Category: ves
Sony Pictures Entertainment Acquires VFX Company Pixomondo
“Under the deal, Sony has acquired 100% of Pixomondo. The company will continue to be led by CEO Jonny Slow, who will now report to Ravi Ahuja, Chairman of Global TV Studios and SPE Corporate Development.
It will maintain three LED soundstages and seven offices in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Canada.”
Patrick McIntire – how much real money does a $25 million film that grosses $100 million at the box office make?
Patrick McIntire
Motion Picture Producer at Universal Pictures & Part Time Instructor at UCLA
“So how much real money does a $25 million film that grosses $100 million at the box office make? Not nearly as much as you think…
First off, the exhibitor (theatre chain) takes 50% on average of the box office receipts. So now your $100 million is down to $50 million. Then there’s the distribution fee, which domestically averages about 30% (in this case, about $15 million). This brings your $50 million down to about $35 million. But we’re not done yet…
P&A (marketing) averages roughly the same amount as the budget of the film worldwide, or about 60% of the budget domestically (US). This varies depending upon the performance of the project. But we’ll use the average (60% of $25 million (the budget) is $15 million). This is then taken from the $35 million, taking you down to $20 million roughly. A far cry from the advertised $100 million gross.
If the project was privately financed (equity investor or investors), they get first monies in and first monies out. At a $25 million investment, the remaining monies go directly to the investors. Leaving $0 initially for producers. Yes, ancillary rights will make up the losses (cable, streaming, airlines, etc.), but this is to show how a movie’s box office claims are not as they appear. Studio films with larger budgets see much higher costs and often don’t turn a profit at all. Profit sharing (backend) can be next to nothing if the film is a bomb. This is just an example and only takes into account domestic box office. But it’s meant to show how misleading a film’s advertising that claims $100 million at the box office can be. Gross receipts are exciting to share. Net receipts? Not so much.”
Comments:
“this equation needs add the variable that in the majority of studio film and tv projects, the taxpayers of the municipality where the production is based and posted pay up to 40% of the cost of the production in the form of a rebate and other financing incentives while the profits on the movie are taxed in another location usually chosen to minimize tax liability.“
Skyrocketing Costs Hit U.K. TV Industry
https://variety.com/2022/tv/global/bbc-itv-channel-4-pact-strawberry-blonde-1235395993/
“With inflation hitting record levels, a looming energy crisis and rising interest rates, the whole of the U.K. has been left reeling. But for the domestic television industry, which was already dealing with a post-COVID skills shortage and industry-wide inflation prompted by the streaming wars, the situation has now become critical.”
“According to latest figures from the British Film Institute, U.K. production will require over 20,000 additional full-time employees by 2025”
studiobinder.com – What is Fair Use: Definition, Policies, Examples and More
https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-fair-use-definition
“If you produce YouTube content or do any work with intellectual property or copyrighted material, then a thorough understanding of fair use copyright law may be absolutely vital.”
“Fair Use is a branch of copyright law relating to the reuse and reproduction of copyrighted material.”
Fair Use Policy (Determining Factors):
- Purpose and character of use
- Nature of the copyrighted work
- Amount and substantiality of the portion reused
- Effect of the use upon the potential market
AI Data Laundering: How Academic and Nonprofit Researchers Shield Tech Companies from Accountability
“Simon Willison created a Datasette browser to explore WebVid-10M, one of the two datasets used to train the video generation model, and quickly learned that all 10.7 million video clips were scraped from Shutterstock, watermarks and all.”
“In addition to the Shutterstock clips, Meta also used 10 million video clips from this 100M video dataset from Microsoft Research Asia. It’s not mentioned on their GitHub, but if you dig into the paper, you learn that every clip came from over 3 million YouTube videos.”
“It’s become standard practice for technology companies working with AI to commercially use datasets and models collected and trained by non-commercial research entities like universities or non-profits.”
