Cage, Witherspoon feature in box-office battle
Three new movies compete for filmgoers over the long President’s Day weekend in the United States. Nicolas Cage is expected to lead the pack of newcomers with Sony’s 3D action sequel “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance.”
Box-office watchers project Friday-through-Monday sales in the United States and Canada could roar to $30 million for the follow-up to the original “Ghost Rider,” released over the same weekend in 2007.
Reese Witherspoon also battles for audiences with 20th Century Fox romantic comedy “This Means War.” Fox sees the story about two CIA agents (Tom Hardy and Chris Pine) trying to win over the same woman bringing in around $14 million over four days. Outside forecasters say it could go a few million higher. The movie pulled in about $1.7 million from Valentine’s Day showings.
The weekend’s other new film is Disney’s animated “The Secret World of Arrietty”, about a tiny family that lives under the floorboards of a country home. “Arrietty” is expected to debut with less than $10 million over four days, box-office forecasters said.
Holdovers from last weekend will also fight for top spots. They include love story “The Vow,” Denzel Washington action movie “Safe House” and family film “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.”
Photo Credit: Columbia Pictures
Familiar script: Home entertainment spending slips
Spending on home viewing of movies and television, on a downward spiral in recent years, fell again in 2011 as sales of DVDs and rentals at video stores dropped.
Total U.S. consumer dollars spent on home entertainment — including DVDs, video on demand and online streaming — declined 2.1 percent to $18 billion for the year, according to industry group DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group. Consumers continued to shift to lower-priced rentals from companies such as Netflix and Coinstar’s Redbox kiosks, eschewing outright ownership.
The DEG pointed to bright spots, including a 20 percent jump in sales of high-definition Blu-ray discs that topped $2 billion for the first time. “The industry’s performance clearly stabilized in 2011,” it said in a statement. (The top choices for the year? “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1,” followed by “Part 2″ at No. 2)
Meanwhile, Hollywood is trying to reinvigorate interest in movie ownership with a cloud-based digital locker called Ultraviolet that allows viewing anytime from Internet-connected devices. The consortium that runs Ultraviolet, in an announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, said movie studios will offer hundreds of titles with the Ultraviolet option this year, up from a paltry, initial 19.
More than 750,000 households have registered with UltraViolet to create digital libraries since last fall’s launch, Mark Teitell, general manager of the Ultraviolet consortium, said in an interview. Photo Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Tech wrap: Fake Apple Store defiant
Customers at an apparent Apple Store in the Chinese city of Kunming berated staff and demanded refunds after the shop was revealed to be an elaborate fake, sparking a media and Internet frenzy. Staff were also angry at the unwanted attention after more than 1,000 media outlets picked up the story and pictures of the store from the BirdAbroad blog. Apple declined to comment on the fake store or others like it dotted around China.
Apple was in early talks to join the bidding for Hulu, the online video site that Walt Disney Co, News Corp and its other owners have put up for sale, Bloomberg cited two unidentified sources as saying.
Verizon Wireless signed up 1.3 million fewer iPhone customers than AT&T and Verizon Wireless customers spent less per month than expected in the second quarter, disappointing Wall Street. While Verizon Wireless added three times more net subscribers in the quarter than AT&T, it only activated 2.3 million Apple iPhones compared with 3.6 million activations at AT&T.
Facebook won a dismissal of a second lawsuit by the Olympic rowing twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who have sought to increase their $65 million settlement with the social media company and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.
RIM said it has bought Swedish video editing company JayCut and hinted the operation will work on features for its PlayBook tablet computer. JayCut joins Stockholm-based design company The Astonishing Tribe, which was bought by the Canadian smartphone and tablet maker in December to improve user interface.
Wanna direct Cars 2? There’s an app for that.
By Poornima Gupta
You could call it another victory lap for Steve Jobs.
John Lasseter, chief creative officer for Disney and Pixar and an old chum of the Apple CEO, credits the making of the new “Cars 2″ film to a single device: the iPad.
Being the creative guru at Pixar and Disney, as well as an adviser for Walt Disney Imagineering — Walt Disney Co’s design and development arm — means Lasseter has less time than he’d like to review materials for the movie, which he directed.
So he made good use of the hour-long daily commute from Pixar’s headquarters to his home in Sonoma by reviewing scenes, pictures and clips on his lime-green iPad 2.
