By Lucas Shaw August 9, 2020 | Kilar made his first major move Friday, dismissing three of his chief deputies and restructuring the company to focus on the HBO Max streaming service. The 49-year-old CEO spoke with Bloomberg News over the weekend about competing with Netflix, the future of the movie business and his fight with Amazon. You just fired three of your top...
By Erik Guenwedel August 10, 2020 | Veteran Warner Bros. Home Entertainment executive Ron Sanders is among a group of key executives who are leaving the company in the wake of a management restructuring implemented by new WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar. Sanders, president, Warner Bros. Worldwide Theatrical Distribution and president, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, has been an integral part of the studio’s retail...
By Eriq Gardner August 6, 2020 | HBO Max costs $14.99 a month. It says so on the website. But those saying it costs more might not be wrong. For customers who don't use AT&T mobile service and consume a lot of data — by binge-watching Friends, for example — those HBO Max users are likely paying extra for exceeding their data allowances. As for...
By Adam B. Vary August 6, 2020 | To earn back the budget on PVOD alone, “Mulan” would need to attract roughly 6.7 million rentals, or just over 11% of current Disney Plus subscribers. Factoring in another $50 million in total global marketing costs (a conservative estimate) bumps that magic number closer to 8.4 million rentals, or 13.8% of subscribers. Jeff Bock, a...
Above: Satisfaction scores peak at major PVOD releases, such as Trolls World Tour and Scoob! (pictured). [caption id="attachment_848" align="alignleft" width="176"] Mark Orne | Screen Engine/ASI[/caption] August 3, 2020 | As theaters closed in March at the start of widespread stay-at-home orders, and early in-home releases premiered, many digital movie buyers and renters gave early window releases a try. As visiting a theater became...
By Chaim Gartenberg July 28, 2020 | AMC Theaters and Universal have reached a new agreement that dramatically shortens the theatrical exclusivity window — the amount of time that films have to play in theaters before they’re allowed to be sold or rented in other places, like iTunes, Amazon, or AMC’s own On Demand service — down to just 17 days (ensuring that the films will...
By Lucas Shaw July 26, 2020 | In October of last year, I wrote a preview of four new streaming services from some of the world's largest companies, the onset of the so-called streaming wars. That term has proven to be something of a misnomer since the biggest dispute is between streaming services and distributors like Roku and Amazon, not between individual services. But now that all four...
Partnership aims to motivate kids to pursue careers in entertainment By Marcy Magiera July 27, 2020 | Public schools in Los Angeles will start the fall semester in less than a month with students resuming remote learning and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) continuing its quest to increase student engagement in online instruction. DEG Members Intel and ViacomCBS are partnering to...
WB's 'Wonder Woman 1984' moved from June to October. By Tom Bruggemann July 17, 2020 | We’ve recreated the original release calendar for March 20 through July 17 as it stood on March 3 — the day before Bond film “No Time to Die” shifted from April to November, auguring a massive number of changes to come. The list, which we will continue...
Transactional film and TV sales surge as Britons turn to digital retailers to buy and rent latest releases and catalogue classics during the pandemic London, July, 22, 2020 | Data released by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) and compiled by The Official Charts Company (OCC) has shown that consumer spend on digital film to buy and keep grew by...
