box office posts
FeedPosted Nov 16th 2009 8:20AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Walt Disney (DIS), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), Film, Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
Last week, I discussed my disappointment with Disney's (DIS) A Christmas Carol. As a shareholder of the Mouse, I remain dissatisfied with the performance. However, this past weekend's theatrical take of the film makes me a little happier.
According to early estimates at Box Office Mojo, Carol scored about $22 million at domestic theaters, making it the second most popular film of the three-day period. Sure, it wasn't number one, but given the fact that Carol made $30 million last weekend, I'd say you have to give it some credit for avoiding a significant percentage drop. So far, it has generated more than $60 million in revenue.
Continue reading Disney's 'A Christmas Carol' didn't die off in second weekend
Posted Nov 10th 2009 9:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), Film, Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
When I discussed Lions Gate Entertainment's (LGF) first-quarter results, I noted the disappointing statement of cash flows. Unfortunately, the company didn't do much better in the second quarter. For the six-month period, Lions Gate used over $160 million for operations compared to the roughly $40 million used in the similar frame one year ago.
Of course, cash flow doesn't always get the most coverage. Investors tend to get more excited by a swing to profitability. On that count, Lions Gate scored admirably, earning 26 cents per diluted share versus losing 44 cents per diluted share twelve months prior. Earnings.com indicates that analysts were really underestimating the Q2 income potential here: the call was for 6 cents per share.
Continue reading Lions Gate Entertainment: Still waiting for cash flow
Posted Nov 9th 2009 9:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), Film
Disney (DIS) had high hopes for A Christmas Carol. It was supposed to be an unqualified blockbuster. Unfortunately, the film's first weekend at the box office was nothing short of a disaster.
Too strong? Hardly. According to early estimates at Box Office Mojo, Carol took in little more than $30 million at domestic screenings. It was wasn't supposed to be like this. Carol was supposed to be light-years ahead of the competition. Sony's (SNE) Michael Jackson's This Is It came in second. The Men Who Stare at Goats, distributed by Liberty Capital Group's (LCAPA) Overture Films, was third. And The Fourth Kind, from General Electric's (GE) Universal, is currently ranked, aptly enough, in fourth place. Each of the latter three pictures had a gross of somewhere between $12 million and $14 million. To me, Carol's take didn't seem as disproportionate as it should have been.
Continue reading Disney's 'A Christmas Carol': Investors not in a merry mood?
Posted Oct 26th 2009 8:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Film, Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
I don't believe it. I never thought it could happen. Lions Gate Entertainment (NYSE: LGF) released Saw VI this past weekend. Surely the latest cinematic celebration of cruelty would be the number-one picture at domestic theaters, right? Saw is a big brand when it comes to torture movies. Jigsaw is a Freddy Krueger (and beyond) for the new generation. The teens would be out in full force to support all the latest traps and sequences of dismemberment and bloodletting for sure.
Well, Saw VI didn't come out on top. Instead, Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Paranormal Activity made the most money in the race for domination at the multiplex, scoring approximately $22 million according to early estimates from Box Office Mojo. The new Saw did come in second, though, so that was at least some consolation, correct?
Continue reading Viacom's 'Paranormal Activity' plays Jigsaw's game -- and wins
Posted Oct 19th 2009 8:20AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Viacom (VIA), Film, Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Where the Wild Things Are was number one over the past weekend at domestic theaters as of early estimates from Box Office Mojo. The film grossed well over $30 million. Coming in second was Law Abiding Citizen. If Wild Things wasn't in the market this weekend, that one definitely would have been tops at the multiplex. The revenge fest, from Liberty Capital Group's (NASDAQ: LCAPA) Overture Films, brought in $21 million.
Right on the heels of that project is the very cheaply made Paranormal Activity, courtesy of Viacom (NYSE: VIA). It made about $20 million. So far, Activity has generated over $30 million in total. And they say the little horror extravaganza cost less than $20,000 to produce!
Continue reading Viacom's 'Paranormal Activity' continues to wow Hollywood
Posted Oct 12th 2009 10:50AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), Film
General Electric's (NYSE: GE) studio division didn't have a great summer at the box office. This past weekend, though, the company's new comedy made waves at the box office.
According to Box Office Mojo, Universal's Couples Retreat, starring Vince Vaughn, took in about $35 million at domestic theaters as of early estimates, more than enough to capture the top slot. Sony (NYSE: SNE) took the next two spots on the chart with Zombieland, and the resilient cartoon Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, respectively. Don't get too cocky, though, Sony, because Disney (NYSE: DIS) was right behind you with its Toy Story 3D special release.
Continue reading GE's 'Couples Retreat' or Viacom's 'Paranormal Activity' -- which is really No. 1?
Posted Oct 5th 2009 8:30AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Sony Corp ADR (SNE), News Corp'B' (NWS), Film
The movie-going public was in the mood to see a classic Hollywood horror archetype over the weekend: zombies. Yep, the walking dead, made popular by George Romero so many years ago, were feasting in darkened theaters across the country. According to Box Office Mojo estimates available at the time of this writing, Sony's (NYSE: SNE) Zombieland made the most money at domestic theaters over the past weekend, taking in $25 million.
