Business Features
“Our Billion-Dollar Olympic Lab”: What NBC Is Taking From Paris to L.A.
The Paris Olympics have put NBC and its employees in a mighty good mood. Walking through NBC Sports’ headquarters midway through the games, one could almost feel the energy and good vibes. And not just because of the live music and s’more-making in fire pits by the Eiffel Tower. No, not that Eiffel Tower. In […]
- By
How the Summer Box Office Went From Tragic to Magic
An exhausted Ryan Reynolds was overwhelmed when the opening-day grosses started pouring in on July 26 for Deadpool & Wolverine, the third entry in his audacious superhero series. By July 27, the impossible was within reach: The Marvel Studios pic was going to cross $200 million in its domestic debut, something no one thought possible […]
- By
What Hollywood Wants From Kamala Harris
As Democrats scrambled to shore up support for Kamala Harris, two megadonors openly challenged one of the core tenets of Joe Biden’s agenda, to rein in corporate power, in a move that could prove to be bitterly divisive within the party if Donald Trump is defeated in November. On July 25, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman went […]
- By
How the NBA’s Slam-Dunk Deals Will Reshape TV
The NBA’s blockbuster $76 billion megadeals with Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon Prime are a testament to its product, and the unrivaled reach and power of live sports. And the deals should also send shivers down the spines of almost everyone in Hollywood outside the network executive suites. While the 11-year agreements are seen as a critical […]
- By
Would You Do It Again? A Year After Strikes, Hollywood Reckons With the Aftermath
“What are we doing, moving around furniture on the Titanic?,” SAG-AFTRA leader and former star of The Nanny Fran Drescher asked a packed conference room of reporters on July 13, 2023. Her union of 160,000 performers had just announced it was going on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. It was joining the Writers Guild of […]
- By
Hollywood Fears of a Major Hack Are Growing
Ten years ago, a hacker group calling itself The Guardians of Peace released a trove of internal communications and data from Sony Pictures. Its demand? That Sony pull an upcoming film, The Interview, in which Seth Rogen and James Franco played journalists trying to secure an interview with Kim Jong-Un. What followed became an international […]
- By
As Moguls Make Sun Valley Plans, Fear of Big Tech Echoes in Dealmaking Haven
It started with the conspicuous TV news crews. “I get out of my car and see five media vans with the dishes and everything. It was weird. It’s very different than last year. There are reporters everywhere,” so relayed one Sun Valley attendee, speaking anonymously to The Hollywood Reporter for a July 1999 news item […]
- By
Sports TV’s Multibillion-Dollar Rights Race: Where the Leaderboard Stands Right Now
Sometime in the near future, the NBA will sign a new TV contract that will roughly triple the value of its current deal. The league is likely to get a $70 billion-plus windfall (from ESPN and, most likely, NBC Sports and Amazon) — even though the audience for professional basketball has been mostly static in […]
- By
Streaming Profits Are Tough to Find. Niche Movie and TV Platforms See a Way Forward
By now everyone in Hollywood seems to accept that streaming is a cutthroat business. It may not be zero sum (most studies suggest that consumers will pay for about four streaming services at a time), but it is mighty close to it. And with Netflix holding a secure lock on one of those subscriptions for […]
- By
Shari Redstone Goes for Broke: Can Paramount Pick Up the Pieces?
Six months ago, a deal to sell Paramount Global (or at least control of the company via Shari Redstone’s National Amusements) seemed all but certain. Deep conversations were happening with a consortium led by David Ellison’s Skydance and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird; a partnership between Sony Pictures and Apollo emerged as a possible spoiler; even Warner […]
- By
Behind Netflix’s Real-Life Legal Dramas
In the first episode of When They See Us, Ava DuVernay’s bleak drama about the Central Park Five, Linda Fairstein, then head of the sex crimes unit investigating the case, gives an order to dispatch an army of officers to Harlem. “Every young Black male who was in the park last night is a suspect […]
- By
Streamflation Alert: Why Subscription Prices Are Suddenly Spiking (Again)
If 2023 was the year of “streamflation,” to use a term coined by the consulting firm KPMG, 2024 is shaping up to be a fast sequel — Streamflation Part 2: They’ll Keep Paying. Streaming services across video and music are raising prices again, or are poised to do so, marking the second such price hikes […]
- By