Understanding the film business / Awards

[jo]

deadline.com/2020/12/wme-patrick-whitesell-warnermedia-hbo-max-move-blatant-attempt-to-self-deal-use-our-clients-work-to-build-their-hbo-max-streaming-service-1234655268/

Endeavor’s Patrick Whitesell On WarnerMedia: ‘Blatant Attempt To Self-Deal And Use Our Clients Work To Build Their HBO Max Streaming Service’

By Mike Fleming Jr

Mike Fleming Jr
Co-Editor-in-Chief, Film


December 11, 2020 1:23pm


EXCLUSIVE: Endeavor Executive Chairman Patrick Whitesell today updated the agents at WME on how egregious he felt last week’s blindside by WarnerMedia was, when the studio announced that Warner Bros’ entire 2021 slate would play HBO Max as the films open in theaters. Here is the note Whitesell sent to staff. The agency is heavily invested in the 2021 WB slate. Aside from repping Tenet’s Christopher Nolan, WME reps Gal Gadot on Wonder Woman 1984, The Little Things‘ stars Denzel Washington, Rami Malek and Jared Leto, Reminiscence‘s Hugh Jackman and Lisa Joy, as well as Millie Bobby Brown in Godzilla Vs Kong, and Lin-Manuel Miranda on In The Heights, among others. This adds to the chorus of ire between talent advocates and the studio/streamer.

From: Patrick Whitesell
Date: Friday, December 11, 2020 at 12:56 PM
To: WME Agents
Subject: Important Update Regarding Warner Bros./HBO Max Negotiations


I’m writing to everyone today to provide an update on where we are with our negotiations with Warner Bros. As I made clear to the Motion Picture group last week and will reiterate now: WME rejects their unilateral decision out of hand.

When Warner Bros. called us to inform us that they were going to announce their decision to simultaneously release movies in theaters and on HBO Max last Thursday, we immediately told them that we are disappointed with this decision, and quickly gathered the Motion Picture group for a call. Since then, we have engaged in follow up discussions with the highest levels at Warner Bros. and we are setting up a meeting today to work toward reaching a solution that protects the creative and economic interests of our clients.

We have already been at work on the movie “The Little Things” – the first film on Warner Bros. release schedule and one that includes multiple WME clients. We have the most business with Warner Bros. out of any of the agencies and we are aggressively working to ensure that our clients are protected.

As I stated last week and will reiterate here:

Warner Bros. announced a strategy across an entire slate of 2021 movies without consulting with their partners (our clients), not only disregarding our clients’ feelings about the strategy but in many cases constituting a contractual violation.

This is a blatant attempt to self-deal and use our clients work to build their HBO Max streaming service, which our clients have no financial interest in.

The simultaneous release on HBO Max will cannibalize the domestic box office and torpedo the traditional waterfall of economics that make movies profitable in the near and long-term for the studio and for our clients (a point our client Chris Nolan very articulately made this week: “Long-term, I think all of the studios know that the movie theater experience will bounce back and be a very important part of the ecosystem long-term. What you have right now in our business is a lot of the use of the pandemic as an excuse for sort of grappling for short-term advantage. And it’s really unfortunate. It’s not the way to do business and it’s not the best thing for the health of our industry”).

In the current environment with COVID, studios by and large have been delaying releases, or with clients’ consent and inclusion in the process, selling the movies to streaming platforms. But what Warner Bros. has decided to do is push forward with a theatrical release in the darkest days of COVID. At a time where our own government leaders are telling us to stay home and away from loved ones, Warner Bros. is doubling down on ensuring box office failure and even worse, putting movie-goers who want to see a movie in a theater at risk.


This decision is even more baffling and egregious knowing that a vaccine is here, eventually putting an end to the incredibly challenging storm we have all been living through the past nine months.

Moreover, we don’t see this decision as a lifeline to the exhibitors or a way of supporting the existing business. Rather, we see this as a purely opportunistic attempt to re-write the rules of windowing to WarnerMedia’s favor, while the theater owners themselves have been brought to their knees due to COVID.

Given that every movie is unique in how it is financially put together for our artists, and given that inside each movie there are unique characteristics from artist to artist, we will not accept a ‘one size fits all’ approach.
Lastly, we take seriously the notion that moving our clients’ work to the HBO Max platform is effectively a free advertisement for HBO Max and we expect and will negotiate that consideration for our clients.

Again, these are all the points that we made last week and have been reinforcing since then. Going forward, we will engage with Warner Bros. on a movie by movie basis, and we will not stop until our clients’ creative and financial needs are satisfied.

Obviously, there is a lot of press attention around this—especially with public statements from other agencies and prominent artists—but we have a fiduciary responsibility to our clients to do our negotiating work in the confidential manner we always do to protect our clients’ privacy and interests.

We will continue to keep you informed as our negotiations progress. Please feel free to share this letter or use the content as talking points with your clients.

Thanks,

Patrick

[jo]

Interesting reader comments on Deadline re the report on Whitesell's response --

Nerdrage
on December 11, 2020 3:20 pm
Not even smart self-dealing (that should be AT&T’s corporate motto ha!) Look at the amazing lineup Disney just announced (sending its stock soaring 13%). Franchise dominant. Build up Pixar, Star Wars and Marvel and you can milk those brands forever.

Where do you build those brands? Movie theaters. The theaters are where the franchises are born, and streaming is where you really capitalize on them.

So theaters are crucial to streaming services. Unless you’re Netflix, so far out in front that you can ignore the dominance of franchises through sheer volume, streaming competitors will survive or fail on the strength of their franchises.

AT&T has DC, which it needs to manage across theaters and streaming. It needs an answer to Star Wars. Well Dune could have been that answer but now they’ll be lucky to get Villeneuve to return their phone calls.

What else could they try, Battlestar Galactica? Franchises are hard to build, but there are few out there to buy. If AT&T isn’t willing to put in the work, expense and risk of building franchises, then the entertainment biz is not for them. Nobody ever said this would be easy but they’re making it harder than they need to.

Theaters will be back, and they will again be the nursery for new franchises. I would look to Disney, not AT&T, to be genesis for those new franchises.


REPLY
Anonymous
on December 11, 2020 7:25 pm
Smart post. In a sea of really stupid ones, most of which can be translated as ‘I want to watch super expensive movies on the streaming services my parents subscribe to for free!’ BATTLESTAR GALACTICA isn’t at WB, it’s NBC/Uni. Peacock is trying with Sam Esmail (yes, really. what odds do you give that?!). Universal tried on the feature side. Disney is doing an amazing job of managing their existing IP but when was the last time they actually created a piece of new IP? MCU, Star Wars, Pixar, Indy, those are 20+ years old. WB has HARRY POTTER, MATRIX, DUNE, DC, EXORCIST… I dunno what else. FANTASTIC BEASTS has killed HP. HBO Max is trying to relegate MATRIX and DUNE to the bargain stores before they’re even released.

Quincy Magoo
on December 11, 2020 10:28 pm

Lots of people got screwed because neither the agencies nor the guilds foresaw Warners (or any other studio) making this kind of maneuver, which had very little to do with the pandemic. If it did, knowing vaccines are coming, why wouldn’t Warners have limited their distribution scheme to Q1 and/or Q2? Why wouldn’t they have released these films on HBO and HBO Max. No, in an attempt to drive subscribers to a service that few have wanted, Warners saddled the colossal failure of the launch of HBO Max onto the backs of artists who had reasonable expectations of how their works would be exhibited when they made their deals. Agents will start asking for guaranteed theatrical-only windows for their clients, and when it’s time for the three guilds to renegotiate their MBAs with the studios, this will be a topic of conversation. This is a topic on which the agencies and guilds can join forces for the people they represent.

[jo]

Btw, it is reported that Patrick Whitesell will also have to sit down to negotiate with Warner Bros in behalf of Hugh Jackman and Lisa Joy Nolan ( writer, director, producer) for proper remuneration packages for their in REMINISCENCE!

Most directors and lead actors have back-end profit participation for theatrical screenings.


Jo

[jo]

It looks like WARNER MEDIA opened Pandora's Box!


www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/warner-bros-under-siege-no-one-is-angry-at-the-streamers-its-these-guys

Warner Bros. Under Siege: "No One Is Angry at the Streamers — It’s These Guys"
11:17 AM PST 12/15/2020 by Kim Masters



Warner Bros Under Siege Illustration By Tim Peacock
Illustration By Tim Peacock


WarnerMedia’s production partners are eyeing court battles over its day-and-date HBO Max plan, and top talent like Denzel Washington aren't pleased by "woefully inadequate" overtures.

In the aftermath of WarnerMedia’s decision to put its entire 2021 slate of films on its HBO Max streaming service the same day the titles open in theaters, the AT&T division seems to recognize the need for damage control — but not quite how to go about it.

As Hollywood has revolted publicly against the plan, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar is making rounds of brief calls to the company’s various creative partners, assuring them breezily that everything will be smoothed over before ringing off. And the offers that follow? One producer involved in the mess tells The Hollywood Reporter that what’s been proposed so far is “woefully inadequate” and “adds insult to injury.”

An agency source references Kilar’s Dec. 13 comment in The New York Times that WarnerMedia is approaching “this situation with a guiding principle of generosity” and offers this response: “You don’t know the definition of generous, dude.”

Part of the problem is that Kilar appears to talk out of both sides of his mouth. Warners threw the entire 2021 slate of movies on HBO Max day-and-date, the company says, because it had concluded that people wouldn’t be returning to theaters by the end of the year. This was even as the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, was saying things could be better much sooner than that, and as the world is witnessing planes delivering loads of coronavirus vaccines.

There are those who argue that people will still be reluctant to go to theaters by the end of the year and those who believe people will be very eager to get out of their houses and experience movies on the big screen. But since no one knows for sure, it seems disingenuous to use the pandemic to explain making such a sweeping move for a full year.

While Warners has been telling filmmakers that the move will apply only to 2021 movies, Kilar simultaneously says things like, “At a certain point you do need to lead.” Where is he leading? Is the studio’s destination really consistent with a temporary shift in strategy, necessitated by the pandemic?

Those who come from the digital world believe the revolution is here, and that every movie will stream day-and-date. They cheerfully dismiss industry players like Christopher Nolan — who say the Warners move will destroy the business model that supports film — as Luddites who are resisting the streaming future. But throughout industry history, other outsiders have also had a dangerous tendency to imagine that Hollywood insiders are stupid. It usually ends badly for them.

