Showbiz Sandbox 401: Redbox Beats Disney At Their Own Copyright Game
February 26, 2018
In the first round of a copyright infringement lawsuit, Disney failed to win an injunction preventing the DVD rental company Redbox from selling digital copies of its films. Instead, a judge ruled that since Redbox is forced to buy retail copies of Disney films, they have the right to sell the digital copy that accompanies each disc. To make matters worse, the federal court faulted Disney for copyright misuse, making the studio vulnerable to an existing countersuit filed by Redbox.
While Disney and Redbox duke it out in court over copyright issues, the cinema-going subscription company MoviePass is suing an upstart competitor named Sinemia over patent infringement while at the same time trying to straighten out its customer service.
In China the Lunar New Year closed out by bringing in $500 million at the box office, the highest weekend tally ever recorded in a single market. In total, the country took in whopping $901 million during the Spring Festival.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including why actor Brendan Fraser disappeared from Hollywood, The Weinstein Company is forced into bankruptcy and Netflix debuts its first Arabic content.
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Showbiz Sandbox 400: The Long, Slow Death of Barnes & Noble
February 19, 2018
As Barnes & Noble loses an ever increasing number of customers to Amazon, the largest bookstore chain in the United States continues struggles to remain a viable business, if not relevant. Now comes word the retailer has cut 1,800 workers representing all of its full-time in-store staff. Should this last ditch effort to stay in business fails, the publishing industry is in for a world of hurt.
Meanwhile, “Black Panther” roared into theaters, shattering records as it came out on top of this week’s worldwide box office, despite Chinese New Year releases earning over half a billion dollars. Will the success of a big budget movie with a minority cast change the culture of Hollywood and the kinds of projects it chooses to make?
The BAFTA Awards were held on Sunday, reinforcing what everyone is saying about this year’s Oscar race: the acting categories look to be locked in stone, but Best Picture is still up for grabs.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news with special guest Karen Woodward, including television producer Ryan Murphy’s rich deal at Netflix, musician Justin Timberlake’s upcoming tour is a huge hit even before tickets go on sale and why MoviePass is in the news yet again.
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Showbiz Sandbox 399: Why Can’t Hulu and Spotify Turn A Profit?
February 12, 2018
As consumers abandon physical media like compact discs and DVDs they are signing up for streaming services like Hulu and Spotify by the tens of millions. Even so, profitability has proven elusive for such companies. We’ll try and understand why, despite all their earnings and tons of headlines, such services continue to be in the red.
Meanwhile the movie awards season has reached a fever pitch, with the Writers Guild handing out their top awards to “Call Me By Your Name” and “Get Out.” Could the horror flick be gaining momentum in the Oscar race just like “Moonlight” did last year?
The Grammys may be over but Michael Giltz just finished his list of the best albums of 2017. Oce you move beyond the big prize for Album Of The Year, his picks have a lot in common with the winners at this year’s ceremony.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including why Russia has launched a smear campaign against an Oscar nominated documentary, a hiccup in the sale of The Weinstein Company and a respected television executive gets picked to head up Amazon Studios.
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Showbiz Sandbox 398: Streaming Services Crowd The Field During Super Bowl
February 5, 2018
The ratings for this year’s Super Bowl may have declined 7% and we might know why. After all, there were ads for Hulu, Netflix movies like “The Cloverfield Paradox,” Amazon Prime’s Jack Ryan series and even a few movies that might appear in theatres later this year. Oh, there was also a pretty good football game that came down to the last play.
The big game usually puts a damper on the box office in North America, but it certainly doesn’t help when new releases can’t hold their own against titles that opened in December. Even so, international grosses are where all the action is these days and over the past week a Bollywood title managed to beat out the latest “Maze Runner” installment in China. We’ll explain why.
Meanwhile, the Oscar race is coming into sharper focus now that the Director’s Guild has handed out their top awards to “The Shape of Water” and “Get Out”. It’s important to remember however, that the preferential ballot has managed to upend the Best Picture category recently.
Of course we also cover the week’s top entertainment news including why there is a petition for RIAA president Neil Portnow to resign, compact discs are slowly disappearing from retail outlets and Netflix may team up with Luc Besson.
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