The Hot Blog Archive for April, 2010

Weekend Box Office by Klady (Actuals Mal Look Different In Rear View Mirror)

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So is Clash of the Titans really doing more than 3x Friday this weekend? Dubious.
Last weekend, putting the late Thursday screenings aside, Clash still only did less than 2.5x Friday over 3 days, dropping 18% from Friday to Saturday. This does not suggest that the film is playing as a kids film. But this weekend, in a battle for a second weekend in first, the studio is estimating the film into that kind of trajectory.
Unlike Clash, the estimate for Date Night wouldn’t actually be surprising off of the Friday number.
And a kids film, like Dragon, is expected to do more than 3x Friday, as kids don’t go to matinees on Fridays in huge numbers, as a rule.
My guess would be that the real numbers are going to be more like Date at 26, Dragon at 25, and Clash at 24. But we’ll see what the “actuals” end up being.
Next…
I keep trying to make the point that the actual grosses of modest studio movies, dramas and simple comedies, are not actually down, but up. The problem is not, as studios keep whining to the media, that dramas aren’t selling. It’s that the studios have been making these movies for 2x and 3x what they should be making them for, making good grosses for the genre into red ink fountains. You shouldn’t always have to be a surprise smash to break even.
Evidence this week is She’s Out Of My League, which screams, “Flop.” But even as it fades to black, it did $30 million domestic. Six years ago, when the similarly themed The Girl Next Door flopped, it grossed just under $15m domestic.
Even in IndieVille, Girl With The Dragon Earring and The Runaways are looking at $3 million-plus domestic. For one thing, only 16 movies last year went on between 125 and 225 total screens in their runs. Of those 16, 5 outperformed what these two films seem likely to do. Two were long-legged docs (The September Issue and Food, Inc.), one was the Almodovar, one was The Brothers Bloom, pushed as a commercial film, and the most successful was the Indian niche film, 3 Idiots.
Interestingly, there were just under 50 releases all of last year that were on between 100 and 1000 screen releases, from the beginning or by the end. The middle class is dead. It’s dead, in part, by the will of the industry. But it is also dead because it is hard. It’s hard on marketers and it’s hard on consumers. The ticket buyers intuitively understand whether the distributor thinks a movie is fish or foul. And in that middle, they tend to assume that anything under 1000… or really, 1500 screens, is an arthouse movie.
Again, this speaks to the lie that The Hurt Locker was a box office victim of Iraq. it was a victim of a timid release that signaled that the film could be disregarded by audiences looking for a more mainstream movie experience. As a result, THL is likely to become the first post-theatrical cult movie that also won Best Picture. When people finally see it, it will not be what was expected.
And the sad fact is that it looks like most people will still discover the film on cable/satellite, as even with the Oscar bump, the DVD sales are running behind such pulp as Law Abiding Citizen and multiples behind such quality popular fare as The Blind Side.
But I digress…
Even a movie like Greenberg… good numbers for an arthouse release with Ben Stiller. Only The Royal Tenenbaums and Flirting With Disaster did better in small releases. And it will be Noah Baumbach’s #2 grosser, behind the Oscar-running The Squid & The Whale’s $11.1 million worldwide. What were people expecting?
Perhaps it is the culture that has grown out of box office obsession. Perhaps it is bad journalists buying into the spin of studios that want to shift the focus from their bloated budgets of recent years to the box office “failures” that must be the fault of the stars or the genre. The bottom line remains that The Blind Side was a $250 million drama, Avatar was a $2.7b action movie, and Precious was Lionsgate’s #5 movie last year, less than $9 million from the #2 film.
We have embraced the hype as the truth. Bad news.

54 Comments »

Friday Estimates by Klady (Slow & Date-y)

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So Date Night is looking at an opening pretty much in line with The Bounty Hunter, It’s Complicated, Julie & Julia, Bride Wars, What Happens in Vegas, Fool’s Gold, etc, etc, etc.
In other words, same shit, same market, pretty predictable opening result, having little to nothing to do with quality.
Truth is, neither Carrell nor Fey have any real history in this kind of position in this kind of movie. Fey actually is a step up on Carrell with Baby Mama, which opened to $17.4m… pretty close.
Non-event.
There is nothing surprising or particularly defining of Clash of the Titans in a 67% 1stFriday-to-2ndFriday drop. Both Bond and Twilight 1 had similar Friday drops last year from a similar opening gross. I’m not defending the movie. Just saying that it would be easy – and wrong – to make Friday’s number into a big drama.
Non-event.
15 days in, Dragon – as Paramount marketing is calling it – is still running slightly behind Monsters Vs Aliens domestically… and slightly ahead internationally.
Non-event.
The new Tyler Perry, like all Tyler Perry, has a big second Friday drop. This one is a little steeper, but…
Non-event.
Letters To God is yet another Jesus flick released to around a million dollars. Until it gets past $4 million domestic…
Non-Event.
And now that I have wasted all of our time… I bid you a fine fare thee well.

