Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 372nd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.
Oscars 2019: 347 Films in Contention for Best Picture.
Pixar and DreamWorks Lead Oscar Shortlist for Animated Short.
Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Roma’ Lands Limited 70MM Runs in 6 U.S. Cities.
Inside the Obsessive World of Alfonso Cuaron and His ‘Roma’ Production Design.
Global Streaming Revenue Set to Outpace Box Office in 2019.
Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the Best Foreign-Language Films of 2018.
Rupert Murdoch’s Very Big 2018 Caps a Career of Hollywood Disruption.
Bron Creative Strikes $100M Co-Financing Deal With Warner Bros.
New Alliance Formed to Steer Blockchain Adoption in the Entertainment Industry.
Charter Agrees to $174M Deal to Settle Lawsuit Alleging Netflix Throttling.
Disney’s Film Prodution Chief Talks ‘Mary Poppins’ and His Big Bet on ‘The Lion King’: “It’s a New Form of Filmmaking”.
Netflix vs Disney: A Year of Warfare Likely Will Escalate In 2019.
Meet the Marvel Executive Who First Championed ‘Black Panther’.
Stephanie Allain’s Homegrown Pictures Joins Forces with Abigail Disney’s Level Forward.
The Filmmaker Karyn Kusama Explores the Many Dimensions of Women’s Rage.
The Fall and Rise of M. Night Shyamalan.
Disney Once Feared Superheroes, Told M. Night Shyamalan Not to Market ‘Unbreakable’ as Comic Book Film.
Steven Spielberg on Storytelling’s Power to Fight Hate.
Judd Apatow Pays Tribute To His Long-Time Mentor In ‘Zen Diaries’.
How Clint Eastwood’s “Man With No Name” Persona Has Evolved Over 50 Years.
‘True Detective’ Creator Helped Work On ‘Deadwood’ Film Script With David Milch.
Black Mirrors: Smartphones & Cinema.
How “Divergent” Turned Into A Disaster.
Divergence, Not Convergence, Marks the Future of the Superhero Franchises.
‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ Reboot Confirmed to be Johnny Depp-Free.
MoviePass Still Exists, Signs Three Picture Deal With Bruce Willis.
George Lucas, Steven Spielberg Top Forbes List of 10 Richest Celebrities.
Quentin Tarantino confronts burglars breaking into his home.
Kathy Griffin Complains About ‘No Women’ Making Forbes List of Highest Paid Comedians.
Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund Releases Annual Report, Unveils $22M Donated in Fundraising.
L.A.’s Housing Crisis Hits Hollywood: The Entertainment Workers Living in Their Cars.
L.A.’s Film and TV Production Boom Fuels Real Estate Grab.
Book vs. Film: ‘Die Hard’. Plus An End To The Christmas Movie Debate.
Steve McQueen’s lost ‘Bullitt’ car reportedly has been found and restored.
The Cheesy Endurance of the Made-for-TV Holiday Movie.
Cable Ratings Fall in 2018: MTV, A&E Buck Trend.
FX Chief: Scripted Originals Could Top 530 in 2019.
The 19 Most-Anticipated New Scripted TV Shows of 2019.
How We Disrupted the Fun Out of TV.
CBS Has to Pay for Les Moonves’s Legal Battle With CBS.
CBS Considers Dropping Nielsen Ratings Contract as TV Landscape Changes.
The Price Is Right: What advertising does to TV.
‘Room 104’: Mark and Jay Duplass Are Saving Filmmakers By Bringing Them to Television.
’13 Reasons Why’ and Other Projects Resume Production After California Wildfire Shutdown.
SMILF’ Creator Frankie Shaw Investigated Over Misconduct Claims.
How Netflix Revived the Rom-Com Genre: “Nobody Was Making Them”.
The Year in Netflix: What It Got Right (and Wrong) in 2018.
Why Channing Dungey’s Leap to Netflix Is Making TV Folks ‘Queasy’.
Netflix Isn’t Killing Movie Theaters, Study Shows.
Apple Lures Justin Lin Away From Sony With One of Its Fancy Development Deals.
Tim Goodman: The 32 Best TV Shows of 2018.
The Top 10 Documentaries of 2018.
Jeffrey Katzenberg Fills Out Quibi Leadership Team.
Premium Short-Form Content Maker Ficto Launches.
2018 Steam Awards Voting Begins This Week.
For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain.
A New Comics Publisher Aims to Shake Things Up.
2019’s Most Anticipated Games.
‘Fresh Prince’ Actor Sues Epic Games Over Carlton Dance in Fortnite.
Watch: Macaulay Culkin Re-Creates ‘Home Alone’ for Google Assistant Ad.
Watch: Final ‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ Trailer is Full of Disney and Pixar Cameos, and Angst.
Penny Marshall, RIP: How She Advanced the Cause of Female Directors in Hollywood.
Penny Marshall broke ground as a director, but on TV she was loved as ‘Laverne’.
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week
My popular one week online class begins Monday, January 7, 2019.
Be sure to check out two special holiday deals at the bottom of the page!
20 movies produced. 19 movies #1 at the box office. Worldwide B.O. gross $13.3 billion. Average B.O. per film: $663M by far the highest average per film of any studio in Hollywood history.
It’s not just dollars and cents, it’s also quality storytelling. 15 Academy Awards, 9 Golden Globes, 11 Grammys. Indeed 8 of Pixar’s 20 films are in the IMDB Top 250 Movies of all time.
