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AT&T’s WarnerMedia group is merging with the reality programmer Discovery. What does that mean for your favorite shows?It’s as if Logan Roy, the fictional patriarch of the Waystar Royco media empire on HBO’s popular series “Succession,” masterminded the deal himself: AT&T has thrown in the towel on its media business and decided to spin it off into a new company that will merge with Discovery Inc. More
As the daughter of Laraine Newman, she has an understanding of the ups and downs of early success. Will those lessons be helpful for her first series, “Hacks”?Right before the shutdown last year, the comic Hannah Einbinder became, at 23, the youngest (and as of now last) stand-up to perform a set on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” making a splash in her network television debut. More
Listen and follow Still ProcessingApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherShe’s simply the best. A new documentary on HBO (called, simply, “Tina”) explores Tina Turner’s tremendous triumphs, but we wanted to go deeper. We talk about how her entire career was an act of repossession: Taking back her name, her voice, her image, her vitality and her spirituality made her one of the biggest rock stars in the world, even in her 50s.Tina Turner at her home in Küsnacht, Switzerland, July 2019.Charlie Gates for The New York TimesOn Today’s EpisodeWesley’s ‘We, Tina’ playlistWesley compiled his all-time favorite Tina Turner tracks onto a playlist. Have a listen.◆ ◆ ◆The music icon’s life onscreenTina Turner in 1973, in a scene from the documentary “Tina.”Rhonda Graam/HBO, via Associated PressFor many, Jenna included, the movie “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993) has been their biggest reference point for Tina Turner up until this point. The biopic, which stars Angela Bassett as Turner, follows the artist’s life with her abusive first husband, Ike Turner.After watching “Tina” (2021), a documentary that recently dropped on HBO Max, Jenna realized how much of the singer’s narrative is missing from the 1993 film.“As incredible as that movie is, it’s not sufficient for her life story,” Jenna said. “It’s so painful to watch. It doesn’t lean enough into how much she shaped and changed music.”◆ ◆ ◆Her liberating live performances“Tina Turner is someone I regret never seeing live,” Jenna said. Her live performances were electric — like her 1988 concert in Rio de Janeiro. She was 48 at the time, on a tour that spanned over 200 dates. She was as fit and vibrant as ever, performing to a record-breaking crowd of over 180,000 people. Wesley remarked, “I mean, just to be one of those people screaming Tina Turner’s name. …”Hosted by: Jenna Wortham and Wesley MorrisProduced by: Elyssa Dudley and Mahima ChablaniEdited by: Sara Sarasohn and Sasha WeissEngineered by: Marion LozanoExecutive Producer, Shows: Wendy DorrExecutive Editor, Newsroom Audio: Lisa TobinAssistant Managing Editor: Sam DolnickSpecial thanks: Nora Keller, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani and Desiree IbekweWesley Morris is a critic at large. He was awarded the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his criticism while at The Boston Globe. He has also worked at Grantland, The San Francisco Chronicle and The San Francisco Examiner. @wesley_morrisJenna Wortham is a staff writer for The Times Magazine and co-editor of the book “Black Futures” with Kimberly Drew. @jennydeluxe More
In “The Big Shot With Bethenny,” on HBO Max, millennial strivers will compete to help Frankel run her Skinnygirl empire.If reality television is a game, Bethenny Frankel belongs among its M.V.P.sFrankel, 50, began her on-camera career in 2005, during the Martha Stewart season of “The Apprentice.” She came in second, with Stewart telling her, “You’re spunky, you’re a show-off, you feel you have to make a physical impression.”If that made Frankel wrong for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, it made her right for “The Real Housewives of New York City,” which premiered in 2008, even though she wasn’t a housewife then and has never really been one since.Frankel spun a tossed off cocktail order in Season 1 — “the skinny girl’s margarita” — into the premixed cocktail brand Skinnygirl. She sold it to Beam Global for $100 million in 2011, retaining her rights to the brand name. (Beam got the premixed drinks business; Frankel kept everything else.) She has since parlayed her reality fame into food stuffs, supplements, cookware, shapewear and under her Bethenny label, eyewear.She is, in her words, “the H.B.I.C. of a major empire.” She recently signed a multiyear deal with iHeart Radio to bring her “Just B with Bethenny Frankel” podcast to the network and to produce others.Her endemic hustle extends to the disaster-relief initiative, B Strong. While raising money for hurricane and earthquake relief, the initiative, in partnership with Global Empowerment Mission, has distributed more than $19 million in aid and personal protective equipment during the Covid-19 crisis.