“Like with the artists, photographers, and other creators found in the 2.3 billion images that trained Stable Diffusion, I can’t help but wonder how the creators of those 3 million YouTube videos feel about Meta using their work to train their new model.”
Actor Bruce Willis Becomes First Celebrity to Sell Rights to Deepfake Firm… or does he
BBC: Bruce Willis denies selling rights to his face
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63106024
https://collider.com/bruce-willis-sells-rights-to-deepfake-firm-deepcake/
Disney’s Price Hikes Usher in Era of the Not-So-Cheap Ad Tier
“When Disney+’s ad tier launches, in December, it will cost U.S. customers $7.99 a month, the current price of the service’s ad-free tier. The price of the no-ads version will be hiked to $10.99.”
This is balanced out by the company’s plan to keep the rate of content spending for all its platforms at around $30 billion for the next few years and its measured revision of subscriber goals. “It now looks like Disney+ is tracking towards tightened and trimmed sub guidance, while the ad-supported tier + price increases + content rationalization = a much improved long-term profit outlook,” Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall wrote in an Aug. 11 note.
Amazon’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ to Cost $465M for Just One Season
“The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that Amazon will spend roughly NZ$650 million — $465 million in U.S. dollars — for just the first season of the show.”
“Amazon’s spending will trigger a tax rebate of NZ$160 million ($114 million U.S). This is somewhat controversial in New Zealand as the government could end up on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars to help subsidize Amazon’s elves-and-hobbits drama series. Stuff reported that the country’s treasury has labeled the show a “significant fiscal risk” given there is no capped upside to how much Amazon — and therefore the government — might spend. ”
‘Bullying is a problem’: visual effects artists speak out against Marvel
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/03/marvel-disney-visual-effects-artists-speak-out
“The visual effects industry is filled with terrific people with lots of goodwill who really care but, at the end of the day, there’s nothing in place when their backs are up against the wall and Disney is making crazy demands,”
https://www.thegamer.com/marvel-mcu-vfx-artists-deadlines-crunch-stress/
“VFX artists are speaking out against Marvel, with many refusing to ever work with the entertainment giant again. This comes as artists share accounts of unworkable deadlines and immense pressure leading to stress and unsatisfactory final products. Many have requested to never be put on a Marvel project again, saying that the studio has the “worst VFX management out there”.
https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/she-hulk-cgi-marvel-vfx-artists-1235332644
“Maslany, Gao and Coiro had been asked by a journalist about their experiences with the “She-Hulk” VFX artists and “how you feel about the finished product,” noting that “there have been numerous accounts lately that VFX houses … they are feeling incredibly crushed by the studios in general and Marvel keeps getting called out.”
https://www.slashfilm.com/941931/why-so-many-vfx-artists-are-fed-up-with-marvel/
“The studio has a lot of power over the effects houses, just because it has so many blockbuster movies coming out one after the other. If you upset Marvel in any way, there’s a very high chance you’re not going to get those projects in the future. So the effects houses are trying to bend over backward to keep Marvel happy. […] One visual-effects house could not finish the number of shots and reshoots Marvel was asking for in time, so Marvel had to give my studio the work. Ever since, that house has effectively been blacklisted from getting Marvel work.”
https://gizmodo.com/disney-marvel-movies-vfx-industry-nightmare-1849385834
“There’s a joke in the visual effects industry that goes like this: Someone hears you work on films, so they ask you, “What movie made you cry?” The artist will respond, “In theaters or in the office?””
Will Artificial Intelligence End Human Creativity? The Future of Immersive Computing
Autodesk – Brian Pene
Netflix Acquires Animation Studio Animal Logic
https://deadline.com/2022/07/netflix-acquires-animation-studio-animal-logic-1235072619/
https://animallogic.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/AnimalLogic_PressRelease_Final.pdf
NETFLIX ACQUIRES WORLD LEADING INDEPENDENT ANIMATION STUDIO ANIMAL LOGIC
19 July 2022 Netflix and Animal Logic are excited to announce today that Netflix plans to acquire the
Australian animation studio.* This acquisition will support Netflix’s ambitious animated film slate,
building on films like Academy Award-nominated Over the Moon, Academy Award-nominated Klaus
and the recently released The Sea Beast
Clearview AI fined in UK for illegally storing facial images
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61550776
Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK’s privacy watchdog and told to delete the data of UK residents.
