Showbiz Sandbox 609: Consumers Are Spending A Fortune on Home Entertainment
February 28, 2023
According to Digital Entertainment Group, consumers in North America spent $37 billion on home entertainment in 2022. That includes not only spending on streaming services, but also DVD, Blu-ray and digital sales. Not to mention physical and digital rentals. And none of these figures includes spending on cable television.
Meanwhile, awards season is in full swing with the SAG Awards, PGA Awards, Annies and the Cesars all being handed out over the past week. We’ll give you the quick summary and what it all means for the Oscars.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including how Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramout are in a dispute over “South Park,” Stephen Fry will host “Jeopardy” in the United Kingdom and new “Lord of the Rings” movies are in the works.
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Showbiz Sandbox 604: Which Awards Actually Matter?
January 17, 2023
As we get deeper into this year’s awards season we’re finally hearing from groups whose opinions mean something. For instance, the guilds for directors, producers and cinematographers have all nominated their top picks from last year’s movies. In other instances however, awards are handed out in so many different categories, it seems like every film released gets a gold star.
Meanwhile, as the Grammy Awards are nearly upon us, we are learning that last year’s top five songs are generating less interest than the top five songs from 2021. In fact, the ten biggest songs of each year are drawing fewer and fewer listeners year-after-year, becoming a smaller piece of the streaming pie.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including why Amazon is parting ways with Jeremy Clarkson, how Cathleen Hoover dominated the 2022 best seller lists and a first look at last year’s global box office tally.
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Showbiz Sandbox 533: Behind The Scenes At The Most Challenging Grammys Ever
March 16, 2021
Working within strict health and safety guidelines the producers of the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards telecast were uncertain how the show would come together or even when it would take place. David Wild knows this first hand. He was the lead writer and one of the producers on this year’s show. Wild joins us to detail all the challenges of pulling off music’s biggest night amidst a global pandemic.
Meanwhile, nods for outstanding achievements in motion pictures were announced en masse over the past week with the BAFTAs, Cesars, Directors Guild, American Society of Cinematographers and many more leading up to, finally, this year’s Oscar nominations.
Of course we also cover some of the week’s top entertainment headlines including a trip to this year’s Berlin Film Festival, how Drake is dominating the music charts and Disney+ continues its staggering growth.
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Showbiz Sandbox 481: Catty Jokes At Oscars Spur Backlash
February 17, 2020
When James Corden and Rebel Wilson strutted onto the Oscar stage dressed as characters from the film adaptation of the Broadway musical “Cats” it garnered sincere laughter from the audience. However, the duo went on to mock the visual effects of the film which they happened to star in, generating a bit of fallout. Turns out there’s a real life sad ending to the story.
Fresh off it’s Oscar win for Best Picture, “Parasite” soared at the box office. Does the film’s success, not to mention the explosive popularity of international TV shows on Netflix, mean audiences in the United States will finally catch up with the rest of the world and embrace subtitles?
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including the controversy over this year’s Cesar Awards in France, the streaming company Roku continues to grow and satellite radio giant Sirius XM invests in SoundCloud.
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Showbiz Sandbox 402: How the 90th Annual Oscars Took Shape
March 5, 2018
The 90th Academy Awards went down pretty much as everyone expected it would. After a lengthy awards season there were few surprises over who would go home with Oscars. There were no upsets (or mistakes) when it came time to announce Best Picture, as Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” won the honor.
During a year which saw the rise of the #MeeToo movement, the vociferous calls from the Oscar stage for gender inclusion and racial diversity within the motion picture industry were also highly anticipated. Anne Thompson, Indiewire’s editor-at-large, was backstage during the ceremony and she joins us to share her insights about.
Meanwhile, though Comcast may have been turned down by 20th Century Fox, the cable giant hasn’t given up on growing its conglomerate through acquisitions. Last week they made a $31 billion offer to buy Europe’s Sky Broadcasting, something Fox has been struggling to do for some time now.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including how Spotify is finally going public, the Swiss back public broadcasting and why YouTube is punishing a prominent conservative conspiracy theorist.
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Showbiz Sandbox 357: Oscars Can’t Win For Losing This Year
February 27, 2017
In a moment that will be discussed for years to come, this year’s Academy Awards ended with the wrong film being announced as the Best Picture winner. Ultimately it wasn’t “La La Land” that took home the prize as many predicted, but rather the socially conscious, racially diverse indie film “Moonlight” that won the award. Anne Thompson, Indiewire’s editor at large, tells us that by choosing “Moonlight” for its top award the Academy was making a statement about who they want to be as an industry.
