Top Reads Scarlett Johansson v Disney: Hollywood’s next labor battle Last Thursday, Scarlett Johansson dropped a bombshell lawsuit on Disney, alleging breach of contract. The suit claims that Johansson had a theatrical-exclusive guarantee in her contract for Black Widow—which would not be unusual for an actor of her stature—and that by putting Black Widow on Disney+ day-and-date with By Sarah • Aug 03, 2021 11:19 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Black Widow: The box office is back Over the last few months, as theaters have reopened, the box office has been lurching back into gear. Godzilla vs. Kong got the ball rolling, F9 kicked it into second gear, and Black Widow just set a record with a record domestic opening during the pandemic with $80 million, besting By Sarah • Jul 12, 2021 10:27 am
Top Reads Simu Liu’s Big Day There was a lot of Simu Liu in the headlines yesterday. Here’s how it started – with a Facebook post, ahead of the release of season five of Kim’s Convenience on Netflix, which of course as we all know now is the show’s final season, and not because By Lainey • Jun 03, 2021 10:52 am
Business of Hollywood Merger Mania Part II: Amazon and MGM On the heels of the news that AT&T is dumping WarnerMedia on Discovery comes the news that Amazon is in talks to buy MGM (you can read an un-paywalled version of the story here). It was always inevitable that Amazon would buy out a studio—as it is By Sarah • May 19, 2021 12:17 pm
Business of Hollywood Merger Mania Part I: WarnerMedia & Discovery Over the weekend, word broke that AT&T, just three years after acquiring Time Warner—now called WarnerMedia—in a blockbuster merger, would dump their still-new entertainment sector and pair it with Discovery to make a separate operation as yet to be named. The news sent a shockwave through By Sarah • May 19, 2021 11:42 am
Business of Hollywood The Golden Globes are cancelled We are watching the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Golden Globes implode in real time, and it’s kind of amazing. If you thought the awards industrial complex was completely entrenched, too big to fail, et cetera, well, the last week has really been something. To recap, before the By Sarah • May 11, 2021 02:21 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews OF COURSE Tom Cruise wants a world tour Last Friday, Paramount shuffled their release dates again, including pushing Top Gun: Maverick from the patriotic and military-movie friendly July 4 weekend to November 19. Now, we are learning the reason for that move, or at least one of them, is that Tom Cruise wants to do a full world By Sarah • Apr 14, 2021 10:01 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Will Smith and Antoine Fuqua abandon Georgia So, obviously, Joe Biden becoming President of the United States did not fix every problem in the world. In fact, based on the events of the last few weeks, it is very much a case of “same song, different verse”. Following a historic election in Georgia that saw the red By Sarah • Apr 13, 2021 01:11 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Paramount changes dates again, won’t risk Tom Cruise On Friday Paramount shuffled their release calendar (again), making continual adjustments to the schedule based on ever-evolving COVID situations around the world. Right now, it seems that by summer some places will be fairly well recovered and back to normal business while other places will remain at least partially shut By Sarah • Apr 12, 2021 11:16 am
Top Reads Power producer Scott Rudin is a toxic boss And “toxic” is putting it lightly. A new expose in The Hollywood Reporter goes HAM on Scott Rudin, the EGOT-winning power producer behind such films as Clueless, The Social Network, Doubt, Fences, the Addams Family duology, Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit, and he’s a frequent producer for By Sarah • Apr 08, 2021 03:30 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Knives Out is Netflix’s latest blockbuster In 2019 Knives Out was not just one of the best films of the year, but also an original idea that turned into a legitimate blockbuster, earning over $311 million against a $40 million budget. Those kinds of mid-budget success stories almost don’t happen anymore, and sequel talk began By Sarah • Apr 01, 2021 10:30 am
Business of Hollywood The Oscar “Hubs” An Oscars meeting took place yesterday between the show’s producers, Steven Soderbergh, Jesse Collins, and Stacey Sher, and the nominees after many of the nominees raised concerns about not being able to be in Los Angeles on April 25 as COVID cases are surging in many places around the By Lainey • Mar 31, 2021 10:36 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Black Widow moves (for the last time?) A year ago, we started the blockbuster shuffle when No Time to Die vacated April 2020 due to the then-burgeoning pandemic. Now, one year on, we have potentially, probably, our last step in the blockbuster shuffle. Disney has pushed a group of seven films out of spring/early summer, including By Sarah • Mar 24, 2021 10:00 am
Business of Hollywood You had me at “Clooney-Roberts rom-com” Have you re-watched Ocean’s 11 recently? It TOTALLY holds up. Ocean’s 12 holds up, too. As far as I am concerned, there are only three Ocean’s movies, 8, 11, and 12, and I have re-watched them all (they were on Netflix, now they’re on HBO Max) By Sarah • Mar 02, 2021 11:16 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Paramount tempts Tom Cruise’s wrath This week is the Television Critics’ Association winter press tour, when television networks set up in front of the press and lay out their programming schedules for the upcoming season. Yesterday, ViacomCBS held their press confab and made some announcements regarding their new streaming service, Paramount+. They’re rebranding the By Sarah • Feb 25, 2021 11:53 am
Business of Hollywood Controversy Before the Golden Globes We are now five days away from the Golden Globes, second to only the Oscars in terms of awards show profile although the Globes remain way far back of several other awards in terms of prestige. If you’re visiting this site, probably you know about the reputation of the By Lainey • Feb 23, 2021 02:51 pm