Filmmakers and stars understand that there’s a pandemic to consider and a digital shift in the works. They know that streaming day-and-date or going without a theatrical release altogether will be routine for many movies going forward; they know the exclusive, weeks-long theatrical window was unsustainable. “None of us are horse-and-buggy people,” says an exec involved in the battle. “We go across all platforms when everyone is in agreement and up-front about it. No one is angry at the streamers — it’s these guys.”

Consider the case of Denzel Washington, whom New York Times critics A.O. Scott and Manohla Dargis just named the greatest actor of the 21st century so far. Most likely, making him very angry was not such a good idea, but sources say that’s what happened as his new detective film, The Little Things, becomes the first one down the WarnerMedia chute.

Like everyone involved with the 2021 slate, Washington was blindsided by the decision to stream day-and-date. Given the pandemic, sources say, he might have been amenable to the move if it had been done transparently the way Warners had handled Wonder Woman 1984. “Many artists would say, ‘As long as we have a fair negotiation, I’m fine,’” says a source involved in the situation.

So Warners could at least partially solve the problem with money, though it hasn’t yet. But even if a Little Things deal is made, that doesn’t address the filmmakers’ unhappiness at being blindsided, nor their concern that the movie is supposed to debut Jan. 29 and Warners, having dismissed veteran Blair Rich, has a leaderless marketing department. Industry insiders note with concern that Warners seems to be purging just about every exec with ties to the studio’s formerly talent-friendly culture — which will have a long-term impact that seems inconsistent with a strategic shift necessitated by the pandemic. (The studio has hired marketing exec Josh Goldstine to consult on Little Things and is rumored to be close to hiring a veteran marketing executive to work across all platforms, which might help the company figure things out.)

More trouble looms with respect to James Wan’s upcoming horror movie, Malignant. A knowledgeable source says Wan, as a producer and director, has an extraordinarily rich deal — 13 percent of first-dollar gross — so he could hardly have been pleased when Warners decided to wipe out the exclusive theatrical window. The same source says the $60 million film was fully financed by Chinese company Starlight Media, which owns all rights.

Warners’ unilateral decision to put the film day-and-date on its own streamer with no deal in place looks like a lawsuit waiting to happen. The source says there is no version of a deal with Warners that does not include an exclusive theatrical release of the film. Starlight is said to be as unhappy as Legendary, which produced Dune as well as Godzilla vs. Kong and plans to fight Warners’ release plan. It doesn’t seem impossible that the two Chinese-owned companies could join forces in litigation against Warners. Legendary declined to comment, and an attorney for Starlight did not respond to a request for comment.

Warners now has to navigate deals with dozens of players. “The poor business affairs lawyers at WarnerMedia — I do not envy them,” producer Jason Blum said on my podcast, KCRW’s The Business. “They have to deal with 17 groups of people who all say, ‘I want to get paid as if my movie did a billion dollars, like you did for Wonder Woman.’ Clearly, they can’t do that, [and] now they’re set up in this super-contentious relationship.”

A source involved with the dealmaking on one film that’s caught up in the new Warners strategy says agencies, producers and talent have to take these talks to the mat: “When you let one company do whatever it wants, it opens the door to another company doing it in different circumstances.”

This will appear in the Dec. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

[jo]

Dec 18, 2020 16:50:08 GMT -5 jo said:

The sad reality of WarnerMedia's decision to stream new movies on day of theatrical release!

www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/warner-bros-streaming-plan-may-invite-piracy-bonanza

Warner Bros.’ Streaming Plan May Invite Piracy "Bonanza"
7:23 AM PST 12/18/2020 by Patrick Brzeski
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Warner Bros.’ Streaming Plan May Invite Piracy ‘Bonanza’
Godzilla: Courtesy of LEGENDARY AND WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. Matrix: Warner Brothers/Courtesy Everett Collection.

The studio’s decision to smash its theatrical windows for 2021 films could result in "high-quality" counterfeit versions of the titles "available on every pirate service in the world" the same day the features hit HBO Max.
The industry remains up in arms about Warner Bros.’ decision to send its biggest 2021 movies directly to HBO Max on the same day the titles hit U.S. theaters. But one group is probably pleased with the plan: Film pirates. “For sure, pirates are celebrating WarnerMedia’s decision,” says Abigail De Kosnik, director of the Berkeley Center for New Media and an associate professor at UC Berkeley.

Traditionally, the theatrical window has provided some buffer against piracy’s erosion of a film’s earnings. Usually, during the early days of a theatrical release the only pirate copies that become available are low-quality “cam” versions, surreptitiously recorded via phone or tablet by someone in a cinema. Law-breaking consumers in some territories have demonstrated a willingness to watch these copies — especially in places like Russia and Turkey, according to experts — but pirates throughout the West and among the more developed major markets of East Asia, such as Japan, South Korea and China’s major urban centers, tend to prefer to wait for the film to hit streaming services, whereupon a high-definition copy can be “ripped” and disseminated.

Warner Bros.’ hybrid plan of dropping next year’s film slate on HBO Max in the U.S. — the only territory where the service has fully launched so far — while simultaneously marketing and releasing the movies in cinemas overseas will likely erode international box office earnings of titles like Dune, The Matrix 4 and Godzilla vs. Kong. “If a film is made available in the U.S. on HBO Max, a high-quality pirate copy is going to be available on every pirate service in the world that same day,” notes Andy Chatterley, CEO of U.K.-based piracy data and analytics company Muso.

Those dynamics were on display when Disney opted to release its big-budget, live-action remake of Mulan over Disney+ in select territories this fall, while also opening it theatrically in the countries where the streaming service hasn’t yet launched (such as the enormous China market, crucially). The film attracted 21.4 million illegal downloads in the 12 weeks after it released, according to De Kosnik’s research, one of the highest totals she has observed since she began measuring pirate consumption in 2017. “Pirates will enjoy a real bonanza next year because of the WarnerMedia decision,” she adds.

Because piracy is such a complicated consumer decision, involving sensitivity to price, content availability, personal ethics and government efforts at deterrence, projecting its impact on box office earnings is difficult to do, explains Neil Gane, general manager of the Asia Video Industry Association’s Coalition Against Piracy. But thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, he says, pirates in many places are better poised to strike than at most moments in recent memory.

Gane says lockdowns and stay-at-home orders have boosted the fortunes of piracy syndicates in the same way that they have driven subscription gains on legitimate streaming platforms. "For example, during the peak lockdown period in Southeast Asia from the end of March to mid-May," he explains, "we saw a proportionate spike there in usage of both pirate streaming and legal streaming platforms." (Indonesia and Malaysia were rare exceptions in the region, thanks to recent government efforts to block access to piracy sites.)

Adds Muso’s Chatterley: “We’ve never seen so many big-budget movies hit pirate networks so quickly. The piracy rates are going to be staggering — that’s just inevitable.”

[jo]

In this survey with studios, Deadline.com sees a more optmistic outlook for the movie business ( in the theaters, not on streaming) sometime in 2021!


deadline.com/2020/12/movie-theaters-2021-outlook-poised-for-rebound-covid-black-widow-1234661930/

How The Box Office Will Power Back In 2021 Despite Covid Woes & Streaming Obsessions

By Anthony D'Alessandro

Anthony D'Alessandro
Editorial Director/Box Office Editor

December 28, 2020 2:34pm


As pollyannaish as it sounds, especially as the domestic 2020 box office crumbles to a historic all-time low of $2.27 billion due to the coronavirus pandemic, the global theatrical business is poised for a comeback in 2021.

However, it might take a few months.


How in God’s name can such a ridiculous projection be forecasted? Entertainment conglomerates, like AT&T, are drunk from launching their own streaming services, with visions of $500-plus share prices dancing in their heads.

Also, aren’t more movie theaters expected to close down? As bankruptcy rumors continue to swirl around AMC and Cineworld, the expectation is that the over-screened U.S.-Canada marketplace (now at 41,172) will scale back significantly by at least a minimum of 5,000 screens, per sources.


The notion that the global box office is due for a rally — especially at a grim time when we’re seeing 60% of all U.S.-Canadian movie theaters closed, along with several key markets like Los Angeles, New York City, London, etc. — stems from most major motion picture studios’ continued belief in the theatrical window. Despite its expected shrinkage, theatrical windows remain a potent financial formula that yields plenty of fruits in its downstream revenues. Nothing beats the big screen, and the studios have long-term plans to commit to it.




Disney
This was quite apparent when Disney CEO Bob Chapek declared earlier this month that the studio’s future streaming series and features stood greatly on the shoulders of established theatrical IP. “We had a $13 billion box office last year, and that’s not something to sneeze at, said Chapek during Disney Investor Day, “We built those franchises through the theatrical window.”

A crunched window was bound to happen with or without Covid-19, and the pandemic just accelerated the process. The trick for all these studios will be figuring out the appropriate number of days to maximize revenue at theaters before transitioning product to other home entertainment ancillaries.

“It’s about balance and following the consumer as they make that transition,” said Chapek. “We need to be flexible to read all the cues, whether it’s Covid or changing consumer behavior so we can nimbly make decisions.” Observed MKM Partners’ managing director of Media & Entertainment Equity Research Eric Handler, who believes the majors largely won’t abandon theatrical window monies: “Disney does a great job maximizing revenue throughout all the windows.”



Said Universal vice chairman and chief distribution officer Peter Levinsohn: “We are very bullish on the prospects of the domestic box office once the cinemas are back up and running at full capacity; some level of exhibition consolidation is likely, but we believe ticket sales will be redistributed amongst the remaining theaters and have little impact on box office going forward.”



Warner Bros.
While Universal was hammered by the National Association of Theatre Owners and No. 1 exhibitor AMC for its sudden theatrical-Premium VOD day-and-date release of DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls World Tour at the start of the pandemic — an experiment that minted a reported $100 million-plus to NBCUniversal — cooler heads prevailed. The studio negotiated a cognizant shortened theatrical window plan, which could very well become the industry standard moving forward: 17 days in theaters for all titles opening under $50M in theaters before transitioning to PVOD, with a 31-day exhibition window for those movies opening north of $50M.

That’s not a hard-and-fast rule as to when Uni will pull movies from theaters, rather a parameter as to when the studio can milk two windows at once. While the studio has been upbeat about this plan, which has been in place since the late fall on Focus and Uni titles, we have yet to hear about its revenue highlights and whether it will continue in a post-pandemic marketplace; a key deal point being that the studio has cut in big exhibitors like AMC, Cinemark and Cineplex Odeon on PVOD revenue. Five weekends after its release, Universal’s The Croods: A New Age has grossed $30.3M domestic, $100M worldewide with the DWA sequel recently hitting PVOD.

