DIS Shareholders and Stock Info ONLY

[HokieRaven5]

Then I'll wait for your review.

As much as I enjoyed some of the recent American versions, Godzilla should just remain in the hands of Toho and Japanese creators. Minus One was a solid entry.

 

[Disney Bobby]

As much as I enjoyed some of the recent American versions, Godzilla should just remain in the hands of Toho and Japanese creators. Minus One was a solid entry.

I lied. Couldn't wait. Just got back from seeing it. Really liked it. My wife even liked it, and she is NOT a monster movie fan at all.

You are 100% correct. Needs to stay with Toho and Japanese creators. Amazing they did that for $15 million. Makes me wonder why Disney has to spend a quarter of a billion on all their movies.

 

[wabbott]

https://deadline.com/2023/12/advertising-digital-rebound-2023-2022-groupm-tv-streaming-1235648715/

Digital Surge Propels Global Ad Market To Nearly 6% Rebound From 2022 Levels, GroupM Estimates; Nearly Half Of TV Ad Dollars Have Shifted To Streaming
By Dade Hayes - Business Editor
December 4, 2023 3:00am PST

Major media agency GroupM says global ad revenue in 2023 will come in at about $889 billion, with year-over-year growth of 5.8% matching the company’s mid-year estimates.

The tally, which excludes political spending because of its highly cyclical nature, is expected grow at a slower rate of 5.3% in 2024 due to inflation and other macroeconomic factors.

Spending overall in 2023 has benefited from a surge in digital spending. “Pure play” digital advertising, a category including YouTube and TikTok but not counting connected-TV and digital out-of-home, will end 2023 up 9.2% over the prior year, exceeding GroupM’s prior expectation of an 8.4% gain. By 2028, pureplay digital will be larger than the entire advertising industry was in 2022, the company said.

Connected TV continues to climb as streaming gains ever-more clout, and the category is expected to grow 13.8% in 2024 compared with this year.

Sports programming is increasingly a magnet for ads across streaming or linear TV, and is winning an increasing share of total viewing. Sports accounted for 23.5% of all viewing hours this year, up from 14.1% in 2018, GroupM said. “Sports is one thing that continues to bring a community experience, a shared experience,” Kate Scott-Dawkins, GroupM’s global president business intelligence, said during a press briefing.

The U.S. and China remain the two largest markets in terms of ad revenue, in that order, but the UK leapfrogged Japan to take the No. 3 spot, largely due to the weakening of the Japanese yen over the last six months.

Media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global have reported softness recently in their ad businesses, which has raised alarms among some investors. Traditional media players are all managing decline in linear TV viewing and advertising, while at the same time mounting streaming businesses whose economics look quite different from those of the legacy TV business. The volume of advertising is shrinking, though, which raises questions about pricing and strategy moving forward. Since the beginning of 2021, streaming has increased its share of advertising across the combined linear and streaming market to 46% from 34.5%.

With smaller ad loads and many consumers remaining in ad-free subscription plans, if 30% of overall connected-TV viewing is ad-free over the next four years, the average number of total ad hours would drop 17%, GroupM estimates.

 

[wabbott]

https://deadline.com/2023/12/comcast-disney-hulu-mike-cavanagh-1235650499/

Comcast Has Collected Big Disney Check For Hulu Stake And Expects, Hopes For More; Peacock At 30 Million
By Jill Goldsmith - Co-Business Editor
December 4, 2023 7:07am PST

Comcast has collected what it hopes will be a first payment from Disney for its stake in Hulu, marking “the beginning of a process” to value the streamer, company President Mike Cavanagh said at a media conference Monday.

The anticipated $8.5 billion dollar check arrived Friday, he told investors at a UBS media conference in NYC.

Disney said it that it will acquire the remaining 33% stake in Hulu it doesn’t already own from the NBC Universal parent. A deal between the Hulu owners established a floor of about that amount. Any additional payout, or not, will depend on an evaluation process underway with both companies and their investment banks. The process was moved up — to this fall from January of 2024 — and the Disney check was due Dec. 1.

Comcast has collected what it hopes will be a first payment from Disney for its stake in Hulu, marking “the beginning of a process” to value the streamer, company President Mike Cavanagh said at a media conference Monday.

The anticipated $8.5 billion dollar check arrived Friday, he told investors at a UBS media conference in NYC.

Disney said it that it will acquire the remaining 33% stake in Hulu it doesn’t already own from the NBC Universal parent. A deal between the Hulu owners established a floor of about that amount. Any additional payout, or not, will depend on an evaluation process underway with both companies and their investment banks. The process was moved up — to this fall from January of 2024 — and the Disney check was due Dec. 1.

The 2019 agreement included a put/call that allowed Comcast to ‘put’ its stake to Disney, or the Bob Iger-run company to buy it. Iger wasn’t sure at first but ultimately decided owning the asset in full makes sense.

The “check cleared, it’s in the account,” Cavanagh said. “We expect, and certainly hope to get more than that once the process ends. But it’s really just the beginning.”

On streaming, Cavanagh said Peacock is at 30 million paying subscribers and said it will hit peak losses of $2.8 billion this year. It was at 28 million at Comcast’s last earnings report in October.

Hitting on the film studio behind Oppenheimer, he said it’s possible there could be potential shifts in the release schedule but is upbeat on the 2024 slate. He praised strong leadership, good talent relationships and partnership with creators. “I think that our reliance, rather than on formulaic…has been more around originality and creativity,” he said, “and I think that feels a little bit like what the moment calls for in Hollywood.”

 

[wabbott]

https://variety.com/2023/streaming/news/peacock-30-million-subscribers-peak-losses-1235820372/

Dec 4, 2023 7:04am PST
Peacock Streaming Loss to Peak at $2.8 Billion in 2023 as Service Tops 30 Million Subscribers, Comcast President Says by Jennifer Maas

Peacock is closing out 2023 with some good news: The Comcast-owned streaming service has reached 30 million paid subscribers.

