Iger, 69, has long been planning retirement and had postponed a scheduled departure date several times. The most recent had been slated for the end of 2021, when his current contract expires.

But the news that he would leave his post immediately sent shock waves through the industry, which has seen Disney not only as one of the most successful entertainment conglomerates but its most deliberate. Even its more aggressive expansions, which of late have included the acquisition of 21st Century Fox and the launch of streaming service Disney Plus, unfurled over years before finally becoming official.

“Why now, and was the announcement accelerated for any reason?” analyst Ben Swinburne of Morgan Stanley asked Iger on an investor call, channeling the feeling of many who follow the entertainment giant.

Iger downplayed the suddenness of the news.

“With the asset base in place and with [streaming] strategy essentially deployed, I should be spending as much time as possible on the creative side of our business,” he said, referring to the Fox acquisition and the Disney Plus launch. “It was not accelerated for any particular reason other than I felt the need was now.”

Iger served in the post for 15 years, succeeding Michael Eisner, who held the job for some 20 years.

Chapek, a 27-year veteran of Disney, served as president of consumer products before running theme parks. He will take over as just the seventh chief executive in Disney’s history.

Chapek, who is little-known to many figures in Hollywood, acknowledged his experience on the film and television side was modest. But he said he had “great exposure and a fairly broad overview of how the company operates” from working closely with Iger in recent years.

Iger said his goal was to fly around the world overseeing Disney’s creative holdings – they include everything from ESPN to Hulu to film and television studios – in his new role. But how much Iger will be directly involved in those realms – or whether this was simply a graceful way to make the transition to Chapek – remained unclear.

Modern Disney has never separated the creative and business sides at the top executive level the way some content firms do. That will, at least formally, remain the case: Iger said he did not want to take a chief content officer title and risk undermining Chapek’s influence in that regard.

Asked about the board’s search for his successor, Iger said that “we were extremely fortunate to have someone in Bob who knows the company extremely well that we know so well.” He said the board “obviously did its duty in conducting a thorough process.”

Chapek takes the job after numerous failed efforts to find a successor for Iger. Thomas Staggs, who once ran the theme parks division and later became chief operating officer, was long thought the heir apparent. But he fell out of favor and left the company in 2016.

Investors were relatively nonchalant about the news, sending the stock price down just 2 percent in afterhours trading.

Keith Gangl, a portfolio manager at Gradient Investments, which holds Disney among its core assets, said in an email to The Post that while “we were surprised by the timing of the announcement,” the news did “not dampen the outlook for the company.

“Disney is a strong producer of content and entertainment and with Chapek’s experience with parks and products, his background should continue to drive the company forward,” he said.

Still, the news marks an end of a historic era. Iger leaves the CEO post as one of the most successful executives in modern media.

Arriving at Disney in 1996 via its acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, at which he had then served as president and chief operation officer, Iger was promoted to the same role at Disney in 2000 before taking over the top spot from Eisner in 2005. He soon set about remaking the company, spearheading an expensive acquisition spree that included Pixar, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm.

Iger’s Disney tenure was marked by a series of bold but in retrospect intuitive gambles that expanded its reach beyond just a company with a strong children’s success to an all-ages juggernaut. Disney under Iger was both a propellant and beneficiary of the contemporary trend for youthful entertainment as adult product, a trend most evident with comicbook movies. Three of the five highest-grossing films of all time in the United States are Marvel pictures, all of which came out in 2018 or later.

The movie studio was Disney’s crown jewel, particularly with its ability, under the direction of Iger and Marvel Studios’ chief Kevin Feige, to match homegrown product to a chaotic international market. In 2019, Disney notched more than $11 billion in global box office revenue, a record. That number was anchored by “Avengers: Endgame,” with $2.8 billion the highest grossing global movie of all time.

He also undertook the move of competing with Netflix by removing much of the company’s content from the service to feed Disney Plus, which also includes a slew of original programming. The budget-friendly service is seen as an early success with nearly 30 million subscribers in the United States and an international expansion ahead of it. The success of Fox acquisition remains an open question, as the company has consolidated that firm’s film studio and looked to take advantage of its robust TV operations, a Disney need.