21 Comments »

TREMEnedous

David Simon and Eric Overmyer’s new HBO outing is both sublime and singular.
Music is the soul of this series, every moment steeped in it, as the Faubourg Treme was soaked to the bone, seemingly beyond drying, by Katrina. There is a lot of talk and drama about how the music is loved in New Orleans, but not the musicians. But it is those musicians, who are driven to play and sing and dance by every instinct they have, who keep the world of Treme pounding along. It is their passion and their inexplicablility that makes this work so unique.
I have only seen the first three episodes, so it could change, but while there are a number of linear threads being pulled through the series, most of what is going on just breathes, like life. You don’t quite know where the characters are headed… as they don’t know where they are headed. They just know that they have to keep moving forward… to keep surviving… to keep waiting for a better answer.
It is inherently a black show. Treme is a black neighborhood. But as the writers have been careful to remind us, Treme is in the spirit, not the skin color. At the same time, like The Wire, there is no fear of race at all. Race just is.
This is what is so amazing about this show. it is like the jazz music that dominates a melange of styles… there is form, but there is the feeling of endless improvisation. Unlike The Wire, a great series that this one quickly threatens to surpass, there is no Guy At The Center. Every time you feel like you are about to pin down the star… the center of the storm… it changes. Is it Wendell Pierce? Yeah. But then it’s Clarke Peters. Wait… it’s Steve Zahn (look for a Support Actor Emmy nomination every season of the series.) But it must be Khandi Alexander.
it does not seem to be a slow swim to the inevitable showdown each season. If there is any guiding narrative it is the idea that this neighborhood is slowly… so slowly… becoming a neighborhood again after the plague. Old men and children… outsiders who mean well, insiders who mean ill, and all shades of color in between… women who are as strong as any of the men and men who have been emasculated.
Casting is loaded with familiar faces, but not one that ever seems unreal. John Goodman and Mellisa Leo are odd perfection as deep-rooted do-gooders, Michiel Huisman and Lucia Micarelli as odd idealistic white street musicians, Kim Dickens as a struggling your chef/restaurateur, Davi Jay as a local guy who also is making a good living being paid by FEMA to help clean up the mess… every one as real as could be… not driving story so much as living from moment to moment.
I loved every second of this show… even the stuff I wasn’t quite sure about as it was happening. It took a full episode to explain one of Zahn’s odd choices and to pay another one off. And it just kept coming back to the music. It is a heartbeat.
I found myself thinking of what I still think of as the greatest sitcom ever, Frank’s Place, while watching this drama. It’s not on DVD… not on VOD. A truly great comedy, as this is a truly great drama. And oddly, for similar reasons. Frank’s Place used the outsider, who was a born insider, as the entry into New Orleans and its culture. Once Frank (Tim Reid) got a taste, he couldn’t leave. There was, as a sitcom must have, a more traditionally structured set of characters. But it also lingered and wandered, much like Treme. Hopefully, the success of Treme will inspire a long-overdue DVD release of Frank’s Place.
I have seen the three. I will watch them again as they air. And I can’t wait for more. Just 10 episodes in this first season. But I look forward to living through at least another 40 or 50. I now know what it means to miss New Orleans.

23 Comments »

Katzenberg On The 3D Sophomore Slump?

Jeffrey Katzenberg is repeating history, almost 20 years later.
His “sophomore slump” memorandum. which was one of the first pieces of internal Hollywood industry correspondence published by a media outlet without authorization – in Variety, though there is no trace of it from searching their website and we are still working on finding a full copy of the memo from 1991 – was all about how the high concept studio that he and Eisner perfected in resurrecting Disney was about to become bastardized, overused, overspent, and devalued.
He was dead on.
And now, in Variety – yes, they can still get a studio head to do an interview between blog leaks – he is at it again. And I am quite sure that he is right again.
” We are asking the moviegoers to pay a 50 percent premium to come see these films. So I think (there will be a) backlash. It will be a whiplash. They will walk away from this so fast.”
Yeah. 50% isn’t true, but close enough.
Now, I have to call bullshit on JK a little. He seems to be suggesting that since he built this thing – and only Jim Cameron’s fingerprints are as firmly connected to Nouveau-3D – that he should be allowed to decide who gets to milk the cash cow.
He beneficently gives Alice in Wonderland a pass… buying into the spin that Tim Burton designed a second of it for 3D… but Clash of the Titans is just too much for him!

