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.
After two months of fielding criticism from some of Hollywood’s top filmmakers, WarnerMedia executives finally had something to crow about when AT&T CEO John Stankey revealed Jan. 27 that the much-maligned plan to release its films in theaters and on HBO Max had helped to double the streamer’s audience to 17.2 million active users. But the good news came with a caveat: $520 million in losses due to the ongoing shutdown of many theaters and subsequent hybrid release plan for the 2021 Warner Bros. film slate. The next day, NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell touted Peacock’s 33 million signups but conceded that the 9-month-old streamer would lose $2 billion in 2020 and 2021. The shift to streaming was always going to be expensive. When Disney revealed plans to forgo licensing deals…
Wendy Williams A biopic exec produced by the TV personality, Wendy Williams: The Movie, draws 2.15 million viewers Jan. 30, more than three times Lifetime’s primetime average. James Goldston The ABC News chief will step down at the end of March after a seven-year run as the division begins a search for a new top executive. Stephen Cooper The Warner Music Group chief sees streaming growth from platforms like Spotify boost quarterly revenue to $1.33 billion, a 6 percent increase from a year ago. Jennifer Witz In the CEO’s first quarterly results at SiriusXM, the company posts a loss tied to a $976 million impairment charge due to per-play music royalty costs for its Pandora service. Showbiz Stocks $54.00 (+6.9%) TWITTER (TWTR) The social network completed an acquisition of the…
Non-English-language TV series used to be a niche proposition, with a handful of international shows making it to the U.S. But the success of Netflix’s global titles — from Spain’s Money Heist to Kingdom from South Korea to French hit Lupin — and a need for streamers to quickly build their libraries is leading to a buying frenzy. Drama series Losing Alice, which premiered on Israel’s Hot 3 network last summer, was scooped up by Apple TV+ and bowed Jan. 22. Alice is the second big show from Israel for Apple — the first, thriller Tehran, a co-production with Israeli broadcaster Kan 1, just received a second-season order. WarnerMedia’s HBO Max secured U.S. premieres for the likes of Spanish series Veneno, about Spanish trans TV personality Cristina Ortiz; Italian mob…
It has all the hallmarks of a Hollywood revenge thriller. A group of regular Joe day traders coordinate to upend the stock market through chats on Reddit and TikTok, boosting the share price of companies struggling amid the pandemic and causing hedge funds to lose billions — largely through an investment site aptly named Robinhood. That’s what happened in late January when hedge funds borrowed shares of GameStop and AMC Entertainment stock and then sold them, anticipating that the price per share would fall. The expectation was to buy back the shares at a cheaper price, return them to the lender and pocket the difference. But here, individual traders bought in en masse, driving up the stock prices substantially. Since the hedge funds borrowed the shares, they had to buy…
During the early days of the pandemic, the prospect of workers suing businesses for not protecting them from the virus was so great that many corporations lobbied for tort protection, aiming to be shielded from negligence claims. And yet there have been few actual lawsuits from the nation’s labor force. Certainly none in Hollywood. That is, until Jan. 15, when Timothy Hearl became the first actor to sue entertainment employers over COVID-19 working conditions. Unexpectedly, Netflix is one of the defendants in this suit after having made an under-the-radar jump into live entertainment last year with Stranger Things: The Drive Into Experience. That drive-in show allows fans of the Netflix series to navigate their vehicles through a parking lot styled as the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, in 1985, where…
What Assistants Are Being Paid How Assistants Cover Living Expenses Assistants Say Their Workload in 2020 … Demographics of Assistants Surveyed Source: Self-reported survey conducted by #PayUpHollywood of 1,014 support staffers from June 2019 to December 2020. Demographic percentages equal more than 100, as participants could report any ethnicities that apply.…