Iger was rewarded well for his efforts. In the most recent fiscal year his compensation reached $47.5 million, among the highest for media executives. It was dwarfed by his total from the previous year, when he received $65.6 million. That number was swollen by a stock-incentive package the board gave him to postpone his retirement.

A new feature on the streaming service will show its top 10 most popular programs and movies, updated daily. Netflix has been testing the approach for about six months in Mexico and the U.K., the company said on Monday.

“Members in both countries have found them useful, so we are now rolling them out to even more,” Cameron Johnson, who oversees product innovation at Netflix, said in a blog post.

The lists should make it easier for viewers to pick what to watch. While Netflix’s algorithm is supposed to make it easy for customers to find shows, the dizzying array of choices is too much for some viewers. Customers often spend long stretches of time just deciding which movie or show to try.

Netflix, the world’s largest streaming subscription service, has frustrated the TV and film industry by not revealing its viewership. Unlike traditional TV, Netflix doesn’t make audience data available, and fans are often left wondering why a favorite show was canceled.

The Los Gatos, California-based company has begun to reveal more information — but only selectively. In December, it disclosed its top 10 programs in 33 countries, offering the most expansive report to date of what is being watched on the service.

But no outside party verified the lists, which Netflix based on viewership in the first 28 days after a show was released. And the numbers counted people who watched at least two minutes of a program — rather than all the way through.

The film brought in $26.3 million, Comscore Inc. estimated Sunday. Analysts had expected about $30 million.

“Sonic” is a rarity among movies based on video games: a box-office winner with legs. It’s also the biggest hit for Paramount since the last “Mission: Impossible” movie in 2018.

A new release – “The Call of the Wild,” based on the Jack London classic about a sled dog – captured second place. The 20th Century Studios film benefited from Harrison Ford’s star power and generally good reviews with a 65% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but there has been a glut of dog movies in recent years. That’s led to diminishing returns for the genre, according to Box Office Pro.

“The Call of the Wild” took in $24.8 million. Analysts had expected about $17.5 million.

The new horror film about a life-like doll, “Brahms: The Boy 2” from STX, landed in fourth place with $5.9 million. Analysts had expected $6 million. It was mostly panned by critics.

The returning “Birds of Prey” from Warner Bros. came in at third place, while Sony’s “Bad Boys for Life” held onto fifth place.

For Jeon Da-jung, a 35-year-old office worker who often commutes through the neighborhood of Buam-dong, central Seoul, the concrete staircase that leads to the nearby Jahamun Tunnel didn’t mean much to her.

But “Parasite,” from the acclaimed South Korean director Bong Joon-ho, completely changed her mind. By using the urban landscape as a metaphor for the deepening social divide between the haves and the have-nots, it opened her eyes to the reality of Korea today, she said — to something she had probably known deep inside for years but felt no immediate need to think about.

“I never thought that the stairs and tunnel I just passed by could turn into fascinating places with some socioeconomic implications,” she said Monday on a visit to the site — her way of paying homage to the Oscar-winning film.

“The movie has changed my view on the overall society that still has lingering problems such as poverty and a social chasm between the rich and poor.”

Jeon is one of many Koreans exploring the class-conscious movie by taking day trips to filming locations or copying gestures, recipes or songs that appear in the film.

The filming locations in Seoul have become hot spots for locals and foreign tourists alike.

Since “Parasite” won four Academy Awards, places shown in the movie — including the tunnel, stairways and the Woori Supermarket — have been bustling with visitors in recent days.

The dark comedy starring Song Kang-ho shed light on the ever-widening social divide via two families — the wealthy Parks and the impoverished Kims. The two families show the stark contrast between the opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum. But they also invite global audiences to consider untold stories about Korean society through unusual symbols such as a “creative” instant noodle recipe, a catchy song, a semi-basement home and a fake university degree.

The melody that the Kims’ daughter, Ki-jung, sings as a mnemonic to remember her false identity has swept the internet recently. The so-called “Jessica jingle” — “Jessica, only child, Illinois, Chicago,” originates from a song about Korea’s easternmost islets, Dokdo. It is so addictive, according to people on social media, that many “Parasite” fans could not stop humming it after watching the film.

Also trending among young moviegoers on social media are selfies with black or white bars over the eyes, recalling the official movie poster depicting the families posing in an odd arrangement with their eyes covered.

