The Morning Fix: Disney not interested in another ‘Proposal!’ Hollywood for sale! Leno’s low-key pitch.
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After the coffee. Before helping Tiger Woods prep for Friday.
Tough crowd! You’d think that a hit movie and a big star would make doing a sequel for Sandra Bullock’s ‘The Proposal’ would be a no-brainer for Walt Disney Co. Apparently, though, the company is not interested, according to New York magazine’s entertainment blog Vulture. Although the story doesn’t say whether Bullock was on board for ‘The Proposal 2,’ it does say Disney told the producers it wasn’t interested. Disney’s big push is for movies with toys or rides. Personally, we think Bullock would be smart to stay away from sequels (remember ‘Speed 2’?). Meanwhile, movies about high school and proms are still OK there, as Variety reports.
Tough job. Remember the good old days of a few years ago? A booming DVD market bringing in truckloads of new money and changing technology that would create new platforms and more demand for content? Sony’s David Bishop does. The head of the studio’s home entertainment unit talks with the Los Angeles Times about what’s working and what’s not.
It’s 2010, right? NBC’s taking a lot of heat for not putting a bunch of Olympic events online for fear of diluting its prime time audience. Debates are raging about whether having something run live online during the day would really hurt the prime-time audience. The network doesn’t want to risk upsetting advertisers on TV just to please fans online. This is an old debate but it gets louder with each passing Olympics. The New York Times on NBC’s defense.
All bids accepted. Lots of assets are for sale right now, including MGM and Miramax, but good luck getting top dollar. Content used to be king, but library values are dropping. The Wrap tries to make sense of the current landscape.
Silent Jay. NBC is taking a low-key approach to promoting Jay Leno’s return to late night next month. While commercials are starting to pop up on the network (in between all the ‘Parenthood’ spots), the network hasn’t, uh, sunk a whole lot of creative effort into its pitch. According to USA Today, NBC originally toyed with some clever spots including one ‘Dallas’-inspired ad in which Leno’s 10 p.m. show would have just been a bad dream. Instead the network is just tinkering with some of the 10 p.m. promotions. Oh heck, I could have thought of that.
Saving Southland. New episodes of ‘Southland,’ the show that NBC tossed overboard last year and that TNT is trying to resuscitate, will be debuting in a few weeks. The show’s executive producer John Wells (he of ‘ER’ fame) tells Forbes that if TNT orders more episodes, he’ll have to trim about 20% off of the budget. As usual, he added, the viewers wouldn’t notice any difference on screen. Yeah, that’s what the newspaper industry says every time they shrink a section or cut some staff.
HBO to go. HBO detailed its long-expected online version HBO Go on Wednesday to reporters. As the pay cable channel has been saying for, oh, two years now, you have to already be an HBO cable subscriber to get their content online. The other rub is that your broadband distributor must also subscribe (i.e. pay in some form or another) to HBO Go. It’s similar to what ESPN is doing with its online site and how cable networks want to build new revenue streams. Here’s a little analysis of HBO’s effort from Hollywood Reporter.
Inside the Los Angeles Times: Her Sharona: The inspiration for the hit single talks about rock ‘n’ roll and real estate. John Horn on why Paramount may have been right to push ‘Shutter Island.’
-- Joe Flint
