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Not sure why OP was modded up. The 1977 Star Wars movie saw Kenner sell $100 million in tie-in toys by 1978. Fox wasn't sold on the idea of a western set in space, so Lucas agreed to receive $500,000 less pay in exchange for keeping the merchandising rights for himself. You bet your ass he exploited the tie-in toys to try to make back that money. I was 8 when the movie came out, and nearly all my friends had the toys (I didn't like the movie so I never bugged my parents for toys). There were fast food tie-ins. And ESB and RotJ were advertised up the wazoo (which really annoyed me since I didn't like the first film) with huge opening-night lines. There was even an ill-fated Star Wars Holiday Special on TV.

I don't really see why merchandising is considered "unpure" either. If the kid wants a Star Wars toy, then it's better to get him one than for there not to be one for him to get. It only becomes a problem if the kid wants one only because his friends have one (which is a jealousy/parenting problem), or if you're an obsessed collector who has to buy every toy that's out there (which is a mental health problem).

Hey stupid fucks, you might want some facts in your diet about which faction supports what. Ask why Obama defended and expanded Bush's police state instead of ripping it out of the ground. It's the leftist (read: Democrat) nihilism of redistribution and economic "regulations" that are going to kill us. Yes, your publicly-funded "education" was worthless.

You expect the Truth ? Oh damn! Did I just *go there*?

. I should start believing things that are contrary to evidence

I'ts pretty hard to see the damage unless you know how things were before.

.You probably didn't notice that I have a five-digit uid.

You're right I didn't. So were you ignoring the subject of this thread when you wrote this

The reason why I know that it's not going to happen is that it hasn't happened in any other artform

Or do you just not understand what has been happening, oh seeing as you brought movies into this

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

Had. For dubious values of "had."

LEGO has done pretty well with it's movies and games in recent years.

http://www.guinnessworldrecord...
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

They must have put a lot of thought and effort into this. I'm betting that they are working on all of those things.

It's also L E G O. They have a H U G E built in fan base.

I am not sure that this will win, but I am far from skeptical.

If only there were a way to find out whether a voice artist had sued anybody and won before claiming infringement of the voice they created.

Oh, wait, there is.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

"Men's Rights Activists Call for Boycott of 'Mad Max: Fury Road,' Citing Feminist Agenda"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

The real money shot of this article is this quote from the "men's rights activist":

"men in America and around the world are going to be duped by explosions, fire tornadoes, and desert raiders into seeing what is guaranteed to be nothing more than feminist propaganda, while at the same time being insulted AND tricked into viewing a piece of American culture ruined and rewritten right in front of their very eyes."

Got that? "..a piece of American culture."

So why aren't we fixing the real issue of overly broad copyrights?

Because that would require national legislatures to actually do non-trivial work. They're already busy enough deciding whether and how much to spend on particular military, entitlement, and military entitlement projects. Nor have they seen any evidence that reforming overly broad copyright would win them more votes, especially when Hollywood promises them essentially free ad time to reach their constituents during election season but only if they "behave" (FOX News; The Hollywood Reporter).

Easy to make that kind of disparaging remark.
If you are wrong, what will you do?
Pretend you never said a word.

I believe the guy. Since he started dating a black woman and making films like Red Tails the guy has developed a social conscience. Dude sold his company to Disnay for bazillions, like Bill Gates he's got nothing better to do but try to better the world now.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

Norway is discontinuing FM transmission entirely.

So... I think that shows you that I called this perfectly. FM is retrograde. It is on the way out. Mandating that phones have FM reception in that context is goofy and more than a little out of touch with the times.

Politicians care about 70 year old and their problems because they show up at the polls at twice the rate of 35 year olds.

That's not true, and I can prove it here and now. You know WHO the Obama admin cares the most about? Hollywood. Why? Because Hollywood gives him the WHAT he cares most about: Free branding. And I say "free" lightly because it's very powerful branding that's worth a lot, even though it's given away for free.

Do you know what prompted Obama to skip the Senate (as required by the Constitution) when he signed ACTA? This did:

https://ustr.gov/sites/default...

And let's not forget this:

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/...

Anyways what were you saying...oh yeah, old poeple. Well no, Obama cares much more about the branding provided by Hollywood. And since they provide it to him free of charge, it doesn't count towards that money in politics that he rants against, because after all, nobody spent a red cent on that branding, just the actors donate their time.

Remember this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Or this?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

Yeah, politicians, such as Obama, prioritize branding more than votes.