“the revenue (today) from a successful 3D release net to the studios is greater than the erosion in the DVD market over the last two years.”

Yes… for that ONE film. But not for the industry overall. He runs a company now that is 3D Animation Only. His one or two films a year are clearly benefited. So studios that release 15 films a year need to back off so he can be safe generating his increased profitability?
The bottom line is that most big studio films are shit, have been shit, and will be shit. Alice wasn’t any better because of 3D, whether it was shot for the projection system or not. There may be another movie which feels as good in 3D as Avatar again… though I would still argue that Avatar was no better in 3D than in 2D. But those movie experiences are few and far between.
“For the last four or five years, the raging debate here has been the inability of Hollywood to convince exhibition, because there’s really nothing in it for exhibition. It doesn’t change the economics of their business. They can’t charge more for a digital experience. The thing that finally got everybody off the dime was when there was something in it for exhibition, which was 3D.
So now take that 3D out of the equation and you derail that (digital) train. And who’s the biggest beneficiary of digital, of a full digital platform? Hollywood. So when you want to talk about the effect of actually blowing this, it’s unbelievable.”

Again… a bit of hyperbole. What got the theaters off the dime is that the studios finally agreed to pay most of the bill for the new projectors. Indeed, there are hundreds of millions and as much a $2 billion per year to be saved by studios by having digital exhibition. That train has left the station and is not coming back. It would make no sense for the studios to get in their own way.
For the first time in almost a decade admissions are way up. Almost all of it can be attributed to 3D. There’s a reason to get out of the home and go back to the movies.
More spin. Almost all of it can be attributed to Twilight 2, The Hangover, The Blind Side, and Avatar.
That said, every $100 million domestic animated film other than The Princess & The Frog happens to have been in 3D. But if you look at 2008’s $100m animated grossers, only one of which was 3D, they were less than 20% behind the average domestic gross of 2009’s six animated $100m films.
Can anyone legitimately say that 3D was the difference? No. And has been pointed out, as discussed many times here, admissions is a blurry, blurry stat. Did admissions really go up a lot? I don’t really know. What I do know is that there were 6 films that grossed over $200m domestic in 2008 and 10 in 2010. Is that 3D’s fault?
I am convinced that there (is) a high road to take, and that it would produce the best opportunity to come along for our business in a decade. I’m even more convinced that if we take the low road, we’ll be out of the 3D business in 12 months.
The “low road” is everyone jumping on the bandwagon. The “high road” is 10 films a year… without quality police. Keep the novelty. Keep the bonus pricing.
JK is dead right. This will blow up. It will sink. And not because this movie sucked or it was 2D conversion that was never meant to be 3D or whatever. 3D was the new fad in town this year. And as I have written before, the opportunity is being raped more quickly than I have seen any other phenom get raped. But when 3D matures… like IMAX… it is a niche’ thing, not a new standard. And if the industry keeps acting as though it is some new standard, it will die like the dodo. And as Katzenberg says… it will happen faster than you can say, “DVD.”

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28 Days Later: And Then There Were 2

Universal officially joins the 28-day window party in a NetFlix deal. Look for the studio’s participation in the Blockbuster deal to come soon.
16 days for four of the six remaining majors to line up for some form of the 28-day sell-thru window. Who says this is not a collusive business? (However, apparently Sony has a deal without the 28 day window at Netflix and Redbox… expect that to change asap.) But I would argue that this collusion is actually a consumer benefit. Unlike other industries, the movie industry has not tried to rape its customers’ wallets as a result of having government look the other way. In fact, the industry has embraced more consumer choice for lower prices… not always to the benefit of the long-term interest of the industry.
I don’t spend a lot of time on iTunes movie section, but I just went for a peek and Up In The Air is doing rental-only window. Other unique takes include Bad Lt: POCNO offering HD and non-HD at different prices, suggesting thought about how people are going to use streamed video in the future (as in, there is no real reason for HD on your iPhone or most computer screens, but if you are pushing to a TV, yes.).
All of this is great, to my eye. Experiment and figure out the post-theatrical future price models. But in the process, don’t throw out the theatrical window with the bathwater. That window offers none of the options that post-theatrical does. If they bust the window, it can be replaced, but not fixed.

