Category: media

The hackers said they would release bits of the film — in increments — if their demands weren’t met. Disney would not comment, but insiders said that the company refuse to pay.

This is not the same thing as saying, “Ratings don’t matter anymore.” We’re not in a post-ratings world — at least not yet. As long as revenue from advertisers remains part of the network TV business model, ratings will matter. Broadcasters aren’t Netflix or HBO. They still want to live up to their name and find shows with a broad appeal, like This Is Us or The Big Bang Theory. But after a decade of audience erosion, including double-digit declines for the vast majority of shows this season, networks have finally accepted reality: People aren’t watching the TV the way they used to, and selling commercials isn’t enough to pay the bills (and make a big profit).

Projected to open officially in August next year, it will contain the world’s largest production facility: 400 acres, 45 sound stages, one a record-breaking 10,000 sq metres. It’s an attempt by Wang Jianlin – China’s richest man and the founder of the overarching Dalian Wanda group – to steal some of Hollywood’s thunder.

Consider the runaway success of Baahubali 2, whose numbers – it was “budgeted at $39m, made in Telugu and Tamil, with Hindi and Malayalam dubbed versions – are astonishing by Indian standards. The film opened on 28 April and grossed $194m in 13 days, making it the highest Indian grosser of all time and putting it on track to become the first Indian film to gross $200m.”

Shockingly, not The Crown – though a show of the actual Queen’s 90th birthday party did win an award.

Netflix is banned starting next year, unless it agrees to release its movies in theatres. “Ted Sarandos previously said something like, ‘We’re not going to bother with these old Parisian theatres.’ But we, at Cannes, care dearly about these old Parisian theatres.”

The Verge: “When Lana talks about her work, she tends to put it in heady, intellectual terms, looking at deconstructionism and semiotics and Jacques Derrida and Kant. Does she bring up that kind of philosophy when she’s talking to the cast?”

Freema Agyeman: “Oh yeah, she does, but we can only contribute so far, because we just kind of go, ‘Huh?’ [Laughs] They’re incredibly erudite, and that’s fascinating. You can sit and learn so much from them.”

Here’s the thing, and why the sequel won’t matter so much: “Without Twin Peaks, and its big-bang expansion of the possibilities of television, half your favorite shows wouldn’t exist. The absorptive, all-in serial, sonically and visually entire, novelistically cantilevered with deep structure and extending backwards into the viewer’s brain, was simply not a thing before Lynch and Frost. With Twin Peaks they effectively renegotiated TV’s contract with its audience.”

First of all, more action, less talk: “It’s not enough to say ‘Oh there’s a wage gap’ and ‘Oh only 7% of American film directors are women’, you have to say, ‘Well if I’m part of the industry I’m part of the problem, what can I do to help?'”