“The younger generation is taking to YouTube and Twitter to share its ‘Parasite’ obsession,” film critic Philip Yoon was quoted as saying in the local newspaper the Hankyoreh.

‘Parasite’ wave in markets

Thanks to the film’s recent achievements at the Oscars, stocks of the companies behind “Parasite” have soared in value. Barunson E&A, which invested $11 million in the production of the film, saw its shares hit record highs Feb. 10-13. After closing at 2,000 won ($1.70) on Feb. 7, they more than doubled to 4,470 won as of Monday.

CJ, which owns the film’s distributor, CJ ENM, saw the value of its shares jump more than 10 percent Feb. 7-17.

A noodle dish called jjappaguri (translated as “ram-don” in the English subtitles) — a combination of black bean-based instant noodle brand Jjapaghetti and instant udon ramen brand Neoguri — boosted sales for the manufacturer of both products, Nongshim, here and abroad, as well as its stocks. In the movie, instant noodles symbolize the social divide. The rich Parks enjoy eating the cheap snack with slices of expensive Korean beef — unlike the poor Kims, who eat instant noodles because that’s all they can afford.

“Every time the movie launches in each nation, jjappaguri goes viral on social media,” said a spokesperson for the instant noodle maker, which has given out the snack at theaters around the world in an effort to promote its brand along with the film.

The Korean food company has also put up YouTube videos providing the recipe for the fusion dish in 11 languages, including English, Japanese and French.

During the four trading days after the movie bagged the four Academy Awards on Feb. 9 (local time), Nongshim shares surged by some 10 percentage points.

Some market analysts forecast that the overall Asian food market will gain popularity around the world thanks to Bong’s latest masterpiece.

The Oscar-winning movie is expected to generate more than $12 million in economic value, according to local brokerage firm Korea Investment & Securities.

“Parasite earned 86 billion won revenue in the domestic market and its estimated operating profit stands at 21.5 billion won,” said Oh Tae-hwan, an analyst from the investment firm.

“The sales will likely increase with the movie launching in more global markets in the near future,” the analyst added.

Some market analysts said the movie has helped take the nation’s content market to the next level, as the local industry will receive more attention from global investors.

“Parasite has proved that content created here can appeal to global audiences, and Korean producers will likely be reevaluated in the global film industry,” Lee Hwa-jeong, an analyst from NH Investment & Securities, said.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)

“And the winner is a. . ..movie from South Korea. What the hell was that all about?” Trump told a crowd at a re-election rally in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “I thought it was best foreign film, right? No, it was [best picture].” He said he wanted to see more winners like “Gone With the Wind,” the epic love story set in the American South.

But it turns out “Parasite” won thanks to the backing of the very type of All-American character Trump complained the Oscars overlooked – a Texas car-dealership mogul.

Neon, the company that distributed “Parasite” and staged its successful awards campaign, is controlled by Daniel Friedkin, a born-and-bred Houstonian who owns Gulf State Toyota Distributors, the largest supplier of Toyotas to Texas and surrounding states. His headquarters sits not in Seoul or even Hollywood but on the far west side of Houston, near a local marketing company and an offshore drilling firm.

The “Parasite” moment brought to a head Friedkin’s years-long effort to parlay success from the scrappy world of car wholesaling to the Hollywood hustle. The 30West media-investment arm that Friedkin funded with his car profits bought a majority stake in Neon in 2018, and the cash Friedkin funneled to the distributor helped the company release the movie and run its Oscar campaign.

The game-changing “Parasite” moment, in others words, might never have happened without Texans’ affinity for Toyota Tundras.

“What we see with what Dan Friedkin and 30 West is how profits from a very Middle American business can have a significant effect on global film,” said Ross Fremer, an executive in business development with the production and management company Cinetic Media who follows the space closely.

Contrary to Trump’s assumption, Friedkin’s “Parasite” connection demonstrates the domestic roots of even the most seemingly global part of the entertainment business: a Korean moment in Hollywood was made possible by an American businessman wholesaling Japanese cars in Texas and the nearby states.

Rendering Trump’s comment further ironic is that Friedkin has roots in Republican Texas politics: He was appointed to two six-year terms as commissioner at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission by former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry, Trump’s first secretary of energy.

