Entertainment Lawyers

 What a difference half a year can make! With Netflix’s ad-supported subscription tier first launched only 18 months ago, the streamer has managed to nearly double its subscriber base since the start of 2024. Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer , Brandon Blake, fills in the details. Brandon Blake Impressive Subscriber Gains Netflix’s total subscribers for the ad-supported tier now number 40 million monthly active users. In January 2024, it was 23 million. The streamer was understandably gleeful to reveal this news at its first in-person Upfronts presentation in New York earlier this month. At its first-ever Upfronts presentation, which was held digitally in 2023, the ad tier had 5 million monthly active users.   Additionally, we were told that 40% of active signups now opt for the ad-supported plan, in countries where it is currently available. Of course, much of this can be attributed to a rather kind price ($7 domestically) for this tier, well below most of ...

 With Netflix the only streamer operating fully in the black, there has been much speculation about which streaming platform will be the first to break into true profitability, with many believing we will see this happen by the end of this year. As many have predicted, it seems Disney+ may be on the verge of taking this streaming milestone. Brandon Blake, our entertainment attorney Los Angeles at Blake & Wang P.A., breaks down the facts and figures.   Brandon Blake Significantly Reduced Streaming Losses For Q1 of 2024, which is Disney’s fiscal Q2, Disney’s combined streaming business, which now included sole ownership of Hulu as well as ESPN+, managed to reduce their losses to only $18M. While subs rose significantly, average revenue per user did slip a little. This is mostly thanks to growth from their recent deal with Charter, which introduced some reduced, wholesale pricing to the mix. Revenue came in at $6.2B. Surprisingly, if we remove ESPN+’s sports-focuse...

 Despite the (mostly unexpected, at least this early) announcement that CEO Bob Bakish will be replaced by a three-person-strong leadership team at Paramount and their continuing negotiations with Skydance and RedBird Capital, it seems Paramount will have another bidder to consider. Namely Sony and Apollo Capital Management in a joint bid. Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer , Brandon Blake, unpacks what we know. Brandon Blake Negotiating Window Ending Paramount and their controlling owner, National Amusements, have been in an exclusive negotiating window with David Ellison’s Skydance but that period will expire shortly. Sony and Apollo have now formally reached out to the Paramount special board committee with a formal $26B cash offer, news which pushed up Paramount’s ailing shares considerably as it broke.   While National Amusements and the Redstone family seem to be mostly focused on the potential Skydance deal, it is pretty clear that not all stakeholders i...

 While, historically, animations have tended to play a lesser role than live productions in the Hollywood ecosystem, we’ve seen some startling (and well-deserved) successes from the animated film market in recent years, including Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse , The Super Mario Bros. Movie , and Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron . With some fantastic releases on the cards for animated productions, will 2024 see this sometimes-neglected niche get the love it deserves? Our local expert, Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment attorney Brandon Blake, looks at what is coming for animation lovers this year. Brandon Blake A Lot to Live Up To From the bittersweet swansong of what will likely be legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki’s last Studio Ghibli project, through to the unexpected (and massive) commercial success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie , which powered over the $1B international mark, 2023 brought some fantastic animated success stories to the table. While it is...