Additionally, according to Comcast CEO Mike Cavanagh, the platform saw $2.8 billion in losses this year (coming in under the $3 billion projected by the company back in January), and Cavanagh expects that figure to be the peak loss for Peacock heading into 2024.

Cavanagh boasted about Peacock’s growth over its first three years during the UBS Global Media and Communications conference Monday, saying: “To be at 30 million paying subscribers for Peacock now, switching gears to that, at roughly $10 monthly ARPU, and having done that in only three years.”

Most recently, Comcast reported that Peacock had topped 28 million paid subscribers as of the end of Q3, which was revealed during their quarterly financial report in late October.

“We’re focused on domestic, we can take the content that doesn’t go into Peacock and monetize it outside of the United States,” Cavanagh said Monday. “I think for us, that’s not the ambition, we’ll figure out how to make sure our international joint ventures and partnerships and the like solve the problem of what it means not to have a global service of our own, and that can change over time. But our primary focus is figure out domestic and make sure that we continue to have the reach and relevance between linear and digital as we look several years down the road. I think that will set us up for plenty of good, both sustainability of what we currently are, which is a pretty powerful thing, and good optionality for the future. And I think the fact that when you roll it all together, we make money. We disclose what we ‘lose’ in Peacock for clarity, and it’s going to peak this year at $2.8 billion of losses. But don’t forget the counter narrative of, what would it all look like if we weren’t trying at Peacock? You’d be asking a different set of questions, which is where are the linear businesses going if you’re not trying to figure out a future for the powerful platforms you have?”

When it comes to potential M&A opportunities for Comcast and its NBCUniversal assets, Cavanagh says “the bar is really high.” “I really like the organic hand we have against all the businesses that are the growth businesses we have, we don’t need to do anything inorganic acquisition-wise to make any of what I described happen.”

 

[wabbott]

https://deadline.com/2023/12/espn-fox-corp-sports-streaming-nfl-1235650525/

ESPN Is “A Great Product”, Fox Corp. CFO Steve Tomsic Says, But It’s Only “A Sliver Of Sports” Given Fragmentation In U.S. Market
By Dade Hayes - Business Editor
December 4, 2023 8:05am PST

Fox Corp. CFO Steven Tomsic said ESPN is “a great product” with strong potential in streaming, but the long-established brand is also just “a sliver of sports.”

The exec was asked during an appearance at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference about ESPN’s forthcoming direct-to-consumer launch and the implications for Fox.

“We did a calculus of all the sort of distribution modes that could possibly emerge,” Tomsic said. “With sports in this country, they’re so fragmented. So, for the true sports fan — look, ESPN’s a great service. And I’m sure when they launch the ESPN flagship [in streaming], I’m sure it will be a great product. But it’s a sliver of sports. If you’re a sports fan and you want to watch the NFL in a given week, you go to Amazon for Thursdays, you go to us on Sunday, you’ve got CBS on Sunday, you’ve got NBC Sunday night and you’ve got ESPN on Monday.” Given the potency of the NFL, Tomsic continued, that level of fragmentation means that “no one sports service is going to satisfy” a fan.

There has recently been momentum for bundling in the streaming sector, not just vertically within companies but horizontally. Verizon this morning announced a bundle of Netflix and Max. Apple and Paramount have reportedly held talks about a bundle. As to a bundle scenario, Tomic said, “If you can conjure a way to bring all of those sports services together … it kind of looks like a digital MVPD” like YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. “And it’s probably going to be at a similar price point,” in the $65-to-$73-a-month range. “We’re obviously following it.”

By contrast with its media peers, Fox has long taken a conservative approach to subscription streaming and relied on the tried-and-true (albeit shrinking) pay-TV bundle. Its main presence in streaming is through free, ad-supported platform Tubi, which the company acquired in 2020. Contemplating a more streaming-centric marketplace than exists today, Tomsic hypothesized, “We have the rights capability, both on the sports side and on the news side, to be able to deliver our services DTC. We have a pretty extensive technology build. … We have all the building blocks for us to get a DTC, if and when that becomes appropriate. But for now, we still think the right strategy is where we’re at.”

Tomsic was asked about the M&A market, which has started to heat up recently after a long cool-down due to macroeconomic and regulatory conditions. Since Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox created a more streamlined Fox Corp. in 2019, questions have percolated about the future configuration of the company. (Not addressed onstage at UBS, though it will be a defining factor in shaping the future of Fox, is the future role of 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch, who recently stepped down as chairman of Fox and News Corp.)

“The way we approach M&A is not from a defensive perspective,” Tomsic said. “We narrowed down the company, and we’ve got a really, really focused company. We don’t need scale for scale’s sake. In fact, the evolution of the Disney transaction was to deliver scale where scale was required for Disney and its SVOD strategy and deliver focus where we could be leaders in news and sports. … If you look historically at our capital deployment and where we’ve gone with that, I think there’s been $4.9 billion in buybacks since the spin and we’ve done, in round numbers $1.5 billion in M&A. We want to grow the company. If you had said to me five years ago that those would be the numbers where that would be the split, I would have expected the opposite. But we’re super-disciplined. We look at everything.”

Opportunities that help “our core verticals” of news and sports remain in the mix, Tomsic said. “Our M&A filter is very broad, but our bar is very high.”

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...ing-bundles-netflix-apple-verizon-1235709564/

Netflix and Apple Open Door to Bundling With Streaming Rivals
A Verizon-backed Netflix and Max deal, and talks between Apple and Paramount suggest that streaming bundles may be about to go get bigger and better.
December 4, 2023 6:31am PST
by Alex Weprin

After years of mostly sitting on the sidelines, two streaming companies that have long been reluctant to bundle their wares with competitor services seem a bit more open to the idea.

On Monday, the telecom giant Verizon announced a $10 per month deal that includes the ad tiers of both Netflix and Max. That’s a 40 percent discount compared to their standard prices.

And it’s notable because while Max has offered discounted pricing before (Max just offered its ad tier for $3 per month for Black Friday), Netflix has notably not offered any discounts or wholesale prices on its plans for many years.

