CHINA INSTITUTES NEW OPEN-DOOR POLICY TOWARDS HOLLYWOOD

The visit of Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping to the U.S. ended on Friday with the surprise announcement that China would ease its restrictions on the number of foreign movies that it permits to be screened in the country and will raise the amount of ticket revenue that studios can receive. The deal raises to [...]

SALES SLIDE FOR KUNG FU PANDA 2 AND OTHER DVD’S

Time was when animated movies accounted for a huge percentage of DVD sales. After all, children never seem to tire of playing the same movie multiple times. But now they can do so without touching a disc — if their parents subscribe to an online rental site like Netflix, which allows kids to watch the [...]

PUSS’S BOOTS NOT LIKELY TO KICK DWA’S PROFITS

While some investors may have concluded that DreamWorks Animation dodged a bullet after its current release Puss in Boots opened below expectations but saw a minuscule drop in its second week and a small one in its third, at least one leading media analyst thinks that this cat has run out of lives. Richard Greenfield [...]

IMMORTALS VS. NINE LIVES AT BOX OFFICE

It’s receiving lousy reviews and unexcited buzz, but Relativity Media’s The Immortals is the favorite to win the weekend box office race. Its principal competition comes from two other newcomers, Warner Bros.’ J. Edgar, directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio (which opened on Wednesday) and Sony’s Jack and Jill, starring Adam Sandler (which [...]

PUSS LIFTS DREAMWORKS ANIMATION’S SHARES

What a difference a weekend makes! Shares of DreamWorks Animation shot up 12 percent on Monday on word that its latest feature, Puss in Boots, declined only 3 percent over the weekend — the smallest drop for a movie during a non-holiday period ever — as it wound up with $33.1 million. A week ago, [...]

PUSS IN BOOTS A SURPRISE NO. 1 AT BOX OFFICE (Updated)

Puss in Boots turned out to be something of a cat burglar over the weekend as the Paramount/DreamWorks Animation 3D feature stole the No. 1 spot away from Tower Heist, which most pundits predicted would be a blowout winner. According to studio estimates, Puss nabbed $33 million in its second weekend, down just 3 percent [...]

HALLOWEEN BOX OFFICE FRIGHTENING

Maybe the box office will just have to wait until next week when it won’t have to deal with the distractions of inclement weather, the final game of the World Series, and Halloween. All of those factors and others — the growing dissatisfaction with 3D (only about 51 percent of moviegoers were willing to pay [...]

MOVIE REVIEWS: PUSS IN BOOTS

DreamWorks Animation’s Puss in Boots is garnering the kind of reviews ordinarily reserved for films displaying the Pixar label. Among the country’s leading newspaper critics, only one, Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, has given it a negative review. In fact, Michael O’Sullivan in the Washington Post calls it “almost shockingly good. And not [...]

NETFLIX: KICKED WHILE IT’S DOWN

Netflix rivals are ganging up on the leading online movie renter, following a string of PR debacles that have pummeled the price of its shares over the past month. This morning, Amazon chief Jeff Bezos announced that it had signed a deal with Fox to add “a broad selection of movies and TV shows” to [...]

DID KATZENBERG HIT PARAMOUNT WITH SURPRISE KUNG FU CHOP?

Just days after DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg said that there was no reason for him to make an immediate decision on whether to renew his distribution agreement with Paramount since the current one doesn’t expire until 2013, DWA has reportedly made the decision. According to the Los Angeles Times, it has told Paramount that [...]

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