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The business behind the show

Sources: JP Morgan raises financing to pay for rollout of digital cinema

February 5, 2010 |  5:48 pm

Lifting a roadblock to the rollout of 3-D in theaters, investment firm JP Morgan has raised nearly $700 million to finance the digital conversion of thousands of screens around the country, three people familiar with the matter said Friday.

The funding, delayed for longer than a year due to the credit crunch, would pay for the installation of digital projectors for about 12,000 screens, easing a bottleneck caused by an abundance of 3-D movies competing for not enough screens. There are currently only about 3,500 digital 3-D screens in the country.

The shortage of screens has created tensions between studios as they muscle each other to get their 3-D pictures into theaters. Warner Bros.' "Clash of the Titans," for example, is set open a week after DreamWorks Animation Studios releases its next animated movie, "How to Train Your Dragon" on March 26. Those movies also will compete for screens with Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," which premieres March 5.

The funding, expected to be formally announced in the next two weeks after studios sign off on the deal,  comes nearly three years after the nation's largest exhibitors -- AMC, Cinemark and Regal -- formed a consortium know as Digital Cinema Implementation Partners to pay for the digital conversion of theaters.

In 2008, the group said it reached an agreement with five studios to raise $1 billion toward retrofitting theaters. The funding would be secured through so-called virtual print fees.

-- Richard Verrier


Andrea Wong leaving Lifetime

February 5, 2010 |  3:21 pm

Andrea Wong, chief executive of Lifetime for nearly three years, is leaving the network. Her contract was due to expire in April.

Wong The shake-up comes less than six months after a corporate restructuring that lumped Lifetime into the A&E Television Networks group, leaving Wong no longer the top executive at the joint venture between Hearst Corp. and Walt Disney Co. Instead, she reported to Abbe Raven, the head of A&E Television Networks. 

Wong worked to give Lifetime a makeover from the network's frumpy image -- but some of her bold business moves backfired.

The MIT graduate agreed to spend more than $150 million to nab the hit show "Project Runway" from Bravo. The expensive deal, which wound up in court when NBC Universal contested the legitimacy of the channel switch, included dozens of movies from the Weinstein Co. that were viewed as stinkers. While "Project Runway" performed well -- though down considerably from when it aired on Bravo -- ratings at the channel have been sliding. It was not the uplifting Lifetime story that Wong was hoping to write when she left her prominent job at ABC in 2007. 

Wong's departure was first reported by the blog deadline hollywood.  It is unclear where Wong will land.

-- Meg James 


More trips to Capitol Hill for Comcast and NBC Universal

February 5, 2010 | 11:15 am

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Comcast and NBC Universal executives may be through arguing about their merger with former "Saturday Night Live" performer Sen. Al Franken, but the two companies will be making return trips to Capitol Hill to again sell their deal in the weeks ahead.

On Thursday, Comcast chief executive Brian Roberts and NBC Universal chief executive Jeff Zucker had a long day in front of both the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet and the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights.

Besides being grilled on whether a marriage of the nation's biggest cable and broadband provider with a content giant would be bad for consumers and competition, Franken (D-Minn.) made the process personal, accusing NBC of lying in the past about how it does business.

"You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust these promises, and that is from experience in this business," Franken said in his opening remarks during the Senate subcommittee hearing.

Roberts and Zucker will have a few weeks off before the next round of hearings about the deal, which would see Comcast take a 51% stake in General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal.

Both the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee are expected to grill Comcast and NBC Universal about the proposed $30-billion deal either later this month or in early March.

The Federal Communications Commission, which along with the Justice Department will decide on whether to approve the deal and what, if any, conditions should be attached, will issue a public notice in a few weeks to the industry and media watchdogs to file comments on the transaction.

Although Congress has no formal role in the approval process, it does have oversight over both the FCC and the DOJ. The issues raised Thursday and likely issues that will come up at future hearings could set a tone for the type of scrutiny the Comcast - NBC Universal sale will receive from the FCC and DOJ. In other words, the point of the hearings is that lawmakers get to send a message to regulators about their concerns.

-- Joe Flint

Related post: Al Franken comes out swining against Comcast-NBC deal.

