Hollywood

A New Mexico judge has ordered that the producers of the western film Rust hand over documents that counsel fears could be used for further charges against Alec Baldwin, siding with prosecutors who say the film company obstructed the investigation of the 2021 death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

The Disney Grooming Syndicate lost even more money on its woke Little Mermaid remake than had been reported.

Previous budget reports said the movie cost $250 million to produce. The actual budget, per this report at Forbes, was $300 million, which does not include promotion costs.

The only reason we know the truth is because Disney wanted tax credits from the United Kingdom, where much of the movie was filmed, and the UK doesn’t put up with bookkeeping shenanigans the way we do here in America.

“The root problem is that there are too many streaming services. That is creating confusion for consumers and hopeless economics for the companies. Consolidation, whether in the form of mergers, joint ventures or bundles, has to come to the streaming world for the industry to be viable.”

In the Fifties, television destroyed radio, many of whose stars were themselves survivors of the death of vaudeville, and persisted through radio and into film: The Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields. And many of the first movie stars had come first from the music halls, such as Chaplin; Will Rogers became a movie star after his pre-eminence in vaudeville.

NEW YORK (AP) — After a 148-day strike, Hollywood screenwriters secured significant guardrails against the use of artificial intelligence in one of the first major labor battles over generative AI in the workplace.

As the old rule of politics has it, one should never argue with a man who buys ink by the barrel. And perhaps in the past few months, Hollywood has earned its own, updated version: never start a war of words with anyone who spends all day in front of their laptop. Incredibly, that is what the studios did in May, when they refused to back down in a contract dispute with the Writers’ Guild of America (WGA) – the union which represents the 11,500 screenwriters currently earning a living, or trying to, in the US film and TV business. And even now the bitter 146-day strike which followed is over, only now is the real trouble about to begin.

The WGA has reached a tentative deal, but it’s just a temporary fix.

If you’ve tuned into TV at all in recent months, you may have noticed that most shows sounded rather familiar. Hollywood has been running reruns for five months while writers and actors picketed outside of major studio headquarters. This week, those picket lines may be getting shorter.

Hollywood heaves a sigh of relief. The WGA and major studios and streamers have reached a tentative agreement on a new three-year contract that promises to end the 146-day strike that has taken a heavy toll across the content industry.

But we hadn’t started to miss them yet!

The hit series Yellowstone has handily beaten Disney in a new fan survey of the top entertainment franchises — a notable feat considering the western series starring Kevin Costner is only five years old.

Yellowstone ranked No. 7 in entertainment and gaming company’s Fandom’s annual survey — which polled 5,000 fans — while the Disney brand trailed at No. 10, according to the results reported by Deadline.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood studios and striking screenwriters are resuming negotiations for the second consecutive day Thursday. The talks could potentially put an end to the nearly five-month dispute that has brought many film and television productions to a halt.

Striking Hollywood actors and writers escalated their war with the studios this week, participating in a joint march in Los Angeles that clogged the streets of the Hollywood neighborhood as protestors marched Tuesday from Netflix offices to the historic Paramount lot.

Meanwhile, the actors union fired off an acrimonious salvo, accusing the studios and streamers of refusing to return to the bargaining table, with SAG-AFTRA leadership calling executives “petty tyrants.”