Perhaps I'm having trouble recognising a serious problem when faced with one, but with the current state of wages being: Hollywood Reporter Wages Article I'm not seeing what this piracy problem is all about.
I don't see anyone in Hollywood making minimum wage or less..... especially not losing money because of piracy... Something as simple as a bad poster design is going to be worse for their profits than all those nasty pirates...
Meanwhile, seems everyone who is complaining about how bad piracy is is making a minimum wage with a few zeros (or more) appended to it, and is bitterly disappointed that they aren't making just a few percent more. The industry is positively thriving. Hard to care.

The distribution system isn't as much about shipping physical items as much as it is about marketing the films to a certain audience, making sure people know about them and then placing them in media that are appropriate for them to find them, obtaining a price that's attractive and then collecting the money. The territories are defined by these factor and there are barriers to entry between them apart from mere shipping.

Even if this weren't the case, as a practical matter the "new" distribution model just isn't ready for prime time and simply can't offer the same deal that the traditional one does. An independent drama film with a big star that's shot well can cost $30 million, if you go to foreign distributors and offer them the rights they can get $10 million or more up front, before they've even made the film, just for the sale of the rights. Can internet distribution offer a producer $10 million in pre-sales? That's a hell of a Kickstarter.

Even the shows that Netflix produces, they don't pay for everything. They paid a $100 million fee for House of Cards for the first 26 episodes and that STILL wasn't enough to cover the costs, that's part of the reason why MRC still has to sell foreign territories. HoC's episodes easily cost more than $6 million, and that's not out of line for a HBO-level drama; the show easily costs over $50 million per 13 episode season. Orange costs slightly less but still over $40 mil a season.

Netflix doesn't talk much about this because the fact is nobody can figure out if they're actually making money on it, it's a huge bet going forward that they can make it work. The Interview distribution was a freak thing but it really didn't make as much money as that film should have the first week, the producers and distributors aren't going to torch the system they have if the system they have makes them more money, and this situation will probably persist for at least another 5 years.

We know there's definitely some money getting made in new distribution modes, from Netflix to file sharing, Kim Dotcom is fucking rich! But very little of this money seems to find its way back to the people that actually pay to make a product, the people that run aggregating sites and ISPs slurp up all the revenue. Think about it: you pay $20-$40 or more a month for Internet service, and exactly 0% of that goes to pay for the things you actually read or see on the Internet.

Or maybe we can just send a few bloviating politicians over and throw in some mass drops of MP3 players loaded with Sony tunes on the country.

There's a North Korean who escaped to South Korea. He now sends balloons across the border with various messages. He's stated that he's planning on sending balloons with DVDs of the movie.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

Where is Team America when you really need them?

"The Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in Dallas, Texas, will be showing Team America: World Police in place of The Interview on Dec. 27 at 7 p.m." http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

And a thriller set in North Korea, staring Steve Carell, has also been dropped:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

"They're all lying! There was an article that said China did it for North Korea and then North Koreans from a luxury hotel in China, and now Thailand. What kind of experts are these when they can't seem to figure where it's coming from?"

link

Well, North Korea has officially said "Wait and See".

The film, due for release on Christmas, has drawn criticism from the North Korean government, which called it an "evil act of provocation" and an "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism" and asked the United Nations to block its release. A government website also threatened the filmmakers with "stern punishment."

Apparently the supreme, glorious little runt doesn't like being teased, and seems to think his delusional self is exempt from parody.

If so, this would be kind of hilarious, and kind of scary ... a nation state doing this stuff because their leader tender ego is feeling bruised.

If this is North Korea, this is all about waving around the collective penis, and posturing that he has any influence on the rest of the world.

Hey, Kim was named the sexiest man alive recently so maybe they have something to be proud of waving...

Well, North Korea has officially said "Wait and See".

The film, due for release on Christmas, has drawn criticism from the North Korean government, which called it an "evil act of provocation" and an "undisguised sponsoring of terrorism" and asked the United Nations to block its release. A government website also threatened the filmmakers with "stern punishment."

Apparently the supreme, glorious little runt doesn't like being teased, and seems to think his delusional self is exempt from parody.

If so, this would be kind of hilarious, and kind of scary ... a nation state doing this stuff because their leader tender ego is feeling bruised.

If this is North Korea, this is all about waving around the collective penis, and posturing that he has any influence on the rest of the world.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...

