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Peacock Finally Sees Success and Profit

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  After six long years of trimming budgets and doing its best to compete with its larger streaming peers, Peacock may finally be coming into its own. With a second consecutive profitable quarter now under its belt, entertainment attorney Brandon Blake, at Blake & Wang P.A., looks at what Peacock is finally doing right.                                                                        Brandon Blake   Subscriber and Profit Uptick Peacock posted a pre-tax profit of $261M for this year’s Q3, with total revenue reaching $1.8B, up from $1.4B last year. That’s quite a change from the $217M loss it faced in the same period last year, and follows on from its Q2 profit of $189M. It has also seen subscriber numbers grow to 48M, up from 41M in the same period last year, although it is flat from Q2....
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Launch Financing Scales Short-Term Loans for Indie Productions

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  Launch Financing, a film finance specialist, will be expanding its gap loan services for the indie market domestically and in both Canada and the UK in the wake of a new institutional senior credit facility. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A., shares the news.                                                                           Brandon Blake Loan Expansion Launch Financing has already helped with more than 60 loans for smaller productions, offsetting the loan amount against committed production receivables such as tax credits and pre-sales. This new $15M senior credit facility, which will extend to $25M over time, will now be on offer through an agreement with Pier Asset Management, a specialty lender. Cash flow issues are common for smaller productions, with extende...
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Crunchyroll Expands with New Anime-Focused Subsidiary

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  Sony is taking a bet on Japanese Anime as a growth vector with the launch of Crunchyroll Storyworks, its new division. Brandon Blake, entertainment attorney at Blake & Wang P.A., shares the news.                                                                   Brandon Blake   New Unit The new unit will be headed by Tohru Iokibe, a veteran at Sony Corp., and hopes to extend the platform’s influence among the Japanese anime community as well as boost its global profile. They will report to Crunchyroll’s Chief Content Officer, Asa Suehira. The new division was announced last week at Crunchyroll’s own Anime Future Forum and ahead of the New York Comic Con.  Storyworks will primarily focus on adapting global stories into anime, and, conversely, bringing Japanese anime titles into the live-action arena....
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Crunchyroll Expands with New Anime-Focused Subsidiary

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  With this year’s stellar box office performance only highlighting the enduring interest in the cinema experience, there’s a lot for the cinema industry to celebrate. However, that doesn’t mean the woes that have followed the industry since the pandemic are fully put to bed. Industry insiders argue that passing the SCREEN Act could do a lot to support those remaining struggles. Entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake, at Blake & Wang P.A., looks at what’s at stake.                                                                Brandon Blake   Ongoing Struggles Fundamentally, one strong year does not a full recovery make. At least not when it comes to the capital the post-pandemic years have slowly eroded. That’s partly what the bipartisan Supporting Cinema Renewal, Enhancement, and Enriching Neighborhoods, or SCREEN, A...
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Cinemas Need the SCREEN Act: Does Congress Care?

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  With this year’s stellar box office performance only highlighting the enduring interest in the cinema experience, there’s a lot for the cinema industry to celebrate. However, that doesn’t mean the woes that have followed the industry since the pandemic are fully put to bed. Industry insiders argue that passing the SCREEN Act could do a lot to support those remaining struggles. Entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake, at Blake & Wang P.A., looks at what’s at stake.                                                                     Brandon Blake   Ongoing Struggles Fundamentally, one strong year does not a full recovery make. At least not when it comes to the capital the post-pandemic years have slowly eroded. That’s partly what the bipartisan Supporting Cinema Renewal, Enhancement, and Enriching Neighborhood...
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Another Strong Box Office Week

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  With the general optimism around this year’s box office, it’s always great to see a strong week, even if it's free of the splashy record-breakers this year has delivered. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A., dives into this past week’s releases.                                                                          Brandon Blake Resident Winners The rebooted Resident Evil franchise, now under Zach Creggar, has turned in a surprisingly strong start, at $108.3M worldwide. It’s the best start for the franchise, and for Creggar as a filmmaker. Notably, it replaces Resident Evil: Retribution , and that film only took a total of $240M worldwide, something this iteration may well surpass and should at least repeat. It also managed to bring in an extended audience, instead of o...
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Disney Gets New Streaming Lead as D2C Division Shake-Up Continues

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There have been some significant recent changes in Disney’s senior leadership, especially in its direct-to-consumer division. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer with Blake & Wang P.A., has the full story.                                                                               Brandon Blake New Streaming Head Joe Earley, the exiting president for Disney’s D2C interests, will now move to a new role as President of the Disney Entertainment TV Franchise and Content Strategy. Adam Smith will step into his shoes as chairman. This will leave him overseeing pretty much everything that falls under Disney’s D2C banner, including their products and engineering, ad technology, programming, partnerships, viewer experience, and the ever-more-important data and analytics. That’s across both Di...
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