course.The filmmakers behind “Lyle” are bullish on its prospects. “The combination of a live-action CGI crocodile, the fact that it’s also musical and a family film, I think give it multiple points of attraction that will hopefully lure audiences off their couches,” said one its producers, Hutch Parker, a former president of production at 20th Century Fox.Also helping the film’s fate is the very thing that has theater owners more broadly concerned: a lack of product in the marketplace.“Every movie I’ve made for the last 30 years had four or five other movies coming out on the same weekend, with four to five movies that had come out the previous weekend that were still out,” Mr. Parker said. “And this is unique in that you’re coming into a market that on the one hand is less vibrant. On the other hand, the opportunity in an open marketplace is unique.”Josh Greenstein, Sony’s president of the motion picture group, added: “If we can open in the low- to midteens we can play and play. The lack of competition will be very good for the movie.”Indeed, the lack of product this year has kept films in theaters longer, generating more ticket sales along the way. Sony’s “Where the Crawdads Sing,” for instance, earned close to $90 million domestically, and “Elvis,” from Warner Bros., had $150 million in box office revenue.The “Lyle” directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon, who turned to family fare after a career making broad-based comedies like “Blades of Glory,” hope that their crocodile will encourage family audiences to change their moviegoing tendencies.“We’re excited that we’ve made something that we feel like if people actually can shift out of the habit of what they might be in with streaming, we’ll deliver them something that brings joy and escape and happiness and all the things you want it to do,” Mr. Speck said in an interview.Complicating this challenge is Netflix’s burgeoning interest in family entertainment, specifically live-action projects. The streaming service sees an opportunity to develop films based on original characters and story lines.“We loved going to see great original family films,” said Ori Marmur, vice president of studio film at Netflix. “Sadly, now when you look at what a lot of the offerings are, they aren’t live-action family. It’s usually animated for family, and then it’s reboots, remakes, sequels, low-budget horror. We saw a real opportunity in seeing those kinds of movies, and building up a slate like that.”The company’s quest to dig deep into films that appeal to all ages has prompted it to acquire big-budget spectacles — often ones the studios turned down because of costs or the risks of releasing a family movie not based on existing intellectual property. “The School for Good and Evil,” for example, originated at Universal Pictures almost a decade ago.While family films released on streaming do not receive the same kind of marketing blitz that theatrical releases do, they often have other attributes coveted by studios hoping to succeed at the box office. “Slumberland” and “The School for Good and Evil” have the spectacle; “Matilda” has the musical elements, and “Enola Holmes” is a known property.Marlow Barkley and Jason Momoa in “Slumberland,” which comes out on Netflix on Nov. 18.Netflix“Slumberland” began at Fox, but things got complicated once the company merged with Disney in 2019, said Mr. Lawrence, the film’s director. Disney, after all, prides itself on its expertise in making family films. It didn’t need Fox doing the same thing.The Chernin Group, which produced “Slumberland,” had a deal that if one of its films had a director, an actor and a completed shooting script, Disney had 30 days to decide whether to make it. The company passed.“It almost instantly turned over to Netflix,” Mr. Lawrence said in an interview, adding: “Releasing it around Thanksgiving, I am hoping that families will watch it together. That’s sort of the ideal scenario.”Set to debut on Nov. 18, the action-adventure is based on the comic book series “Little Nemo in Slumberland,” by Winsor McCay. It features a young female protagonist, mystical dreamlands, numerous special effects, and a story about grief and loss.“I find it comforting knowing that when it actually comes out, I won’t have that same sort of box-office stress that happens on every movie where by Friday afternoon, everybody knows what it’s made for the weekend and it’s either a success or a failure,” said Mr. Lawrence, who directed three of the four movies in the “Hunger Games” franchise and is currently shooting the prequel, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” “Not having that sort of pressure on it is interesting.”And he’s hoping some audiences will find the film in the Netflix-owned theaters, too.“Would I have loved a slightly longer theatrical release, maybe some IMAX screens or something like that?” he said. “Sure.” More

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      in Television

      ‘Andor’ Review: Star Wars Without the ‘Star Wars’

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      The franchise’s latest series on Disney+ sticks to the story but flushes a lot of the usual trappings out the airlock.As the big science-fiction and superhero franchises have proliferated, their mantra has been that television is a place for diversification and creative freedom — to do something different, within reason. Hence Marvel’s strenuously meta “WandaVision” or Paramount’s goofy, animated “Star Trek: Lower Decks.”“Andor,” the newest series in the “Star Wars” universe (premiering Wednesday on Disney+), doesn’t take one of those hard detours. But it’s different in its own way. In the four (of 12) episodes available for review, it continually feels as if the people who made it like a lot of things — “Blade Runner,” “Avatar,” “Casablanca,” Vietnam War metaphors — better than they like “Star Wars.”Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The defining feature of “Andor” is how it takes a “Star Wars” story and, without getting conceptual, transposes it in visual and tonal terms. Heavily latexed aliens, plastic-suited storm troopers and vast, exotic landscapes are, for the most part, out; humans (or humanoids) wearing nondescript uniforms in a battered, urban-industrial backdrop are in. Costume-heavy Saturday-serial space opera is replaced by straight-ahead sci-fi action with a real-world anti-corporate theme.And the good news about “Andor” is that the new look and feel are rendered meticulously and evocatively; a lot of effort, led by the creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy, has been spent on giving the show a gritty and realistic texture. Moment to moment, it’s easy to just relax and enjoy the change. The opening scene, a “Blade Runner” homage that leads into a dark, seamy version of the typical “Star Wars” cantina, is a witty example of the show’s method.But making “Andor” less like “Star Wars” means, in this case, making it more like a lot of other science-fiction dramas. And while its surface attractions are significant, you may find yourself looking for things that other sci-fi stories supply, like compelling characters and a narrative pulse.Following the general pattern of serialized franchise extensions, “Andor” goes back in time, fleshing out and coloring in a small, retrospective piece of the overall story. (Advancing the narrative is still the province of films.) In this case it’s an even smaller piece than usual. Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, was a character created for a movie, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” that was a stand-alone time capsule in its own right. Giving him a back story in “Andor” is embroidering on an embroidery.Gilroy was brought in to do rewrites on “Rogue One,” and perhaps he had a sense of unfinished business, because the real challenge of putting Cassian at the center of a series is that he’s a cipher in that movie — a rebel operative with a ruthless streak and a shady past who’s just there as a foil for the film’s young heroine. When he joins her in a haze of self-sacrificial glory, his epiphany feels completely unearned.There’s no reason that such a character couldn’t be turned into something more interesting for the series, but through the early going, “Andor” doesn’t pull it off. Cassian’s antisocial tendencies, and his resourcefulness, are given a foundation in a childhood on a planet whose Indigenous people are exploited by an Empire-sanctioned mining company. (These forest-planet flashbacks are an unusually clear expression of the hoary colonialist clichés “Star Wars” falls back on when depicting the Empire’s reach.)Like many “Star Wars” projects, “Andor” includes a scene-stealing droid, named B2EMO.Lucasfilm/Disney+But that new information doesn’t make him any more interesting; neither does the attempt to make his adult character, a thief and black marketeer, into a Humphrey Bogart-style cynical romantic, declining to choose sides until his hand is forced. That’s the primary narrative thrust of the early season, as a covert rebel leader played by Stellan Skarsgard tracks down Cassian and enlists him in a dangerous mission against the corporation that ravaged his home planet.The scene in which Skarsgard’s character recruits Cassian while they’re pursued by corporate goons takes up much of the fourth episode, and it’s an exciting, well-executed action set piece. But the recruitment pitch is notably uninspiring, and that’s typical of “Andor,” in which action and design are more than satisfactory while the thinness of the characterizations leaves you unfulfilled. (The same could be said of old-school “Star Wars” films under George Lucas’s helm, of course, but they could make up some of the balance in emotion and sheer, propulsive entertainment value.)Luna, who shot to stardom in America with “Y Tu Mamá También,” in 2001, is a fine actor, but he’s still unable to bring much besides an air of juvenile grievance to Cassian, who’s just awfully hard to care about. Thin writing is an issue up and down the cast list; people seem less important than the depictions of political intrigue and corporate malfeasance, which are handled well but aren’t that different from any number of other dystopian dramas. Fiona Shaw stands out in a supporting role as Cassian’s rough-and-tumble mentor, and Adria Arjona is fun to watch as his sparring partner and probable love interest.It’s typical of “Star Wars” projects that the best performances tend to be given by robots. That was the case in “Rogue One,” where the hulking war droid voiced by Alan Tudyk was the best reason to watch. “Andor” has a small, decrepit, R2-D2-like figure named B2EMO, voiced by Dave Chapman and sort of a cross between a toolbox and a shop vac. He doesn’t have a lot to do in the early episodes, but he has signs of personality. Keep an eye on him when the fighting really breaks out. More

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      41 TV Shows to Watch This Fall

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      Noteworthy premieres include new seasons of buzzy hits (“Abbott Elementary,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”), reboots and revivals (“Quantum Leap,” “Willow”) and more.The fall television season got off to an early start this year with the arrival of the dueling franchise extensions and hopeful blockbusters, “House of the Dragon” on HBO and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” on Amazon Prime Video. But TV’s vast landscape offers a lot more than expensively produced, effects-laden fantasy. From the relatable delights of “Abbott Elementary” to the highly specific hilarity of “Documentary Now!,” here are some noteworthy fall premieres, arranged in chronological order.All dates are subject to change.THE SERPENT QUEEN The story of Catherine de’ Medici, the 16th-century queen of France, in a satirical, talking-to-the-camera 21st-century telling, with Samantha Morton and Liv Hill as Catherine and a large cast, including Charles Dance, Colm Meaney and Ludivine Sagnier, as the clerics and aristocrats who underestimate her at their peril. Starz, Sept. 11.THE JENNIFER HUDSON SHOW The success of daytime talk-show hosts is notoriously hard to predict, and whether Hudson will have the right skill set and personality for the role is about to be seen. But she immediately becomes the most talented singer and actress in the field, for what that’s worth. Syndicated, Sept. 12.THE HANDMAID’S TALE This bleak allegory and nonlinear-TV pioneer — the first streaming show to win an Emmy for outstanding drama series — soldiers into its fifth season, with June (Elisabeth Moss) quickly coming down from the cathartic high of Season 4’s bloody conclusion. Hulu, Sept. 14.Elisabeth Moss in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” returning for its fifth season on