Cinedigm has acquired all North American rights to the psychological horror film Family Dinner, which debuted at Tribeca earlier this year.
27.09.2022 - 18:29 / variety.com
Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor In a telling example of the state of the touring industry in 2022, indie artist Santigold has canceled her upcoming North American tour, citing the “devastating” costs due to inflation, soaring costs and the glut of artists on the road after pandemic restrictions lifted early this year. “As a touring musician, I don’t think anyone anticipated the new reality that awaited us,” she wrote in a long and impassioned post on Instagram. “After sitting idle (not being able to do shows) for the past couple years, many of us like everyone else, earning no or little income during that time, every musician that could, rushed back out immediately when it was deemed safe to do shows. We were met with the height of inflation — gas, tour buses, hotels, and flight costs skyrocketed — many of our tried-and-true venues unavailable due to a flooded market of artists trying to book shows in the same cities, and positive test results constantly halting schedules with devastating financial consequences.
“All of that on top of the already-tapped mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional resources of just having made it through the past few years,” she continued. “Some of us are finding ourselves simply unable to make it work.”A post shared by @santigold Her cancelation speaks to a growing problem as festivals and touring artists returned after two years of lockdown: Audiences can’t or won’t return in sufficient numbers to support all of the tours and festivals that are taking place, due to ticket prices, too many options, Covid caution or all three. While attendance numbers might be great for Harry Styles or Lady Gaga, for the average touring musician, it’s tougher than ever. What this will mean for the music
Cinedigm has acquired all North American rights to the psychological horror film Family Dinner, which debuted at Tribeca earlier this year.
Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor This past spring, as the omicron wave subsided and the world began a ready-or-not return to something resembling normal, the floodgates opened and thousands of musicians returned to the road. Audiences flocked to arenas and big theaters see Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, Elton John and many others. Coachella launched the festival season with a bang, and smaller clubs began to cautiously figure out how to put on shows in tight spaces. It was a bumpy start — many acts (even Sir Elton and Bon Jovi) had to cancel or postpone shows because of positive Covid tests — but a start, nonetheless. Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino says ticket sales are on their way to a record year.
EXCLUSIVE: Sylvester Stallone, Bear Grylls and Endemol Shine North America have established a production partnership with plans to create high-adrenaline series.
EXCLUSIVE: Paris-based Urban Sales has sold Japanese director Chie Hayakawa’s dystopian drama Plan 75 to KimStim for North America, in addition to several other territories. The film won a Camera d’Or Special Mention when it premiered in Un Certain Regard at Cannes this year, and is also Japan’s submission to the Best International Feature category of the Oscars.
Our nation is once again in a perpetual state of energy dependence.Twice now, the president of the United States has pleaded with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to come to the rescue of the American economy, and twice he has been snubbed.The most recent instance only confirms what everyone has known for nearly two years — the emperor has no clothes. This week OPEC and its plus one Russia (OPEC+) announced they would curb production by 2 million barrels per day.This happened despite the Biden administration’s quid pro quo scheme to purchase OPEC barrels to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) in exchange for a guarantee to not lower production. According to Goldman Sachs, we are likely to see oil prices return to $110 per barrel, and gasoline prices will likely return to $5-$6 a gallon nationally. It’s understandable to see this announcement as a betrayal by OPEC, but the real betrayal is the Biden administration’s actions in weakening America’s energy independence and dominance.
Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and his attorney general are pushing the GOP-led state legislature to decriminalize possessing small amounts of marijuana following President Biden's recent pardon of thousands who were convicted for the same offense under federal law. "Conviction of simple possession can mar people's records for life and maybe even prevent them from getting a job," Cooper told a Friday task force meeting on racial equity and criminal justice.
Rage Against The Machine have cancelled their forthcoming North America tour dates in 2023.The band were due to hit the road in Portland on March 23 for their ‘Public Service Announcement’ tour before going on a run of dates which wrapped up in Detroit on April 2.But frontman Zack de la Rocha‘s leg injury, which happened during the second show of their previous North American leg in Chicago on July 11, has now forced the band to cancel further forthcoming dates.In a statement on RATM’s social media pages, which you can view in full below, the frontman confirmed that he has torn his Achilles tendon.He said: “It’s been almost three months since Chicago, and I still look down at my leg in disbelief. Two years of waiting through the pandemic, hoping we would have an opening to be a band again and continue the work we started 30 some odd years ago.
Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor While there’s been no official word, Pink Floyd has been shopping its recorded-music catalog and other assets for several months, seeking as much as $500 million, according to the Financial Times, with both major music companies and investment firms as the top bidders. But sources say an explosive new interview with founding member, main songwriter and stakeholder Roger Waters — in which he makes extensive remarks about Israel, Ukraine, Russia, the U.S. and other political matters that one could politely characterize as controversial — is giving at least one potential buyer cold feet and seems likely to lead others to rethink their positions. For years Waters has sounded off about politics in the press and at his concerts, most controversially Israel’s policies. But the new interview in Rolling Stone raises (or lowers) the bar considerably. While interviewer James Ball does his best to challenge some of Waters’ more far-fetched statements, the former Pink Floyd singer argues emphatically that some Jewish people in the U.S. and U.K. bear responsibility for the actions of Israel “because they pay for everything”; that well-documented accounts of Russian war crimes in Ukraine are “lies, lies, lies”; that the United States is “the most evil [country in the world] of all by a factor of at least 10 times”; that Russia’s brutal military involvement in Syria is justified because “they were there at the invitation of the Syrian government” (which is led by one of the world’s most murderous dictators, Bashar Assad), and more. (See a 12,000-word transcript of the interview here).
Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Although the weekend’s announcements postponing Ringo Starr’s two recent tour dates stressed that the 82-year-old singer-drummer did not have COVID, the former Beatle has since tested positive. The next six dates of the legendary former Beatle’s tour with his All Starr Band will be canceled. Rather than dishonesty or inaccuracy, it seems likely that, as with countless other people in recent months, Starr showed symptoms of the disease before testing positive. “It has been confirmed today that Ringo has Covid and the tour will be on hold while Ringo recuperates,” the announcement reads. “Ringo hopes to resume as soon as possible and is recovering at home. As always, he and the All Starrs send peace and love to their fans and hope to see them back out on the road soon. We will keep fans updated with any further news or changes.”
Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Ed Sheeran has announced details for the North American leg of his “+ – = ÷ x Tour” (pronounced “The Mathematics Tour”), hitting stadiums across the continent for the first time since his 2018 “Divide” tour, Dates begin on May 6th at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX, before wrapping up on September 23rd at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, CA (see itinerary below). Main support on a majority of the dates comes from R&B singer Khalid (May 6th-September 2nd), with rapper/singer-songwriter Russ rounding out the tour (September 9th-23rd); Dylan, Cat Burns, Maisie Peters, and Rosa Linn alternate as first of three. Sheeran recently wrapped the European leg of the tour, performing in front of over 3 million people in six months, including a five-night stand at London’s Wembley Stadium.
This Friday, September 30th marks Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a public commemoration of the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools. In recognition of this important day, ET Canada is welcoming back entrepreneur and activist Shayla Stonechild to co-host our half-hour TV special “Indigenous Artists & Icons: Celebrating the Future”.
Manori Ravindran International Editor Grasshopper Film has acquired the North American distribution rights to “Rewind & Play,” Alain Gomis’ feature documentary on the late jazz pianist Thelonious Monk. The film is set to screen at the 60th annual New York Film Festival later this month, and will open in theaters early next year. The doc uses an interview with Monk in France from 1969, which many would now consider to be deeply problematic, as its centrepiece. In December 1969, Monk arrived in Paris for a concert at the tail end of a European tour. While there, he was invited to appear on a television interview program, where he was to answer questions in an intimate, one-on-one studio stage.
Santigold has announced that she is cancelling all of her upcoming tour dates because she “will not continue to sacrifice myself for an industry that has become unsustainable for, and uninterested in, the welfare of the artists it is built upon”.The musician was due to tour the US In October and November in support of her new album ‘Spirituals’, which was released earlier this month. However, that tour will now not go ahead.In a lengthy statement, she told fans: “For the past several years we have all been through immense challenges, some physical, some mental, some spiritual, some economic”.“And yet, as we have begun to trudge on, much of the toll of that experience has been left untended as we rush back in, attempting to make up for lost time, to reconnect, catch up on bills unpaid, to escape the insanity that had begun to set in.
