For the past several years, media business models have been under siege. Music and newspapers get a lot of the attention, but what about the business model of the classic American movie star? Like everything else, this model has recently come into serious question, as big-time stars like Tom Cruise and Harrison Ford and Julie Read More
A few years ago, I was at a kicking Grammy Awards party in a Los Angeles mansion hosted by music company EMI, which was then in the midst of a ditched merger dance with Warner Music. As a journalist covering the merger, I was on the List, and my privileged status granted me Read More
Avatar is returning to movie theaters next week in the hopes of reversing a disturbing trend in Hollywood: 3-D is fading at the multiplex. After some big hits like Alice in Wonderland and Toy Story 3, recent 3-D offerings including Cats and Dogs and Step Up 3D have withered.
But perhaps a bigger question Read More
Financier and corporate raider Carl Icahn has been after stock in Lions Gate Entertainment for years. In a new legal claim Icahn and 8 other plaintiffs filed in New York County in late July, the current Lions Gate board of directors is accused of facilitating “an unlawful sham transaction.” The claim states that Read More
As business capitals go, Los Angeles is an oddity. There are few corporate headquarters here-after Disney, can you name one?-which makes a financier like Ron Burkle a quintessential L.A. power figure: peripatetic, elusive, canny and demonstrably rich.
He’s invariably described as low-key and publicity shy, and articles about Mr. Burkle usually also Read More
Anyone who has seen Rob Lowe aping Robert Wagner in The Spy Who Shagged Me, or playing the music exec Benjamin Kane in Wayne’s World, knows two things: The guy can do funny and the guy can do unctuous. But can he do business?
Mr. Lowe is part of the consortium that Read More
It was just another Sunday in Beverly Hills for Hugh Hefner. His latest girlfriend, Crystal Harris, and other playmates lounged by the pool at the Playboy Mansion, while Hefner played Backgammon nearby with “the boys.” In the evening, it was movie night in the screening room: Inception, which Hef declared “a mind blower,” Read More
Audiences everywhere are ranting about Despicable Mel: the unraveling of an actor whose career as an entertainer seems like it ought to be kaput.
In the past two weeks, the Aussie-born Mel Gibson has supplemented past anti-Semitic outbursts with leaked recordings that use the N-word (in an especially off-putting reference to rape) Read More
Last week on a soundstage on the Disney lot in Burbank, the feds held a press conference to announce that they had taken down some Web sites that were providing illegal free and paid downloads of TV shows and films. Dramatically called “Operation in Our Sites,” this collaboration between the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Read More
Do you remember where you were when you heard that Michael Jackson died?
That’s a retro question nowadays-the kind of thing that is earnestly said about John Lennon or Elvis Presley. For this generation, obviously, the answer is: You were at your computer and read it on TMZ. It’s hard to believe that a Read More