Lucasfilm Debuts 'Empire Strikes Back Uncut.'

that nobody cares about ... or PBS).

Your ignorance is showing.

As soon as Toho Co. Ltd. says it's OK.

We are well past the tipping point. The major chains are 100% digital now, and in most cases have removed their film projectors. Most independent theaters have also installed digital though they tend to keep their film equipment. Even revival houses are having difficulty getting film prints and have had to resort to showing DVD or Blu-Ray instead.

If a movie is shot on film, the grain from the shooting emulsion is captured by the scanning process and shows in digital projection. You won't see grain from the film print but you generally don't in any case; the grain of the print stock is much finer than the grain of the filming stock so the latter is mostly what you see. If the movie was edited on film (often they are not; nowadays even movies that are shot on film are likely to be scanned into a computer and edited digitally) the editing splices will also show. Seeing those things does not necessarily mean that you are seeing film projection.

A story about the switch from a couple of years ago: http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...
A recent story about the conversion at some small theaters: http://www.wirenh.com/2013/11/...

...Did not seem too currently informed. Better try again.

Though now that I think of it, in spite of some commonality on identifying what the current problems are, you run into problems when you start to talk about solutions. Take crony capitalism for instance. From the conservative side, this is a particularly strong argument for limited government. The less power and money government has, the less you have to gain by insinuating yourself with politicians. The liberal reaction is that, if there's a problem, it must be that we need more laws to address the problem, plus more bureaucracy to administer the new laws.

In reality, both these approaches have merit but are insufficient. The conservative argument is valid, but government will never be so limited that the opportunity for rent seeking is eliminated entirely. On the other hand, the liberal solution fails to recognize that the new laws and new bureaucracy will be developed by politicians who are already in the pockets of the crony capitalists, so they don't really solve the problem either.

See references:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/07/cinema-filmgoer-thrown-out-texting-alamo/
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/risky-business/movie-theater-kicks-customer-texting-195400/

In this age of decreasing levels of common decency, and manners in public places, (theaters being nearly the antithesis of private) people still feel they have a false sense of entitlement to do rude things without consequences.

Not play down that someone DIED here, but that level of offense is going to get more common as the texters drain what enjoyment might be left in going for a Big Screen Experience.

I still remember when they first banned cigarettes in theaters, and how terribly offended people were on both sides of the ban.

Maybe, I'm just getting Old and Cranky... Good thing I'm Canadian, and guns are nowhere near as available to us up here.

There were three women in Pussy Riot and if you listen to Putin the other day when discussing it his reaction was that what they did was "degrading to women." Yekaterina Samutsevich was just released a few hours ago.

RT is infamous for being virulently anti-American; it's a Russian news organization with an agenda that is fairly obvious at times

Although the BBC may have its faults, RT, nee Russia Today, is both government funded and controlled.

VGTRK, Channel One and NTV will also collect new government cash.

MOSCOW – The Russian state-controlled English-language TV channel Russia Today has avoided cuts in funding for 2013 and is to receive 11.2 billion rubles ($355.6 million) from the government next year.

Similarly, the state run TV company VGTRK, which runs several channels, including Rossiya, Rossiya 2, Kultura and Rossiya 24, is going to collect 19.98 billion rubles ($634.3 million).

The Walking Dead is at the height of its popularity right now. The S3 finale had its highest ratings yet.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/walking-dead-season-3-finale-ratings-431948

World War Z has raked in $366 million so far, so I don't think people are tired of zombies yet.

So as to maintain some buzz when the movie gets released, duh. How Conde Nast Plans to Turn John McAfee's Bizarre Tale Into Hollywood Gold

Even a great job in the CG sector isn't worth shit when the business side of the industry runs the companies into the ground: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/life-pi-house-rhythm-hues-422482

Now, why does this remind me of stories like these?
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/life-pi-house-rhythm-hues-422482

please, fox just lies, saying other news networks are somehow as bad is ridiculous.

Saying "I hate Fox News, they are biased" doesn't scream out "I just want honest, balanced coverage". It screams out "I am a biased left-winger". Take one obvious example, NBC/MSNBC have had a rash of "selectively editing" videos recently. There was the 911 call in the Trayvon Martin case, the bogus sandy hook "heckling", and taking a Romney speech completely out of context.

