The all-new Hollywood Reporter offers unprecedented access to the people, studios, networks and agencies that create the magic in Hollywood. Published weekly, the oversized format includes exceptional photography and rich features.
Summer box office is booming, yet for the first time in two decades, Warner Bros. is largely taking a vacation. Sony Pictures and Paramount, which traditionally have competed heavily in the warm-weather blockbuster season, have generated just 2.2 percent and 4.2 percent of domestic market share, respectively, from May 4 to July 8, with only a few titles left to unfurl. The dramatic shift in release strategy and competitive landscape has led to two studios — Disney and Universal — generating a whopping 61 percent of domestic revenue in the key summer corridor, domination that would have been unthinkable just five years go. The shift underscores how, rather than compete with juggernaut franchises like Disney’s Marvel and Star Wars films or Universal’s Jurassic World, some studios simply are avoiding the…
Drake The rapper’s new album, Scorpion, becomes the first to cross 1 billion streams in its first week of release and generates seven of the top 10 tracks on the Billboard Hot 100, breaking The Beatles’ record. Vincent Sadusky The Univision CEO presides over mass buyouts at the company’s digital Gizmodo Media Group and explores a sale of the division after its canceled IPO plans. Margaret Peterlin Leaving Washington for Hollywood, the former chief of staff for ex-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson joins AT&T’s WarnerMedia as senior vp global external and public affairs. Luc Besson The veteran filmmaker is hit with a second sexual assault allegation as his EuropaCorp studio struggles to stay afloat amid layoffs. Showbiz Stocks $418.97 (+5%) NETFLIX (NFLX) Barclays raises its target price on the streamer…
How vulnerable is Hollywood after President Trump escalates what could become a damaging and protracted trade war with his China counterpart, Xi Jinping? The Middle Kingdom’s box office grew 16 percent in the first half of 2018, and the country could surpass North America as the world’s biggest theatrical movie market by 2020. Hollywood’s biggest films now make a substantial share of their revenue in China, such as Universal’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which has earned nearly 25 percent of its $1.061 billion in global ticket sales there. Yet film analysts in the U.S. and Beijing remain sanguine about the trade spat so far. Peter Schloss, CEO at CastleHill Partners, a Beijing-based merchant bank focused on the media and entertainment industries, points out that Beijing has been very specific with…
When Verizon pulls the plug on its ambitious video streaming app go90 at the end of July, the telecom giant will join a list of companies that have failed to build businesses from short, “snackable” videos. Now the question facing the digital video industry is whether there’s an appetite for such content. In the nearly three years since Verizon launched go90 as a free, ad-supported video destination, the company has pumped in what sources estimate to be hundreds of millions of dollars to license original programming from dozens of producers, including Machinima, LeBron James’ Uninterrupted and Whistle Sports. Firms like Awesomeness and Complex Media (both partially owned by Verizon through its joint venture with Hearst) struck expansive deals to distribute content on the app, resulting in shows like teen drama…
In its voracious quest to attract as many eyeballs as possible, Netflix might soon be aiming for those of the influencers who traverse the fabled Sunset Strip. Sources tell THR that the streaming giant is hammering out a $150 million deal with Regency Outdoor Advertising for about 35 billboards strategically located along the boulevard. The prime corridor, where billboard rentals can range from $25,000 to as high as $55,000 per month, is favored by studios and networks for high-profile signage when trumpeting their newest projects — and it also attracts ads for liquor and luxury goods. Reed Hastings’ Netflix, which has more than 56 million paid U.S. subscribers and is expected to spend $8 billion on content this year, can obviously save money by owning its billboards — for example,…
MoviePass is betting that there are enough believers in its gym membership-like subscription model to keep it afloat for years despite burning cash at a risky rate. Yet Wall Street hasn’t been impressed with those efforts. When the service’s parent company, Helios and Matheson Analytics, filed July 2 to raise $1.2 billion to pour into the app to grow subscribers from 3 million to 5 million by year’s end, its stock fell 29 percent to 22 cents per share. The company’s stock has fallen 93 percent since last August, when the service dropped its price to $9.95 a month for a ticket per day. For a company with a market cap of $47 million, raising more than $1 billion will be difficult, says analyst Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities. Nevertheless,…