Sept. 14.HuluATLANTA After a third season, ending in May, that was quietly received — and that dropped more than half of the show’s previous broadcast audience — Donald Glover’s prickly comedy quickly returns for a fourth and final go-round. FX, Sept. 15.THE U.S. AND THE HOLOCAUST Ken Burns, directing with Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, devotes six hours to an uncomfortable chapter of American history with an alarmingly familiar backdrop of racism and xenophobia. PBS, Sept. 18.QUANTUM LEAP Raymond Lee (the sympathetic diner owner in “Kevin Can F**k Himself”) plays a new time-jumping do-gooder in this reboot of the early-90s sci-fi series. The Quantum Leap project is restarted and the original hero, Sam Beckett, is still missing, so a Scott Bakula guest appearance seems pretty much preordained. NBC, Sept. 19.PARIS POLICE 1900 In the spirit of “Babylon Berlin,” this period policier sets standard crime drama against a vivid historical backdrop: the Dreyfus affair, organized and violent antisemitism, the rise of the pioneering lawyer Jeanne Chauvin (Eugenie Derouand) and the sometimes deadly career of the Parisian courtesan Marguerite Steinheil (Evelyne Brochu). MHz Choice, Sept. 20.REBOOT Steven Levitan, who grabbed the network-sitcom brass ring with “Just Shoot Me!” and “Modern Family,” indulges in some gentle self-parody. Judy Greer, Keegan-Michael Key and Johnny Knoxville play the cast of a hacky early-aughts family comedy who reunite for a new version written by a young woman (Rachel Bloom of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”) who is strangely obsessed with the original show. Hulu, Sept. 20.ABBOTT ELEMENTARY Quinta Brunson’s sitcom about struggling teachers at a Philadelphia elementary school, a breakout hit in the spring and an Emmy nominee for best comedy series, embarks on its second season. ABC, Sept. 21.Lisa Ann Walter, left, and Sheryl Lee Ralph in “Abbott Elementary,” returning for its second season on Sept. 21, on ABC.Scott Everett White/ABCANDOR Tony Gilroy has more on his résumé than a writing credit for “Rogue One,” and it looks as if his new “Star Wars” series might incorporate some of the real-world grit he displayed a feel for in the Bourne movies. That would be a good thing, though don’t tell it to your friend with the lightsaber collection. Disney+, Sept. 21.REASONABLE DOUBT Kerry Washington is an executive producer and a director of this legal melodrama created by Raamla Mohamed, who was a writer and producer on Washington’s breakthrough series, “Scandal.” Emayatzy Corinealdi plays a high-rent, high-stress Los Angeles lawyer whose conscience begins to bite her in the first scripted series from Disney’s Onyx Collective brand for creators of color. Hulu, Sept. 27.THE DARK HEART Gustav Möller, director of the Swedish film “The Guilty” (remade in America starring Jake Gyllenhaal), oversaw this five-part thriller inspired by real events. A woman who manages a civilian search team for missing persons takes on the case of a landowner and lumber baron who alienated a lot of people, including his ambitious daughter, before he disappeared. Topic, Sept. 29.SO HELP ME TODD A quirky-funny mystery series — in the long lineage of “Monk” — starring Marcia Gay Harden as a Type-A lawyer and Skylar Astin as her son, who’s better at investigating than he is at adulting. CBS, Sept. 29.Marcia Gay Harden stars in “So Help Me Todd,” premiering Sept. 29 on CBS.Michael Courtney/CBSANNE RICE’S INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE AMC takes its first step toward an Anne Rice universe, under the aegis of the veteran producer Mark Johnson (“Better Call Saul”). Jacob Anderson, the eunuch warrior Grey Worm in “Game of Thrones,” plays Louis, the Brad Pitt role from the movie version; Sam Reid steps in for Tom Cruise as Lestat; and the newcomer Bailey Bass, soon to be seen in several “Avatar” sequels, replaces Kirsten Dunst as the child vampire, Claudia. AMC, Oct. 2.EAST NEW YORK William Finkelstein, a creator of this cop drama, spent the 1990s and early 2000s writing and producing for a good roster of shows: “L.A. Law,” “Murder One,” “Brooklyn South,” “Law & Order” and “NYPD Blue.” On the other hand, he also created “Cop Rock” with Steven Bochco. Amanda Warren (the mayor in “The Leftovers”) plays a new precinct boss in the Brooklyn neighborhood of the title, heading a cast that includes Jimmy Smits, Richard Kind and Ruben Santiago-Hudson. CBS, Oct. 2.THE WALKING DEAD There was a time — and it was only six years ago — when “The Walking Dead” was drawing more than 12 million viewers an episode and the death of a major character was Monday morning news. Now more important as intellectual property than as weekly storytelling, the original series shuffles to the finish line with its final eight episodes. AMC, Oct. 2.Norman Reedus in AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” returning for its final season on Oct. 2.Jace Downs/AMCMAKING BLACK AMERICA: THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the codes, networks and private societies that Black Americans have created “behind the veil” of the color line in a four-part documentary series. PBS, Oct. 4.ALASKA DAILY Tom McCarthy, who made one of the best newspaper dramas of our time in the film “Spotlight,” created this series about an abrasive reporter (Hilary Swank) who gets canceled in New York and takes a job in Anchorage, lured by a story about the deaths of Indigenous women. The presence of Jeff Perry as her new boss probably isn’t the only thing that will remind you of the shows of the ABC stalwart Shonda Rhimes. ABC, Oct. 6.A FRIEND OF THE FAMILY Anna Paquin and Colin Hanks star in this true-crime mini-series as the parents of the actress Jan Broberg, who was kidnapped when she was 12 and again when she was 14 by the same family friend (played by Jake Lacy). The bizarre story has also been told in the 2017 feature documentary “Abducted in Plain Sight.” Peacock, Oct. 6.Jake Lacy and Anna Paquin in the Peacock mini-series “A Friend of the Family.”PeacockPENNYWORTH: THE ORIGIN OF BATMAN’S BUTLER This stylish “Batman” prequel series, about the former special-forces soldier who will one day be Bruce Wayne’s butler (as the show’s awkward new title makes clear), leaves Epix for a platform closer to its DC Comics roots. Season 3 also mostly leaves behind the alt-history British civil war that occupied the first two installments, jumping ahead