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Review – Date Night

When Shawn Levy landed on Hollywood with Just Married – tie for #1 on my Worst of 2003 list – he fit right in with a parade of truly terrible film directors who Fox continued to dredge up to take completely cookie cutter scripts and to add stylistic incoherence to the mess.
But the movie was a hit. And then, so was Cheaper By The Dozen, which was similarly shot as though by a college freshman with a video camera. This guy must be the greatest charmer in history in person… funny and clever. Steve Martin insisted upon him for The Pink Panther… which also became a hit after many re-edits and re-shoots.
And then, Night At The Museum… another major film comedian… another very high concept movie… and another piece of absolute shite directing work. And a massive hit.
I don’t recall any director this bad at the basic job of setting up shots and making the most of what is happening on the set having this long a run of big hits. Rob Cohen had misses. And comparing this guy to Cohen seems a shame, as Levy doesn’t seem to show any of Cohen’s unearned arrogance.
I was really hoping that Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, as likable a pairing as you could put on a screen, would get a stronger Shawn Levy after Levy had been behind the camera for two really big studio movies. But alas…
The script is okay. A bit of a mess. It is pure 70s textbook character comedy. Landis, Reitman, Oz… all did it way better than this. Fish bored in water, fish out of water, fish in trouble, fish exceeds expectations of self, fish can’t wait to get back in the tank for a happy life… with a twinkle in the eye, know that there is still magic possible.
What was sooooo frustrating about the film is that it could not have been more loaded. Besides the leads, James Franco and Mia Kunis as a cleverly-conceived couple, Wahlberg in a great cameo opportunity, William Fichtner and Ray Liotta as bad guys… and throwaway appearances by Taraji P Henson (Stunningly… STUNNINGLY bad role for a recent Oscar nominee), Mark Ruffalo, and Kristin Wiig. And on a side note, Levy found every wrong note for Olivia Munn to play, obviously casting her for her following, then delivering none of her natural charm or sexiness when all there had to be was a minor re-write.
But whenever I actually laughed or started getting happy about the film, this now-veteran studio film director started knocking out single-single-single-single sequences like a first-time filmmaker, losing all the juicy goodness of some of these comic performances. Every time the idea of the film was about to start flying… clunk, clunk, clunk.
Even in the third act, when there is a big stunt, it take s a second – in a long sequence – to adjust to the fact that this is happening in a movie where it doesn’t much seem to fit. But ok… let’s let the movie be what it wants to be. But then, this extravagance – which reminded me a lot of The Blue Bros… except that as wild as it was in TBB, it was much better – which offered the promise of being goofy fun was just badly done, except for the performance of J.B. Smoove, who was funnier than the direction deserved.
Look… not the worst movie in history. Not very good, but there are still a bunch of actors you really like. I wouldn’t tell people to avoid it at all costs.
But what sticks with me is that Levy is, simply, a remarkably untalented director when it comes to capturing what is happening on his sets. He must – right? – create a great relationship with actors. And they seem to be doing good work. But if it’s not on the screen, it doesn’t exist.
Few things frustrate me more in a movie theater than potential wasted. And Shawn Levy is the ultimate in that for me right now.

82 Comments »

How Long Can Ryan Kavanaugh Last?

I’m not sure I have anything close to a realistic answer.
All I can say is that the question continues to be asked all over town… and the idea of offering to fund MGM’s production slate top the tune of $500 million – more than half of which, presumably, is meant to be Hobbit and Bond – is not making it any better. I guess his thinking is that if those two films return double his money, the rest of the money is risk-free… all profit possibility. Of course, Alan Horn isn’t a moron and the bid for the studio’s assets will drop significantly if the other half of Hobbit is no longer in the deal.
But back to the point… leadership at least one of the top agencies has told his agents NOT to do deals with Kavanaugh because the money train is about to crash into a wall.
And to be sure, Relativity Media’s brand on your film is more often than not – at least 2/3rds of the time – the sign of a fiscal car wreck. it’s breathtaking how many of the biggest bombs of recent years they have been in on funding. The Tale of Despereaux, The International, State of Play, Land of the Lost, Funny People, Nine, Did You Hear About the Morgans?, The Wolfman, Green Zone. And that’s just the last couple of years.
Now… they were in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Couples Retreat, and biggest of all, Mamma Mia! So it’s not all been losses. But most of the bets… bad.
All that said… if I were in MGM financially, I would be all over this deal. It would be a gamble. The library price would drop to $1 billion – $1.2 billion. But the potential upside of the production package means that they could lose $100m more… or earn a couple hundred million more. And in the case of a miracle… more…as years pass.
It’s a good gamble for the MGM side. And all it requires is a lunatic with a loose check signing arm.
We all know who would be wearing the dress at this wedding, right?

