Showbiz Sandbox 646: A Slimmed Down Sundance Still Shines
January 30, 2024
This year’s Sundance Film Festival reflected the current state of the contracting industry itself, offering fewer films at fewer venues for fewer in-person attendees. Yet, as festivals like Sundance work toward rekindling post-pandemic financial support, this year’s official selections were just as noteworthy as those that have appeared throughout its 40 year history. We’ll give you a rundown of the titles too look out for over the next year and fill you in on all the Sundance winners.
Speaking of winners, this year’s Oscar nominations were announced and they included a few titles from last year’s Sundance and Cannes film festivals. The only thing missing for most were nominations for “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig and its star Margot Robbie.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including Jon Stewart’s return to “The Daily Show,” the influential music website Pitchfork suffers layoffs and Netflix continues dominate the streaming landscape with a stellar quarterly earnings report.
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Showbiz Sandbox 645: Amazon Prime Video Set To Dominate Advertising Market
January 16, 2024
Unlike most major streaming services, which allow new subscribers to choose between a more expensive ad-free plan and a cheaper ad-supported tier, Amazon has taken an opt-out approach with Prime. When Prime Video begins streaming ads in late-January one of the biggest streaming services in the world with at least 150 million subscribers, will immediately become a major player in television advertising. Especially since most of its customers will decide not to pay extra to avoid ads.
Meanwhile the Emmys got slotted into January due to last year’s actors and writers strikes forcing the awards ceremony to compete with football playoffs and presidential election campaigns. Will anyone be paying attention to see who wins prizes for television series that aired two years ago? Or with guild awards nominations piling in has everyone already moved onto the Oscars.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including the deal Tom Cruise landed to make movies at Warner Bros., Harry Potter’s best selling video game and another former cable news anchor launches a program on X (née Twitter).
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Showbiz Sandbox 613: Author James Patterson Questions New York Times Best Seller List
April 4, 2023
James Patterson has been a perennial presence on the New York Times best seller list after his most recent book failed to make the list, he accused the newspaper of “cooking the books” in the way it compiles its lists. According to BookScan, which uses actual sales figures, Patterson’s latest book should have made the list, but the Times uses a proprietary formula and method for determining its list and now he’s publicly calling them out.
Meanwhile, we signed up for the new version of MoviePass just to find out what it offered. It turns out it is very hard to pull off a moviegoing subscription service when you don’t have deals with movie theaters.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including how Cineworld, the owner of Regal Cinemas, plans to restructure and exit bankruptcy, why the cast of the television series “Blue Bloods” took a pay cut, and the stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s “My Neighbor Totoro” wins six Olivier Awards.
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Showbiz Sandbox 573: Paramount Takes A Global Approach to Streaming
February 21, 2022
During its most recent earnings call ViacomCBS outlined how they plan on reorganizing the media giant to compete with streaming leaders such as Netflix. First they are bringing content from all of their current services into Paramount+ and retaining the rights to popular programming such as “South Park.” They announced a glut of new projects including a new “Star Trek” movie and to hammer the point home changed the company name to Paramount Global. Wall Street immediately responded by selling off shares.
Meanwhile, the Academy Awards announced their COVID health and safety guidelines for this year’s Oscars ceremony. Masks and proof of vaccine will be required, depending on who you are, where you’re sitting and whether you’re appearing on the telecast. Everyone seems to agree, the rules are confusing and don’t seem to make much sense.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including how actor Tom Holland is ruling the box office in two different movies, more leadership shakeups at CNN and Netflix strikes a deal with comedian Dave Chappelle.
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Showbiz Sandbox 524: Cable News Networks Make Big Moves
January 13, 2021
Thanks to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and amped up political unrest, viewership of cable news networks has reached record levels. Now that the presidential election is over in the United States, some are making changes to both their anchor and programming lineups. Maybe the biggest move is Fox News, which is moving an opinion show to their early evening rotation.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros. is subtly pushing back against critics of its workplace environment on DC titles, despite top talent like Gal Godot and Jason Mamoa weighing in with concerns. Walter Hamada, the head of DC Films, seems to be taking most of the heat.
Of course we also cover some of the week’s top entertainment headlines including the return of “Sex and the City,” Kevin Hart heads to Netflix and the Grammy Awards get postponed.
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Showbiz Sandbox 180: Binge-Viewing Is Transforming The Way We Watch Television
February 4, 2013
With new streaming media services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime popping up all the time, we now have the ability to watch entire seasons of episodic television series all at once. Now Netflix is taking binge-viewing one step further by releasing all 13-episodes of their original drama series “House of Cards” at once. Dawn Chmielewski of the Los Angeles Times explains how the trend is altering narrative structures, existing revenue models and the entire television landscape.
Speaking of television, the Super Bowl proved once again to be a huge ratings bonanza with more than 108 million viewers tuning in to the football championship game. Unfortunately a power outage delayed the airing of a post-game television show which had hoped to get a boost from carryover viewers.
Meanwhile, Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” continues to top the worldwide box office, leading a pack of Oscar contenders that continues to attract big audiences well into the new year.
Of course we also cover the top entertainment headlines from the past week including news about a film version of the hit series “Entourage”, plans for subscription channels on YouTube and Ticketmaster (sort of) ditches its horrible security system.
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