Reelist: 500 Million Facebook Friends
Sony Pictures keeps on improving its marketing game online. With the upcoming “Facebook” film, The Social Network, directed by David Fincher, Sony’s domain choice in 500millionfriends.com is inspired branding.
Compared to all of the usual/uninspired studio domains, e.g., blankmovie.com, blankthemovie.com, blank-movie.com, blank-thefilm.com and the random .net absurdity, 500MillionFriends is welcome creativity/cleverness from a major studio.
The teaser below explores the hyperbolic yet real-life world of Facebook’s origins, with lines like: “Your best friend [Eduardo Severin] is suing you for $600 million dollars…” With a majority of Americans using Facebook (okay, 3-4 out of 5 Americans), how do the filmmakers take an everyday utility like Facebook, and market (then tell) a story that captures a blockbuster audience?
CAA Exit Package: $250M from KKR
Private equity is interested in the agency business, most likely because of their spin-off businesses in sports – is sports the new Hollywood model? – and less due to the changing value of talent in the media marketplace.
Via Deadline: Is this the beginning of the end of another Hollywood agency era? My sources tell me that, after months and months of negotiations with potential financial partners pursued by CAA, the agency has focused on KKR – Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co, the NYC-based private equity firm.
Via WSJ: The KKR investment would come at a tough time for Hollywood talent agencies, whose commissions have faltered. Plummeting DVD sales and the credit crunch have left studios cutting back on the number of shows and films they produce. This has limited work for actors and directors that agents represent, leading the agencies to explore new avenues of growth. Read more >>
The Fight Over Miramax
Harvey and Bob Weinstein want to buy back Miramax, their parents’ namesake film catalog which they sold to Disney during the Eisner years for $80M.
With Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa and Fortress Financial backing them, the Weinstein’s had entered into an April exclusive buy with Disney for $625M.
However, Disney is reportedly reopening the bidding, including the Gores’ Platinum Equity Group.
Via LAT: The Weinsteins and Burkle had been in exclusive negotiations with Disney after beating out two other bidders in April: investor brothers Alec and Tom Gores and an offshore entity organized by troubled financier David Bergstein and his partner, construction magnate Ron Tutor. It’s believed that Disney plans to approach the Gores about restarting talks. Read more >>
Inception: Renovating The Matrix
DiCaprio has jumped on the “subconscious security” bandwagon with Warner Bros’ Inception film. Part Matrix reboot, part step-off from The Dark Knight for director Nolan, the film promises to create interesting comparisons between past Matrix travestologies (yes, a travesty in the trilogy mashup).
Christopher Nolan reinvigorated the cop flick with Memento, and of course reclaimed Batman from the Burton/Schumacher fiasco-sequels, but his latest WB initiative could create the next individual, filmmaker innovation, a la Peter Jackson, James Cameron and even Michael Bay’s box office reawakening with Transformers.
The Ten Spot: Nov 7, 2009
Spielberg: Have Movies Will Travel…. Again? – BusinessWeek
Even before Steven Spielberg’s newly reformulated Dreamworks SKG makes its first film, his studio is moving for a third time – well, sort of. BusinessWeek has learned that the Dreamworks operation, headed by Spielberg and producing partner Stacey Snider, is moving the rights to show its movies on pay TV from Starz (LMDIA) to Showtime (CBS).
The Hot New Business Of Virtual Goods – SAI
NYT: Analysts estimate that virtual goods could bring in a billion dollars in the United States and around $5 billion worldwide this year — all for things that, aside from perhaps a few hours of work by an artist and a programmer, cost nothing to produce. “It’s a fantastic business,” said Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested $10 million in several virtual goods companies. “Because it’s digital, the marginal cost for every one you sell is zero, so you have 100 percent margins.”