To be certain, it is not clear whether Netflix is offering a wholesale price to Verizon or how the discount cost is being shared between the three companies, but the 40 percent discount suggests that either Verizon, Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix or some combination thereof is helping to subsidize those costs.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said at a UBS conference Monday morning that the bundle is something that “nobody else can do” and that forming new bundles is a priority for the telecom company.

Verizon, it should be noted, has offered Netflix in its bundles before, but it has never done so for the ad tier, and has suggested that in the past it was shouldering the cost of Netflix in its other bundles.

The launch of Netflix’s ad tier a year ago, at a lower price point, seems to have been a tipping point, with Netflix executives having noted that it is generating better margins on that tier than its base ad-free tier.

At the same time, another streaming service that has been reluctant to bundle seems more open to it. Apple TV+ has held some talks with Paramount about an Apple TV+-Paramount+ bundle, sources confirm, though the exact nature of what that bundle will look like remains unclear (it could happen through an intermediary like Verizon).

Apple TV+ does not have an ad tier yet, but it did recently raise prices, making fighting churn a priority. Apple has had success with a bundle of its own services (Apple One includes services like Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple News and cloud storage), but as it seeks to grow its streaming video service to profitability, it seems open to partnering with other players in the space to keep subscriptions consistent and to reduce churn.

The streaming services from legacy media companies like Disney (Disney+, Hulu), NBCUniversal, (Peacock), Warner Bros. Discovery (Max) and Paramount (Paramount+) have long shown a willingness to discount or bundle, either in-house (the Disney Bundle) or with partners (Peacock’s deal last month with Instacart+, Paramount+’s deal with Walmart+).

But the new bundles involving Netflix and Apple suggest that some players that have largely avoided discounting or wholesale offers may be warming up to the idea, and partnering with their legacy media competitors to stay in the game.

 

[wabbott]

And since y'all were discussing this a day or two ago...

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment...tainment-concurrent-theatrical-140000045.html

Godzilla Conquers Entertainment With Concurrent Theatrical, Streaming Strategies | Analysis
by Scott Mendelson
Mon, December 4, 2023 at 8:00 AM CST·10 min read

You might start noticing a lot of “Godzilla” entertainment these days.

This weekend, Japanese producer Toho released “Godzilla Minus One” in the U.S., taking in $11 million from 2,308 theaters, impressive for a Japanese-language monster saga that is the first such feature since 2016’s “Shin Godzilla.”
But cinemas are hardly the only place where U.S. fans can catch a glimpse of the radioactive dinosaur. Over at Apple TV+, the 10-episode series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” has emerged as a critically acclaimed hit following its debut on Nov. 17.

And fans got a first look at Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire,” due to be released in April, at this weekend’s CCXP fan event in Brazil.

To paraphrase this year’s Best Picture winner, Godzilla is everywhere all at once. At least it sure seems that way.

The latest Godzilla movie, distributed by Emick Media in the U.S., added its $11 million box office haul — a strong result for a subtitled Japanese film with almost no marketing — to the $23 million the film has already grossed in Japan.

Known affectionately as the “Mickey Mouse of Japan,” Godzilla is one of the world’s most sprawling entertainment franchises. Spanning 35 live-action movies over nearly 70 years — not to mention three anime-inspired animated films — the Godzilla IP universe extends to television series, comic books, video games, novels and other merchandise.

While confirmed grosses in Japan, especially for older films, are hard to clarify, the “Godzilla” film franchise is estimated to have earned more than $2.57 billion in worldwide ticket sales since 1954. That includes 100 million tickets sold for the Toho-produced titles — not counting the most recent entry — in Japan alone.

In recent years, Hollywood studio Legendary has controlled the rights to produce English-language films and television shows after acquiring them from Toho in 2010 in a multi-year deal.

As Hollywood continues to figure out how to turn every remotely successful property into a multi-media, never-ending IP content farm, Godzilla stands out as an example of a global brand whose owners and licensors have diversified the use of the character’s content to keep it interesting for new generations of moviegoers. So far, Hollywood films produced by Legendary, such as “Godzilla vs. Kong,” present Godzilla as a towering protector of Earth’s status quo (and humanity by default), while the Toho films present him or her as the terrifying destroyer of worlds.

The character’s appearance in three disparate projects in the span of five months speaks to the enduring popularity of the character — and to how Toho and its licensors have managed to stay true to its original DNA. “While there may be debates over certain preferences, considering the current popularity of the Monsterverse vs. the decades-long expansiveness of the ongoing Toho series, a genuine sense of joy is shared by all the fans simply due to having so much new Godzilla media,” film critic and noted Godzilla enthusiast Aaron Neuwirth told TheWrap.

The Legendary movies don’t seem to mitigate interest among the fans for the Toho-produced films, while Legendary’s expansions into television (including Netflix’s animated “Skull Island” series by writer/executive producer Brian Duffield) can coexist without making the movies less of an event. The how and why of these relative concurrent successes show that Godzilla is a malleable character who can exist in various forms in various genres — a contrast to the constant rebooting of singular characters like Superman or Spider-Man.

And Godzilla hasn’t been afraid to save the day for the movie industry. Even with “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” underperforming two years prior, 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong” helped salvage sinking movie theaters after the first year of the pandemic. It was the first major tentpole that earned global grosses — $468 million, including $100 million domestic and $188 million in China — on par (if not better) with what might have been expected in pre-COVID times.

Toho, a Toyko-based entertainment company formed in 1932 that is also known for anime and films by Akira Kurosawa, has owned the rights to the Godzilla and Godzilla-related properties and characters since the 1954 “Godzilla” original.

Legendary acquired the English-language rights in March of 2010 to make English-language productions, with Warner Bros. serving as co-producers and distributors (in most territories) for the Hollywood feature films. Legendary has what are colloquially called “rolling rights,” meaning they keep them as long as new Godzilla media gets made every so often.

