Paparazzi, eat your hearts out: Celebrities are now taking their own candid photos of themselves and putting them on the Web. While watching the Academy Awards on TV Sunday night, Hollywood couple Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore sent text updates to fans via Twitter.
Hulu caused quite a stir this week when, at the request of rights holders, it shut down Boxee’s access to its streaming video platform. While many discussed the business implications of this move, some are ready to do more than just talk about it. One reader wrote to tell us that he’s gonna stop using [...]
Los Angeles has long been known as a one-industry town–the movies. And so it came as no great surprise when two of my closest friends announced their intention to get their German shepherd, Heidi, into show business. Heidi soon became the star of her own Los Angeles Times blog.
On Feb. 3, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is going to make an honest man of me. Finally I will be able to buy a legal DVD of one of my favorite movies, Carol Reed’s 1959 “Our Man in Havana.” But there’s still no rhyme or reason to what films are available in any digital form.
Hollywood has the Oscars. Broadway has the Tonys. Now Twitter has the…Shorty Awards? The awards, announced last week by the Brooklyn Internet company Sawhorse Media, aim to honor the best Twitterers of 2008 in categories like humor, news and food.
Like David going 15 rounds with Goliath, StreamCast Networks Inc. battled the biggest companies in the entertainment industry for nearly six and a half years before finally dropping the slingshot and hitting the dirt. The file-sharing company filed a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition last week, sending it down the road to liquidation. But the company’s demise wasn’t triggered by Hollywood studios or the major record labels, as much as they would have liked to have done so.
While Marvel’s lawyers have been doing plenty of work on their own to hurt interest in the new movie “Iron Man,” some are suggesting an even more interesting scenario: that the release this week of the videogame Grand Theft Auto IV (to excellent reviews) will have an impact on how many people are willing to buy tickets to “Iron Man”’s opening weekend.
Only 350 miles separate [Silicon Valley and Hollywood], and technology and entertainment executives are worlds apart. But they are circling each other once again, trying to figure how best to combine forces to get movies, videos and other programming to homes and cellphones. Of course, media moguls and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs working together again has all the familiarity of a late-night rerun.
Hollywood and Silicon Valley have something of a Mars/Venus problem: The two sides are talking but they don’t speak each other’s language. A new venture involving a phone company may just add Pluto into the mix.
On Monday, the William Morris Agency, the Hollywood talent shop, will announce that it is teaming up with the Silicon Valley venture capital firms Accel Partners and Venrock to invest in digital media start-up companies based in Southern California. What makes the combination unusual, though, is the addition of AT&T as a limited partner.
Now that professional writers are done protesting the Web, will they flock to it? In this quick video interview, Patric Verrone, president of the Writers Guild of America West, tells us which parts of the new WGA contract the Guild is happy about, what new Web ventures are coming down the pike (and whether they’ll stick around) and makes a case for the continuing value of writers.
Out of work and newly wise to the state of content being distributed online, a group of professional writers is looking to start their own production and distribution company. Aaron Mendelsohn, writer of the Disney film Air Bud and an active Writers Guild of America member, is captaining the efforts, and says he has gotten a group of “A-list” film and TV writers on the team. He’s also partnering with online community experts from Silicon Valley and raising “north of $30 million” in venture capital, with the idea of launching a company called Virtual Artists later this year.
Back in the Hilton Theater Monday afternoon for a session with execs from Hollywood–Albert Cheng, EVP-digital media, Disney-ABC Television Group; Dan Fawcett, president, Fox Digital; Tom Lesinski, president, Paramount Pictures Digital Entertainment; and four days into the job, Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.
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