Showbiz Sandbox 644: The Golden Globes Lose Their Luster
January 11, 2024
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association held its first Golden Globes awards ceremony under a new and supposedly improved organization under new ownership. Organizers scrambled to find both a network to broadcast this year’s show, not to mention a host. In the end, the winners weren’t surprising with “Oppenheimer” and “Succession” each taking home five, but the show itself was incredibly bland.
Realistically, neither the Golden Globes or groups like the National Society of Film Critics are good predictors of which films will be favorites at this year’s Academy Awards.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including the best selling books of 2023, a major radio station operator files for bankruptcy and Prince’s “Purple Rain” heads to Broadway.
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Showbiz Sandbox 472: The Growing Dominance of Netflix Movies During Awards Season
December 16, 2019
As Hollywood’s major guilds begin announcing their nominations for best films of the year a trend seems to be emerging; Netflix is becoming a player in prestige cinema. Similar to how cable networks disrupted the domination of broadcast companies at the Emmys, the streaming giant has a growing number of entries vying for top awards.
In China the government has had to pivot from censoring basketball to worrying about how to deal with soccer now that one of the sports star players has spoken out over the protests taking place in Hong Kong. Can the government continue to pull sports off the airwaves without creating a huge programming problem?
Meanwhile, there has been some industry murmurings about the lack of big titles from Marvel or Lucasfilm on next year’s release schedule, leading some to believe box office will be down significantly. We take a quick look at some of the upcoming 2020 releases and explain why there is no need to panic.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment headlines including the controversy that might break the reality show “Survivor,” why Billboard is adding video streaming to its album charts and the National Film Registry announces its latest selections.
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Showbiz Sandbox 320: Is Comcast the New Disney?
May 2, 2016
Comcast announced last week that it would acquire Dreamworks Animation for $3.8 billion, taking another step toward transforming themselves from a cable giant into a full fledged media conglomerate. Meg James, a corporate media reporter for the Los Angeles Times, join us to discuss how, though the deal may not have been anticipated, it makes a lot of sense for both companies.
The purchase is the most recent in a string of acquisitions that have closely mirrored the strategy Disney has executed over the past decade as they gobbled up companies such as Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm. Comcast has proven quite adept at turning undervalued assets such as NBCUniversal and Universal Studios theme parks into profitable entities.
Meanwhile, as the Tony Awards season officially kicks off, Broadway is suffering from what is being referred to as The Hamilton Effect. This is a condition in which you open a musical that blends hip-hop and history in a way that not only makes the show a cultural phenomenon, but the inevitable winner of this year’s much coveted Best Musical Tony.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including the Daytime Emmy winners, why Fox is pulling out of this year’s Comic-Con convention and how French law enforcement is preparing for the Cannes Film Festival.
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Showbiz Sandbox 319: The Changing Tide of Music Distribution
April 25, 2016
Almost three years after Beyoncé made a big splash by releasing a secret album via iTunes, the pop star has snuck up the world once again with her latest work, a video album called “Lemonade”. This time however Beyoncé was strategic in how she distributed her album, premiering it with an HBO special, then exclusively to the streaming music service Tidal, before ultimately turning back to iTunes. More and more, big name acts are controlling how and to whom their music gets distributed.
Multi-genre musician Prince was way ahead of his time when it came to controlling how his music reaches the world. The legendary artist died suddenly last week leaving behind a lifetime of work a great deal of which was never released. We discuss the many fascinating ways the unexpected death of Prince was covered by the media and his sometimes unique distribution methods.
We’ll also take a look at the introduction of a new cinematic camera that has the potential to revolutionize filming and post-production by allowing to filmmakers “to effectively capture the color, direction and placement of every ray of light”.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including some behind the scenes drama at the morning talk shows, why China shut down some of the Apple iTunes stores and how Hollywood is making its way to West Africa.
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