Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 235th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

CinemaCon 2016: Highlights From The Studios’ Presentations In Las Vegas.

CinemaCon: The Buzz, the Highs and the (Surprise) Biggest Loser.

5 Lessons From the Cannes Film Festival Lineup.

Hasbro Cinematic Universe Takes Shape With Michael Chabon, Brian K. Vaughan, Akiva Goldsman.

Hot Panama Papers Project Shopped for Film and TV Amid Book Deal.

Every Generation Gets the ‘Jungle Book’ it Needs.

Does Disney’s ‘Jungle Book’ Success Spell Trouble for Warner Bros. Version.

In Disney Shakeup, Cost-Cutters Get Clout in Post-Staggs Era.

Oobee Do, All of Hollywood Wants to Be Like Disney, Too.

‘Beauty and the Beast’ to Prince Charming: Disney Animation Set for Live-Action Movies.

Paramount and 20th Century Fox’s Next 20-Plus Films All Directed by Men.

Producer James Schamus in Beijing: “China Is Becoming the New Hollywood”.

China Exec Who Put $500M Into Universal Pictures Says “More to Come”.

China Shuts Down Apple’s Film and Book Services.

How Hollywood Changes Movies to Appease Foreign Censors.

Orientalism, Whitewashing, and Erasure: Hollywood’s Historic Problem With Asian People.

Universal Sets First 4K Ultra HD Releases, Including ‘Jason Bourne’.

Academy Clarifies Its Rules Determining Members’ Voting Rights.

Superman Only Had 43 Lines in ‘Batman v Superman’.

A Dead Superhero is a Marvelous Corpse: A theory of superhero suffering and death.

Those Who Doubt Avatar’s Sequels Forget What Made the Original Great.

Why Hollywood’s Whitewashing of ‘Doctor Strange’ and ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Is So Frustrating.

Max Landis Blames Scarlett Johansson ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Casting Controversy on ‘Broken System’ in Hollywood.

Joss Whedon Calls ‘Age of Ultron’ His ‘Miserable Failure’.

Joss Whedon Says Comments About ‘Avengers: Age Of Ultron’ Were “A Disservice To The Movie, And To The Studio And To Myself”.

Why Does Hollywood Keep Disrespecting Melissa McCarthy?

“I’m Just Gonna Be A Student Again”: Francis Ford Coppola on His Five-Year Project to Redefine Cinema.

How Much Money Would It Cost to Be Captain America?

Hollywood Conservative Group Friends of Abe Disbands on Eve of California Primary.

‘Three’s Company’ Movie in the Works at New Line.

Arthouse Audit: ‘Green Room’ Opens Strong, ‘Sing Street’ Soft.

How ‘Green Room’ Director Jeremy Saulnier and DP Sean Porter Created the Film’s Gritty Look.

Interactive Map: The Rise and Fall of the Drive-In Movie.

ArcLight Cinemas to Launch Women in Entertainment Workshop Series.

Alamo Drafthouse CEO Talks Texting, the Future of Movie Theaters and Bernie Sanders in New Interview.

Why Producer Cassian Elwes Believes the Entertainment Paradigm Shift is ‘Starting to Happen Already’.

Six powerful media satires that actually predicted the future.

What Makes a Movie Gay? This Series Has Several Answers.

Film and TV Shoots in Los Angeles Spike 11.4 Percent in Q1.

Filming With Drones Raises Safety Concerns in Hollywood.

Average Movie Ticket Price Jumps to Record $8.58 in First Quarter.

‘Deadpool’-led Box Office Drives IMAX Q1 Revenue Up 48 Percent.

Hollywood Tax Incentives: A State-by-State Guide.

A Glimpse at What TV Shows People Are Watching, City by City.

Your Complete Guide To Spring Finales & Summer Premieres.

‘The Night Manager’s’ David Farr on Writing a Hit Series, Whether There Will Be a Sequel.

Beyond ‘Making a Murderer’: The Challenge Facing Documentary Mini-Series [Reality Checks].

‘Game of Thrones’ Showrunners Reveal Their Most ‘Brutal’ Season Yet.

The Essential Guide to ‘Game of Thrones’ Character Betrayals, Alliances, Schemes, and More.

David Chase: ‘The Sopranos’ Was a Middle Finger at the TV Establishment’.

New Yorker feature: Kenya Barris, showrunner of TV series “black-ish”.

Samantha Bee Has Proven Why Late-Night Needed Full Frontal.

Even ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ Writer Lawrence Kasdan Thinks TV Is the Future of Quality Storytelling.

‘Bones’ Lawsuit: How a Hit TV Show Loses Money.

How The Simpsons mastered the art of neutral political satire.

Looking Back at a Decade Ago When TV First Peaked.

Stephen Colbert Makes ‘Late Show’ Change in First Night Under New Showrunner.

How Lifetime Became One Of The Best Places In Hollywood For Women.

Comedy Central to Launch in Middle East, North Africa.

