Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 335th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Box Office: Hollywood Suffers Worst March Downturn in Recent Memory.

Women and POC Led the Box Office’s Top Films for 11 of the Past 12 Weekends.

‘Black Panther’ Is Officially the Highest-Grossing Superhero Movie in U.S. Box Office History.

No hero is safe: Marvel has let the Avengers: Infinity War writers kill off anyone they want.

Disney Developing a Disneyland Grad Nite Movie.

A24 Founding Partner John Hodges to Exit.

A24 Claims Apple Acquisition Isn’t Real And Just A Rumor.

Apple May Not Buy A24, But Don’t Be Surprised If It Did: Silicon Valley Increasingly Defines Hollywood.

Endeavor Buys Streaming Provider NeuLion for $250 Million.

Hollywood Hopes to Cash in as Saudi Arabia Lifts Its 35-Year Ban on Movie Theaters.

U.K. Creative Industries Get $212M Funding Boost to Strengthen Global Competitiveness.

Steven Spielberg Says Netflix Movies Shouldn’t Be Eligible for Oscars.

Steven Spielberg Finally Settles Carl’s Jr. “SpielBurger” Battle.

Steven Spielberg Resurrects a Lost Dalton Trumbo Script for Amazon.

Martin Scorsese’s New Film Course: ‘Portraits of America’ Teaches Democracy Through Chaplin, Coppola, and More.

Margot Robbie to Produce Female-Led Shakespearean Drama Series.

Examining How Films Effectively Utilize Cliché.

Why Pop Culture Is Obsessed With The 1980s Right Now.

A Recent History of Movies that Look and Feel like a Memory.

‘Isle of Dogs’ Co-Writer Roman Coppola on Becoming Wes Anderson’s Collaborative Secret Weapon.

Orson Welles’ Voodoo Macbeth: A forgotten diversity landmark.

The full story behind the Legally Blonde ending you didn’t get to see.

Donald Glover Releases Mock Script For His Animated ‘Deadpool’ Series After Marvel Cancels the Project.

The New Pixar Short Will Be About a Dumpling That Comes to Life.

Domee Shi Will Be the First Woman to Direct a Pixar Short Film with ‘Bao’.

‘Sharknado’ Saga To End Where It Began Thanks to Time-Traveling Sixth Movie.

The 2018 Network Pilot Season Shows Considerable Gains for Women Directors.

Critic’s Notebook: The Blinding Whiteness of Nostalgia TV.

TV Academy Further Expands Membership Eligibility.

Study: TV Ad Spending Declined by $1 Billion in 2017.

‘Silicon Valley’ Clowns Facebook for Russian Troll Scandal.

‘Westworld’ Season 2 Trailer Decoded: Shogun World, Civil War and Nirvana Unchained.

‘True Detective’ Director Shuffle: Jeremy Saulnier Exits, Daniel Sackheim Signs On.

Apple’s Original TV Programming Won’t Arrive Until 2019.

Top Female Showrunners Talk TV Industry Battles, Opening Doors for Others.

A Nintendo Fan Has Calculated the Size of Super Mario’s Brother Luigi’s Penis.

‘Beetlejuice’ Musical Sets Pre-Broadway Premiere.

Commencement Speeches 2018: List of Hollywood Speakers.

Listen: 3rd & Fairfax (Episode 86).

Watch: Pixar’s Tribute to Cinema.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

Workshop your story’s antagonist character in my 1-week online course. Begins Monday, April 2nd.

If the Protagonist is most often your story’s most important character, the Nemesis is not far behind. Indeed some of the greatest characters in film history have been Nemeses including Darth Vader (Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope), the Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz), Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs), and the shark (Jaws).

If conflict is the stuff of great drama, there is perhaps no conflict more compelling than that of a Protagonist versus a Nemesis. But what makes for a worthy Nemesis? How to develop them?

Following up on my recent Create a Compelling Protagonist course, I’m offering Create a Worthy Nemesis. It is a 1-week writing course that takes a unique approach to developing this pivotal character in that we start the process with the Protagonist.

I found Scott Myers’ online workshop on writing a “worthy nemesis” extremely helpful as a first time screen writer it answered some key questions about character construction and relation, gave me a lot of food for thought and was overall a great experience. I will surely come back for another course once I have applied all that I learned on this one. — Zeba Bakhtiar

Here are the 7 lecture titles:

Lecture 1: Nemesis v. Antagonist
Lecture 2: Shadow v. Light
Lecture 3: Fear v. Need
Lecture 4: Disunity v. Unity
Lecture 5: Overlord v. Underdog
Lecture 6: Intelligence v. Wisdom
Lecture 7: Empathy v. Sympathy

Without a doubt, I’ve gotten more useful information out of this course than any other single course I’ve ever taken. I especially enjoyed the discussions of the applications of Carl Jung’s work to screenwriting. You’re doing great work. — Scott Gunn

Notice the clever theme of v. for versus? There’s a reason for that, one you will discover when you take the class. In addition to the seven lectures that I am writing, there is 24/7 forum feedback, six insider tips, a teleconference, and an opportunity to workshop one of your story’s Nemesis characters.

The most recent Create a Compelling Protagonist session has been phenomenal. In fact, I have extended the class for at least another week because of all the incredible conversations we’ve had along with great workshopping of participants’ Protagonists. I fully expect the my Nemesis class will just as stimulating.

This was my first time taking one of Scott’s classes, and it was totally worth it. He was full of unique insights, from his daily lectures to his Insider Tips (my favorite part of the course). Further, he was highly responsive to the myriad questions posed by students. I very much enjoyed the exchange of knowledge and advice that occurred among participants, another highlight. Would definitely recommend this class! — Jace Serrano

In 2017, I presented a condensed version of the Write a Worthy Nemesis class at the London Screenwriters Festival, the Austin Film Festival, and the Willamette Writers Conference. Packed rooms. Standing ovations. You can get the complete take in this week-long online course.

So sign up today right here and join me for a week’s journey into the dark side of the human soul, the place where great Nemeses figures dwell, waiting for you to find them.

Class start date: Monday, April 2.