FunnyorDie.com: ‘SNL’ for the online crowd – LAT
Since its launch, the site has transcended the initial hype of Ferrell and McKay’s debut video, “The Landlord” (with 66.7-million views and counting). Now it’s a fledgling new media studio with a CEO, a Silicon Valley office and a reported ($15-million investment. (Though the site is making money, it hasn’t turned a profit, according to those familiar with its finances. McKay calls it “our not-for-profit theater.”) For the legions of comic unknowns out there, the site offers another way to network and possibly get discovered. For the A-listers, it is a creative outlet, set apart from the conglomerates running entertainment, that may not earn them a dime but pays off with street cred on the comedy scene.) Read more >>
SXSW: Multi-Picture Your Media
Woke up this am, and found the excellent SXSW PanelPicker via @ischafer (Ian Schafer from Deep Focus) recommending the PanelPicker conference scheduling site. Now here”s a topic that would engage me!
Multi-Picture Your Media: Marketing & Distribution in a Multi-Platform World
Description:
With the film and tv markets feeling the struggle of lowered DVD expectations, less foreign money and tighter windows in marketing and distribution, how can a filmmaker make a creative dent, much less drive a theatrical release? We’ll discuss the traditional “multi-picture” play with an eye to creating a definitive niche, an aggregated audience and a release schedule that exhibitors, film buyers and studios have to pay attention to. From Robert Rodriguez’s “El Mariachi” to Peter Jackson produced “District 9″ – an interactive-focused walkthru on how to attract publicity, marketing and distribution using multi-platform next-generation practices. Read more >>
Reelist: X-Men’s Wolverine, Innovating Film Franchises
So begins the inaugural summer blockbuster release season: Wolverine, the X-Men origins backstory or prequel on the immortal, was superhuman enough to pull away from the pack with $87 million or $21,225 per theater average. From Hugh Jackman’s Oscar hosting to the leaking of a screener, the latest Marvel franchise had plenty of build-up, and many are already saying the leak either didn’t hurt or cost the film $20 million. Read more >>
Reelist: Brüno vs. Borat for Box Office
Sasha Baron Cohen’s Brüno - the Universal and Media Rights Capital (MRC) film – promises to push the boundaries of taste in a very cash-positive way when it opens on July 10th. Below, the “Red Band” restricted trailer – MySpace video is on-and-off, so via TrailerAddict:
After the jump, a comparison of Brüno v. Borat with 14 Brüno aggregated clips to boot… Read more >>
Reelist: Duplicity, Action Movie for the Corporate Mind
In Duplicity, Tony Gilroy’s latest film – think the Bourne trilogy scripter and Michael Clayton writer-director – CIA officer Claire Stenwick (Julia Roberts) and MI6 agent Ray Koval (Clive Owen) have left the world of government intelligence to cash in on the highly profitable cold war raging between two rival multinational corporations. Their mission: secure the formula for an over-the-counter consumer drug. A sophisticated romantic thriller, Duplicity engages the corporate mind while weaving in an espionage anti-script. What, however, does Duplicity do for innovation? Read more >>
Anti-Studio: Theatrical Drives Theatrical, Not DVD As Usual
Is DVD on the downturn? During a recent lunch with one of my favorite studio digital media chiefs, we discussed the future of home entertainment – DVDs, Blu-Ray, Netflix, hulu, On Demand, digital downloads, you get the basic idea. We mused what the return would be in the next year or two when more of the consumer world is looking for at-home (“digital home”) entertainment, and not tuned into buying packaged DVDs or renting from brick-and-mortars like Blockbuster. Do people actually still buy and rent this way still, you ask? Yes, but they’re moving towards the $4 on-demand, 24-hour window rental – which is 1/4 what studios are used to based on the current retail environment. So how do they survive? Read more >>
Reelist: The ABCs of Film Clichés
At Reelist: it made sense to update the clichés behind so many over-clichéd titles. What with Hollywood pursuing more big-budget films every year, there are mass-targeting efforts underfoot to mainstream audiences to these bromide-heavy, ‘tentpole’ releases:
Aliens: Aliens have just one, singular culture – same language, religion, clothes – whichever planet they herald from. They rarely come in peace, and never blow up Earth when they lose ground. They typically come back for those who have been left behind, no matter the risk. Read more >>