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LA Film Festival Moves Downtown (with Press Release)

Downtown
Where the folks are broke. You go
Downtown
Where your life’s a joke. You go
Downtown
Where you buy a token. You go…
Home to Skid Row.

There are often conversations about why Sundance is in the tiny ski resort that is Park City. LAFF reminds us why, as it moves its “hub” for the third time in a decade, from Hollywood’s Arclight to West Hollywood’s Sunset 5 to Westwood, and now to the downtown hub, centered around LA Live.
It is a special Los Angeles reality that each move has made parking harder and more expensive for potential patrons.
On the other hand… Downtown Los Angeles is trying hard to revive itself… and except from the occasional hip party at the hotels down there… still no go. The facility around LA Live, which I have to admit, I had not been at until LAFF parent FIND put the Independent Spirit Awards down there, is impressive. And aside from the aforementioned parking – The ISAs gave attendees parking passes that generously allowed us to pay only $15 to park for the event – it might make an interesting center for the fest.
But… if you want to go see a movie at 7 at LAFF and you live in Santa Monica, you will have to leave your home at around 5 to be sure to get there in time… 5:30 on the weekends… unless it’s been a beach day… then 4:30. Even from where I live, pretty much in the middle between Santa Monica and downtown, I would be looking at a minimum of 45 minutes of travel allowed to be safe.
However… if you live in Los Feliz or Silverlake – which if you are truly hip, you must – the festival is now a little MORE accessible than in the past.
Bottom line… this is a political, financial move for the festival. Westwood is shutting down as a place to view movies. The Arclight has matured into a place that is not nearly as generous to festivals as it once was. And the AFI’s move to the Chinese and Chinettes in Hollywood was a success in terms of how they did the fest last year, but not an option if you want to show more than 50 films or so.
There is nowhere else to go. And no doubt, LA Live et al, made it financially attractive for the festival to be there, with opening night scheduled on the last possible night of the NBA Finals… dear God, they must be rooting for the Lakers to win in 4 or to miss the Finals.
The Indie Spirits move downtown was almost unanimously seen as a flop. Part of that was that it was cold, the space was laid out in a less inviting way than it had been in Santa Monica, and the aforementioned – repeatedly – parking. Personally, I think they can make downtown work for the Indie Spirits, even if we will all, forever, miss the beach and the daytime event.
About the parking… I might seem obsessed, but the truth of the LA movie universe is that parking and general ease of access is the #1 issue in building audience. One of the reasons that Westwood has died as a weekend film hub for the city… parking. Why is American Cinematheque having issues in both locations… parking? Why is teh Showcase on La Brea closed? Parking. Why is the Sunset 5 a niche house in spite of being dead center in its market? Parking. It’s also why Landmark has had such a success atthe Westside Pavillion, why the Arclight in Hollywood thrives, and why the Chinettes at Hollywood & Highland are doing well.
Anyway…
There is a romantic notion about this working. I would like it to. I would like to find myself spending at least a few of the 10 days rushing downtown and catching up with the scene down there. I would love see the LA Times, the presenting sponsor of the event, which with a failing AFI Fest is now LA’s clear hometown festival of choice, expend as many dollars covering this event as they will covering Cannes, a festival that is of interest to less than 10% of the paper’s readership.
Let’s give it a couple of years to settle in and hope for the very best…
Press Release After The Jump…

Read the full article »

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How Ready Are The Studios For The iPad?

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Disney | Focus
Fox | Fox Searchlight
MGM | Miramax
Paramount | Sony
Universal | WB
This idea was passed along by a professional studio geek who decided not to take credit… but an invisible hat tip.
Feel the Flash pain. But for anyone looking for trailers, Apple’s QT-driven site is a click away.

