Gross box office receipts across the European Union and the U.K. were up 70 percent in 2022 to $5.5 billion (€5.07 billion), with an additional 250 million tickets sold, bringing total attendance figures to 657 million. The return of the studio blockbusters were the main drivers of the theatrical resurgence. - The Hollywood Reporter
The flagship Disney+ service also lost 4 million paid subscribers during the quarter—its biggest drop ever and a shock to analysts who expected the service to add 1.7 million subscribers. Disney’s shares fell more than 4% following the report. - The Wall Street Journal
The Kerala Story, set in the southwestern state but produced by Mumbai's Hindi-language industry, purports to tell the story of three out of an alleged 32,000 women lured into marriage by Muslim men ("love jihad," a decades-old conspiracy theory) and taken to join ISIS in Afghanistan. - BBC
"The show is dragging an ancient queen into Western debates in which she has no place, they argue, … and they would like Afrocentrists to back off. … '“How can someone who's not even from my country claim my heritage just because of their skin color?' said (one) Egyptologist." - The New York Times
To be sure, Paramount is hardly alone in its bloodletting. Warner Bros. Discovery, for instance, completed a series of layoffs as well as a corporate reorganization last year, while Disney is in the midst of cutting 7,000 positions across the company. - The Hollywood Reporter
"'We have had over 40 new advertisers come into the hour since we launched the new program, including some of the largest in the country and, really, across all major categories,' says Jeff Collins, executive vice president of ad sales at Fox News Media." - Variety
"For 1,350 global publishers included in Chartbeat’s data, 27% of page views coming from external, search and social in January 2018 came from Facebook (2 billion page views). In April 2023, this was down to 11% (1.5 billion)." - Press Gazette (UK)
"What launched as a single show in 1987 (The Week in Rock, led by correspondent Kurt Loder) eventually became a bona fide news outlet for Gen X and older millennials who found that traditional TV programming on the broadcast networks and CNN wasn't cutting it." - The Hollywood Reporter
In the industry, some are dubbing this year’s labor action “the Netflix strike. Netflix in a lot of ways has upended the business model, and broken it in fundamental ways.” - Los Angeles Times
On the last day of April, Gov. Kevin Stitt vetoed a bill funding the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority, calling public broadcasting an "outdated system" and complaining of indoctrination, the over-sexualization of our children." Among the pernicious influences he cited was Clifford the Big Red Dog. - Deadline
His remark on Tuesday that he may transfer NPR's primary Twitter account with nearly 9 million followers to another entity is typical of how Musk has run the social media site. - NPR
Thanks to the massivehit series The Glory and, of course, Squid Game, Netflix's Ted Sarandos has invested a lot of money into developing Korean shows that, he says, "are now at the heart of the global cultural zeitgeist.” - The New York Times
The genre of movie doesn't matter - the point is, this kind of movie is never going to sell at movie theatres. But it can grab you and keep you when it plays on streaming. - BBC
The Jerry Springer show had many iconic sounds, but one of its best-known "was added in post-production: the 1,000 hertz censor bleep, which became more prevalent as the behavior on the show grew more profane." - Fast Company
Maybe this isn't great timing - for the streamers, anyway. For instance: "On Friday, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav announced that the company’s streaming division, including HBO Max (soon known as Max), made $50 million in profits during the first quarter of 2023." - HuffPost
