Filmgoers to eat up more ‘Hunger Games’
A tally like that would land the movie about teens forced to fight to the death among the top second-weekend performers of all time. “Hunger Games” would rank seventh on that list if it hits $60 million, according to website Box Office Mojo. The record for second-weekend ticket sales belongs, unsurprisingly, to 2009′s “Avatar.” That movie took in $75.6 million during its second weekend and went on to become the highest-grossing film ever.
“Hunger Games” opened with a stunning $152.5 million last weekend, the third-highest film opening in history and biggest debut for a non-sequel. By this Sunday, the book adaptation’s 10-day domestic haul may top $250 million, said Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box office division of Hollywood.com.
For the masses who have already seen “Hunger Games,” two new films are reaching the big screen. Action movie “Wrath of the Titans” starring Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, battles for the fan-boy audience. The movie is a 3D sequel to 2010 Olympian epic “Clash of the Titans.” Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros., the studio behind the film, projects domestic weekend sales of about $40 million.
For families, an updated “Snow White” story called “Mirror Mirror” stars Julia Roberts as the evil queen in a comedy-and-adventure twist on the classic fairy tale. Distributor Relativity Media projects the movie’s domestic receipts will reach the low-$20 million range.
Photo Credit: Lions Gate/Murray Close
Disney comes to YouTube and Google TV
When it comes to Hollywood movies and TV shows on the Web, all the focus is on Netflix, Hulu and even BlockBuster’s online ambitions. Yet YouTube, the daddy of the online video space with some 3.5 billion views a day, has been quietly bulking up its traditional studio content. All this while there’s been a lot written about its $100 million investment to create hundreds of new cable channels of the future.
Since May, YouTube has signed up Sony Pictures, Universal Studios and Warner Bros to offer their movies for rental through YouTube, and on Wednesday it confirmed it has inked a deal to offer initially a “handful” of Disney titles in the U.S. and Canada, with hundreds of titles to be added in the coming weeks.
The Disney movies include titles like the original Alice In Wonderland, the new version of Winnie the Pooh as well as Pixar hits like Cars and Cars 2. The shows will also be available on YouTube through Google TV.
YouTube has been tight-lipped on details of how the movie rental program is evolving. A company spokesman said the online video company was “really pleased” with how it’s going.
See YouTube manager’s blog below:
Welcoming your favorite Disney movies for rent on YouTube Today, the first of hundreds of The Walt Disney Studios movies from Disney, Disney·Pixar and DreamWorks Studios are coming to YouTube. These titles join thousands of full-length feature films from major Hollywood studios that already available to rent at YouTube.com/movies.
Fans of animated movies? We’ve got the beloved animated classic, Alice in Wonderland and the newly envisioned Winnie the Pooh. Love Disney·Pixar? We have hits like Cars and Cars 2 all in one place. Up for a little bit of adventure? We’ll take you from the darkest depths of the oceans with all four of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, including the most recent blockbuster in the franchise Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
So gather the family and friends to watch your favorite Disney movies at YouTube.com/movies. Check back in because even more of the great Disney classics and new releases will be added in weeks to come, including our YouTube Movie Extras with behind-the-scenes clips, interviews, and more.
Minjae Ormes, Movies & TV Marketing Manager, recently watched John Lasseter Talks About His Hawaiian Shirt Collection.
Newest “Twilight” film flies into theaters
Twihards are breathing new life into movie theaters this weekend.
The passionate “Twilight” fans already are turning out in droves to see the beginning of the end for the hugely popular vampire and werewolf series. Midnight screenings early Friday generated $30.3 million in U.S. and Canadian ticket sales for “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn: Part 1,” according to studio Summit Entertainment. With many showtimes already sold out, box-office watchers predict the weekend tally will reach a massive $140 million through Sunday. Summit’s more conservative projection sees $110 million to $125 million for the first of the franchise’s two-part finale. Either way, the movie, which features a vampire-human wedding and pregnancy, looks set to record the year’s second-highest debut behind boy wizard Harry Potter’s summer farewell. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2″ opened to a staggering $169 million in July.
For families, dancing penguins return in 3D for “Happy Feet Two.” Box-office watchers forecast about $30 million domestically for the animated movie from Warner Bros. Elsewhere, new drama “The Descendants” starring George Clooney as a Hawaiian father grappling with a family crisis hits 29 theaters this weekend. The Fox Searchlight film, touted as an Academy Award contender, opened in five locations on Wednesday.
(Photo credit: Reuters)
The Hoff wants a video game of his own
David ‘The Hoff’ Hasselhoff wants to stay “hip and current with the kids,” so he’s doing it the way he knows best–by getting beat up in cheerleader outfits and chicken suits in an ad campaign.
The Hoff is Electronic Arts’s latest pitchman in online videos for “Burnout Crash,” a racing video game on Xbox Live with the motion controller, Kinect, but he’s not stopping there: He wants a game of his own, he told Reuters in an interview this week.
