by Emily Nagle
Sony has acquired anime streaming network Crunchyroll from AT&T in a deal worth $1.175 billion. While the deal was initially created in December 2020, the deal was not approved until Monday.
The streamer was purchased by Funimation, Sony’s anime distribution and dubbing company. Now that the two companies are merged, what can anime lovers expect? According to Tony Vinciquerra, the chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures, the corporation will use this merger to enhance the anime viewing experience by providing more for customers and also expanding distribution. He announced in a press release on the Sony Pictures website, “With the addition of Crunchyroll, we have an unprecedented opportunity to serve anime fans like never before and deliver the anime experience across any platform they choose, from theatrical, events, home entertainment, games, streaming, linear TV — everywhere and every way fans want to experience their anime. Our goal is to create a unified anime subscription experience as soon as possible.”
It’s not yet clear what the merger will mean for the streaming companies – Funimation and Crunchyroll are still separate platforms. However, there are talks of Crunchyroll being a perk of a more expensive Playstation Plus plan.
As for AT&T? With the money it earned from the deal, it’ll now be able to pay off the debt it has accrued while building its streaming empire. The company is also in the process of another merger as it passes WarnerMedia onto Discovery, which will be finalized by mid-2022. After extinguishing all of its debt, it plans to return to strictly being a connectivity business.
This week’s Box Office raked in a total of $62,376,000.
- “The Suicide Squad” – $26,500,000 (Premiere)
- “Jungle Cruise” – $15,693,000 ($65,317,454 total gross)
- “Old” – $4,140,000 ($38,523,145 total gross)
- “Black Widow” – $4,007,000 ($174,358,784 total gross)
- “Stillwater” – 2,860,000 ($10,000,070 total gross)
The Suicide Squad,” led this weekend’s box office which is struggling to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic with the delta variant now surging around the world. The film, is a sequel to the 2016 hit, and has generated $26.6 million in North American ticket sales. This is lower than it’s industry projected sales of $28 million. “The Suicide Squad” is one of the strongest openings in the pandemic, but is far short of what sales would have looked like in a world with no pandemic. New coronavirus cases are cutting into ticket sales, and film fans are opting to watch the movie at home on HBO Max, where it’s available at no extra charge.
The new “Suicide Squad” has been much better received by critics and audiences than the original film. The film boasts a solid 92% on Rotten Tomatoes compared to 86% for the original film, which should give stronger legs for a more successful in-theater run.
Falling to second place was last weekend’s box office leader , Disney’s “Jungle Cruise”, which lost a significant number of movie screening to “The Suicide Squad” this weekend. The film dropped 55% to an estimated $15.7M in its 2nd weekend run.
In third place, “Old” raked in $4.1M in its third weekend run, dropping 40% from it’s second week in sales. The Universal horror title has gross sales of $38.5M.
by Emily Nagle
[usr 4.5]
Meet the newest reboot series: C.H. Greenblatt’s Jellystone! on HBO Max.
Set in the town of Jellystone, this show features the classic Hanna-Barbera characters including Yogi Bear, Boo-Boo Bear, and Huckleberry Hound as they get into wacky situations. This show is the first to feature Hanna-Barbera characters in 30 years, since 1991’s Yo Yogi!.
Even though it’s bringing back beloved characters, Jellystone isn’t really driven by nostalgia. Instead, it’s a reboot of the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, completely reinventing them for a new generation. Yogi, Cindy, and Boo-Boo Bear are now doctors and a nurse at the Jellystone Hospital. Some of the characters have been made female when they were originally male, most notably Jabberjaw the shark and Augie Doggie. I imagine they made these changes to balance out the predominantly male cast (this is something the 2018 Muppet Babies reboot did as well by introducing Summer Penguin, a completely new female character, to the group of toddlers), but these changes are actually used to set up the stories for each episode. Jabberjaw takes advantage of Magilla Gorilla getting amnesia to become assistant manager of the store, with one of her primary motivations for this idea being receiving attention from every male citizen of Jellystone.
What initially drew me to this series was the art style. Jellystone! is Greenblatt’s third series after Cartoon Network’s Chowder and Nickelodeon’s Harvey Beaks, both of which are great shows with funny episodes. It’s refreshing to see these cartoon characters that have been around for more than half a century get a new look to them. They look like they’d fit right in as background characters from Greenblatt’s other shows, which I like.
Even though they look similar to those other shows, the animation style is slightly different – there’s more tweening and other aspects of computer animation compared to the hand-drawn style of Harvey Beaks and Chowder. It’s subtle, like how a character’s hair or ears would move when they turn their head. This difference definitely wasn’t a bad thing, because the characters are still super fun to look at, but it was interesting to see something slightly different from Greenblatt.
