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.
Ariana Grande The star’s Eternal Sunshine album hits No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart for the second week in a row with more than 115 million streams, per a Luminate tally Sam Levinson After the creator’s The Idol flamed out with one season on HBO, script issues on Euphoria delay its third run and the cabler releases the starry cast to seek other work. MacKenzie Scott The philanthropist (and ex-wife of Jeff Bezos) quietly pledges to donate another $640 million to more than 300 nonprofits across the U.S. Lorne Michaels Pete Davidson’s move to pull the plug on Bupkis’ season two leaves the SNL creator’s producing shingle in the lurch, as shooting was to begin this summer on the Peacock title. Showbiz Stocks $86.23 (+6.3%) TKO GROUP HOLDINGS (TKO)…
If Bob Iger were a Marvel superhero, his power would be persuasion. The Disney CEO has long leaned on his ability to convince others of his plans. From film and TV writers, directors and stars, to Disney shareholders, to the company’s own board members, Iger’s track record has been impeccable. Consider possibly the most important deal he ever led: Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009. While Marvel’s success since then is not in dispute, at the time the idea of Disney chasing young men via the comic book brand was seen as a real risk. In his 2019 memoir The Ride of a Lifetime, Iger recalls how he pitched a skeptical Steve Jobs on the deal. Jobs, who had sold Pixar to Disney just a couple of…
Several years into Hollywood’s streaming crusade, executives find themselves confronted with a stubborn problem: Those direct-to-consumer platforms are largely unprofitable. That fact is becoming increasingly important as the industry sees the bottom line of its linear cable TV network businesses — once the key growth drivers and profit centers of their empires — hit by cord-cutting and the cannibalization of their own streaming efforts. Research firm Ampere Analysis forecast in late February that streaming revenue would overtake pay TV subscription revenue in the U.S. for the first time later this year, helped by the addition of streamers’ ad tiers. That raises a question: Which companies can follow up revenue growth with streaming profits and can get them to scale? Source: Company filings; THR research; *includes Hotstar…
In 2015, Imax had little competition. Now there are more than 1,000 premium large-format screens in North America, among them Cinemark Theatres’ XD, Regal Cinemas’ RDX and Canadian giant Cineplex’s UltraAVX. The PLF slice of the opening-weekend pie, including Imax, keeps getting bigger across all genres: Oppenheimer (48 percent), Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (42 percent), Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (37 percent), Fast X (32 percent) and The Little Mermaid (26 percent). As a general rule, Imax still makes up about half the PLF pie, despite having less than half the overall screen count. Dolby Cinema is praised for its proprietary projection system and sound, along with state-of-the art seating, but is exclusive to AMC in the United States. Since Imax had no room for…
A side from her husband, Christopher Nolan, their children and her mother-in-law, Oscar-winning producer Emma Thomas gave a shout-out to only one other person by name when accepting the Academy Award for best picture for Oppenheimer. “And I want to thank Rich Gelfond at Imax and everyone else at Imax for believing in this movie when it maybe didn’t make much sense to do so,” said Thomas. For Gelfond, who was in the audience, that moment won’t be forgotten anytime soon and comes as his company witnesses its own atomic explosion, with more moviegoers than ever embracing the Imax and premium large-format (PLF) experience despite an average hefty upcharge of $5 per ticket (in L.A., an Imax seat can run $28). Imax collected a record $1.06 billion in global ticket…
For years, Nolan has used Imax cameras to shoot his movies, including the Dark Knight trilogy. But no one could have ever imagined that a three-hour biographical drama would earn nearly $1 billion at the box office, with nearly $200 million coming from Imax screens. “If I had shown you the treatment for Oppenheimer and told you it was about a physicist who developed the atomic bomb, that wouldn’t necessarily scream out at you as an Imax film, so it’s about how the vision was executed for Imax,” says Gelfond. The entire town is waiting to see whether Nolan will stick with Donna Langley and Universal after Oppenheimer’s box office and Oscar domination, or return to Warners (many are betting on the former). One thing is almost assured: He’ll be…
