Universal

When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn’t about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that
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With theaters largely closed due to COVID-19 nationwide (except for a handful of drive-ins), there are many things that make sense financially for major studios when it comes to the distribution of their movies right now. It made sense that current theatrical releases such as Bloodshot, The Invisible Man, The Hunt, Onward, etc. would quickly
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In what is considered an anomaly in the industry for an on-demand rental title (not sellthrough): Dreamworks Animation/Universal’s Trolls World Tour is now available for pre-order on FandangoNOW in advance of the pic’s April 10 availability date. While pre-orders for sell-through titles like Bad Boys for Life are quite common, that’s not the case with VOD rental titles. In
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Illumination/Universal’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru has been moved off of its global release which was previously set for late June in some offshore markets and for July 3 domestically. This is another casualty of the coronavirus pandemic as Illumination’s Mac Guff studio in Paris has been temporarily shuttered in abidance with the current lockdown
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If predicting box office openings wasn’t worse enough for the industry, the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. has studios and exhibition at the edge of their seats as concerns swell about how bad the impact might be. This weekend’s wide entries — Sony’s Vin Diesel movie Bloodshot,  Lionsgate-Kingdom Story’s faith-based K.J. Apa movie I Still Believe
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“We are in uncharted territory.” Those are the words from one exhibition source this morning to Deadline in the wake of MGM/Eon/Universal’s shocking shift of No Time to Die from its April 10 Easter global launch date to Thanksgiving, largely due to those Asian markets effected by the coronavirus. Don’t doubt this for a second,
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Universal–Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man made its first appearance Thursday night at 7 PM shows nationwide with $1.65 million, an an amount of cash that’s near both studios’ previous collaborations, Get Out ($1.8M Thursday) and Split ($2M). Both 2017 titles overperformed their $20M-predicted tracking at the time, with Split posting a $40M start, and Get Out taking $33.3M. Invisible Man, directed and written
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It’s not as if Universal and Blumhouse anticipated the opening of its gaslight thriller The Invisible Man to coincide with the guilty verdict handed down this week to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein in his sexual misconduct trial. But the Blumhouse-produced movie written and directed by Leigh Whannell arrives in cinemas at a moment when the
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Jurassic World 3 director Colin Trevorrow on Tuesday announced Day 1 of shooting for the Universal sequel, plus the pic’s title: Jurassic World: Dominion.  It’s Trevorrow’s second time directing the dinosaur franchise, after J.A. Bayona took over for the second movie, 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Trevorrow is also exec producing with Steven Spielberg. Frank Marshall
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Peter Levinsohn was named Vice Chairman and Chief Distribution Officer for Universal Filmed Entertainment Group today after serving as President and Chief Distribution Officer since 2013. In his new role, Levinsohn will oversee domestic theatrical distribution, global home entertainment, global television distribution, new media and digital strategy, and film technology. Prior to joining Universal, Levinsohn
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Following a barrage of criticism eight months ago from right-wing commentators and President Donald Trump, who called the movie one that will “inflame and cause chaos,” Universal-Blumhouse’s The Hunt is muscling its way back on to the release calendar with a March 13 date. It’s being billed in a new ad campaign as “The Most
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