Santigold has cancelled her upcoming Holified tour, citing difficulties with inflation and the changing landscape of post-pandemic music touring.Sharing the news via an open letter on her official website today (September 27), Santigold wrote that she was “both sad and proud” to cancel the tour, which was set to begin in Atlanta next month before wrapping up in California by November.Santigold first spoke of the “pit in [her] stomach” that she felt when deciding to axe the tour, before describing the financial and mental tolls of post-pandemic touring that forced the cancellation. “When I think of disappointing you all,” she wrote, “I feel the disappointment deep in the pit of my stomach.“But for the past several years we have all been through immense challenges… For many of us, the landscapes we are re-entering are not the same.” The singer went on to explain the inflation costs associated with touring, describing them as unanticipated and specifically citing the “skyrocket[ing]” price of “gas, tour buses, hotels, and flight[s].”As a result of these difficulties — which also included the unavailability of venues due to “a flooded market of artists”, and the halted tour schedules due to positive COVID cases — Santigold admitted that she simply “[couldn’t] make it work.” The singer wrote that these “demands of a relentless industry” had caused her anxiety, insomnia and fatigue.“My little heart that has been working way beyond its limits, my whole body in fact and my soul too, are screaming at me ‘NO muthafucka! Pull.The Fuck.
As if there aren’t already enough awards handed out in the movie and TV business, BAFTA has decided we need some more for North America.
Liza Foreman Boutique distributor Juno Films has picked up North American distribution rights to the Irish-language feature “Róise and Frank,” (“Mo Ghrá Buan”), the company confirmed on Friday. Written and directed by Rachael Moriarty and Peter Murphy, the drama tells the story of an imaginative widow, played by Irish actress Bríd Ní Neachtain, who decides that a stray dog she befriends is the reincarnation of her deceased husband Frank. As time passes, Róise slowly begins to open herself back up to the outside world and reconnect to friends and family. Her canine companion starts to coach the local junior high school’s hurling team with great success for the team and its players, under Frank’s guidance.
Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Since the dawn of radio, the United States has been and remains the only major country in the world where terrestrial radio pays no royalties to performers or recorded-music copyright owners of the songs it plays — a situation that is largely due to the powerful radio lobby’s influence in Congress. While the more than 8,300 AM and FM stations across the country pay royalties to songwriters and publishers, they have never paid performers or copyright holders, although streaming services and satellite radio do. On Thursday morning, Senators Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced the bipartisan American Music Fairness Act, which aims to rectify that situation by “ensur[ing] artists and music creators receive fair compensation for the use of their songs on AM/FM radio. This legislation will bring corporate radio broadcasters up-to-speed with all other music streaming platforms, which already pay artists for their music.”
Pale Waves have cancelled the remaining dates on their North America tour due to “logistical and safety issues” with their tour bus.The band had dates booked up until October 7 in the US, but said they are now unable to fulfil the remainder of the tour.In a post on Instagram, they said: “We are hugely disappointed to say that due to logistical and safety issues with our tour bus, we are unable to complete the remainder of our North American tour. We’ve exhausted every possible option to find a new bus, but have been left with no option but to cancel these remaining dates.“We’re so sorry to everyone who has purchased tickets – we’re working with our booking agent to arrange rescheduled dates and will share more details as soon as we possibly can.
GAYLE has cancelled her forthcoming headline tour of North America, citing her struggles with adapting to the rigours of a touring lifestyle.The singer’s ‘Avoiding College’ tour was initially set to kick off on Saturday October 8, when she was due to perform in Oklahoma. Should the tour have gone ahead, GAYLE would have taken in a further 18 cities up until Friday November 11, when she would’ve played to fans in Fort Lauderdale.GAYLE announced the cancellation in a note posted to her Instagram Story, writing today (September 19): “Hey everyone, I am cancelling my tour that starts next month.