Toho remains involved in Legendary’s projects as a producer and can still make kaiju films mostly aimed at the Japanese marketplace. Thus far, as evidenced by the relatively concurrent critical and commercial successes of Legendary and WB’s “Godzilla” in 2014 and Toho’s “Shin Godzilla” in 2016, it has been a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“Godzilla’ has deftly tapped into our nuclear anxiety and love of watching big monsters smash things for 70 years,” one high-ranking exhibition insider noted. “It’s great seeing a legacy franchise execute at such a high level in so many different ways because it offers the industry some important, timely lessons in creative reinvention and longevity.”

“Gojira” as a horror movie, not a monster mash

The first “Godzilla,” titled “Gojira” in its native Japan, was a stone-cold horror movie where the giant lizard beast was a metaphor for the unthinkable carnage wrought by America’s use of nuclear weapons upon civilian Japanese populaces during World War II.

That the franchise eventually became associated with hyper-colorful and unapologetically campy monster mashes and kaiju team-ups does little to demystify Ishirō Honda’s original melodrama. But it does qualify as ironic, considering its origins, the extent to which Godzilla has morphed into a national mascot for Japan.

It is one of many franchises — ranging from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series to Blue Sky’s blockbuster “Ice Age” films — to begin with a far more dramatic and emotionally compelling entry than the comparatively more cartoonish follow-ups that came to define the franchise.

As Neuwirth explained to TheWrap: “Sympathetic movie monsters weren’t a new concept for the time.” However, he stated, “Honda’s influential classic managed to wrap a compelling new creation with a distinct look, iconic sound, and innovative method of filmmaking all for the sake of a dark metaphor for the experiences an entire country was still in mourning of, let alone the new fears that have emerged with the arrival of the atomic age.”

Hollywood gets into the monster game

Legendary’s so-called “Monsterverse,” which launched in 2014 with Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla,” has been chugging along with big-budget, globally targeted blockbusters featuring Godzilla and King Kong. It was followed by “Kong: Skull Island,” a Vietnam War-era period piece that earned solid reviews and grossed $568 million globally in early 2017. That remains the biggest-earning “giant monster movie” in unadjusted global box office outside of the “Jurassic Park” features.

However, 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” was a critical and commercial disappointment. Michael Dougherty’s ambitious, sprawling “Godzilla” sequel earned just $390 million, partially because “Avengers: Endgame” and “Aladdin” became such all-consuming early summer smashes and partially because the marketplace had been flooded with other monster movies like “Rampage” and “The Meg” in the time since “Godzilla” and “Kong” had been released.

Legendary’s next Monsterverse film “Godzilla vs. Kong” was already in production when “King of the Monsters” stumbled, so it moved forward (albeit delayed from 2020 to 2021 due to the pandemic). There were reports that Legendary was attempting to sell the film to Netflix for $200 million. Distributor Warner Bros. stepped in and bought Legendary’s 75% share of the film’s $165 million with intent to distribute theatrically, and the movie opened in late March of 2021 with a simultaneous debut in theaters and on HBO Max.

With the success of “Godzilla vs. Kong” the Monsterverse lived on, as Legendary put into development the prequel series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” at Apple TV+ — which has dual timelines set after “Godzilla” and in the 1950s — and another Monsterverse movie, which became “Godzilla X Kong” from “Godzilla vs. Kong” director Adam Wingard.

Toho stands tall

Takashi Yamazaki’s “Godzilla Minus Zero” is the 30th Toho-produced live-action Godzilla film. It has no connection to the Monsterverse movies or shows — and yet was wildly anticipated anyway.

“Shin Godzilla,” a mix of Godzilla horror show and bureaucratic black comedy, was Toho’s first live-action offering since “Godzilla: Final Wars,” which closed out the 1999-2004 “Millenium era” on the 50th anniversary of the original “Godzilla.” Like almost every Japanese-focused entry since “Godzilla 2000” in 1999, it is a straight-up reboot, although a few of the “Millenium Era” titles acknowledge the first film.

In between “Shin Godzilla” (which won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture) and the post-WWII-set “Godzilla Minus Zero,” (currently sitting with a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) Toho also produced three anime-influenced “Godzilla” animated films, which Netflix has distributed throughout much of the world. None of these films are overshadowing the Legendary films, nor are the Legendary films and shows minimizing the Toho-produced films among the fanbase. Fans are eating it all up.

And “delivering on that enjoyment is fairly simple, as the bar for success doesn’t require much for a Godzilla fan,” Neuwirth continued. “Deliver a good enough-looking Godzilla destroying cities or getting into fights with other kaiju, and the battle for approval has been won.”

Judging by the box office success of “Godzilla Minus One” already — $34 million globally on a reported $15 million budget — the audience that craves Godzilla is being offered all they could want, minus the toxic element found within other notable fandoms.

In recent years, Toho has leaned into its Godzilla IP to expand internationally. In 2019, the company told Variety it had injected $140 million into its Toho International subsidiary in Los Angeles with an eye to working more with Hollywood. And in a “Toho Vision 2021” white paper released in 2018, Toho said a company priority was to develop a “character business centered on ‘Godzilla.’”

Everywhere all at once

Evidence that one “Godzilla” title isn’t impeding the success of another can be seen in the performance of “Monarch” on Apple TV+ and the growing anticipation for “Godzilla Minus One.”

While raw streaming data is hard to come by, the premiere episodes of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” made the Top 10 at Samba TV for the week of Nov. 20. It over-indexed with Gen Z households by 12% and over-indexed with Black households by 18% while pulling in 292,000 U.S. households (live+ two days) during the period, according to Samba TV. The expansion into streaming-era television — the show takes place after “Godzilla” and before “King of the Monsters” — seems to complement rather than undercut the Monsterverse’s theatrical ambitions.

The move is reminiscent of decades of episodic shows based on DreamWorks Animation movies that thrived on their own demographic (kid-friendly) terms without making films like “Kung Fu Panda 3,” “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” or “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” any less of a theatrical smash. It helps that, unlike the Disney+ MCU shows, there isn’t a publicity campaign telling folks that they must watch certain Monsterverse movies to understand the show.

Godzilla will live on in the monster’s various and diverse distribution channels. As one studio insider said, so long as filmmakers “remember to put the ‘god’ in “Godzilla,” the character can play in whatever sandbox is required.