Friedkin, who is famously press-averse, declined to be interviewed. So did several of his top Hollywood lieutenants, including Micah Green, the ex-Creative Arts Agency powerbroker who runs 30West, and Tom Quinn, who runs Neon.

But his story demonstrates the unlikely link between a Texas tycoon and the global movie business.

With a Forbes-estimated net worth of $4.2 billion, Friedkin is the 187th richest person in America, just eight spots behind Mark Cuban and 30 spots ahead of Meg Whitman. His fortune comes in large part from Gulf States Toyota, the exclusive distributor of the automaker’s cars and parts to dealers in Texas and surrounding states. The company has nearly doubled its sales over the past decade to $9 billion last year, much of which has gone to Friedkin’s pockets.

Yet the cash hasn’t just been a way for the Texan, 54, to feed interests such as a notorious private-plane obsession – it has fueled his bid to reshape Hollywood. In addition to 30West, he created the production company Imperative and has spent years financially backing movies as varied as “Parasite,” “The Mule,” “I, Tonya” and “The Square” as well as far less-regarded pictures such as the J. Paul Getty kidnapping tale “All the Money in the World” and the Julia Roberts drama “Ben Is Back.”

Interviews with 10 film veterans and executives who have had dealings with Friedkin, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize relationships, yield a portrait of one of the more enigmatic men in the modern entertainment business. Money and cinema have been mixing uneasily in Hollywood since Thomas Edison flexed his monopoly on film patents more than a century ago. But even in an industry where art and commerce make for odd bedfellows, Friedkin stands out.

The executive, according to two people who’ve worked with him, can have broad commercial tastes. Yet his film ventures involve some of the most upscale projects in town, including Martin Scorsese’s period drama “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which will shoot this year, and “Lyrebird,” a WWII art-heist picture that Friedkin directed himself and was acquired by the upscale Sony Pictures Classics last year for a 2020 release.

Friedkin has an in-person manner that two entertainment veterans who met with him but asked for anonymity so as not to jeopardize relationships described as down-home and not oriented toward foreign-language titles. (“Lyrebird,” despite being populated by foreigners, is in English.) Yet he has often put money in prestige-oriented projects. Those movies also include “The Square,” the layered 2017 Swedish-language film about moral choices and social norms that, like “Parasite,” also won the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize, the Palme d’Or.

Friedkin has a pedigree far from the world of film geekdom. His late father, Thomas Friedkin, was a pilot who became the largest shareholder of the now-defunct discount airline Pacific Southwest, which his own father had started.

A racecar owner and enthusiast, Thomas Friedkin dabbled in Hollywood as a pilot, often on lower-profile movies such as the Disney science-fiction comedy “The Cat from Outer Space” and “Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol.” He became a Toyota wholesaler via his racing connections during the 1960′s, when Toyota was not yet a desirable brand in the U.S.

When his father died in 2017, the younger Friedkin inherited not just operating control of the business (his three siblings are less involved day-to-day) but also his father’s affinity for combining flying and Hollywood. As he piloted his own planes all over the world, Friedkin started an aerial photography company. The firm handled a lot of the overhead scenes in the 2017 World War II hit “Dunkirk;” Friedkin flew some of the planes himself.

His actual Hollywood involvement, however, was modest for years. He founded two production companies in 2014. One was Imperative, with the help of Bradley Thomas, a longtime collaborator of the gross-out creators the Farrelly Bros (“There’s Something About Mary,” “Dumb and Dumber”). The other was a nonfiction entity called Pursuit with Lauren Sanchez, the former Good Day LA host who has been romantically linked to Washington Post owner Jeffrey Bezos. Sanchez, a helicopter pilot, also has a love of aerial photography. But neither venture gained much traction, producing few works of note.

Things began to change when Friedkin hired Green away from CAA in 2017. Long a fixture on the film-financing scene, the agent had worked closely with Friedkin while he was at CAA, inhabiting the role of matchmaking the billionaire with directors and scripts that are the mother’s milk of Hollywood agencies.

That set the ball in motion. Green and Friedkin hired the former’s CAA colleague, a financing expert named Dan Steinman. The trio then brought on Trevor Groth, a longtime respected Sundance Film Festival programmer, to cement its indie-film bona fides.

