In addition to contending with swarms of placard-wielding screenwriters belting out chants like, “DISNEY, SHOWTIME, HBO, WITHOUT OUR SCRIPTS YOU GOT NO SHOW,” the suits have had to re-jigger their upfront strategies to varying degrees. Sources familiar with the presentations at Disney, NBCU, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox Corporation told us the plan was to lean into news, sports, and reality programming. “We’re all in the same boat,” said an executive at one of the companies.
In any case, the in-person event would have been a rather understated affair by Netflix standards. The Paris Theater seats just 571 people; in contrast, the Theater at Madison Square Garden, where Warners is set to make its pitch to ad buyers, has room for several thousand. And it appears the virtual Netflix upfront will have even less wattage than what the company was originally planning: our source adds that Netflix has decided not to feature talent during the presentation.
Plans for all of the presentations were still in flux as we were wrapping up this story on Friday. But a source familiar with Disney’s upfront said the event will continue as planned, and that it will even have talent in attendance. A second source, however, told us that talent involved in scripted projects have been pulling out of their scheduled appearances.
One more thing: in a surprise plot twist befitting a Hollywood script, NBCU suddenly has a bigger headache on its hands than a bunch of angry picketers. On Thursday evening, just three days before the company’s presentation was set to kick off the entire upfronts shebang on Monday morning, news—an ad-world fixture known to dazzle the upfronts crowd with her lavish outfits—was in talks with
Entertainment Entertainment Latest News, Entertainment Entertainment Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Source: bleedingcool - 🏆 20. / 69 Read more »