THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (November 17, 2023): The latest issue features How David Zaslav blew up Hollywood – The inside story of a novice movie mogul in an age of disruption, discontent and disaster ; Russell Brand’s Alternate Reality – The British entertainer built an army of fans with his conspiracy-minded podcast. Now, amid sex-assault claims against him, they’ve become his whole world; Sofia Coppola’s Subversive Search for Truth in ‘Priscilla’ – Hollywood is addicted to mythologizing biopics. ‘‘Priscilla’’ offers something different…

How David Zaslav Blew Up Hollywood

A merger put him in the driver’s seat at Warner Brothers, one of the industry’s biggest studios. It has been a wild ride.

By Jonathan Mahler, James B. Stewart and Benjamin Mullin

It was April 2022, and David Zaslav had just closed the deal of a lifetime. From the helm of his relatively small and unglamorous cable company, Discovery, he had taken control of a sprawling entertainment conglomerate that included perhaps the most storied movie studio on the planet, Warner Brothers. The longtime New Yorker had always loved movies, and against the advice of several media peers, he had moved to Hollywood and taken over Jack Warner’s historic office, hauling the old mogul’s desk out of storage and topping it off with an old-time handset telephone. So far things were going great. He had met all the stars and players, was widely feted as the next in line to save the eternally struggling industry and was well into the process of renovating a landmark house in Beverly Hills. 

Sofia Coppola’s Subversive Search for Truth in ‘Priscilla’

Hollywood is addicted to mythologizing biopics. ‘‘Priscilla’’ offers something different.

By Rafaela Bassili

As with much of her other work, the opening of Sofia Coppola’s latest film, “Priscilla,” is all about textures. A pair of manicured feet sink into a shag carpet; a fingernail is carefully polished in red; we see the back of a prodigious black bouffant, then the dexterous painting of a dramatic cat eye with black liner. Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny) paces around Graceland relentlessly. There’s nothing for her to do, and too much for her to process.