Despite Warner Bros’ trumpeting this past weekend that Wonder Woman 1984 opened to $16.7M domestic, a record for the pandemic, with $85M WW to date in its audacious day-and-date theatrical HBO Max release model, don’t believe for a second that a new window was just born. More on this later.




It’s going to be a long four to six months until hopefully Covid-19 cases are quelled again due to the vaccine, and movie theaters and markets can fully reopen with high-capacity auditorium caps. As we learned from Tenet at the end of August, it’s not about one movie bringing back business back but rather a cluster. A box office rebound is also contingent on the majors committing to $100M global P&A campaigns for their event pics. The hope is that MGM’s long-awaited 007 movie No Time to Die and Sony’s Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway will be the first big booms we see over Easter weekend April 2-4 — that is if those two movies aren’t rescheduled (and we’ll know that by February). Otherwise, many are looking to Disney’s May 7 release of Marvel’s Black Widow as the movie to bring business back. Until then, expect more studio movies, with the exception of Warner-HBO Max titles, to shift out of the next four-month corridor (see schedule to the right).

“Artists will still want to make films that have a cultural impact; movies that are in a movie theater and have a global wide release are what make such impact. Audiences will still want to go,” said Sony Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group chairman Tom Rothman. “The next three or four months will be grim — we’re still in the tunnel, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel.”


How 2021 Will Deal With The Whole Notion Of “The Customer Gets To Decide”
AT&T’s WarnerMedia has defended its theatrical-HBO Max 2021 release strategy as one where “the customer gets to decide.” It’s a bold jingle on par with a MAGA slogan from Donald Trump’s campaign. Some in town perceived WarnerMedia’s move as a means for the studio transforming into another Netflix, and leaving theatrical behind. Handler, for one, doesn’t think that Warners can do without its global box office revenues, which last year grossed $4.4 billion.

One industry source in a note to his colleagues this morning called the release of WW1984 “a miscalculation” given the $1 billion global box office that the studio was leaving on the table by hastily taking it out too soon. WarnerMedia never reported any hard-number viewership on WW1984, or the exact amount of subscribers the film brought in over the weekend. The Patty Jenkins sequel grossed $85M globally in its first two weekends, this compared to the original’s two-weekend running total in 2017 of $438.3M (it finaled at $822.3M WW).

“As far as Warner’s day-and-date theatrical streaming model goes, I don’t think it’s sustainable. Maybe they go the whole year with it. The talent agencies aren’t happy, and now the client back-end is damaged. WarnerMedia is clearly willing to sacrifice box office revenue to drive incremental subscriptions to HBO Max. As a result, this is going to mean significant losses for the Warner Bros business as they’re ramping up the SVOD service. It will hurt cash flow and AT&T has a mountain of debt to service, while trying to keep shareholders happy,” Handler observes.




Since the announcement of the theatrical-HBO Max 2021 slate strategy on December 3, AT&T’s share price is down 2% to $28.55 (as of midday Monday). Earlier this month, the debt-laden telecom fielded bids for its DirecTV at $15 billion, a price 78% lower than what the company paid for it in 2015. Industry sources have pointed out that it will be near impossible for WarnerMedia to recapture any lost theatrical revenue on its 2021 slate via the addition of HBO Max subs. First, the streamer is in a pickle in that not all of its 38 million HBO and HBO Max subs combined have fully activated the streaming service. Next, HBO Max itself doesn’t make any extra money unless it comes from new subscribers.

Even though WW1984‘s domestic opening repped a record debut for the pandemic, don’t interpret that as “the consumer decided where they wanted to see the movie, and chose theatrical over streaming.” We are in a broken exhibition infrastructure, not a normal marketplace, and when the Joe Shmoe moviegoer catches up with the fact they can see a Warner Bros movie for free at home, a cannibalization of its box office could very well take effect. The industry outlook on the day-and-date theatrical-HBO Max plan is that exhibition will box out this model once the marketplace becomes vibrant again and rival studios commit to more windowed fare.

“Like in every industry, the notion of ‘give the consumer what they want’ has to find some equilibrium with what a business needs to do to remain successful,” Adam Fogelson chairman of STXfilms Motion Picture Group, told Deadline. “Studios need to make good content that is also profitable. Consumers need to pay a fair price — as defined by both sides — to see that content where and when they want. And exhibitors need to run a successful business too. Now, everyone has theories about what price on what platform in what window will do to the overall ecosystem. But to date they’re just theories. So the studios have picked various ways to deal with the short-term challenges, but I’m sure we’ll see an evolution or a hybrid of the different distribution models once we have the benefit of some actual learning,”

STXfilms has responded to the pitfalls of the pandemic by monetizing its movies via various means, including the sale of My Spy to Amazon (which has a sequel in the works), a PVOD and ultimate $20M-$30M HBO release of the Gerard Butler action pic Greenland coupled with a near $48M overseas gross, and the PVOD drop of the Invisible Narratives pandemic thriller Songbird.



Universal
“When we moved to the 17-day window (depending on the size of the film), our goal was to find the right balance between maintaining a minimum period of theatrical exclusivity, especially for the bigger films, and creating a strong consumer proposition that provides optionality for moviegoers,” said Levinsohn. “We never saw PVOD as a replacement for theatrical, rather an augmentation to the theatrical release. As the transactional home entertainment business has gotten smaller, the economics of releasing films theatrically has become more challenging. Too many films are being siphoned out of the ecosystem, so our goal has been to implement a strategy that augments the P&L by making films available to consumers in the home when awareness is at its peak. We still believe that a theatrical release first is the right way to go; if the market changes, we’re a very aggressive company and will react accordingly.”

“Customer satisfaction is an absolute — the consumer deciding your business parameters is something entirely different,” said Rothman. “Do what’s best for the asset.”


Sony
Like many studios, Sony has responded to the pandemic by eventizing its movies on the shelf, either through sales to a streamer like Apple (Greyhound) or Hulu (Happiest Season), or maintaining a widowed theatrical release, i.e., its recent holiday global release of Monster Hunter. The studio remains a big believer in a windowed theatrical release and has demonstrated that by delaying the release dates of its bigger IP titles like Morbius, Venom 2 and Ghostbusters: Afterlife to deeper dates in the release calendar.

“Before the pandemic, Bad Boys for Life was doing fantastic business at the box office. In 2019, the industry had a $42 billion global box office year. That’s an indicator of consumer behavior, and that success wasn’t because there wasn’t anything to watch at home,” Rothman said. “The movie business has been competing with the home since the advent of television in the 1950s. Questions were always asked: ‘Why would anyone go to the movies if there’s a VHS at home?’, ‘Why would anyone go to the movies because there are 300 cable channels at home?’, ‘Why would anyone go to the movies if there’s streaming content in the home?’ The answer: Because it’s fun, and because it’s different. It’s the same reason why anyone chooses to go to a Broadway show, a live sporting event or a concert.”

Despite the industry’s current love affair with streaming, and its short-term knee-jerks experimenting with distribution models during the pandemic, a sage wisdom prevails about the long-terms prospects of the theatrical business, and that audiences will return.


“People like leaving their homes and having fun, emotional, communal experiences together,” says Fogelson, “I don’t think that will change.”

“We at Universal are optimistic about the future. Our leadership talks about the roaring ’20s,” Levinsohn said. “We’ve all been stuck inside and people are desperate to get out of the house.”

[jo]

Streaming Movies Are Like Ether

Once upon a time (i.e., pre-Covid) award-season movies would generate a certain vibration. They (and you) would hit the industry or press-screening circuit and then they’d open commercially and hang around for three or four weeks, and you could sense a certain occupational presence.

This was in the good old days of 2019 and before, of course…way back when you could watch films with a crowd and actually sit next to strangers and shit. I’m saying this because streaming and occasional DVD-watching are piss-poor substitutes. Even watching films at invitational drive-in showings…even that doesn’t get it.

In the current environment it’s very easy to watch something really good and then forget about it…it’s respected but doesn’t linger and just flies out of your mind. Streaming will never replace sitting in front of a 50-foot-wide screen. Because your TV screen lacks that power, that dominance, that persuasive presence that movies need. If the current is missing, fuhgedaboudit. Because it makes all the difference in the world.

Jeffrey Wells, Hollywood Elsewhere

[jo]

Steven Spielberg talks of the communal experience of the arts, movie-going in particular --


www.joblo.com/movie-news/steven-spielberg-return-of-movie-theaters

[jo]

variety.com/2021/tv/news/wme-wga-endeavor-content-packaging-production-1234902142/


WME ( led by Ari Emmanuel and Patrick Whitesell) will be divesting majority of its holding in its packaging arm ENDEAVOR/ENDEAVOR CONTENT as part settlement of the disagreements with WGA.

Excerpts --

WME and the WGA have finally come to terms on a settlement that will allow WME to resume representing writers after a nearly two-year standoff with the guild. WME was the last agency holdout in the WGA’s campaign to reform the rules governing how talent agents represent union writers.

The WGA told members that the deal is in line with previous agreements with CAA, UTA and ICM, which aim to end conflicts of interest in writer representation. The deals preclude the agencies from holding 20% or more of a production company. A side letter agreement requires that WME divest its interest in Endeavor Content to that threshold by a date certain, and appoints a retired judge to oversee the process. The deal also imposes a similar restriction on Silver Lake Partners, Endeavor’s majority owner...

[jo]

In a conference with investors, WarnerMedia CEO shares future prognosis


www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/warnermedia-chief-jason-kilar-teases-mysterious-harry-potter-sequels

WarnerMedia Chief Jason Kilar Teases Mysterious Harry Potter Sequels
6:17 AM PST 3/4/2021 by Etan Vlessing


Kilar also talked about an advertising-supported HBO Max and agreeing with Disney boss Bob Chapek on theatrical windowing post-pandemic during an appearance at an investors conference.
WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar talked about expanding the world of Harry Potter for HBO Max and Warner Bros. during an appearance at an investors conference Thursday.

"There's this little thing called Harry Potter, which is one of the most beloved franchises. And we're incredibly thankful to be able to partner with J.K. Rowling and so I would argue there's a lot of fun and potential there as well," Kilar told the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecommunications Conference during a session that was webcast.

