Small Screen: Native American TV Writers Lab Open To Apply and UTA CEO Discusses Compensation in The Age of Streaming
Daniel Ezra and Samantha Logan - All American (The CW)
Broadcast: Fans of The CW’s All American will be disappointed to learn that the broadcast show’s fifth season will not be making it onto Netflix in January. Though the show will return to The CW, it is unclear when binge-watching will be possible. As part of the legacy deal between Netflix and The CW, All American will be on the streamer at some point in 2023, but dates remain unclear – with Season 5 slated to have anywhere from 13 to 22 episodes, the earliest viewers can expect to stream rather than watch on TV is March of this year. The sports drama series, which premiered in January of 2021, was renewed for Season 5 in March, which aired in October. Season 5 sees cast members Daniel Ezra (Spencer James), Bre-Z (Tamia “Coop” Cooper), and Greta Onieogou (Layla Keating) return. Ezra’s portrayal of Spencer James finds its basis in the true story of star wide receiver Spencer Paysinger, who transferred from Crenshaw High School to affluent, primarily-white Beverly Hills High on the merits of his football abilities. The show follows James’ struggles to reconcile responsibility to his own community in Crenshaw with his life in Beverly Hills as he plays competitively throughout high school.
Nia Sondaya - Instagram
Cable: Showtime’s Yellowjackets has cast Nicole Maines (Supergirl), François Arnaud (The Borgias), and Nia Sondaya (Truth Be Told) in recurring roles. The thriller series, which has already been renewed for a third season, covers a group of teenagers who are involved in a plane crash in 1996, following their attempts to survive and recover as well as exploring their current lives in the year 2021. Sondaya will play Teen Akilah in the place of Keeya King, who left the show after Season 1; Maines will play a trauma survivor named Lisa; Arnaud will guest star as New York writer Paul in 4 episodes of the season. Season 2 will premiere on March 24.
Pantheon - AMC
Streaming: Despite a two-season order, AMC’s Pantheon has been canceled after just one season. Though Season 2 has been fully produced but will not air. The show has been a long-time coming writers began work in 2018, after which the show received a 2-season order in March of 2020. Based on an eponymous collection of short stories by award-winning author and translator Ken Liu, Pantheon follows Maddie (Katie Chang), a teen bullied at school who meets her late father online after his consciousness is uploaded to the Cloud. As the series progresses, more of these “Uploaded Intelligences” populate, threatening world war. Pantheon is not the only show to get the ax at AMC: Damascus, Invitation to a Bonfire, and season 2 of both 61st Street and Moonhaven were all sacked at the end of 2022, part of a $400M write-down. It is possible that AMC will look elsewhere to host some of these shows, including Pantheon, but nothing has yet been announced.
The viral fan-favorite series Wednesday has been renewed for a second season on Netflix. Following its original airing in November, Wednesday shattered platform records for hours watched, and has since become the second largest English language season of scripted TV on the platform. The reboot of The Addams Family follows Wednesday (Jenna Ortega) in her teenage years as she navigates her burgeoning psychic abilities, fights crime, and tries to solve the mystery of what happened to her parents 25 years prior. Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán bring to the screen re-imaginings of Morticia Addams and Gomez, members of the Addams family that audiences know and love. Tim Burton is executive producer and the director of 4 episodes in season 1.
Season 2 of Starz crime drama BMF premiered on January 6th. Producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson and other actors on the show have been teasing an action- and drama-packed season, as well as two upcoming spinoffs and a documentary that was released in December. Season 2 of BMF picks up where the previous season left off, with the true story of the Black Mafia Family, a drug trafficking and money laundering organization based in Atlanta, Georgia from the 1980s until the early 2000s. The season begins as brothers Meech and Terry Flenory are embroiled in a fight over their growing drug empire, with one brother seeking to expand the BMF reach and the other wanting to double down on their current markets. The Flenory feud deepens and complicates, implicating family and friends in ways nobody saw coming. Demetrius “Lil’ Meech” Flenory Jr. will play his father, real-life kingpin Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory, and actors Myles Truitt, Russell Hornsby,Laila Pruitt, Michole Briana White, and Steve Harris will return. New cast members on Season 2 include such names as La La Anthony, Mo’Nique, and Leslie Jones.