“The Big Shot With Bethenny” is the “authentic modern version of ‘The Apprentice,’” Frankel said.Krista Schlueter/HBO MaxOn television, Frankel used “The Real Housewives” as a vaulting horse toward a couple of Bravo spinoffs; a single season of a syndicated talk show, “Bethenny”; and a bunch of appearances on “Shark Tank.” She quit “The Real Housewives” in August 2019 after eight on-and-off seasons, citing spiritual corrosion.“I was making great money, but I didn’t feel good about it,” she said. “If I’m really as successful and smart and savvy and legit and the-Emperor-does-have-clothes as I think I am, then that’s not really where I should be anymore.”But she didn’t stay away from reality television long. She teamed with Mark Burnett (“The Apprentice,” “Survivor”) and MGM Studios to create “The Big Shot with Bethenny.” “In business and television she is a clear force of nature, deservedly so,” Burnett wrote in an email. In “The Big Shot,” premiering April 29 on HBO Max, millennial strivers attempt to become Frankel’s vice president of operations at Skinnygirl. Nominally a business competition show, it dispenses with most hallmarks of the genre — imagine “The Apprentice” with 100 percent more entropy.“I can let two people go. Hire everybody. Fire everybody,” Frankel says in the first episode. “I can do whatever I want.”On a recent afternoon, Frankel arrived at a Soho loft where some of the show was shot — lipped, lashed, bronzed, glamorous even through the Zoom screen. During an hourlong interview, she discussed entrepreneurship, her Martha Stewart beef and how to make reality TV more real. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you end up on “The Apprentice” in the first place?I’d never watched a ton of television, but I said, “I could get on ‘The Apprentice.’” I said to my partner, “Go buy the least expensive video camera you can find and just videotape me selling cookies.” I got called, which was the craziest thing of my life, and I went to Bloomingdale’s and used my credit card to buy a Moschino red jacket. I went to this hotel, they interviewed me. I didn’t make it. But I’ve always been a connector, like, follow through, send a card, send a gift. Connect. So I kept in touch with the same producers and casting directors without looking too desperate. And they said, “OK, now it’s the Martha Stewart ‘Apprentice,’ here’s your chance.” I wanted it more than anything in the world. I didn’t want the fame per se. I wanted the job.You made it to the finale, then lost. Do you feel like you were robbed?I ran into Martha Stewart shortly after. I was wearing a really sexy dress. Intentionally. She was standing next to Jon Bon Jovi. And she said to him: “This is Bethenny, she was just on my show. And she’s mad at me because she didn’t win.” And I said: “Martha, I’m not mad at you. You’re like an ex-boyfriend that I hate but I’m still in love with.”Frankel and Dawna Stone were finalists in the Martha Stewart season of “The Apprentice.”Virginia Sherwood/NBCFrankel with Alex McCord, left, and Jill Zarin in “The Real Housewives of New York City.” Frankel left the franchise in 2019.Barbara Nitke/BravoThen you went onto other reality shows, “Housewives,” the Bravo spinoffs, “Shark Tank,” “Skating With the Stars.” How do people who know you only from TV see you?People think I’m scathing, abrupt, aggressive, intense, passionate, smart, successful, secretive, stealthy, a baller, manipulative, funny. I think I said intense? Economical, organized, efficient, reliable, honest.What do we get wrong? What don’t we see?What people probably don’t realize or believe is I am the most private person that I know, which is the craziest irony. I’m private about moments and experiences. I’m more of a homebody than anybody that I know, short of someone being agoraphobic. I do not leave my house and I do not put on hair and makeup unless I’m being paid to.Few people have used reality TV as successfully as you have. Was that always your plan?Going on “Housewives” was strategic. It’s not that easy to get on TV. I wanted to be a natural food chef. I wanted to be on the Food Network, and this is a place to show that I’m a natural food chef. Once it started, I thought: This is going to be a game changer. This is going to be very disruptive. But I was always honest about what I was doing.The premise of “The Big Shot With Bethenny” is that you need to hire a vice president of operations for Skinnygirl. What does a vice president of operations do?I wanted a second in command. The people at MGM wanted the title because the audience can digest and understand the title. What I really needed in my business was my person, who can think like me, manage the shop like me, edit a social post, have a vision.