“Jackass 3D” tops “Avatar” on Viacom Chief’s movie list
“My favorite 3D movie of all time is Jackass 3D,” Viacom’s Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said on Wednesday at Reuters Global Media Summit. The movie, which grossed $116 million in the United States, according to Box Office Mojo was “relatively low cost” and “significantly profitable,” Dauman said. “You’ll see more of that coming.”
What else might the future hold for Viacom in 3D? Possibly Snooki.
Reuters Breakingviews columnist Rob Cox asked Dauman if audiences can soon expect a Jersey Shore in the third dimension.
“I’d love to see that,” Dauman said, “Gym, tan and laundry in 3D.”
Earlier this month, Viacom said it is selling Harmonix, the video game publisher behind Rock Band and this year’s Microsoft Kinect hit “Dance Central.” Dauman said the sale is proceeding swifty but declined to divulge details prospective buyers. Media Summit guest chief executives Bobby Kotick and Strauss Zelnick from Activision Blizzard and Take-Two respectively, said they’re not interested.
“Whoever puts the best proposal forward from all perspectives will be the winner,” Dauman said.
Soccer clubs and mortgages: How a media mogul spends $10 million
Unlike many of us, media executives know what it’s like to play around with large wads of cash. So it seemed natural to ask them about what kind of investment opportunities they’re seeing when they gathered in New York this week for the Reuters Global Media Summit.
We gave each media honcho $10 million in hypothetical cash and told them to put the money to work without buying stock in their own companies.
Some executives plowed the money into broad sectors and regions, like emerging markets, while others zeroed in on specific stocks, like Electronic Arts’ CEO John Riccitiello’s penchant for software maker Adobe.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said he already owns shares of privately-held Facebook, the Internet social network on which many of Zynga’s video games are designed to be played on, and that he’d buy more on the secondary markets (OK, so he creatively sidestepped the rule against investing in his own company).
And some media moguls seemed to have investment strategies driven by goals other than maximizing returns:
“I would put it in US-based international equities. I mean, if you said….If you forced me to invest a dollar.”
(Reuters: You can put it in your pillow if you want.) That’s what I’ve been doing. Unfortunately, the pillow was unsleepable
Live blog from the Reuters Global Media Summit
Reuters reporters will be sending live updates from interviews with guests including Disney’s Anne Sweeney, IAC’s Barry Diller, WPP’s Martin Sorrell, Sirius XM’s Mel Karmazin and more.
