Category: Business

Robert Downey Jr. Signs on For ‘Avengers 2′ and ‘Avengers 3′

After weeks of speculation as to whether or not he would return, Robert Downey Jr. has officially signed on for the next two “Avengers” films.

Marvel made the announcement on their website Thursday.

Downey’s involvement could seem like a no-brainer to fans, but the 48 year-old actor had hinted in numerous interviews, including a recent segment on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” that his days of playing Tony Stark were over.

But while Downey has agreed to suit up for more “Avengers” action, his new deal does not include a fourth “Iron Man” standalone film.

Downey’s contract, negotiated by CAA, comes on the heels of “Iron Man 3′s” outstanding performance at the worldwide box office. Disney’s 3D blockbuster is already the fifth highest-grossing movie of all-time with a giant $1.2 billion across the globe.

Joss Whedon, director of “The Avengers,” recently said in an interview that he had no intention of making a sequel to the without the Oscar-nominated actor.

“He is Iron Man,” Whedon said. “He is Iron Man in the way that Sean Connery was James Bond.”

Produced by Marvel’s Kevin Feige, “The Avengers 2″ arrives in theaters May 1, 2015.

Robert Downey Jr. Playing Hardball During Avengers 2 Contract Negotiations

The future looks incredibly bright for Marvel Studios. Not only was The Avengers one of the biggest hits of all time, now ranking number three on the all-time records chart, this past weekend Iron Man 3 became the second biggest opening weekend earner ever. Their films are warmly welcomed by both critics and audiences who are excited to see how the Marvel Cinematic Universe builds and develops. But a new report from Deadline suggests that there is a negative side to such high-level success: contract negotiation.

One of the biggest news stories surrounding the release of Iron Man 3 has been the fact that Robert Downey Jr.’s contract with Marvel is now up for renegotiation. But while the potential for an Iron Man 4 is up in the air, there is a much more immediate issue that they must deal with: The Avengers 2. As we reported last month, the star made more than $50 million for his work on Joss Whedon’s blockbuster, and he wants to be shown similar money for the sequel. The Hollywood Reporter adds that he is currently negotiating for both The Avengers 2 and The Avengers 3

But the issues actually extend beyond Downey Jr., as it turns out that some of the other biggest stars in the MCU have also had money battles with Marvel Studios, one insider quoted saying, “Some received only $200,000 for Avengers and Downey got paid $50M. On what planet is that OK?” While the studio was inevitably able to look him up, Thor’s Chris Hemsworth and his people took issue with the fact that he was reportedly only offered a $500,000 raise while working out a deal for Thor: The Dark World after the incredible success of The Avengers. The site says that many of the stars are “becoming united behind Robert Downey Jr.” One source said, “He’s the only guy with real power in this situation. and balls of steel, too. He’s already sent a message that he’s not going to work for a place where they treat his colleagues like shit.”

Speaking with Joss Whedon, who Deadline says has a $100 million contract with Marvel, the writer/director justified the reason why the studio is having trouble with its stars. Admitting that Marvel is very stingy, he said, “There’s the element of the opportunity here for something that is both popular and very human, and usually you have to choose as an actor.”

This is a very important issue for Marvel Studios that they must have known was going to come eventually. Even if this situation wasn’t about money, there is the risk in any expanded franchise that an actor might be tired of playing the same part over and over again and wanting to leave. Eventually there will be a point where well-established characters either start to leave or get killed off. It’s times like these that determine how far in the future that will be.

Film or no film, Jackson must have his golf

Golf nut Samuel L. Jackson has a special clause written into his movie contracts – he gets two days off a week to plays his favourite sport.

According to a new report, the Pulp Fiction star has the special “perk package” added to all his contracts.

And producers have to agree to pay for his course fees before he signs up for films.

He revealed: “It’s part of my perk package! Two days off, they have to pay for it. Generally, the way they make that happen is they just move me onto a golf course when they send me to town. My assistant generally has the responsibility of finding the new courses, setting up the tee times and giving me the directions.”