Kilar did not elaborate on what those development plans might be, but recent speculation has pointed to Warner Bros. looking to expand the famed film franchise by putting a Harry Potter live-action TV series in early development at HBO Max.

And on the movie front, there's talk Warner Bros. could be developing a new tentpole based on the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play. Discussion about possible sequels for Harry Potter — whose rights Warner Bros. controls along with creator J.K. Rowling — came as Kilar was talking about the creative fortunes going forward for Warner Bros.

And that trajectory continues to be bound up with HBO Max as WarnerMedia parent AT&T has placed a big bet on streaming with its direct-to-consumer offering. Kilar pointed to HBO and HBO Max now standing at a combined 41.5 million subscribers to date, well ahead of projections.

"It's early days, but given my experience in the industry, we are so far ahead of pretty much any metric, whether it's engagement, usage-per-day, our absolute number of subscribers," Kilar said as HBO Max gets set to launch in Latin America in June.

He also addressed fears the HBO brand could be diluted in favor of volume of programming to get HBO Max to scale globally. "What we need to do is continue to hold that quality bar incredibly high and expand our sensibilities," Kilar said as he pointed to recent HBO Max series like The Flight Attendant as broadening the audience for the streaming platform while curating excellence.

And Kilar addressed inserting advertising into a cheaper version of HBO Max. "It turns out that most people on this planet are not wealthy. If we can wake up and use price and be able to kind of invent and do things elegantly through advertising to reduce the price of the service, I think that’s a fantastic thing for fans," he argued.

Kilar also talked about the comprehensive reorganization at the studio to allow WarnerMedia studios to become pipelines to its networks, especially HBO Max, rather than wholesalers of content. "We've been in a business that's largely been defined by wholesaling, by licensing to others. And that's a good business. But I can tell you what's a better business, which is when you get to scale on a global basis with owner economics, and you're able to both produce and develop and distribute where you're in control. That's a better business," Kilar argued.

And when asked about how WarnerMedia will handle theatrical releases and other windows post-pandemic, Kilar said he agreed with Disney CEO Bob Chapek telling the Morgan Stanley conference two days earlier that he anticipated shorter theatrical-to-home release windows.

"I do tend to agree with Bob Chapek when he says it's hard to imagine going back to 2015 in terms of the windows that existed for theatrical and everything that happened afterwards," Kilar said. But he quickly added there was an industry consensus on moving forward with theatrical releases and expanding streaming options.

"I think people appreciate and understand that, and at the end of the day, it's about putting the seeds in place for a very healthy and robust business that can last for another 100 years," Kilar added. But on how that balance between theatrical windows and premium video-on-demand platforms will shake out before an industry standard can be agreed upon, the WarnerMedia chief said it was too early to say.

"It's so dynamic. People are absolutely experimenting," Kilar told the investors conference, while indicating more visibility would likely emerge later this year.

[jo]

Berlinale as an outpost for the look into the future of the film industry.

Berlin: A Post-COVID Recovery Leads to Optimism as European Film Market Wraps
1:00 AM PST 3/5/2021 by Scott Roxborough


With the promise of theaters reopening and plenty of big-budget, buzzy art-house titles available, Berlin's EFM offered hope for the global film business after a year of Corona lockdown: "There is a consensus that there is light at the end of the tunnel."

This year, more than most, Berlin's European Film Market was an opportunity to gauge the health of the global indie industry. Judging from the business done over the past week — the 2021 EFM wraps Friday — the general assessment would be: The patient is stable and the prognosis is promising.

"For the first time in many markets, we are seeing a proper supply of films: we've got movies for every taste, every budget, every genre," says Stefano Massuzi of Italian distributor Lucky Red. "With progress on vaccines and the promise of theaters reopening it feels like a re-start."

That optimism was reflected in the ambition of some of the films brought to the 2021 EFM. The COVID pandemic, and the lack of affordable insurance to cover for pandemic-imposed shutdowns, slammed the brakes on many of the biggest indie projects (Roland Emmerich's $140 million sci-fi epic Moonfall from AGC Studios, which delivered last year, being a notable exception), but in Berlin, the tentpole titles returned.



FilmNation and CAA launched In Lost Lands, a fantasy epic from Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson, starring Milla Jovovich and Dave Bautista, based on a story by Game of Thrones novelist George R.R. Martin. Lionsgate rolled out Eli Roth's hotly-anticipated adaptation of blockbuster sci-fi horror video game Borderlands. And AGC Studios lined up Shailene Woodley and Anthony Mackie for its prison-set thriller Panopticon produced with Scott Free and director by Narcos helmer Andrés Baiz.

"My big takeaway from this market is that the big companies are going bigger and the smaller companies have become smaller," says Cindy Mi Lin, CEO of Beijing-based distributor Infotainment China Media, which acquired China rights to AGC's The Blacksmith — a comic book action adaptation from Taken director Pierre Morel — ahead of Berlin. "AGC, Lionsgate, and FilmNation have all gone bigger, with budgets that are almost studio-level — all $70 million to $160 million and they're all offering sci-fi, which is interesting. They're producing studio-look movies and going big. The small companies have become smaller, with smaller budgets. There are no medium-sized films in the market."

While the middle may be getting squeezed, there was plenty of business in Berlin for both the top-end tentpoles and low-budget arthouse fare. The latter — which tends to dominate the Berlin Film Festival's official program — found takers in the likes of Neon, which scooped up North American rights to Céline Sciamma’s well-received competition title Petite Maman, or Cinema Guild, which nabbed U.S. rights to Hong Sangsoo's black-and-white minimalist drama Introduction.

"We've been busy! We announced UK/Ireland deals for three films by female directors: The Souvenir Part II from Joanna Hogg, True Things from Harry Wootliff and Hatching by Hanna Bergholm," notes Clare Binns, joint managing director of UK arthouse exhibitor Picturehouse Cinemas. "Our commitment to quality indies and foreign language cinema on the big screen remains stronger than ever."




However, much like in Sundance a few weeks earlier, the biggest deals for finished films were struck by studios and global streamers, who have shown the willingness to pay top dollar for buzzy indie titles both niche and mainstream. Universal's Focus Features snatched up most of the world on Red Rocket, Sean Baker's follow up to The Florida Project, from FilmNation ahead of Berlin, with only a handful of territories — including France (Le Pacte), Israel (Lev Cinemas), and Australia/New Zealand (Roadshow Distribution) — going to indie buyers. A24 has rights in North America.

Netflix secured a pair of eight-figure deals: paying a reported $15 million for North America and Latin America rights to Colin Firth World War II movie Operation Mincemeat from The King’s Speech producer See-Saw and Cohen Media Group, and dropping $18 million for U.S. rights to Liam Neeson-Laurence Fishburne action-thriller The Ice Road in a deal with CAA Media finance (The Solution is handling international sales on the project, which is written and directed by Die Hard With A Vengeance and Armageddon screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh).

International indie buyers have been more cautious, in part because theater re-openings are still a piecemeal affair. While cinemas in several big territories are open for business, including Australia/New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, and there's been promising progress in the U.S., with cinemas in art-house-friendly New York set to open Friday [March 5] —Europe remains a grey zone. Italy and Germany have laid out plans to begin re-opening theaters, perhaps as early as late March, and the U.K. is aiming for a return to semi-normal operations May 17, but few expect the emergence from lockdown to be smooth or straightforward.

Alamo Drafthouse's bankruptcy filing this week was a stark reminder of how precarious the exhibition business remains.

"Distributors adapting to the local conditions of each territory is, of course, crucial, and as the state of the world differs country by country, being nimble is more important than ever," says Elizabeth Williams, director of acquisitions and development at Signature Entertainment. "I've had Zooms this week with people in Australia essentially living in a non-Covid world right now, with people in the U.S. who have barely left their homes in a year...Overall though, there is a consensus that there is light at the end of the tunnel. The news of cinemas re-opening in the U.K. in a couple of months has given everyone a boost, and in the meantime, there are many good films to acquire and release for those at home keen for some escapism."

Alex Ritman and Patrick Brzeski contributed to this report.

[jo]

Post-mortem on the last Oscars --

Winds of change... or more of the same?

deadline.com/2021/04/oscars-low-ratings-hollywood-concern-peter-bart-1234746548/

[jo]

Another upheaval --


From the NYTimes --

In a Deal With Discovery Hatched in Secret, AT&T Sheds Its Media Business

The telecommunications giant will spin off WarnerMedia in a transaction that will combine HBO and CNN with Oprah Winfrey’s OWN and HGTV.



By Edmund Lee and John Koblin
May 17, 2021
Updated 5:48 p.m. ET

Just three years after it thundered into Hollywood with grand visions of streaming video on millions of its customers’ cellphones, AT&T is making a stunning retreat with plans to spin off WarnerMedia and merge it with Discovery.

The blockbuster deal, announced Monday, will put CNN and the HBO hit “Succession” in the same corporate family as the reality television shows “Flip or Flop” and “90 Day Fiancé.” It will create the second-biggest media company in the country, by revenue, with a sprawling business that touches on streaming entertainment, movies, sports and cable news. The merged company, which could have a value above $100 billion, would rival behemoths like Disney, the biggest media company, as well as Netflix, the leader in streaming.

For the debt-saddled AT&T, the spinoff is an about-face from its $85 billion purchase of Time Warner in 2018. Industry analysts had questioned the acquisition, citing the continued acceleration of cord-cutting. AT&T fought for the deal despite vocal opposition from President Donald J. Trump, whose Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to block it.

The new transaction will combine HBO, Warner Bros. studios, CNN and several other cable networks with a host of reality-based cable channels from Discovery, including Oprah Winfrey’s OWN, HGTV, the Food Network and Animal Planet.



With such a large menu of cable networks — most of which are highly profitable — the company can build a cash hoard to fuel the newer streaming business, which still loses money and needs time to gain enough customers to become profitable.

For consumers, this could mean even more shows to watch. But it’s unclear what it would mean for streaming subscription prices or traditional cable bills. WarnerMedia’s channels such as CNN and TNT and Discovery’s networks benefit from automatic rate increases paid by cable and satellite operators. Having more channels could give the new company even more leverage when negotiating those rates.

Sports is another key component of the merger. WarnerMedia includes the sports-heavy cable networks TNT and TBS and Discovery has a large international sports business.

“I believe we’re going to be the best media company in the world with an ability to reach everyone in the world because our stories play well everywhere in the world,” David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, who will oversee the new company, said in an interview.

