Showbiz Sandbox 452: The Tony Awards Go To Hell
June 10, 2019
The 2018-19 Broadway season was a banner year as the Great White Way broke box office and attendance records, earning $1.89 billion from an attendance of 14.8 million patrons. The Tony Awards were handed out to the season’s best productions and performances as “Hadestown,” a musical about Hell, took home eight prizes including Best Musical and “The Ferryman” won four trophies including Best Play.
During this episode we take a different approach to reporting box office; rather than report which movie topped the worldwide charts, we look which title earned the most money over the past week. Why only count Friday through Sunday, when there are four may days to every week in which people are seeing movies.
We are also joined by Patrick von Sychowski, the editor of Celluloid Junkie, who tells us how he put together an exclusive story of how Chinese authorities spent three years tracking and shutting down one of the largest movie piracy rings of all time. After uncovering piracy being done on an industrial scale, the question remains, could it happen again.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including why Netflix was told to stop poaching employees from its competitors, YouTube starts pulling hateful content off its platform and Entertainment Weekly magazine goes monthly.
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Showbiz Sandbox 447: The Madness of Media Moguls Making Mega-Millions
May 6, 2019
While the exorbitant salaries of the entertainment industry’s top executives are not a new phenomenon, the subject cropped up again recently after a relative of Walt Disney objected to the $65 million paycheck Disney CEO Robert Iger earned last year. That amounts to 1,424 times more than the average salary of a Disney employee. We debate whether Hollywood moguls should be earning hundreds of times more than their employees and why their compensation is so high in the first place.
On Broadway, Tony nominations were announced last week and they pack more drama and excitement than the creatively weak season that just ended. We’ll take a look and predict which shows will benefit the most from awards and the chance to perform live on TV.
Meanwhile, “Avengers: Endgame” continues to dominate the worldwide box office, earning $2 billion in just 11 days, faster than any film in history. That said, we wonder why Hollywood studios neglect to mention that their tentpole movies often begin showing on Thursdays.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including big changes at CBS News, YouTube scores some Major League Baseball games and why the London production of “Les Miserables” is getting a makeover
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Showbiz Sandbox 109: Making Grammar Fun (And F*cking Funny)
June 27, 2011
When Chris Baker isn’t working on Madison Avenue for a big advertising firm, he is creating some of the world’s most exclusive websites… literarily. TheWorldsMostExclusiveWebsite.com only lets verified celebrities and big wigs past the home page. His website M. Night School is crowd-sourcing enough funds to send director M. Night Shyamalan back to film school. Baker joins us to discuss his latest effort, “The Elements of F*cking Style
After this past weekend, Baker may want to send Pixar back to film school. “Cars 2”, the company’s highly anticipated sequel to their blockbuster “Cars”, was given a drubbing by critics. However, critical acclaim may not matter for a film that earns $2 billion a year in merchandising.
At least nobody’s forcing you to see “Cars 2”. That might not be an option in China where the government is “suggesting” that everyone see “Beginning of the Great Revival,” a propaganda film disguised as a historical epic detailing the founding of China’s Communist Party.
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