“What people probably don’t realize or believe is I am the most private person that I know,” Frankel said.Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesIs a reality show the best way to find that person?I’ve never looked at a résumé, ever. Headhunters give you people that are like, “Next Tuesday, I have a doctor’s appointment, and two years from July, I need to take a three-week trip, and what time is my lunch break?” I didn’t come up that way. We just worked. It’s hard to find people like that. That’s who I go for. I don’t care if you know anything — you’re loyal and you’re smart and you work hard. That is all you need.People competing for a job on a reality show sounds a lot like “The Apprentice.”Initially, I wanted to be disassociated from “The Apprentice.” It’s not real. It’s manufactured. Everything going on with our projects was really going on. So for example, I really have a shapewear brand; we really had to create a campaign for it. That was really happening. I really have salad dressings and preserves. The built-in projects are real; they have real stakes. Also, when you watch “The Apprentice,” do you ever see him in his pajamas? You ever see him at home with his wife? I imagine Donald Trump eats cereal. Do we see that? No. Do you see me in my life? Yes. The authentic modern version of “The Apprentice,” that’s what this really is.“The Apprentice” has a very predictable structure. Watching your show, I had no idea what would happen.Our executive producer produced “America’s Top Model.” Mark Burnett has produced “The Apprentice,” “Shark Tank,” “Survivor.” I get that they feel safety in format. I feel trapped and suffocated by it. Like, I’m back on my talk show directing traffic between a soufflé and fall florals. On my own reality shows and on the “Housewives,” I would say, “Let’s do real.” So all of the things that are shocking are not contrived. There were so many things not planned. It’s a very different show for that reason because it’s based in authenticity.So without too many spoilers, did it work out? Did you get your person?This experience gave me the person and I’m so excited.What have you learned about being good at being on television?People always say get out of your own head — it’s not entirely true. Reality television is the highlights. Something’s a sound bite. Something’s a takeaway. Something’s entertaining. I know what people want to see. I know what people want to drink. I understand what people think is entertaining. More
AT&T, HBO’s parent company, reported that HBO and the new streamer added 2.7 million subscribers in the first quarter.AT&T added 2.7 million new customers to HBO and HBO Max in the first quarter, a boost for the company’s new streaming effort in an increasingly crowded field.The company’s WarnerMedia division, which includes HBO, recorded $8.5 billion in revenue for the period, a 9.8 percent jump over last year, when theater sales and advertising revenue plummeted during the pandemic. Led by the chief executive Jason Kilar, WarnerMedia also includes the cable networks CNN and Turner and the Warner Bros. film studios.HBO is the cornerstone of AT&T’s media strategy, and the company sees HBO Max as a way to keep its mobile customers from fleeing, offering the streaming platform at a discount to its phone subscribers.In its report on the year’s first quarter, AT&T stopped disclosing the number of active HBO Max users, obscuring how many people are actually tuned into the new streaming service.Over all, AT&T counted 44.1 million subscribers to HBO and HBO Max in the United States at the end of March, a gain of 2.7 million from the previous quarter. Before it stopped breaking out the HBO Max subscriptions, in December, it said it had 41.5 million subscribers: 17.1 million for the streaming service, 20 million for HBO on cable and the rest from hotels or other deals.HBO Max most likely drove the gain in the quarter, which is notable given how competitive the streaming universe has become. HBO Max is also the most expensive of the major streaming platforms, at $15 a month. Netflix, which reported