five years and introducing superheroes. HBO Max, Oct. 6.LET THE RIGHT ONE IN John Ajvide Lindqvist’s ultra-bleak 2004 novel about a child vampire keeps circulating through the culture: It has inspired films, plays, a comic book and a TV pilot, with Thomas Kretschmann, that wasn’t picked up. Now the story makes it to TV with Demián Bichir as the father of the girl vampire (Madison Taylor Baez) who’s forever 12. Showtime, online Oct. 7, cable Oct. 9.THE MIDNIGHT CLUB The latest from Mike Flanagan, whose atmospheric horror series (“The Haunting of Hill House,” “Midnight Mass”) have won a following on Netflix. Heather Langenkamp plays the doctor at a hospice where the patients like to tell one another scary stories. Netflix, Oct. 7.BECOMING FREDERICK DOUGLASS The documentarian Stanley Nelson (“Attica,” “Freedom Riders”) fills in some important chapters in his epic yet quotidian history of Black life in America with this film and with “Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom” (Oct. 4), both directed by Nelson and Nicole London. PBS, Oct. 11.CHAINSAW MAN Anticipation is running high in the anime world for the MAPPA animation studio’s adaptation of “Chainsaw Man,” a dark-comic, body-horror manga about a young devil hunter with a deadly appendage. Crunchyroll, Oct. 11.SHERWOOD The cast of this BBC mystery series is a lengthy British-TV who’s who: David Morrissey, Lesley Manville, Claire Rushbrook, Philip Jackson, Joanne Froggatt, Terence Maynard, Kevin Doyle, Robert Glenister, Clare Holman, Lorraine Ashbourne, Adeel Akhtar, Pip Torrens and Mark Addy, among others. Morrissey is the detective investigating a bow-and-arrow murder in Robin Hood’s old Nottinghamshire haunts that brings up hatreds from a 1980s miners’ strike. BritBox, Oct. 11.THE WINCHESTERS Jensen Ackles returns to the “Supernatural” universe, reassuming his role as the monster hunter Dean Winchester in this prequel series. This time Dean, in a supporting role, is tracking down the real story of the younger days of his mother and father (Meg Donnelly and Drake Rodger), which sounds like a good strategy for avoiding pesky continuity questions. CW, Oct. 11Drake Rodger and Meg Donnelly in “The Winchesters,” premiering Oct. 11 on the CW.Matt Miller/CWDOCUMENTARY NOW! One of TV’s greatest pleasures returns after a more than three-year hiatus. The fourth season, hosted, as always, by Dame Helen Mirren, will include sendups of “My Octopus Teacher,” “The September Issue,” “When We Were Kings” and Werner Herzog’s “Burden of Dreams.” IFC, Oct. 19.FROM SCRATCH Zoe Saldana stars in a mini-series that crosses cultures — a Black American woman falls in love with a Sicilian chef during her Wanderjahr in Italy — and genres, mixing picturesque Euroromance and sorrowful survivor’s tale. Netflix, Oct. 21.THE PERIPHERAL Scott B. Smith, who wrote the screenplay (based on his own novel) of the excellent 1998 thriller “A Simple Plan,” is the creator and showrunner of this series based on a dystopian, alternate-futures mystery by William Gibson; Chloë Grace Moretz stars; and Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan are among the executive producers. That’s an awful lot of bleak-noir experience. Amazon Prime Video, Oct. 21.GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S CABINET OF CURIOSITIES Del Toro takes on the Alfred Hitchcock role, playing master of ceremonies for an eight-episode horror anthology. (A previous title included the words “Guillermo del Toro Presents.”) The first season’s directors include Jennifer Kent (“The Babadook”), Catherine Hardwicke (“Twilight”) and Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night”). Netflix, Oct. 25.SHERMAN’S SHOWCASE Diallo Riddle and Bashir Salahuddin’s consistently clever, stealthily sophisticated, unabashedly nostalgic sendup of old-school variety shows finally returns for a second season. IFC, Oct. 26.Bashir Salahuddin, foreground, in “Sherman’s Showcase,” returning for its second season on Oct. 26, on IFC.Michael Moriatis/IFCTRUE CRIME STORY: INDEFENSIBLE Back for a second season, the comedian Jena Friedman applies the adversarial techniques of topical late-night humor to the true-crime genre, in 20-minute episodes that are less investigations — the facts of the cases are generally pretty plain, at least in Friedman’s eyes — than expressions of darkly comic outrage. SundanceTV, Oct. 27.BIG MOUTH Since Nick Kroll broke the third-dimensional wall in the Season 5 finale and had a heart-to-heart with his animated character, Nick Birch, will any of his castmates get to follow suit in the sixth season of this raunchy paean to puberty? The real-life John Mulaney would probably have some interesting things to say to his animated counterpart, randy Andy Glouberman. Netflix, Oct. 28.MANIFEST A hit in reruns on Netflix after being canceled by NBC, this paranormal mystery-melodrama gets a fourth and final season at its streaming home. Netflix, Nov. 4.DANGEROUS LIAISONS This new adaptation of the Choderlos de Laclos novel was announced nearly a decade ago, with Christopher Hampton, who had already based a play and a film on the novel, attached as writer once again. Hampton didn’t remain as the writer — he gets an executive producer credit — but the mini-series has arrived billed as the “origin story” of the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont. Apparently they weren’t always jaded monsters. Starz, Nov. 6.MOOD Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge (“Fleabag”) and Michaela Coel (“Chewing Gum”) before her, Nicole Lecky turns a hit one-woman play into a buzzy British TV series. She plays Sasha, a broke and unemployed young Londoner who finds herself in the potentially lucrative and liberating — and also potentially exploitative and dangerous — world of the influencer economy. BBC America, Nov. 6.Nicole Lecky in “Mood,” premiering Nov. 6 on BBC America.Natalie Seery/BBC Studios, via Bonafide FilmsTULSA KING On the same night that Tyler Sheridan’s flagship show, “Yellowstone,” begins its fifth season, his portfolio of manly genre dramas grows with the addition of this mash-up of gangster story and neo-western. It’s also Sheridan’s latest action-hero reclamation project: Sylvester Stallone stars as a Mafia capo sent to oversee operations in the foreign territory of Tulsa, Okla. Paramount+, Nov. 13.LIMITLESS WITH CHRIS HEMSWORTH Deploying the charm he brings to his depiction of the Norse god Thor for