“I’ve wanted to develop my own game so this was a way of seeing if this works and maybe we can take this one step further with using the same concept as ‘Burnout Crash,’ and maybe do something with the Hoff,” he said.
Hasselhoff said he’s in talks with EA about developing some kind of game or app. EA could not immediately be reached for comment.
Hasselhoff has promoted games before but declined to comment on how much money he has made from the video game industry.
The 59-year-old former Baywatch star said he signed on with EA after the company sent him the game and it reminded him of driving stunts he’d help create on his hit show from the 1980s, Knight Rider.
“I saw the game and said, this is what Knight Rider is about,” Hasselhoff said.
The moment the Hoff announced he was going into the gaming Biz. Watch the ending part where Chobot makes him realize he has to get into the gaming biz lol!
The fall TV season, beyond Jay Leno
What’s that? Jay Leno is moving to prime-time? You don’t say!
Frankly, it’s hard to remember the last time there was such hubbub about a TV show. It was, after all, the cover story in Time magazine. Not to be outdone, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, AP, and probably every local news outlet between New York and Hollywood had a story about the talk show host — more often than not raising the question of whether he’s going to save network TV.
(You’ve got to give it to the public-relations machine on this one. They really worked the story. Of course, their spinning was augmented by a huge marketing effort. Stuart Elliott of the New York Times today estimated that NBC put out more than $10 million in promoting the show).
But there is more to the fall TV season than Jay Leno. The media buyers and planners over at RPA offer a useful road map to the season in a recent report.
Their take on the fall season is fairly upbeat (maybe network TV doesn’t really need Leno to save it).
“For the first time in two years, network fortunes will not be held hostage to the industry’s labor problems, but will be determined, as they used to be, by content quality and scheduling… Based on what we’ve seen, the overall quality of that content looks better than it has in the past two seasons,” the report says.
Here, according to RPA, are some things to keep in mind heading into the season:
Are advertisers giving Olympics the cold shoulder?
Are the Winter Olympics getting frozen out? Not exactly, but drumming up advertising and sponsorship dollars isn’t as easy as it used to be. Here’s how Andrew Benett, the global chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG, described what’s happening: “You have a confluence of many factors happening here. One, winter versus summer. Two, a hangover from Beijing. And three, the economic times.”
Of those, the economic situation is the one that’s drawing away most of the money. Bank of America, General Motors, and Home Depot are just some of the big names that have dropped their sponsorship of the U.S. team.
But experts we spoke to also pointed to some broader problems facing the Winter Games. For one thing, behind the scenes, they say the IOC and USOC haven’t always been accommodating with the advertising community. For another, younger audiences (and thus advertisers) just aren’t that into some of the classic winter sports. It’s not that they don’t want to see athletes competing on the mountain — they would just prefer to watch them competing in newer, thrill sports like those of the X Games.
So, while the ugly economy — and Beijing hangover — may only be temporary problems, there are longer terms issues that must be tackled. And the stakes are high. Recall the International Olympic Committee, alone raises an estimated $4.5 billion from the combined sponsorship and global TV rights deals for every four-year period.
Keep an eye on:
- The Beatles take a step closer to selling their music online on Wednesday with the simultaneous release of the band’s re-mastered catalog and the MTV video game The Beatles: Rock Band (Reuters)
- Hollywood may have seen near record revenue from the box office this summer, but attendance was down and there were as many notable flops as hits (NY Times)
- AOL has appointed former Yahoo executive Brad Garlinghouse as president of its Web and mobile communications group (Reuters)
Hope it’s ok to point out this fun video, a song parody
making fun of the problems media and the ad industry
have getting ad revenue. For those who can afford to take
such matters easy, the “Mad Avenue Blues”, it is very
well done and professional:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CqRcCHk_ Pc
Bollywood to plagiarism: Bye bye?
Filmmakers in Bollywood, India’s movie industry, are notorious for borrowing liberally from foreign films far and wide, especially Hollywood.
Even when they don’t copy an entire film frame by frame, Bollywood directors often borrow from several films at once, melding story lines and adapting them to an Indian setting, complete with song and dance. They do this, of course, without buying the remaking rights. Despite a lot of original cinema coming out of Bollywood, plagiarism is rife.
Hollywood hasn’t cared until now, The Washington Post’s Emily Wax reports. Twentieth Century Fox recently settled a lawsuit with BR Films — a well-known banner — over its remake of the 1992 hit “My Cousin Vinny.” Fox accepted $200,000, paving the way for a release of the Hindi version, called “Banda Yeh Bindaas Hai” or “This Guy is Fearless”.
The Times of London has reported that a lawyer representing major American studios has recently sent warning letters to producers who he believes are copying Hollywood films. Among the titles are “Ghostbusters”, “Jerry Maguire”, “The Departed” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, the paper reports.
Will Fox’s action finally put a stop to the widespread plagiarism in Bollywood? More likely, Bollywood producers will just have to cough up the money to buy remaking rights, which is how it should be.