Photo: Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, left, and NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker are sworn in at a Senate hearing Thursday. Credit: Chris Kleponis / Getty Images


TV Guide Network CEO Ryan O'Hara exiting

February 5, 2010 |  9:11 am

Ryan O'Hara, president and chief executive of TV Guide Network and TV Guide.com, is exiting after about eight years with the channel, the last four and a half years as the top executive. No replacement for O'Hara was immediately named.

The exit of O'Hara comes just nine months after TV Guide Network was bought by Lionsgate and One Equity Partners and soon after Diane Robina was named executive vice president of programming. A person familiar with the situation said, however, that O'Hara is leaving on his own accord and is expected to announce a new position in New York in the coming days. O' Hara declined to comment.

Lionsgate has been revamping the channel in an effort to make it a broader-based network and recently bought reruns to ABC's "Ugly Betty" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm." 

-- Joe Flint



The Morning Fix: Al Franken smacks his old bosses! Emmys live, really live. Howard Stern Idol bound? (yeah, we don't buy it either)

February 5, 2010 |  8:33 am

After the coffee. Before figuring out how to scam your way into the Super Bowl.

Et tu, Brute? Comcast and NBC Universal CEOs Brian Roberts and Jeff Zucker took a grilling yesterday over their plans to merge the nation's biggest cable and broadband provider with the programming giant on Capitol Hill Thursday. Senators and Congressmen repeatedly pressed the duo on whether their merger would be bad for consumers and competition. The biggest concerns were raised by someone NBC made very rich -- Senator Al Franken (D-Minn). The former "Saturday Night Live" regular-turned-politician dismissed the promises of Roberts and Zucker, saying he didn't trust them and "that is from experience in this business." No word on whether Franken's residuals will be cut. More on the hearings from the Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. The Daily Beast's Kim Masters also has a take on the hearings as well as an amusing story about a "magical" dinner Comcast and NBC Universal brass held in New York earlier this week.

CTlogosmall Would be bring Baba Booey with him? This sounds pretty out there, but the New York Post's Page Six is reporting that the producers of Fox's "American Idol" are wooing radio star Howard Stern to replace Simon Cowell next year. Stern, as he often does, has been dropping vague hints about offers he's gotten as he weighs whether to sign a new deal with Sirius XM, the satellite radio service that carries his show. Stern would certainly be a colorful judge but he has no music industry experience and is also very polarizing (not to me, by the way). The risk of Stern, seems to me, is that it could alienate the parents who like to watch "American Idol" with their kids, At the same time, Stern has always been most popular with men 25-54 and Fox wants 18-34 with "American Idol." Nonetheless, we say give him a shot as a guest judge.

Live, really live. NBC, which has the rights to this year's Emmys (and is stuck carrying them at the end of August because of its NFL commitments), wants to run the show live across the country instead of on tape delay on the West Coast. One of the reasons motivating this is how social network sites such as Twitter and Facebook are changing the way people watch TV. I know I stay off Twitter when something is being broadcast on tape delay out here unless I want the show spoiled. Heck, I stay off to avoid "24" spoilers from the East Coast. The Golden Globes ratings went up without a tape delay last month and the Oscars are always live across the nation. Of course, the Grammy ratings went up with a tape delay so who knows what is best approach. The scoop from Broadcasting & Cable.

Crowded stage. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has resolved a potential snafu regarding production credits for "The Hurt Locker" and "The Blind Side." Without going into the arcane rules, there was an issue of who would be able to go up on stage to take a trophy. Details on the arcane issues from Variety.

Now Los Angeles can't even play Los Angeles. It used to be that Hollywood shot everything here even if the movie or TV show was supposed to be set somewhere else. Remember those palm trees that would occasionally pop up in the background of the drama "Thirtysomething," which was supposed to be in Philadelphia. Now, filmmakers aren't even using Los Angeles when the material is set here. The New York Times weighs in on the issue of runaway production, something us Angelinos are already quite familiar with.

AOL looking more like Google. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has tapped his former Google colleague David Eun to be president of the portal's media division. More from Washington Business Journal.

Sensitivity training time? A sign at NBC's cafeteria in Rockefeller Center regarding Black History Month and that day's menu has caused something of an outrage. We'll let the New York Post take it from there. 