Jackson’s golfing deal was tested recently while he was shooting The Sunset Limited in New Mexico.

He explained: “I was just doing a film with Tommy Lee Jones in Santa Fe, so they moved me into a golf community – the two best golf courses in Santa Fe – and [then] they closed the golf course three days after I got there. I couldn’t go out there and play because it just wasn’t open. I had to find places to play. I’d drive about an hour away and go up to about 6000 feet to play.”

Rogers exits video store business

Rogers has officially bailed on the video store business.

In December, the company announced it was closing 40 per cent of its video shops as it continued to move away from selling and renting physical copies of DVDs, Blu-rays and video games.

The company said at the time that rentals represented a “declining marketplace” but still kept 93 stores stocked with movies and games.

Those remaining stores stopped renting late last week and are now in liquidation mode.

Rogers intends to keep those locations open to serve its other businesses, such as TV and wireless services.

As far back as 2005, Rogers had been signalling that its video business was in decline.

In February, the company reported its video operations lost $23 million in 2011 on revenues of $82 million, which were down 43 per cent from the previous year.

Last year, Blockbuster Canada also decided to close up shop across the country, shutting more than 400 stores.

Alexander becomes ‘Soup Nazi’ spokesman

LOS ANGELES — Seinfeld star Jason Alexander will finally get as much soup as he wants: He’s the new spokesman for SoupMan Al Yeganeh, the man whose restaurant inspired the classic “Soup Nazi” character on “Seinfeld.”

Alexander joins athletes Reggie Jackson and Shaquille O’Neal as a “brand champion” for SoupMan, Inc., the company that sells soups made with Yeganeh’s recipes. The SoupMan vittles are currently sold in SoupMan restaurants, supermarkets and online.

Alexander will specifically work to build SoupMan’s supermarket business, its franchised restaurants and its food service business, which supplies soup to restaurants and schools.

“I think it’s great coming full circle with Al’s soups,” Alexander said in a statement. “I lined up with New Yorkers for years for his amazing creations. Then we had one of the greatest episodes of ’Seinfeld’ ever, somewhat at his expense. But now I get to make amends by helping bring his recipes to everyone … Finally, I get to say ’Soup for you! Soup for everyone!’”

Yeganeh’s original soup shop, Soup Kitchen International, is still operating on 55th Street in Manhattan. And yes, they still serve lobster bisque.

Movie crowds dip to 16-year low as apathy lingers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hollywood has more tricks in its bag than ever with digital 3-D and other new film tools. Yet as the images on screen get bigger and better, movie crowds keep shrinking — down to a 16-year low as 2011’s film lineup fell well short of studios’ record expectations.

Through New Year’s Eve on Saturday, projected domestic revenues for the year stand at $10.2 billion, down 3.5 percent from 2010’s, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. Taking higher ticket prices into account, movie attendance is off even more, with an estimated 1.28 billion tickets sold, a 4.4 percent decline and the smallest movie audience since 1995, when admissions totaled 1.26 billion.

Just what has put the movie business in the dumps is anyone’s guess — though safe bets include the tight economy, rising ticket prices, backlash against parades of sequels or remakes, and an almost-limitless inventory of portable and at-home gadgetry to occupy people’s time.

The year got off to a dismal start with what could be called an “Avatar” hangover, when revenues lagged far behind 2010 receipts that had been inflated by the huge success of James Cameron’s sci-fi sensation.

A solid summer lineup helped studios catch up to 2010, but ticket sales flattened again in the fall and have remained sluggish right into what was expected to be a terrific holiday season.

“There were a lot of high-profile movies that just ended up being a little less than were hoped for,” said Chris Aronson, head of distribution for 20th Century Fox, whose sequel “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” has been part of an under-achieving lineup of family films for the holidays. “The fall was pretty dismal. There just weren’t any real breakaway, wide-appeal films.”