Keep an eye on:
- Nokia plans to tackle Apple’s iPhone with a bet on Linux software. (Reuters)
- Channel 4 will drop Big Brother as it focuses more on public service broadcasting. (Financial Times)
- Alcatel-Lucent shares jump on rumors of Chinese bid. (Reuters)
Just as Bollywood looks to Hollywood for inspiration, Hollywood too often remakes European movies!
MGM to remain independent no longer?
What’s going to happen to MGM?
On Tuesday, the Hollywood studio announced it was replacing its chief executive Harry Sloan with a team that includes a turnaround expert. It’s a well-known fact that MGM, which is owned by private equity firms and Comcast, has struggled with a massive debt load. It has payments due on $3.7 billion of debt and the future isn’t looking too good, given the down market and shrinking DVD demand.
Media and entertainment industry analysts believe MGM won’t last much longer as an independent studio, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times:
Most industry watchers believe that MGM will not survive much longer as an independent studio and is likely to be sold to a bigger media company such as Time Warner Inc. or merged with another movie and TV studio like Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. Qualia Capital, a private investment firm headed by Amir Malin and Ken Schapiro, is actively looking at MGM, said a person with knowledge of the situation.
Who else could be a buyer? There were rumors earlier that investor Carl Icahn, who is a major shareholder in Lions Gate, was buying up MGM’s debt in the open market with the intention of forcing a merger between the two studios.
Then, there’s Comcast, which already owns a stake in MGM and could potentially be interested in owning MGM’s rich content librabry, which includes the James Bond films. Reuters’ Yinka Adegoke recently wrote that investors worry that Comcast will make a splashy acquisition soon. Could this be it?
Keep an eye on:
You misspelled library. librabry is not a word.
MGM Studio: CEO Sloan out, turnaround star Cooper in
Debt-ridden Hollywood studio MGM, whose library is home to such gems as the Rocky and James Bond flicks, has replaced CEO Harry Sloan, appointing a three person team to run the show: famed turnaround ace Stephen Cooper, motion pictures group boss Mary Parent, and CFO Bedi Singh.
Sloan is out as CEO but the veteran Hollywood businessman, who took the helm a few months after MGM’s 2005 buyout by a group of private equity and media investors, will stay on MGM as non-executive chairman of the studio. The studio has been grappling with a massive $3.5 billion debt load stemming from its 2005 buyout by private equity and media firms.
Along with the debt load, MGM , which has not had a major film release since Tom Cruise’s ”Valkyrie” in December, has been struggling like other Hollywood studios with lining up fresh film financing due to the economic crunch and dropping DVD sales.
Cooper, well-known for turning around big troubled companies Krispy Kreme and Enron, has been appointed to restructure MGM’s balance sheet to enable Parent to make movies.
MGM is due next to release a remake of the 1980′s hit “Fame” and to start production on “Red Dawn” another remake, in September.
Sloan left a private law practice in 1983 and has been a media executive and investor since. He invested and ran three media companies, including SBS Broadcasting, Lions Gate Entertainment and New World Entertainment.
E3: James Cameron stingy with “Avatar” details
To say the film “Avatar” is eagerly awaited would be an understatement. The 3D film is 4 years in the making — twice as long as it took for director James Cameron to make the blockbuster “Titanic.” It is due to hit the screen in December, but fans who call some of his other works (“Aliens” and “Terminator 2″) sterling works of art (guilty, as charged) are itching to see a glimpse of the film. What better way to do that than at E3, the video game conference in Los Angeles this week, since there is a sister video game also in the works, right?
Wrong. Cameron gave a very (very very) detailed description of the (mildly complicated ) flick, which all seemed to set the table for a butt-kicking clip, a must-see trailer. But none was forthcoming. Not even a clip of the game, which is developed by Ubisoft.
Strange behavior at a show — E3, the annual Video Game conference — whose every briefing, bar none, includes some kind of glossy video of cinematic or real-game action.
Check out the video above, as Cameron describes part of “Avatar”, including his vision that the battle at the end of the film is “the mother of all battle.” I guess I’ll have to wait to see it.
The occultic meaning of the word “Avatar” is really Lucifer/Satan. -That alone should have raised eyebrows, but it didn’t lol
-Think about that for a minute..what would happen if James Cameron just named the film -SATAN- …would people then want to consider the real meaning behind the film?
The entire Movie/Entertainment industry is a well financed satanic psychological war operation being executed upon the public right before their eyes.
Just like all the other Illuminati controlled industry, the Movie/Entertainment industry is a tool designed to advance their agenda of a “New World Order” and the deceptions that come along with it.
In the satanic Illuminati occult dogma, the term “AVATAR” represents their coming Anti-christ, and is the Illuminati occult representation of Satan incarnate.
The Illuminati believe that through science they will be able to genetically produce a “Body” or “Host” that can then be possessed by the actual spirit of Lucifer/Satan.
This “host” that the spirit of Satan will inhabit is called the “AVATAR”
James Cameron has actually named his entire film project based around the satanic doctrines of demonic possession and modern DNA manipulation, in which the Illuminati seek to bring about the “New Age humanoid”, or demonically possessed biological human entity.
