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.
Hayao Miyazaki The director’s feature The Boy and the Heron flies to a $12.8 million opening, making it the first original anime title in history to top the North American box office chart. Simran Sethi The exec must decide if Freeform will stay in scripted after scrapping Cruel Summer and Good Trouble, which, with the final bow of Grown-ish, were its last originals. Christopher Abbott The Poor Things actor levels up to a potential franchise star by nabbing the lead in Universal and Blumhouse’s Wolf Man as Ryan Gosling exits the project. Meghan and Harry The Sussexes bring attention to themselves, but as producers, not as much. Netflix’s data trove shows their docuseries Live to Lead at No. 5,563 on its watched list. Showbiz Stocks $23.30 (+6.3%) NEWS CORP (NWSA)…
Don’t be surprised if top Hollywood studio executives and theater owners aren’t feeling the Christmas spirit this year. They’re bracing for a tumultuous 2024 ride at the domestic box office after a slew of high-profile tentpoles were pushed to 2025 because of the lengthy writers and actors strikes. In a major blow to the post-pandemic recovery effort, domestic box office revenue in 2024 is now expected to come in behind 2023, a reversal of fortunes no one saw coming. If projections are right, domestic box office in 2024 could top out at $7.5 billion to $8 billion, compared to an expected $8.8 billion to $8.9 billion this year, say multiple studio executives who spoke with THR (a few are more bullish in thinking $8 billion to $8.5 billion is possible).…
The future of Paramount Global — or the pieces of it — is shaping up to be among the biggest stories facing Hollywood in 2024. Shari Redstone, who’s considering whether to relinquish her family’s stake in National Amusements, holds a controlling interest in the conglomerate. Among those kicking the tires is Top Gun: Maverick producer David Ellison and his Skydance, which is reportedly working with Gerry Cardinale’s private equity firm RedBird on evaluating potential deals. But Skydance and RedBird are far from alone, should the Redstone stake in National Amusements or Paramount as a whole hit the block. The company’s distress has also been top of mind for John Malone, the cable tycoon, Warner Bros. Discovery board member and mentor to WBD CEO David Zaslav. Media insiders have been buzzing…
As the streaming industry has come down from its blank-check era, it has rediscovered a time-honored way to keep revenue flowing: licensing TV series and movies to other outlets. Acquired shows are among the most watched programming on streaming — it’s the year of Suits, after all — and shows with high episode counts help keep users inside a streamer’s ecosystem. Just as reliable is the uproar when streamers remove shows for tax write-downs or other cost savings, whether it’s a signature series (à la HBO’s Westworld being removed from Max last year) or originals that seemingly never had much chance to find an audience (as with Disney+ and Hulu purging Willow and Y: The Last Man, among others, this year). The perception, fueled by big content removals, is that…
To understand the connection between sports and streaming video, consider this: Amazon’s $1 billion per year deal to stream Thursday Night Football is literally changing U.S. internet habits. Comcast president Mike Cavanagh, speaking Dec. 4 at a UBS conference, said Amazon’s TNF game “comprises roughly 25 percent of all internet traffic on Thursday nights” and that it single-handedly “moved peak data usage on our broadband network from Sunday night to Thursday night.” And Comcast, with more than 32 million broadband internet subscribers, knows where users are spending that valuable bandwidth. It’s a cliché to say that sports is the glue holding together what’s left of the pay TV bundle, but while the bundle isn’t dead yet, every media company with sports rights has decided to go all in on streaming.…
Class Superlatives PROM QUEEN AND KING Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce The most talked-about entertainer of the year and the Super Bowl-winning podcaster combined their forces — and audiences — to forge the kind of four-quadrant cultural phenomenon the industry hasn’t seen in ages. Well, except for —> MOST POPULAR Barbenheimer Combined global box office gross: $2.4 billion WORST HOMECOMING PERFORMANCE Bob Iger He rode back into town last year like a high-EQ white knight to rescue the Magic Kingdom from his flailing handpicked successor, only to be cast as one of the principal villains of the strikes and architect of Disney’s “Dewokening.” MOST UNSETTLING YEARBOOK PHOTO MOST INVINCIBLE MARVEL VILLAIN Audiences Tepid reviews and lackluster box office for the latest entries in the franchise — particularly November’s The Marvels…