Is Kathy Bates available? HBO is moving ahead with its already reported on plans to develop a show about an over-the-top Hollywood blogger, reports the Hollywood Reporter. Hmmm, wonder where they got the inspiration.

Inside the Los Angeles Times: Mary McNamara on Diane Sawyer. Bidding war for Terminator.

--  Joe Flint

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Sony Pictures bidding against Lions Gate for 'Terminator' rights

February 4, 2010 |  5:05 pm

T3Next time the Terminator is back, it may be from Sony Pictures.

The Culver City-based studio will make an offer by the end of the day, when bids for rights to make future movies in the 26-year-old action franchise are due, people familiar with the process said.

In addition, production and animation company Threshold Entertainment is seriously considering a bid, one person close to the process said, pending the resolution of issues with its financial partners.

Lions Gate made a so-called "stalking horse" bid last month of $15 million and 5% of future revenues for the rights to make future "Terminator" movies.

As part of the process submitted to the court by Halcyon Group, the bankrupt production company that owns the rights and financed last year's "Terminator Salvation," any bidder that goes up against Lions Gate must offer at least $15.95 million. 

If any buyer other than Lions Gate ends up with the rights, it must pay the independent studio a breakup fee of $450,000.

[Update, 6:43 p.m.: A previous version of this post said that the minimum amount of a new bid was $16.25 million and the break-up fee for Lions Gate is $750,000. In fact, according to a person close to the process, Lions Gate's break-up fee was reduced by the court to $450,000 and minimum bid is $15.95 million. The previous version also incorrectly said that a new bidder must match Lions Gate's offer of 5% of future "Terminator" revenues on top of a cash payment.]

Sony and Threshold both have histories with the franchise. Sony distributed "Terminator Salvation" and 2003's "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" internationally. Threshold's chief executive, Larry Kasanoff, was previously president of Lightstorm Entertainment, the production company controlled by "Terminator" and "T2: Judgment Day" director James Cameron.

Warner Bros., which distributed "Salvation" and "Rise of the Machines" in the U.S. and Canada, is not bidding, a person close to the studio said.

It's still possible that other bidders could swoop in by the end of today.

FTI Consulting, which is handling the sale for Halcyon, will hold an auction in its offices on Monday for all potential buyers. There will then be a hearing on Wednesday at which a bankruptcy judge must approve the sale.

A potential logjam in the process is Pacificor, the Santa Barbara-based private equity fund which claims to be owed more than $30 million by Halcyon. According to people close to the process, Pacificor is attempting to submit a "creditor's bid" that covers the amount it is owed and forces any other buyer to pay more. If there is no offer higher than the creditor's bid, then Pacificor could end up owning the "Terminator" rights.

Halcyon disputes that it owes Pacificor that much, however, so it is unclear whether the bankruptcy judge will allow the private equity fund to have a say in the process.

--Ben Fritz

Times staff writer Claudia Eller contributed to this report.

Photo: Arnold Schwarzenegger in "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines." Credit: Reuters.


Movie projector: 'Dear John' likely to come close but not quite dethrone 'Avatar'

February 4, 2010 |  3:29 pm

DearJohn

After holding the top spot for seven consecutive weeks, it looks as if "Avatar" will reign one final time over Super Bowl weekend.

Despite rising interest among its core audience of teenage and twentysomething females, the romantic tearjerker "Dear John" appears likely to open just shy of director James Cameron's blockbuster, which looks to be No. 1 at the box office for the eighth weekend in a row.

According to people who have seen pre-release polling of moviegoers, "Dear John" is on track to sell a little more than $20 million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada. That's a solid start given that financier Relativity Media paid about $25 million to produce the film, which Sony Pictures is releasing in exchange for a distribution fee.

Still, the backers of "Dear John" will be looking to go beyond a good opening to a very long run akin to that of 2004's "The Notebook," also based on a Nicholas Sparks romance novel, which debuted with $13.5 million and ended up with $81 million in ticket sales after five months in theaters.

"Avatar" is on track to gross $26 million to $28 million from Friday through Sunday if it continues the minimal 10% to 15% drops that it has experienced for the last several weekends. The 3-D science fiction epic, which has grossed $604 million domestically and nearly $1.5 billion overseas, could get a boost from its nine Oscar nominations this week, including best picture, and see an even smaller decline.