earnings on Tuesday, remains the leader, with 67 million customers in the United States and nearly 208 million in total.Netflix’s dominance has started to wane, in part because of newer entrants like HBO Max and Disney+. Netflix added four million new subscribers in the quarter, with a little more than 400,000 in the United States. Netflix chalked up the comparatively sluggish growth to the production slowdown when Hollywood studios largely stopped making shows and films during the pandemic. The company said it expected a more successful second half of the year, when returning favorites and highly anticipated films become available.HBO Max most likely got a boost from an unorthodox strategy championed by Mr. Kilar: The sibling company Warner Bros. plans to release its entire lineup of 2021 films on HBO Max on the same day they’re scheduled to appear in theaters. The announcement rumbled throughout Hollywood, angering agents and filmmakers who stood to lose out on crucial bonuses and commissions by short-circuiting the old theatrical release schedule.Mr. Kilar has said the company was likely to go back to a more traditional distribution plan next year. For the rest of 2021, he is counting on the film slate — which included the recent releases of “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” and “Godzilla vs. Kong,” as well as the Friday premiere of “Mortal Kombat” — to help drive people to HBO Max.The company also plans a global expansion of HBO Max starting in June, along with a lower-cost version of the service that will include commercials. The company has about 19.7 million HBO customers overseas who it hopes to convert into HBO Max subscribers. More
A Times journalist gives a sneak preview of the Academy Awards on Sunday and offers insights on a changing film industry. More
Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of April’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 twice-weekly Watching newsletter here.)Ann Skelly in “The Nevers.”Keith Bernstein/HBONew to HBO Max‘Exterminate All the Brutes’Starts streaming: Apr. 7The filmmaker Raoul Peck, perhaps best-known for his Oscar-nominated 2016 documentary “I Am Not Your Negro,” tackles his most ambitious project yet with the four-part cinematic essay “Exterminate All the Brutes,” based in part on Sven Lindqvist’s book of the same name about Europe’s domination of Africa and in part on the scholarly work of the historian and Indigenous rights activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and the Haitian anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot. Relying on a mix of clips from old movies and new dramatizations of historical incidents — all overlaid with the director’s discursive narration — Peck considers how pop culture and the literary canon have shaped the narratives around Indigenous people and their colonial invaders. Equal parts informative and provocative, this project is aimed at changing the way viewers think about who history’s heroes and villains are.‘The Nevers’Starts streaming: Apr. 11There’s a bit of steampunk and a lot of X-Men-like energy in “The Nevers,” a semi-comic action-adventure series created by Joss Whedon, the man behind “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Firefly.” Whedon’s contributions have been downplayed by HBO’s promotional departments, in part because he left the production in the middle of its first season — and perhaps because of recent accusations of mental abuse from his past employees. Nevertheless, “The Nevers,” set in Victorian Britain, very much feels like one of his shows, with its alternately angsty and witty characters. Laura Donnelly plays Amalia True, a superhero who leads a team of strange and powerful women referred to by London aristocrats as “the touched.” As the ladies tackle supernatural phenomena, they also clash with an establishment that wants to keep them marginalized, because of what they can do and because of who they are.