Marvel, Hemsworth headlines a wellness-and-longevity documentary series for Marvel’s corporate parent, Disney. (The sound of his unadulterated Australian accent makes him even more charming, if that’s possible.) Subjects like how to deal with stress and the value of fasting are addressed with superheroic energy. Disney+, Nov. 16.WELCOME TO CHIPPENDALES Robert Siegel, fresh off “Pam & Tommy,” and Jenni Konner of “Girls” are the showrunners of a mini-series starring Kumail Nanjiani as Steve Banerjee, the unlikely and eventually ill-fated founder of a male-stripping colossus. Hulu, Nov. 22.WILLOW Ron Howard’s 1988 fantasy film “Willow” is not the first piece of intellectual property anyone would have predicted for a reboot, but when George Lucas is involved — he received “story by” credit on the film — anything can happen. Lucasfilm and Howard’s Imagine Entertainment are producing this sequel series; Warwick Davis, now 52, returns as the title character. Maybe Willow will be a more consistent spell caster than he was as a teenager. Disney+, Nov. 30.Warwick Davis in “Willow,” premiering Nov. 30 on Disney+.Lucasfilm/Disney+THE ADVENTURES OF SAUL BELLOW Asaf Galay’s documentary, an “American Masters” offering, recruits wives, children and innocent bystanders to talk about being the real-life sources of Bellow’s books. Meanwhile, fellow novelists and critics like Charles Johnson, Salman Rushdie, Stanley Crouch and, in what may have been his last interview, a captivating Philip Roth certify or question Bellow’s place in the American pantheon. PBS, Dec. 12.And if all that isn’t enough for you, these new and returning shows are also coming this fall (new shows in bold):Sept. 11: “Monarch,” Fox; Sept. 12: “War of the Worlds,” Epix; Sept. 13: “The Come Up,” Freeform; Sept. 15: “La Otra Mirada,” PBS; “Vampire Academy,” Peacock; “The Light in the Hall,” Sundance Now; Sept. 16: “Los Espookys,” HBO; Sept. 18: “60 Minutes,” CBS; “SEAL Team,” Paramount+; Sept. 19: “Bob Hearts Abishola,” “NCIS,” “NCIS: Hawai’i,” “The Neighborhood,” CBS; “9-1-1,” “The Cleaning Lady,” Fox; Sept. 20: “FBI,” “FBI: International,” “FBI: Most Wanted,” CBS; “The Resident,” Fox; “New Amsterdam,” NBC; Sept. 21: “The Conners,” “The Goldbergs,” “Home Economics,” “Big Sky,” ABC; “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race,” CBS; “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago Med,” “Chicago P.D.,” NBC; Sept. 22: “The Kardashians,” Hulu; “Law & Order,” “Law & Order: Organized Crime,” “Law & Order: SVU,” NBC; “Thai Cave Rescue,” Netflix; Sept. 23: “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” HBO Max; Sept. 24: “Finding Happy,” Bounce; Sept. 25: “The Rookie,” ABC; “The Simpsons,” “The Great North,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “Family Guy,” Fox; “Van der Valk,” PBS; Sept. 27: “The Rookie: Feds,” ABC; “La Brea,” NBC; “Mighty Ducks: Game Changers,” Disney+; Sept. 28: “The D’Amelio Show,” Hulu; Sept. 29: “Young Sheldon,” “Ghosts,” “CSI: Vegas,” CBS; “Welcome to Flatch,” “Call Me Kat,” Fox; “Dragons Rescue Riders: Heroes of the Sky,” Peacock; Sept. 30: “Ramy,” Hulu; Oct. 2: “The Equalizer,” CBS: “Family Law,” “The Coroner,” CW: Oct. 3: “The Good Doctor,” ABC: Oct. 5: “Kung Fu,” CW: “Reginald the Vampire,” Syfy; “Chucky,” Syfy/USA; Oct. 6: “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Station 19,” ABC; “Walker, Independence,” “Walker” CW; Oct. 7: “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” Apple TV+; “Fire Country,” “Blue Bloods,” “SWAT,” CBS; Oct. 9: “NCIS: Los Angeles,” CBS; “Secrets of the Dead,” PBS; Oct. 10: “All American,” “All American: Homecoming,” CW; Oct. 11: “Professionals,” CW; Oct. 14: “Shantaram,” Apple TV+; Oct. 16: “Magpie Murders,” “Miss Scarlet and the Duke,” PBS; Oct. 20: “One of Us Is Lying,” Peacock; Oct. 21: “Acapulco,” Apple TV+; Oct. 26: “Mysterious Benedict Society” Disney+; Nov. 3: “Blockbuster,” Netflix; “The Capture,” Peacock; “The Suspect,” Sundance Now; “Kold x Windy,” WE; Nov. 4: “Lopez vs. Lopez,” “Young Rock,” NBC; Nov. 9: “Zootopia+,” Disney+; Nov. 10: “The Calling,” Peacock; Nov. 11: “The English,” Amazon Prime Video; Nov. 13: “Yellowstone,” Paramount; Nov. 18: “The L Word: Generation Q,” Showtime; “Planet Sex With Clara Delevingne,” Hulu; Nov. 23: “Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin,” Peacock; Nov. 30: “Irreverent,” Peacock; Dec. 1: “Wicked City,” “Hush,” AllBlk; Dec. 22: “The Best Man: The Final Chapters,” Peacock. More

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      September 2022: What’s New on Amazon, Hulu, Apple TV+ and More

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      Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles.(Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)Morfydd Clark and Benjamin Walker, center, in “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.”Amazon StudiosNew to Amazon Prime‘The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 1When J.R.R. Tolkien died, the author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” left behind thousands of pages of partial stories and detailed notes, which collectively expanded on the history of his fictional Middle Earth and its surrounding lands, across many cycles of war and peace. The expensive Prime Video series “The Rings of Power” — which could cost around a billion dollars by the time its planned five-season run ends — draws on some of those stray Tolkien tales as the inspiration for an epic saga set thousands of years before “The Hobbit,” at a time when the world’s different races formed wary alliances in an effort to thwart the dark power of Sauron. The show maintains the bright look and sense of wonder that made Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies so popular, though the large cast and varied settings also recall “Game of Thrones.”Also arriving:Sept. 9“Flight/Risk”Sept. 16“Goodnight Mommy”Sept. 21“Prisma”Sept. 23“September Mornings”Sept. 30“Jungle” Season 1“My Best Friend’s Exorcism”Maddie, voiced by Katie Chang, and David, voiced by Daniel Dae Kim, in the animated series “Pantheon.”Titmouse Inc/AMCNew to AMC+‘Pantheon’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 1The acclaimed Chinese American science fiction and fantasy author Ken Liu is known for stories that consider ordinary human lives and relationships in the context of pulpy scenarios that are not too far removed from reality. The animated series “Pantheon” combines multiple Liu short stories into one interconnected drama. At the show’s center is a troubled teen named Maddie (voiced by Katie Chang) who receives advice on the internet from someone who may be her late father (Daniel Dad Kim) living on in the cloud as an “uploaded intelligence.” Her situation swells into a broader crisis, keyed to the potential dangers of a future where people’s lives feel “realer” online than in physical reality.