by Mark Lepage.

I did a double take at the poster.

The first thought was: Good – a re-release of Straw Dogs, which couldn’t possibly be less controversial now than when Sam Peckinpah shoved Dustin Hoffman’s broken nebbish glasses and the issue of maleness into the film-going consciousness. But no, it wasn’t Dustin, it was James Mars-den, and it was a remake.

And a mistake. Needless to say, Straw Dogs tanked, commercially and artistically.

What were they thinking? What everyone else is, apparently. The foreseeable future will be nothing but hindsight as Hollywood rolls out a wax museum of replicants. Past isn’t prologue; it’s the entire script.

You’ve already heard of, seen or shunned Arthur, Fright Night, Conan the Barbarian, Footloose and The Thing. Depending on whom you ask in the industry, the recent spate of remakes will top out around 50 (!) in the next year or so.

Read the rest of this article from Vancouver Sun.

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by Robin Pagnament.

HOLLYWOOD studios have started making films in India’s regional languages as part of an attempt to tap into more than $1 billion in annual revenues from new audiences.

Already a big player in Bollywood, Fox is set this week to release its first film in Tamil, a South Indian language with 65 million native speakers.

The film, a romantic comedy titled Engeyum Eppothum (“everywhere all the time”) featuring the Tamil star Anjali, is the latest sign of growing international interest in India’s regional language film business, which also includes films made for the Telugu and Bengali markets.

Put together, they gross an estimated $US1.1bn ($1bn) a year, compared with $US813 million for Hindi language films.

Read the rest of this article from The Australian.

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by Brooks Barnes.

FOR the last 12 years, Alan F. Horn’s movie operation has printed money for Warner Brothers, the largest of Hollywood’s studios. Sure, there have been flops and missteps. But Mr. Horn, as Warner’s president and chief operating officer, has generally kept the studio on an unusually steady course by delivering hit after hit: “The Perfect Storm,” “300,” “The Departed,” “Happy Feet,” “Ocean’s Eleven,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Million Dollar Baby,” “The Dark Knight.”

The most lucrative film franchise in Hollywood history, bigger even than “Star Wars” and James Bond, is Harry Potter. And Mr. Horn is largely the one to thank for that. But in the coming days, Mr. Horn will ride — unhappily — into the sunset after being squeezed out of the studio to make room for a new generation of managers.

Read the rest of this article from NYTimes.

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This article was written by Brooks Barnes.

“Paramount Pictures, looking for new ways to turn its old movies into cash, especially as DVD sales continue to decline, is creating an online video clip service that will allow users to search hundreds of feature films on a frame-by-frame basis.

Feeling “the need for speed,” as Tom Cruise put it in “Top Gun”? Log on to ParamountClips.com, search for the exact video snippet you want and press the checkout button. Within minutes — with the price depending on the type of licensing use you have in mind — Paramount will electronically deliver the selection in the format and resolution desired. Most scenes are available in multiple languages.”

Read this article from New York Times.

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This article was written by Patrick Goldstein.

“It’s not even the middle of December yet and, according the Associated Press, Hollywood has already set an all-time box-office record, with domestic theatrical revenues having passed the previous record — 2007′s $9.68 billion — with a possible $10.5 billion mark easily in sight before year’s end.

All in all, it’s pretty impressive, especially when you consider that all these sky-high grosses come less than two years after the end of the ugly 2007-2008 writers strike, the one in which every studio executive in town was crying poverty and bemoaning the end of the industry as we know it, saying theatrical moviegoing was slowly being wiped out by piracy, pricey home entertainment systems and all sorts of horrific Internet threats.”

Read this article from LA Times.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

“The recent firings and hirings of studio executives at Disney, Universal and elsewhere point to a widespread corporate panic amid sharp declines in DVD sales.”

Read this article from LA Times.

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

“My goodness! If one were to believe all the news reports, it would appear that the entire motion picture industry has just fallen into the Pacific and sunk slowly beneath the waves. Gee gosh golly, what’s wrong with everybody? Last I heard, Variety and the MPAA were telling everybody that everything was okey dokey.

OK, as some of us already knew, they were simply bluffing. Yes, it really isn’t okey dokey. In fact, it is getting kind of poopy out there. Just look at all of the senior executives currently cleaning out their desks. The first round (and I do mean it’s only the beginning) has already hit hard, and the headlines are taking on all of the subtlety of a news report on a mob massacre.”

Read this article from Dennis Toth.

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“Cut your spending. Save your money. Many of the revenue streams that have gushed into your industry for decades, some for nearly a century, are about to dry up. This will likely mean a period of belt tightening like you’ve never seen before.

The end is coming for DVDs, traditional movie rentals, and yes, much of your cable money will likely disappear.

The news isn’t entirely bad; you still have iTunes and Netflix–places where people spend money to buy or rent movies. You still have Hulu, Crackle.com, and YouTube, which are generating ad revenue by streaming full-length films and TV shows online. But the reality is that the amount of money that these legal operations generate is far less than the returns your industry is used to making.

Unless some dramatic technological breakthrough occurs that can defeat file sharing, then you are staring at checkmate. Your business is headed for the same meat grinder that has chewed up the recorded music sector and print publishing. What will come out the other side is still uncertain but will likely be much smaller.”

Read this article from News.CNET

The Ten Commandments of Filmmaking
How to Work (and Survive) in the
Film and Television Industry
by Peter D. Marshall

Read this article from Zia Records.

“With the crumbling of the studio system and the Production Code, there came a generation of revolutionary filmmakers. These we recognize as the mavericks of the late 60’s and 70’s: Scorsese to Malick to Hopper to Cimino and so on. All these cats, who would be credited with altering cinema and strongly influencing current styles of filmmaking, were themselves altered by the filmmakers of the French New Wave (a.k.a. Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer).”