Category: media

Disney is slashing jobs and reducing the number of movies it produces in a year from 18 to 8. “Disney’s move reflects a trend in Hollywood to cut costs amid increasing overhead, production budgets and marketing bills. Disney has said for some time it was going to cut its total number of films and concentrate on Disney-branded offerings, which make more money that those released on the studio’s Touchstone label.”

The number of movie jobs in Los Angeles increased for the second year in a year last year. “In Los Angeles, the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and three smaller, nearby cities, ‘production days’ on feature films rose from 8,707 in 2004 to 9,518 last year, according to a midyear update from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. Until 2004, location production days had fallen for seven years in a row, a function of runaway production.”

Hollywood has invited films from 83 countries to compete for this year’s foreign-language Oscar. The countries “include the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan, who have received their first invites this year. A recent rule change means that films entered for the award need no longer be in the country’s official language.”

Independent UK record labels are seeking a change in Britain’s copyright law that would hold internet service providers (ISPs) liable for illegal downloads by users. The industry also hopes to encourage the development of more legal downloading services.

A year ago Hollywood was anxious about a string of bad weeks at the box office. But “as of early July the picture has brightened for Hollywood with a slight surge in profits. The news comes as a big relief – just weeks ago the figures were not encouraging, according to film industry analysts.”

The ratings company Nielsen “plans to measure how many people actually watch TV commercials starting in November, a move that could result in a decline in advertising rates…”

The Canadian government has declined to give Quebec filmmakers $20 million in “emergency” aid. Last month 20 representatives of the Quebec industry went to Ottawa to complain about “Telefilm Canada’s recent announcement that, because of lack of funds, it could help bankroll only four or five Quebec features this year, leaving more than two dozen projects without support.”

Canada’s CBC is embroiled in a dispute over a mini-series about Tommy Douglas, a 20th Century political leader. Descendants of one of Douglas’s opponents are protesting the depiction of their ancestor. The CBC seems willing to accommodate the protest, but not to the protesters satisfaction. Meanwhile researchers for the series stand by their portrayals and are angry that CBC is considering the protests. “Is there only one accepted version of history? It’s shocking that this is coming from a public broadcaster.”

“Because of user fees and a confusing tangle of theater alliances, online ticket sellers like MovieTickets.com and Fandango.com, whose purpose is to save people from long waits at the ticket counter, have yet to win the hearts of mainstream theatergoers. But surging revenues from advertising and a possible shift in business philosophy could change that.”

“The demise of the independent bookstore has been augured for nearly a generation now, the inevitable casualty of behemoths like Borders and Barnes & Noble, online booksellers like Amazon, and ultimately, so we’re told, of the universal, digital library imagined by Google and various techno-visionaries. The more imminent demise of the video store, meanwhile, has merited only occasional notice, mostly in the business pages. Yet something important is being lost here, something that isn’t going to be replaced by rent-by-mail outfits like Netflix, video-on-demand services, or newfangled delivery systems like the Disney-backed MovieBeam.”