MONDAY AM writethru: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he’s delivering the motion picture industry a $9 billion-plus year at the domestic box office, a feat many thought was unimaginable with the lack of a mega-tentpole over the holiday, coupled by a Q4 impacted by the double strikes. The numbers were compiled from
Look Back & Look Ahead
There will be blood at the box office in 2024. And not the type that comes with two studio tentpoles going at each other. Nah, as Barbenheimer showed this past year, that’s actually great for business. We’re talking the red-ink kind, and it will be felt on both sides, studios and cinemas, with the latter
If 2020 began with promise, all that changed as every industry tradition we took for granted was stripped away without warning. The pandemic has seen nearly 20 million positive cases in the U.S. alone, and soon 350,000 will be dead. Every facet of entertainment was impacted: live theaters and movie theaters closed, production in TV
It was supposed to be a year when the playing field became even. After losing to Disney for four years in a row, with the Burbank studio setting an industry record in 2019 of $13.2 billion global box office, a new major studio was set to become the domestic king. “I think 2020 is going
If 2020 began with promise, all that changed as every industry tradition we took for granted was stripped away without warning. The pandemic has seen nearly 20 million positive cases in the U.S. alone, and soon 350,000 will be dead. Every facet of entertainment was impacted: live theaters and movie theaters closed, production in TV
A word for stocks in 2020: epic — as in monumental, as a bona fide crash in the spring alternated thereafter with convulsions of angst and optimism reflecting a world turned upside down by the first global pandemic in a century. Major indexes from the Dow Jones to the Nasdaq, S&P 500 and Russell 3000