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Miramax: Round 13

So… if Disney sells off Miramax for less than the $1 million per film avg price tag that already represents film library values going into the toilet, they are just being silly. The sale is not about economics… it is an old-fashioned ego play to clear the decks of the company’s past.
It’s pathetic that we are now at a point where $700 million for 700 films, including big grossers and Oscar winners, is considered the high number. This is not Rich Ross’ fault. But the number is so low that a company as deep-pocketed as Disney should not dumping a commodity that could have future upside… including a sale at a later date.
if Harvey Weisntein can convince Ron Burkle that buying the Miramax library can pay for itself over 5 years or 7 years or whatever under Harvey’s guidance, Disney is, essentially, giving away the library.
More importantly, Disney has not been a company that produces/distributes a ton of movies each year. Since they acquired Miramax, the big studio – including Touchstone and Hollywood Pictures – has made/distributed about the same number of films as Miramax/Disney-Dimension… just over 300 each.
Let’s forget the hope that there will be some DVDesque cash cow distribution system showing up to make each title worth a lot more again. How about if Disney decides – as I project all studios will – go into packaging their entire content play, current and historic, as a subscription offering on a variety of levels. No doubt, the pitch would be kid-centric. But the Miramax library could fill its own channel, playing each title only 6 times a year or less. Doesn’t that channel make the purchase more attractive for buyers over 12? Add in the parade of Touchstone/Hollywood titles that are really for adults. There has to be a way to fill out the Marvel Channel, no?
Bottom Line: This sale or non-sale will not be the key to Disney’s future. It could be successful for The Weinsteins… or it could be the last nail in their glass coffin. The Goreses will just try to turn it over as soon as there is a 20% premium to be made. And Bergstein… really… are you kidding me? That mook owes ME tens of thousands, much less the tens of millions he owes others… this is who Disney empowers? No.
There is one more option… sell it to the Weinsteins and Burkle for $500m, retaining 40% of the rights, but with an agreement not to take any of the revenue for 5 years and to be willing to sell the stake for, say, $500m more at any time. Harvey gets five years to milk the library and to re-build. If things go bad, Disney still has something of potential long-range value. And Diisney isn’t just doing something to do something.
But even at $700m, the number is too low for Disney. It will never destroy Disney. But it could sting mightily… unless library values keep dropping… which would be horrifying. Ironically, Disney is the studio most likely to devalue libraries by rushing to window-busting. Ah, the circle of life!

1 Comment »

MGMess: Episode 292

I just had to laugh when reading Nikki “Things Are Looking Up At MGM” Finke’s latest, “MGM Begs Creditors For Stand-Alone Studio.”
It’s like watching Dr Drew’s Studio Rehab. “Hey man… just $500 million more… this time, we’re going to make it work and save the whole studio! I swear, dude. I’ll never ask for anything else again!”
They have been begging for this for years now. It was Harry Sloan’s dream. Of course, he didn’t seem to be aware that the primary value of MGM, the library, had become an anchor instead of wings. He tried an end-run using Tom Cruise as bait, but that funding fell out soon enough as well… and the funders for UA certainly didn’t want to double-down on MGM, with all due respect to Mary Parent.
Thing is, if you wanted to launch a studio with Mary Parent as your studio chief and what is left of the rest of the team over there, the creditors would surely take 100 of your 500 million to make the production arm and whatever titles may already have shot film for the company go away. They might even license you the studio name and logo to put in front on your films when distributed by other studios for another $10 million. Cough up another $150 million today and you can have all the Bond and Hobbit rights you want!
Or… you could just get the creditors to cancel MP’s contract and allow you to hire her – and most of her team – outright.
The point is, if you want to spend $500m to start a new production business, why would you want to be encumbered by the weight of a troubled former major?
Here’s a better idea… spend $200 million… get MP away from MGM… set up an output deal at Paramount or Sony… and make some money. She could do that for you.
Regardless, someone is still going to have to eat more than $2 billion in lost value on this library. $250 million less to eat would likely seem mighty appetizing about now.

Three Studios Set 28 Day DVD Window… Three Left

March 23What WB is signaling – and other studios will follow – is that after 28 days in post-theatrical, everything is the long tail… negligible revenues (aside from the wholesale DVD sales needed to fill the pipeline). But the heat of demand is over. That is the point at which they are fine with everyone buying discs at wholesale prices and distributing them as widely as they like with no additional revenue for the studio.
Until titles hit that that 28 day window, buy it or pay the studio a per-rental price.

