Showbiz Sandbox 62: The Secret Behind Hollywood’s Accounting Practices

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 and The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood.

“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 52: Recruiting Sandra Bullock’s Baby

Things could have gone better this past week for the hosts of Showbiz Sandbox.  J. Sperling Reich couldn’t connect to the Internet, Michael Giltz was almost washed away by a flood in Nashville, Tennessee and Karen Woodward showed up at her 20-year high school reunion only to find out that her high school crush was happily married. Thankfully there was plenty of entertainment news to discuss.

The remake of “A Nightmare On Elm Street” topped the box office, scooping up $32.2 million in North America, more than the first, second, fifth and seventh installments of the original franchise. “How To Train Your Dragon” continues to perform strongly and came in second. Oversees “Iron Man 2″ opened to just over $100 million in 53 territories. The only question now is how much money will it make in North America, and will poor advance reviews affect the gross. (Don’t bet on it).

Lots of big names broke their silence this week. Director Roman Polansky blogged about being arrested in Switzerland. NBC programming chief Jeff Gaspin, told the New York Times Conan O’Brien was no longer a problem or a threat to his late-night lineup since he’s moving to cable. O’Brien gave his first televised interview since departing “The Tonight Show” to “60 Minutes”. Actress Sandra Bullock gave an exclusive to People magazine about her personal life and the adoption of her son.  Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 51: Ridley Scott Believes 3D Is An “Alien” Concept

Hollywood just won’t stop talking about 3D movies, so unfortunately we can’t either. It’s hard to argue against 3D when films like “How To Train Your Dragon” keep coming in first at the box office, even after five weeks in theaters. With the announcement that “The Green Hornet” and “The Last Airbender” will be converted to 3D the debate has turned to whether it’s better to shoot natively in 3D, or add it in post-production.

Filmmaker Ridley Scott won’t have to find out when he makes not one, but two prequels to his blockbuster “Alien” since he’ll be shooting them in 3D. Disney’s head honcho, Rich Ross, also announced a couple of upcoming releases when he finally met the press last week. We’ll be getting a sequel to “Monsters, Inc.” and a “Winnie the Pooh” movie, along with a few other family friendly flicks.

If 3D films don’t excite you, then the upcoming television season may not either. We review a number of pilots that are in the works, most of which seem derivative. In fact, some of them, like “Rockford Files” and “Hawaii 5-0″ are simply rehashes of previous hit shows.  Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 44: And The (Six) Oscars Go To… “Hurt Locker”

The ballots have been counted, the envelopes have been opened and the nominees have undoubtedly returned their ball gowns and tuxes. Finally, after all the news coverage and public speculation about who would this year’s Oscars, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences put us out of our misery on Sunday during their annual awards ceremony. The proceedings lasted more than three hours as usual and provided very few surprises.

Katheryn Bigelow made history by being the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar for “The Hurt Locker”, which won six awards in total including Best Screenplay and Best Picture. Jim Cameron’s “Avatar” won three technical awards for art direction, cinematography and visual effects. One of the night’s biggest surprises was when Geoffrey Fletcher walked off with the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for “Precious”, upsetting Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air”.

As we predicted on last week’s episode, Jeff Bridges won Best Actor for “Crazy Heart”, Sandra Bullock won Best Actress for “The Blind Side”, Mo’Nique won Best Supporting Actress for “Precious” and Christolph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for “Inglorious Basterds”. Damien Bona, co-author of the book Inside Oscar, stops by to help us analyze this year’s Oscar results. Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 42: Tom Cruise Takes A Pay Cut, And Other Indignities

We only talk about “Avatar” for a couple of seconds in this week’s podcast, thank goodness. Instead, we focus on actors campaigning for their Oscars (and a few who aren’t). We also discuss what we call “the 3D movie brouhaha” which has made Jeffrey Katzenberg irate.

In TV news, co-hosts Karen Woodward and Michael Giltz are passionate about the Olympics and the absurdity of “Lost” (even recaps are confusing!) And, after 28 years, MTV is changing its logo to reflect that the channel is no longer just about “music television”. They may be about 10 years too late.

Co-host J. Sperling Reich jumps into one of his favorite topics – new media – and reminds us that this guy named Steve Jobs sits on the board of Disney and is one of the top shareholders. No wonder Disney CEO Robert Igor called the underwhelming iPad “a really compelling device” that could be a game changer. We’ll hold off our thoughts on the new Apple product until we see if it really will change the way entertainment is distributed.  Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 36: Can “Avatar” Beat “Titanic”? Heck No!

“Avatar” continues its takeover of the box office, while “The Hurt Locker” appears to be taking over the awards season. James Cameron’s 3D labor of love entered the list of top 10 grossing films of all time and may be poised to become the highest grossing movie ever, a title now held by another Cameron film, “Titanic”. “Avatar” is now one of only five films to ever earn over a billion dollars world-wide.

