English Entertainment
‘Unreal’ season 2 to take on gender and equality based issues
MUMBAI: Critics’ Choice Television Award winner Unreal will push the bar on equality and gender based issues, according to show runner Sarah Gertude Shapiro.
Unreal takes place behind the scenes of a fictional reality dating show, “Everlasting”.
The first season features Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer in leading roles as producer Rachel Goldberg and executive producer Quinn King respectively. They are joined by an ensemble cast which included Harry Potter alumni Freddie Stroma as Everlasting’s devastatingly charming suitor Adam Cromwell, Johanna Braddy, Josh Kelly and Jeffrey Bower-Chapman amongst others.
The second season which will be telecast in India on Star World is all set to tackle issues of race, gender and men’s rights. Featuring B.J Britt as the latest suitor, the show’s season two is already breaking the norm by doing what no dating reality show did – casting an African-American leading man.
Joining him will be veteran actor Bruce Davison who plays Randy, a cowboy musician from Quinn’s past, Christopher Cousins as Gary, the President of the channel that airs the fictional show and relative newcomer Lindsay Musil as Beth, a small town girl vying for Britt’s character.
Shapiro said: “The first season was really about the princess fantasy, and the power of this fantasy of being rescued. For both sides of the gender spectrum. or all sides of it, [there is] the idea that one person can show up and rescue you and change your whole life. And [in] the second season, we’re really exploring race and masculinity. And that is a big shift for us. It’s still Everlasting, but with a different suitor, and the suitor is going to be black, so [we’re] exploring the race politics of that.”
Shapiro said Season 2 will top all the reality TV tropes covered in Season 1, “I think race is a big way to top that. It’s the elephant in the room … the fact that those shows have never had an African-American lead. For us, I think you top that by pushing our universe into a place the real universe hasn’t gone.”
Unreal is created by Marti Noxon and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro, and was inspired by Shapiro’s award-winning independent short film Sequin Raze. The show has been awarded the Critics’ Choice Television Award for being the Most Exciting New Series and the American Film Institute Award for Top 10 Television programmes of 2015.
Unreal season 1 is currently being telecast on Star World and Star World HD. The show’s second season will be telecast on the channel following the US premiere.
English Entertainment
Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approve Paramount deal
Investors wave through a $111 billion megamerger but deliver a stinging, if toothless, rebuke over half-a-billion-dollar goodbye packages
NEW YORK: The shareholders said yes to the deal. They said no to the cheque. At a virtual special meeting on Thursday that lasted barely ten minutes, Warner Bros. Discovery investors voted overwhelmingly to approve Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of the company — and then turned around and voted against the lavish exit pay packages lined up for chief executive David Zaslav and his fellow outgoing executives.
Not that it will make much difference. The compensation vote is purely advisory and non-binding. The Warner Bros. Discovery board can, and almost certainly will, pay out as planned.
But the symbolism stings. It is the second consecutive year that WBD shareholders have voted against the executive compensation packages, and this time they had good reason. Zaslav’s exit deal is, by any measure, extraordinary. Under the terms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he is set to receive $34.2 million in cash severance, $517.2 million in equity in the combined company, and $44,195 in continued health coverage — a total of at least $550 million. On top of that, Warner Bros. Discovery has agreed to reimburse Zaslav up to $335 million for taxes assessed by the Internal Revenue Service on his accelerated stock vesting, though the company says that figure will decline depending on when the deal closes. As of March 11, Zaslav also held $115.85 million in vested WBD stock awards — and last month sold a further $114 million worth of WBD shares.
Shareholder advisory firm ISS recommended voting against the compensation measure, citing “problematic” tax reimbursements to Zaslav and the full vesting of his stock awards.
Zaslav will be bound by a two-year non-competition covenant and a two-year non-solicitation of customers and employees after the deal closes.
His lieutenants are not walking away empty-handed either. J.B. Perrette, chief executive and president of global streaming and games, is in line for $142 million, comprising $18.2 million in cash severance and $123.9 million in equity. Bruce Campbell, chief revenue and strategy officer, will receive an estimated $121.5 million, including $18.8 million in severance and $102.7 million in equity. Chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels is set for $120 million, made up of $6.6 million in cash severance and $113.1 million in equity. Gerhard Zeiler, president of international, will get $82.6 million, including $11.9 million in severance and $70.7 million in equity.
The deal itself, clinched in February after Netflix declined to raise its bid for Warner Bros., still needs regulatory clearance from the Justice Department and European authorities. Several state attorneys general are also weighing legal action to block it.
Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, was unsparing. “The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger isn’t a done deal,” she said after the shareholder vote. “State attorneys general across the country are stepping up to stop this antitrust disaster. We need to keep up this fight.”
If it does go through, the combined entity would be a formidable beast, bringing together Paramount Skydance’s stable — CBS, CBS News, Paramount Pictures, Paramount+, BET, MTV and Nickelodeon — with WBD’s portfolio of HBO, Max, Warner Bros. film and TV studios, DC, CNN, TBS, TNT, HGTV and Discovery+. Paramount has said it expects $6 billion in cost savings from the merger, which is Wall Street shorthand for mass layoffs on a significant scale.
The ten-minute meeting was presided over by chairman Samuel Di Piazza Jr., with Zaslav, Campbell, Wiedenfels and chief communications officer Robert Gibbs in virtual attendance. Di Piazza was bullish. “We appreciate the support and confidence our stockholders have placed in us to unlock the full value of our world-class entertainment portfolio,” he said. “With Paramount, we look forward to creating an exceptional combined company that will expand consumer choice and benefit the global creative talent community.”
Zaslav echoed the sentiment. “Over the past four years, our teams have transformed Warner Bros. Discovery and returned the company to industry leadership,” he said. “Today’s stockholder approval is another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction that will deliver exceptional value to our stockholders.”
Paramount Skydance struck a similar note. “Shareholder approval marks another important milestone towards completing our acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery,” it said in a statement, adding that it looked forward to “closing the transaction in the coming months.”
The shareholders have spoken on the merger. On the pay, they were ignored before the vote was even counted.