The deal represents another failed moment in the long history of corporate outsiders trying to remake the entertainment business. With few exceptions, those escapades — from General Electric’s ownership of NBC to Gulf and Western’s control of Paramount Pictures — ended badly.




As part of the deal, AT&T will get cash and bonds that would amount to $43 billion, allowing it to shed some debt. It can now refocus on its wireless business, which has been battered as customers keep switching from one rival service to another. The costly expansion of 5G technology has also strained the company’s balance sheet. AT&T shareholders will own 71 percent of the new business, with Discovery investors owning the rest.

Placing Mr. Zaslav, 61, a media veteran and the longtime chief executive of Discovery, in charge means Jason Kilar, 50, who was hired to run AT&T’s media group only last year, is most likely on his way out. Mr. Kilar, a streaming pioneer who was Hulu’s first chief executive, was kept in the dark about the deal until a few days ago. He has hired a legal team to negotiate his departure, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The deal could finally give Mr. Zaslav the size and scale he has long sought. A garrulous executive who can recall ratings figures off the top of his head, Mr. Zaslav represents the last of the old guard in media, a hobnobbing mogul known for hosting lavish get-togethers at his house in the Hamptons.


David Zaslav, a media veteran and the longtime chief executive of Discovery, will run the new company.

The deal came together quickly. Mr. Zaslav expected to meet with AT&T’s chief executive, John Stankey, at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament in February, but both had stayed home because of the pandemic. Instead, Mr. Zaslav sent an email to Mr. Stankey as he was watching the golf tournament on TV to discuss a possible deal.

“You around?” Mr. Zaslav said he wrote to Mr. Stankey. “I have an idea.” He added some emoji flair to his signoff with several 🏌🏻and one 😎.

Today in Business

May 17, 2021
Jason Kilar, the WarnerMedia chief, is said to be negotiating his exit.

Mr. Zaslav said the note kicked off a conversation that lasted several hours. Later, the two met several times “secretly from my brownstone in Greenwich Village,” Mr. Zaslav said.


“We wanted to be together and lay things out and see whether what we were thinking could really work,” he said.

In a call with the news media, Mr. Zaslav praised other executives within WarnerMedia, including Toby Emmerich, the head of the film division, Casey Bloys, who oversees content at HBO and HBO Max, and Jeff Zucker, the leader of CNN. Mr. Zucker and Mr. Zaslav are also longtime golfing buddies.

Mr. Zaslav said he would look for ways to “get the best people to stay,” but he didn’t elaborate on his plan for the management team.

The companies said they expected the deal, which must be approved by shareholders and regulators, to be completed in the middle of next year. They anticipate annual costs can be cut by $3 billion, a move that usually entails layoffs.

For AT&T, the deal allows it to go back to being a purely telecommunications business and shed some of its nearly $170 billion in debt. Investors seemed lukewarm on the news, sending AT&T shares down 2.7 percent. The company announced a dividend cut that would nearly halve the annual payout.

AT&T needs the extra cash to compete with Verizon and T-Mobile. The entire wireless industry is racing to claim the fastest speeds with products that could rival cable companies for broadband service. If successful, the wireless giants could take internet customers away from cable.

The new media company will be bigger than Netflix or NBCUniversal. Together, WarnerMedia and Discovery generated more than $41 billion in sales last year, with an operating profit topping $10 billion. Such a sum would have put it ahead of Netflix and NBCUniversal and behind the Walt Disney Company as the second-largest media company in the United States.



Traditional entertainment companies are struggling to keep viewers as the likes of Facebook, YouTube and TikTok draw big audiences. Consolidation appears to be the quickest way to buy more eyeballs, and the deal could set off another round of media mergers. ViacomCBS, the smallest of the major entertainment conglomerates, is often seen as a possible target.

To compete with Netflix (208 million subscribers) and Disney (104 million customers for Disney+), both AT&T and Discovery have invested heavily in streaming. AT&T has spent billions building HBO Max, which together with regular HBO now has about 44 million customers. Discovery has 15 million global streaming subscribers, most from its Discovery+ app.

The new company expects to generate $52 billion in sales and $14 billion in pretax profit by 2023. Streaming will be a big driver of that growth, with an estimated $15 billion in revenue.

But the new company will also have $58 billion in debt. Mr. Zaslav emphasized that it would be generating enough cash to pay that down fairly quickly. The combined business will spend more than $20 billion a year on developing content, he added.

Mr. Stankey had viewed AT&T’s media business as a way to hang onto phone customers. Before he took over as chief executive last year, he was the company’s chief mergers strategist. But his track record has been spotty. In addition to planning AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner, he was behind the company’s $48 billion acquisition of the satellite operator DirecTV in 2015. The service has been bleeding customers for years; in February, AT&T sold part of the business to the private equity firm TPG for about $16 billion, a third of what it originally paid.

Mr. Stankey hit an elegiac note in a memo to WarnerMedia employees on Monday morning.

“I will admit that I am personally disappointed and sad that I will not have the opportunity to continue this journey with you, but I am incredibly optimistic and enthusiastic about the future of the combined WarnerMedia and Discovery,” he wrote.

When asked at a news conference if there was any piece of the new business that he would consider selling, Mr. Zaslav was emphatic: “We want it all. We want to keep it all.”



Mr. Zaslav also praised CNN, saying “everyone wakes up and wants to know, what’s going on in their world. And nobody does that better than CNN. I’ve been glued to CNN for the last several months.”

Mr. Zaslav talked up the movie and television-making machine that Warner Bros. and HBO have created, saying, “Success is about creative talent — in front of the screen, and behind the screen, and fighting and fighting to create a culture that supports that creative vision.”


Several Wall Street analysts lauded the deal, and one suggested there might yet be a fight for some of these assets.

“One is left wondering whether there is more of the story yet to come,” Craig Moffett, co-founder of the Wall Street research firm Moffett Nathanson, wrote in a note Monday morning. “What now for Comcast, for example?”

The cable giant is unlikely to make a play for CNN or the Warner Bros. studio, “but one could argue that HBO is a must-have,” he said. “There are potential other parties who may feel the same.”

In an interview, Mr. Stankey denied that HBO was in play. “I think that David bought it,” he said, prompting laughter from both men.

It looks like what they have done is to separate the operations of the content creators from the telecommunications business ( which delivers content via streaming, apart from its basic telephone/telecommunications business).


LOL - I hope they don't touch the film release schedule this year -- that we get to see REMINISCENCE by August 20, 2021! I wonder if the plan to do simultaneous releases will still be done given that cinemas may come into full existence not too long from now?

[jo]

It's AMAZON's turn to make its move --

It is in talks to buy MGM Studios!

www.msn.com/en-ph/money/companies/amazon-in-talks-to-buy-mgm-studios-for-9bn/ar-BB1gQW3U?ocid=msedgntp


The current chairman & CEO of MGM is Michael de Luca, erstwhile a very well-respected producer. His last producing job was REMINISCENCE. I wonder if he will be taken by the new organization if talks flourish towards a conclusion.

Among the properties owned by MGM is the Bond franchise. Will EON Productions which owns the Bond franchise relinquish all film rights, produced or unproduced. If I recall right, EON owned the film rights to A STEADY RAIN, of which a first draft screenplay had already been completed. Hmmm...

Jo

[jo]

www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/david-zaslav-discovery-warnermedia-plans-1234955316/

A not very hopeful assessment from THE re the potential head of the combined Discovery-WarnerMedia organization ( which will include WarnerBros,HBO and HBO-MAX, as he is known to be somewhat risk-averse.


Jo

[jo]

The Amazon-MGM Deal!

From the NYTimes --

James Bond, Meet Jeff Bezos: Amazon Makes $8.45 Billion Deal for MGM
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, while diminished, commanded a premium price, with Amazon seeking to bolster its crucial Prime membership offering..

By Brooks Barnes, Nicole Sperling and Karen Weise
May 26, 2021
Updated 3:13 p.m. ET

LOS ANGELES — In the ultimate symbol of one Hollywood era ending and another beginning, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, home to James Bond, “Thelma & Louise” and Rocky, finally found a buyer willing to pay retail: Amazon.

The e-commerce giant said on Wednesday that it would acquire the 97-year-old film and television studio for $8.45 billion — or about 40 percent more than other prospective buyers, including Apple and Comcast, thought MGM was worth. The studio, which had been shopped around for months, was once home to “more stars than the heavens,” as Louis B. Mayer liked to brag. But its vast production lot and pre-1986 film library were sold off decades ago. (Sony Pictures now occupies the lot, and Warner Bros. owns classic MGM films like “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind.”)

MGM does come with one Hollywood crown jewel: James Bond. The spy franchise, which started in 1963 with “Dr. No,” will help Amazon compete in the white-hot streaming wars. With Disney+ coming on strong and HBO Max, Apple TV+ and Paramount+ determined to make inroads, the original streaming disrupters — Netflix and Amazon Prime Video — are leaning harder on movies with broad appeal to keep growing, particularly overseas.

But even 007 has an asterisk. Amazon will own only 50 percent of Bond. The balance is held by Barbara Broccoli and her brother, Michael G. Wilson. The siblings also have ironclad creative control, deciding when to make a new Bond film, who should play the title role and whether remakes and television spinoffs get made. (They have blocked such efforts in the past.)




The 25th installment in the Bond series, “No Time to Die,” is scheduled for pandemic-delayed release in theaters on Oct. 8, with Universal Pictures handling overseas distribution. Beyond that, the franchise’s theatrical future is unclear. Amazon has released movies in theaters in the past, but lately has preferred to put them directly on its Prime Video service. The title role is also expected to be recast; Daniel Craig has played Bond for 15 years.

“We are committed to continuing to make James Bond films for the worldwide theatrical audience,” Ms. Broccoli and Mr. Wilson said in a statement.




So why did Amazon pay such a startling premium?

For starters, it can. The company has $71 billion in cash and a market capitalization of $1.64 trillion.

But Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, is known as a conservative buyer. The purchase of Whole Foods for $13.4 billion in 2017 was the biggest acquisition in Amazon’s history. Its next-largest deals — until MGM — were for Zappos ($1.2 billion, 2009) and the smart-doorbell company Ring ($1.2 billion, 2018).




The Whole Foods deal was a major strategic change for the company, pushing it into new markets of groceries and physical stores, which it had largely avoided. MGM is more about augmenting a current strategy: Amazon most likely paid more than others thought MGM was worth because of its all-important Prime membership program.

