Industry Correspondent
Deals, development and the people who move between them, written for readers who want to know why a project exists at all.
HBO and Warner Bros have put at least twelve Game of Thrones projects into development since May 2017. House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms reached a screen. The twelfth, Aegon's Conquest, is now a film dated for 1 June 2029.
Paramount Skydance will distribute about 470 million warrants with a floor exercise price of $12.00. Its shares closed at $10.28 on Monday. The same filing says the timing of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, 'if any', is not yet certain.
Rey's return to cinemas has now been handed to four writing teams and two directors in 41 months without a day of filming, and the one Star Wars film Lucasfilm has released this decade made 32% of what The Rise of Skywalker took.
Forgotten Island's $12.8m opening is being written up as a DreamWorks disaster. Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado opened Puss in Boots: The Last Wish at $12,429,515 and finished on $186,090,535. The difference between the two films is not the reviews. It is the calendar.
Yuval Abraham's Oscar-winning No Other Land needed 350 days to reach an American cinema and never found a US distributor. NAZA needed 20 days, and its team stopped asking.
Mushtaq Khan spent 46 years in Hindi cinema and appeared in 11 films alongside Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. Raza Murad, who attended the funeral, says no star came. Half the obituaries could not even agree how old he was.
The consent decree obliges the merged Paramount-Warner to release four independent films a year and attaches $5m a year to buy them. Missing a single studio release costs $30m, six times as much.
A24 used to take 40 to 45 per cent of the ticket. It now asks for the low to mid 50s. On the $197.5m Backrooms took in America, those ten points come to $19.75m, nearly twice what the film cost to make.
The last Disney+ price rise Chapek approved took effect eighteen days after the board sacked him. It put the ad-free tier at $10.99. On Wednesday it reached $21.49, and the gap between the ad-free and ad-supported plans has tripled to exactly $9.00.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens in Exposition Park on Tuesday at $25 a head. The Getty cost more and is free. The Broad cost $140m and is free. At The Broad's first-year attendance, the Lucas gate would take 49 years to cover the build.
Warner Bros. released 11 films in 2025 and Paramount eight. The commitment being written into a settlement with California and 11 other states is 30 a year for three years, which is 33 films more than the current rate produces.
Resident Evil took $24m on Friday including previews and is heading for about $50m. That is 48% of the weekend on day one, against 41.8% for Weapons, which is why forecasts of $58m to $68m, ours included, were too high.
Cameron spent 60 weeks and $18m converting Titanic to 3D. Outsyders did most of Lilo & Stitch in eight weeks. But six weeks was the normal turnaround in 2012, which means the number that actually moved is the headcount, not the calendar.
American Idol moves to the Atlanta area for season 25 after 24 years in Los Angeles. The reporting says Georgia's incentives won it, but California now pays a higher rate. LA reality filming has fallen to 676 shoot days, about a third of its five-year norm.
AI films have struggled to make anyone care about faces that belong to nobody. A True Warrior casts a creator its audience already recognises as the villain Sultan, and was generated in twenty-four hours.
Fielder and Lance Oppenheim spent three years on Elizabeth Holmes, starting 34 days before she went to prison. A24 wants it in best picture, where no documentary has ever been nominated.
AI-generated features now premiere at Tribeca and Venice. Guillermo del Toro would rather die than use it. The real threat falls on junior crew, and the real opportunity on filmmakers with no money and something to say.
Record UK production spend has not reached the smallest shoots. Peer-to-peer platforms let owners rent out idle kit and, on Picturental, offer crew on demand. Here is how they work and what to check.
Disney and 20th Century's adaptation of Peter Heller's novel finished fifth in North America. It is Ridley Scott's weakest start since The Last Duel in 2021.
Everyone covered the price Paramount Skydance is paying for Warner Bros. Discovery. Almost nobody covered the ticking fee that starts accruing in twenty days.
Schiff's office confirms draft text is circulating, yet there is no score, no sponsor list and no vehicle. Marcus Dey on why presidential goodwill is the weakest possible foundation for a tax credit.