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 62: The Secret Behind Hollywood’s Accounting Practices
July 12, 2010
How is it the last Harry Potter film can gross $938 million but still lose $130 million? Journalist and author Edward Jay Epstein joins us to unravel some of Hollywood’s quirky accounting practices. He’s written two books on the subject; The Hollywood Economist: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies
“Despicable Me” topped the box office though the amount it took in from 3D screens was rather low. Could audiences be tiring of paying exorbitant 3D ticket prices? Meanwhile, Miramax finally seems to have found a buyer and Lions Gate is trying to make piece with activist investor Carl Icahn.
The Emmy nominations were announced last week and we’ll fill you in on whose up for the television’s big awards. Over in the world of music Pollstar announced that concert ticket sales are down 15% for the first half of the year.
During our Big Deal or Big Whoop segment we race through a number of top entertainment headlines, including Roman Polanski’s release, Lindsay Lohan’s jail time and Mel Gibson getting dumped by his agency. Maybe Gibson can find some work on YouTube, which plans to offer $5 million in grants to select content partners.
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Showbiz Sandbox 58: Celebrities Take Over Broadway
June 14, 2010
The Tony Awards were held on Sunday evening honoring the year’s best Broadway productions and performances. Brian Scott Lipton the editor-in-chief of TheaterMania.com was there and he stops by to fill us in on all the big winners, memorable moments and why so many movie stars are currently working in theater.
The 11th Annual Golden Trailer Awards also took place this past week and Stephen Garrett of Kinetic Trailers won two big prizes. He joins us to discuss the current state of movie promos and what its like to win the award for Trashiest Trailer.
At the box office “The Karate Kid” knocked “Shrek Forever After” out of first place after three weeks and provided a little hope for this summer’s poor ticket sales. “The A Team” on the other hand opened to poor reviews and even worse box office receipts.
In television news, the final ratings for this past season’s television shows have been released. We’ll fill you in on which shows finished on top as well as the ones nobody cared to watch. You’ll never guess where “The Jay Leno Show” came in (hint: it’s not in the top 100).
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Showbiz Sandbox 57: A Memo From James Cameron
June 7, 2010
It was kind of a slow news week in the entertainment world, especially when it comes to the North American box office. Movie attendance is down 10% over last year’s summer blockbuster season. Hollywood Reporter deputy film editor Carl DiOrio stops by with his theories as to why audiences are staying away from this year’s crop of Hollywood offerings.
The MTV Movie Awards were held last weekend and the telecast was filled with so much profanity half of it was bleeped out. Though few take the awards seriously, we’ll still fill you in on all the winners and Tom Cruise’s outstanding dance performance.
Over in television Bravo has been making a name for itself with a string of successful reality television shows including “The Real Housewives of New York”. The network is not shy about letting the New York Times know that they use social media and the Internet to decide which shows are working, popular storylines and which cast members are break out stars deserving their own show. Speaking of break out stars, the cast of the popular “Big Bang Theory” wants a 285% pay raise and are presenting a unified front when negotiating with the network.
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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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Showbiz Sandbox 53: I’m Sleeping With Richard Dreyfuss
May 11, 2010
The Cannes Film Festival kicks off in France this week and our very own Michael Giltz and J. Sperling Reich are on the Croisette to cover all the news. When they’re not sharing a bed they’ll be seeing all the big movies and speaking with all the filmmakers.
Back in North America “Iron Man 2” opened to huge numbers, earning $128 million over the weekend, giving it the fifth biggest opening of all time. Meanwhile, the Washington Post is struggling with it’s own numbers. The media company has decided to put Newsweek magazine up for sale as its profit has declined 30%. On the other hand, their online property Slate.com has seen ad revenue increase 30%.
Another group looking to make money online are music publishers. They’re going after websites that publish music lyrics without permission. Even though song lyrics are copyrighted, how much money could there possibly be in such sites?
On television, 88-year-old actress Betty White continued her improbable comeback by scoring huge ratings when she hosted last week’s “Saturday Night Live”. Another actress making a comeback is Lindsay Lohan who was just cast in a porn film. . . sort of. She’ll be playing Linda Lovelace in a biopic about the porn star.