Then came Neon. In keeping with that old adage that nothing happens in Hollywood without the story of a disgraced ice skater, the mogul helped finance “I, Tonya,” the Oscar-winning film about the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan scandal. Neon, at the time an upstart founded by Weinstein Company refugee Quinn, acquired, distributed and marketed the film, landing an Oscar for star Allison Janney. Friedkin so liked the job Neon did he decided to buy a majority stake in the company.

Friedkin can operate in Hollywood with a kind of Netflixian range, stepping in and writing checks that others won’t. Scorsese’s next movie is a period story of oil and murder on Native American land, is being financed by Friedkin in a manner similar to how Netflix took on “The Irishman”- with a high budget that scared off traditional studios. (Robert De Niro’s in this movie too.)

Friedkin has made other financial decisions that ran against Hollywood wisdom. #MeToo allegations against Kevin Spacey in 2017 threatened to sink “All the Money in the World,” the J. Paul Getty kidnapping drama, with distributor Sony Pictures ready to bury the movie that Imperative had financed. Friedkin stepped in and wrote an additional check for more than $10 million so filmmakers could hire Christopher Plummer, reassemble the cast and crew and reshoot every scene in which Spacey appeared.

“Most people would take the hit and move on,” said a producer who asked not to be identified because he did not wish to offend potential partners. “I think when that happened a lot of people said ‘this is a guy who does things differently.'”

But how much Friedkin can become an established part of the Hollywood firmament remains unclear.

Two prominent film executives The Post interviewed with no competing interest said they were skeptical Friedkin, like many billionaires, would maintain interest in the film business, especially without a steady stream of hits. “All The Money In The World’s” title proved to be misleading; it grossed just $57 million globally. “Ben is Back,” notched just $10 million domestically. Friedkin was noticeably little-seen at events over Oscar weekend even as “Parasite” was racking up prizes, suggesting a desire to keep a low Hollywood profile.

Meanwhile, three producers The Post spoke to, all of whom asked for anonymity for the sake of relationships, said 30West’s strategy remains unclear. “Are they investing in movie companies? Putting equity in movies? Investing in business that have nothing to do with movies? It’s not really clear what they are,” one said.

At this story was about to be published 30West said the it would be acquiring a significant minority stake in Altitude Media Group, a British film sales and production company behind such films as the documentary “Diego Maradona.”

Friedkin’s financial success comes from a mix of skill and luck, according to auto-industry experts.

“Toyotas are some of the best-selling cars around, so to have an exclusive license like that is almost automatically going to be very profitable,” said Jack Cohen, a Los Angeles-based expert on automobile wholesaling and retailing. He noted it would be nearly impossible to obtain such a license today in the face of greater competition and corporate oversight.

“But you still need to manage it well, because if suddenly cars are selling better in other states, Toyota comes in and says ‘why are we giving the exclusive to you?'”

Hollywood is littered with billionaires who’ve packed up their bags when obstacles arose. For every Arnon Milchan, there are five outsiders who came and went. This is particularly true for billionaires who white-knight commercially challenged foreign films that often need the money. Unlike other industries, success in the movie business is often illusory.

It’s a theme Friedkin appears aware of and interested in. “Lyrebird” is about a pricey piece of art and how its value, in a world of fickle perceptions, can quickly evaporate. Speaking at a Toronto international Film Festival screening, he noted the power of these illusions.

“Where do we draw the line on what is a fake?” he said. “Everything comes from a collective view and vision of other experiences and other things that we’ve been exposed to,” he noted. “When does something become a fake and when is it not a fake? We all recognize that those lines are pretty blurry.”

Zee5, the top domestic streaming platform set up by India’s biggest television broadcaster, is betting on local content to fend off big-spending rivals, Chief Executive Officer Tarun Katial said in an interview. The over-the-top, or OTT, service is playing to its advantage by adding more local-language shows and lower-price options to gain market share, he said.

“International OTTs have neither legacy nor library with depth,” Katial said at his office in Mumbai, adding that Zee5 has produced more than 100 original shows in local languages, at least 10 times more than any rival. “We can win this content battle.”