The news gathering in the US is atrocious. Anyone who is not completely biased can see Fox is right-wing, MSNBC is left-wing, and the rest are center-left (although CNN seems to push more to the MSNBC side these days). They are all a bad combination of sensationalist ratings driven garbage combined with a huge agenda that rarely has the viewers' best interests in mind. If you don't view the news with a filter that considers the source, you are being deceived."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/trayvon-martin-nbc-news-editing-911-call-306359
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/29/msnbc-caught-selectively-editing-another-clip-this-time-of-sandy-hook-victims-father/
http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/06/19/msnbc-busted-for-editing-romney-comments-out-of-context-backtracks-sorta-video/

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/hollywood-ship-hms-bounty-sinks-mutiny-pirates-caribbean-384716

If you go down to the sea, be prepared. Only a fool would go to sea aboard a vessel that isn't seaworthy. Only a fool - and the seas don't give a small rat's ass how much money you have, or how many "experts" agreed that it would be safe.

Even seaworthy vessels can go down, if not crewed by extremely competent AND lucky crewmembers:
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/titanic.htm

http://www.boatnerd.com/fitz/

Did I mention luck? Even the best of ships and the best of crews can be swallowed whole, and vanish without trace when their luck has run out.

I just laugh. Remember that new screw hoax? They said "they just make it too easy."

Jimmy Kimmel recently went out on the street with an iPhone 4S and passed it off as the new iPhone 5 and asked people what they thought of it. Not one of them realized it was the old iPhone 4S. If that doesn't say something about the mindset of Apple's userbase, I don't know what does.

I'd be very interested to see a breakdown in these poll results by age. I would not be at all surprised to see younger, more Internet-connected respondents have a more negative view of the TSA, while the Fox News generation (average viewer age 65, average age for Bill O'Reilly viewers 71) tends toward a more positive view. We see the same thing with numerous other issues where pretty much everyone on sites like Slashdot agrees, but the actual politics seem to be lagging behind. For instance, 50% of Americans now favor legalizing marijuana according to recent Gallup Polls, but while 62% of people in the 18-29 age bracket are in favor, only 31% of senior citizens do. And those seniors vote at a MUCH higher rate than young people. This is why issues relevant to old people are discussed endlessly, while issues important to the young are simply ignored. It's why college funding keeps getting cut every year while Medicare and Social Security remain untouchable.

Get out there and vote this November! Even if it's just for the lesser of two evils, vote anyway. The only way this imbalance will be fixed is if young people start voting at the same rate as older Americans.

From Hollywood Reporter:

“Never more than at this moment in the modern era have we needed a profound reminder of the colossally important and exciting role that science, space exploration and the human quest for knowledge must continue to play in our development as a species,” said MacFarlane.

Quite a serious side to the man. Clearly, menstruation and holocaust jokes are just his day job.

Clearly McFarlane is just a bizarro human, opposite to all normal guys, who work really boring jobs in science, engineering etc, and are only free to make menstruation and holocaust jokes in their spare time.

From Hollywood Reporter:

“Never more than at this moment in the modern era have we needed a profound reminder of the colossally important and exciting role that science, space exploration and the human quest for knowledge must continue to play in our development as a species,” said MacFarlane.

Quite a serious side to the man. Clearly, menstruation and holocaust jokes are just his day job.

The 1313 moniker refers to a specific level of Coruscant which is a haven for criminals, bounty hunters, and crime lords.

Well there's that but there was also 1313 Mockingbird lane, lest we forget! (Munster's street address)

We'll know for sure this fall. "The Munsters" is getting a reboot.

I really wonder how many shows would be produced if people could pay for individual series on the equivalent of Pay Per View, but at a more reasonable price.

Well, HBO hasn't gotten any money from me, but AMC has. I willingly forked over $2/episode for Breaking Bad and Walking Dead, which I can watch again and I don't have to sit through the FBI warning. So call it $40 for the 2nd season of Walking Dead, and they had an average audience of ~5 million. If all those people were like me and didn't have cable, that's potentially ~$200 million in revenue. Let's be conservative and halve it. The total budget for that season was something like $60 million. So that's a $40 million profit, which I wouldn't scoff at. In fact, that's all of AMC's quarterly profit. Seems like a viable model in a world where people aren't shelling out $100/month for a bunch of crap they don't want to watch.

Recording artists from major labels now put their songs on youtube for free and still sell copies. Why they are still getting bent out of shape over file sharing is beyond me.

They're not. The middle-men, i.e., the RIAA, is the one getting bent out of shape.

