Mike Cavanagh, the president of Comcast who was recently named the de-facto head of NBC Universal, said the company remains “committed to reaching a fair deal [with actors and writers[ as soon as possible, so we can get back to doing what we do best, which making great content together.” In a change, he kicked
Streaming
What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise
The media news cycle is in a frenzy today over a Bloomberg piece that Apple will shell out a $1 billion to produce big screen features annually. That’s great news for exhibition, yes. But, in reality, doing the math, the streamer was already bound to spend in the billions on a feature slate. Apple’s deep
Oscar-nomination afterglow for this year’s Best Picture contenders was largely felt more in the home than it was at the box office, with a majority of titles already available to be viewed on the couch except for 20th Century Studios/Disney’s 3D title Avatar: The Way of Water. Since noms were first announced on January 24
EXCLUSIVE: In an unprecedented move, Netflix and major exhibition circuits in the U.S. and UK recently agreed a 30-day theatrical window for Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. This comes after years of discussions on finding “a way forward to show their high-quality productions on our screens,” says Tim Richards, founder and CEO
Netflix co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos tossed cold water on hopes that the streamer’s recent deal with major cinema chains for Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery could be the start of something bigger. “We are in the business of entertaining our members with Netflix movies on Netflix, so that’s where we focus
Come in quickly, Insiders. It’s getting colder out there. Jesse Whittock here with a rundown of this week’s top news and analysis, coming to you from across Europe. Queen Elizabeth Laid To Rest The world says goodbye: Following Queen Elizabeth II’s passing on September 8, the mourning period that came after and the thousands of
Apple Original Films will premiere holiday musical comedy Spirited in theaters November 11 and globally on Apple TV+ on November 18. The modern musical rendition of Charles Dickens’ classic holiday story A Christmas Carol directed by Sean Anders stars Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds, Octavia Spencer, Patrick Page, Sunita Mani, Loren Woods, Joe Tippett, Marlow Barkley
Imax Corp. has acquired Ssimwave, an Ontario-based AI-driven tech firm whose clients include media giants from Disney and Paramount Global to Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCU parent Comcast. It’s a cash and stock deal worth $21 million. Imax has also worked with Ssimwave, an expert in enhancing on-demand and live visual imagery for broadcast and
Roadside Attractions movies following their releases on the big screen will now be found on Hulu after the distributor signed a multi-year output deal with the streamer for the post-theatrical Pay 1 window. Hulu will get exclusive U.S. streaming rights to upcoming Roadside Attractions films as Call Jane, Oscar nominee Phyllis Nagy’s feature directorial debut
EXCLUSIVE: We hear that four holiday movies have received HBO Max release dates as of Wednesday: Legendary’s Christmas Story sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas for November 17 this year, and three yuletide titles from ESX Entertainment: Holiday Harmony and A Christmas Mystery both on November 24 and A Hollywood Christmas on December 1. A Christmas Story Christmas from director Clay
It looks like Peacock needs to juice its paid subscriptions some more. Universal/Blumhouse/Miramax’s Halloween Ends, which is already set for theatrical release on October 14, will also debut on NBUniversal’s Peacock streaming service day-and-date. This is a similar practice to what happened with the previous installment of the revived Jamie Lee Curtis horror franchise, Halloween Kills, last
The Paris Theater, an NYC cinematic landmark rescued by Netflix in 2019, will officially reopen August 6 with the streamer’s The Forty-Year-Old Version by Radha Blank and a week of repertory films programmed by the director. The only single-screen movie theater in Manhattan and the borough’s largest, with 545 seats, has hosted limited theatrical engagements
Where did everybody go? They certainly weren’t watching the Friday night Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony. The audience dropped to about 17 million, down 37 percent from 26.5 million viewers for the Rio de Janeiro opening in 2016. (Though Saturday was better.) We know they weren’t at the movies. The box-office dropped 25 percent from last
Samba TV has provided an update on the number of U.S. Smart TV terrestrial households which have tuned into Disney+ Premier’s Black Widow with a running cumulative U.S. household viewership of 2 million. Last weekend, Samba TV reported that 1.1M U.S. households bought Black Widow in its first weekend. That means an additional 900K households bought the Scarlett
Shares of publicly traded move chains fell sharply Monday while broader markets rose as Disney’s Black Widow helped drive the post (ish) pandemic box office to new highs but plenty of viewers siphoned off to Disney+, raising an alarm or at least a lot of questions. AMC Entertainment, the biggest U.S. chain, saw its shares
Amazon did not report viewership figures for their $200M Skydance acquisition title The Tomorrow War, but third-party streaming analytics corp Samba TV did, and the Chris Pratt movie drew 2.41M U.S. households during the 4-day holiday weekend. The previous 3-day weekend viewership for Amazon movies Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse, another Skydance pick-up by the streamer, and
IFC Film’s Werewolves Within saw the biggest debut in a weekend without many new limited releases. Directed by Josh Ruben and written by Mishna Wolff, the comedy-horror flick stars Sam Richardson (Veep) and Milana Vayntrub. In the Ubisoft game-based film, a proposed pipeline creates divisions within the small town of Beaverfield and a snowstorm traps
Specialty box office is ready for liftoff. With Los Angeles and New York completely peeling back restrictions on theater capacity for the first weekend, we are starting to see rays of hope illuminate the limited release space. Meet The Blacks 2 blasted expectations last week by posting a $1M+ debut (per screen average of $2,533).
