B. Riley analyst Eric Wold, who has stayed generally bullish on the movie theater business despite its recent trials, is now warning investors that the arrival of a “down box office year” has made him “increasingly cautious.” In a note to clients about his 2024 outlook, Wold wrote that he expects the stock performance of
WGA Strike
Big media shares, which rose in pre-market trading Monday, opened lower at the bell and are still trending down midday after the Writers Guild reached a tentative deal with studios to end their prolonged strike. Renewed market jitters over inflation, interest rates and a potential government shutdown appeared to have offset relief that Hollywood is
Mike Cavanagh, the president of Comcast who was recently named the de-facto head of NBC Universal, said the company remains “committed to reaching a fair deal [with actors and writers[ as soon as possible, so we can get back to doing what we do best, which making great content together.” In a change, he kicked
At a time when the industry is suffering through historic dual strikes by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA, the motion picture industry is poised to see an enormous weekend at the box office with Warner Bros./Mattel’s long awaited toy feature adaptation Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s World War II era three-hour adult drama Oppenheimer reaping a combined
What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise
It feels like Covid all over again, but it’s not. Disney has just made a slew of release-date changes, many due to the impact of the WGA strike and screenplays not being ready and productions paused. We already know that Thunderbolts and Blade are waiting the strike out before rolling cameras. Scripts aren’t fully ready
Alex Newell of Shucked and J. Harrison Ghee of Some Like It Hot broke ground Sunday night as the first openly nonbinary Tony Award winners. Newell won for Best Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical and Ghee for Best Actor in a Lead Role in a Musical. Both drew huge ovations with acceptance
Six weeks into the writers strike, the early returns on summer studio films have been some of the best since Covid brought the exhibition business to a screeching halt. But if SAG-AFTRA members trade lines of dialogue for picket lines beginning July 1, the business might well look like pandemic redux. The domestic box office
In a week when distributors and exhibitors are reconvening for their annual Las Vegas meet-up, CinemaCon, and celebrating the post-pandemic resurge of the box office, the motion picture industry is bracing for a potential WGA strike. With production and deal-making slowing down, especially with 98% of WGA West and WGA East authorizing a strike if