Whose Rights Are They Anyway?

It’s not exactly a massive act of chivalry to say that the public exploitation of a nude video that appears to have been taken through a peephole of some kind in ESPN reporter Erin Andrews’ hotel room is outrageously wrong.
What fascinates me about this story is that, like the Wolverine leak, ESPN has managed to shut the video and images off of a massive number of celebrity perv sites across the web in short order.
I don’t think this adherence has much to do with any moral outrage over Ms. Andrews’ privacy being invaded. Privacy invasion is standard on these sites. But serious legal threats, e-mailed out to hundreds or thousands of sites at once is not. That was Fox’s strategy on Wolverine and apparently, it is ESPN’s strategy here. In addition, ESPN has deployed the “you’re going to get a computer virus if you try to download this” spin to try to scare people away from smaller sites that might be running the video.
Don’t misunderstand… porn and nude celebrities are used as bait for malware. Absolutely. But this has been true for a decade, focusing primarily on images that don’t actually exist. And then there is the flip side. Hundreds of YouTube posts have been removed, leaving some “Erin Andrews Peephole” posts that have no footage of Ms Andrews, as people try to draw eyeballs to their personal video efforts that are not sexual in nature.
Interestingly, one of the pervy sites, DonChavez.com, did the detective work that Traditional Media has not and turned up the fact that this video had been on the web for at least months on DailyMotion.com and only became a major issue online and through Old Media – as in the NY Post, where they are getting slammed for their “look and be shocked” coverage – after ESPN and Ms. Andrews’ lawyers asked for the video to be taken down, turning the video from “is it real?” status to a confirmed nude video of a public figure.
Don Chavez further postulates that the guy who put the initial video on Daily Motion also posted similar videos of other women, marked by ethnicity or “stewardess,” etc. How mainstream businesses like Daily Motion deal with the ongoing freedom to post videos that may have been made illegally will be interesting.
Then there are other issues of censorship. The Sporting News ran a blog entry by Spencer Hall entitled, “NY Post Tops Its Indecency With A Side Of Stupidity In Erin Andres Coverage” that has disappeared for hours now with the excuse that the site has too much traffic… but everything else on the site is running just fine, thanks. What’s really going on there?
Then there is the issue of American prudery… the Spanish ran the nude video, uncut and not covered, on their evening newscasts.
But mostly, I am fascinated by a new era of corporations making mock of “the free internet” when their interests become greater than their patience.
And I have had my experience with this, as a trailer for Black Dynamite, given to me at Sundance for posting, by the filmmaker, led to this blog being shut down temporarily by Movable Type (twice!), and the content being pulled by both YouTube and Google Video after requests by Sony. Now, I know that neither Sony Pictures staff or the filmmaker have anything to do with this. The corporation bought the film and from that point on, it become part of their digital piracy program, in which they constantly search for all of their copyrighted content all over the web.
It wasn’t Sony’s requests that this trailer be removed – never mind that it was free advertising and that they never made any effort to ask me to take it down voluntarily – that shocked me. It was that MovableType had the ability and will to shut down my entire site, which lives on my non-MT server, because of a corporate request. It was that both YouTube and Google Video (same parent… Google) pull things first and ask questions later (or never).
The amount of power that corporations have, when they are willing to spend the money and make the effort, to secure their copyrights in the mainstream is massive. Companies that can afford lawyers to defend the freedom of the content of their users have little interest in spending a dime in that pursuit. And companies that cannot afford to defend lawsuits – even those they might obviously win – simply have to fold. And of course, there are basic business-to-business interests being served by all of this, whether with “geek sites,” “perv sites,” “news sites,” or AOL, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, etc.
Two hours later and the Sporting News blog entry smacking the NY Post is still unavailable, but still on the site’s front page… (You can work around this problem and read the entry if you like by clicking here and scrolling down.)
Mighty shows of power are breathtaking indeed… even if they start with the violation of some 31-year-old’s self-exploiting reporter’s right to build a career on her butt, boobs, legs, mouth, etc but not to have her pubic hair and nipples exposed by some perv with a video cam and a Daily Motion account.
And I am not joking. I do believe that the line of violation is sacrosanct, for the sinner or the saint, the virgin or the whore, and the tv personality or the ink-stained wretch. The line was crossed here. And the rumbling continues. These are the odd, almost embarrassing moments define the future.

