Showbiz Sandbox 385: Hollywood Finally Addresses Concerns Over Sexual Harassment
October 23, 2017
The recent and voluminous sexual harassment claims against mega-producer Harvey Weinstein have ignited a firestorm of similar allegations by women against numerous professionals throughout the industry. It has grown into a day of reckoning that is reaching directors, agents and executives in Hollywood, to encompass the music, publishing and video game industries too.
Last week it was revealed that filmmaker James Toback sexually harassed upwards of 38 women over a course of decades. At the same time Nickelodeon fired Chris Savino, the creator behind one of its most popular series, over harassment claims and the head of amazon Studios stepped down under a cloud of similar accusations.
Meanwhile, Ticketmaster may have finally found a way to squelch scalpers from buying up all the best seats at live events. Its Verified Fan program is getting great, albeit expensive, tickets into the hands of actual fans. Now all they have to do is work on the technology to make it work more effectively.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including Netflix continues to expand its subscriber base, Justin Timberlake will perform at the Super Bowl halftime show and HBO will bring its international productions to the United States.
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Showbiz Sandbox 226: Back To The Future – Why TV Networks Suddenly Love Old People Again
February 24, 2014
Broadcast television networks are finally catching on to what most of us have known all along; people over the age of 50 actually watch a lot of TV. In a never-ending pursuit to attract younger viewers, networks discovered that baby boomers make up a large portion of their audience. Surely we’ll be seeing a lot more programming meant to appeal directly to this new found demographic.
Maybe some of these new, more mature shows can be turned into movies one day. That seems to be the new trend in Hollywood as studios get set to release two movies that are spun-off from canceled series (“Veronica Mars”) or are have actually already appeared on television as mini-series (“Son of God”).
Speaking of Hollywood studios, it turns out that despite crying poor on a perennial basis, they all managed to make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit during 2013. Not revenue… actual profit.
Of course, we also cover the week’s top entertainment news stories including Cee Lo Green quitting “The Voice”, CNN quitting Piers Morgan and the end of Moviefone’s movie listing service.
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