 

[Suger Mag]

And since y'all were discussing this a day or two ago...

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment...tainment-concurrent-theatrical-140000045.html

Godzilla Conquers Entertainment With Concurrent Theatrical, Streaming Strategies | Analysis
by Scott Mendelson
Mon, December 4, 2023 at 8:00 AM CST·10 min read

You might start noticing a lot of “Godzilla” entertainment these days.

This weekend, Japanese producer Toho released “Godzilla Minus One” in the U.S., taking in $11 million from 2,308 theaters, impressive for a Japanese-language monster saga that is the first such feature since 2016’s “Shin Godzilla.”
But cinemas are hardly the only place where U.S. fans can catch a glimpse of the radioactive dinosaur. Over at Apple TV+, the 10-episode series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” has emerged as a critically acclaimed hit following its debut on Nov. 17.

And fans got a first look at Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire,” due to be released in April, at this weekend’s CCXP fan event in Brazil.

To paraphrase this year’s Best Picture winner, Godzilla is everywhere all at once. At least it sure seems that way.

The latest Godzilla movie, distributed by Emick Media in the U.S., added its $11 million box office haul — a strong result for a subtitled Japanese film with almost no marketing — to the $23 million the film has already grossed in Japan.

Known affectionately as the “Mickey Mouse of Japan,” Godzilla is one of the world’s most sprawling entertainment franchises. Spanning 35 live-action movies over nearly 70 years — not to mention three anime-inspired animated films — the Godzilla IP universe extends to television series, comic books, video games, novels and other merchandise.

While confirmed grosses in Japan, especially for older films, are hard to clarify, the “Godzilla” film franchise is estimated to have earned more than $2.57 billion in worldwide ticket sales since 1954. That includes 100 million tickets sold for the Toho-produced titles — not counting the most recent entry — in Japan alone.

In recent years, Hollywood studio Legendary has controlled the rights to produce English-language films and television shows after acquiring them from Toho in 2010 in a multi-year deal.

As Hollywood continues to figure out how to turn every remotely successful property into a multi-media, never-ending IP content farm, Godzilla stands out as an example of a global brand whose owners and licensors have diversified the use of the character’s content to keep it interesting for new generations of moviegoers. So far, Hollywood films produced by Legendary, such as “Godzilla vs. Kong,” present Godzilla as a towering protector of Earth’s status quo (and humanity by default), while the Toho films present him or her as the terrifying destroyer of worlds.

The character’s appearance in three disparate projects in the span of five months speaks to the enduring popularity of the character — and to how Toho and its licensors have managed to stay true to its original DNA. “While there may be debates over certain preferences, considering the current popularity of the Monsterverse vs. the decades-long expansiveness of the ongoing Toho series, a genuine sense of joy is shared by all the fans simply due to having so much new Godzilla media,” film critic and noted Godzilla enthusiast Aaron Neuwirth told TheWrap.

The Legendary movies don’t seem to mitigate interest among the fans for the Toho-produced films, while Legendary’s expansions into television (including Netflix’s animated “Skull Island” series by writer/executive producer Brian Duffield) can coexist without making the movies less of an event. The how and why of these relative concurrent successes show that Godzilla is a malleable character who can exist in various forms in various genres — a contrast to the constant rebooting of singular characters like Superman or Spider-Man.

And Godzilla hasn’t been afraid to save the day for the movie industry. Even with “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” underperforming two years prior, 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong” helped salvage sinking movie theaters after the first year of the pandemic. It was the first major tentpole that earned global grosses — $468 million, including $100 million domestic and $188 million in China — on par (if not better) with what might have been expected in pre-COVID times.

Toho, a Toyko-based entertainment company formed in 1932 that is also known for anime and films by Akira Kurosawa, has owned the rights to the Godzilla and Godzilla-related properties and characters since the 1954 “Godzilla” original.

Legendary acquired the English-language rights in March of 2010 to make English-language productions, with Warner Bros. serving as co-producers and distributors (in most territories) for the Hollywood feature films. Legendary has what are colloquially called “rolling rights,” meaning they keep them as long as new Godzilla media gets made every so often.

Toho remains involved in Legendary’s projects as a producer and can still make kaiju films mostly aimed at the Japanese marketplace. Thus far, as evidenced by the relatively concurrent critical and commercial successes of Legendary and WB’s “Godzilla” in 2014 and Toho’s “Shin Godzilla” in 2016, it has been a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“Godzilla’ has deftly tapped into our nuclear anxiety and love of watching big monsters smash things for 70 years,” one high-ranking exhibition insider noted. “It’s great seeing a legacy franchise execute at such a high level in so many different ways because it offers the industry some important, timely lessons in creative reinvention and longevity.”

“Gojira” as a horror movie, not a monster mash

The first “Godzilla,” titled “Gojira” in its native Japan, was a stone-cold horror movie where the giant lizard beast was a metaphor for the unthinkable carnage wrought by America’s use of nuclear weapons upon civilian Japanese populaces during World War II.

That the franchise eventually became associated with hyper-colorful and unapologetically campy monster mashes and kaiju team-ups does little to demystify Ishirō Honda’s original melodrama. But it does qualify as ironic, considering its origins, the extent to which Godzilla has morphed into a national mascot for Japan.

It is one of many franchises — ranging from the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series to Blue Sky’s blockbuster “Ice Age” films — to begin with a far more dramatic and emotionally compelling entry than the comparatively more cartoonish follow-ups that came to define the franchise.

As Neuwirth explained to TheWrap: “Sympathetic movie monsters weren’t a new concept for the time.” However, he stated, “Honda’s influential classic managed to wrap a compelling new creation with a distinct look, iconic sound, and innovative method of filmmaking all for the sake of a dark metaphor for the experiences an entire country was still in mourning of, let alone the new fears that have emerged with the arrival of the atomic age.”

