Renting your own movie theatre isn't cheap, but (once we can gather in greater numbers than two or three), it's not exactly unaffordable. And it makes some things far better: For instance, "when attending a public theater, your experience is completely reliant on the strangers in there with you. It all hinges on others adhering to theater etiquette rules, which tend to vary from person to person. This is a problem that is mitigated by the private theater experience." - CinemaBlend
That's right, even the streaming device is getting into content now. (Actually, it already was; this is just the newest content it has acquired.) "Quibi’s content could be especially valuable because it features well-known celebrities. Hollywood also is hungry for new content because the COVID-19 pandemic has canceled or delayed new production. And the programming can help set Roku apart from its bigger rivals" - even while some of the rivals are featured apps on the streaming devices. - Los Angeles Times
"Such films have existed almost as long as the franchise itself. Early examples were spoofs, like the 1978 short Hardware Wars and a 1997 Stormtrooper-centric sendup of Cops called Troops. Lucasfilm held annual fan-movie contests in the decade before Disney acquired the company in 2012. But Disney's stewardship, coupled with the wide availability of higher-quality moviemaking tools, has inaugurated a new era of fan creativity." - The New York Times
The yearly Celluloid Ceiling report by San Diego State University found that women accounted for 16 per cent of directors working on the 100 highest-grossing films in 2020, up from 12 per cent in 2019 and only 4 per cent in 2018. - Irish Times
Things might have seemed iffy for the multibillion-dollar animation powerhouse after its founding creative director, John Lasseter, abruptly left in 2017 amid allegations of grabbing and kissing unwilling women. Disney, Pixar's owner, turned to Docter, who had been at the studio his entire adult life and directed Monsters, Inc., Up, and Inside Out — and was then in the middle of making Soul. In the three years since, he's calmed things down, ramped business back up, and brought in a younger, more diverse set of artists and writers. - The Hollywood Reporter
The Peabody- and Pulitzer-winning audio series lost much of its luster (and gave up its awards) when its primary subject was revealed to be a big ol' liar fabulist. Media columnist Nicholas Quah considers how the flawed material got past editors in the first place, what consequences have been suffered by the main people involved, and the complications the Times has faced in dealing with the matter. - Vulture
Disney bought the rights to the specially shot and edited footage of the Broadway production and planned to release it in movie theaters — until the pandemic changed everything and the show was put on Disney+ instead. That's similar enough to other movies from 2020 that the Globes consider Hamilton eligible; SAG, oddly, puts it in the TV movie category. The Motion Picture Academy, on the other hand, made a deliberate decision to exclude the project from the Oscars. Reporter Scott Feinberg provides an explainer. - The Hollywood Reporter
Production shutdowns are expensive, and a delay of a few weeks would disrupt series’ delivery dates and air pattern. This is especially crucial for broadcast series whose current seasons are already airing. - Deadline
"As predicted, domestic movie tickets sold between Jan. 1 through Dec. 31 came generated an estimated $2.3 billion (or $2.28 billion) compared to $11.4 billion in 2019, according to Comscore estimates. That's the lowest showing in at least 40 years." - The Hollywood Reporter
"Imported films accounted for only about a sixth of China's total box office in 2020, a nearly 55% decrease year-on-year, industry data tracker Maoyan Entertainment said Monday. The decline highlights the chaos COVID-19 has wrought on Hollywood release schedules as well as the diminishing appeal of foreign content in what has just become the world's largest film market." - Variety
The short-form site crashed and burned mere months after rolling out millions of dollars worth of shows, but Roku is already offering ad-supported free content through its own channel on its own devices. - Variety
Or at least the "unhappiest auteur" hates happy endings. Manohla Dargis dives deep on the director and his "beautiful bummers," including, of course, the newish Mank, "a movie that, in its broadest strokes, enshrines its own loathing of the industry, partly through its strained relationship to the truth." - The New York Times
Step one is to fight against 1980s racist tropes. Tamlyn Tomita: "I said I would love to, this would be so fun, but the only caveat is that because I’m older, because I’m a little bit more knowledgeable and I’m going to fight for it anyway — I need to be able to inject a truer picture of Okinawa." - Los Angeles Times
The headlines say it's a record, but is 16 percent something to brag about? Hollywood thinks maybe. (It's certainly a better record than 2018's 4 percent. Four.) - Variety
Positive cases have been identified - in one case described as a cluster of infections - in several of the studios where production won't return for an extra week or two. - Los Angeles Times