Now the prognostication begins about whether “Avatar” (and Cameron) will be nominated for an Academy Award? His ex-wife’s movie “The Hurt Locker” certainly seems to be headed that way. Director Kathryn Bigelow is earning raves for the film and she is being being heavily favored to be the first female to win a Best Director Oscar. Between Bigelow and Nancy Meyers (“It’s Complicated”), female directors, or at least the discussion of their recent success, is the topic du jour in Hollywood.

Another favorite topic at the beginning a year is reflection and prediction. What were the top reviewed movies of the decade? Did you see any of them? Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 35: Women In Hollywood… It’s Complicated

You know it’s a slow entertainment news week when J. Sperling Reich, Karen Woodward, and Michael Giltz wind up talking about their personal arrest records. However even during the holiday season we can find showbiz news to talk about, not to mention places to talk. Michael joins us from the boisterous Cranky Café where he was enjoying homemade mac and cheese (and free Wifi).

America was sinning over the holidays, and by that we mean seeing movies on Christmas Day. Avatar set box office records with a $75 million North American gross and a $145 million international gross, but is it really a good movie? One movie that Karen and Michael agree is not at all good is “It’s Complicated”, and yet it’s doing rather well at the box office – is that because women are so starved for a decent “women’s film” that they will see whatever is in theatres?

Speaking of women’s films, or lack thereof, Karen digs up a couple of interesting news pieces focusing on the lack of a strong female presence in Hollywood, both on screen and off. Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 30: “Modern Warfare” Stuns Hollywood

As predicted, the teen vampire romance “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” opened this week and earned record breaking box office. The second installment of the “Twilight” franchise made $140 million in North America, making it one of the largest openings in history. The film did manage to break the record for highest grossing midnight screening when it opened Friday morning. What might be more amazing is that the Sandra Bullock vehicle “The Blind Side” came in second with an impressive $34 million. Opening so strongly against a powerhouse tent pole like “Twilight” makes Bullock one of the more bankable stars in Hollywood these days.

Of course, even “Twilight’s” $258 million worldwide opening pales in comparison to what the new video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2″ raked in during its first five days in stores. Ben Fritz an entertainment business reporter for the Los Angeles Times joins us to talk about the wild success of the video game. Actually, calling it a video game is almost an insult – it’s more like an interactive action movie, and one that made $550 million within five days of its November 19th launch.

Fritz is a prolific journalist who this past week wrote tons of stories for the L.A. Times Company Town column and blog. One such story was on the controversy over the Academy Awards’ Documentary short list. Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 29: Camped Out For “Twilight: New Moon”

There was a debate over titling this week’s episode “The Profanity Podcast “due to some various disagreements and the name of a new sitcom. Intrigued? Read on.

Harry Medved from Fandango.com joins us briefly to talk about next week’s number one movie at the box office, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon.” (Did we get the name right? Can’t we just call it “New Moon” or “Twilight 2”?) Yes, that’s right, we’re prognosticating next week’s number one movie in North America. Hey, when women of all ages are lining up just to catch a glimpse of Robert Pattinson and/or Taylor Lautner at the premiere, you know you might have a hit on your hands.

Speaking of hits, is Twentieth Century Fox taking a huge risk by bankrolling a film based on an unfamiliar story with no Hollywood superstars and a budget approaching $500 million? We’re talking about “Avatar,” and particularly Michael Cieply’s article in the New York Times’ on the film directed by James Cameron. (So, is Cameron himself not a superstar?) John Horn and Claudia Eller from the Los Angeles Times write that the movie’s price tag continues to climbe and that its global marketing campaign could cost as much as $150 million, “Avatar” won’t have to do “Titanic” business to make money, but it will have to fill auditoriums around the world for weeks to become profitable. Read more

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Showbiz Sandbox 27: That’s It For “This Is It”

This week we begin with Michael Giltz and Karen Woodward disagreeing over “This Is It,” the Michael Jackson documentary/concert film/eulogy. Is the film recommendable? Not according to the box office numbers, where the film brought in a disappointing $23 million. But since the film made $103 million worldwide J. Sperling Reich wanted to serve Michael some crow pie.

If you don’t want to see “This Is It,” maybe you’ll see “Avatar”? The second trailer for the highly anticipated film was released this week, after the first one bombed. The new trailer looks like this movie is actually about something. How about “Precious”? Sperling and Michael disagree over whether this movie is a heart tugging Oscar winner or shallow drivel.

Speaking of shallow, did Jeffrey Katzenberg really add anything new to the future of entertainment conversation in his recent Business Week interview? Seems more like a politician staying message then a mogul adding to the dialogue. Read more

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