‘Mare of Easttown’Starts streaming: Apr. 18Kate Winslet plays a dogged small-town Pennsylvania police detective with a messy home life in “Mare of Easttown,” a crime drama created by Brad Ingelsby, a screenwriter of the films “Out of the Furnace” and “The Way Back.” As with Ingelsby’s movies, this mini-series uses a pulpy premise — a murder mystery — as an entry point to a complex and absorbing study of a place at once familiar and unique. The director Craig Zobel and a top-shelf cast (including Jean Smart as the heroine’s opinionated mother and Julianne Nicholson as her former high school basketball teammate) capture the limitations and comforts of a community where everyone knows each other’s painful secrets. The gray tones and the procedural plot resemble those of a grim European cop show, but the performances and dialogue exhibit a lot of vitality.Also arriving:Apr. 1“Made for Love”Apr. 13“Our Towns”Apr. 15“Infinity Train” Season 4Apr. 16“Mortal Kombat”Supposed Sasquatch footprints, as seen in “Sasquatch.”HuluNew to Hulu‘WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn’Starts streaming: Apr. 2Like many stories about cutting-edge business ideas, the saga of the real-estate-sharing company WeWork ultimately comes down to the disconnect between its bosses’ public ideals and the ugly practical realities of making money. Directed by Jed Rothstein, “WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn” features a wealth of insider interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, all describing a start-up that began by touting a clever solution to the modern urban problem of overpriced office space but then tried to evolve into an entire unwieldy lifestyle brand. Rothstein’s film focuses mainly on the charismatic co-founder Adam Neumann, and how Neumann and his fellow execs were spending like billionaires while misrepresenting — even to their faithful employees — what was really happening.‘Sasquatch’Starts streaming: Apr. 20The journalist David Holthouse has spent much of his career investigating odd American subcultures, spending time with people whose lives have revolved around drugs, violence or the arcane. In the three-part docu-series “Sasquatch,” Holthouse heads into Northern California’s so-called Emerald Triangle — one of the most storied cannabis-growing regions of the world — to look into a legend he heard decades ago, about a trio of farmers who were dismembered by the infamous cryptid known as Bigfoot. The director Joshua Rofé follows Holthouse into the wild as he interviews locals who are enthusiastic about both marijuana and the paranormal. The stories they unearth are partly about eerie phenomena and partly about the very real dangers of a community teeming with crime.Also arriving:Apr. 3“Hysterical”Apr. 8“Glaad Media Awards”Apr. 9“The Standard”Apr. 12“Spontaneous”Apr. 15“Younger” Season 7Apr. 16“Fly Like a Girl”“Songbird”Apr. 21“Cruel Summer”Apr. 22“Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World”Apr. 25“Wild Mountain Thyme”Apr. 28“The Handmaid’s Tale” Season 4From left, Deborah Ayorinde, Melody Hurd, Shahadi Wright and Ashley Thomas in “Them.”Amazon StudiosNew to Amazon‘Them’Starts streaming: Apr. 9The first season of the new horror anthology series “Them” has the subtitle “Covenant,” referring to the rules for residents of a middle-class suburban subdivision in the early 1950s. Deborah Ayorinde and Ashley Thomas play a married couple with two young daughters, who move from North Carolina to an all-white neighborhood in Los Angeles looking for their piece of the American dream. They meet open hostility from their new neighbors (including the local housewives’ cruel ringleader, played by Alison Pill), while also being haunted by strange supernatural forces. Created by Little Marvin and produced by Lena Waithe, “Them” uses the discomfiting facts of racial discrimination to unsettle the audience, even before the nonhuman monsters arrive.Also arriving:Apr. 2“Moment of Truth”Apr. 16“Frank of Ireland”Apr. 30“Without Remorse”Justin Theroux and Melissa George in “The Mosquito Coast.”Apple TV+.New to Apple TV+‘The Mosquito Coast’Starts streaming: Apr. 30Justin Theroux is both a producer and the star of the mini-series “The Mosquito Coast,” an adaptation of an acclaimed 1981 novel by his uncle Paul Theroux. The show’s co-writers Neil Cross and Tom Bissell, with the director Rupert Wyatt, have updated the story to the 21st century, but its still about the idealistic and eccentric inventor Allie Fox, who hates modern technology as much as he detests American materialism. Chasing his dreams — and dodging the federal authorities — Allie packs his family onto a rickety boat and floats them down to Latin America, where he plans to live off the land. The TV version deviates sometimes significantly from the book, but its heart is the same: a rich portrait of a brilliant madman, and of the people he’s dragged into his delusions.Also arriving:Apr. 2“Doug Unplugs” More