“If you’re Amazon, the perspective is what’s the potential for Prime membership, what is the potential for advertising,” said Brian Yarbrough, a senior analyst at Edward Jones.

In addition to paying Amazon $119 a year or $13 a month for free shipping and other perks — notably access to the Prime Video streaming service — households with Prime memberships typically spend $3,000 a year on Amazon. That is more than twice what households without the membership spend, according to Morgan Stanley. About 200 million people pay for Prime memberships.

“As Prime Video turns 10, over 175 million Prime members have streamed shows and movies in the past year, and streaming hours are up more than 70 percent year over year,” Mr. Bezos said last month when Amazon reported quarterly earnings.

In buying MGM, Amazon is bolstering Prime Video at a time when the biggest old-line studios are becoming less willing to license their libraries to outside streaming services; Warner Bros., Walt Disney Studios and Paramount Pictures must now supply corporate siblings like HBO Max, Disney+ and Paramount+.

That shift has made independent film libraries more valuable. In recent weeks, Sony Pictures licensed its old films and TV shows to Netflix and Disney in deals valued at more than $3 billion, a sharp increase from the expiring licensing agreements. Sony does not have a streaming service, unless you count the game-oriented PlayStation Network.



The Amazon deal could emerge as a pivotal moment in the convergence of Big Tech and the entertainment industry. Instead of acquiring old-line studios, internet companies have grown under their own steam in Hollywood — until now. Apple has flirted with such purchases in the past.





Sony has repeatedly insisted that its movie and television studio, valued at roughly $30 billion, is not for sale. Other big film libraries are owned by NBCUniversal, which is part of Comcast, and ViacomCBS.

“The acquisition thesis here is very simple,” Mr. Bezos said during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday. He said MGM had a “vast, deep catalog of much beloved” movies and shows. “We can reimagine and redevelop that I.P. for the 21st century.” He said that work would be fun and “people who love stories will be the big beneficiaries.”

Although its library is diminished, MGM still owns 4,000 older movies, including pre-1986 films that come from two MGM divisions, United Artists and Orion. Those movies include “Rocky,” “RoboCop,” “The Pink Panther,” “The Silence of the Lambs” and the James Bond catalog. Other titles include “Legally Blonde,” “Moonstruck,” “Basic Instinct,” “The Thomas Crown Affair” and “Tomb Raider.” (Fun fact: In true Hollywood fashion, MGM’s roaring lion mascot is lip-syncing; a cranky tiger sounded more ferocious.)

“MGM didn’t have the resources to build and create off the catalog,” said Rich Greenfield, a founder of the Lightshed Partners media research firm. “Amazon does, and the opportunity to exploit the MGM catalog is incredible.”




In addition, MGM has several movies in its pipeline that could be Oscar contenders, including “Respect,” an Aretha Franklin biopic starring Jennifer Hudson; Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci,” starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver; and Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest project, which stars Bradley Cooper in his first film since “A Star Is Born.”

Completion of the deal is subject to regulatory approval. On Wednesday, Representative Ken Buck, Republican of Colorado and a senior member of the House antitrust subcommittee, said in a statement that he was “deeply concerned” by the acquisition and noted Amazon’s pandemic-fueled growth spurt.





“It’s critical that mergers and acquisitions involving monopoly companies experiencing tremendous and exponential growth are met with a greater level of scrutiny,” Mr. Buck said. Amazon’s revenue for the first quarter of 2021 increased 44 percent to $108.5 billion, the company’s fastest rise in almost 10 years.

Amazon’s entertainment strategy has evolved as streaming services have proliferated. Indie films like “Manchester by the Sea” and unconventional series like “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Transparent” gave Amazon a foothold in Hollywood; domination will require a steady supply of hits that appeal to wide audiences.

Amazon’s appetite for movies became ravenous during the pandemic. It paid $125 million for the rights to “Coming 2 America,” $80 million for “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” and $200 million for “The Tomorrow War,” a Chris Pratt adventure that will arrive on Prime on July 2. Amazon also has Oscar ambitions, buying the rights to “Sound of Metal,” which was nominated for best picture and other top awards at this year’s ceremony and won the Oscars for sound and editing.

The problem: Amazon Studios has had limited bandwidth, most of which is tied up with television series — including a coming “Lord of the Rings” adaptation that is believed to be the most expensive show ever made, with a one-season budget of $465 million.

MGM managers could help. Michael De Luca, MGM’s movie chairman, has a track record that includes, at various companies, the “Rush Hour,” “Austin Powers” and “Fifty Shades of Grey” franchises. When it comes to making its own hit films, Amazon has long struggled. In one debacle from 2015, Amazon spent lavishly to bring Woody Allen into its fold and later terminated the contract, prompting lawsuits.

MGM also has a 17,000-episode television library and a TV studio that makes “Vikings,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Fargo” and various “Real Housewives” shows. In 2014, MGM acquired Mark Burnett’s production company, One Three Media, which holds rights to competition series like “The Voice.” Mr. Burnett, a contentious figure in Hollywood because he helped shape Donald J. Trump’s image with “The Apprentice” and remained close to him during his divisive presidential term, serves as MGM’s television chairman.

MGM, which bought out Mr. Burnett’s company in 2015, owns the entirety of “The Apprentice,” both the aired shows and unaired footage, which some have claimed contains unflattering footage of Mr. Trump.




Anchorage Capital, a New York investment firm, has been the majority owner of MGM for more than a decade. Before that, MGM was tossed between owners. Bitten by falling DVD revenue, the studio eventually filed for bankruptcy to eliminate about $4 billion in debt. It was worth about $2 billion in 2010, according to analysts.

Kevin Ulrich, Anchorage’s chief executive and MGM’s chairman, formally put the studio on the block late last year. Anchorage has been under pressure from various stakeholders to exit the investment, with some agitators complaining that Mr. Ulrich was overly enamored with Hollywood and should have sold years ago.



The end of MGM as a stand-alone company adds to a vast reshaping of the media business as the big seek to compete by getting even bigger. Last week, AT&T announced a deal to spin off its WarnerMedia group and combine it with Discovery Inc., a move meant to strengthen WarnerMedia’s struggling HBO Max streaming service and a nascent streaming platform owned by Discovery. In a counterattack against the tech companies that have aggressively moved into Hollywood over the last decade, Disney paid $71.3 billion for the bulk of Rupert Murdoch’s entertainment assets in 2019.

Such megadeals have left smaller studios like MGM, Lionsgate and STX Entertainment looking for lifelines. (STX, known for comedies like “Hustlers” and “Bad Moms,” merged with the Bollywood studio Eros International last summer.)

Some of the first conversations between Amazon and MGM began in March 2020, when Mike Hopkins, Amazon’s newly installed head of video, had a series of talks with Mr. Ulrich. But Amazon did not formally begin acquisition talks — largely negotiated remotely, as so many deals have been during the pandemic — until about two months ago.

“The opportunity to align MGM’s storied history with Amazon is an inspiring combination,” Mr. Ulrich said in a statement. “I’m very proud that MGM’s lion, which has long evoked the Golden Age of Hollywood, will continue its storied history.”

[jo]

Preliminary announcemetns for The 94th Oscars --

www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/oscars-2022-date-1234960021/

Oscars: Academy Announces Date for 94th Oscars and Key Events Leading Up to It
Additionally, the organization says it will return to an eligibility period that aligns with the calendar year.


BY SCOTT FEINBERG

The 94th Oscars ceremony, which was previously scheduled to take place on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022, has been pushed back to Sunday, March 27, 2022.

The eligibility cutoff for films hoping to qualify for the 94th Oscars, however, has been set for Dec. 31 (the end of the calendary year, per longtime tradition), up from Feb. 28 for the 93rd (the cutoff was extended to try to help more films qualify despite the pandemic). In other words, the eligibility period for the 94th Oscars will run from March 1 through Dec. 31, 2021.

The restoration of a year-end eligibility cutoff was expected, but there had been speculation that the Oscars ceremony would be moved forward, not backward, perhaps to the last Sunday in February or the first Sunday in March, in order to avoid Super Bowl LVI, which will take place in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 13, and the winter Olympics, which will take place in Beijing between Friday, Feb. 4, and Sunday, Feb. 20.


However, insiders say, this would not have left the general public or Academy members with enough time to see the nominated films before voting, or the producers of the Oscars telecast (yet to be hired) with enough time to put together a show reflective of the nominees, since the announcement of nominees will only come on Feb. 8. And after the lowest-rated Oscars telecast in history, not least because the nominees were little seen prior to the show, this is perhaps a greater consideration.

The pandemic will, in one sense, still shape the 94th Oscars. Given that a portion of the eligibility period was impacted by COVID, just like the eligibility period for the 93rd, with theater closures and the like, the amended eligibility requirements that were put in place for the 93rd — including allowing films to qualify without a theatrical release, as long as one had been announced before being derailed by the pandemic — will remain in place for the 94th.

The Academy intends to announce new eligibility requirements ahead of the 95th.

Lastly, the Academy’s Governors Awards ceremony, at which the organization has presented its special awards — the honorary Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award — since 2009 (excepting 2020, when it was canceled due to the pandemic), will be returning this season. It will not, however, take place in the fall, as had been the case prior to the pandemic, but will instead be held on the evening of Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022.


Then, Oscar nomination voting will run from Jan. 27 through Feb. 1, and final voting will run from March 17 through March 22.

Here is a full listing of the key dates for the season leading up to the 94th Oscars.

General entry categories submission deadline Monday, November 15, 2021
Preliminary voting begins 9 a.m. PT Friday, December 10, 2021
Preliminary voting ends 5 p.m. PT Wednesday, December 15, 2021
Oscar Shortlists Announcement Tuesday, December 21, 2021
Eligibility period ends Friday, December 31, 2021

Governors Awards Saturday, January 15, 2022
Nominations voting begins 9 a.m. PT Thursday, January 27, 2022
Nominations voting ends 5 p.m. PT Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Oscar Nominations Announcement Tuesday, February 8, 2022
Oscar Nominees Luncheon Monday, March 7, 2022
Finals voting begins 9 a.m. PT Thursday, March 17, 2022
Finals voting ends 5 p.m. PT Tuesday, March 22, 2022

94th Oscars Sunday, March 27, 2022

All dates are subject to change.

