Month: August 2019

August 15, 2019 11:10PM PT Jagan Shakti’s exhilaratingly schmaltzy fact-based drama about India’s epochal launch of a Mars-bound satellite is a rousing crowd-pleaser. Chronic cynics and inveterate snarkers would do themselves — and everyone else — a great big favor by steering clear of “Mission Mangal,” an entertaining and ingratiating feel-good movie about the 2013
0 Comments
Disney’s live-action “Mulan” film has become an unlikely battleground for the fight against Beijing’s authoritarian rule after its main star, China-born Crystal Liu Yifei, retweeted a Chinese propaganda post in support of the police crackdown on mass anti-government protests in Hong Kong. On the Twitter-like Weibo social media platform, where Liu has nearly 66 million
0 Comments
YouTube is pushing back against overzealous copyright policing by music companies. Starting in mid-September, the video giant will forbid copyright holders from making manual claims to commandeer revenue generated by YouTube videos that include very short music clips (e.g., five seconds of a song) or “unintentional” music (like music from passing cars). “One concerning trend
0 Comments
The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau has brought down the hammer on several networks that, according to the agency, misused the Emergency Alert System or Wireless Emergency Alert tones on episodes of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” among other programs. The programs were accused of violating the FCC’s rules on actual
0 Comments
There’s something uniquely satisfying about watching Kirsten Dunst snarl. Dunst and her on-screen personae appear to relish the opportunity to take advantage of people’s tendency to underestimate them; when a Dunst character taps into her latent anger, the actor brings it to the boiling surface with startling ferocity. Her otherwise cherubic face breaks into a
0 Comments
Activision Blizzard tapped David Messinger, a former 15-plus-year veteran of CAA, as its first corporate-wide chief marketing officer. Messinger, based in Santa Monica, reports to Coddy Johnson, Activision Blizzard’s president and COO. It’s the first time the video-game company has appointed a CMO who will oversee the global marketing operations across all of Activision Blizzard
0 Comments
Screen Engine/ASI, a market research firm that specializes in focus-group testing of movies and TV pilots, has acquired ticktBox, which operates a digital marketing and ticketing platform used by movie distributors, exhibitors, and TV networks. Terms of the deal, which closed Aug. 9, weren’t disclosed. With ticktBox, SE/ASI will have one of the largest databases of
0 Comments
Thematic Entertainment, the Los Angeles and Melbourne-based outfit launched by Chris Hemsworth, has optioned U.S. remake rights to “Bajo la rosa” (“Under the Rose”), Spaniard Josué Ramos’ debut feature. The original psychological thriller was released in 2018 in Spain via arthouse SVOD platform Filmin, and is experiencing a buoyant international roll-out as a completed film,
0 Comments
August 15, 2019 12:28PM PT Media analysts and the entertainment industry aren’t the only ones paying attention to the recent CBS-Viacom merger. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, a current frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, has weighed in on the merger, Tweeting that the Department of Justice “should be paying close attention.” According to Warren, the pair
0 Comments