No One Wins In the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard Case
Recap: After losing a libel trial in the UK in 2020, many legal experts predicted that Amber Heard would easily win a defamation case that her former husband, Johnny Depp, brought against her in the United States. The case revolved around a 2018 Op-Ed Heard had written for the Washington Post claiming that two years prior, she “became a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Depp and his lawyers refuted the claim and insisted she was the instigator of the abuse. The late spring case became a ratings and social media event with both actors’ careers seemingly on the line (Depp had already lost his role in “The Fantastic Beasts” franchise after the U.K. verdict). In a complicated case with a Heard counterclaim, a jury said that Depp was defamed by Heard with actual malice and awarded him a combined $10 million in compensatory and $5 million in punitive damages. Heard, on the other hand, was ruled to be defamed by Depp’s former lawyer, Adam Waldman, in $2 million of damages to be paid by Depp. Virginia law lowered the punitive damages to $350,000, and Heard was unsuccessful in getting her judgments overturned. Following weeks of testimony, however, neither actor came out of the hearings untarnished. In December, Heard decided against a retrial and agreed to a $1 million settlement with Depp that the latter pledged would be donated to charity.
What’s Next: Depp recently filmed celebrated filmmaker Maïwenn’s “La Favorite” which will be released in France in 2023 and then stream on Netflix 15 months later (per French law). The film will likely find Depp returning to the Cannes Film Festival for the first time since the legal actions. Heard is still expected to appear in “Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom,” which hits theaters on Dec 23, 2023.
“House of the Dragon” vs. “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power”
Recap: In a streaming showdown of legacy fantasy franchises, it appears both HBO and Amazon Studios won. After acquiring the rights to “Lord of the Rings” for a massive $200 million+ pricetag, Amazon spent years (including a pandemic delay) developing the first season of what would become known as “The Rings of Power.” They also put a stake in the ground announcing a Sept. 2, 2022, release date over two and a half years beforehand. That didn’t stop HBO from dropping the first episode of its long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel, “House of Dragon,” just two weeks before on August 21 (Disney+ smartly moved its new “Star Wars” series “Andor” out of the initial fray to Sept. 21). Both programs have been championed by their respective corporate entities (and third party viewership companies) as massive hits. “Rings of Power” became the first Amazon Studios program to top Neilsen’s original and overall titles categories, with 1.253 billion minutes watched for the week of August 29. Amazon revealed toward the end of September that nearly 100 million customers had watched the program. By December, Amazon Studios Vernon Sanders said the overall series amounted to 24 billion hours streamed and even boosted sales of J.R.R. Tolkein’s books on the retailer. Overall, Nielsen tracked “Lord of the Rings” as more watched than “House of Dragon” for every week they had concurring episodes, but one. That being said, don’t cry for HBO. “House of the Dragon” was a massive hit, with a younger overall audience than “Rings of Power,” and it still landed over 1 billion minutes of streaming viewership. The “Dragon” has also bested “Rings of Power” in year-end critics’ list mentions and early awards nominations so far.
What’s Next: Both series are in production for a second season, with neither expected to return until 2024. Whether they avoid releasing in the same time frame remains to be seen.
The “Don’t Worry Darling” Press Tour
Recap: Did Harry Styles spit in co-star Chris Pine’s lap at the world premiere in Venice? Did Florence Pugh arrive at the festival at the exact time the movie’s official press conference was occurring on purpose? Who was sleeping with who on set? Why had the usually social media-savvy Pugh barely promoted the film on social media? Why was director Olivia Wilde continually putting her foot in her mouth during interviews? And how did a disputed firing before filming somehow make Shia LaBeouf look good? The publicity tour leading up to the Warner Bros. release was either an unmitigated disaster or an example of how, in the age of social media, no publicity is bad publicity when promoting a project. The only figures who remained utterly unscathed from the drama were Pine and Nick Kroll. And as for the movie, it barely survived a silly awards season hyped September release date to earn a break-even $86 million global tally (it would have been an ideal February or March opener) before finding newfound popularity on HBO Max.
What’s Next: Wilde’s next directing assignment is unclear (the Kerri Strug movie is dead), Styles finishes up his world tour, and Pugh has three films releasing in 2023: “A Good Person,” “Oppenheimer” and “Dune, Part II.”