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Showbiz Sandbox 41: Live Nation Becomes The Master Of Tickets
February 8, 2010
We swear we’re trying not to talk so much about Avatar, and although this seemed like a good week to skip the Ava-chat (congrats “Dear John!”), alas, the news cycle had other ideas.
But wait! There was also some important television news! Namely, the Super Bowl, which drew an average of 106.5 million people, just edging out “MASH’s” 106 million people in 1983. And football fans didn’t just watch the Saints win; they also watched the ads (which are sometimes the best part of the Super Bowl). This year’s favorite seems to be the Leno-Oprah-Letterman ad, but you be the judge. Where was Conan? Probably negotiating with Fox? It certainly seems like Rupert Murdoch plans on playing hardball with Team Coco (whenever he’s not unofficially greenlighting “Avatar 2”).
A company that doesn’t appear to be negotiating is Hulu, or is it NBC? During a Congressional hearing last week to investigate Comcast’s proposed acquisition of NBC, a representative asked NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker, “What about Boxee?” Read more
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Showbiz Sandbox 37: Conan and Leno’s Late Shift Shrift
January 11, 2010
It’s official: Simon Cowell will be leaving “American Idol” this season and NBC (finally!) admits that airing “The Jay Leno Show” in primetime five nights a week was a mistake. Cowell is headed off to start a new reality talent show, “X Factor”, while Jay Leno is headed back to his old late night time slot, at least for a half-hour. But where will Conan O’Brien’s tonight show end up? Right now NBC wants to push him back a half hour.
In theaters, “Avatar” just will not go away. It stays firm at the top of the box office again this week. “Daybreakers” staring Ethan Hawke, also did well in its debut, but the Amy Adams vehicle “Leap Year” didn’t leap anywhere.
Meanwhile, the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) tries to sell us on 3D television and video rental service Netflix reaches an important agreement with Warner Bros.
David Colker, a business reporter covering technology for the Los Angeles Times gives us the low down on CES, espcially all the 3D televisions announced at the show (which aren’t even available for sale yet). Do consumers even want 3D television? More importantly, how are we prepared to wear those funny 3D glasses at home? Read more
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Showbiz Sandbox 34: Hollywood’s Box Office Billions Set New Record
December 21, 2009
We are joined this week by two of the film industry’s top box office pundits, Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com and Daniel Frankel of TheWrap.com. They help us understand how the North American box office surpassed $10 billion in 2009 while releasing few films during an economic recession. Of course, we also touch on “Avatar’s” opening weekend box office and the worldwide spin it’s distributor claims makes the film a huge hit.
But we promise this week’s episode won’t be entirely about Avatar! We also discuss the untimely death of actress Brittany Murphy and the rumor mongering it set off among online tabloids. The Golden Globe nominations were announced mid week. Were there any surprises? What about snubs? Which noms will carry over to the Oscars, and what can be done to get audiences to actually watch the Oscars?
There’s also a ton of television and music news, such as the rumor that Simon Cowell might leave “American Idol” (oh no!), the list of next year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees (ABBA!) and an old Rage Against The Machine song beating out this year’s winner of “X Factor” on the U.K. singles charts during Christmas week (huh?!). Read more
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Showbiz Sandbox 20: Judging Ellen DeGeneres and 3D TV
September 14, 2009
Getting everyone’s schedules in sync was a challenge this week given that all of our hosts were in different cities. It certainly didn’t help the audio quality either. Michael Giltz reports in from Toronto where he is covering the Toronto Film Festival.
If you’re following Michael on Twitter then you already know what movies he’s seen and what he thought of them (he loved “Up In The Air” and “A Serious Man” and wasn’t so keen on “Men Who Stare At Goats”). Michael tells us all about the Coen Brothers latest movie and the start of George Clooney’s run for another Oscar.
On the other side of the world in J. Sperling Reich was in Amsterdam, Holland speaking at the International Broadcaster’s Convention. The big news from the trade show is all the buzz about 3D content in the home. Karen Woodward and Michael agree, the world isn’t ready for 3D television. . . or is it? Read more
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