Ever since Variety invented the slanguage of entertainment business headlines 100 years ago — that lingo that has execs ankling from the Mouse, helmers bringing legit experience to put pilots, and topliners making p.a.s. at preems — reading the trades has been a core aspect of the entertainment industry’s identity. Whether you are a genuine insider with points and participation or one of the millions of wannabes who Hoover up every scrap of information related to the battle for the box office, there are legions of reporters and news organizations dedicated to supplying you with your latest fix.
In a city where your Uber driver is likely to have an opinion about how Bob Chapek is doing, and an idea where Kevin Mayer will land next, the editors and writers who cover the entertainment industry for the Los Angeles Times enjoy an enviable position. Straddling the blurry divide between the trades and the mainstream media, Company Town, as the L.A. Times entertainment business unit refers to itself, lives by the same principle that drives the world it covers: constant, unbridled competition.
For Ryan Faughnder, the young reporter who began writing The Wide Shot, the L.A. Times’s new entertainment business newsletter, in January of 2021, it’s already been a year to remember. Every Tuesday since January 12, Faughnder and his editor Richard Verrier have sent subscribers this free compendium regardless of whether or not they are paying for an L.A. Times subscription. With a journalist’s eye for the salient angle and contacts at every level and in every corner of the industry, the newsletter has delivered a truly “wide shot” of topics, ranging from the rise of “special purpose acquisition companies” — a k a SPACs — among the entertainment C-suite elite, to the prospects for a return to the theatrical exhibition of films after the pandemic shutdown, to the impact of Chinese filmgoing on the bottom line at IMAX, the Canadian film technology company that has more than 700 screens in that country.