Hollywood gets into the monster game

Legendary’s so-called “Monsterverse,” which launched in 2014 with Gareth Edwards’ “Godzilla,” has been chugging along with big-budget, globally targeted blockbusters featuring Godzilla and King Kong. It was followed by “Kong: Skull Island,” a Vietnam War-era period piece that earned solid reviews and grossed $568 million globally in early 2017. That remains the biggest-earning “giant monster movie” in unadjusted global box office outside of the “Jurassic Park” features.

However, 2019’s “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” was a critical and commercial disappointment. Michael Dougherty’s ambitious, sprawling “Godzilla” sequel earned just $390 million, partially because “Avengers: Endgame” and “Aladdin” became such all-consuming early summer smashes and partially because the marketplace had been flooded with other monster movies like “Rampage” and “The Meg” in the time since “Godzilla” and “Kong” had been released.

Legendary’s next Monsterverse film “Godzilla vs. Kong” was already in production when “King of the Monsters” stumbled, so it moved forward (albeit delayed from 2020 to 2021 due to the pandemic). There were reports that Legendary was attempting to sell the film to Netflix for $200 million. Distributor Warner Bros. stepped in and bought Legendary’s 75% share of the film’s $165 million with intent to distribute theatrically, and the movie opened in late March of 2021 with a simultaneous debut in theaters and on HBO Max.

With the success of “Godzilla vs. Kong” the Monsterverse lived on, as Legendary put into development the prequel series “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” at Apple TV+ — which has dual timelines set after “Godzilla” and in the 1950s — and another Monsterverse movie, which became “Godzilla X Kong” from “Godzilla vs. Kong” director Adam Wingard.

Toho stands tall

Takashi Yamazaki’s “Godzilla Minus Zero” is the 30th Toho-produced live-action Godzilla film. It has no connection to the Monsterverse movies or shows — and yet was wildly anticipated anyway.

“Shin Godzilla,” a mix of Godzilla horror show and bureaucratic black comedy, was Toho’s first live-action offering since “Godzilla: Final Wars,” which closed out the 1999-2004 “Millenium era” on the 50th anniversary of the original “Godzilla.” Like almost every Japanese-focused entry since “Godzilla 2000” in 1999, it is a straight-up reboot, although a few of the “Millenium Era” titles acknowledge the first film.

In between “Shin Godzilla” (which won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture) and the post-WWII-set “Godzilla Minus Zero,” (currently sitting with a 97% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) Toho also produced three anime-influenced “Godzilla” animated films, which Netflix has distributed throughout much of the world. None of these films are overshadowing the Legendary films, nor are the Legendary films and shows minimizing the Toho-produced films among the fanbase. Fans are eating it all up.

And “delivering on that enjoyment is fairly simple, as the bar for success doesn’t require much for a Godzilla fan,” Neuwirth continued. “Deliver a good enough-looking Godzilla destroying cities or getting into fights with other kaiju, and the battle for approval has been won.”

Judging by the box office success of “Godzilla Minus One” already — $34 million globally on a reported $15 million budget — the audience that craves Godzilla is being offered all they could want, minus the toxic element found within other notable fandoms.

In recent years, Toho has leaned into its Godzilla IP to expand internationally. In 2019, the company told Variety it had injected $140 million into its Toho International subsidiary in Los Angeles with an eye to working more with Hollywood. And in a “Toho Vision 2021” white paper released in 2018, Toho said a company priority was to develop a “character business centered on ‘Godzilla.’”

Everywhere all at once

Evidence that one “Godzilla” title isn’t impeding the success of another can be seen in the performance of “Monarch” on Apple TV+ and the growing anticipation for “Godzilla Minus One.”

While raw streaming data is hard to come by, the premiere episodes of “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” made the Top 10 at Samba TV for the week of Nov. 20. It over-indexed with Gen Z households by 12% and over-indexed with Black households by 18% while pulling in 292,000 U.S. households (live+ two days) during the period, according to Samba TV. The expansion into streaming-era television — the show takes place after “Godzilla” and before “King of the Monsters” — seems to complement rather than undercut the Monsterverse’s theatrical ambitions.

The move is reminiscent of decades of episodic shows based on DreamWorks Animation movies that thrived on their own demographic (kid-friendly) terms without making films like “Kung Fu Panda 3,” “How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” or “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” any less of a theatrical smash. It helps that, unlike the Disney+ MCU shows, there isn’t a publicity campaign telling folks that they must watch certain Monsterverse movies to understand the show.

Godzilla will live on in the monster’s various and diverse distribution channels. As one studio insider said, so long as filmmakers “remember to put the ‘god’ in “Godzilla,” the character can play in whatever sandbox is required.

Love Godzilla!!!! especially the old campy ones with the dude in the rubber suit. Now they are more fun as the CGI gets better and better. Just started Monarch: Legacy of Monsters... so far so good, very much enjoying it (4 episodes in)... and then I had to go back and watch Godzilla (2014) for full context... will watch King of Monsters also, somehow I missed these.

Different zilla group, but so VERY much looking forward to seeing G-1, wish we had an IMAX closer... might actually go to the theaters for this one....

 

[HokieRaven5]

Different zilla group, but so VERY much looking forward to seeing G-1, wish we had an IMAX closer... might actually go to the theaters for this one....

I would recommend it, otherwise you may be waiting a while before it hits some sort of home media release.

 

[Dis]

I don't think Disney's environmental goals are causing people to not go to a Disney movie.

It's not the environmental goals.

Disney’s chief diversity officer Latondra Newton is reportedly leaving the company — ending a six-year stint that generated controversies as the Mouse House adopted “woke” policies that have alienated many of its core customers.

 

[wabbott]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/b...xecs-disney-charter-carriage-deal-1235710526/

Nexstar CEO Says The CW Will Be at Breakeven by “End of 2025”
Perry Sook said the advertising recession and the recent dual Hollywood strikes represent headwinds to getting beyond losses at broadcast network.

December 4, 2023 10:08am PST
by Etan Vlessing

The CW-parent Nexstar Media Group has applauded the recently-struck new carriage agreement between the Walt Disney Co. and Charter Communications as a positive for future content deals for Disney and other entertainment giants.

