Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 220th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

2016 Writers Guild Awards Screenplay Nominations Announced.

‘Brooklyn,’ ‘Hateful Eight,’ ‘Room’ Among Films Not Eligible for WGA Awards.

‘The Big Short,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ Land USC Scripter Award Nominations.

Humanitas Prize Finalists: ‘Still Alice’, ‘Black-ish’ Writers Among Nominees.

National Society of Film Critics Names ‘Spotlight’ Best Picture.

‘Spotlight,’ ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Among Producers Guild Film Nominees.

People’s Choice Awards 2016: Full Winners List.

BAFTA Awards: ‘Carol’ and ‘Bridge of Spies’ Lead Nominations.

Why You Don’t Need to Take the Golden Globes Too Seriously: A Short Explainer.

Drunk at the Golden Globes: How 7,500 Glasses of Champagne Impact the Show.

Manohla Dargis and A. O. Scott: The Year the Studios Get It Right.

Relativity Turns To Kevin Spacey and Dana Brunetti To Run Its Film, TV Business.

Movie Theaters Are Back With $11 Billion Box Office Haul, Steady Stock Prices in 2015.

11 Reasons for Record-Breaking $11 Billion Box Office in 2015.

Global 2015 Box Office: Revenue Hits Record $38 Billion-Plus.

U.K. 2015 Box Office: Revenue Hits Record $1.91 Billion.

Hong Kong Box Office Climbs by 20% in 2015.

Spain Box Office Rises 8.6 Percent in 2015, Led by Local Hit.

The Biggest Movies of 2015 Are About Themselves.

7 Recurring Themes in Some of the Year’s Best Movies.

3 New Movie Distributors Made Waves in 2015.

Academy Voters Don’t Seem to Understand #OscarsSoWhite and Fear It Might Come Back.

Oscars: Why This Could Be the Year Only 5 Films Get Nominated for Best Picture.

Ricky Gervais Previews Golden Globes: No Jokes That Cause “Collateral Damage” (Q&A).

‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ and the Little Casting Choice That Makes a Huge Impact.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is North America’s all-time №1 movie.

The Force Awakens Is the Biggest Movie of All Time, but Not for Long.

2016: The Year of the Post-Superhero Superhero Movie.

16 Heroic Movie Characters Who Will Win You Over in 2016.

‘Rogue One,’ ‘Finding Dory’ Top Most Anticipated Movies of 2016.

The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2016.

Disney’s 2016 Slate: 13 Titles Include ‘Alice’ Sequel, ‘Star Wars’ Spinoff.

Disney Announces Five Female-Centric Pics for 2016, Only One Directed By Woman.

Digital Streaming Should Overtake Discs as Hollywood Profit Driver in 2016.

Will This Be China’s Big Year to Buy Into Hollywood.

Why China’s Wanda Purchase of ‘Jurassic World’ Producer Legendary Could Be Win-Win.

The Female Takeover of Hollywood: Soon, But Not Yet.

Five New Year’s Resolutions for the Distinguished Film Nerd.

New Yorker: The George Awakens.

What the Seven “Star Wars” Films Reveal About George Lucas.

When Exactly Does the Awakening Happen in ‘The Force Awakens’?

Han Solo Built a Kitchen for Leia on the Millennium Falcon.

‘Star Wars’ Monopoly Game to Add Rey After Controversy.

The 13 Indies You Must See This January.

The 7 Indies You Must See on VOD This January.

The Real Reporters Behind “Spotlight” On Reliving The Facts And Accepting The Fiction.

‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ Fan Film Whips Up Theatrical Release From Drafthouse Films.

All the Times A113 Shows Up in Disney•Pixar Movies.

‘Big Fish’ Writer John August Honored by Writers Guild.

Joss Whedon Confirms He’s Done with Marvel Movies, Clarifies When He Left.

J.J. Abrams Responds to “Rip-Off” Criticism About ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’.

In ‘The Big Short,’ Adam McKay Uses Absurdity as His Guide.

Darren Aronofsky Filming Series in Space for Nat Geo.

Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer screenplay complete.

Bryan Cranston and Franklin Leonard on the Hollywood Blacklist and The Black List.

7 Unforgettable Creations From the Mind of Hayao Miyazaki.

‘The Hateful Eight’ Is a Hellish Journey into Quentin Tarantino’s Psyche.

