Columns
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The Emmys’ Locks, Hopefuls, and Snubs
This morning, Emmy winners Liza Colón-Zayas (The Bear) and Jeff Hiller (Somebody Somewhere, nominated again this year for his guest role in Pluribus) announced the nominees for the 78th Emmy Awards, which will be handed out across three ceremonies (one for primetime categories, two for creative arts) in September. And despite a packed TV season with too many contenders to count, the two series with the most nominations were sure things, both from HBO Max: The Pitt dominated the drama categories with 25 nods, and Hacks set a record for the most comedy noms in a single year with 24. Even the limited/anthology series category […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on Jul 10, 2026 -
Colbert, Kimmel, and the Battle of Late Night
While covering the Academy Awards may have its challenges, the Emmys are a much bigger venture. Twenty-three awards will be handed out at the Primetime Emmys on September 14, honoring nominees across the comedy, drama, and limited series categories, plus variety and reality competition shows. Meanwhile, about 100 more Emmys are awarded in craft-focused categories (and, randomly, guest acting) at two Creative Arts Emmy ceremonies a week before the main show. If all of this weren’t enough to keep up with, the Television Academy’s ever-changing rules and regulations also mean its award categories are in constant flux. Take, for example, […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on Jun 17, 2026 -
Hacks and The Comeback Beat the Odds
The Comeback always seems to coincide with a new existential crisis facing television. In 2005, the HBO comedy series—created by Michael Patrick King and Lisa Kudrow, and starring the then recent Friends actress as a former sitcom star desperate to return to the spotlight—was a cutting satire about reality TV, which threatened to cheapen the medium with its low costs and tabloid-friendly drama. The show’s initial limited run garnered a cult following, and HBO revived it in 2014 when reality TV had achieved a certain level of legitimacy—but the industry was on the cusp of an overhaul with the impending streaming wars, churning […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on Jun 10, 2026 -
The Spinoff Comes of Age
Showrunner Bruce Miller admits that when he first read The Handmaid’s Tale, he thought the ending of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel was a little unsatisfying: “I was like, ‘Well, I hope there’s a sequel!’” Two decades later, Miller was at the helm of the Hulu series based on Atwood’s book. The show was an immediate hit—it premiered in 2017, during the first Trump administration, at a moment when its themes were particularly resonant. The evocative image of the red cape and white bonnet donned by star Elisabeth Moss and her fellow handmaids became not only an image of subjugation, but one […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on Jun 3, 2026 -
Widow’s Bay and the Genre Jump Scare
In recent years, a trend has emerged in horror: auteurs have moved into the genre after first establishing themselves in sketch comedy. In 2018, Jordan Peele of Key & Peele won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Get Out, his feature directorial debut (which he would follow up with 2019’s Us and 2022’s Nope). This year, Amy Madigan won Best Supporting Actress for her devious turn in the horror film Weapons, the second feature from Zach Cregger (after 2022’s Barbarian), a founding member of the comedy troupe The Whitest Kids U’ Know. There’s clearly a connection between comedy and horror. Both genres succeed by getting a response—a laugh […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on May 29, 2026 -
Ready or Not, the Emmys Are Coming
To quote Schitt’s Creek’s Moira Rose: My favorite season? Awards. And for some of us, it’s a year-round venture. Weeks before the Academy Awards took place on March 15, I began tracking the dozens of shows that would soon be campaigning for Emmys. The Emmys take place each year in September, but like its cinematic counterpart, the preparation begins many months earlier. After all, Oscar futures are currently being debated as Cannes rolls into its second week. Similarly, the Emmy luncheons, billboards, screenings, and Q&As have been in the works for a long time already. But we’re now in the […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on May 20, 2026 -
Making Sense of Lynn Hershman Leeson’s Monumental Life’s Work
Last year, I stumbled on a bootleg copy of Twists in the Cord (1994), an experimental documentary shot on video by Lynn Hershman Leeson. I’ve followed the prolific artist for years, but I had never heard of the piece until it appeared in a search result when I was looking for something else. It’s classic Leeson, depicting technology as a catalyst to subvert identity and authenticity. She was an established—if unsung—artist in the 1970s when she started making films and videos, and her just-published memoir, Private I, reveals this turn was less of a second act than a lifelong pull […]
by Joanne McNeil
in Speculations
on Apr 22, 2026 -
Silver Linings Playbook: Meet the New Indie Distributors
Has there ever been a good time to launch an independent film distribution company? Maybe not, admits Danielle DiGiacomo, former executive at Utopia and The Orchard, and one of the partners at a new distribution outfit launched at Sundance called Subtext. “We’ve always been operating under the shadow of giants, and it’s always been an uphill battle,” she says. “But we think the market has been correcting itself over the last few years,” says Subtext co-head Brian Levy. “And that we are now on the precipice of fertile ground for new opportunities.” Subtext is not alone. In the past several […]
by Anthony Kaufman
in Industry Beat
on Mar 30, 2026 -
For Once, the Oscars Are Unpredictable
As we come to the end of a long awards season—the Oscars are, miraculously, less than two weeks away, and final voting closes this Thursday—it’s remarkable that the race feels as up-in-the-air as it did many months ago, before the contenders began screening for pundits and voters. The sure-things have now become the maybes; there’s only one performer whose acting trophy is a sure thing. I take pride in my ability to predict the winners at the Academy Awards. It’s a dubious skill I’ve been honing ever since I won my local video store’s Oscar pool back in high school. […]
by Tyler Coates
in Considerations
on Mar 3, 2026 -
“I’m a Reactor”: Stellan Skarsgård, Back To One, Episode 382
Stellan Skarsgård is a celebrated Swedish actor whose career spans more than five decades across European and Hollywood cinema. He first gained attention in Scandinavia before becoming an international screen presence in films such as Breaking the Waves and Good Will Hunting. He went on to deliver acclaimed performances in movies like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Dune, Dune Part 2, and television series like Andor and Chernobyl. In his latest, Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value, Skarsgård gifts us with perhaps his most robust and richest work in the form of Gustav, a once-prominent filmmaker struggling to mend fractured ties with his daughters. On this episode, he details the environment […]
by Peter Rinaldi
in Back to One
on Feb 26, 2026