Zee5, which started in 2018, is among dozens of streaming platforms including Amazon locked in a race for Indian users, a market that Boston Consulting Group estimates will reach about $5 billion in 2023. With China closed to foreign streaming services, India has become a battleground for global streaming brands, with an emphasis on delivering films and TV shows to smartphone users expected to number 850 million in two years.

After amassing 61 million active monthly users in its first 15 months in India, Katial says Zee5 has little choice but to keep producing new shows at even faster rates. The platform aims to add between 70 and 80 original shows over the coming year, while making 15 direct-to-digital movies for release in 2021.

Representatives for Netflix and Disney’s Hotstar platform in India declined to comment.

There are 22 official languages in India, creating a broad battlefield for niche audiences.

“It’s a strategy to move away from fighting in the fiercely competitive segment of Hindi or English,” Bhupendra Tiwary, an analyst at ICICIdirect, said of Zee5’s local-content push. “Zee is creating its own space in this war zone where it sees more opportunity.”

Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., part of the Subhash Chandra-led Essel Group, is increasing its investment in streaming, even though the broadcaster has seen its market value plunge on concern the group’s debt had grown too large. Chandra, who opened India’s first amusement park and brought satellite television to the country, has had to sell his stake in Zee, while staying on as a board member.

“We are completely insulated from the financial concern which our parent group went through last year,” Katial said. He declined to say how much the company was planning to spend on growth.

Zee Entertainment shares gained 2% as of 2:36 p.m. in Mumbai trading Thursday.

Zee5, the streaming platform, is planning its local-language expansion just as some of its global rivals are pushing further into India.

– – –

Disney earlier this month said it will introduce its Disney+ streaming service in India through its Hotstar platform on March 29, at the beginning of the Indian Premier League cricket season. Hotstar, which has said it has 300 million active monthly users, has relied on India’s most popular sport to draw users after spending big to secure the rights.

Disney is also re-branding the Hotstar VIP and Premium subscription tiers to Disney+ Hotstar to underline its global brand.

Netflix, the world’s largest streaming platform by paid subscribers, has said it intends to sign on 100 million subscribers in India, almost 25 times the customer base it had in the country as of this year. Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings said during a visit to the country in December that Netflix intends to spend 30 billion rupees ($419 million) over 2019 and 2020 to produce more local content.

Netflix’s “Sacred Games” series, a local original, has drawn Indian viewers globally, the company has said. “Lust Stories,” a Hindi-language anthology of short films, released in June 2018, also drew attention.

Zee5 has said its original “Rangbaaz Phirse” and “The Final Call” series are hits, along with “Auto Shankar,” a Tamil-language show.

– – –

At the same time, competitors are paring fees to draw subscribers in a country used to free services including Google’s YouTube, while paying little for bandwidth via mobile phone plans.

Last year, Netflix slashed prices by as much as half in India for subscribers that commit to at least three months. Most of the country’s streaming services, including Apple TV+, Amazon Prime and Disney’s Hotstar have also offered discount deals this year and subscriptions at prices well below those in other markets.

Zee5 has begun offering some region-specific packages at 49 rupees a month or 499 rupees a year to attract more viewers, said Katial. That compares with the standard packages at 99 rupees a month or 999 rupees a year.

At the same time, Zee5 is planning to add 90-second videos to its platform to meet demand and compete with the likes of Beijing-based ByteDance Inc.’s TikTok, a platform that is growing fast globally among younger users. That effort will start “soon,” Katial said.

The Nazis seen here, in 1977 America, are also all over the place, where you least expect them (and also where you do). From the show’s opening scene – in which a Carter administration policy adviser (Dylan Baker) executes his family and neighbors at a backyard picnic in Chevy Chase rather than have his Nazi past exposed – viewers begin to understand that a vast network of thousands of Nazis, old and young, have infiltrated the halls of power and are biding their time while their female Fuhrer-surrogate (Lena Olin) plans a terrorist attack in the name of the Fourth Reich.

On the one hand, “Hunters” seems (and plays) like pulp fantasy. On that pesky other hand, here in 2020, there have been shootings in synagogues and a rise in anti-Semitic speech and hate crimes. Because even the most self-evident truths have gone blurry, “Hunters” can sometimes feel powered by contemporary outrage.