How Quentin Tarantino Changed The Ending Of ‘The Hateful Eight’.

‘Walking Dead’ Creator Frank Darabont’s Deposition Unsealed: “We Had Crisis-Level Problems”.

‘Steve Jobs’ Scribe Aaron Sorkin To Make Directorial Debut On High-Stakes Poker Memoir ‘Molly’s Game’.

Movie Theater to Be Given Away in Essay-Writing Contest.

Ed Wood’s “Plan 9” Studio to Be Preserved.

Mexico Claims El Chapo’s Interest in Biopic Led to His Arrest.

What Does a 21st Century Film School Look Like.

Superhero TV Shows in 2015: 7 Biggest Moments and Most Shocking Revelations.

TCA Kick Off: Burning Questions for TV’s Top Executives.

‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ Renewed Through 2020.

2015 Was Another Insanely Huge Season for the NFL on TV.

Why TNT Thinks You’ll Watch 3-Minute Commercials.

When ‘The X-Files’ Became A-List: An Oral History of Fox’s Out-There Success Story.

Twitter May Expand Tweet Limit to 10,000 Characters.

Twitter Isn’t Raising the Character Limit… It’s Becoming a Walled Garden.

Page Views Don’t Matter Anymore — But They Just Won’t Die.

Netflix’s Content Chief Just Perfectly Summarized How the TV Industry’s Been Broken Since Birth.

New on Netflix’s 2016 Agenda: Making Real Money.

Netflix Nearing Russia Launch.

Netflix Launches in 130 More Countries.

This Simple Trick Helped Netflix Increase Video Viewing by More Than 20 Percent.

Movies and TV Shows Leaving Netflix in January 2016.

10 Good Movies to Watch on Amazon Prime in January 2016.

Yahoo Shutters Video Service Yahoo Screen.

Yahoo Plans to Fire At Least 1000 Employees.

YouTube Exec Doubles Down on Online Video Growth Projection.

Roku Has Sold One Million Smart TVs in the U.S., Will Introduce 4K Models in 2016.

What Amazon’s 2015 Bestsellers Say About Us.

Why Does the Internet Love Watching These “Lesbians Touch Penis”.

A Nigerian comics startup is creating African superheroes.

New Yorker: The Mogul of the Middle.

Writers Guild of America, West calendar of events: January 2016.

Lexi Alexander: Of Fear And Fake Diversity.

The Bitter Script Reader: That time Jane Espenson answered my letter.

The Bitter Script Reader: Conversation with Franklin Leonard.

Black List (Terry Huang): 2015 in Film.

Matty Granger: My “STAR WARS: EPISODE VII Review. The Force Awakens & The Rise Of Idiot Journalism.

Sean Penn: Extols the movie “The End of the Tour”.

Gavin Polone: How Studios’ Phony Accounting Screws Everyone (Including Themselves).

Bob Saenz: Surviving Setbacks.

Bryan Singer: How we made The Usual Suspects.

Terrible Minds: Be The Writer That You Are, Not The Writer Other People Want You To Be.

Scriptnotes: Episode 261.

WTF with Marc Maron: Episode 670 — Todd Haynes / Sarah Silverman.

Watch: 7-Minute Video Essay Looks At The Importance Of Framing In Some Of 2015’s Most Memorable Films [video].

[Watch] Understanding Aspect Ratio [video].

Watch: Let Me In: The Films of Noah Baumbach [video].

Watch: Malick Motifs [video].

Watch: ‘The Big Short’ Writer-Director Adam McKay Broke Rules to Make a Crowd-Pleasing Awards Contender [video].

Watch: SXSW Film 2016 Unveils Early Highlights [video].

Watch: Video Essay Details Deleted Scenes & Unused Concepts From ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens” [video].

Watch: The Feminism of Studio Ghibli [video].

Watch: A Celebration of the Top-Grossing Women-Directed Films of 2015 [video].

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: Short but sweet. I’ve got just a couple of spots left for my Prep: From Concept to Outline online workshop which begins Monday. It’s been a major game-changer for many, many writers who’ve taken the course, not only in breaking an original story and prepping them to launch into their first draft with confidence, but also because they can adopt and adapt the prep process as laid out in the workshop for all future writing projects.

So join me, won’t you? To sign up, go here.