Showbiz Sandbox: Streaming Through the 2022 Sundance Film Festival

February 2, 2022

For the second straight year the COVID pandemic forced the Sundance Film Festival to move its 2022 event online. Even so, its organizers did a great job of putting on a virtual festival programmed with movies from emerging filmmakers and important documentaries on timely subjects.

Joining us to discuss the 2022 Sundance Film Festival is Stephen Garrett, a writer for the Book & Film Globe and the founder of Jump Cut, a marketing company that specializes in creating compelling trailers and posters for a wide variety of acclaimed motion pictures. We discuss the entries that will surely see some life after the festival, a few that won’t and the likelihood that any of them will ever be seen in movie theaters.

As expected, streamers such as Apple, Netflix and Hulu opened up their checkbooks to acquire Sundance titles for their subscription services, perhaps signaling a pause, if not an end, to big theatrical acquisitions being made at the festival.

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Showbiz Sandbox 77: It’s Official – Hollywood To Make Nothing But Sequels

November 1, 2010

With the seventh installment of the Saw franchise and Paranormal Activity 2 topping this week’s box office, it’s not hard to see why Hollywood studios have been greenlighting sequels and prequels. They range from high profile titles such as “The Hobbit” and “Avatar”, to questionable projects such as “Top Gun 2”. Don’t even get us started on the prequel to Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas”.

If big budget Hollywood movies aren’t your thing, you could always stay home and watch television, provided the broadcast networks don’t get into a carriage dispute with your cable provider and black out their signal. Fox did just that to Cablevision subscribers recently and we’ll explain why. Meanwhile, Conan O’Brien prepares for his new late night talk show with a Rolling Stone interview.

During Big Deal or Big Whoop we provide analysis of the week’s top entertainment headlines, including Charlie Sheen’s latest trouble, a new hit for AMC and a film based on Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. Our Inside Baseball discussion focuses on why consumers prefer to rent digital movies rather than purchase them.

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