But the show, created by David Weil (with “Get Out” and “Twilight Zone’s” Jordan Peele as an enthusiastic executive producer), also struggles to find a sure footing between two disparate tonal tracks. Quite a bit of “Hunters” dwells in that vividly imaginative space suggested by Quentin Tarantino’s film “Inglourious Basterds” (and more recently, Taika Waititi’s “Jojo Rabbit”), in which Hitler’s lingering reach is converted into a campy menace and battled back with physical skills, cunning espionage and assorted heavily armed hokey-ness.

At the same time, “Hunters” frequently flashes back to the Holocaust itself, where a younger version of Pacino’s character, Meyer Offerman, survives Nazi torture and begins to conceive of a lasting revenge. In these scenes, the mood dial switches to a “Schindler’s List” mode in intensity and horror. Well into the 10 episodes (five of which were made available for this review), you’ll have one scene where disco kids shimmy to the Bee Gees on the Coney Island boardwalk, and then, in another scene set 35 years earlier, it’s point-blank executions at Auschwitz.

The story focuses on Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman), a young Brooklyn man who works in a comic-book store and hustles drugs to support himself and his safta (grandmother), Ruth (Jeannie Berlin), a Holocaust survivor and Jonah’s only relative. A nighttime intruder shoots and kills Ruth in her easy chair, leading a grief-stricken Jonah to investigate the murder, which leads him to Offerman, who explains, eventually, that Ruth was one of his best Nazi hunters.

We follow Jonah’s slow initiation into Offerman’s justice league, members of which include a tough-talking nun, Sister Harriet (Kate Mulvany); a black-power activist, Roxy Jones (Tiffany Boone); a washed-up actor, Lonny Flash (Josh Radnor); a Vietnam vet, Joe Torrance (Louis Ozawa Changchien); and Murray and Mindy Markowitz (Saul Rubinek and Carol Kane), a pair of grandparents who are also Holocaust survivors.

The actors often seem to be working from different notes. As Jonah, Lerman has to juggle deep grief, sidekick naivete and an astonishment at the violence Offerman and company employ when they capture a Nazi. “The Talmud is wrong,” Offerman explains to Jonah. “Living well is not the best revenge. You know what the best revenge is? Revenge.”

For all his wisdom and self-made wealth, Pacino’s character is surprisingly one-note, more of a presence than a marquee attraction; everyone else, including Olin as “the Colonel,” is at risk of lapsing into caricature. The two most interesting and most realized characters are an FBI agent, Millie Malone (Jerrika Hinton), who investigates the death of a NASA employee (someone gassed her in her bathroom shower stall) and slowly discovers the Nazi conspiracy; and a young, white-supremacist assassin, Travis Leich (Greg Austin), whose bloodlust exceeds the coded directives given to him.

With so many plates spinning, it’s easy for the writers and actors to lose track of what kind of show they’re making. “Hunters” treats its 1970s Nazis more like vampires than war criminals – friendly monsters who reveal themselves only when backed into a corner: an old lady watching game shows in her Florida condo; a doddering toyshop owner in Manhattan; a bank president.

This is perhaps the most effective takeaway “Hunters” has to offer, the unsettling notion that the worst among us hide in plain sight – and might even be working on Offerman’s team. Somewhere in Episode 5, there are signs that the show might be hunting for more than just war criminals – something deeper within the human condition. That pursuit gets more difficult when morality becomes a moving target.

Through the “Louvre Agreement,” 13 CS:GO teams will have a share of revenues and profits from Pro Tour competitions held by the ESL, the world’s largest esports network and the oldest still in operation. The partnership also involves Dreamhack, which produces large-scale esports events and festivals.

This agreement also makes the 13 teams majority stakeholders in the league and will have a role in how it operates. The agreement transforms the ESL Pro League into a 24-team competition (starting on its 11th season in March) with a single global division, moving away from a region-based model. The additional 11 teams must qualify on the basis of their world ranking or through the Mountain Dew League, the ESL Pro League’s gateway series.

Victor Goossens, founder and co-CEO of Team Liquid, said the teams and ESL have been working to plan for sustainable careers and futures for the esport.

“The new entity will utilize our combined strengths to pave the best path forward for everyone,” Goossens said in a prepared statement. “We consider this a monumental agreement and an important step forward for all of esports.”

