The ALLBLK, streaming service for Black TV and film from AMC Networks, announced the world premiere of Beyond Ed Buck, streaming Thursday, February 24.
26.01.2022 - 19:35 / deadline.com
In a conference call with Wall Street analysts, AT&T CEO John Stankey defended the decision to separate HBO Max from Amazon’s channels business.
While the move last year caused a significant short-term loss of subscriber momentum, the gain in control of data and customer insight will pay off in the long term, the executive maintained. Other companies, he noted, are claiming to have direct access to consumers but instead rely on Amazon and other tech giants to do the heavy lifting.
“Better to have them there while you have direct access and control of them and can market to them and know what they’re doing than to have it be in some black box where you absolutely have no idea what somebody else is doing with aggregating your content and your exposure to your customer,” Stankey said. Without naming names, he added, “There are a lot of entities out there that are growing, quote-unquote, ‘direct-to-consumer’ customers that are behind the screen of the Amazon marketplace that really are Amazon’s DTC customers. They are not the media company’s DTC customers.”
He also took a not-very-veiled shot at Disney and other competitors on the lower end of the price spectrum. With HBO Max priced at $15 a month, WarnerMedia did not have to “struggle” to establish itself as a revenue generator, he said. Average revenue per user, or ARPU, was $11.15 in the quarter ending December 31.
The comments came after AT&T posted better-than-expected earnings, including a fourth-quarter uptick in subscribers to HBO and HBO Max. Globally, they combined to close the year with 73.8 million subscribers.
“We said it was going to happen, and it happened. We said the market was going to come to us on pricing,” Stankey said. “Lo and behold, we are no longer the
The ALLBLK, streaming service for Black TV and film from AMC Networks, announced the world premiere of Beyond Ed Buck, streaming Thursday, February 24.
Alvin Deutsch, the attorney who represented singer Peggy Lee in her landmark victory over Walt Disney Productions and more recently tangled with Broadway producer Scott Rudin and the estate of author Harper Lee over rights to a stage production of To Kill A Mockingbird, died Oct. 6 at his home in New York City. He was 89.
John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentLola Arabia, the United Arab Emirates label of Oscar-winning Spanish producer Andrés Vicente Gómez (“Belle Epoque”), has struck a 12-movie co-production deal with Dubai-based Charisma Group.The alliance will take in a range of titles, from $2 million-budgeted contemporary comedies to banner productions budgeted at $40 million, revolving around contemporary and historic stories of West Asia.The partners aim to produce an average of four films a year, said Charisma Group co-president Ayham Al Ziyoud.Development has begun on the whole slate. “Although in principle we plan projects with modest budgets, these will be increased in the following year once we find the rights partners outside the Gulf States,” Gómez said.
EXCLUSIVE: Abbey Lee (The Neon Demon, Lovecraft Country) and Christopher Abbott (Black Bear, Catch-22) are attached to lead Fear is the Rider, a chase thriller from BAFTA-nominated director John Michael McDonagh (The Guard, Calvary, The Forgiven) that The Exchange is introducing to international buyers at the 2022 virtual EFM.
EXCLUSIVE: Katie McGrath (Supergirl), Ray McKinnon (Rectify) Adam Shapiro (Never Have I Ever), Mark Musashi (Fear of the Walking Dead) and Marina Mazepa (Malignant) have been cast opposite Colin Woodell and Mel Gibson in Starz’s The Continental, the prequel to the Keanu Reeves film series John Wick. The Continental will be presented as a three-night special-event TV series, produced for Starz by Lionsgate Television.
As the Oscars wrestle with grabbing a larger millennial audience, the dissing of tentpoles in the Best Picture category continues this year. In addition to AMPAS voters overlooking the sixth highest grossing movie ever at the global box office, Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home ($1.77 billion) for Best Picture, they also snubbed Daniel Craig’s swan song as James Bond in MGM/UAR/Eon’s No Time to Die in that slot as well.
Shooting wrapped last month on the long-awaited Gerard Butler project Kandahar and here are some exclusive behind the scenes photos from the film, which is notably one of the first major U.S. titles to shoot its entirety in Saudi Arabia. The film, which is produced by John Wick outfit Thunder Road Films and Capstone, reunites Butler with his Greenland and Angel Has Fallen director Ric Roman Waugh. While this certainly isn’t the first action thriller the bankable Scottish actor has starred in, Kandahar is one of the first big-budget Hollywood titles to shoot in the country’s northwest AlUla region, which is home to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Hegra.
EXCLUSIVE: Disney Branded Television has assembled well known Disney talent for Prom Pact (working title), a teen rom-com movie for Disney+. Prom Pact, which I hear is among several original movies DBT will be announcing during their TCA session tomorrow, is toplined by Disney Channel favorites, former Andi Mack star Peyton Elizabeth Lee, who is now the lead of Disney+’s Doogie Kamealoha, M.D., and Zombies‘ Milo Manheim, who also was a runner-up on ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. The film comes from Julie Bowen, star of ABC’s signature comedy Modern Family, and Melvin Mar, producer behind such Disney series as ABC’s Fresh off the Boat and Disney+’s Doogie Kamealoha, M.D., headlined by Lee.
AT&T CEO John Stankey and Discovery CEO David Zaslav generally sidestepped questions about the exit of CNN boss Jeff Zucker amid dismay among the cable network’s on air talent and staffers over how the situation was handled.
EXCLUSIVE: John Hesling, President of Maverick TV USA, is stepping down after four years at the Chrisley Knows Best producer.
infamous 1995 sex tape, premieres Wednesday on Hulu — and it doesn’t take long before s–t gets weird.Lily James and Sebastian Stan star as Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, the bikini-clad “Baywatch” star and bad-boy Mötley Crüe drummer — recently divorced from Heather Locklear — who meet-cute in an LA club and, four days later, get married on the beach in Mexico.They settle into Lee’s ginormous Malibu estate, which is undergoing major renovations. When Lee — a childish, arrogant jerk who struts around in thong underwear — fires carpenter Rand Gauthier (Seth Rogen) and refuses to pay him the thousands he owes him or return his tool box, Gauthier (an ex-porn actor) steals Lee’s safe from his garage.
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As one of Hollywood’s most on-again, off-again couples, fans have always wondered: Why did Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee divorce? The reason has to do with more than their infamous sex tape.
Stranger than fiction. Pam & Tommy is a fictionalized version of a real-life scandal that engulfed Pamela Anderson and then-husband Tommy Lee in the 1990s, but the truth behind the series is full of unbelievable twists and turns.
For years, fans have wondered what the true story was around Pamela Anderson’s sex tape with Tommy Lee and whether the former couple made any money from the leaked private video.
Bleecker Street has acquired U.S. rights to the dramatic thriller 892, starring John Boyega (Star Wars franchise) and the late Michael Kenneth Williams (The Wire), which recently made its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in U.S. Dramatic Competition and won its Special Jury Award for Ensemble Cast. The independently-financed distributor is planning a late summer release in theaters nationwide.
Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorWhen hairstylist Barry Lee Moe took on the job of turning Sebastian Stan into Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, he thought a wig would help embody the 1990s rocker’s look. But for Hulu’s limited series “Pam & Tommy,” which premieres Feb. 2 on Hulu, Stan wanted the freedom to touch his hair and feel it.
Cynthia Littleton Business EditorJohn Stankey and Brian Roberts are wrestling with different sides of the same problems.For Big Media, the fourth-quarter earnings revelations so far have reinforced predictions that 2022 is the year the honeymoon ends for the promise of new streaming ventures. Now it’s entrenching time.