For Your Favorite Homophobe…

Those merchandising people think of everything!
(from Entertainment Earth)

DP/30 – In The Loop dir Armando Iannucci

Armando Iannucci has a long history in BritComs, but this year he is breaking into the feature game with a comedy that stole the show at Sundance and has found loving audiences at festivals all over the world. The film is a true ensemble and while it has the familiar piece of shows like “The Office,” it gives you the full big screen experience with its relentless pace and layers of language and ideas.
The full 30 minute video interview is after the jump…

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I Love IFC, But…

Seriously.
I wouldn’t go see the Off-Broadway comedy an ad like this normally is selling, even if tickets were half-price.
This is a horrible piece of advertising.
I know it’s a hard movie to sell. How do you get the pace of it onto a banner ad. I know. Brutal. But black and whites of Kim McAfee and the rest of the touring company of Bye Bye Birdie?
I know I am hurting someone’s feelings and I am sure they are normally very creative. But please… a pull quote from the film and a bunch of stars names would be better than this.
You’ve done some wonderful ads for movies like Gomorrah, Che’ and Summer Hours. This ad would make me turn my car around from being on my way to the theater… unless I was taking the bus in from Connecticut to see a French farce at the Paris… in 1968.

About ComiCon

The hype is starting to creep out of the geek universe, as suggested by a NY Times dropping today… so let me just say this…
ComiCon has become a great geek convention, especially for movie geeks.
And it is absolutely, irrefutably, profoundly irrelevant to the box office future of the films that are promoted there.
Sorry.
For every film that is said to have benefited from the event, there are equal number or more that say they have been damaged. And they are equally full of shit.
ComiCon has become about Hollywood Ego, like so much of what is done. It is a massive event, filled with people who are the core audience for genre films… and who will show up for most of the films that are as heavily promoted as the ones that studios are now spending at least $750,000 each to show up and promote.
I defy ANYONE to offer a SINGLE example of a wide-release film that was made or damaged by ComiCon.
The NY Times can try to trot out The Spirit as evidence that the film was hurt by ComiCon, but it’s completely absurd. No movie expecting to make more than $1.2 million can sell just to ComiCon. And if you want to know why people left the Spirit panel, it was because it was a movie that was positioned as being about hot chicks and there was no Scarlett Johansson, no Eva Mendes… not even Stana Katic. With due respect to Jaime King, it was a played out panel. Sam Jackson is a great actor, but he has become to ComiCon what Jon Voight is to a movie premiere… inevitable. They didn’t even take audience questions.
As unpleasant as the response was… it still had NOTHING to do with Lionsgate’s poor date, poor marketing, and generally bad release of the film. You have to sell your movie. They only thing ComiCon could have effected was Lionsgate’s level of commitment… which if true would be a failure on Lionsgate’s part to act like adults and sell their movie in the face of some niche negativity.
And Watchmen… are they f-ing kidding? What part of a $55 million opening is the problem created by ComiCon 8 months earlier? I mean, it’s ridiculous. That opening was built by the studio and the machinery they spent tens of millions on to promote the film widely. And the poor multiple was the result of a disinterested public, which may have, in fact, been uninterested in a slavish adaptation of the book. But WB didn’t make the movie based on ComiCon response. They made the movie they made… and they sold it… and ComiCon was a great rush for Zach Snyder & Co, but not a single person in that room who was alive a year later didn’t pay to see the film… and that’s still $70,000 at the box office.
Seriously… one real example… and if you say Iron Man, I am going to laugh in your face… the movie opened to $99 million nine months after the event… it has NOTHING to do with bloody ComiCon.
I’m not saying “don’t go” or “don’t have a good time.” Hell, I’m heading down there for my annual look-see because I do feel obliged on some level. But let’s not delude ourselves. ComiCon jumped the shark years ago. It is just a very complex advertising venue that costs about what two primetime spots cost.
And for those who go and love to party with the celebs for minutes at a time and the geeks for hours at a time, I salute you. Enjoy. It’s your party.

BYOB Again… It's A New Day… it's A New Week… It's A New…

Invading The Vintage

Franco Brambilla is an interesting artist… works in genre a lot… here is his site…

Slooooooow News Day

While others obsess on Michael Jackson’s remnants sale and feel compelled to turn Bruno into a disaster for no real reason.. this silliness seems much more honorable to me…

Life in Bogota

I have noted David Carr both Twittering and Facebooking from his bike journey through Columbia. Guess his phone works there.
And I got me thinking… of a colony of unemployed journalists… living in a South American commune… connected by the web… calling sources on Skype… living just fine on $25,000 a year… becoming the Internet’s New York Times…
At least until the Kool-Aid…

Press Releaase – All The Trek You Can Swallow

PARAMOUNT HOME ENTERTAINMENT CELEBRATES THE BIG SCREEN RETURN OF ONE OF THE GREATEST FRANCHISES EVER WITH A UNIVERSE OF NEW RELEASES
Original Feature Films and the Second Season of the Original Series Energize onto DVD and Blu-ray September 22, 2009 Loaded with Stellar Bonus Features
HOLLYWOOD, Calif.

