Vice to file for bankruptcy if it can’t find a buyer as it becomes the latest new media company to collapse with dwindling revenue and interest Vice, founded in 1994 in Montreal as a free magazine: by 2017 it was valued at $5.7 billion, with 3,000 employees The company had a cable network, more than…
Category: Film

Box Office: ‘Jackass Forever’ Catapults to No. 1 as ‘Moonfall’ Craters
After living through nearly two years of a pandemic that won’t end, Americans, as it turns out, were in desperate need of a laugh. That may explain why Paramount’s go-for-broke action comedy “Jackass Forever” triumphed at the domestic box office while Roland Emmerich’s disaster epic “Moonfall” turned into an epic disaster. “Jackass Forever,” the fourth…

Barry Diller Headed 2 Hollywood Studios. He Now Says The Movie Business Is Dead
Barry Diller made his name in the film industry as the chairman and CEO of two Hollywood studios, Paramount Pictures and what was then 20th Century Fox. Now, he is declaring the industry dead. “The movie business is over,” Diller said in an exclusive interview with NPR on the sidelines of the Allen & Company…

Cosby release infuriates survivors; lawyers hail win for Constitution
Reaction to Bill Cosby being freed from prison on Wednesday after Pennsylvania’s highest court overturned his sexual assault conviction ranged from outrage to cheers. Here are some of those voices: – “Today’s devastating decision to overturn the conviction of a man who caused so much harm, pain, and emotional trauma to so many women is…

Agencies, Studios Debate: When to Drop a Star Who Becomes Toxic?
As publicly reported Hollywood misconduct cases grow in frequency, there remains a lack of consistency with regard to how the industry responds. On Feb. 4, a group of WME staffers convened in a conference online to discuss the escalating Armie Hammer situation. For the past three years, the agency’s client advisory committee has been tasked with…

Trump, on huge White House stage, decrying Biden, radicals
Facing a moment fraught with national crises, President Donald Trump accepted his party’s renomination on a massive White House South Lawn stage Thursday night, breaking with tradition by using the executive mansion as a political backdrop and defying pandemic guidelines to address a tightly packed, largely maskless crowd. As troubles churned outside the gates, Trump…

Thomas Chatterton Williams on Race, Identity, and “Cancel Culture”
Thomas Chatterton Williams, one of the contributors to the Harper’s letter, discusses what the document aimed to accomplish and whether cancel culture has always existed.Source: Harper’s Magazine On July 7th, Harper’s Magazine published what it called “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate,” which quickly became part of the conversation around the subject of “cancel culture.” The letter, which…

Two projects are being filmed again. This is how they are doing it.
Baltasar Kormakur, the Icelandic director best known in the United States for “Everest,quot; and “Contraband,” turned to a color-coded armband system to get his sci-fi Netflix series “Katla,quot; back into production in Reykjavik after the coronavirus closed it down in mid-March. Producer Lucas Foster made the difficult and costly decision to isolate his entire cast and crew in…

SHOWBIZ IN SHOCK…
Hollywood’s Great Depression: Meet the Entertainment Workers Left Jobless by the Coronavirus Pandemic Mac Brandt was one of the lucky ones. For the past six years, he’s made a living purely from acting, appearing in television shows like “Kingdom” and “Arrested Development,” and scrounging up enough jobs to pay the bills without having to tend bar…

Bob Iger Thought He Was Leaving on Top. Now, He’s Fighting for Disney’s Life.
The Walt Disney Company turned franchises like Marvel and “Star Wars” into the biggest media business in the world, and last fall it was putting the finishing touches on the image of a storied character: its chief executive, Bob Iger. In late September, Mr. Iger, 69, published “The Ride of a Lifetime,” an engaging work of…