Nexstar president Michael Biard told the UBS Annual Global TMT Conference the new Charter bundle after the carriage deal with Walt Disney had more high-profile content in a single offering, which was more attractive to consumers. “That reaffirms our thesis, it wasn’t about being paid for premium content,” Baird argued about the carriage talks showdown that led to a blackout for pay TV customers.

That was followed by Disney and Charter striking a new agreement where the Hollywood studio giant had to make concessions, but emerged with a new pact seen as an industry template moving forward. “Premiere programming got paid and it got carried and it got relaunched,” Biard told investors.

He pointed to the Charter cable bundle shedding less popular cable networks, which ultimately will retain more subscribers by reducing churn and increasing the value of popular content retained. “Charter certainly feels reenergized around the video business post that deal. I’ve seen more advertising for Charter video in the last few months than I’ve seen in the last few years,” Biard said.

And with underperforming cable networks being jettisoned, the Nexstar exec said broadcast TV content like that offered by his company stood to secure better pricing for its carriage. “That frees up spend inside the bundle to be reallocated to folks like us that are underperforming, as opposed to overperforming, relative to the value they’re delivering,” Biard argued.

Nexstar CEO Perry Sook also addressed his company acquiring a 75 percent stake in The CW, with prior 50-50 partners Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery each keeping a 12.5 holding. Sook recalled CW losing around $300 million when it was acquired, and Nexstar has eliminated around $100 million in annual savings with an eye to profitability within three years.

At the same time, Sook said the advertising recession and the recent dual Hollywood strikes represent headwinds to getting beyond losses at The CW. “We still think we will be at break-even … probably towards the end of 2025,” Sook predicted.

The Nexstar CEO added his company was on the lookout for new M&A deals. “We’re obviously on the look for acquisitions that would complement what we built, which would be in the content space or kind of adjacent to content. (We) haven’t found anything at a price that is compelling,” he said.

Having effectively reached the maximum number of local TV stations allowed by current FCC rules, Nexstar turned to cable and The CW to expand. The company has also invested in its cable news channel NewsNation, which features a lineup of TV news veterans and uses Nexstar’s local TV resources in a bid take on larger cable news competitors.

Sook also forecast upside for Nexstar from political advertising heading into the 2024 U.S. Presidential campaign season.

“We are starting to see spend at this point, even in the third quarter. We saw our earliest spend from the 24 presidential candidates that accelerated their first telecast day from what Hilary Clinton did when she ran. So that’s a positive economic indicator,” Sook reported.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

It's not the environmental goals.

Disney’s chief diversity officer Latondra Newton is reportedly leaving the company — ending a six-year stint that generated controversies as the Mouse House adopted “woke” policies that have alienated many of its core customers.

Didn’t they bring in a new CDO though?

 

[Elijah Abrams]

https://deadline.com/2023/12/espn-fox-corp-sports-streaming-nfl-1235650525/

ESPN Is “A Great Product”, Fox Corp. CFO Steve Tomsic Says, But It’s Only “A Sliver Of Sports” Given Fragmentation In U.S. Market
By Dade Hayes - Business Editor
December 4, 2023 8:05am PST

Fox Corp. CFO Steven Tomsic said ESPN is “a great product” with strong potential in streaming, but the long-established brand is also just “a sliver of sports.”

The exec was asked during an appearance at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference about ESPN’s forthcoming direct-to-consumer launch and the implications for Fox.

“We did a calculus of all the sort of distribution modes that could possibly emerge,” Tomsic said. “With sports in this country, they’re so fragmented. So, for the true sports fan — look, ESPN’s a great service. And I’m sure when they launch the ESPN flagship [in streaming], I’m sure it will be a great product. But it’s a sliver of sports. If you’re a sports fan and you want to watch the NFL in a given week, you go to Amazon for Thursdays, you go to us on Sunday, you’ve got CBS on Sunday, you’ve got NBC Sunday night and you’ve got ESPN on Monday.” Given the potency of the NFL, Tomsic continued, that level of fragmentation means that “no one sports service is going to satisfy” a fan.

There has recently been momentum for bundling in the streaming sector, not just vertically within companies but horizontally. Verizon this morning announced a bundle of Netflix and Max. Apple and Paramount have reportedly held talks about a bundle. As to a bundle scenario, Tomic said, “If you can conjure a way to bring all of those sports services together … it kind of looks like a digital MVPD” like YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV. “And it’s probably going to be at a similar price point,” in the $65-to-$73-a-month range. “We’re obviously following it.”

By contrast with its media peers, Fox has long taken a conservative approach to subscription streaming and relied on the tried-and-true (albeit shrinking) pay-TV bundle. Its main presence in streaming is through free, ad-supported platform Tubi, which the company acquired in 2020. Contemplating a more streaming-centric marketplace than exists today, Tomsic hypothesized, “We have the rights capability, both on the sports side and on the news side, to be able to deliver our services DTC. We have a pretty extensive technology build. … We have all the building blocks for us to get a DTC, if and when that becomes appropriate. But for now, we still think the right strategy is where we’re at.”

Tomsic was asked about the M&A market, which has started to heat up recently after a long cool-down due to macroeconomic and regulatory conditions. Since Disney’s $71.3 billion acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox created a more streamlined Fox Corp. in 2019, questions have percolated about the future configuration of the company. (Not addressed onstage at UBS, though it will be a defining factor in shaping the future of Fox, is the future role of 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch, who recently stepped down as chairman of Fox and News Corp.)

“The way we approach M&A is not from a defensive perspective,” Tomsic said. “We narrowed down the company, and we’ve got a really, really focused company. We don’t need scale for scale’s sake. In fact, the evolution of the Disney transaction was to deliver scale where scale was required for Disney and its SVOD strategy and deliver focus where we could be leaders in news and sports. … If you look historically at our capital deployment and where we’ve gone with that, I think there’s been $4.9 billion in buybacks since the spin and we’ve done, in round numbers $1.5 billion in M&A. We want to grow the company. If you had said to me five years ago that those would be the numbers where that would be the split, I would have expected the opposite. But we’re super-disciplined. We look at everything.”