In addition to giving the colorful cast of characters a new look, the humor also differs slightly from past Hanna-Barbera productions. The stories and dialogue are more reminiscent of C.H. Greenblatt’s past projects, which featured some crazy situations stemming from relatively small problems. Yogi Bear can’t decide what to eat for lunch at work, so Cindy Bear installs a nuclear stomach into his body…but then he’s perpetually hungry and ends up eating the entire town and everyone in it. In another episode, Cindy Bear is so busy that she forgets to do her reading for book club. What does she do to buy herself more time? She ends up turning everyone in Jellystone into gelatin. As someone who loved watching Chowder back in the early 2000s, I love seeing Greenblatt’s chaotic sense of humor again.
Jellystone! is a creative spin on the Hanna-Barbera franchise. I love that Greenblatt chose to do something different with it, instead of trying to make it look the same as it always has, or keeping all the characters the way they were before. It’s fresh and super fun, and has already been confirmed for a season 2! I recommend this show to anybody who’s familiar with characters like Yogi Bear, enjoyed Chowder and/or Harvey Beaks, or just likes wacky animated shows.
by Emily Nagle
WarnerMedia’s ad sales division has announced a new brand studio named House of Max.
Set to launch in the final quarter of 2021, the studio will work with partners to create advertisements featuring beloved WarnerMedia characters from the company’s wide variety of properties, ranging from Cartoon Network to TBS. The creation of House of Max occurs months after HBO Max introduced a cheaper, ad-supported tier to their streaming service. Already, customers have given great reviews on the new AVOD tier, particularly praising the relatively light ad load – only 4 minutes of commercials per hour of viewing.
While no specific brands have been announced for the new venture yet, House of Max will make advertisements more personal to viewers by featuring their favorite characters.
Julian Franco, SVP of Product Management for HBO Max, sees House of Max as promising, helping the 30 million-subscriber service to flourish even more. He believes the new studio “will help us provide an even better experience for our viewers, offering brand partners the opportunity to develop custom creative that fits in seamlessly with HBO Max’s premium content and interface.”
by Emily Nagle
Top 5 Highest Grossing Films for Weekend of July 30 – August 1
5. Stillwater ($5.1 million)
4. Black Widow ($6.4 million)
3. Old ($6.7 million)
2. The Green Knight ($6.7 million)
1. Jungle Cruise ($34.2 million)
This weekend saw the release of several films, three of which ended up dominating the box office. In addition to the three films that made the top 5, “Nine Days”, “Enemies of the State”, and “Never Gonna Snow Again” also debuted this weekend, but all grossed less than $20,000.
Medieval fantasy “The Green Knight” stars Dev Patel as Gawain, a newly appointed knight who sets out on a journey to face the Green Knight and prove himself a hero. It’s based on a piece of 14th-century literature titled Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and has been praised by critics for its cinematography (done by Andrew Droz Palermo) and direction (David Lowery).
It’s been less than a week since Disney’s “Jungle Cruise” first rolled out to theaters, and already it’s climbed to number one at the box office. Based on the Disneyland attraction of the same name, this movie follows a team of adventurers as they take a rowboat through the jungle, searching for a magical healing tree. The crew consists of captain Frank Wolff (Dwayne Johnson) and botanist Dr. Lily Houghton (Emily Blunt), along with her brother MacGregor (Jack Whitehall). It’s available in theaters and on Disney+, but ended up heavily dominating the box office this weekend, grossing $34 million – more than the other 4 films combined.
by Emily Nagle
Disney’s “Black Widow” star Scarlett Johansson has sued the company over releasing the film on Disney+ in addition to a theatrical release.
Lots of pandemic-era Disney films have thrived both on streaming and in theaters, like Cruella and Raya and the Last Dragon. However, Johansson reported that her contract for the film stated that, like Marvel’s past films, “Black Widow” would see a theatrical release before becoming available for home viewing.
Johansson claimed that her compensation for “Black Widow” would be dependent on the film’s box office performance, meaning if people preferred to view it at home, this equates to lost revenue for her. When faced with the lawsuit, Disney shot back at Johansson in a statement on Thursday, asserting that they had not breached the contract, and therefore her claims were invalid.
“There is no merit whatsoever to this filing,” Disney wrote in response to Johansson’s claims. “The lawsuit is especially sad and distressing in its callous disregard for the horrific and prolonged global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Disney has fully complied with Ms. Johansson’s contract and furthermore, the release of ‘Black Widow’ on Disney+ with Premier Access has significantly enhanced her ability to earn additional compensation on top of the $20 [million] she has received to date.”
After Disney shot down Johansson’s lawsuit, fans expressed their anger on Twitter, with some users blasting Disney and even arguing to boycott the company for not giving the “Black Widow” star the compensation she was promised.
This isn’t the first time Johansson has expressed dissatisfaction with her experience working with Disney’s – in 2019, she revealed that she found her character Natasha Romanoff to be too sexualized, with the other characters objectifying her.
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