In this techno-satire, a woman tagged with a chip by her mogul husband tries to break the (block)chains of love.Cristin Milioti has claimed a curiously specific character niche: woman escaping from twisted sci-fi trap. In the “Black Mirror” episode “USS Callister,” she was programmed into a simulation by her creepy boss. In last year’s “Palm Springs,” she and Andy Samberg puzzled out how to break free of a time loop that stuck them in a vicious “Groundhog Day” rom-com cycle.In “Made for Love,” a light-handed and dark-minded comedy of technology, control and gaslighting whose first three episodes arrive Thursday on HBO Max, the snare is all in her head.As in physically. As in implanted. As in a microchip.Hazel Green (Milioti) received this unwanted hardware upgrade from her husband, Byron Gogol (Billy Magnussen), who runs a world-dominating tech company. (Feel free to play around with the first vowel sound in “Gogol.”) For 10 years, they’ve lived in a gilded cage — or rather a gilded cube, a virtual-reality environment called the Hub, secluded from the messy outside world, with eternally perfect weather and a dolphin sporting in the swimming pool.And for 10 years, Byron has grown more devoted. Too devoted. “Have your wife review her biometrically recorded orgasms to better optimize them” devoted. Finally, he decides that he loves her — and his technology — so deeply that he and she will become “Users One” of his new product, Made for Love, which makes couples into two-person neural networks, their brains digitally connected. No more secrets, no more miscommunication, no more private thoughts.Who the hell would want that? you might ask, a question “Made for Love” raises but doesn’t entirely answer. For the purposes of the story, what’s important is that Byron wants it and Hazel emphatically does not. This impels her to fly the cube, a madcap and violent escape with Byron watching from behind her eyeballs. (Turns out he implanted only her chip, not his: “I had to read your diary first to know if I could let you read mine.”)Based on the novel of the same name by Alissa Nutting, a writer and producer on the series, “Made for Love” plays out as a screwball action satire, which likely makes its chilling premise — patriarchy and techno-utopianism as two sides of the same chip — go down easier than it would as a straight drama. (Christina Lee of the mordant “Search Party” is the showrunner; other producers include Patrick Somerville of Netflix’s “Maniac,” with which this shares a skeevy-dystopian vibe.)The metaphors are never far under the surface here, like Byron and Hazel’s double-finger wedding bands, reminiscent of tiny handcuffs. And when Hazel seeks help from her widowed father, Herb (Ray Romano), she finds him having taken up a committed partnership with a sex doll — sorry, “synthetic partner” — named Diane. Their one-way relationship is an echo of what Byron is trying to make Hazel into, a wife machine, but it’s also oddly tender and respectful.“Made for Love” is hardly subtle, and its cautionary tech tale has been told repeatedly in “Black Mirror” and elsewhere. But it’s playful and funny and almost momentum-driven enough to get away with hand-waving away its many implausibilities. Among those is the question of why Hazel, presented as a wily, resourceful skeptic, would have been swept off her feet by Byron, who from their first meeting throws up enough red flags for a giant slalom course.The casting helps put this over. Milioti, with her charm and anime eyes, is an almost too-perfect rom-com-lead type. (She broke out on TV as the title figure in “How I Met Your Mother.”) But she smartly plays against that type in stories that subvert expectations. Her Hazel is cunning, feral and sardonic on the lam; in flashbacks to her married life in the Hub, you can almost hear her scream behind her 10,000-watt smile.Romano, meanwhile, may be one of the few actors you could introduce in bed with a humanoid sex toy, whom he dresses in his dead wife’s clothing, yet have your viewer think, “You know, this seems like a complicated guy who’s been through a few rough patches.”And Magnussen, given the broadest of the central roles, pushes Byron’s zealotry past tilt. Inept at most human relationships, Byron has funneled all his emotional capacity into Hazel, out of both passion and the gamifying impulse to get the all-time high score on his marriage. He’s the epitome of both the obsessive Wife Guy and the hubristic Tech Guy, and he makes plain the connection between the two types.He’s also pitiable, insofar as a billionaire with godlike powers can be. “I am the only person who actually loves you!” he pleads to Hazel. “Objectively!”But it’s Milioti who gives the season’s first half (I’ve seen four episodes of eight) its adrenaline. “Made for Love” is a loopy jolt to the cortex that demands a high tolerance for absurdity. What grounds it is Hazel’s journey from kept woman to action hero, determined not to be a character in somebody else’s love story. More
