Inside The Hollywood Reporter Roma’s Starry Launch Party in the Eternal City
The Hollywood Reporter Roma, the entertainment media brand’s first European edition, was launched in a majestic mansion in Rome on Thursday night.
The starry party at Palazzo Brancaccio attracted 1,000 buzzy Italian well-wishers that included Cinecittà CEO Nicola Maccanico; local Netflix content exec Tinny Andreatta; Piera Detassis, president of the Italian Academy of Cinema; Alessandro Michele, who recently exited his role as creative director of Gucci; and Italian actress Ornella Muti.
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The gilded indoor-outdoor setting in Rome had the feel of a scene out of Federico Fellini’s Italian classic La Dolce Vita. Also walking the red carpet were Suburra star Alessandro Borghi, The White Lotus actress Beatrice Grannò and Isabella Ferrari of The Great Beauty.
Inside, Nekesa Mumbi Moody, The Hollywood Reporter’s editorial director, and Elisabeth Rabishaw, co-publisher and executive vice president of THR, congratulated THR Roma on its debut.
“This is only the beginning,” said Moody, who used Italian words Iike essenziale (essential) and potente (impactful) to describe THR Roma.
Concita De Gregorio, THR Roma’s editor-in-chief, wowed the crowd with a speech that tied together Rome and Hollywood’s cinematic history, its cultural impact, the state of the industry and more onstage alongside Italian singer-songwriter Erica Mou, who performed songs closely identified with movies, including “Que Sera Sera.” (At one point, Maya Sansa, an actress of Italian and Iranian descent, silently sat on the front of the stage to illustrate De Gregorio’s commentary.)
“Rome embodies the history of cinema. It is not, however, just Marcello [Mastroianni] and La Dolce Vita. It is [Paolo] Sorrentino’s Rome, Rome as seen in Suburra and Siccità, the D’Innocenzos [brothers’] Rome,” de Gregorio said.
“There is filming everywhere [in Rome],” she added. “It’s an open-air set. Each stone tells of the cinema that is yet to be. The cinema that will be.”
THR Roma is a multimedia platform that includes a website, a print magazine and a network of communities that will promote and highlight local, national and European events all aimed at the global market.
THR parent PME Holdings has partnered with Brainstore Media, an Italian publisher and part of the Artmediamix, led by Gian Marco Sandri, on THR Roma. Brainstore specializes in digital and global communications, as well as live broadcast events.
The partnership will see THR Roma and the U.S. version of The Hollywood Reporter share content, even as they exist independently of one another.
The launch of THR Roma follows on the heels of January’s launch of THR Japan.
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