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 Walker The singer’s Still Over It hits No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 201.1 million on-demand streams of the album’s 20 tracks in the week ending Nov. 11, per MRC Data. John Malone Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway slashed its holdings in Malone-backed companies last quarter, including Liberty Media and Charter Communications. Andy Serkis The director’s Sony sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage hits the $200 million milestone stateside, a feat only topped by Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings this year. Robert Deaton The exec producer behind the CMA Awards couldn’t stop the country kudosfest from hitting a second straight all-time low in total viewers, averaging 6.83 million. Showbiz Stocks $42.60 (+9.8%) AMC ENT. (AMC) Plans to sell popcorn and the tease of a possible…
While members of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) voted to ratify a new three-year Basic Agreement with the studios and streaming services, the divisive deal just squeaked by thanks to a delegate voting system, even as 50.4 percent of the popular vote rejected the contract. (Ratification vote results were revealed Nov. 15.) Now, the union and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) are set to implement an unpopular agreement amid a reinvigorated labor movement and concerns over key issues such as funding of the MPI Pension and Health Plans, livable wages and rest periods among the membership. During the unveiling of the ratification vote results, the union’s international president, Matthew Loeb, acknowledged that it had been a “close election” preceded by “vigorous debate.” Gains…
After nearly 14 years, Britney Spears no longer is under the constraints of a conservatorship and is free to make personal and business decisions for herself for the first time since the legal arrangement was instituted in 2008. But the Nov. 12 court ruling in her favor doesn’t mean her fight is finished. Spears and her attorney Mathew Rosengart have made it clear they’re going to investigate abuse and financial mismanagement she alleges occurred during the conservatorship and hold her father, Jamie Spears, and others accountable for any wrongdoing they discover. “I’m going to be watching to see what is the next petition that is filed. Britney is seeking accountability for all of the violations and breaches of the fiduciary duties [such as] the surveillance allegations and reproductive rights decisions,”…
The Walt Disney Co. is taking a gamble on sports betting. The entertainment giant, notoriously conservative when it comes to protecting its brand, will use ESPN as its entry point into the fast-growing sector. “Given our reach and scale, we have the potential to partner with third parties in this space in a very meaningful way,” Disney CEO Bob Chapek told analysts during a Nov. 10 earnings call. The decision to pursue a multibillion-dollar betting deal is something of a strategic pivot for the company, which for years said that the only role sports betting had at ESPN was as one more piece of its TV programming. It was on May 14, 2018, that the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for legalized sports betting in the U.S. via its…
On Nov. 9, publicly traded tech firm Unity — maker of the Unity real-time game engine used in production from games to movies — surprised many in Hollywood when it unveiled a deal to acquire the tech assets of Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital for $1.6 billion. This included roughly 275 engineers, a cloud-based platform and a collection of tools such as the hair and fur system developed at Weta for the simians in the Planet of the Apes trilogy, which received a SciTech Award from the Academy. It allows Unity to combine the Weta expertise with its own engineering team, which will operate using the name Weta Digital, while Weta’s VFX and animation business — whose Academy Award-winning work includes Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and James Cameron’s Avatar…
On Nov. 16, the public-facing aspect of Netflix’s new way of reporting viewing metrics launched. The streamer says it’s changing how it reports its in-app top 10 lists and will supplement those local lists with a website showing top titles in more than 90 countries. The rankings will be based on the total number of hours viewed for a given title, rather than Netflix’s previous standard of a two-minute sample. The change is a move toward data transparency at Netflix, though it — and every other streaming provider — also collects a lot of information that remains at the level of state secret. That includes how many users complete a show or film, whether a title drives subscriptions or retention of existing users and what Netflix terms “efficiency,” a measure…
