Hello, and welcome to this Thursday's edition of The Monitor, WIRED’s entertainment news roundup. This time around, we've got news about Amazon, Disney, and Netflix—oh my!
Today in Dream Collaborations news, Amazon is reportedly working on a TV adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s 1987 sci-fi book Dawn to be helmed by Ava DuVernay and Victoria Mahoney. According to The Wrap, Amazon has given a script-to-series commitment to the TV adaptation, which DuVernay will executive produce through her Array Filmworks collective. The Hugo Award–winning novel tells the story of an African American woman enlisted by aliens to bring back the human race 250 years after a nuclear war destroys Earth. Mahoney, who recently served as the second unit director on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, is writing the adaptation and slated to direct the pilot.
In a move that surprised most of Hollywood, Disney announced earlier this week that Bob Iger was stepping down as CEO. Iger, who had been in the role since March 2005, was immediately replaced by another Bob—Bob Chapek, Disney’s chair of parks, experiences, and products. Iger, the company announced Tuesday, will serve as executive chair and will head up Disney’s creative endeavors until his contract ends on December 31, 2021.
Netflix is notoriously tight-lipped about how many people watch its programming and where. But at a panel this week at the Berlin Film Festival, the company’s head of international originals, Rachel Eggebeen, said the company may start sharing more performance data with producers. “We’ve been starting to share more data with our producers, and that will absolutely continue,” Eggebeen said. Netflix also revealed this week that the company would begin putting lists of the top 10 most-popular movies and TV shows in user’s feeds on the app.
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