A technical director working on the animated movie crafted an iPad app — called Review Tool — specifically for his boss.
“I would get everything on the iPad and it was fantastic to be able to look at stuff,” Lasseter said, adding that he then used the iPhone4′s voice memo feature to send notes and email comments. ”What I am able to do in an hour’s review on my iPad, we estimate it is equivalent to three hours of review time at Pixar.”
from Summit Notebook:
ESPN: We all live in sports towns (And tell great jokes)
ESPN President George Bodenheimer has been at the business of TV sports, one way or another, for nearly three decades, starting in the mailroom and working his way up.
It's the classic media story -- and this one even involved a stint driving through nearly every little town in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Mississippi to sell this odd new 24-hour sports network to cable distributors.
Here's one thing he's learned: Every town thinks it's a sports town. Sort of like everybody thinks they have a good sense of humor.
As he said at the Global Media Summit:
Every town I pulled into, I was calling cable operators. They'd say 'Hey George, your idea is a little crazy. And we're glad you're here -- but this is a sports town.' I'm telling you from experience every town in the United States, and maybe the world, I don't think that's an overstatement, considers itself a sports town. People always said we're in a niche business. If we're in a niche, we're in a mighty big niche."
And that hasn't changed. Indeed, given the downturn in the economy, people may be more sports-crazed than ever, he said.
I think sports is a little bit of comfort food to people in the United States and indeed around the world. It's why there's a lot of fans. It takes you to a different place. There's a beginning, a middle and an end. You see an outcome. The value is only going to grow in the DVR world and the 'I gotta have everything in two minutes world.' I just think live sports are going to continue to be a bit of an oasis in be a good driver for the media business.
from Summit Notebook:
ABC: Don’t you know that I’m still in love with news?
I asked ABC TV chief Anne Sweeney at our Global Media Summit on Monday whether the nightly news broadcast will go away someday soon. Everyone who follows the broadcast TV business has wondered this at some time or another, particularly as fewer people tune in.
Here's a bit of that conversation, where I got Sweeney to firmly say... not much. If you're in a rush, the general message appears to be:
- News is changing along with the changing times
- We believe in our news operation
- Budgets may change (likely for the worse), but news is worth paying for
- We're more than our evening news broadcast (where Charles Gibson is ceding the anchor slot to Diane Sawyer), but we're not going to say one way or the other whether we'll keep it going.
- Me: News operation is often a big cost. Some say that evening news is losing its relevance as people get their news elsewhere. Is it possible that ABC would get rid of its evening newscast?
Sweeney: I think world news is not just about 6:30. I think World News is about being ready to provide the news whenever it happens. It's not just limited to that half hour. It's actually on all day. The ABC broadcast day opens, the network day opens with Good Morning America. ... So we always have the ability to come in with breaking news. ... And then shows like 20/20 provide us with an opportunity to go a bit broader. And then of course there's This Week with George Stephanopoulos, which gives us the Washington beat, which again can appear in the other shows throughout the week. So it's really a manner of managing the assets rather than focusing on (the 6:30 news)
Me: How much will you preserve ABC's news budget when the returns in this fragmenting news media landscape are lesser than ever?
Sweeney: The budgets are always going to change, just as they have in the other parts and certainly in our other businesses.
Me: I take it the budgets are going to keep shrinking.
from Summit Notebook:
ABC TV chief to daughter: You *will* watch television
When I went to college in 1991, I begged my parents to buy me a small television for my dorm room (They wouldn't let me work during my first year of college, so I had no money). How things have changed in 18 years!
I learned how much they changed at the first day of the Reuters Global Media Summit. Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, was talking to us about how quickly the Internet and mobile technology are changing the way that we look at news and entertainment. That led to her divertimento into campus life:
You come to realize very quickly that all these platforms are very different. Sometimes they're being used or accessed by different demographics.
The way my 19-year-old daughter accesses televisions... We had quite a discussion about why she didn't want to take a television to college with her. She said, "Mom, you don't understand I don't need it." I said "You're going to have a television if I have to nail it to your wall. You have to have one." She said, "If I want to see shows, I can go abc.com, I can go to Hulu."
This is how a 19-year-old lives. And I think it's important to understand not only that piece of the demo, but also kids who are growing up today who have more devices than she had, if that's even possible, growing up. We're going to have to be serving them, so it's a learning process. As platforms surface, we assess their viability, both from a technological and from a business model perspective.
New media may be new media, but when you're the daughter of the ABC TV chief, it's not just a TV -- it's a family obligation.
“Iron Man” writer: Disney, Don’t ‘castrate’ Marvel heroes
Comic book artist Bob Layton co-wrote Marvel Entertainment’s iconic Iron Man titles in the 80′s, with partner David Michelinie. The duo recreated Iron Man’s Tony Stark into the alcoholic and playboy businessman that caught on notoriously well with readers.
You have to wonder what the reaction will be in the Disney cafeteria to creative types like Layton. So Reuters reporter Eric Yep asked Layton, who now works freelance, what he thinks about the putting the House of Mouse in charge of the Hulk and the Human Torch.
I would hope that while some of Marvel’s library lends itself naturally to Disney’s sensibilities, they’ll be wise enough not to castrate the entire cast of characters in some blanket policy.
Fears for Spider-man’s manhood aside, Layton remained concerned about the comic book industry’s woes and afflictions.
It’s no secret that the distribution system in comics is basically a monopoly, although no one has the balls to call it that!
The comic industry veteran, however, wasn’t as tormented as some Marvel fans appear to be – some reportedly imagining The Punisher’s violent escapades in a Disney theme park.
I’ve always been a proponent of getting the comic industry into the hands of better businessmen. Disney’s global distribution may be able to create in-roads where the comic industry has failed to make an impact.
Don’t worry, they will. As usual, the new Disney (after Walt died) is run by corporate moguls where the “bottom line” is their only imparative. I shall mourn the loss of Marvel.
Sun Valley: Ken Auletta paints it, black
Allen & Co’s Sun Valley media and technology conference forbids journalists from attending the morning sessions that executives and other media power players attend before they go out to play and talk about deals in the afternoon. That means the last, best hope they have is to get the low-down from a journalist who was invited.
There’s no pride in it, but at least you hear what happened from a reliable source.
In this case, that’s Ken Auletta, New Yorker media writer and author of several books about the media business. He moderated a panel about surviving in the digital age.
The answer? No answer, Auletta said.
Among the big minds pondering the issue were IAC/InterActiveCorp CEO Barry Diller, Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger (who on Tuesday told reporters that he’s not worried about how to get people to pay for content) and Liberty Media Chairman John Malone.
Questions asked at the session, Auletta said: How do you “monetize” on the Web? Can you? Is your “brand” an advantage?
Twitter, which is one of the media-anointed darlings of this year’s session, was also up for discussion, Auletta said. According to him, Diller said he was pessimistic about Twitter’s chances of making money. Auletta quoted Diller as saying it’s about “how to advertise in a way that doesn’t feel like an interruption.”
Disney Stores get face lift for Earth Day
The Walt Disney Co rolled out a new look and mission for its North American Disney Stores in an Earth Day celebration designed to reposition the chain it bought back from The Children’s Place last year as a “light education” destination, Jim Fielding, president of Disney Stores Worldwide said.
Disney reacquired the 225 stores after Children’s Place fell behind on a pledge to invest millions to fix up the outlets. Disney had a tough time making the stores profitable before it handed them off to Children’s Place, but Fielding said he just completed the chain’s five-year plan and is “optimistic” about its prospects, even in one of the worst retail environments in living memory.
In addition to a new store design to be rolled out over the next year, the chain is looking for new digs in cities where bankruptcies and foreclosures have reshaped communities and the commercial real estate surrounding them. “We are still repositioning that portfolio to make sure we are in the right malls, in the right cities, and the right states,” Fielding said.
As its first global initiative, Disney Stores launched a global Earth Day effort organized around an offering of recycled products, conservation-themed games for kids, and a giveway of reusable bottles that had families lining up at the stores on Wednesday. The global celebration also includes a tree planting initiative linked to sales of recyclable shopping bags, and Disney is working on signing up U.S. partners for more charitable endeavors like it frequently sponsors at its 106 European stores, Fielding said.
The worldwide do-gooderism is aimed at reminding kids – most of whom come to the stores for the latest Princess dress, Buzz Lightyear or stuffed Mickey — that “they are part of a bigger world and to be conscious of what’s going on around them,” Fielding said.
Yay, Earth Day … Now hand over the Pooh Bear before my kid starts screaming.