Big franchises still are knocking it out of the park. “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2,” the finale to J.K. Rowling’s fantasy epic, was the year’s biggest earner and the top-grossing film in the series at $381 million domestically and $1.3 billion worldwide.

“Transformers: Dark of the Moon” pulled in $352 million domestically and $1.1 billion worldwide, while “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1” has climbed to $271 million domestically and $650 million worldwide.

Other franchises did well in 2011 but came up short of their predecessors on the domestic front, among them “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” ”The Hangover Part II,” ”Kung Fu Panda 2,” ”Cars 2″ and “X-Men: First Class.”

Strong overseas business has helped make up for shrinking domestic revenues and declining DVD sales. But 2011 was the second-straight year that domestic attendance declined sharply, and audiences generally have been shrinking since 2002, when admissions hit a modern high of 1.6 billion.

It could be a case of the same-old same-olds, with fans growing tired of over-familiar characters and stories. It could be overcrowded weekends such as Thanksgiving, when studios loaded up on family films that cannibalized one another’s audiences. It could be the economy, with fans growing more selective on how often they spend their spare cash to catch a movie, particularly at a time when so many films play in 3-D with premium ticket prices.

And it could be the times we live in, when audiences have so many gadgets to play with that they don’t need to go to the movies as much as they once did.

“It’s not any one thing. It’s a little bit of everything,” said Jeff Goldstein, general sales manager at Warner Bros., whose Robert Downey Jr. sequel “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” has done solid business, yet is coming in well short of the first installment. “But consumers are being more specific with their choices on how to spend their money. The options are a little greater than they were a few years ago with gaming and social-networking opportunities.”

The year’s animated slate failed to produce a $200 million hit, the first time that’s happened since 2005. Likewise, comic-book superheroes slipped in 2011, the genre unable to deliver a $200 million hit for only the second time in the last 10 years.

Even Adam Sandler, one of Hollywood’s most-bankable stars, had a mixed year, managing a $100 million hit with “Just Go With It” but barely crossing $70 million with “Jack and Jill.”

Studio executives typically blame slow business on “the product” — weak movies that leave fans indifferent. But during the first few months of the year, when business lagged as much as 20 percent behind 2010’s, studios were confident they had great product coming, with many executives predicting that 2011 would finish with record revenues, topping the all-time domestic high of $10.6 billion in 2009.

The movies themselves turned out fairly good, and surprise smashes such as “Bridesmaids,” ”The Help,” ”Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and “The Smurfs” boosted business.

But the year was littered with duds (“Happy Feet Two,” ”Tower Heist,” ”Cowboys & Aliens”). And with only days left in 2011, Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol” is leading a batch of holiday releases that so far has done only so-so business, despite generally good reviews and high marks from the fans that are showing up.

Hollywood is left right where it was 12 months ago, finishing the year quietly and looking ahead to a promising lineup to turn its fortunes around next year.

Even more so than 2011’s schedule once looked, the 2012 film list looks colossal. Among the highlights: the superhero tales “The Dark Knight Rises,” ”The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Avengers”; the latest in the animated franchises “Ice Age” and “Madagascar,” along with “Brave,” the new adventure from animation master Pixar; Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones’ “Men in Black 3”; Daniel Craig’s new James Bond thriller “Skyfall”; Johnny Depp’s vampire story “Dark Shadows”; Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” a cousin to his sci-fi classic “Alien”; and Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” the first in a two-part prequel to his “Lord of the Rings” films.

That’s just a small sampling of 2012’s big-screen titles, which also include 3-D reissues of “Titanic,” ”Finding Nemo,” ”Beauty and the Beast” and “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.”

Looking ahead, there’s good reason for optimism in Hollywood. Looking back, though, the past year spells caution.

“I’m not prepared to be Chicken Little yet, but if the films coming in 2012 can’t reverse this trend, then I think we need to reevaluate our expectations,” said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “We are living in a different world today than we did in the mid-’90s in terms of the technology available to deliver media. That may finally be having an impact.”

