“Holding Space” for the ‘Wicked’ Press Tour

The press tour for Wicked started oddly and just got odder as it rolled along. In October, star Cynthia Erivo got so upset over a fan-made poster — it positioned her character’s hat so that it obscured her eyes — she posted on social media that it was the “wildest, most offensive thing I have seen.” Then there was the mix-up by Mattel in which Wicked-inspired Barbie dolls shipped out in boxes misprinted with the URL of a porn website. That inspired a class action suit against the toy manufacturer by a South Carolina resident who thought this was the wildest, most offensive thing they had ever seen. For weeks, Erivo and co-star Ariana Grande cried their way through questions about friendship and feelings of insecurity. The most viral moment came when Erivo was told by a journalist that “people are taking the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ and really holding space with that.” Erivo responded by putting a hand to her chest and offering — with either genuine tenderness or Oscar-worthy commitment — “I didn’t know that was happening.” Grande supported her co-star by reaching out and grabbing her … index finger? Christopher Guest couldn’t have directed a wackier parody.

George Clooney Wrote the Dumbest Op-Ed Ever

At the time, it seemed like a sensible enough idea. After all, during his 90-minute senior moment at the June debate against Donald Trump, Joe Biden looked like a surefire loser. So why shouldn’t Clooney, a major Democratic fundraiser, write an op-ed for The New York Times prompting the president to step aside and let a younger candidate run? What could possibly go wrong? Oy. But to be fair, Clooney wasn’t the only left-leaning celebrity who underdelivered this election cycle. Beyoncé, Will Ferrell, Richard Gere, Katy Perry, Dick Van Dyke — none of them were able to move the needle of public opinion enough to get Kamala Harris into the White House, not even Taylor Swift. In the end, America listened to Hulk Hogan.

Nicole Kidman (and Other Actresses of a Certain Age) Crushed it

You can’t go to the movies these days without bumping into Nicole Kidman (literally, if you’re in an AMC theater, where Kidman’s “We Make Movies Better” pre-previews ad has been running for what seems like decades). At 57 — once considered an awkward age for actresses — Kidman never has been more in demand. Her steamy role in Babygirl, the new erotic thriller in which she plays a CEO who dabbles in a dangerous liaison with a much younger intern, won her the best actress prize at the Venice Film Festival in September. On the small screen, she headlined Netflix’s biggest hit of 2024, Perfect Strangers, and her series on Peacock, Lioness, just got picked up for a second season. Nor is Kidman the only over-50 actress who had a terrific 2024. Demi Moore’s harrowing turn in The Substance, playing an aging starlet who injects herself with an iffy youth serum, has earned the 62-year-old actress some of the most glowing reviews of her career (“Fearless,” gushed The Guardian). Pamela Anderson, 57, just won a Gotham Award for her role in The Last Showgirl, while Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore, both 64, are garnering raves for their performances in The Room Next Door, which won the Golden Lion in Venice (after its premiere received an 18-minute standing ovation). There also were notable turns by 50-year-old Amy Adams in Nightbitch, 57-year-old Marianne Jean-Baptiste in Hard Truths and 52-year-old Karla Sofía Gascón in Emilia Pérez, to say nothing of Thelma star June Squibb, who in November turned a sprightly 95.

Will Smith Was Forgiven

So, it turns out slapping Chris Rock in the face in front of 17 million Oscar viewers wasn’t such a terrible career move after all. Just two years after the smack — and his 10-year banishment from the Academy Awards — Will Smith was back on top of the box office, with June’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die grossing $404 million globally.

E.T. Went to Washington

There were, as always, plenty of extraterres- trials on screens in 2024. A Quiet Place: Day One (pictured below) landed in theaters in June, grossing $261 million worldwide, followed in August by Alien: Romulus (above), which grossed $350 million. Alien docs invaded the streamers, with The Manhattan Alien Abduction and Investigation Alien on Netflix and Beyond: UFOs and the Unknown on MGM+. But the most entertaining alien show this year was in Congress, which in November continued hearings started last year to solve the mystery of real-life UAPs, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (what they’re calling UFOs these days). “Let me be clear,” testified Luis Elizondo, a former military intelligence officer who spent a decade running an X Files-like program at the Pentagon investigating unexplained phenomenon. “UAP are real. Advanced technologies not made by our government, or any other government, are monitoring sensitive military installations around the globe.”