Thompson also brings us backstage at this year’s Oscars, walking us through how such a huge mistake could actually happen, and what it was like in the press room when the error became apparent. Naturally, we touch on the some of this year’s Oscar winners as well.
Meanwhile, the way movies get distributed continues to be a contentious topic in Hollywood, with studios and cinema owners reportedly in negotiations on an agreement that might see new releases available for home viewing in as little as two weeks.
Of course, we also cover the week’s top entertainment news stories including how Netflix continues to book comedians, CBS cancels a brand new series and Beyoncé cancels her Coachella gig.
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Showbiz Sandbox 352: 2017 Academy Award Nominations Launch #OscarsSoDiverse Trend
January 24, 2017
When the 2017 Oscar nominations were announced this week the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences managed to avoid a third straight year of controversy over all-white acting nominees. Among this year’s honorees are six African American actors, setting a record for the most in a single year. Hopefully this is a sign more racially diverse films are being produced.
What the Academy did manage to overlook however, were films with huge audiences. Despite nominating nine films for Best Picture Oscars, not a single one has surpassed the $100 million mark (yet).
Meanwhile, in over in the music business, album sales have never mattered less. These days it’s all about music publishing, which can be a true goldmine. Just ask Paul McCartney who is suing Sony/ATV to regain the publishing rights to the Beatles catalogue.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including Jerry Seinfeld’s new Netflix deal, the death of 3D television and NBC renews one of its biggest hits for two more seasons.
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Showbiz Sandbox 314: As Expected, The Oscars Shine A Spotlight On Diversity
February 29, 2016
In a year when the Academy Awards were faulted for a lack of diversity among its nominees, ceremony host Chris Rock addressed the #OscarsSoWhite controversy head on in his opening monologue by mixing pointed criticism with biting humor. Anne Thompson, Indiewire’s editor at large, brings us along as she attends the 88th annual Oscars and explains just how difficult it was to predict this year’s winners.
Mind you, award season never really ends. France handed out their own awards for last year’s top movies and we’ll tell you who won all the big prizes at the Cesars. We even look at the nominations for the Olivier Awards, the London theater equivalent to the Tonys. Literally hours after winning his first Oscar, Mark Rylance was nominated again, this time for his performance in “Farinelli and the King”.
Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble is planning to imitate its online rival Amazon by, oddly enough, opening new brick and mortar stores. And a reissue of the Alex Haley bestseller Roots brings up everything from copyright to the question of when a book goes out of print to ebook pricing.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including how Netflix and other streaming services have decimated video sales, PBS will launch its own cable network and Adele tops the Brit Awards.
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Showbiz Sandbox 310: Diversity Makes A Comeback At Sundance
February 2, 2016
This year’s Sundance Film Festival wrapped up over the weekend in historic fashion by awarding the dramatic competition grand jury and audience prizes to “The Birth of a Nation”, a historical biopic a Virginian slave revolt. The film made headlines earlier in the week when Fox Searchlight purchased the film for a record $17.5 million after beating out Netflix in a heated bidding war.
We’ll tell you about all the big Sundance awards and continue the Oscar season slog, in which this year’s front runners are as mixed up as a Republican presidential primary. SAG added to the confusion, making “Spotlight” this week’s hero, after “The Big Short” looked like a winner the week before.
Meanwhile the Federal Communications Commission is about to vote on ending the monopoly of set top boxes for US cable subscribers, a decision that could have big ramifications for everything from what you watch to the stock prices of numerous tech companies, including Apple and Roku.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including Louis CK bypasses television networks and brings his new series directly to viewers, Pope Francis gets ready for his closeup in a feature film and sales of new music were outpaced by catalogue titles over the past year.
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Showbiz Sandbox 270: The Oscars Need A Reboot
February 23, 2015
What was billed as the closest Oscar race in recent memory turned out to be predictably dull as “Birdman” flew away with four awards including Best Picture. Not even host Neil Patrick Harris could make them more entertaining. Indiewire’s Anne Thompson attended the ceremony and stops by to give us her thoughts on this year’s Oscar winners and the ceremony itself.
We also take a look at the movies that could potentially be competing for Oscar trophies next year. Filmmakers such as Ron Howard, David O. Russell, Steven Spielberg and even this year’s Best Director winner Alejandro González Iñárritu all have movies set for release.
In other awards prognostication news, now that the Academy Awards are over, we have the Tony Awards for live theater to look forward to. Though once it looked as if there wouldn’t be any musicals to honor, Broadway will be awash in them come springtime. Even better, there are more new musicals than revivals scheduled for this season.
Of course, we also cover the week’s top entertainment news stories including Starbucks plan to stop selling CDs, the Emmys update their rules and finding an ending to “Mission: Impossible 5” has been… well, impossible.
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