Universal, Sony/ATV to buy EMI for $4.1 billion

LOS ANGELES (AP) — EMI Group Ltd., the iconic British music company that is home to The Beatles, Coldplay and Katy Perry, is being split and sold for $4.1 billion.

The deals will open EMI’s buyers, Universal Music and Sony/ATV, to regulatory scrutiny as they increase their dominance of the music industry.

Universal Music Group said Friday that it will pay 1.2 billion pounds ($1.9 billion) for the recording division, joining Universal artists including Lady Gaga and Eminem with EMI superstars such as David Guetta and Lady Antebellum.

A consortium led by Sony/ATV announced a separate deal Friday to pay $2.2 billion for EMI’s publishing division. That business is in charge of songwriting copyrights for such artists as Rihanna and Norah Jones.

Sony/ATV, a joint venture between Sony Corp. and the Michael Jackson estate, said it is a 38 percent partner in the consortium. Other parties include Mubadala Development Co., Jynwel Capital Ltd., the Blackstone Group and David Geffen.

The two-part sale, if approved by regulators, would further increase Universal Music’s dominance in recorded music and springboard Sony/ATV into the top spot as a music publisher, according to Impala, an association of European independent music companies that is against the deal.

The purchases would give Universal Music and Sony/ATV undue negotiating power over artists and distributors of music, even over the world’s biggest music store, Apple Inc.’s iTunes, Impala said.

Both deals are expected to be carefully reviewed in Europe, the U.S., Japan and Australia. Even if regulators approve, they could force the sale of key assets or attach other terms.

Helen Smith, Impala’s executive chairwoman, noted that when Universal Music bought music publisher BMG in 2007, it had to sell some assets to get smaller.

“When you have players which are dominant, even if they take over small players in market share, that can have a serious impact on competition,” she said.

Jean-Bernard Levy, CEO of Universal Music parent company Vivendi SA, told analysts on a conference call that he was “very confident” the deal would be approved in as little as 10 months.

In the United States, Universal is the top music producer with a 30 percent market share compared with EMI’s 9 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. With a combined share of 39 percent, they would tower over Sony at 29 percent and Warner Music at 19 percent.

On the publishing side, Sony/ATV will add EMI’s 1.3 million song copyrights to its roster of 750,000 songs that include hits from The Beatles, Bob Dylan and Taylor Swift.

The deal leaves Citigroup, EMI’s current owner, with liability for its underfunded pension plan, according to two other people familiar with the talks. One put the liability at $600 million, the other said it was about $260 million.

Neither person was authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Citigroup had put EMI up for sale in June, four months after it foreclosed on private equity firm Terra Firma. Terra Firma bought EMI in 2007 in a $6.8 billion acquisition financed with debt from Citigroup, but it couldn’t make enough money to keep up with the terms.

Vivendi believes it is swooping in to buy a troubled asset at an “inflection point” in the music industry, Levy said. Thanks to gains in digital track and album sales, overall U.S. album sales are up 5.2 percent at 360 million units so far this year, according to SoundScan. At this point last year, overall album sales had plunged 10 percent.

Vivendi expects to cut costs and save more than $150 million a year — making the deal profitable even if the music industry doesn’t grow in the future. Vivendi expects the deal to boost its profits in the first year after regulatory approval.

Morningstar analyst Allan Nichols, who covers Vivendi, viewed the deal with trepidation on fears that the music industry could resume its decline and that regulators could reject it.

But antitrust regulators could be more lenient of big tie-ups when the music industry is struggling to recover from more than a decade of online piracy, he said.

Also, Vivendi is paying less per dollar of earnings than Access Industries’ Len Blavatnik did when he took Warner Music Group Corp. private for $1.24 billion in July.

“The catalog is very impressive, and they didn’t pay a whole lot,” Nichols said.

Sony/ATV’s interest in expanding its library is due to the stability of licensing music copyrights, a business that has been profitable over the years because it relies on business customers like filmmakers instead of individual consumers.