Can ‘Inside Amy Schumer’ and ‘Broad City’ Overcome the Underdog Complex?

MTV President Opens Up About Major Brand Reinvention: Music Is “Our Muse”.

The Good, the Bad, and the Overly Proper: Dialect Coaches Rank the American Accents of TV’s Foreign Actors.

China Bans Rich Kids From Reality TV to Avoid Embarrassing State, Parents.

Apple, Facebook, Google, and Alibaba Take Hollywood.

Netflix Is King of Paid Streaming, Study Says.

Netflix to Add 150 Hours of HDR Content by End of 2016.

Netflix Supports Premium VOD Service The Screening Room.

Amazon Launches Prime Video Standalone Option for $9 Monthly.

Amazon Prime Video Has 4 Times Netflix’s Movie Lineup.

How BuzzFeed Motion Pictures Is Retaining Its Top Talent.

Launch Your YouTube Series with Sundance New Voices Lab.

Google Wins Copyright Case Against Authors, Will Keep Scanning Books to Add to the Infosphere.

Google Puts Big Emphasis On Virtual Reality At I/O Conference.

Studio 360: The pioneers who are making the first virtual-reality narratives.

100th Anniversary Pulitzer Prizes Go to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s ‘Hamilton’, Emily Nussbaum.

The Oscars of Comics Just Nominated a Record Number of Women.

How Tribune Papers Plan to Profit Off Reader Comments.

Xbox 360 to Discontinue Production, Microsoft Says.

The Onion: Hollywood Stars Overthrown In Bloody C-List Uprising.

Doug Richardson: Screenwriting Questions Asked and Answered.

Bob Saenz: Writers Don’t Get No Respect.

Chuck Wendig: Lessons From 40: Four Decades Of Dumb Stuff I Learned.

Chicks Who Script: Episode 82.

Scriptnotes: Episode 246.

Watch: How a TV Show Gets Made.

Watch: Alexander Payne : The Science Of Failure.

Watch: 16-Minute Video Essay Makes The Case For Why Superhero Movies Suck.

Watch: 7+ Hour Teaser Trailer for the Longest Movie Ever Made.

R.I.P. Prince, legendary musician has died at the age of 57.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: Create a Compelling Protagonist in my upcoming 1-week online course!

In almost every movie, the most critical character is the Protagonist.

* Typically the story is told through their perspective.
* Their goal usually dictates the end point of the plot.
* All the other primary characters are somehow linked to the Protagonist.
* Normally they go through the most significant metamorphosis.
* And the Protagonist acts as the main conduit into the story for a script reader and moviegoer.

So guess what? You need to create a Protagonist that grabs a reader’s attention and keeps it for 100+ pages.

How to do that?

That’s what we will be exploring in my upcoming 1-week online class “Create a Compelling Protagonist”.

Go beyond writing a ‘sympathetic’ Protagonist. Dig deeper than giving your Protagonist a ‘flaw.’ That is surface level writing. In this class, you will learn an approach that will help you immerse yourself into this key character, and craft a Protagonist worth writing… and reading.

This class not only explores proven ways to help you create a compelling character, it also lays out an approach you can use as the groundwork for developing the rest of your story.

Seven lectures, 24/7 forum feedback, insider tips, 90-minute teleconference, and the opportunity to workshop your story’s Protagonist [or Protagonists].

Plus if you’re a fan of the movies Bridesmaids, The Social Network and Up, we’ll be using those as our study scripts. They offer a diverse set of Protagonists and yet the approach we will study next week shows how a writer can craft such compelling and different lead characters.

It all starts Monday, May 2. You can learn more and sign up here.

Here are some observations from writers who have taken the class with me:

“One week of Creating a Compelling Protagonist challenged me in ways I couldn’t challenge myself. If you want to develop your ideas, this is a rare opportunity at great value. Thank you, Scott!” — Brianna Garber

“I’ve taken a ton of classes, both inside and outside film school, and this was one of the best. The material provided a ton of inventive ways to approach the development of a solid, three-dimensional protagonist, and helped me dig deeper into the character’s internal world — forcing me to reject easy solutions, the first ideas that came to mind.” — Jason Young

“Scott generously offers up his knowledge, insight, time and resources, so that in just one week a fully formed character can begin to lead you into your story.” — Ellen Musikant

“A class that is perfect for anyone looking to learn the primary character archetypes, their psychology, and how they relate to the protagonist. The lectures provide thorough examples of these character archetypes in modern and classic movies, and the online forums were a hotspot to ask questions about the material or anything related to screenwriting. Scott’s style of teaching is highly accessible to anyone, as he creates an environment of easy, open discussion on the subject of character and welcomes any other questions you may have along the way.” — Kristen Vincent, sold spec script “Fetch” in 2013.

This 1-week Craft course is coupled with another class: Write A Worthy Nemesis. That begins Monday, May 2. For information on that session, go here.

This is the only time I will be offering these Craft classes in 2016, so take this opportunity and sign up now!