The ICO says that, globally, the company has stored more than 20 billion facial images.
Clearview AI takes publicly posted pictures from Facebook, Instagram and other sources, usually without the knowledge of the platform or any permission.
Netflix Animation’s management reboot and cancellations
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/netflix-animation-erased-executives-fired-220251819.html
Phil Rynda, whose official title is Netflix’s Director of Creative Leadership and Development for Original Animation, was let go this week, along with several of his staff, TheWrap can exclusively report and Netflix has confirmed.
Netflix shares loss may trigger a free, ad-supported streaming
Announcing its Q1 2022 results, the streaming leader revealed that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the quarter, prompting an investor sell-off that lopped off more than a third of the SVOD’s value in after-hours trading.
Netflix co-CEO Reed Hastings then revealed in an earnings call that the streamer would roll out cheaper ad-supported versions of its service, with plans being explored “over the next year or two.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61173561
Squeezed consumers are cutting back on streaming services to save money, while some feel there is too much content to choose from amid an avalanche of competition from rivals such as Disney and Amazon.
“Netflix’s wider problem, along with the rest of the sector is that consumers don’t have unlimited funds, and that one or two subscriptions is usually enough,” said Michael Hewson, an analyst at CMC Markets.
Netflix remains the world’s leading streaming service with more than 220 million subscribers. It is increasingly producing its own content and shows such as the Crown, Bridgerton and Squid Game have been global hits.
The firm had enjoyed uninterrupted quarterly growth in subscribers since October 2011 but on Tuesday it admitted it was losing customers to rivals, while struggling to expand due to password sharing.
It also said a decision to raise prices in key markets had cost it 600,000 subscribers in North America alone, while its exit from Russia over Ukraine lost it 700,000.
Rajiv Talreja on retaining talent through quality of life balance
Industrial revolution: people took a job for survival
Information revolution: people took a job for standard of living
Digital social revolution: people are taking a job for quality of life
Paramount+ reveals new streaming plans
www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60401124
Streaming service Paramount+ has announced a huge slate of new shows and films ahead of its expansion to countries including the UK this year.
Matrix co-producer sues Warner Bros. over same-day HBO Max streaming release
www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/matrix-co-producer-sues-warner-bros-over-hbo-max-streaming-release.html
“WB’s sole purpose in moving the release date of ‘The Matrix Resurrections’ forward was to create a desperately needed wave of year-end HBO Max premium subscriptions from what it knew would be a blockbuster film, despite knowing full well that it would decimate the film’s box office revenue and deprive Village Roadshow of any economic upside that WB and its affiliates would enjoy,”
“The Matrix Resurrections” disappointed at the box office, partially because of its simultaneous release strategy and partially because its target audience is older than the moviegoers who have been most active in returning to cinemas.
StudioBinder.com – What is an Entertainment Lawyer
www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-an-entertainment-lawyer-definition/
Areas Entertainment Lawyers Can Help With
– Navigating contracts
– Protecting Intellectual Property (IP)
– Connecting clients to other industry professionals (lawyers, managers, agents)
AT&T to Spin Off WarnerMedia in Merger with Discovery
www.awn.com/news/att-spin-warnermedia-merger-discovery
Discovery CEO David Zaslav told CNBC that his goal is to hit “2-, 3-, 400 million homes over the long term” — twice the amount of subscribers currently boasted by Netflix. Even prior to the merger, WarnerMedia’s key holdings – Warner Bros., HBO, CNN, DC Comics, among others – control rights to the kinds of pop culture hits that incentivize subscriptions.