Luis Guzman - Gregg DeGuire / Stringer
Industry: Channel 4, a British free-to-air public broadcast television network, will remain in public ownership. In a LinkedIn message on January 5th, the network announced that the British government had decided to keep the Channel as a public service, canceling a £1.5bn suggested privatization against which the network had railed. In the statement, Channel 4 says, “We have spoken up for diverse and young audiences across the UK, nurtured new talent and held power to account. . . . [this] decision allows us to do even more to support creative jobs and skills across the UK, . . . and to continue opening up the sector for those aspiring to a career in TV and film.” Despite agreeing that Channel 4 should not be sold, the UK’s Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Michelle Donelan does say that "change is necessary" and has put forth suggested reforms to Channel 4’s current model. Among these proposals are allowing the broadcaster to make and own the rights to some or more of their programming (most of which is currently created and overseen by independent production companies in London) and moving more jobs outside of the city. Channel 4 has been government-owned and advertiser-funded since its inception in 1982, during which time the channel has been disallowed from making its own programs or owning the rights to them, possibly losing out on money to be made with sales to other broadcasters and streamers. Under the new proposals, it will be able to create and own some programming, opening the door to profit from those rights.
The 8th annual Native American TV Writers Lab has opened applications for 2023. The Lab is put on by the Native American Media Alliance in partnership with A+E, US Bank, and One Small Planet, with the goal of amplifying underrepresented Indigenous voices in scripted television. The lab prepares Native Americans for careers in TV writing with an intensive virtual workshop whose alumni have gone on to write for Netflix, CBS, HBO, and Hulu, as well as sold pilots and achieved literary notoriety. The lab also offers the opportunity to meet with industry personnel and network with corporations and their staff. Only 10 participants are selected per year. The lab runs from April to May, with participants expected to complete a script by the end of the season. The earliest deadline to apply is January 16, the regular deadline is January 30, and the final deadline is February 13.
Esteemed actor Luis Guzmán has announced the launch of his own production company, called Mascot Camp Productions. Mascot has already partnered with Rescue Dog Productions, Matthew Dwyer, and Michael Hollingsworth. Guzmán’s company plans to make six feature films and four TV series in the first two years of production, releasing the films – Enough, about a trans man and his family, and 6 Rounds, a crime drama – first. Guzmán, a respected name in both domestic and international cinema, and his colleague John LaBrucherie hope that Mascot Camp can “immediately impact the current viewing environment,” with strength in both numbers and diversity and a focus on inclusion and outreach.
Quay Street Productions has named Samantha McMillon as their new COO. McMillon is the first to hold a COO position at Quay Street, where she will oversee commercial operations. Producer Nicola Shindler, who owns Quay Street, met McMillon when they both worked for ITV Studios, of which Quay Street is a part. Quay Street plans to release two dramas in 2023; Nolly with Helena Bonham Carter, and Significant Other starring Katherine Parkinson and Youssef Kerkour. As part of this effort, the company has developed its team in the last year, adding more employees and even new positions in anticipation of its growth.
Jeremy Zimmer, CEO of United Talent Agency, appeared on Peter Kafka’s Recode Media Podcast to discuss compensation for talent in a changing media landscape. Zimmer posits that as streaming services such as Netflix exit the periphery of media consumption and become the norm for how audiences consume content, the structure used to pay talent involved in these productions needs to evolve in kind.
“Whether it was TV or movies,” Zimmer explains, in the past, “your biggest talent . . . were able to claim some part of the product’s performance. They could say, ‘you’re going to pay me this much, and then with success . . . If it goes into syndication, I’ll see some of that [money].”
Should the movie be sold, talent will see some of the money from these acquisitions –– in other words, for talent on TV shows, additional compensation came from the shows’ continued success through secondary sales. However, when streaming platforms like Netflix, who increasingly depend on advertising for much of their profit, sell a show to another broadcaster, talent involved in that show rarely see more money. Because Netflix originals are just that, originals, there are no syndication sales. Combine this with ad revenue that doesn’t make it into the hands of talent, and Zimmer says there is an unfair deal. Why, in a media landscape that has changed so drastically since the inception of scripted television, have contracts with talent not evolved?
The conversation is different, he acknowledges, for streaming services like AppleTV and Amazon Prime, who are a part of a larger company with many other streams of revenue. Zimmer admits that there is no clear-cut solution, nor has anyone proposed anything new to rectify what he sees as a growing problem. He offers that the way out of the situation is “putting smart people in rooms, who can figure out mutually beneficial solutions” that neither place all of the blame on talent nor streamers. An upcoming negotiation with the Writers’ Guild of America, a combination of unions representing TV and film writers, may address these problems. For the WGA, the fight is to ensure the development of streaming services doesn’t leave writers behind. What will the future look like? Zimmer admits he doesn’t know.
“The battles have changed multiple times, presumably they will change again down the line,” he says. “We need to find some way that if the model changes again . . . that we can have room to be compensated fairly.”
More than ever, scripted television has become a bastion of popular culture, and with this boom comes a need to restructure an aging compensation model. Whether streamers and talent can reach an agreement that simultaneously has teeth and the ability to evolve remains to be seen.