LFG L.A.! (They Not Like us)

Californians brought home seven golds from the Paris Olympics, then in October the Dodgers won the World Series and in December the Galaxy raised the MLS Cup. No less an authority than WalletHub crowned the city the nation’s top sports destination. We’re No. 1! 

Men Began Wearing Shirts Again — but Chest Hair Stuck Around

Male movie stars started losing their shirts a couple of years ago (see Timothée Chalamet at the 2022 Oscars), but in 2024, the masculine blouse made a triumphant return to the red carpet. The only thing was, a lot of guys apparently forgot how to button them up (see Pedro Pascal at the SAG Awards or, for that matter, Glen Powell on the cover of May 22’s Hollywood Reporter). Not to be outdone by the men, some female stars — like Bella Hadid, Zoë Kravitz, Kendall Jenner and Jennifer Lopez — also turned up on the red carpet this year with exposed (although much less hairy) upper torsos.

Joaquin Phoenix Had a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad 2024

Joker: Folie à Deux was such a colossal flop that it could have ruined any actor’s year. The grosses for this surprise musical (none of the trailers hinted there would be singing) were disappointing to say the least, a fraction of the billion dollars the original made in 2019. And the reviews! Harley Quinn couldn’t have been more brutal with her bat, with one critic accusing director Todd Phillips of making the movie “bad on purpose” and another calling it “whatever the exact opposite of fan service is.” Still, despite all that, the 50-year-old Oscar-winning actor might have walked away from the wreckage in one piece. Except just before the film came out, Joaquin Phoenix stepped on another rake, pulling out of Todd Haynes’ gay romance movie five days before production was scheduled to begin in Mexico. He never offered any public explanation for his abrupt departure from the since-scuttled project, which only made the reputational damage worse.

Podcasters Became Kingmakers

He hasn’t yet been offered a Cabinet post, but that’s probably because there isn’t a job in the White House that could make him more powerful than his current gig — podcaster in chief. Joe Rogan’s three-hour conversation with an almost-stable-sounding Donald Trump just days before the election — and Rogan’s subsequent endorsement hours before the polls opened — may have normalized Trump just enough to sway undecideds (some voters in Arizona told reporters that Rogan’s interview, streamed by some 40 million Americans, was a “deciding factor”). Had the results gone differently, by the way, we’d be heralding Alex Cooper as a queenmaker, gushing about Kamala Harris’ October appearance on her Call Her Daddy podcast.

Former Kid Stars Finally Got Some Respect

There’s nothing new about child actors growing up to be pop stars — Britney Spears, Olivia Rodrigo and Justin Timberlake, to name a few — but it’s not every year a pair of them end up as Oscar contenders. Ariana Grande’s performance in Wicked and Selena Gomez’s in Emilia Pérez are both generating tons of awards buzz. Meanwhile, Shake It Up‘s former Rocky Blue, Zendaya, was on a hot streak in 2024, playing a tennis coach in Challengers and a Fremen warrior in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (and getting cast in Christopher Nolan’s next top-secret project). And let’s not forget Miley Cyrus, who just got nominated for a Golden Globe, or ex-Disney legend Lindsay Lohan, who had something resembling a comeback in 2024, starring in Netflix’s Christmas comedy Our Little Secret and an upcoming Freaky Friday sequel.

Alec Baldwin Was Acquitted … And Landed On a Reality Show

The windup to Alec Baldwin’s trial in July took three years — cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was accidentally shot and killed on the New Mexico set of his low-budget Western Rust in October 2021 — but the proceedings ended up lasting just three days. The judge tossed out the involuntary manslaughter charges against the 66-year-old actor before testimony had even begun. A tearful Baldwin hugged his wife, Hilaria, and got back to his life, which will soon include a TLC reality series about the day-to-day inside the Baldwin household that’s scheduled to debut in 2025. Rust, meanwhile, premiered in November in Poland. Baldwin was not invited.