Given that movies that have been released via streaming (so long as a theatrical distribution has been announced) will qualify for Oscar consideration -- removes any doubts that REMINISCENCE can qualify despite its planned simultaneous theatrical and streaming release.

Given the dates, should REMINISCENCE score highly with critics and AMPAS voters Hugh Jackman will not be in a position to help with any award consideration appearances ( like special screenings with Q&A) as he will be busy with The Music Man.

We'll see how it goes.

Jo

[jo]

Implications of the sale of MGM to Amazon --

A Guest Essay on NYTimes --

I Wrote James Bond Movies. The Amazon-MGM Deal Gives Me Chills.
May 31, 2021


By John Logan

[Mr. Logan, a three-time Oscar nominee for screenplays, was a co-writer on the James Bond movies “Skyfall” and “Spectre.”



So, Amazon now owns 50 percent of 007.

With the acquisition of MGM and its movie catalog, the online retail giant bought into the James Bond franchise. When I heard this news, a chill went through me. Having worked as a writer on “Skyfall” and “Spectre,” I know that Bond isn’t just another franchise, not a Marvel or a DC; it is a family business that has been carefully nurtured and shepherded through the changing times by the Broccoli/Wilson family. Work sessions on “Skyfall” and “Spectre” were like hearty discussions around the dinner table, with Barbara Broccoli and her half brother Michael Wilson letting all the unruly children talk. Every crazy aunt or eccentric uncle was given a voice. We discussed and debated and came to a resolution, as families must, with no outside voices in the room. When you work on Bond movies, you’re not just an employee. You’re part of that family.

The reason we’re still watching Bond movies after more than 50 years is that the family has done an extraordinary job of protecting the character through the thickets of moviemaking and changing public tastes. Corporate partners come and go, but James Bond endures. He endures precisely because he is being protected by people who love him.

The current deal with Amazon gives Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, who own 50 percent of the Bond empire, ironclad assurances of continued artistic control. But will this always be the case? What happens if a bruising corporation like Amazon begins to demand a voice in the process? What happens to the comradeship and quality control if there’s an Amazonian overlord with analytics parsing every decision? What happens when a focus group reports they don’t like Bond drinking martinis? Or killing quite so many people? And that English accent’s a bit alienating, so could we have more Americans in the story for marketability?

If you think I’m exaggerating, consider some internal polling data that decreed that the movie adaptation of “Sweeney Todd” — for which I wrote the screenplay — would be much more popular without all those annoying songs.




From my experience, here’s what happens to movies when such concerns start invading the creative process: Everything gets watered down to the most anodyne and easily consumable version of itself. The movie becomes an inoffensive shadow of a thing, not the thing itself. There are no more rough edges or flights of cinematic madness. The fire and passion are gradually drained away as original ideas and voices are subsumed by commercial concerns, corporate oversight and polling data. I wonder whether such an outré studio movie as “Vertigo” would have survived if such pressures existed then. Not to mention radical films like “Citizen Kane,” “The Red Shoes,” “Cabin in the Sky” and “Bonnie and Clyde.”

Why worry about Amazon? It’s not that it’s a bad-faith company. It’s that it’s a global technology company with a more than $1.6 trillion market capitalization that produces on a mass scale and is obsessed with the “customer experience.” It’s not necessarily a champion or guardian of artistic creativity or original entertainment. In the context of the larger company, Amazon Prime Video is not chiefly about artists. It’s about attracting and retaining customers. And when bigger companies start having a say in iconic characters or franchises, the companies tend to want more, not better, and the quality differential can vary wildly, project to project. (See: the rapidly expanding “Star Wars” franchise at Disney and the DC Comics franchises of Superman, Batman and others at Warner Bros.)

As a screenwriter, I’ve had the opportunity to work on several big studio movies. Those that emerge with meaning, with art and uniqueness intact, are always those that are protected from undue corporate influence — those occasions when the moviemakers can work in a protected environment.

In my case, films like “Gladiator,” “The Aviator,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Rango” and “Hugo” were all made from passion and without ever worrying about synergy or spinoffs or cross-platform marketing. Artistic control and stewardship are especially vital to big movies, where the voices are many and the stakes huge.

When we were making “Gladiator,” it took a giant like the director Ridley Scott to fend off the countless naysayers who predicted disaster would befall our “sword-and-sandal epic.” They questioned everything, especially the ending: Isn’t it a bummer? How can we have a sequel if you kill the hero? And is there any way we could avoid an R rating? But Ridley believed in the story we were telling and how we were telling it, so he resolutely kept the commercial concerns and noisy corporate voices outside the door.





So too Martin Scorsese with our Howard Hughes biopic, “The Aviator.” A subject like Mr. Hughes naturally invites controversy and high emotion. The push from outside the creative circle was for the lurid and sensational, but Marty stared down every challenge that threatened our more humane version of the story. He sometimes said, “Yes, that would make an interesting Howard Hughes movie, but it’s not our Howard Hughes movie.” Significantly, in the case of both “Gladiator” and “The Aviator,” we were working with brave producers who defended our choices. They cared more about the art than about the bottom line.

When you’re making a movie, you need a champion to fight battles like these. Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson are the champions of James Bond. They keep the corporate and commercial pressures outside the door. Nor are they motivated by them. That’s why we don’t have a mammoth Bond Cinematic Universe, with endless anemic variations of 007 sprouting up on TV or streaming or in spinoff movies. The Bond movies are truly the most bespoke and handmade films I’ve ever worked on. That’s why they are original, thorny, eccentric and special. They were never created with lawyers and accountants and e-commerce mass marketing pollsters hovering in the background.

This is also why they can afford to be daring. Here’s an example from “Skyfall” — my favorite day working on the movie, in fact.

Sam Mendes, the director, and I marched into Barbara and Michael’s office, sat at the family table and pitched the first scene between Bond and the villain, Raoul Silva. Now, the moment 007 first encounters his archnemesis is often the iconic moment in a Bond movie, the scene around which you build a lot of the narrative and cinematic rhythms. (Think about Bond first meeting Dr. No or Goldfinger or Blofeld, all classic scenes in the franchise.) Well, Sam and I boldly announced we wanted to do this pivotal scene as a homoerotic seduction. Barbara and Michael didn’t need to poll a focus group. They didn’t need to vet this radical idea with any studio or corporation — they loved it instantly. They knew it was fresh and new, provocative in a way that keeps the franchise contemporary. They weren’t afraid of controversy. In my experience, not many big movies can work with such freedom and risky joy. But with the Broccoli/Wilson family at the helm, Bond is allowed to provoke, grow and be idiosyncratic. Long may that continue.

James Bond has survived the Cold War, Goldfinger, Jaws, disco and Ernst Stavro Blofeld, several times. And I can only hope that the powers-that-be at Amazon recognize the uniqueness of what they just acquired and allow and encourage this special family business to continue unobstructed.

Bond’s not “content” and he’s not a mere commodity. He has been a part of our lives for decades now. From Sean Connery to George Lazenby to Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton to Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig, we all grew up with our version of 007, so we care deeply about him.

Please let 007 drink his martinis in peace. Don’t shake him, don’t stir him.




John Logan co-wrote the screenplays for the James Bond films “Skyfall” and “Spectre.” He was nominated for Academy Awards for best original screenplay for “The Aviator” and “Gladiator” and for best adapted screenplay for “Hugo.” He won the Tony Award for best play for “Red.”

[jo]

From Deadline --

Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel On M&A Wave, Shifting Release Windows: “Prices Are Going Up In Every Situation”

Dade Hayes
Finance Editor

Endeavor Swings To Slim Net Profit In First Quarter As Public Company Despite 10% Revenue Slide Amid Pandemic

June 2, 2021 3:02pm

Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel sees the wave of M&A transforming the media business is “further proof that content is in high demand and short supply.”

Regardless of the form mergers take — a tech giant like Amazon swallowing MGM, or two legacy peers, WarnerMedia and Discovery, getting together — they all need what Endeavor is selling, Emanuel said Wednesday during a conference call with Wall Street analysts to discuss Endeavor Group Holdings’ first quarterly financial report as a public company.

Many of those bulking up in streaming, he added, naming Disney and ViacomCBS as examples, also have to continue to support their legacy platforms. As a result, he said, current levels of content investment will continue for at least the next five years.



“Our position in the ecosystem favors long-term growth and the investments will continue,” Emanuel said. “There’s a finite number of creators and intellectual property to meet the demand, therefore increasing the value. … Prices are going up in every situation.”

The exec offered the comments after his Endeavor Group Holdings, the parent of WME, IMG and mixed martial arts circuit UFC, said it swung from a loss to a net profit of $2.4 million in the quarter ending March 31. Revenue in the quarter slipped 10% to $1.07, but execs painted a rosy recovery picture during the hourlong call.

As far as shifting release windows, Emanuel said experimentation has gone on for at least six months. He cited Warner Bros’ move to put its 2021 slate on HBO Max at the same time it reaches theaters.

“We’re going to find the floor,” he said, but “it’s going to take a little bit of time.” Endeavor has “navigated that whole situation,” he added, and is “one of the big players in that ecosystem. And we’re negotiating on behalf of our own clients and our own properties to make sure that we get the proper economics.”

The Warner/HBO Max move and other smaller ones have resulted in dozens of settlements with profit participants as studios trade box office dollars for streaming subscribers.

“We’re flexible with the studios,” said Endeavor president Mark Shapiro. “We’re having these conversations up front, and they are paying for that flexibility. So that moves right to the benefit of all of our clients.”

As far as Amazon’s $8.45 billion acquisition of MGM, Shapiro offered the view that deals are about an exploding array of content forms. In addition to film and TV, it can be podcasts, audio, music, licensed goods and other fare. “You can bet that Amazon didn’t buy MGM just to leverage the library,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of buying. There’s going to be a lot of original programming and there’s going to be a lot of spending.”


Across the entire Endeavor portfolio, Shapiro added, the company’s operations are going to be “fueled by this consolidation.”

[jo]

Warner Media is returning the traditional releasing format for 2022 films: theatrical releases first...and then followed by streaming much later. But will they do it for all movie releases?

collider.com/warner-bros-movie-release-plans-2022-hbo-max/

Warner Bros. Plans to Return to a Traditional Release Plan in 2022
BY MATT GOLDBERG
PUBLISHED APR 08, 2021

While they’ve had success with their theatrical/hybrid model, it doesn’t appear to be the new normal for the studio.


