Entertainment Lawyers

  As we see greater and greater merging of the NFT concept with the entertainment industry, we’ve finally seen a high-profile sign-up to CAA enter the space. Brandon Blake, the entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang, has more news. Brandon Blake Cool Cats NFT Collection Who are Cool Cats, anyway? It’s the operational name for an NFT collection that’s attracted some high-profile Hollywood interest, including ownership by Reese Witherspoon, Marc Benioff and Alexis Ohanian. It was launched, however, on the Ethereum blockchain almost a year ago by Colin Egan, Evan Luza, Tom Williamson and Rob Mehew. Offering 9,999 avatars for purchase, it has pulled in a quarter of a million dollars over the time period. What do purchasers get for their investment? A non-exclusive right to use the characters, currently. This means the collection retains the rights to use them in new projects.  Signing with CAA On the back of this success, they have now officially

  As one of the first mainstream superhero movies in a long while to gain a Chinese release date, it was inevitable that all eyes would be on the Chinese reception of The Batman . Regrettably, state concerns about a new COVID outbreak in the country have led to a softer overall uptake than expected. All the same, the new superhero romp has managed to cross a critical $500M milestone in global takings, and remains strong on performance. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A, unpacks some figures for us.                                           Brandon Blake Slow Start In many ways, it’s unfortunate that the release won’t get to truly test itself against the current Chinese movie consumption trends honestly, with the disease outbreak clipping its wings. 35% of Chinese cinemas, majoritively in key markets like Shanghai and Shenzhen, are now temporarily shuttered to help control the spike. Despite this, it has delivered a strong score on local ratings platforms,

  The heady days where streaming was synonymous with no ads are now behind us. Yet what has created this apparent flip-flop on the original allure of the medium, and why are fans and studios both happy to put up with the reintroduction of advertising to their ad-free streaming world? Blake & Wang P.A’s entertainment lawyer , Brandon Blake, looks at the phenomenon.                                                         Brandon Blake AVOD Introductions Boom At this point, it’s hard to find a streamer who isn’t offering a discounted AVOD tier. If it’s not already a live feature, it’s coming soon. Even Disney+ has turned to ads, with a rollout later this year. Hulu, of course, has always offered AVOD tiers cheaper, and Paramount+ onb oarded the idea last June. While Netflix hasn’t yet added AVOD, they’ve also not ruled it out entirely.   For most, the primary draw is the ability to offer a tier-based discount in return for the marginal extra inconvenience. In turn, this opens

 NBC has ended the flow of its content to Hulu, instead opting to focus on Peacock. We’re seeing a lot of reshuffled content deals as the streaming wars hot up, but this one seems a little more purposeful than most, so we turned to Brandon Blake of Blake & Wang P.A for more on the news.                                                         Brandon  Blake Starting This Fall This means that, as of Fall 2022, we will see hit shows like Saturday Night Live, The Voice, and American Auto premier on Peacock, instead of being available through Hulu the day after they air. Hulu will, however, retain the right to show some older NBCU properties, including Will & Grace and Law & Order: SVU. Hulu seems- officially at least- unperturbed by the new development, explaining that they have anticipated the streaming reshuffle as an inevitable consequence of new streamers entering the marketplace.  Wrangle with Disney However, it’s likely there’s a little more to this one than is immediate

 Has the era of total Netflix domination finally drawn to a close? Not quite, but we’ve seen some massive gains in subscribers across other top streamers for 2022. The entertainment layer with Blake & Wang P.A, Brandon Blake, crunches the figures.                                                          Brandon Blake Netflix Predicts A Slow Down Still seen colloquially as ‘the’ streaming giant, Netflix managed to add 8.3M subscribers in quarter 4 for a total of 222M global paying subscribers, 75.22M in North America, but took some heavy market criticism when it revealed its Q1 2022 target will be only 2.5M. Despite the market sulk, however, that is a fairly reasonable conservative approach as the pandemic-wrought boom grinds down to a halt and the real business of keeping market traction starts. Predicted ARPU for North America is $14.78. Disney Booms Disney+ and Hotstar have added 11.7M subscribers for a total of 118.1M, and a global ARPU of $4.41. Hulu has gained 1.2M subscriber