HOLLYWOOD LIBERATION ARMY

WHAT'S AHEAD FOR NET, DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT

A nice roundtable discussion on how The Internet and digital technology are changing entertainment at lightning speed.  In short, the coming years will scramble concepts of music-making, movies, TV networks and advertising. 

One excellent quote from Roger McNamee, a Silicon Valley VC and author of "The New Normal":  Most major media companies define their technology strategy in terms of digital-rights management. Their view of the world is about controlling access to what they own. The next 10 years are about exactly the opposite. It's about the creative people and their fans getting together. Whatever it is you like, it will be increasingly available. It's time to give customers what they want.

It's now our job and the industry's job to actually do it. The old business models are brain-dead, and the body will die soon.

Kind of ties in to what I said about Hollywood in my previous post.

USA Today

HOLLYWOOD BOX OFFICE HEADED FOR DISASTER

Numerous stories are beginning to appear on the sad state of this year's box office.  This comes as no surprise for the simple reason that the Hollywood system is broken.  At a certain point several years ago, Hollywood made the strategic decision to abandon original concepts and concentrate solely on remakes, sequels, and pre-sold properties taken from other media -- books, comics, games.  This strategy worked well initially with A-list franchises like "Lord Of The Rings", "Harry Potter", and "SpiderMan", resulting in record box office grosses; but now that Hollywood has burned through many of the A-list titles, it is being forced to rely more and more on less popular B and C-list properties that cannot possibly perform as well.  At the same time, it has become institutionally incapable of creating original movies and cannot go back to that point, and as such, faces the inevitable prospect of a long and slow erosion at the box office.

That's not to say that Star Wars won't be huge this summer, but Hollywood gets none of that money, and sure, they're trying to resurrect Batman and Superman again, but how many times you can that work?  War of the Worlds, King Kong, how many titles like these are there?  Not enough, and they are running out of them.

Hollywood Worries As Decline Continues -- NY Times

Hollywood's Box Office FlameOut -- CNN

GOOGLE LIKES TO WATCH

Looks like Google is getting into the burgeoning online video space in a big way.  They've announced they will begin archiving and indexing personal video footage submitted by the 'masses', in what they see as an experiment in video blogging.  Seeing that the ultimate video search engine is probably one of the internet's holiest grails, it's not suprising.  I wonder if they will tie this in with Blogger as well.

CNET News.com   

MACHINIMA GROWS WITH 'GOD OF WAR'

First EA paid the Red vs. Blue guys to create "The Strangerhood" machinima series to highlight its Sims 2 game, now Sony is getting into the machinima act with "Pimp My Weapon", a new machinima series intended to promote "God Of War".  Nice little trend developing here -- machinima series being bankrolled essentially as advertisements for the game.  I'm sure we'll see more of this.  Check out the first episode at Heavy.com, which I did not realize was even still around, so its certainly a coup for them as well.

Kotaku

SUPREME COURT POWER TO STOP P2P LIMITED

Variety, or at least this reporter, seems to agree with me that the Supreme Court's ruling on P2P, even if it rules against Morpheus, Grokster, et al., will have limited effect in reality as the whole P2P business will simply move overseas.  In addition, as soon as one side loses in this case, they will be lobbying Congress, which seems to be itching to get involved anyway.  This fight is far from over.  I think in the end, the only real solution to harnessing the power of P2P while protecting the rights of content creators will be a technological one.   

Variety

MORE LONG TAIL GOODNESS -- THIS TIME IN TELEVISION

Wired's Chris Anderson goes in depth into the imminenet transformation of the television business using the 'Long Tail' paradigm.  It fits in nicely with the whole 'Exploding TV' meme.

The Long Tail via Lost Remote

ENTERTAINMENT BIZ PREPS FOR DAY IN COURT

A nice concise summary of the upcoming P2P case in front of the Supreme Court:

"Three men will stand before the U.S. Supreme Court March 29, arguing one of the most important copyright cases in history.

One will speak for most of the entertainment industry. The second will argue for two companies that provide peer-to-peer file-sharing software, and the third will represent the U.S. government.

Experts agree that the court's written opinion in case No. 04-480 will have a profound impact on federal legislation, business models, law enforcement and the financial resources of industries that have provided an estimated 6% of the country's gross domestic product. Its legal and practical effect will touch the entertainment, technology and copyright industries -- and nearly everyone who earns a living in these sectors..."

As important as this case is, I'm not sure even the Supreme Court can stop file-sharing, assuming that it would want to.  The Internet is a transnational actor, and it will more likely take a world legal consensus and perhaps even some kind of international treaty in which most countries are signatory before file-sharing can truly be contained.  I'm not sure that will ever happen.

Reuters

NOTES ON INTERNET MOVIE FINANCING

The holy grail of independent movie financing will be the ability for independent movie makers to utilize the internet to raise funds for their movies, collecting a dollar here and a dollar there from a prospective mass audience.  To contribute to the overuse of the 'Long Tail' meme, let's call it the 'Long Tail' of movie financing.  I've seen a few nascent attempts at this, with Civilian.com's Ethan Hawke movie being the most prominent.  MoviesForTheMasses is a new entry in the category and it will be interesting to see how successful they can be without any recognizable names.

Hollywood Reporter

KUMA INKS WITH UTA AKA THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

Kuma, the company behind the 'reality Video game' "Kuma: War" has linked with UTA to "develop new entertainment concepts by marrying Kuma's unique episodic game production system with television properties."  Bullshit translator:  Kuma War sucks and they're desperate for other sources of revenue so they hired some slimeball Hollywood agents to try and scam a partner.  I've played Kuma.  What can I say.  The reality enviroment is cool.  BUT IT'S NO AMERICA ARMY!  The gameplay sux and I don't see a lot of 'support' for it from the fps community.  Survey Says: EHHH!!!

Hollywood Reporter

BEST BAYWATCH BEACH MOMENTS COMING TO YOUR PHONE

Zen Question:  What is the sound "Best Baywatch Beach Moments" makes when it comes to your mobile phone?  Answer:  Ka-Ching!

Unscripted tv giant Freemantle has signed a deal to produce original content for a new mobile entertainment channel -- Thumbdance -- [I'm serious] it is creating with wireless media company Mobliss.  It's first short-form show -- "Best Baywatch Beach Moments".  Maxim can you hear me now?

 

Variety.com