Warner Bros’ plan to release their 2021 slate simultaneously in theaters and HBO Max was met with both shock and consternation with folks worrying if this would be how studios approached distribution for the future, but it looks like WB intends to wind back the clock next year. In an interview with Recode, CEO Jason Kilar says that when it comes to WB’s biggest movies in 2022, they’ll go to theaters first and then to HBO Max.

“I think it’s very fair to say that a big, you know, let’s say a big DC movie … it’s very fair to say that that would go exclusively to theaters first and then go to somewhere like an HBO Max after it’s in theaters,” says Kilar.

The hybrid model was a wise move for WB when it was announced late last year when there was still uncertainty about how much longer we’d be dealing with the pandemic, how long it would take for people to get vaccinated, and how long it would be before they felt safe returning to theaters. WB could no longer sit on all of their movies and keep pushing back release dates, so they went with the hybrid models. But it’s safe to assume that in 2022 we’ll be on the other side of the pandemic, so then it’s contingent for studios to decide how they want to proceed.

The new normal appears to be that studios still want to send their biggest movies to theaters, where they need that kind of cultural footprint and limited availability to drive up interest and expand ancillary revenue streams. However, the days of the 90-day release window are likely over, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a film like The Batman runs for 45 days in theaters before ending up on HBO Max. It's a similar strategy to what other studios have mapped out with Universal and Cinemark having theatrical/PVOD releases or Paramount sending some releases to Paramount+.

The question now becomes how Warner Bros. wants to balance its blockbusters with its smaller movies. What happens to prestige titles? Would films like Argo and A Star Is Born still get theatrical releases, or are they now going straight to HBO Max? Have we now created an environment where only the biggest movies get theatrical releases and the streaming services gobble up everything that doesn’t have a chance of making $1 billion worldwide? We’ll have to wait and see.

[jo]

If you're interested on how studios make money on their movies -- bearing in mind that this series was written in 2016

this one looks at the profitability of the big-budget movies (costing $100 million+)

stephenfollows.com/how-movies-make-money-hollywood-blockbusters/


while this one analysizes profitability for movies with production budgets between $30 million - $100 million)

stephenfollows.com/films-make-money-pt2-30m-100m-movies/

[jo]

Barry Diller ( who I did not know had a history in filmmaking as studio boss - including CEO/Chairman at Paramount and FOX, mentoring other execs who became film moguls themselves) expresses his opinions of movies made for streaming --


deadline.com/2021/07/barry-diller-streamer-movies-sun-valley-allen-1234789032/#comments


Btw, now it makes sense that he can take over as the guiding lead producer ( including not just the show's financial stability but also overseeing, at his level, the creative and production aspects) of The Music Man after Rudin's departure.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Diller

[jo]

What's happening to Hollywood?



deadline.com/2021/09/christopher-nolan-universal-pictures-sets-next-film-j-robert-oppenheimer-development-atom-bomb-world-war-two-1234832975/

[jo]

What a telling article, from someone who has been a well-respected film critic and journalist, Owen Gleiberman!


From Variety --

Could Mediocre Movies Save Movie Theaters? ‘Ticket to Paradise,’ ‘A Man Called Otto’ and ‘80 for Brady’ Say Yes

By Owen Gleiberman


Quick, what do the following movies have in common? The cheesy middle-aged rom-com “Ticket to Paradise,” the curmudgeon-finds-his-heart-of-gold drama “A Man Called Otto,” and “80 for Brady,” a road comedy about four octogenarians girl-tripping their way to the 2017 Super Bowl. All three are built around those once larger-than-life entities known as movie stars (Julia Roberts and George Clooney in “Paradise”; Tom Hanks in “Otto”; Jane Fonda, Sally Field, Lily Tomlin and Rita Moreno in “Brady”). All three are solid mid-level hits at the domestic box office (“Ticket to Paradise” made $68 million, “A Man Called Otto” has grossed $60 million and “80 for Brady” is chugging its way to the $50 million yard line). That’s a fact that many have taken note of at a time when the most savory offerings of the awards season (“Tár,” “The Fabelmans,” “The Banshees of Inisherin”) starkly underperformed at the box office.


Yet there’s a larger lesson to be gleaned from the success of these three films, one that has largely gone unremarked upon. I’d say it relates to the most essential thing about them: All three are defiantly mediocre. That, in fact, is the secret of their success.

I’m sorry, I really am, for how totally patronizing that sounded. But maybe I can take the sting out of it by admitting that, like many moviegoers, I’m not some automatic hater of mediocrity. I am even, at times, a defender of it. Mediocrity has its place in the multiverse of movies and always has. I would argue that it’s been a sizable chunk of the movie pie — and that movies, as an industry, depend on mediocrity more than we might like to think.

Not all mediocrity is created equal, of course. I thought “Ticket to Paradise” was the purest candy-corn rom-com kitsch, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a picture that has no illusions about itself. One reason it was such an effective vehicle for Julia Roberts and George Clooney is that these two old pros could relax into the tropical formulaic shenanigans of it — they turned hitting their marks into a pleasurable form of slumming-as-showmanship. “A Man Called Otto,” on the other hand, takes off from a potentially good premise — Tom Hanks as a man warped by cynicism — and fills it in with a contrived backstory, “healing” situations too prefab to believe and enough feel-good tropes to make you feel force-fed. It was not my cup of mediocrity. As for “80 for Brady,” it has its funny moments, but mostly it’s star-driven sitcom comfort food for a too-often ignored demo. I’m glad they got a movie attuned to their feisty antennae.





But here’s why all of this is the magic key, a path to the future of movie theaters that has not been duly recognized. When it comes to analyzing the box office tea leaves and what they say about where moviegoing is headed, the excitement that got pinned to the phenomenon of “Top Gun: Maverick” is fully justified, but it’s far from the whole story. For “Maverick” was a fantastic anomaly. It’s a movie whose very essence hinged on 40 years of pent-up 1980s nostalgia, now uncorked like some ironic blockbuster equivalent of fine wine. (In 1986, if you’d suggested that “Top Gun” should have won the Oscar, or even been nominated, you’d have been looked at like someone who’d lost his marbles.)

“Elvis,” too, as much as it was a must-see biopic-on-Baz-Luhrmann-overdrive that earned its success ($150 million at the domestic box office), is not a film to generalize from. Neither is “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” These were movies that adults turned out for. They proved, and can stand as symbols of, the viability and transcendence of the theatrical experience. But how easy would it now be to come up with another “Maverick,” another “Elvis,” another “EEAAO”?

I, too, am desperate to see more movies like that, but what we also need are the movies that grease the wheels of the theatrical experience: the friendly bread-and-butter formula films for adults that audiences can depend on, that can keep them hooked on the act of moviegoing. To me, the most painful aspect of the fall movie season — I’m tempted to call it tragic — is seeing the extraordinary films that underperformed, like “Tár” and “The Fabelmans,” treated as if they were subtly alien, as if there was something not inviting enough about them. “Tár,” we kept being told, was “cold” and enigmatic. (In truth, it has the heat of a thriller and is eminently accessible.) “The Fabelmans” was about Steven Spielberg’s parents’ divorce and his teenage adventures in filmmaking. A prevalent attitude out there was: Come on, is that something the mass audience would give a damn about?

But I think that kind of dismissiveness misses the actual problem. The audience of adults that still yearns to see movies that aren’t fantasy blockbusters (Marvel, “Jurassic Park”), or the horror freakout of the week, has been drastically underserved. As a result, they have fallen out of the regularity of moviegoing. The rhythms of staying at home, which the media, during the pandemic, tried to sell as a new normal, almost a new ideology (you won’t have to go into the office anymore! or to a movie theater! just let it all come to you!), are still very much in play. The idea that they’re a new paradigm has not lost its sway. But I think 2022 was the year when people allowed themselves to get used to going to the movies again. What’s going to keep them there is movies they can count on for an experience that reinforces — in its very aesthetic — the comfortable and the conventional.





Because really, it has always been that way. What we imagine as “film history” is, in fact, the crème de la crème. During the heyday of classic Hollywood, people went out to the movies and saw the studio programmer of the week — thousands upon thousands of Westerns and comedies and romances and thrillers that are now long forgotten. And the 1970s, that fabled age of cinematic adventure, had a whole lot of cereal mixed in with the cutting-edge art. Yes, “The Godfather” and “M*A*S*H” and “Dog Day Afternoon” and “Last Tango in Paris” and “The French Connection” and “Shampoo” were box office hits — but so were “Billy Jack” and “Willard” and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” and “Escape from the Planet of the Apes” and “The Towering Inferno” and “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams” and “Rollerball.”

You could say, and you’d be right, that our era outdoes that one in the sheer profusion of fantasy escapist pulp. But I’m talking about movies for adults that adults still want to see. Those movies run on a separate track from the Marvelization of Hollywood, and we need them — in a more modest way — to be commercially successful too. Imagine that there were 30 movies a year like “Ticket to Paradise” and “A Man Called Otto”; not so long ago, there were. But the industry, in letting the mid-budget movie for adults slide into oblivion, wound up dichotomizing itself into a choice of insane extremes: CGI rides for kids (or the kid in us all) versus… those highly select and elite films that the critics cream over during awards season. That is not a healthy choice. It’s like saying that you want to go out to eat and your options are either fast food or a high-end place of dauntingly lauded culinary ambition. Given that choice, who wouldn’t stay home (or go with the fast-food option)?

It’s easy to mock mediocrity, but actually it’s the great uniter. Just look at all the television that’s mediocre that people relax into for that very reason. (Some of it is even quite acclaimed; but that’s another story.) If there were more movies like “Ticket to Paradise” or “A Man Called Otto,” audiences would show up for them, and the whole spirit of going out to a movie theater would shift. I can’t prove it, but I suspect that an audience of people who’d gotten that much more used to going to the movies would be that much more eager, in the flow of things, to show up for “Tár” and “The Fabelmans.” At its greatest, moviegoing can be a religious experience, but at its most everyday and sustaining, moviegoing is that reassuringly dowdy thing known as a habit. The industry needs to start making movies that adults want to make a habit of seeing.

[jo]

Bob Iger has returned to Disney...and has announced a changed in direction and strategy given the recent negative trends in their performance.

boundingintocomics.com/2023/03/14/after-an-abysmal-box-office-performance-by-ant-man-and-the-wasp-quantumania-disney-ceo-bob-iger-signals-cutting-back-marvel-franchise-films/

Will the changes that he is putting through affect the film budget of Wolverine-Deadpool, including its marketing strategy?

Jo