The internet has basically eroded their hold on distribution and they're fucking pissed off about it. The whole "stealing from artists" line is just propaganda, the RIAA has been fucking stealing from artists since it's inception. Here's a suit from just a few years ago that, using their own calculations when going after individual copyright-infringers, found $6 BILLION in damages due to piracy by the CRIA (the Canadian wing of the RIAA). They later settled for $45 million, less than 1% of the original damages.

And then there's their latest legal arguments. In their case against Redigi, the RIAA argued that an MP3 downloaded from the internet was not owned, it was licensed, and therefore First Sale Doctrine did not apply. That's nothing new; we've heard that argument a billion times. The funny part is, while that case with Redigi was being argued, the RIAA was being sued for not paying disco group Sister Sledge their contracted royalties. See, they were contracted to receive a small percentage of "sales" revenue, and a higher percentage of "licensing" revenue. The RIAA, in a fit of irony it seems, argued that the music they sell online isn't licensed, it's sold, and thus, the group was not due the higher percentage of royalties for their online music 'sales'.

So, according to the RIAA, music sold online is both licensed and sold, depending on whichever argument justifies their thievery in open court.

Anyone defending these fucking assholes should have their head examined.

There are many references to the studies.

Looking forward to the sequel http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/space-2099-television-remake-288601

Will Wikipedia, Google and TotalBiscuit black out for us? No? Damn, we're screwed.

In related news, Dodd (MPAA) wants to meet with Silicon Valley behind closed doors, at the White House (the President also needs to be put back in his place?). Yes, it's the New York Times, but you better believe it. Also in the Hollywood Reporter.

The thing is, the Entertainment Industry controls the mainstream media (MSM), or: mass-consumption media, because they are part of the Industry. What the blackout did, was unprecented. Why the Media Moguls were so mad: Silicon Valley (the concerted effort of many independent tech companies) was able to get a news story out to hundreds of millions of people. For one day in history, Silicon Valley was a mainstream medium, and the masses were learning about things that should have been -and successfully had been so far- kept quiet. And millions of people actually did something.

What if Silicon Valley is going to actively promote the creation of a Public Domain by way of a drastic copyright term reduction for sound recordings, movies, software, etc.? It would be their worst nightmare come true. That is why Silicon Valley needs to be silenced. If Dodd (MPAA) is successful, Wikipedia, Google, etc. will no longer black out for anybody. They will meet behind closed doors and the masses can continue to live in blissful ignorance.

They were designed by his friend Issey Miyake after Steve decided a corporate image and uniform would help his company. I believe he was impressed by the workers' uniforms at Sony.

Found a source: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/fash-track/steve-jobs-issey-miyake-black-turtlenecks-246808

The reason now is "in for a penny, in for a pound." How much of a software company's worth is the value of their patent portfolio?

Let's look at Google, and their project Android. Android was recently attacked by a series of patent infringement suits. These guys, Oracle, a few others.

How do they respond? They purchase Motorola Mobility, for $12.5 billion. Suddenly, bang! They have a gigantic war chest of mobile patents. Now the situation changes. Now it's like the guy who goes to see the dentist, sits down in the chair, and when the doctor comes in with the drill he grabs the doc by the balls and says "Let's not hurt each other." Suddenly these heavy hitters have something to fear.

Now the other side of the coin.

Google just plunked down $12.5B to defend itself from software patents. That's how much it was worth to them. Sure, they get Motorola Mobility as well in the deal. But we all know why they made the purchase. For the patents. Cheaper than going to the courts. How much of that 12.5 do you think the patents were valued at? How much did Google stand to lose fighting Android? Same number pretty much. Probably more than 5 billion. Probably less than 10.

Now imagine if software patents were suddenly made invalid. That is a LOT of money to suddenly go *poof*. And that's just one instance. Think of every tech company that has a patent war chest. How much value they place on it. How much money they make in licensing. Motorola Mobility just was purchased because of their patent "wealth".

If that all suddenly goes away it'll wreak havoc in the tech sector. All patent holding companies will have to be revalued. Expect companies to lose 20%, 30%...50%... What do you think that'll do for jobs in the tech sector? Your job?

I freaking hate software patents, but now that they're here and companies lean so heavily on them for valuation...it's going to be a rough day when they go away. Going to be a *lot* of unhappy stock holders and a lot of lost jobs.

Er, you do know that Eureka was just cancelled, right? I bet Warehouse 13 will be canceled in a year. Need to make more room in the schedule for wresting.