So now Fox and Sony have followed. The three majors holding out are Disney – which is Apple-committed – Universal – which is still in play and probably getting a lot of guidance on this from Kabletown – and Paramount, which is Sumner Redstone’s Paramount, facing yet another moment of industry transition that it could have led instead of weakly following… eventually.
The only one of the studios holding out that concerns me is Disney, which is showing an interest in being the leading window-breaker. But they are not dumb people. They have to understand that there is middle ground. What I would expect to see next is a move by them to make Apple’s iTunes the only rental outlet in the new 28-day window.
All that said, there is a new twist. “These studios will provide new enhanced payment terms to Blockbuster in exchange for a first lien on Blockbuster Canada Co.’s assets.” It’s a little murky, but it smells to me like these four studios are looking at a backdoor acquisition of this established Home Ent brand to use as their group outlet – which, of course, they couldn’t possibly be colluding to do – for the Home Entertainment First Window

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On Lionsgate

How many ways can I say this?
Lionsgate is a bottom heavy, library-first business that is too big and valuable to be sold at a price that feels good, but is too slow and underfunded to ever compete with The Majors in a real way, making its ongoing movie business as significant to its future as that library.
It’s not complicated. But it has made Lionsgate an uncomfortable place to be for the players who have wanted to make their Kerkorian-esque killing on it for over a decade now. In the meanwhile, the company has had a remarkable run of success as, easily, the most successful True Indie distributor, including franchises of real value and a Best Picture Oscar, and a strong TV player.
Thing is, none of the success has ever made the company valuable enough to sell for that magical number that valued both the strong indie business and that massive library. Oscar didn’t matter. The TV hits didn’t matter. Tyler Perry didn’t matter. Saw. And MGM has found with both Bond and The Hobbit in their pocket… it’s just not enough to dominate the library value.
So… they keep building. Go back to the Artisan buy… which backfired when Blair Witch turned out to be a one-time event. The purchase of other libraries. And of course, TV Guide and Mandate, home of Nikki-whisperer Joe Drake. They keep piling the company with new pieces… but the stock price never moves. Why? Because movies don’t move stock prices… same as everywhere else.
And now there is a bigger problem… the value of libraries is dropping as DVD dropped to a stable business instead of a high flier and The Digital Long Tail does not seem to offer anything like the DVD revolution in terms of numbers that potential buyers value.
The problem for Carl Icahn is, like Sam Zell, he has no good answer. Staying where he is not realistic. Lionsgate doesn’t have the money – and no one else has the inclination – to get rid of him by offering even a small profit on his investment. And he can’t sell off the pieces without having control of the company.
In many ways, production is a wildcard/poison pill. In theory, the bets could pay off big… or they could become a real drag on the bottom line. The fact that no one knows – and no one can know – protects the company from predators. So when Joe Drake spends more than Lionsgate ever has on production, they might lose… but it covers the company’s collective ass as well.
And so it goes. Icahn can’t just go away. But there is nothing – not even if Kick-Ass and Killers each end up generating scores of millions of profits for the company – that is likely to turn Lionsgate into a high-flier/attractive takeover target anytime soon… or anytime in the next 5 years.
Epix? Really? Paramount (at war with Viacom brother Showtime), the MGM library – if that holds up – and the Lionsgate long tail? They will eventually get the channel on the big carriers. But how many times can people watch Iron Man, Transformers, Saw, Madea, and Singin’ In The Rain on cable/satellite? (The one ray of hope in the dark clouds is that pressure will force Epix to innovate across platforms and they will set a standard for others… others that will profit from the bumps and bruises Epix absorbs by going first.)
Ask me and the endgame is going to be Icahn taking control… at $7.50 a share or $4 a share. And that’s where the next year or two of production will make a real difference. But neither the Israelis or the Palestinians are going anywhere on their own volition. Sorry.

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BYOB 4610

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One More iPad Point… On Books

Amazon may have some problems selling hardware… it is not close to the experience of reading books on the iPad.
However, as a retailer, it is miles and miles ahead of Apple and their Kindle experience for the iPad is excellent… way better than on the Kindle… and they have pretty much every book. I will be buying the new Michael Lewis, for instance, on Kindle, because it’s not available via Apple. But my Kindle will remain in the drawer… and I will read the book on the iPad.
Also, if you have a Kindle account, all your books transfer for free.
What will be interesting, for Hollywood, is to see how script sharing works on the new platform.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon