| Film Trailers Are Banking on Net Impressions | USA TODAY March 18, 2008 | The total amount of screen time amounts to little more than a teaser, but those few seconds may have turned the Indiana Jones sequel from a question mark into a must-see when it opens May 22.
Since the trailer's debut online less than four weeks ago, millions of fans have clicked through to watch the promo for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
|
| | MGM Hires Ex-Universal Exec As Production Chief | | Los Angeles TimesMarch 14, 2008 | Still struggling to reestablish itself as a viable movie studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios has hired former Universal Pictures executive Mary Parent as production chief.
As chairwoman of the Worldwide Motion Picture Group, Parent will oversee development, production, distribution, marketing and business affairs for MGM's movies.
|
|
| Less Profanity Means More Profit, Movie Study Says | | South Florida Sun-SentinelMarch 14, 2008 | A new study by The Nielsen Co. found that the PG-rated movies with the least profanity made the most money at the U.S. box office.
Sexuality or violence in those films had less to do with success than the language, the Nielsen PreView group said in a study released Thursday.
|
| | Hulu.Com Users Can Watch TV, Movies Starting Today | | Orlando SentinelMarch 12, 2008 | Hulu.com, a joint venture of News Corp. and NBC Universal, plans to open its online library of ad-supported TV shows and movies to the public today, the company announced.
Short clips from films and TV shows such as Napoleon Dynamite and Saturday Night Live are also available via the service, accessible at Hulu.com, as well as on Time Warner Inc.'s AOL site, Yahoo Inc. and other popular Web portals.
|
|
| Itunes Offers Far Fewer Films Than 1,000 Promised By Jobs, Plugged In | | The Baltimore SunMarch 13, 2008 | Although Steve Jobs announced in his keynote at the Macworld 2008 expo that 1,000 movies would be available for rental from the iTunes Store by the end of February, it didn't happen.
Last week I checked the "all rentals" box on the iTunes Store and got just 287 items, although a power search with the "Search movies available for rental" box checked turned up 436 films.
|
| | Studios Offer to Start Talks With Actors Soon | | Los Angeles TimesMarch 13, 2008 | In a move to defuse labor tensions, the chief negotiator for the major studios Wednesday offered to begin contract negotiations with Hollywood's actors March 31.
The current contract expires June 30, but leaders of the Screen Actors Guild have faced intense pressure from A-list members to begin immediate negotiations to avert another costly strike after the 100-day walkout by writers that ended last month.
|
|
| Acer to Launch 6-Speaker Movie Laptop | | Associated Press/AP OnlineMarch 12, 2008 | NEW YORK - Acer Inc., the Taiwanese computer maker that bought Gateway last year, said on Tuesday that it now aims to take laptop users as close as they can get to the high-definition home theater experience.
The top model of the new "Gemstone blue" line of laptops has a screen with the same resolution as an a top-of-the-line HDTV, at 1,920 pixels by 1,080 pixels, and will have six speakers, including a subwoofer, for so-called "5.1" surround sound.
|
| | A Giant Loss for Studios? | | USA TODAYMarch 12, 2008 | LAS VEGAS -- Hollywood may have taken in a record $9.6 billion at the box office in 2007, but it could have been so much more.
Studios left "hundreds of millions on the table" by refusing to release "event" films throughout the year, says John Fithian, head of the National Association of Theatre Owners.
|
|
| Library Users Increasingly Going Online for Free Movies | | Waterloo CourierMarch 11, 2008 | Mar. 11--WATERLOO -- You can already head down to the Waterloo or Cedar Falls Public Library and borrow a movie for free with your library card.
It's a program called MyLibraryDV, and it allows anyone with a library card number and a high-speed Internet connection to access movies and television programs with a free downloadable player.
|
| | Giving the Outsiders a Say on Movies | | The New York TimesMarch 11, 2008 | The idea behind a new Web site, Massify.com, is to give film enthusiasts a vote on which films are made in the first place.
|
|
| | Like Its Well-Fed Folks, the Film Fest is Swelling | | Los Angeles TimesMarch 11, 2008 | AUSTIN, Texas -- You see them uplinking everywhere: bloggers, techies and assorted Internet enthusiasts (don't call them geeks) hunched over laptops, tapping away at iPhones and wielding digital video recorders with the kind of abandon more commonly associated with Japanese tourism than film festival revelry.
To be sure, connectivity is everything at the South By Southwest Film Conference & Festival, which opened Friday in the tech-savvy state capital -- Texas' quintessential college town and its alternative hipster mecca.
|
|
| Media & Marketing: Viacom Expects to Remain in Business With Spielberg | | The Wall Street JournalMarch 11, 2008 | Viacom Inc. Chief Executive Philippe Dauman, seeking to soothe the fractious relationship with movie unit DreamWorks, said he has been making efforts to befriend DreamWorks founder Steven Spielberg and expects him to remain in business with Viacom "in one form or another."