It’s thrilling to watch Lionsgate make a run at the box office top spot with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, a grown-up comedy. Not a kiddie fantasy, like Peter Rabbit 2 or Cruella. Not a Covid-era placeholder, like The War With Grandpa, or a streaming event, like Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. But a rough, raucous, R-rated action
Hidden Empire Film Group’s comedy/horror romp The House Next Door: Meet the Blacks 2 scared up a $1.064M opening weekend (per screen average of $2,533) with writer-director Deon Taylor and his team huddling right now over where and how much to expand the run — but expand it they will. Taylor’s thrilled with the $$
With more theaters reopening and film-goers slowly returning, life is being resuscitated into the specialty box office. This week we see a faith-based movie premiere banking serious dinero. Witnesses is a film recounting the early days of the Church of Latter-Day Saints and the translation of the Book of Mormon. The movie is directed and
Disney+’s live-action 101 Dalmatians spinoff Cruella drew 686K U.S. households over the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend according to today’s figures from Samba TV. It’s a number that’s 39% less than the 4-day Labor Day traffic for another Disney+ Premier title, Mulan, which pulled in 1.12 million U.S. households over Sept. 4-7, 2020. Both titles were available
EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has another feature hit on its hands in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead which is on its way to becoming one of the streamer’s top 10 most watched movies, bound to notch 72M viewing households in its first four weeks. Army of the Dead, which repped the streamer’s widest theatrical release in 600 theaters prior
In the wake of Monday’s news that Amazon is making a go at MGM, it’s been radio silence. As of today, we hear that both sides remain actively in talks, and want to get the deal done soon but the time frame remains undefined. With Amazon’s recent acquisition of big pics like Paramount’s Coming 2
Another Paramount theatrical release is leaving the calendar, and that is the Antoine Fuqua-directed Mark Wahlberg sci-fi thriller Infinite, which will hit the Paramount+ streaming service in June. ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish made it official today during the conglom’s earnings call. Infinite was recently dated to hit cinemas on Sept. 24. Exhibition need not worry: There’s a ton of
AT&T CEO John Stankey took a Godzilla vs. Kong victory lap Thursday as the film managed to storm the domestic box office and provide a solid boost for HBO Max. Subsidiary Warner Media’s strategy of releasing its 2021 slate day-and-date in movie theaters and on its new premium streaming service was highly controversial when announced
Lionsgate’s Voyagers isn’t your ordinary “the human race is in danger” sci fi romp. Written and directed by Neil Burger (Limitless, The Illusionist) Voyagers follows a group of young men and women bred specifically to have a great level of intelligence and obedience as they embark on an expedition to colonize a distant planet. Sounds like good, safe
Third-party streaming ratings firm Samba TV reported Monday that 3.6 million households watched at least five minutes of Warner Bros/Legendary’s Godzilla vs. Kong on HBO Max in the pic’s first five days on the site from March 31-April 4. While HBO Max didn’t provide any official viewership figures on Godzilla vs. Kong, previous data from Samba
More films with Eddie Izzard and Judi Dench is something that the world needs. They starred together in Stephen Frears’ Victoria & Abdul in 2017 and now they reunite in the Andy Goddard-directed Six Minutes To Midnight which will be released by IFC Films in theaters and on demand starting today. Written by Izzard, Goddard and