Showbiz Sandbox 68: Who Said Jennifer Aniston Was A Movie Star?
August 23, 2010
Who would have guessed that in this day and age a Sylvester Stallone movie could top the box office for two straight weeks. But Sly’s “The Expendables” finished first with $16 million beating out five new releases including the Jennifer Aniston vehicle “Switched”. The dramedy opened to a disappointing $8.1 million prompting entertainment pundits like Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times to question whether Aniston is truly a movie star.
Generating interest doesn’t seem to be a problem for “The Social Network”, which details the founding of Facebook. More than six weeks before its release the film directed by David Fincher is getting a ton of early Oscar buzz.
Google is also making waves in Hollywood. A book about the company’s early days is being turned into a movie and Google TV has the industry worried that consumers will start canceling their cable subscriptions en masse. According to a story in the New York Times however, Americans have not been cutting their cable cords in the large numbers once predicted. Instead, cable subscriptions have increased.
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Showbiz Sandbox 65: Hollywood’s Love/Hate Relationship With Twitter
August 2, 2010
Last summer a number of movies had enormous box office drop offs in their second day of release and studios blamed it on what they termed the Twitter Effect. Daniel Frankel from The Wrap joins us to explain how the social media trend that was going to revolutionize word-of-mouth hasn’t demonstrably done so. Platforms such as Facebook, MySpace and even text messaging seem to influence moviegoers more than Twitter. That hasn’t stopped studios from finding modest success on Twitter by purchasing trending topics.
A number of big television news stories broke over the past week thanks to the annual Television Critics Association press tour. Ellen DeGeneres resigned as a judge on “American Idol”, but Fox may be replacing her with Jennifer Lopez. Meanwhile, Stephen McPherson, the president of ABC, abruptly resigned under a cloud of controversy relating to rumored sexual harassment investigations and was promptly replaced by ABC Family topper Paul Lee.
In the music world Kanye West may be hoping the Twitter effect will help boost sales of his upcoming album. The hip-hop star made headlines by opening a Twitter account and turning up at Facebook headquarters to entertain employees.
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Showbiz Sandbox 56: What You Talkin’ Bout Guillermo?!
June 1, 2010
The past week’s entertainment news was filled with surprises. First Gary Coleman, star of the hit 80’s sitcom unexpectedly died at the age of 42 from a brain hemorrhage. Then, after more than two years of work, the ongoing turmoil at MGM causes director Guillermo del Toro call it quits on the film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”. A question lingers over whether Peter Jackson will step in to helm the film himself?
Meanwhile, the Hollywood Reporter, one of the industry’s big trade papers, left many mouths agape when they hired former Us Weekly editor Janice Min to transform the film into a broader weekly publication.
Maybe not such a surprise was the tepid box office results over the North American Memorial Day Weekend. Customarily the start of the summer blockbuster season, this year audiences stayed away from theaters, probably because they don’t find any of the new releases, including “Sex and The City 2” and “Prince of Persia” all that interesting. Another expected, though sad, turn of events was the passing of actor Dennis Hopper, who had been battling prostate cancer since last October.
Over in the music world, Germany’s Lena Meyer-Landrut won the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest with her catchy pop song “Satellite”. Read more
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