Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 283rd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

New Hollywood Panic and Pressure Over Rival Premium VOD Plans.

The Reckoning: Why the Movie Business Is in Big Trouble.

Why China’s Box Office May Not Save the Film Industry After All.

2016 Box Office Record Won’t Be Broken Until 2020, Experts Say.

Test Run Failure for Summer Movie Doppelgangers.

Adults Over 50 Make Up 30 Percent of All Movie Theater Visits.

The Outliers Of 2016: Smaller Movies With Big Profits.

Hollywood Women Are About to Kick a Lot of Ass on the Big Screen

March 2017 Is First $1 Billion March in Domestic Box Office History.

What Could Virtual Reality Bring to the Cinema?

4 Big Problems the Film Industry Needs to Fix Immediately.

Here’s What CinemaCon 2017 Taught Me About the Future of the Movies.

Jim Gianopulos Takes Reins Of Paramount As Chairman & CEO.

Paramount looks to Disney model to recover after string of flops.

Annapurna Ramps Up International Distribution With New MGM Deal.

WGA “Broke Off Negotiations,” Producers Claim As Strike Vote Looms. 
Note: This headline is bull shit.

As Writers Guild Talks Stall, a Jittery Hollywood Wonders What’s Next.

Writers Guild of America moves another step closer to possible strike.

WGA Says It Wants to Keep Negotiating Despite Strike Vote.

‘Westworld’ Creator Backs Writers Guild Strike Vote: We Will “Do What It Takes”.

Writers Guild Talks to Resume April 10 as Strike Authorization Vote and Contract Expiration Loom.

Writers Guild Negotiations: If Talk Shows Go Dark, Donald Trump Could Be The Biggest Winner in a Strike.

Ken Levine: What you should know about a potential WGA strike.

Disney is planning enough ‘Star Wars’ movies to last into the 2030s.

‘Beauty and the Beast’: 9 Differences Between the Live-Action and Animated Movies — and Why They Matter.

‘Life’: How Sci-Fi Horror Gives Scientists a Bad Name.

Why Action Scenes in Big-Budget Movies Have Become So Boring.

Why Are Bad Guys in Superhero Team-Up Movies Always Faceless Drones?

How to pretend you’ve seen the 30 best movies ever made.

Studio Ghibli Fest Bringing Six Animated Classics Back to the Big Screen.

Why Sundance, SXSW, and Funders Are Falling in Love With This Tiny Collective of Black Women Filmmakers.

Aaron Sorkin Gets an Education on Hollywood’s Diversity Issue at WGFestival.

Aaron Sorkin Just Learned Hollywood Has a Diversity Problem and Twitter is Roasting Him.

George Lucas Pledges Another $10M to USC for Diversity Effort.

Paul Scheer on the Career-Making Parody That Led to Crazy Encounters With Criss Angel and Russell Crowe.

Fake Seth Rogen Script ‘The Kosher Nostra’ Fools Hollywood Gatekeepers.

‘Batgirl’ Movie: Joss Whedon to Direct Standalone Film.

Jordan Peele on What ‘Get Out’ Teaches Hollywood.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out Now Highest Grossing Film Debut For Writer-Director.

‘Donnie Darko,’ The Inside Story: Director Richard Kelly Reveals Francis Ford Coppola’s Hidden Hand in Shaping the Movie.

“The Sexpendables”: How Basic Instinct Birthed a Schlocky, Sexy Cottage Industry.

‘Frozen’s’ Original Ending Finally Revealed.

Sherry Lansing Book Excerpt: Screaming Matches and Tears on ‘Fatal Attraction’ Set.

‘Life’ Screenwriters Share Sequel Details and Offer ‘Deadpool 2’ Update.

‘Boss Baby’ Screenwriter on Skewering Corporate Culture and All Those (Coincidental) Trump References.

How a Warner Bros. Staffer’s Passion Project Helps Female Filmmakers.

How Did ‘Frozen’ Originally End?

Hollywood’s criminal neglect of non-superhero comics.

Academy Allows PricewaterhouseCoopers To Hold Envelopes Again After Best Picture Oscar Fiasco.

‘Fast & Furious’ Franchise Damage Would Cost $514 Million, Expert Estimates.

Warner Bros. Facing $900 Million Lawsuit Over ‘The Conjuring’ Franchise.

Here’s Why Script Supervisors Are the ‘Secret Ninjas’ of Film Production.

Let’s try that again … the most difficult scenes to film in cinema history.

As Theatrical Windows Threaten to Close, Indie Film Needs to Yank Its Fingers Out of the Way.

What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 1: The Founding Mothers of Film.

What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 2: The First Females to Crack the Directors Guild.

What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 3: A New Generation of Women Behind the Camera, 1966–1983.

