| Fox Studio Unit to Focus on Foreign Films | The Wall Street Journal May 13, 2008 | News Corp.'s Twentieth Century Fox studio launched Fox International Productions to oversee the production and acquisition of local-language movies, an effort to consolidate its foreign-film operations in various regions.
Fox joins competitors like General Electric Co.'s Universal Pictures International and Sony Corp.'s International Motion Picture Production department, which in the past year began to centralize their local foreign-film production and acquisition operations.
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| | Films, TV Sag Under the $Tar System | | Los Angeles TimesMay 12, 2008 | Here we go again.
The entertainment industry quivers near the brink, threatened with another devastating strike even as people are still picking up the pieces from the last one.
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| Tax Incentives Urged for Studios | | Los Angeles TimesMay 10, 2008 | Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Friday that California must boost tax incentives to movie and TV studios to help keep productions from moving out of state.
He said incentive offerings by other states were luring studios away and costing California tens of thousands of jobs.
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| | Warner Bros. Shutters Two Indie Film Labels | | The Wall Street JournalMay 09, 2008 | In the latest sign that Hollywood studios are gun shy about the art-house movie market they once coveted, Warner Bros. said it is shutting down its two specialty film labels as part of a broader effort to streamline costs.
Warner Bros.' move to close the two boutique labels, Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures, comes just a few weeks after the company absorbed a third specialty label, New Line Cinema, into the main Warner studio operation.
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| Studios win $111 million judgment against TorrentSpy.com | | Associated Press/AP OnlineMay 08, 2008 | LOS ANGELES - The six major Hollywood studios have won a $111 million judgment for copyright infringement against the shut-down file-sharing Web site TorrentSpy.com.
The judgment, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, fined the operators of the Web site, Valence Media LLC, $30,000 per violation for nearly 3,700 illegal movie and TV show downloads.
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| | Lawsuit Over Movies on Web Settled | | Los Angeles TimesMay 06, 2008 | Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and other members of the Motion Picture Assn.
of America settled a lawsuit against a website they accused of illegally posting copyrighted movies.
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| Hot Spot for U.S. Movie Scores | | Los Angeles TimesMay 06, 2008 | SOFIA, Bulgaria -- Victor and Borislav Chouchkov were satisfied.
Co-owners of a family recording company in Sofia, the brothers had completed -- in just 48 hours -- recording a score for a movie starring Ethan Hawke.
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| | N.Y.'s Cuomo Hits Film Piracy | | Los Angeles TimesMay 06, 2008 | New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo on Monday announced the latest effort to stiffen New York's anti-film-piracy laws.
of America, Cuomo said 50% of all illegally recorded movies are pirated in New York, costing the state millions of dollars and thousands of jobs.
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| 'Iron Man' Big Opening Boosts Marvel And Viacom | | The Wall Street JournalMay 05, 2008 | A huge opening weekend for comic-book adventure "Iron Man" marked an impressive Hollywood debut for Marvel Studios and gave hope that the theatrical movie business may be relatively immune to the nation's economic woes.
"Iron Man" sold an estimated $104.3 million worth of tickets since its U.S. opening late Thursday; $100.8 million of the take came during the normal three- day weekend beginning Friday, according to studio figures released on Sunday.
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| | Actors Guild, Studios to Extend Talks | | Los Angeles TimesMay 03, 2008 | The Screen Actors Guild and Hollywood studios for the second time extended their talks on a new three-year contract, in a sign the parties are finding some common ground.
For the last three weeks, SAG and the studios have been locked in negotiations on a contract that would earn actors a larger slice of revenue for their work in the digital age.
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| Apple to Begin Selling Movies on Release Date: FILMS TO COST $14.99 THROUGH ITUNES STORE | | San Jose Mercury NewsMay 02, 2008 | May 2--Apple, which hopes to do for show business what it has done for digital music, is now selling new movie releases from major studios and independent film companies on the same day as their DVD releases, the company announced Thursday.