YouTube Influencers Became the New Walter Cronkite

It was around Labor Day when I officially swore off network news. Election fatigue played a role in disconnecting, to be sure, but I’d also found an alternative: YouTube pundits who spend hours live on their channels dissecting the top stories of the day and exploring every possible angle. They have names like DJ Akademiks and Kempire, who specialize in hip-hop and pop culture; Emily D. Baker and the Florida Law Man, who break down legal headlines and filings; and titles like Popcorned Planet, The Art of Dialogue and, my personal favorite, Tisa Tells. 

As it turns out, I’m not the only one who has made the switch from broadcast and cable news to YouTube — a recent Pew Research Center study found that 54 percent of U.S. adults now get at least some of their information from YouTube newscasters, 25 percent of them on a regular basis (especially, curiously, women, who make up 57 percent of the YouTube news audience).

If you happen to be on the other side of those percentages and haven’t yet watched one of these “shows,” they have nothing like the slickly produced anchor chair- and roundtable-filled sets of CNN, MSNBC or Fox. Most hosts are operating with little more than their built-in computer camera and a ring light. There is no producer to speak of, and certainly not a teleprompter. Much of the time, these MCs are providing analysis in real time, sourcing their information from across social media and the internet and relying on their audience to fill in the blanks. 

Tisa’s daily reports all start the same, with the effervescent host — whose 5-year-old channel boasts nearly 500,000 subscribers — declaring, “Heyyyy, what’s up, guys? Well, baby, if your name is [insert headline-grabber of the day] …” She goes on to synthesize the scandal, then dives into the paperwork, sharing any supporting evidence, and interjects plenty of opinion while taking in a high-speed scroll of comments. For some topics, she might speak for three hours straight. Tisa’s tally of videos related to Diddy’s sex trafficking trial and all its sordid tentacles: More than 1,000. 

Of course, there’s no department of standards and practices for these broadcasters — or, for that matter, a long-standing tradition of journalistic ethics. YouTube does have strict community guidelines, although seasoned hosts know how to evade algorithmic censors (which is why they sometimes speak in what seems like code, referring to, say, “PDF files” instead of using a red-flag word like “pedophiles”). As for vetting — you know, whether or not the news they’re putting out in the world is true — Tisa, for one, says her sources are as good as they come, and she attempts to independently verify each claim with five different methods, including public filings. If that’s good enough for her half a million followers, I guess that’s good enough for me, at least for now. 

The Future of Driving Finally Arrived … and Got Stuck in L.A. Traffic

Getting around Hollywood was as maddening as ever this year, but at least there were some eye-popping new contraptions for commuters to ogle while idling at a red light. A fleet of fully autonomous Waymo taxis — those driverless white sedans that look a bit like a cross between a Jaguar I-Pace and the robot from the original Lost in Space — began operating in March in L.A. So far, there’s been only one major accident, but it wasn’t the Waymo’s fault (in May, a human driver speeding at 86 miles per hour on the 10 east crashed into the back of one; nobody was seriously injured). Even more head-turning (and head-scratching) was the armada of $100,000 Tesla Cybertrucks — Elon Musk’s electric Hummer — that started rolling into town late last year. Oddly, the soon-to-be-official vehicle of the Department of Government Efficiency was an instant hit in the most liberal city in America.

Pop Music Popped (But Not for Katy Perry)

Taylor Swift won best album (Midnights) at the Grammys in February, Billie Eilish picked up artist of the year (for her Barbie anthem “What Was I Made For?”), Sabrina Carpenter (speaking of former Disney stars) opened for Swift’s Eras Tour and had one of the biggest singles of the year with “Espresso,” and Chappell Roan — who just three years ago was performing “Pink Pony Club” in a Chicago park in front of all of 50 people — played a historic set at Lollapalooza for around 80,000 fans, one of the biggest crowds in the festival’s history. But, of course, the pop gods giveth and taketh, and 2024 was less terrific for Katy Perry, who left her gig on American Idol to launch a comeback album she cryptically titled 143. Or maybe that was its position on Billboard‘s chart? More of a snore than a roar.

