Showbiz Sandbox 117: Crunching The Numbers Behind Summer’s New Box Office Records
September 6, 2011
Big budget sequels and super hero movies helped push the bar on summer box office records slightly higher. North American grosses rose to $4.4 billion as overseas markets improved to $8.2 billion in receipts. But how much did all those blockbusters actually cost to produce and market? After all the money is counted, how profitable will the latest installments of “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Transformers” truly be? We sharpen our pencils and do the math to answer all these questions and more.
One future blockbuster that was recently axed by Disney may actually get made after all. The studios is lowering the budget on “The Lone Ranger” by asking star Johnny Depp and filmmaker Gore Verbinski to take a pay cut.
The publishing world also seems to be doing quite well lately thanks to strong sales of digital titles. Even though the e-books may be getting all the love in mainstream media stories, Random House wants everyone to know that print books aren’t dead. In fact, the sale of hardcover and paperback books still outpaces their digital counterparts.
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Showbiz Sandbox 62: The Secret Behind Hollywood’s Accounting Practices
July 12, 2010
How is it the last Harry Potter film can gross $938 million but still lose $130 million? Journalist and author Edward Jay Epstein joins us to unravel some of Hollywood’s quirky accounting practices. He’s written two books on the subject; The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies
“Despicable Me” topped the box office though the amount it took in from 3D screens was rather low. Could audiences be tiring of paying exorbitant 3D ticket prices? Meanwhile, Miramax finally seems to have found a buyer and Lions Gate is trying to make piece with activist investor Carl Icahn.
The Emmy nominations were announced last week and we’ll fill you in on whose up for the television’s big awards. Over in the world of music Pollstar announced that concert ticket sales are down 15% for the first half of the year.
During our Big Deal or Big Whoop segment we race through a number of top entertainment headlines, including Roman Polanski’s release, Lindsay Lohan’s jail time and Mel Gibson getting dumped by his agency. Maybe Gibson can find some work on YouTube, which plans to offer $5 million in grants to select content partners.
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Showbiz Sandbox 61: Andrew Garfield Fills Spider-Man’s Reboots
July 5, 2010
That “Twilight Saga: Eclipse: wound up at the top of the box office over the Fourth of July holiday weekend with $280 million worldwide was not a big shock, however the casting of Andrew Garfield to play Spider-Man in the next installment of the franchise came as a surprise. Entertainment journalist Michael Giltz has been following the 26-year-old actor for several years, but the selection of the unknown had most industry insiders searching for his resume.
In all likelihood the next “Spider-Man” film will be shot in 3D though the format is not a guarantee of box office gold. Just ask M. Night Shyamalan whose “Last Airbender” had a disappointing opening despite being converted to 3D in post-production. Film critic Roger Ebert was not alone in trashing the film.
This week also saw Larry King announce his retirement from the nightly talk show he’s hosted on CNN for 25 years. King’s program has been slipping in ratings recently, as have late night talkers hosted by Jay Leno and David Letterman. But viewership continues to grow on cable television, not to mention on Hulu which will begin offering monthly subscriptions for expanded content offerings.
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Showbiz Sandbox 58: Celebrities Take Over Broadway
June 14, 2010
The Tony Awards were held on Sunday evening honoring the year’s best Broadway productions and performances. Brian Scott Lipton the editor-in-chief of TheaterMania.com was there and he stops by to fill us in on all the big winners, memorable moments and why so many movie stars are currently working in theater.
The 11th Annual Golden Trailer Awards also took place this past week and Stephen Garrett of Kinetic Trailers won two big prizes. He joins us to discuss the current state of movie promos and what its like to win the award for Trashiest Trailer.
At the box office “The Karate Kid” knocked “Shrek Forever After” out of first place after three weeks and provided a little hope for this summer’s poor ticket sales. “The A Team” on the other hand opened to poor reviews and even worse box office receipts.
In television news, the final ratings for this past season’s television shows have been released. We’ll fill you in on which shows finished on top as well as the ones nobody cared to watch. You’ll never guess where “The Jay Leno Show” came in (hint: it’s not in the top 100).
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