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Rubikon”Sept. 9“There Are No Saints”Sept. 16“Official Competition”Sept. 23“Section 8”Sept. 30“Sissy”Sidney Poitier as seen in the documentary “Sidney.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Sidney’Starts streaming: Sept. 23The actor Sidney Poitier, who died earlier this year at 94, set a standard of excellence that placed him among the all-time greats. The documentary “Sidney” (directed by Reginald Hudlin for Oprah Winfrey’s production company Harpo) covers Poitier’s life from his childhood in the Bahamas through his rapid rise in the theater and then in Hollywood at a time when the opportunities for Black actors were slim. The film features an impressive slate of A-list actors and directors — plus one of the final interviews with the man himself — all explaining how Poitier’s influence as an artist and as a Civil Rights pioneer continues to endure.Also arriving:Sept. 9“Central Park” Season 3“Gutsy”Sept. 30“The Greatest Beer Run Ever”Diego Luna as the title character in the new Stars Wars series “Andor.”Disney+New to Disney+‘Cars on the Road’Starts streaming: Sept. 8The “Cars” crew is among the most popular of Pixar’s creations, inspiring three feature films, a spinoff franchise (“Planes”) and countless toys, games and theme park attractions. The new series “Cars on the Road” sends the champion racer Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) and his tow-truck buddy Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) on a trip across the country, parceled out across nine short episodes that more or less add up to an hourlong “Cars” mini-movie. Unlike the grander big-screen adventures, these little eight-minute morsels are comic vignettes, set in a variety of locations and always rooted in the unlikely bond between these two mismatched pals.‘Andor’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 21The latest addition to the “Star Wars” TV universe is a prequel to a prequel, filling in the backstory of one of the major characters from the 2016 movie “Rogue One” — and, in the process, fleshing out more of the pre-“A New Hope” saga of the Rebel Alliance’s rise as a legitimate challenge to the dominance of the Galactic Empire. Diego Luna reprises his role as Cassian Andor, a cynical crook with a tragic past, who is persuaded to use his talents for deception and thievery to aid the Rebel cause. The 12-episode first season will be followed later by an already in-the-works 12-episode second season, which will take “Andor” all the way up to to the part of the “Star Wars” timeline where “Rogue One” begins.Also arriving:Sept. 8“Epic Adventures with Bertie Gregory” Season 1“Growing Up” Season 1“Pinocchio”“Remembering”“Tierra Incognita”Sept. 16“Mija”Sept. 19“Dancing with the Stars” Season 31Sept. 21“Super/Natural” Season 1Sept. 28“The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers” Season 2Sept. 30“Hocus Pocus 2”From left, Fred Armisen, Ana Fabrega, Julio Torres, Bernardo Velasco and Cassandra Ciangherotti in the second season of “Los Espookys.”HBONew to HBO Max‘Los Espookys’ Season 2Starts streaming: Sept. 16For their unclassifiable “Los Espookys,” the creators Julio Torres, Ana Fabrega and Fred Armisen have brought a gently surreal comic sensibility to the weird adventures of a horror-loving theater troupe in a fictional Latin American country. Torres and Fabrega play two members of the troupe, Andrés and Tati, who alongside their visionary leader Renaldo (Bernardo Velasco) and their more pragmatic partner Úrsula (Cassandra Ciangherotti) hire themselves out to people looking for someone to provide realistic haunted house effects. Season 1 introduced this eccentric crew and featured subplots with Renaldo’s Uncle Tico (Armisen), a valet parking attendant who lives in Hollywood. It’s hard to predict what’s in store for Season 2, given that the first run featured such a unique mix of supernatural fantasy and low-key hangout comedy.Also arriving:Sept. 17“Secret Origin of the Batwheels”Sept. 21“Escape from Kabul”Sept. 22“The Hype” Season 2Sept. 28“Hostages”Rachel Bloom, left, and Krista Marie Yu in Hulu’s show-within-a-show comedy “Reboot.”Michael Desmond/HuluNew to Hulu‘Reboot’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 20This inside-Hollywood farce pokes fun at the modern phenomenon of streaming services and TV networks reviving classic shows. “Reboot” is about a neurotic writer (Rachel Bloom) who sells Hulu an edgy update of a long-cancelled family sitcom, but then discovers that the original showrunner (Paul Reiser) still has the rights to make new episodes. The show-within-the-show’s cast members — Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer and Johnny Knoxville — encourage the old guard and the new to work together to bring some heat back to their own flagging careers. The veteran TV writer Steven Levitan (“Modern Family”) created “Reboot,” drawing on his own years in the complicated business of making “comfort” comedies that are equal parts funny and true.‘Ramy’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 28In Season 2 of the comedian Ramy Youssef’s semi-autobiographical dramedy, his title character tried hard to straighten out his life by recommitting himself to his Muslim faith and even pursuing a traditional marriage. Then all of Ramy’s plans fell apart, leaving him with a choice at the end of the finale: to stay on the righteous path he had been on, or to backslide. The belated Season 3 will pick up that larger story, about one man’s attempts to balance his interest in religious traditions with the pleasures of a secular American life. “Ramy” will also continue to spend time with the character’s eclectic batch of friends and family members, who face traumas and hangups of their own.Also arriving:Sept. 1“The Mighty Ones” Season 3Sept. 7“Grid” Season 1“Tell Me Lies”Sept. 8“Wedding Season” Season 1“The Zone: Survival Mission” Season 1Sept. 14“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 5Sept. 16“Atlanta” Season 