This April 23, 2013 photo shows Alan Hirschfield, a former entertainment executive who helped make the 1970s movies "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Taxi Driver," at his home in Wilson, Wyo. (AP Photo/Jackson Hole News&Guide, Price Chambers)
LOS ANGELES (AP) --
Alan Hirschfield, a former entertainment executive who helped make the 1970s movies "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and "Taxi Driver," has died. He was 79.
Son Marc Hirschfield says the former chief executive of Columbia Pictures died Thursday at his home in Wilson, Wyoming, of natural causes.
Hirschfield held the post at Columbia from 1973 to 1978 and was chairman of Twentieth Century Fox from 1982 to 1986.
Marc Hirschfield says his father also started Arista Records with music executive Clive Davis.
Hirschfield was ousted at Columbia after he opposed the reinstatement of studio boss David Begelman, who embezzled more than $61,000, on moral grounds.
Hirschfield was born in New York and raised in Oklahoma. He is survived by his wife, Berte, three children, six grandchildren, niece and grand-niece.
Ashley Walters, left, and Rosalind Eleazar pose for photographers at a photo call for the television series "Missing You," Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, in London. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
It's Netflix's resolution every new year to give viewers a headscratcher in January.
Since 2020, the streamer has released a U.K. miniseries based on thriller book by Harlan Coben over the holidays. It seems to have paid off: "Fool Me Once," starring Michelle Keegan, Adeel Akhtar and Joanna Lumley, launched this past January and became what Netflix says was one of their most watched shows of the year, amassing 108 million views.
2025's seasonal suspense series is "Missing You," based on Coben's 2014 New York Times bestseller. It stars Rosalind Eleazar ("Slow Horses") as Detective Inspector Kat Donovan, a police officer who specializes in finding missing people — apart from the fiance that vanished 11 years earlier.
"They know Jan. 1 is the sweet spot for them," says actor Richard Armitage, who has appeared in each winter Coben adaptation, which relocates the stories from the books' America to the north of England. "People have ownership over the show now, so like, 'I want my Harlan Coben show on New Year's Day. Give me my Harlan Coben fix.'"
"It's perfect timing for the release, to be honest," says co-star Ashley Walters. "Most people are going to be hung over or, you know, just not have anything to do with the day."
The show opens with the shock of Donovan's ex-fiance (Walters) popping up on a dating app, over a decade after she came home one day to find him gone.
"I've ghosted people before," laughs Armitage. "Just people you don't want to talk to anymore. Not digitally though."
Another star, Jessica Plummer, isn't a fan of those who disappear without saying goodbye, though.
"I'd just feel too guilty," she admits, calling it "cowardly and lazy — sorry Richard!"