Overseas, "Avatar" could easily take in an additional $80 million-plus this weekend, bringing its total worldwide haul to nearly $2.2 billion.

On the post-Super Bowl weekend, "Avatar" is certain to be thrown off its domestic perch by any one of several new releases, including the romantic comedy "Valentine's Day" and the horror remake "The Wolfman."

"Dear John" was originally set to be the only new movie opening this weekend. However, when Paramount Pictures delayed the Leonardo DiCaprio thriller "Shutter Island" from October to Feb. 19, Lionsgate decided to avoid the competition and pushed back its John Travolta-Jonathan Rhys Myers action movie "From Paris With Love" to this Friday.

FromParis Studios usually don't debut movies aimed at men on Super Bowl weekend, because the target audience is otherwise occupied on Sunday. But Lionsgate, which bought distribution rights to "From Paris" from financier Europa Corp., is hoping to duplicate the success of "Taken," which opened on Super Bowl weekend last year to a healthy $24.7 million. Both films were directed by Pierre Morel.

However, people who have seen pre-release surveys say "From Paris With Love" is tracking for a more modest opening of about $15 million.

Much of the action on the box-office charts this weekend may be focused on several small movies that received multiple Oscar nominations on Tuesday, which are hoping for significant boosts.

Lionsgate will expand best picture nominee "Precious" from 222 theaters to 669 theaters. The low-budget Sundance acquisition has sold a healthy $46 million of tickets to overwhelmingly African American crowds.

The studio is hoping that Oscar attention will draw a more diverse crowd to the harrowing inner-city tale. "Precious" had played as wide as 1,003 theaters in December. In some cases it will be returning to theaters where it already played, such as Los Angeles' Arclight Cinemas.

Sony Pictures Classics and Fox Searchlight are using this weekend to springboard their movies "An Education" and "Crazy Heart," respectively, beyond the limited runs they have had. The British coming-of-age drama "An Education," which got a best picture nod and has generated $8.8 million, will go from 75 theaters to 763. The country music drama "Crazy Heart," for which Jeff Bridges got a best actor nomination, is jumping from 239 to 819 theaters. It has collected $7.3 million.

"An Education" and "Crazy Heart" will be looking to gross about $3 million this weekend, while "Precious" will probably take in $1.5 million or so, since it has already done a substantial chunk of business.

-- Ben Fritz

Top photo: Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried in "Dear John." Credit: Scott Garfield / Sony Pictures.

Bottom photo: John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Myers in "From Paris With Love." Credit: Rico Torres / Lionsgate.


Google's Hollywood man leaves for AOL

February 4, 2010 |  1:08 pm

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David Eun, the executive who served as Google's ambassador to Hollywood's television and film community, is leaving the Internet search giant to join America Online.

Eun takes over March 1 as president of AOL Media and Studios, succeeding Bill Wilson, who will leave after nine years with the company. Eun will oversee AOL's 80 content sites, its new SEED publishing platform and studio operations.

"David brings an impressive breadth of media experience to AOL at an exciting juncture for our company," AOL Chairman and Chief Executive Tim Armstrong said in a statement.

The newly independent AOL is a work in progress, having been spun off in December by corporate parent Time Warner.

The once-dominant Internet access provider is struggling with declining ad revenue and subscribers -- although the dial-up access business is no longer its focus. Under Armstrong, AOL is attempting to shed its image of dot-com has-been and remake itself as as a sort of digital media powerhouse with content that attracts about 100 million monthly visitors.

Eun brings digital media cred to the struggling AOL. After all, he's the guy who helped bring Sony Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate and Disney's ABC and ESPN to the onetime Hollywood bete noire, YouTube, by striking content deals for the online video site.

Google declined to make Eun available for an interview, but issued a statement thanking him for his work.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

David Eun, Google's vice president of content partnerships, is seen in offices in Manhattan. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times


Sony Pictures third studio to grow revenue, operating income last quarter

February 4, 2010 | 12:58 pm

Despite layoffs and shrinking development spending, Hollywood's bottom line looks to be growing again.