Business Was … Meh. And That Was a Win.

Sure, there was plenty of bad news in 2024. The layoffs never let up (as recently as November, CAA slashed 20 agents from its payrolls, and there was Paramount’s massive purge a few months before that), while film and TV production continued to slump (down 40 percent at one point this year from its peak in 2022). Still, the post-strike box office apocalypse that so many anticipated for 2024 never fully materialized, with billion-dollar hits like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine followed by the biggest Thanksgiving feast in history (Moana 2, Wicked and Gladiator II) that should result in theatrical being down a modest 5 percent or less from 2023. Meanwhile, several streamers — Disney+, Paramount+ and Max — finally reached profitability, something only Netflix could previously flex about. Even Comcast’s Peacock had an OK 2024, losing a measly $1.4 billion this year, or about half of the $2.75 billion hit it took in 2023. Granted, none of this has anybody in Hollywood singing a rousing chorus of “Happy Days Are Here Again,” but it does offer a glimmer of hope for the coming year. 

What Was Old Is New Again (Again)

It was déjà vu all over again at the box office, with 2024’s biggest hits — Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, Despicable Me 4, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, Wicked, Dune: Part Two, Twisters and Moana 2 — all reworking familiar IP. Of course, that itself feels a bit like a repeat; in recent years, the biggest grossers have almost always been sequels, prequels or reboots, with only an occasional completely original concept slipping into the top ranks (like 2023’s Oppenheimer). Audiences, though, obviously don’t seem to mind. In fact, in a year that was expected to be a box office disaster, two releases joined the billion-dollar club, with Pixar’s Inside Out 2 raking in $1.7 billion globally and Marvel’s Deadpool & Wolverine grossing $1.3 billion. Still, being a sequel doesn’t guarantee boffo ticket sales: Paddington in Peru barely made any honey at all, grossing a bearish $40 million.

Diddy Was Arrested … And His Streams Soared

After he was busted in New York in September — charged with racketeering, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, obstruction of justice and whatever crimes he may have committed with those 1,000 bottles of baby oil — the 55-year-old music mogul saw his streams jump 20 percent. That’s not entirely surprising; R. Kelly’s numbers nearly doubled after a 2019 documentary accused him of sexual misconduct with underage girls. Still, Diddy is in no position to enjoy his streaming spike. He’s incarcerated at the notorious Brooklyn detention center awaiting trial in May. If convicted, he faces 15 years to life.

Francis Ford Coppola and Kevin Costner Took Big Swings And Whiffed

Francis Ford Coppola sold his wine company and sunk more than $100 million of his own money into Megalopolis, his futuristic utopian epic that ended up grossing a very dystopian $12 million globally when it was released in September. Kevin Costner ditched his day job (on Yellowstone, the biggest drama on television), mortgaged his 10-acre Santa Barbara home and sunk nearly $40 million of his own coin into the first two installments of Horizon — his planned four-part Western movie series — that he filmed back-to-back in Utah. The first movie performed so poorly, grossing a paltry $31 million when it opened in June, that the second one still doesn’t have a release date. Parts three and four likely will never be shot.

The Penguin Saved Gotham

And not just Gotham. Colin Farrell’s all-in (and heavily latexed) turn as Oswald Cobblepot rescued HBO Max from its House of the Dragon and Tokyo Vice funk while also liberating DC from the creative Arkham it had been stuck in the past couple of years. The eight-part series was set in the same gritty big-screen universe as 2022’s The Batman (and its sequel, arriving in theaters in 2026), but there were few references to a certain caped crusader. Instead, Farrell and executive producer Matt Reeves turned Batman’s wobbly supervillain into a Tony Soprano-like antihero, bringing the mob drama back to HBO Max and attracting a much larger audience than anybody anticipated. It was the streamer’s third-biggest first-season show ever. 