The signed teams for the ESL Pro League are: Astralis, Complexicity, Evil Geniuses, ENCE, FaZe Clan, Fnatic, G2 Esports, Mousesports, Natus Vincere, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Team Liquid, Team Vitality and 100 Thieves.

The agreement means those partner teams are now majority stakeholders with a long-term slot for participation, and will earn a share of revenues from all competitions in the ESL Pro Tour, including IEM Katowice and the ESL One Cologne. The ESL Pro Tour has a total prize pool of $5 million across 20 tournaments and leagues.

“The other remaining 11 slots will be open to teams qualifying on the basis of their world ranking or directly through the Mountain Dew League, the ESL Pro League’s gateway competition,” said Craig Levine, ESL’s chief strategy officer. “This creates the best of both worlds by allowing for stability as well as new and up-and-coming teams to qualify.”

The news of the reconfigured ESL Pro League comes on the heels of a newly announced Counter-Strike league called Flashpoint, operated by FACEIT and funded by a consortium of other esports organizations. Flashpoint’s organizers have said they want to bring more personality and flash to esports, citing the WWE as an inspiration.

Liam Neeson, also easy on the eyes, plays the stoic husband, but Manville, as a woman who receives a frightening cancer diagnosis early in the film, demands our attention every second she’s on screen, whether scared, smiling, poker-faced or – when chemo makes her hair fall out – getting her head shaved by her attentive, wryly teasing spouse.

Manville plays Joan, and Neeson her husband, Tom, in a moving story that is bookended by two Christmases, taking us through 12 months of medical tests, surgeries, therapeutic treatments and their side effects, and the aftermath. (“Ordinary Love” is not for anyone who, like Tom, hates hospitals. Interestingly, the film – which was shot in Belfast, where the United Kingdom’s National Health Service provides most services free – never mentions cost once.)

But this is no medical drama.

As much focus as the film devotes to clinical procedures, even more of it is directed at relationships. In addition to Tom and Joan’s marriage, which has the warm if slightly itchy feel of a pair of well-worn wool socks, the film also looks at Joan’s friendship with a fellow cancer patient (David Wilmot), who used to teach their late daughter.

That loss – mentioned only obliquely and without specifics – informs Tom and Joan’s unusually close bond, as well as offering the opportunity for a slightly contrived scene in which Tom delivers a monologue at his dead daughter’s gravesite, while his wife is having tests at the hospital. To be fair, Tom does acknowledge the absurdity of “talking to a bit of stone,” as he puts it. And the speech, in which he confesses his own vulnerability, only takes place at Joan’s insistence (it’s the anniversary of their daughter’s birthday).

Otherwise, the screenplay by Irish playwright Owen McCafferty (“Quietly”) is a lovely, understated thing.

It does include some heavy conversations, freighted by Tom and Joan’s reciprocal fears and insecurities, and we see the toll these stresses take on them in an ugly argument that flares late in the film. Frankly, the fight is necessary from a storytelling standpoint, adding critical texture to a tale that might otherwise be all about the unstinting devotion of a selfless spouse.

But true to its title, “Ordinary Love’s” true subject is the mundane, not the melodramatic.

Much of the film centers on quotidian routine: meals; shopping for groceries; the daily walks that Tom and Joan take; their bickering about traffic and Tom’s annoying habits; and, when she gets sick, the domestic adjustments made to accommodate painkillers, nausea and, inevitably, far more major sacrifices.

Despite the serious subject matter, “Ordinary Love” might sound, by one measure, slight. As Humphrey Bogart observed in “Casablanca,” “It doesn’t take much to see that the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.” But that film was set against the tumultuous backdrop of World War II, and this one, well, is more concerned with how many Brussels sprouts to buy.

The point being: Even when questions of life and death loom large, someone still has to make dinner. That observation doesn’t make “Ordinary Love” a major motion picture event. But it does, in its own quiet, wise way, nudge it just a little bit closer to the extraordinary.

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Three and one-half stars. Rated R. Contains brief sexuality and nudity. 92 minutes.

Ratings Guide: Four stars masterpiece, three stars very good, two stars OK, one star poor, no stars waste of time.