Bad Release Date The Real Ugly Truth?

Sony has a bit of a dance coming up. The next three weekends have their The Ugly Truth – a film with all the potential box office of The Proposal, though reviews will likely be rougher – followed by Universal’s Apatowian Funny People, followed by what may be the crown jewel of non-R-rated comedy this summer, Julie & Julia. Can Sony squeeze enough out of The Ugly Truth in two weekends, one against Sandler and Apatow, before launching Streep & Adams? This is beginning to look like a strategic release date mistake. It’s not that they won’t open Ugly to the mid-20s. It’s just that there may be no room for it to do any more than $65m total in what is suddenly a massive competitively moment for comedies that appeal to women.




Poll results after the jump…

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Weekend Estimates by Klady – Potent Potter

Not too much more to look at here. Potter is where is was headed. Ice Age 3 rolls along, ahead of the first two films after two weekends and slightly ahead of Tranny2 for the weekend (as it probably really was last weekend), and Transformers: ROTFL is in line to break into the Top 10 all-time domestic with more than $400m, but likely not the worldwide all-time Top 15, which starts at $870.8m.
Bruno fell hard and is still probably looking at between $70m and $80m domestic… which is, ironically, where Fox felt its top on Borat would be. Not a cash machine, but still profitable for Universal.
It is not a direct defense of Bruno, but it is worth pointing out that these steep second weekend drops are becoming more and more standard. This is the ninth drop of more than 67% this year… the record for a year is ten. Five of the nine steep ones were opened on 2750 screens or more. None of them were opened on fewer than 1250 screens.
I understand the argument that “people just don’t like the film,” but I don’t see a natural Bottom 10 list in any of the years biggest drop lists. This year, it is (in order of the drop, worst to less worst): Friday the 13th, Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, Bruno, Miss March, Notorious, Year One, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, and Watchmen.
Using another measure, there have only been 13 films that have opened over $50m and done less than 2.5x opening. Three have already happened this year. There were two last year and three in 2007. There were only 5 in cinema history before that. But even looking from last year to this year, the numbers are not pretty. Quantum of Solace (2.49x open) and The Incredible Hulk (2.43x) were rough, but Fast & Furious (2.19x), Wolverine (2.1) and Watchmen (1.9x… the big release record holder) are harsher.
Looking past those mega-openers, there have been 59 releases of over $20 million that have done less than 2.5x opening. 22 of them were in the last two years… 11 this year already, compared to 11 last year. 9, in 2006, was the ignoble record before that…7 is the next worst showing. See the trend? Bruno has a real chance of being the film that sets the new record for futility in the name of 2009.
In years past, this increase in front-loading was a problem, but less of an issue as DVD revenues rose. With DVD dropping off, the erosion in opening multiples continues… but now it represents actual lost revenue, not cannibalization by another revenue source.
The Hangover holds are, like Wedding Crashers before it, astounding. It might not have enough time to play out, but based on the current trajectory, it could actually pass Up to become the second highest grosser of this summer. Remarkable.
Speaking of Up, it looks pretty well ensconced in the #5 all-time animation slot, about $45m behind #4, Shrek The Third, and #2 amongst Pixar titles only to Finding Nemo. International numbers are just starting to come in, as the film hasn’t opened in many of the biggest markets.
(%00) Days Of Summer positioned as an indie play? Yeah. Kinda. Already discussed. Same with The Hurt Locker. Humpday at 5… well… bless us, every one… Magnolia just isn’t a theatrical-first-priority releasing company right now…

Box Office Add…

Klady estimates The Hurt Locker at $199k on 93 screens yesterday.
Last weekend, the 3-day was almost exactly 3x Friday. $600k would take the overall gross to $2 million.
The trajectory for this year’s current exclusive-and-widening box office champ, Sunshine Cleaning, saw it do $671,618 on 64 screens, then $1,274,007 on 167, then peak at $1,807,164 on 479 in its 4th weekend before it started sliding back down, even with another screen expansion. That said, it went from $4.7m total on that peak weekend to $12.1 million in the end.
Locker is in its 4th weekend and this expansion will take it to double the domestic total that Sunshine had was when ended that $672k weekend (wknd 2). That part is good. But Sunshine as at $10,494 per screen in that expansion and Locker is at around $6500. That part is not so good.
What Summit needs now is to figure out how it’s going to get the film to its $1.8 million weekend, it’s $25m weekend and beyond.
The thing about this film is that if there is a big enough sample, it will start selling itself. But the danger of the slow rollout without a lot of money behind it is that the sample is strong in a few markets and no one has any idea what the movie is in the markets you have to hit when you get over 150 screens (and really, not even that wide).
The hard part for the distributor is that as they expand and numbers are good, but not sensational, a self-fulfilling prophecy starts to take over and an undersupported film in a bust market just can’t break through. That is not to say there is not a lot of risk for the distributor. There is. And financially, it is all their risk. But without bold choices, the rewards will sometimes pale against what was really possible. The Hurt Locker is not Once. Teens will love it. But they have to see it to love it.

