This year Netflix is forecasting 6 million new subscribers, the lowest first-quarter increase since 2017, well down on the almost 16 million sign-ups in the first quarter last year, as lockdown restrictions ease. - The Guardian
"NPR cut spending in areas including staff and executive pay to offset a decline in revenue spurred by the pandemic, particularly in corporate sponsorship. The network's revenue is 'slightly above' its 2019 income but hasn't reached 2020 levels, Cowan said. Next year, NPR will aim to completely roll back the budget cuts that staffers agreed to last year...
" Hammer is bemused at the lengths to which China has gone to stop its citizens catching even a brief glimpse of his latest film" — Do Not Split, about the 2019 pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. "In the rest of the world, that move has earned him the type of press coverage he could never have dreamt of."...
About 26% of Gen Z said video games are their top entertainment activity, and 87% of those in the age bracket said they play video games daily or weekly. That’s followed by listening to music (14%), browsing the internet (12%) and engaging on social media (11%). Only 10% of Gen Z respondents said watching TV or movies was their...
There may be fundamental problems with the way the Academy Awards connect with contemporary Hollywood films and their audiences. “For some time the movies nominated for best picture represent only a tiny fraction of the tickets sold – there is chasm between the Oscars and the moviegoing public. The Marvel and DC films are hardly ever up for best...
It's not the 1960s anymore (not by a long shot), so actors usually don't play drunk by getting drunk. Instead, consider Aubrey Plaza's technique for her movie Black Bear. "Acting drunk when you’re sober is no easier than acting sober when you’re drunk. To get into the right frame of unsteadiness, Plaza would spin round until almost throwing up...
This doesn't seem like a great idea, but then again, who asked the audience? "Items can be digitally added to almost any movie or TV show. For example, advertisers could put new labels on the champagne bottles in Rick's Cafe in Casablanca, add different background neon advertising signs to Ocean's 11, or get Charlie Chaplin to promote a fizzy...
Just as Chloé Zhao seems a near-lock for Best Director, the predictions are ... that no one watches this year's Oscars ceremony. "At a time when the traditional film industry is fighting for its primacy at the center of American culture — with at-home entertainment soaring in popularity and pandemic-battered theater chains closing — a collective shrug for the Oscars would send Hollywood deeper into...
The flagship theatre was special for multiple reasons, but one is that Hollywood often doesn't seem very, well, Hollywood. "The ArcLight Hollywood, by contrast, represented the living, breathing movie industry. It accomplished the rare feat of melding Hollywood the real with Hollywood the ideal. With its costume and prop exhibits in the lobby and its Q&As with actors and...
Not just irrelevant, but worse. HBO is celebrating, of course, but "whatever about HBO, how do the rest of us feel about Game of Thrones turning 10? Is our nostalgia tempered, for instance, by the fact the final seasons are now agreed to have been pretty dreadful? What, moreover, of the casual use of sexual violence as a plot device?...
Well: "Changing the Academy Awards, a 93-year-old American institution, has typically proven an exercise in futility. Tweaks have been tried along the way, yet the basic format has been stubbornly immutable." Maybe this year will be different? Hope dies hard in Hollywood. - Boston Globe (AP)
Right now, though not only right now, there's an issue with Black horror. "Black horror faces a distinct paradox: The genre has long been a valuable tool for creators of different backgrounds to process their traumas, and for audiences to reckon with their own. Some Black writers and producers in America use horror and science fiction as a lens through...
Yes, it's Philly. Despite how much those of us outside the area might think we know it, "the characters in Rocky don’t talk like they’re from Philadelphia. Neither do the ones in Silver Linings Playbook or The Irishman. For all the stories that have been set in and around the city, there’s a pronounced lack of authenticity when it comes to speaking the...
TV networks spend about $100 million a year in developing pilots for series. Only a small number get to the schedule. Even fewer become ratings successes. So there's an awful lot of very weird failed pilots out there... - Tedium
Last week the video-rental-service-turned-streaming-giant paid an estimated $1 billion for five-year exclusive U.S. rights to Sony's theatrical releases and right of first refusal for the studio's direct-to-streaming productions. If Netflix is going to spend that kind of money, shouldn't it have just bought Sony outright? It's what many people expected, and all the other major Hollywood studios have been...
