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.
At this point in the streaming wars, bundling, rather than M&A, is back in the spotlight. During a May 18 investor conference, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav was asked whether he would be interested in exploring a sports- and news-led “skinnier bundle” with content from the streamers. Zaslav, who had earlier been bemoaning the irrationality of the streaming business, from the money being spent to the amount of content on different platforms for viewers to sort through, appeared to take a macro approach to the question. “There should be a consolidation, and I think it’s more likely to have to happen in the packaging and marketing of products together,” he continued. And he cautioned, “If we don’t do it to ourselves, I think it’ll be done to us,” naming…
Anna Gomez Biden’s pick for a Democratic commissioner for the FCC could, if confirmed by the Senate, break a 2-2 deadlock at the agency that regulates the media-tech landscape. Mark Zuckerberg Three years after buying Giphy for $400 million in a bet on ephemeral internet memes, Meta sells it to Shutterstock for $53 million, facing regulatory pressure in multiple countries. LL Cool J With CBS ending NCIS: Los Angeles after 14 seasons, the star of the procedural moved to spinoff NCIS: Hawaii in a recurring role that could set him up as a mainstay. Jonah Peretti The BuzzFeed CEO unveils his latest bet, Botatouille, an AI-powered chatbot that can recommend recipes from Tasty, as his company’s stock teeters in delisting territory. Showbiz Stocks $355.99 (+7.4%) NETFLIX (NFLX) The streaming giant…
THE WELL-KNOWN CREATOR As we grow older, we start to see the gray in things, start to understand the limitations and the complications and the paradoxes that render some problems unsolvable. However, I often feel I’m too both-side-y — that I’ve gone too far in my adult knowledge that the intricacies of things usually, at least somewhat, smudge the lines between pure right and wrong. Perhaps it should be as simple as: This Is Unfair, Fix It. I am 100 percent on the side of the guild in this strike. The companies have been, it is now clear, transforming the industry to suit their evolving needs and using said pivot as a smokescreen behind which to subvert our hard-won gains, seeking to erode our power and institute rollbacks in the…
The unseasonably cold and rainy weather in Cannes this year didn’t put a damper on business, but the writers strike loomed like a storm cloud, threatening a deluge. There were plenty of deals, big and small, in the Cannes Marché du Film, which drew more than 13,500 participants this year, an all-time record, exceeding pre-pandemic figures. As the market drew to a close, Netflix secured an eight-figure deal for North America for May December, the Todd Haynes-directed dramedy starring Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. The pickup, reportedly worth $11 million, is a domestic-only, non-global agreement, a setup that used to be rare but could become increasingly common as streamers tighten their focus on individual territories and local audiences. CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group are handling domestic rights…
No one could have blamed Universal studio mogul Donna Langley and her team for wanting to take a joy ride when Fast X opened to $251.5 million overseas, the biggest international launch of 2023 to date, besting The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It set franchise records in key markets including Japan, India, Brazil and Indonesia. And it’s one of the few recent Hollywood movies to resonate in China, where it started off with $77.1 million. The box office in North America is a different matter, where the car-racing franchise has been slowing down since the record-breaking start of 2017’s The Fate of the Furious. While the series has done most of its business over-seas, domestic still matters. There’s only one more movie planned…
How do you solve a problem like Peak TV? For TV viewers, living an era with hundreds of TV shows is pretty cool — the more choices, the merrier. But for the TV Academy and its members, it has presented a real dilemma: What is the most equitable way to approach Emmy voting when no voter can possibly have seen everything — or even a large share of everything — that’s out there? In 2017, the TV Academy tried something that it thought might help to make things fairer. It ended its tradition of issuing nomination ballots with a fixed number of slots per category and instead began instructing members to nominate as many achievements in each category as “you have seen and feel are worthy of a nomination.” Over…