4Sept. 19“Best in Dough” Season 1Sept. 22“The Kardashians” Season 2Sept. 26“A Chiara”“Chefs vs. Wild” Season 1Sept. 27“Reasonable Doubt” Season 1Sept. 28“The D’Amelio Show” Season 2New to Paramount+‘The Good Fight’ Season 6Starts streaming: Sept. 8The sixth and final season of one of TV’s best dramas adds Andre Braugher and John Slattery to its ace cast, as part of the aftermath to a Season 5 finale which saw the venerable attorney Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) step away from her partnership with Liz Reddick (Audra McDonald) in their progressive Chicago law firm. Braugher plays the firm’s charismatic new partner, while Slattery plays Diane’s doctor, helping her adjust to whatever comes next. “The Good Fight” — a spinoff of the long-running legal drama “The Good Wife” — has been through multiple on-screen and behind-the-scenes upheavals since its 2017 debut, but what has remained consistent is the head writers Michelle and Robert King’s sharp-witted approach to ripped-from-the-headlines political stories, which playfully examine how the American justice system is trying to hold the line against the tumult of our crazy times.Also arriving:Sept. 3“Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert”Sept. 7“Ink Master” Season 14Sept. 23“On the Come Up”New to Peacock‘Last Light’Starts streaming: Sept. 8Though based on a 2007 Alex Scarrow novel, the thriller miniseries “Last Light” is very much of the moment, with its story of a society thrown into chaos by a sudden drop in the oil supply. Matthew Fox plays Andy Yeats, a brilliant chemical engineer who gets summoned to a key Middle Eastern petroleum reserve to investigate a potentially catastrophic problem. Joanne Froggatt plays his wife Elena, who is in Paris helping their young son through an experimental eye operation, while their college-aged daughter Laura (Alyth Ross) is home in London raising awareness about climate change. When the long-feared fuel crisis hits, the family has to race across the world to reunite, dodging street-riots and a cabal of powerful people who don’t want Andy to make public what he knows.Also arriving:Sept. 2“Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.”Sept. 14“Hell of a Cruise”Sept. 15“’Til Jail Do Us Part” Season 1“Vampire Academy” Season 1Sept. 21“Meet Cute”“Shadowland”Sept. 28“Sex, Lies and the College Cult” More

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      ‘Bluey’ Is About Everything, Especially Music

      by

      “Ladies and gentlemen! I will now play for you the ‘Rondo alla Turca.’”From the first scene of “Bluey,” the hit Australian canine cartoon that amusingly, frankly and ever-so-understandingly takes the hands of children and parents through the escapades of the Heeler family of heelers, classical music is as much a part of playtime as the toys scattered around their suburban Brisbane home.Bandit, the stay-at-home, try-to-work father who, with Chilli, his wife, has become the idol and the envy of parents everywhere for his willingness to entertain his children anywhere, anytime, anyhow, is on the floor, with his 6-year-old daughter, Bluey, draped over his knees. He cracks his knuckles, takes on airs and tickles her mercilessly to the tune of the Mozart sonata. Bluey’s adorable 4-year-old sister, Bingo, watches, begging to be the piano herself.“Magic Xylophone,” the first seven-minute installment of the three seasons currently streaming on Disney+, is notionally about the importance of taking turns. But like most episodes of “Bluey,” it’s also about far more than the immediate lessons it teaches through the Heelers’ antics, at least in the giggly way that the show is “about” everything from family and friendship to marriage and mortality.Amid the slapstick, “Magic Xylophone” is about the power of music to transform us. Bingo finds a xylophone in a toy box, one with the make-believe ability to freeze people in place. Once stuck, they can be subjected to all manner of embarrassments — such as when the girls’ target is their father — or pleaded with to share, as when Bingo ensnares Bluey. All the while, we learn that “Bluey” is going to be no ordinary children’s show in another way, too: This is a show that repays listening, as well as watching.As the girls have their fun, the Mozart sticks around, becoming the basis for a strikingly well-crafted score that stays enchantingly true to the spirit of the original material even as it deviates wildly while the girls argue with their mother, or suffers from comical wrong notes when Bluey and Bingo fight. By the end, Mozart’s rondo has found its way to major-key joy, and the girls have, too, sitting arm in arm as their father sprays himself in the face with a hose.“BLUEY” DID NOT NEED to have music this good. “Peppa Pig,” for instance, its predecessor in fickle toddlers’ hearts, sometimes plinks and plonks to make a point, but its music usually does little more than start and end another episode in its endless cacophony of oinks.But the producers of “Bluey” intend its episodes to be thought about as short films instead of televisual fodder, and the scoring has a cinematic quality that helps make it the kind of show that parents might want to actually watch rather than curse from a distance.“I always knew that music was going to be almost half the show,” Joe Brumm, its creator, said in an interview, explaining his admiration for the role of sound in films like “True Romance,” “The Truman Show” and “The Thin Red Line.”“I didn’t want the usual kids’ TV scoring,” he continued. “Some shows just use one track for an entire season, or a variation of it. I’d worked on ‘Charlie and Lola’ years ago, and they had a couple of musicians who played multiple instruments, and every episode had its own score. So that was the norm for me; it’s definitely not the norm for a lot of shows.”The music of “Bluey” is a collaborative endeavor, but it is primarily the task of its composer, Joff Bush. Bush, 37, switched from jazz piano to composition as a student at the Queensland Conservatorium, and he later attended the Australian Film Television and Radio School. He leads weekly, hourslong Wednesday sessions, at which Brumm and others talk through the philosophy and the psychology of an episode while he improvises at the piano, before later writing a score. It’s work that Brumm is so proud of that he has given Bush his own character in tribute, a musician called Busker.Far from every episode of “Bluey” uses classical music, and Bush’s tastes are eclectic. Some of its more than a hundred shows take inspiration from folk, jazz or rock, and almost all of them are then filtered through what Brumm calls the distinctively “jangly” sound that comes from Bush’s collection of old guitars and his habit of ignoring his mistakes. Even when Bush does color with the classical canon, there is a charmingly offbeat oddness to his work, something that helpfully reminds you that no real family could possibly be as agreeable, as forgiving or as functional as the Heelers, however much your children might reason otherwise.