What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 4: 1984–1999.

What Happened to the Women Directors in Hollywood? Part 5: 2000–2017.

The Black List Hopes to Release Survey of TV Pilots for First Time Ever.

Binge-Watching Millennial TV Viewers Average 6 TV Episodes Per Sitting.

Reality TV’s Ruling Class: Top 10 Power Players of 2017.

How ‘Westworld’ Will Avoid Production Delays in Season 2.

‘True Detective’ season 3 revived, David Milch joins team.

How Learning To Overshare Changed Comedian Pete Holmes’s Life Forever.

Reality Show Set in Wilderness Canceled, but No One Tells Contestants for Months.

Netflix Without Borders: Inside The Streaming Service’s Plans For Global Domination.

7 Filmmakers Turning Amazon Into An Art House Cinema Powerhouse.

Facebook Clones Snapchat With Stories, Photo Filters.

MasterClass Raises $35 Million to Boost Celebrity-Taught Online Courses.

Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary.

Dystopian Dreams: How feminist science fiction predicted the future.

Bob Dylan Archives Center Opens in Oklahoma.

Read: Cameron Crowe — Billy, How Did You Do it?

Read: Jeff Willis — Attachments.

Watch: The Graduate: Hello, Darkness Trailer.

Watch: The History of the Mockbuster .

Watch: Netflix vs. Hollywood Battle Heating up.

Watch: Annapurna Pictures Supercut Celebrates ‘The Master,’ ‘Spring Breakers’ and More Hits.

Watch: Rogue One & Star Wars: The Original Trilogy — Shot Comparison.

Watch: How Tommy Wiseau Blocks A Scene.

Watch: Hayao Miyazaki’s Cosmologics.

Watch: Unique Connections Between Hayao Miyazaki Films.

Watch: A Brief History of Hollywood Whitewashing.

Watch: Modern Filmmaking Techniques.

Watch: Martin Scorsese // God’s Point of View.

Watch: The First Woman Filmmaker Nobody’s Heard Of.

Watch: So You Don’t Want to Watch a Black & White Movie?

Allan Weiss, Writer on 6 Elvis Presley Movies, Dies at 90.

Jean Rouverol, Blacklisted Screenwriter, Dies at 100.

SCREENWRITING MASTER CLASS TIP OF THE WEEK

If the Protagonist is most often your story’s most important character, the Nemesis is not far behind. Indeed some of the greatest characters in film history have been Nemeses including Darth Vader (Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope), the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz), Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), and the shark (Jaws).

If conflict is the stuff of great drama, there is perhaps no conflict more compelling than that of a Protagonist versus a Nemesis. But what makes for a worthy Nemesis? How to develop them?

Following up on my recent Create a Compelling Protagonist course, I’m offering Create a Worthy Nemesis. It is a 1-week writing course that takes a unique approach to developing this pivotal character in that we start the process with the Protagonist.

I found Scott Myers’ online workshop on writing a “worthy nemesis” extremely helpful as a first time screen writer it answered some key questions about character construction and relation, gave me a lot of food for thought and was overall a great experience. I will surely come back for another course once I have applied all that I learned on this one. — Zeba Bakhtiar

Here are the 7 lecture titles:

Lecture 1: Nemesis v. Antagonist
Lecture 2: Shadow v. Light
Lecture 3: Fear v. Need
Lecture 4: Disunity v. Unity
Lecture 5: Overlord v. Underdog
Lecture 6: Intelligence v. Wisdom
Lecture 7: Empathy v. Sympathy

Without a doubt, I’ve gotten more useful information out of this course than any other single course I’ve ever taken. I especially enjoyed the discussions of the applications of Carl Jung’s work to screenwriting. You’re doing great work. — Scott Gunn

Notice the clever theme of v. for versus? There’s a reason for that, one you will discover when you take the class. In addition to the seven lectures that I am writing, there is 24/7 forum feedback, six insider tips, a teleconference, and an opportunity to workshop one of your story’s Nemesis characters.

The most recent Create a Compelling Protagonist session has been phenomenal. In fact, I have extended the class for at least another week because of all the incredible conversations we’ve had along with great workshopping of participants’ Protagonists. I fully expect the my Nemesis class will just as stimulating.

This was my first time taking one of Scott’s classes, and it was totally worth it. He was full of unique insights, from his daily lectures to his Insider Tips (my favorite part of the course). Further, he was highly responsive to the myriad questions posed by students. I very much enjoyed the exchange of knowledge and advice that occurred among participants, another highlight. Would definitely recommend this class!— Jace Serrano

So sign up today right here and join me for a week’s journey into the dark side of the human soul, the place where great Nemeses figures dwell, waiting for you to find them.