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On March 14, incoming ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro — then still Los Angeles-based — made a trip to the network’s Bristol, Connecticut, headquarters for a town hall with employees. Pitaro, 48, is a digital-native executive with strong ties to Disney CEO Bob Iger. He assumed stewardship over a company rocked months earlier by the head-spinning departure of John Skipper, the victim of a blackmail scheme by a cocaine dealer. At the same time, the 8,000-employee sports behemoth was being buffeted by political controversies (including widespread NFL anthem protests) that exacerbated its relationship with arguably the most powerful league in sports. So Pitaro’s mandate was to calm the waters. When he was asked by staff about charges of a liberal bias at ESPN, he pushed back. The company, he told employees,…
Jennifer Lee/Pete Docter Bob Iger promotes the Frozen co-director and Up filmmaker to chief creative officers for Disney Animation and Pixar, filling the void left by the outgoing John Lasseter. John Martin As the AT&T-Time Warner deal closes, the Turner CEO, who joined the company in 1993, exits as John Stankey takes over the rebranded WarnerMedia businesses. Baran bo Odar/Jantje Friese The creators of the German sci-fi drama Dark score Netflix’s first European overall deal, joining super-producers Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy in the streamer’s growing arsenal. Chris Hardwick After an assault claim by ex-girlfriend Chloe Dykstra, the Nerdist founder sees his talk show pulled by AMC as NBC mulls what to do with his game show The Wall. Showbiz Stocks $15.20 (+6%) GAMESTOP (GME) Private-equity groups are reportedly discussing…
On the pitch, this year’s World Cup may have gotten off to a slow start. Overnight ratings for the June 14 opening match between 2018 host Russia and bottom-ranked team Saudi Arabia were down sharply on the tournament opening four years ago in Brazil, with Fox Sports drawing only 39 percent of what ESPN did in 2014 and viewership for Spanish-language Telemundo just 35 percent of that of Univision. Ratings also dipped across Europe and South America, hurt by Russia’s less than favorable kickoff time and two less than glamorous teams. But whatever happens in the tournament until the final match July 15, the business of the World Cup looks better than ever. Everything, from TV to online viewership, from licensing revenue to sponsorship cash, is on the rise. World…
More than a year before Brie Larson took the stage at the Women in Film Crystal + Lucy Awards on June 13 to announce that Sundance and Toronto had committed to credentialing more diverse writers, the festivals had begun to brainstorm ways to push for broader inclusion at their events. Two days ahead of the gala, Stacy L. Smith — director of USC’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative and creator of the “inclusion rider” contract clause made famous in Frances McDormand’s Oscar speech this year — issued the June 11 critics’ diversity study that served as the foundation of Larson’s speech, showing that 82 percent of film reviews of 2017’s top 100 movies came from white critics. Both festivals have now pledged to issue an additional 20 percent of press credentials to…
Arguably the biggest trend in the Chinese film business of the past two years has been the market’s rapid diversification. While the Chinese box office (ticket sales hit $8.59 billion in 2017) once was exclusively dominated by Hollywood tentpoles and local blockbusters, filmmaking from various corners of the world — including India, Southeast Asia and Europe — and in scale and styles outside the tentpole mold, such as local art house or international prestige drama, have begun to connect with mainstream Chinese moviegoers. Yet some genres remain conspicuously underrepresented — including horror movies. Now, Hollywood’s premium purveyor of the form, Jason Blum, is looking to fill that void. Blum touched down at the Shanghai International Film Festival on June 18 to unveil an ambitious partnership between his Blumhouse Productions and…
I n the late 1980s, desperate to resuscitate a floundering studio that had veered off-course under the leadership of Chariots of Fire producer David Puttnam, Sony Corp. made a move for the big time. Having newly purchased Columbia Pictures from the Coca-Cola Co., Sony offered the posts of chairman and CEO to the double act of Jon Peters and Peter Guber, producers of such blockbusters as Batman and Rain Man. Then the new owner discovered that the partners were still under contract to Warner Bros., which had no intention of letting them go. By the time a deal was done, Sony had agreed to buy Guber and Peters’ company for $200 million and pay Warners some $500 million in assets, on top of the $3.4 billion it had already paid…