The Great Visual Effects Logjam Of 2022
Recap: A year ago, the 2022 release schedule looked fruitful. Then the delays came. “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” “Ant-Man: Quantumania,” “The Flash” and “Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom” all moved to 2023. And then, quizzically, critics and viewers started to notice lower-quality visual effects in both Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm series (“Moon Knight,” “She-Hulk,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” etc.). While every film and series is different, the major culprit was simply too much demand and not enough top-tier VFX houses. And this is all without public knowledge of other films stuck in the VFX pipeline waiting for their “turn.” Then, for the first time in memory, visual effects artists started publicly venting over unacceptable working conditions. Oh, a lot of them started to vent.
What’s Next: Marvel has reportedly attempted to address its VFX issues, which appears to include fewer series on Disney+ in 2023. A slew of CG-heavy films is still on track for next year. Will they get finished in time?
“Top Gun: Maverick” Keeps Movie Theaters Alive (Not Enough Product)
Recap: At one point, it was scheduled for 2019, but the real release date for Joseph Kosinski’s “Top Gun: Maverick” was intended to be June 26, 2020. We all know what happened next. But, instead of selling the film to Netflix, Amazon, or Apple or doing a hybrid minimal pandemic release with PVOD, Paramount waited. And they didn’t just wait till 2021 and the hope of vaccines. They waited until May 2022 and following a Cannes Film Festival premiere, the sequel to a 26-year-old film became a box office sensation. Still in theaters here and there, “Top Gun: Maverick” has earned over $1.4 billion worldwide, making it the no. 1 movie globally in 2022 and no. 11 all-time. It also gave Cruise the biggest hit in his 40-year career. Perhaps more importantly, however, it kept movie theaters alive this past summer. Due to several factors (including the last entry in this feature), there were simply not enough major releases over the past 12 months. One reason that films such as “The Menu,” “Elvis,” “The Lost City,” “Nope,” “Everything All At Once,” “The Woman King” and “Barbarian” had longer lives in theaters than they might have pre-pandemic. But without “Maverick”? We can’t fathom where the theatrical distribution business would be at this point.
What’s Next: Oscar and guild nominations for “Maverick,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Pt. 1” for Cruise in July and an almost “normal” release schedule with multiple big releases on the same weekend in 2023.
Peak TV Shows Signs Of Crashing
Recap: It finally appears to be happening. Despite the advent of streaming services throwing every television show possible on the wall, hoping something will stick (and encourage signups), the narrative TV boom is slowing down. 2022 was actually up 16% year over year in August, but that’s the true “peak.” WarnerBros. Discovery has already canceled programs with completed seasons for tax write-offs (such as the second season of “Minx”). AMC has also canceled previously renewed series, including the second season of “Moonhaven” and Starz did the same with “Dangerous Liaisons.”
What’s Next: FX head honcho John Landgraf, who coined the term Peak TV, will have his annual state of the industry at the TCA Winter Tour in January. Oh, and if there is a work stoppage due to a WGA or DGA strike this spring, Peak TV is definitely over.
Netflix Has A Rocky Year, Wall Street No Longer Values Streaming The Way It Did & The Future Of The Industry Is Unclear
Recap: To us, this is, without question, the biggest story of the year, at least on the industry level. Think back to the late fall of 2019 and early 2020; Disney+ and Apple TV+ launched in November of 2019, Paramount+ arrived in March, Universal’s Peacock launched in April, and Warner Bros.’ HBO Max launched in May. All these services are ravenous for content, green light a million projects, and spend billions of dollars, and Disney’s Bob Iger really says it all the following December (2020) when he says streaming is the future of our company. Iger means it, and every company in the world is following suit. They all want to be Netflix, the golden goose of the streaming industry that has several years on them and disrupted the industry ages ago.
We enter the age of #TooMuchContent in a way that FX’s John Landgraf could never predict, but not even two years later, the bottom falls out. Wall Street essentially has changed its mind. In January 2020, Netflix stock gets pummeled, closing at the lowest level since April 2020 after disappointing earnings and Wall Street downgrades. And then it happens again in April of this year, Netflix announced it had lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade, and then its stock plunged another 35% from the previous drop. This time it is news that’s heard around the world, with CNN saying Netflix’s world has been “turned upside down” as investors lose confidence in the streamer. It’s called the first “disastrous” year for Netflix. The company—which has never had to bother with advertisers because of its massive subscriber base—quickly announces and then implements an ad-model-tier subscription, the first sign that Netflix is vulnerable to the whims of the marketplaces after years of being unaffected by any and all changes.