“There’s a humanness to it, I hope,” Bush said.THERE IS A LONG HISTORY entwining classical music with animation, one that dates back well beyond Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the Wabbit!” to strains of Wagner in “What’s Opera, Doc?” “If cartoons have become associated over time with any one musical genre, it is classical music,” the musicologist Daniel Goldmark writes in his book “Tunes for ’Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon.”But the Warner Bros. cartoons from the 1930s to the ’50s used classical music as an “endless source of jokes at the expense of concert hall culture,” Goldmark writes. When concert music and opera were more prominent than they are now, many viewers had certain expectations about Romantic-era music — Wagner most of all — that could easily be subverted, and puncturing its pretensions with a cartoon rabbit was anyway inherently funny.“We do actually steal that approach, sometimes,” Bush said, “taking these grand things and messing with them.”Sometimes Bush does that with glee: A squabble in “Ice Cream” gets sprinkled with absurd grace when Bluey and Bingo waltz, tongues wagging, to Tchaikovsky; their divalike cousin Muffin has become associated with music from “Carmen”; even Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” gets trotted out in “Escape” as the girls dream of chasing down parents who dare venture out for a night. Sometimes the nods are less obvious, as when Elgar drifts in to accompany a crowning ceremony in the backyard paradise of “Rug Island.”Bush is certainly interested in breaking down elitist ideas of what classical music should be — in showing, as he puts it, “that these are great pieces of music, and they don’t have to be heard in a concert hall where we’re all sitting quiet. They can be for everybody.”But Bush — unlike the composers of the Warner Bros. era, and at a time when classical music is less widely known if still set high on its lonely pedestal — tends to do this less through satire or mockery than by remaining somewhat faithful to the composers themselves, whether to the cheekiness of Mozart or to the intricacy of Bach.And there is a lot of Bach in “Bluey”: a Brandenburg Concerto’s counterpoint as a girl-gang’s game of nail salon on a tree stump intertwines with their fathers’ manly-man efforts to chop it up in “Stumpfest,” for example, or a prelude from “The Well-Tempered Clavier,” its already disjointed theme broken up by Bush and made to flow only when the girls successfully deliver a love letter that resolves a parental fight about the trash in “Postman.”There are also episodes that reward thought, like “Bingo.” Bluey goes out for the day, leaving Bingo to struggle by herself while Chilli endures her own traumas trying to fix a toilet. Bush chose a solo piece to illustrate solo play, Mozart’s “Sonata Facile” for piano. “The melody is this little loop,” he said, “it’s this idea of Bingo starting again and getting stuck.”There’s a deeper message in that choice of music. The Mozart looks so simple on the page — and sounds like it, too — that it’s easy to forget that it can be devilishly hard to get right. So too is playtime, for children on their own. Or plumbing.“Any pre-Romantic music, you’ve got free rein,” Bush said. “So much of that is about the beauty of the music itself, rather than ‘This is a sad piece; be sad.’” You can really mess with the music a lot more, without hitting on any meanings.”“THERE’S NOTHING WORTHY going on,” Brumm insists when asked whether this is all part of a grand plan to educate children in music appreciation, à la Walt Disney’s “Fantasia,” even if as an occasional classical listener he sees nothing wrong with getting them interested in it. Bach is available to use without a licensing fee, after all, and the composer isn’t around to protest a misuse.During weekly sessions where the show’s creators talk through the philosophy and the psychology of an episode, Bush improvises at the piano, before later writing a score.Natalie Grono for The New York TimesBush feels likewise, as much as he revels in seeding slivers of Saint-Saëns across an episode so that he can drop the big entry from that composer’s “Organ” Symphony at the climactic moment in “Calypso.”“I don’t think we ever approach it from the place of getting kids into classical music, or anything like that,” he said. “It’s always about the story, about what feels right and fits.”Nowhere is that narrative honesty more brutally effective than in “Sleepytime,” Bush’s balletic masterpiece, which turns the nightly nightmare of getting a family some sleep into an outer-space emotional epic to the sounds of Gustav Holst.Using “Jupiter” from Holst’s “The Planets” for “Sleepytime” was Brumm’s idea, but Bush’s execution is sublime. Carefully, he teases the intervals of its famous theme whenever we glimpse parental affection, giving it an ethereality when cuddles are involved, or an impudence when Bluey pops up to ask for a glass of water then inevitably needs Bandit’s help as she goes to pee.Only when Bingo finally keeps her promise of sleeping in her own bed — “I’m a big girl now,” she tells the sun, a symbol of Chilli’s comforting embrace in a dream inspired by a book about the solar system — does Bush unfurl Holst’s melody in its full splendor, marking the glow, the nobility, the certainty of a mother’s love.“There’s a time in a child’s life when they are starting to build their own identity, and their own independence,” Bush said. “The idea that they are going alone but their parents’ love will always be there is such a powerful one. It needed to be something like ‘Jupiter’ that is bigger than what it is.”You know what’s coming, and when it does, it lands with the devastation of an asteroid strike; the domestic turns into something sublime. Good luck not crying. More