Friday Estimates by Klady – Potted

Harry Potter is doing…. Harry Potter business. Taa Dah!!!
The reason – again – why all the hysteria and premature projection around box office… all the throwing around of electronic ticket sales numbers as though they mean anything other than how many people bought tickets for a popular movie in a way that is still growing in popularity itself… and the idea that tracking can be taken seriously as a way of guessing how high a film will open in these cases of enormous popularity… all absurd on their face. It’s bad information. And while no one is yet spinning this Potter opening as disappointing, but you can bet that irrelevant comparisons to Transformers 2 will fly.
As I pointed out yesterday, “An $80m 3-day, which is what I think the max is, is still $20 million more in the first 5 days than any Potter yet and the #6 5-day gross of all time.” That is about where we seem to be headed. It’s a great number. It will or will not lead to being the biggest Potter film, though as box office is going these days, probably not. It will likely end up right about Goblet & Phoenix… maybe a little closer to Sorcerer’s Stone. But $290m is about The Potter Domestic Number now.
Flip side, Bruno is now paying for doing the midnight Thursday shows with an 80% Fri-to-Fri drop and the perception that the media is now invested in selling. The weekday numbers were only off about 15%… until Harry Potter ate the movie world. The Potter Effect is real. The Twitter Effect is BS.
As of last night, Bruno was about $4m behind Borat. By the end of the weekend, he’ll be running about $16m behind Borat‘s first 2 weekends. That’s off by a third… but that’s about what I expected from Bruno before numbers started rolling in… an $80m – $90m domestic movie with the possibility of something bigger. So again… to me, similar to Potter. Reporting is good… hyping expectations so you can report disappointment, not so much.
The (500) Days of Summer opening is strong indie stuff, though for me, it points back at the problem discussed yesterday with the Hurt Locker approach. Fox Searchlight has spent a ton for this opening. They are opening on 27 screens, but the machinery of Searchlight has been humming along as though it was an 1800 screen opening. No, they aren’t spending full-out on TV. But they are buying TV. And at a venue like The Grove, here in LA, the “outdoor” placements are pretty much at the same level as Harry Potter. The studio is comfortable that the expansion will catch the box office up with the media spend because they believe in the word of mouth. It is a painful reality of non-wide-release distribution that the risk that Searchlight is taking is what is necessary to create a “grass roots” hit… like the US funding guerillas, the idea is not for anyone to notice that the flair has been paid for.
Good for Searchlight.
One last note… remember the Ice Age 3/Transformers 2 showdown that Tr2 won by miraculously beating the family film 3 days out of the first five by just enough to be #1 for a second weekend. IA3 is now 17 days old… and those 3 days of Tr2 being ahead remain the ONLY days in which Tr2 beat the week-fresher IA3. Hmmmm…
One more last note… today, Public Enemies will become the #2 all-time Michael Mann domestic grosser. Again… what were people expecting? The film even has a shot at Mann’s #1 grosser, Collateral, at $101m domestic.

Passings: Steve Rothenberg, 54

Just a week short of his 55th birthday, Steve Rothenberg passed away of gastric cancer yesterday. Steve was the President of Domestic Distribution at Lionsgate since 2004. Under his leadership, the company had its best run of theatrical success, with the Saw films, the Tyler Perry films, the Oscar-winning Crash, and the highest-grossing doc in history, Fahrenheit 9/11.
Rothenberg came to Lionsgate in the Artisan merger, where he had risen to Artisan’s top distribution slot after getting a lot of credit for the success of The Blair Witch Project and all the attention given Darren Aronofsky’s break-out, Pi. His three decades in the film business also include time handling distribution for the start-up Savoy Entertainment and the ever-evolving Samuel Goldwyn Company.
Asked about Rothenberg, Tom Ortenberg, who worked with him throughout their time at Lionsgate, described him as a “dear friend and one of the nicest, smartest people I have ever met… a hero of mine and a role model to my kids.”
In the end, all any of us will have is how we are remembered. And one can’t ask for much better than that.