What seems apparent? The bubble of streaming has burst (see above), but much of it is founded on Netflix’s calamity. The ripple effect is enormous, and the industry panics. Warner Bros. Discovery which has just merged, is already on shaky ground, and with Wall Street reevaluating the worth of all streaming channels, HBO Max seems to start gutting half of their shows, canceling series left and right. Many of the other streamers begin to follow suit, and as an advertising freeze hits in the middle of the summer as the panic grows, things begin to look dire for all streamers and the worried film and TV industry around it. If and when there are more calamities down the road for various streaming companies, you’ll be able to trace it all back to what happened to Netflix in 2022 and how Wall Street lost confidence in the growth possibilities of these companies.
What’s Next: The cutting of budgets, the canceling of more shows, the anxious minding of the bottom dollar, and an industry that will enter 2023 with a lot of fiscal conservative thinking and uncertainty. – Rodrigo Perez
Ryan Murphy Has A Netflix Comeback
Recap: If you were to ask anyone in the television world who would be the next big name to leave Netflix, it was likely Ryan Murphy. The TV factory producer signed an overall deal with Netflix in 2018 for a staggering $300 million. Murphy left the friendly confines of then-Fox Television for the new agreement, but it let him continue to finish projects or develop new seasons of “American Horror Story” and “American Crime Story” for his longtime home, FX. Murphy was one of three big deals showrunner Netflix made along with Shonda Rhimes and Kenya Barris. The latter left before his own $100 million deal was up (not on the best of terms), and Rhimes has delivered the monster hit “Bridgerton” and last year’s buzzworthy mini-series “Inventing Anna.” Murphy, on the other hand, mostly brought in vanity projects such as the middling dramedies “The Politician” (canceled after two seasons) and “Hollywood” as well as one-off films he either directed or produced such as “The Prom” and a remake of “The Boys in the Band.” Murphy had delivered a hit with 2020’s “Ratched,” but that was a series made through Twentieth Television before his overall deal (i.e., it didn’t count). In fact, a second season for that thriller is partially up in the air because Netflix does not own the program. With rumors flying he’d soon be back in the Disney/20th Studios fold, something happened. Murphy dropped two big hits right in Netflix’s lap when it arguably, needed them the most. In September, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” became the second most-watched English-language series worldwide for Netflix, ahead of the aforementioned “Bridgerton” and right behind “Stranger Things.” This past fall Murphy also delivered the mini-series “The Watcher,” which debuted at no. 1 on the service and was the top program streamed in the U.S. the week of October 10. Those results are making that $300 million investment look much, much wiser. The big question now is: Does Murphy even want to say? And can the newly re-installed Iger convince him to return “home”?
What’s Next: Two more greenlit seasons of “Monster” and another season of “The Watcher” at Netflix and” American Sports Story” (the first being about Aaron Hernandez) and “American Love Story” are moving forward at FX, meaning Murphy will continue to split his time between the two entities while Netflix pays the bills.
Late Night Shakeup As Trevor Noah Says Goodbye, With James Corden To Follow
Recap: There are big changes in the late-night talk show landscape. In July, only a few months after its merger was complete, Warner Bros. Discovery canceled the critically acclaimed “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” a TBS staple for seven years. In April, James Corden revealed he’d be leaving “The Late Late Show” in 2023. Considering how much Corden juggled the program with his film and narrative television roles, that wasn’t actually too shocking. The major surprise was on Sept. 29 when Trevor Noah stunned co-workers and Paramount corporate by revealing he’d depart “The Daily Show,” a gig he took over after being hand-picked by Jon Stewart in 2015. In fact, Noah was gone less than three months later on Dec. 9. Neither CBS nor Comedy Central has announced replacements for Corden or Noah as of yet. And with a struggling ad market expected in 2023, it’s possible neither will be in a rush to commit to any one major anytime soon.
What’s Next: Noah has announced a world tour while Comedy Central has revealed an intriguing lineup of guest hosts for “The Daily Show,” including Chelsea Handler, Kal Penn, Al Franken, Sarah Silverman, and Leslie Jones. Corden is expected to leave this spring officially, and rumors are flying that another regular late-night voice may depart as well.