Sony/ATV plans to reap new revenues from the EMI catalog, which includes around 100 No. 1 hits from Motown artists Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and The Supremes.

“We think there are biopics and life stories yet to be told about them,” said Sony/ATV Chief Executive Marty Bandier in an interview. “There’s a depth and quality to this asset that can’t be compared to anything.”

In a move that may appease regulators in Europe and the U.S., Vivendi said it would sell 500 million euros ($680 million) worth of non-core assets, mostly minority stakes in companies that it did not disclose. Strategic bidders that lost out on the auction, such as Warner Music, are expected to vie for those assets.

Vivendi said that London-based EMI would find a safe home at a company headquartered not far away in Paris.

“For me, as an Englishman, EMI was the pre-eminent music company that I grew up with,” Universal CEO Lucian Grainge said in a statement. “UMG is committed to both preserving EMI’s cultural heritage and artistic diversity and also investing in its artists and people to grow the company’s assets for the future.”

Grainge said on the conference call that he would ensure the famous Beatles’ recording studio, Abbey Road Studios, would remain open as a “symbol of British culture.”

Universal released statements from bands in support, including from Coldplay manager Dave Holmes, who said “this can only be a positive for the artists and executives at EMI.”

‘Terminator’ Back With Arnold To Star: Schwarzenegger In Package Shopping Now; ‘Fast Five’s Justin Lin To Direct
He’s baaack! Arnold Schwarzenegger is attached to star in a rights package that CAA is shopping today that will revive The Terminator, one of Hollywood’s most iconic scifi franchises. The agency is dropping the package on studios this afternoon. I’m told that already, Universal, Sony and Lionsgate, and CBS Films are looking hard at the package. There is no screenwriter attached at this point, and Robert Cort is producing. This is the first real activity on The Terminator project since February 2010, when the property emerged from a bankruptcy auction and into the possession of Pacificor. The Santa Barbara-based hedge fund posted a bid of $29.5 million, with the promise that additional multimillion-dollar payments for each film would go to Halcyon, the company that made the 2009 McG-directed Terminator Salvation. That film starred Sam Worthington as the cyborg and Christian Bale as John Connor, and the storyline launched the battle between Skynet and the human survivors of the apocalypse, the war foreshadowed in James Cameron’s visionary 1984 original film. Halcyon wanted to make several films but ran out of money. At the time of the auction, Pacificor beat out a combined bid by Lionsgate and Sony planning to make back-to-back sequels to bring the franchise to a natural creative conclusion.
While many felt at the time that Pacificor overpaid and that Lionsgate and Sony would have been better matches for the material, CAA has chosen an optimum time to seek a new deal. I wrote back in February that Universal quietly was trying to arrange for Lin to be helmer of the project. At the time, some turned up their noses. Given the strong international grosses being racked up by Fast Five and the expectations for a strong domestic opening this Friday, Lin has a lot of heat. And Schwarzenegger is looking to recapture past marquee glory ending his run as California State Governor. Schwarzenegger has circled several projects including Last Stand for Lionsgate, but here, he’s the star, returning to the signature role that once established him as the world’s biggest movie star.
Much like the Superman property, The Terminator has a ticking clock on the rights. There is a stipulation in copyright law that if you assign your rights, you get them back in 35 years. In this case, Cameron assigned his rights to Hemdale, and the North American rights will revert back to him in 2018. Now, Cameron has more or less washed his hands of the Terminator franchise, but I’m told a new deal would have to be made with him if the plan was to keep making Terminator installments beyond that period. There is plenty of time to make at least two Terminator films before that happens, and that might be sufficient to end the saga that so far has spanned four films. Any financier that makes those films owns them free and clear. Rumor is the project price tag is at least $25 million upfront, against a purchase price near $36 million, not including paydays for Schwarzenegger or Lin. It would stand to reason because of the amount Pacificor paid in 2010 and the interest it has carried since. I’m told there is no set price, but this will likely be a whopping sale by the time the dust has settled and the bidding is complete.