"What this shows is that digital media is gaining momentum on traditional media," observed Phil Leigh, president of research firm Inside Digital Media.
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| | Japan's Oricon to Sell Struggling S Korean Movie Download Subsidiary. | | AsiaPulse NewsMay 01, 2008 | TOKYO, May 1 Asia Pulse - Oricon Inc. (TSE:4800) announced Wednesday that it will unload most of its stake in South Korean subsidiary Oricon CNS Inc. and remove the troubled provider of movie download services from its consolidated earnings.
Dongbang Environment Technology is a South Korean company involved in telecommunications.
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| Studios not willing to accept contract demands by actors | | Associated Press/AP OnlineMay 01, 2008 | LOS ANGELES - Major Hollywood studios said Wednesday they won't accept pay hikes sought by the Screen Actors Guild in contract talks, suggesting a deal is unlikely before the talks temporarily end later this week.
In a statement posted on its Web site, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said significant gaps remain between the two sides after 13 days of talks.
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| | Warner Bros. To End Lag On Pay-TV Movie Release | | The Wall Street JournalMay 01, 2008 | In a sign of Hollywood's interest in new forms of distribution that can replace the DVD, Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. unit this year plans to release almost all of its movies via video-on-demand services on the same day the DVDs are released.
The move could have broad ramifications for Hollywood, which has relied heavily on DVD revenue in recent years, even as that market has matured.
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| Media & Marketing -- Entertainment: DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. | | The Wall Street JournalApril 30, 2008 | DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.'s first-quarter profit soared 69% as "Shrek the Third" DVDs and the international box office of "Bee Movie" drove results.
The Jerry Seinfeld vehicle "Bee Movie" has grossed $287.1 million world-wide.
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| | Summer Movies Drive Toys Full-Speed to Shelves | | USA TODAYApril 29, 2008 | LOS ANGELES -- Forget the battle of the box office.
More than 2,000 toys and 6,000 other merchandising tie-ins -- from fast-food trinkets to life-size, limited-edition busts -- are flooding stores to coincide with summer's biggest movies, including Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Dark Knight and The Incredible Hulk.
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| Pay-TV Test Set for Film Venture | | Los Angeles TimesApril 25, 2008 | A partnership of Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Lionsgate to launch a movie channel and video-on-demand service is a risky test of the promise of new media.
The question is whether the joint venture will be able to yield the same enormous dividends that Hollywood studios have reaped for decades from pay-TV services such as HBO, Showtime and Starz.
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| | Three U.S. Film Surprises in Lineup | | Los Angeles TimesApril 24, 2008 | PARIS -- Eleventh-hour additions of Clint Eastwood's thriller "Changeling," starring Angelina Jolie, and Steven Soderbergh's double Che Guevara biopics, "The Argentine" and "Guerrilla," were among the big news delivered by festival general manager Thierry Fremaux during Wednesday's news conference to unveil the official lineup for the 61st annual Cannes Film Festival.
However, the opening- and closing-night films remain a mystery.
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| Media & Marketing: Disney Launches Film Label Focused on Nature Documentaries | | The Wall Street JournalApril 22, 2008 | In a bid to cash in on the appetite for so-called green entertainment, Walt Disney Co. launched Disneynature, a new film label that will focus on live- action documentary films starring the Earth and its inhabitants and intended for theatrical release.
The new division will be run by Jean-Francois Camilleri, a longtime Disney executive in France who also helped develop the French documentary "March of the Penguins," which was distributed in the U.S. by a division of Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. In a presentation at Disney's Burbank, Calif., headquarters, Chief Executive Robert Iger said th
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| | Summer Forecast: Film Industry in a Tights Spot | | USA TODAYApril 18, 2008 | LOS ANGELES -- Hollywood desperately needs a hero, and not the kind that fights crime, or flies or wears tights.
Heading into its most important season of the year, the film industry is staggering into summer.
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