Shockingly, Hollywood Celebrities Didn’t Fix the Middle East …

… although they tried, posting their opinions about the Israel-Gaza war all over social media, usually with career-cratering results. Starting at the end of 2023, there was actress Melissa Barrera, who got dropped from Scream VII after resharing a post that accused Israel of “genocide and ethnic cleansing.” Around the same time, CAA agent Maha Dakhil — who reps Tom Cruise, Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman and, until she started posting about Israel, Aaron Sorkin — was forced to step down from her agency’s board after she described the Gaza bombing as “genocide” on Instagram. Then there was WME agent Brandt Joel, who shortly after Hamas murdered six hostages in September angrily posted, “Screw the left kill all,” on a WME WhatsApp group chat. He ended up deleting the comment and later apologized to his co-workers during a Zoom meeting. But even luminaries who never said a peep about the Middle East were drawn into the controversy, ironically getting singled out precisely because of their silence. In May, while stars filed into the Met Gala in New York, activists on TikTok launched “Block Out 2024,” urging the masses to unfollow celebrities who hadn’t yet taken a stand against Israel’s war in Gaza. Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift, both of whom have remained tight-lipped on the subject, reportedly lost hundreds of thousands of followers in the days afterward, although it wasn’t long before they picked them up again.

Blake Lively Apparently Missed That Day at Media-Training School

Here’s a helpful tip for anyone promoting a drama dealing with the sensitive subject of domestic violence: Maybe don’t try to slip in a plug for your hair products line. Also, pitching the film as a giddy girls’ night out — “Grab your friends, wear your florals!” Blake Lively chirped in one TikTok spot — is perhaps not the most appropriate tone for a picture exploring spousal abuse. Joking with an interviewer who asked a sincere question about fans wanting to discuss the themes of the movie with its star (“You mean, like, ask me for my address, phone number?”) is probably a bad idea, too. In fact, for a full tutorial on how not to promote a picture like It Ends With Us — the adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s best-seller about filial cruelty directed by Lively’s co-star Justin Baldoni (until Lively wrested control from the contentious filmmaker and brought husband Ryan Reynolds in for some script tinkering) — just watch the actress’ eyebrow-raising press interactions and social media spots during the film’s summer press tour.

Congrats, Chris Weitz! You made the Biggest Flop of 2024

He directed American Pie, About a Boy and The Twilight Saga: New Moon, but here’s one he’d probably rather forget. Weitz’s Afraid, a sci-fi thriller about a home digital assistant that goes haywire and terrorizes a young family, was the smallest-grossing major release of the year, making all of $6.7 million domestically and $6.2 million overseas, for a grand total of $12.9 million, or roughly the codpiece budget for Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II.

Jennifer Lopez Learned Love Does Cost a Thing

Turns out love isn’t always more wonderful the second time around. In February, just as Jennifer Lopez was gearing up to release This Is Me … Now, a new album celebrating her romantic reunion with former fiancé Ben Affleck, rumors began swirling that their relationship was in trouble (again). Making matters even more awkward, the album was accompanied by an Amazon Prime musical as well as a documentary gushing about the couple’s latest love affair — both co-written by Lopez and Affleck themselves — even as the liaison was clearly already floundering. Sales for Lopez’s planned tour promoting the album in the spring were so sluggish, she ended up canceling to “focus on herself.” By April, after just two years of matrimony, Lopez filed for divorce.

Hollywood Left the Messaging to Western Union

Looking back, the shuttering of Participant Media in April may have marked a turning point — the waning of social messaging (for now) in films and television. For 20 years, the production company had boldly churned out social impact films like Spotlight, An Inconvenient Truth and RBG. But as 2024 unfolded, it became clear just how allergic Hollywood had become to politically charged content. Hard-edged documentaries like Union (about the labor movement) as well as No Other Land and The Bibi Files (both about the Middle East conflict) failed to find U.S. distributors, while A24 buried the release of The Sixth, its Jan. 6 doc, even while releasing a scripted Alex Garland drama about a fictional civil war. Even MSNBC chickened out, scheduling Separated — a doc by Errol Morris and NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff on the child-separation scandal during the first Trump administration — to air after the 2024 election. “Make your own inferences,” Morris cryptically posted on social media.

This story appeared in the Dec. 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.