Sony Pictures on Thursday became the third major movie and television studio to report increased revenue and operating income for the quarter ended Dec. 31, along with 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros.

Revenue for SPE grew 25% to $2.2 billion, driven in part by box-office revenue from the disaster picture "2012" and the Michael Jackson documentary "This is It," as well as what the studio said was "significant sales" of DVDs for "Angels & Demons" and "Terminator Salvation," which Sony distributed overseas. TV revenue was also up, helped by the new syndicated success "The Dr. Oz Show."

Operating income grew a less impressive but still solid 9% to $153 million.

The good news, however, didn't help save jobs at Sony, which earlier this week said it would lay off about 450 employees and eliminate 100 open positions. 

Time Warner's Warner Bros., meanwhile, grew its revenue 7% last quarter to $3.3 billion. Operating income shot up 61% to $436 million. Theatrical revenue from the inspirational drama"The Blind Side," for which Warner received a distribution fee from financier Alcon Entertainment, as well as DVD sales of "The Hangover" and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," were top contributors.

Operating income for the News Corp.-owned 20th Century Fox nearly tripled in the same quarter to $324 million.

The strong performance for three separate studios marks a shift in momentum for Hollywood. In the quarter ended Sept. 30, for instance, revenue for both Warner Bros. and Sony Pictures declined, through Fox's performance improved.

The fourth quarter doesn't appear to have been good for Universal Pictures, however. Overall revenue for NBC Universal dropped 10%, and although owner General Electric doesn't break out the performance of the movie studio, DVD sales were likely very soft after a dismal summer at the box office with such underperformers as "Land of the Lost" and "Funny People."

Viacom Inc., owner of Paramount Pictures, will report its financial performance for last quarter Feb. 11.

--Ben Fritz


Sen. Al Franken comes out swinging against Comcast-NBC deal

February 4, 2010 | 12:34 pm

Doesn't look like comedian turned senator Al Franken is planning a return to NBC's "Saturday Night Live" anytime soon.

In his opening remarks about the proposed Comcast-NBC deal at a hearing held by the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, Franken (D-Minn.) ripped into the deal and the risks it could present to not only consumers but media competition as well.

Franken, who was a regular on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" for years and also had a short-lived sitcom on the network called "Lateline" in the late 1990s, dismissed the claims made by Comcast and NBC Universal that the partnering of the nation's largest broadband and cable provider with the entertainment giant would not harm competitors or the public.

FRANKEN "You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t trust these promises, and that is from experience in this business," Franken snapped.

Franken noted that similar promises were made by NBC when it was supporting the gutting of federal regulations that limited the amount of programming a broadcast network could own. Known as the financial interest and syndication rules, the Federal Communications Commission removed them over a decade ago after years of debate between producers and networks. Getting rid of the so-called fin-syn rules cleared the way for the mergers of Walt Disney and ABC as well as Viacom and CBS.

At the same time, most independent production companies were either gobbled up or went out of business. Today, the majority of programming is made by the big broadcast networks and studios.

Franken even pointed to NBC General Counsel Rick Cotton during his opening remarks and accused NBC of demanding that producers give them ownership in shows if they wanted the shows to get on the air.

"If an independent producer wants to get show on, it is routine practice, and you guys know it, for the network to demand at least part ownership of the show," Franken said. "Lateline" was produced by Paramount, NBC and Franken's own company.

Franken's remarks have provided the biggest fireworks of the day so far. Earlier Thursday morning, Comcast and NBC Universal chief executives Brian Roberts and Jeff Zucker faced a mix of hardball and softball questions about the deal from the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet.

Lots of the same ground is being covered in the two hearings. There is great concern from lawmakers about media concentration, discrimination against small and independent programmers, and programming available on free television migrating to cable.

It was pretty easy to tell who was on team Comcast - NBC Universal and who wasn't in the House hearing, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), who is chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Comcast needs to "ensure independent writers, directors and producers won't be harmed" by the deal to acquire majority control of General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal.

Also wary was Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who expressed fears that the deal will stifle competition and end up costing consumers.

Skeptical of the concerns of media watchdogs was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), who said he was more interested in talking about the deal and not a bunch of "what if" scenarios.

-- Joe Flint

Photo: Sen. Al Franken. Credit: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg




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