Entertainment Lawyers

  While the streaming wars heat up, Netflix is still managing to hold out in its top position as the US’s most-watched streamer. Entertainment attorney and legal expert, Brandon Blake, breaks down the latest Nielsen weekly U.S streaming chart data as Netflix manages to score a 10/10.                                                                       Brandon Blake In this week's latest figures, covering the start of August, we saw All American , a Netflix property now wrapping up its 3rd season, manage to rack up 1.433B viewing minutes. In doing so, it just edged out another Netflix original, Outer Banks , with 1.423B views. Not perhaps a total reflection on their relative viewer pulling power, as All American had an extra 3 days on the service to pull interest. Of course, the Nielsen ratings are not free...

Late August has never been the best time for the cinema circuit. Combined with day-and-date releases that bring premium titles to streaming immediately and the reared head of the delta variant, no one was expecting wonders from this weekend’s Box Office. Against this generally listless backdrop, however, Free Guy has delivered a surprisingly joyous performance. Brandon Blake , entertainment lawyer Los Angeles , dives deep into the figures for us. A $28.3M debut represented a surprising success for Free Guy , carrying on into a strong, if not exceptional, $14M performance over the next few days. A nearly $35M five-day marker is nothing to be sneered at. While the overall box office for the weekend of August 16-18 is still lagging behind the 2019 figures widely being used as benchmarks, the three new openers- Free Guy, Respect, and Don’t Breathe 2 - actually outperformed the new openers for the same 2019 weekend. Free Guy not only outperformed expectations but also brought in a 2.65x m...

As the streaming push into Latin America hots up, we see NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo Enterprises, perhaps the best-known Spanish-language media company currently operating, launch a new development division for Peacock and other NBC-owned properties. There’s already an ambitious slate of 50 projects lined up for 2022, and more beyond. Entertainment lawyer Los Angeles Brandon Blake analyzes what this could mean for the industry in general. The division will launch as “NBCUniversal Telemundo Hispanic Streaming”, under the watchful eye of Romina Rosado as GM and executive VP. They move over from their role as executive VP of Entertainment and Content Strategy at Telemundo itself. Their remit is to further the Spanish content slate for the network, across telenovelas, unscripted content, comedy, and drama, alongside bolstering the other new edition to the Telemundo house- Telemundo Streaming Studios. Launched in May, these two new divisions are intended as a production hub for the langu...

  It’s unusual for an overall loss to stimulate positive market interest, but with Cinemark Holdings announcing a narrowed loss for their new Q2 period, the market has seen reason to take another look at the beleaguered chain. Brandon Blake analyzes this strange market shift. It’s no secret that the theater industry has been one of the hardest hit by global shutdowns through the 2020 period. The newly-announced Q2 loss of $142.5M still represents an improvement on the $170.4M reported for Q2 2020. Likewise, overall revenue has risen to $294.7M, vs $9M at the same point last year. Breaking these figures down further, we see $153.5 from direct admissions, and $109.8 concessions, and 19.1 million patrons in attendance. Not too bad from an industry hit so badly by pandemic closures. Overall, this second-quarter recovery is somewhat more accelerated than previously predicted, too. The North American Box Office itself has tripled from the first quarter. Cinemark is also keen to show the...

With Emmy nominations racking up and finally some good financial news from its streamer, Apple has had a great week in the entertainment industry. Entertainment attorney Los Angeles , Brandon Blake , has more details.  35 Emmy nominations are nothing to sneeze at for any studio, but given that Apple has been seen as something of an ‘also-ran’ in the streaming wars, it’s a massive achievement. Most of it is built on the runaway success of the freshman comedy Ted Lasso , which has been a definite win for Apple TV+ Emmy nominations are not the only Apple win for the week, either. They have had a monstrously successful quarter, one terminating in double-digit growth both domestically and globally. It’s a little difficult to disentangle exact figures for Apple TV+ from that, given the nature of Apple’s hodgepodge ‘Apple Services’ division. Yet CFO Luca Maestri weighed in with the following: “TV+, Arcade, Fitness+ subscriptions continue to scale up and are contributing to growth. The key...