By Ken Ziffren September 13, 2018 | There's a lot of mystery and speculation about the new direction of the filmed entertainment unit of The Walt Disney Co. The largest of the traditional Hollywood studios is in the process of switching from a wholesale producer and distributor of content to a direct-to-consumer (call it "DTC," or "Disney Play") model. By the end of...
BY BEN MUNSON September 07, 2018 | AT&T owns a significant SVOD product in HBO Now, with its $15-per-month price point and more than 5 million subscribers. But the company may be looking at bundling it with other direct-to-consumer products. John Stankey, head of WarnerMedia, gave that impression during a discussion at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media and Entertainment conference this...
By Jason Knott September 6, 2018 | The invasion of the IT industry into the entertainment industry is rapidly shifting the media environment, and it creates a substantial opportunity for custom integrators to capture cord-cutters. That was the over-riding message from John Penney, executive vice president of consumer development & strategic partnerships at 20thCentury Fox, who spoke as the opening keynote speaker at CEDIA...
By Tim Peterson September 4, 2018 | Within one of the oldest buildings at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, resides the entertainment giant’s future. On the first floor of The Walt Disney Studios’ Animation building — two floors below Walt Disney’s old office — sits Disney’s StudioLab, the epicenter of the company’s investment in emerging technologies. Through a partnership with Accenture...
By Eriq Gardner August 30, 2018 | Disney has prevailed on its second attempt to stop Redbox from selling digital codes that consumers can redeem at online outlets to access copies of Black Panther and other movies. On Thursday, a California federal judge granted a motion for a preliminary injunction. The judge blessed the studio's revised licensing terms over "Combo Packs" which he concluded no...
By Dawn C. Chmielewski August 28, 2018 | Amazon is holding exploratory talks with major Hollywood studios about creating films for its streaming service, sources confirmed to Deadline. The company has held preliminary discussions with Paramount and Sony and possibly others about the possibility of developing original movies for the streaming service. Talks are still in the early stages, and no agreements have been reached,...
By Daniel Frankel August 27, 2018 | Having spent more than $1 billion for a salvo of new original shows set to launch next year, Apple is in the process of building out its Culver City, Calif-based marketing team. Over the weekend, Apple posted an job opening on LinkedIn, looking for a “creative director for original content." Silicon Valley’s largest company is seeking...
By Jonathan Berr August 21, 2018 | Chief executive Bob Iger of Walt Disney is facing a challenge that will make his recent victory over Comcast in the battle for 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets seem like a walk in the park. I am not talking about the difficulty Iger will experience in integrating the storied 20th Century Fox studio and other assets of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire into...
By Scott Mendelson August 22, 2018 | If we judge a studio’s summer by the amount of new franchises it created, Warner Bros. may be the unofficial winner. Yes, Walt Disney ruled the roost with 42% of the overall market share, even if 22% of that came from just two movies (Avengers: Infinity War and Incredibles 2). And yes, Universal/Comcast Corp. had the year’s...
By Cynthia Littleton August 21, 2018 | Trying to play catch-up to Netflix, the largest U.S. media conglomerates are bent on reinventing part of their operations as a direct-to-consumer business model. The industry’s biggest content producers aim to tap into the efficiency of streaming video via the internet to build proprietary pipelines into America’s living rooms, laptops, tablets and smartphones. “The modern media...