No disrespect to Disney, but I think the real Magic Kingdom lies 397.8 miles north of Anaheim in a city called Emeryville, California where you’ll find this:
Longtime GITS readers know of my fascination with Pixar having blogged about them dozens of times. Due to having two sons who quite literally have grown up in what someday is likely to be called the Pixar Era, I have seen every one of the company’s movies, most of them several times.
In my estimation, the filmmakers at Pixar are master storytellers.
But how do they successfully wrangle magic time after time in their films? Are there lessons we can learn from Pixar to inspire and upgrade our own writing?
Those are two key questions I undertook in creating the online course Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling which begins Monday, January 7, 2019. My answer: An emphatic yes!
First off, there are the practices Pixar uses in developing, breaking, writing and rewriting a script. In our 1-week class, we go through that process step by step, then see how we can adapt that approach to our own writing.
Then there are several narrative principles evident in Pixar movies, six of them we focus in our online class: Small Story / Substantial Saga, Special Subculture, Strange Sojourners, Separation, Sentimentality, Sires and Siblings, Stumbles and Switches, and Surprise. Going through every Pixar movie, we explore how these dynamics work in the context of each narrative and their overall applicability to storytelling.
There are 7 lectures, each of which I wrote, the content buttressed by an exclusive interview I conducted with Mary Coleman, Senior Development Executive at Pixar since the days of Toy Story 2, so we get a real inside look the outfit’s creative process.
The class also has a Logline Workshop where you can post a story idea and revise per peer feedback. And two teleconferences to accommodate peoples’ schedules where participants get a chance to dig into the course content with me as well as discuss anything related to writing, screenwriting, and movies.
Here are some nice comments from just a few folks who’ve taken the class:
“I was lucky enough to be able to take Scott’s Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling class. It was my first class and a wonderful experience. I learned a ton and now have some important utensils that will help make all my stories better. Scott’s a great teacher and it was a pleasure learning from him!” — Valencia Stokes
“This course is awesome. I refer to these notes and lessons all the time.” — Traci Nell Peterson
“A course on Pixar movies? Apart from legitimately letting out my inner child and renting Up ‘for research purposes, I learnt about the ethos of the Pixar Brain Trust and the essential elements contained in all of their movies. Scott took us on an all-inclusive week long journey into why Pixar are so successful and how to practically apply this to your own script.” — Camilla Castree
“I recommend this course wholeheartedly. Plus you get to watch Pixar films as homework.” — TheQuietAct
“Scott Myers is a brilliant teacher and unites his knowledge and experience, insight and depth of thought in his lectures as well as he is providing help and support to his students. I highly recommend the class.” — Eva Brandstätter
A few words about the format: I’ve been teaching online since 2002, worked with over 1000 writers in that context, and honestly believe it is superior to the onsite class environment in many ways:
- You can do virtually everything on your own time: Download lectures, read forum conversations, add your own comments, upload writing exercises and assignments. In your pajamas. In bed. Drinking coffee. However you want to access online course content, you can do it.
- As opposed to listening to a teacher present lectures verbally, you get to download lectures and read them. Again at your leisure, but even more importantly, instead of feverishly trying to jot down notes from a verbal presentation, here you get everything laid out for you. I take great pride in my lectures, as they not only provide great content, they also have a narrative flow to them. Yes, they tell a little story.
- Feedback and conversations online tend to be much more thoughtful and therefore beneficial than onsite settings. Why? Because instead of off-the-cuff, random comments, participants online tend to spend more time and reflection in composing posts for online.
- Finally I’m constantly amazed at how much of a community emerges in online class environments. Writers from all around the world and somehow we bind together into remarkably vibrant learning communities, time and time again.
So if you’ve never tried an online screenwriting class, come on in! The virtual water’s fine!
For more information on Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling which begins January 7, 2019, go here.
So join me to learn some incredible insights into crafting a story with the practices and principles at work in Pixar movies. I look forward to the opportunity to work with you! Or to put it another way…
In the spirit of the season, I have two special deals for you! Check out the entire schedule of 10 Craft classes I will be offering in 2019:
January 7, 2019 — Craft: Pixar and the Craft of Storytelling
Learn More
January 21, 2019 — Craft: Story Summaries — From Loglines to Beat Sheets
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February 4, 2019 — Craft: Handling Exposition
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February 18, 2019 — Craft: Scene Description Spotlight
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March 4, 2019 — Craft: Character Development Keys
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March 18, 2019 — Craft: Create a Compelling Protagonist
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April 1, 2019 — Craft: Write a Worthy Nemesis
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April 15, 2019 — Craft: Scene-Writing Workshop
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April 29, 2019 — Craft: Dialogue-Writing Workshop
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May 13, 2019 — Craft: The Coen Brothers and the Craft of Storytelling
Learn More
The first holiday offer: Each Craft class is on sale. Regular price: $95. Sale price: $79.
But here’s the really big second deal: You can enroll in the Craft Package which includes all 10 Craft classes at a savings of nearly 50% off the already discounted sale price. Special price: $400. That’s each course for $40 apiece! You not only get all 10 one-week classes, you also obtain exclusive access to the Craft Package site enabling you to go through all of the Craft lectures — 70 in all, each written by me — at your own pace and on your own time.
Know somebody who’s a writer? Or is someone looking to get you a special writing gift? Check out the Craft Package for something truly unique and turn 2019 into an excellent learning opportunity.
Happy Holidays!