Sony also captured second place with its computer cartoon, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs. That film is on its way to a total haul of over $100 million. At the moment, it has better than $80 million in the bank. Shareholders of Disney (NYSE: DIS), however, had their own computer cartoons in the marketplace as well. The double feature of Pixar's Toy Story and Toy Story 2 came in third with $12 million. To be honest, I thought the idea of running those two back-to-back would be too much to take for the attention spans of the younger crowd. I know it would be way too much for me to take.
Continue reading Sony's zombies consume competition at box office
Posted Sep 27th 2009 1:40PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Internet, Google (GOOG), General Electric (GE), Walt Disney (DIS), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World
I caught an item over the weekend at paidContent about paying for content. Come to think of it, what else would you expect to find over at that site? All joking aside, paying for content in the digital age is actually a very serious issue for media investors. If you're a shareholder of Disney (NYSE: DIS) or General Electric (NYSE: GE), as I am, then you know both of those businesses have ample exposure to intellectual properties that management would like to exploit over the web. For a fee, of course.
The paidContent piece discusses research apparently conducted by a News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS) subsidiary that suggests consumers would be willing to pay for stuff on the internet. All I can say is, I hope the research turns out to be accurate.
Continue reading Will media companies ever get people to pay for web content?
Posted Sep 18th 2009 3:40PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), News Corp'B' (NWS), Media World, Film, Marvel Entertainment (MVL)
I read a surprising article over at Boxofficemojo by Brandon Gray. The author highlighted the foreign financial performance of News Corp.'s (NASDAQ: NWS) computer-animated cartoon Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the third entry in the popular franchise. Amazingly, Dinosaurs has now grossed $667 million at theaters outside the domestic market.
What's so interesting about that? Well, it means that the project now occupies third place on the all-time foreign chart. Gray says the number-one film on this chart is Titanic, which was a co-production between News Corp. and Viacom (NYSE: VIA). Coming in second is Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
Continue reading News Corp.'s 'Ice Age' sequel proves Pixar isn't only game in town?
Posted Sep 11th 2009 3:00PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Time Warner (TWX), Marketing and advertising, Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), Media World, Film, Marvel Entertainment (MVL)
Disney (NYSE:
DIS), a media business that competes with
Time Warner (NYSSE:
TWX) and
Viacom (NYSE:
VIA), is currently holding a four-day fan convention in California called the D23 Expo. According to Julia Boorstin over at
CNBC.com, you might consider it a Comic-Con-like event strictly for the Mouse. As far as I can tell, this initiative is a smart marketing move. Disney is able to promote a lot of its content in a very targeted fashion.
Of particular interest is one piece of content that was highlighted in an article at the Los Angeles Times website. Disney is making a significant bet on an upcoming cartoon called The Princess and the Frog. It won't be a flashy 3-D production. Instead, it's animated in a 2-D environment.
Continue reading Disney promotes its content with new convention
Posted Aug 29th 2009 12:10PM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Competitive strategy, General Electric (GE), Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA), News Corp'B' (NWS), Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
Coinstar's (NASDAQ: CSTR) Redbox, a convenient movie-rental kiosk, has really shaken things up in the media industry. BloggingStocks has covered recent events surrounding this asset: Zac Bissonnette wrote an article earlier in the month discussing the subject of litigation with certain studios, and Brent Archer covered a possible options play connected to a deal with Viacom (NYSE: VIA).
I won't rehash all of the details, but let me boil it down to the salient issue: studios such as Disney (NYSE: DIS), General Electric's (NYSE: GE) NBC Universal, and Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) are all worried about the devaluation of physical media. Redbox charges a single dollar per day for a DVD rental. This frightens content makers. Executives at these companies believe that discs must be defended since they are an important way of amortizing costs associated with making films. Even those entities that have decided to engage the Redbox model probably aren't happy about it. Lions Gate (NYSE: LGF) surely doesn't enjoy the deflation of the DVD, but it is playing ball nevertheless.
Continue reading Redbox is really irritating the studios, but they should calm down
Posted Aug 11th 2009 8:00AM by Steven Mallas (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Time Warner (TWX), Walt Disney (DIS), Media World, Film, Lions Gate Entertainment (LGF)
Boy, was I wrong. I wasn't bullish on Lions Gate Entertainment (NYSE: LGF) as an earnings trade. Well, the stock closed higher by 8% on Monday, and shares rocketed another 15% in the after-hours session. It was an amazing sight.
The market loved the first-quarter report, obviously. Revenues increased 30%, helped in part by the TV Guide acquisition. Earnings per diluted share were 30 cents. That was ten times higher than the income reported one year ago. According to Reuters, the adjusted profit was 21 cents per share. Doesn't matter, it was still blazingly better than the loss Wall Street was expecting.
Continue reading Lions Gate reports Q1 profit, smashing estimates
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