Opportunities that help “our core verticals” of news and sports remain in the mix, Tomsic said. “Our M&A filter is very broad, but our bar is very high.”

Tomsic should also know that with Lachlan now in charge, he might want 20th Century Studios back from Disney in a change of strategy at Fox Corp. Rupert only cared about news and sports, and I doubt that’s the case with his son.

 

[wabbott]

Tomsic should also know that with Lachlan now in charge, he might want 20th Century Studios back from Disney in a change of strategy at Fox Corp. Rupert only cared about news and sports, and I doubt that’s the case with his son.

Ya know, the more I read about the upheaval in movies/tv/streaming, the more it looks like that in 5 to 10 years the concept of "networks" as we've known them for 100 years won't exist. There are just too many ways to share information nowadays.

Think about Spaceship Earth. From cave drawings to papyrus documents to the printing press to the telegraph, radio, tv, and on and on. Now ANYONE can make a move and distribute it worldwide. Why bother with networks?

What if the price to sell ABC is cheaper next year than today? And will ESPN be able to tote the mail when pro and college sports contracts are up for renewal?

 

[afan]

Ya know, the more I read about the upheaval in movies/tv/streaming, the more it looks like that in 5 to 10 years the concept of "networks" as we've known them for 100 years won't exist. There are just too many ways to share information nowadays.

Think about Spaceship Earth. From cave drawings to papyrus documents to the printing press to the telegraph, radio, tv, and on and on. Now ANYONE can make a move and distribute it worldwide. Why bother with networks?

What if the price to sell ABC is cheaper next year than today? And will ESPN be able to tote the mail when pro and college sports contracts are up for renewal?

There's still too many places that can't get decent internet or can't afford it and the streaming. I can't see any that are OTA going away. They are still needed via antenna for news, natural disasters etc.

There's plenty of options for streaming music or satellite radio yet regular am/fm still exist. They may change formats but I see that happening way less than it did 10 to 20 years ago.

 

[RivShore]

There's still too many places that can't get decent internet or can't afford it and the streaming. I can't see any that are OTA going away. They are still needed via antenna for news, natural disasters etc.

There's plenty of options for streaming music or satellite radio yet regular am/fm still exist. They may change formats but I see that happening way less than it did 10 to 20 years ago.

Terrestrial radio still exists but the major broadcasters have all been flirting with or fell into bankruptcy over the last decade. So yes, OTA and the networks will still exist in a few decades but will it be anywhere near the cash cows they are today?

 

[RivShore]

Wow, they are stopping BO reporting for this in week 3? Someone needs to take responsibility for this mess.


https://nypost.com/2023/12/04/enter...els-could-be-mcus-lowest-grossing-movie-ever/

Flop 'The Marvels' could be MCU's lowest-grossing movie ever

Johnny Oleksinski


In the end, “The Marvels” won’t live up to its sparkling title.

The Disney-produced superhero movie, from all indications, will wind up as the lowest-grossing Marvel Cinematic Universe movie in its entire 15-year history.

While the film starring Brie Larson, Iman Vellani and Teyonah Parris opened less than a month ago — and has so far grossed a scant $80 million domestically and $197 worldwide — any hopes of it becoming a sleeper hit have disappeared.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, the 33rd MCU film’s box office dropped a staggering 78% in its second weekend, and it’s only gotten worse from there.

And Variety reported that Disney sent a note to press saying, “With ‘The Marvels’ box office now winding down, we will stop weekend reporting of international/global grosses on this title.”

The previous record-holder for biggest MCU loser was 2008’s “The Incredible Hulk” starring Mark Ruffalo, with $80 million domestically and $264.7 million worldwide.

Critics were mostly dismissive of “The Marvels.” The film currently holds a 62% score on RottenTomatoes.

And The Post called the film “a sad study of the downfall of America’s favorite screen franchise.”

Disney CEO Bob Iger recently said onstage at the New York Times DealBook Summit that “The Marvels,” which was directed by Nia DaCosta, failed partly due to a lack of on-set supervision.

“The Marvels was shot during COVID,” Iger said.

“There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives [that are] really looking over what’s being done day after day after day.”

 

[wabbott]

Terrestrial radio still exists but the major broadcasters have all been flirting with or fell into bankruptcy over the last decade. So yes, OTA and the networks will still exist in a few decades but will it be anywhere near the cash cows they are today?

Follow the money and think newspapers. Does anyone buy newspaper advertising anymore when you can get 100x the reach online at less cost? You are seeing the migration of advertising from linear to streaming very rapidly today.

 

[wabbott]

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/disney-tests-monday-night-football-simulcast-espn-abc-1235820816/

Dec 4, 2023 - 11:40am PST
Disney Tests ‘Monday Night Football’ Double Play
by Brian Steinberg

ESPN is, for at least one week this season, really doubling down on “Monday Night Football.”

The Walt Disney-backed sports-media outlet plans to simulcast two different Monday-night games on December 11, its latest gridiron maneuver that has already seen the football-TV mainstay air on both ESPN and ABC for the bulk of the regular season in a bid to fill schedules during the recent Hollywood labor strikes.

A Monday-night game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants will kick off December 11 at 8:15 p.m. eastern, anchored by Troy Aikman and Joe Buck, with Lisa Salters on the sidelines. A game between the Tennessee Titans and the Miami Dolphins will start at the same time, televised via ESPN. ESPN+ and ESPN Deportes. Chris Fowler, Louis Riddick and Dan Orlovsky will call the game, with Laura Rutledge on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, Peyton and Eli Manning will offer commentary on both games during the telecast of their regular ESPN2 program. The brothers will focus on a single game when the situation dictates. They will host a group of guests, and the show will have limited commercial breaks during the evening,.

Disney broadcast two games in a single night on two occasions earlier in the season, but the start times were staggered.

ESPN will run its usual coterie of pre-game programming, with “Monday Night Countdown,” “NFL Live” and “Monday Blitz” all on the schedule.
The programming stunt may offer viewers a preview of what ESPN might be able to do more regularly when it makes all of its programming more readily available to broadband consumers, something Disney has suggested could happen in 2025.