Mr. Dauman, speaking at a Bear Stearns media conference, was treading carefully after creating a storm at an investor conference last fall when he played down the financial relevance of Mr. Spielberg and DreamWorks to Viacom, saying their departure would be "completely immaterial" to the company's financial outlook.
|
| | India's Movie Mecca Goes Global; Riding a Boom, Bollywood Evolves Into a Magnet for Investment and Talent | | The Washington PostMarch 08, 2008 | MUMBAI -- When Amit Shah, a budding young actor born in Chicago, auditioned for a role in the upcoming Hollywood comedy "Fraternity House," the directors picked him to play an Indian exchange student.
But he quickly realized that if he was going to be pigeonholed as the token Indian immigrant, he had better visit the country of his parents' birth and attend one of the growing number of acting schools in Mumbai, a sprawling metropolis of 17 million.
|
|
| Trans World's Slide Continues | | Times UnionMarch 06, 2008 | Mar. 7--ALBANY -- Change is not coming fast enough to Trans World Entertainment Corp.
The Albany-based owner of FYE said sales in the fourth quarter of 2007 fell by double-digit percentages from a year earlier.
|
| | Blockbuster Finish for Movie-Rental Co. | | Associated Press/AP OnlineMarch 07, 2008 | DALLAS - Blockbuster Inc., the movie rental company, said Thursday its fourth-quarter profit more than quadrupled as it cut costs and adjusted prices for its online subscription service.
The Dallas-based company also said it would restate financial results over the past three years - relatively minor adjustments in the few millions.
|
|
| House Panel OKs Film Incentive Bill: But There's No Money Included | | The Idaho Statesman, BoiseMarch 05, 2008 | Mar. 6--Idaho would have the power to set up an incentive program that would offer filmmakers a 20 percent rebate on production costs under a bill that squeezed through the House Commerce & Resources Committee Wednesday.
A 6-4 vote now sends House Bill 592 to the full House.
|
| | Movie Ticket Sales Hit Record | | Los Angeles TimesMarch 05, 2008 | In Hollywood, the math is never simple.
Movie ticket sales climbed to $9.6 billion in the U.S. and Canada and $26.7 billion globally, both logging 5% increases that demonstrated a "healthy" industry, said Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Assn.
|
|
| MPA: Studios Settle Internet Piracy Case | | Associated Press/AP OnlineMarch 06, 2008 | HONG KONG - Five Hollywood studios have reached a settlement with a Chinese Internet company accused of providing cybercafes with illegal copies of their movies, an industry group said Thursday.
The five studios sued Beijing Jeboo Interactive Science & Technology Co. in Shanghai in September and December for supplying Internet cafes with computer software that allowed users to download and watch illegal copies of 20 Hollywood movies, including "Hitch" and "Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest," the Motion Picture Association, or MPA, said in a statement.
|
| | B-Movie Case With an A-List Crowd | | Los Angeles TimesMarch 04, 2008 | For the last six years, few plots in Hollywood have kept more power brokers and entertainment lawyers in suspense than the FBI investigation into onetime private eye to the stars Anthony Pellicano.
With alleged victims including actors Sylvester Stallone and Keith Carradine and secret grand jury testimony from the likes of super-agent Mike Ovitz and studio executives Brad Grey and Ron Meyer, the case was seen by many as the entertainment industry's biggest scandal in decades.
|
|
| A Tough Sell: Movies on Small Screens | | The New York TimesMarch 02, 2008 | The Internet is littered with ventures that offer the ability to download movies legally online.
Few have had the predicted success.
|
| | Coming Soon: Movies on Flash Memory Cards | | CNETMarch 02, 2008 | GALWAY, Ireland--PortoMedia is probably the only start-up in the world inspired by the movie Carlito's Way.
Company founder Chris Armstrong explains: Four years ago, he set out to his local DVD store to rent a movie.
|
|
| Writers Ratify Contract With Studios | | The Wall Street JournalFebruary 26, 2008 | Hollywood screenwriters overwhelmingly voted to ratify a new three-year labor contract yesterday, two weeks after returning to work following a three-month strike that effectively crippled much of the entertainment industry.
With the writers' contract all but settled, attention turns to the 120,000- member Screen Actors Guild, whose contract expires June 30.
|
| |
| The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986 - 2007 | | The New York TimesFebruary 24, 2008 | Summer blockbusters and holiday hits make up the bulk of box office revenue each year, while contenders for the top Oscar awards tend to attract smaller audiences that build over time.
Here's a look at how movies have fared at the box office, after adjusting for inflation.
|
| | Do Video Games Have a Film-Like Future? | | USA TODAYFebruary 18, 2008 | Today's cutting-edge video games have the look and sound of movies; some even have blockbuster budgets.
But even game developers concede that their creations usually lack the emotional impact of a great film or book.
|
|
| |
