Entertainment Lawyers

  The pending spin-off of Starz assets from the Lionsgate brand may feel like it’s been in the news forever, especially as we see a flurry of preparatory licensing and deal-making between the two, but there does seem to be a date in sight. Finally! To share the news, we have Brandon Blake, entertainment attorney at Blake & Wang P.A.                                                                     Brandon Blake   Spring (at the Earliest)   While the pending deal is still in regulatory review, Lionsgate CEO Jon Felthimer announced last week that they still believe they are on track to see the full separation in spring this year. It may even be as early as April.   There is a small delay currently, as the proxy needs to be updated with last quarter’s financials, which inevitably ad...

  The Boy and the Heron Takes a Record Domestic Opening It’s been a great year for underrated and unexpected titles at the box office. While a 12.8M opening may seem small in comparison to the franchise blockbusters of previous years, it represents massive support for an animation piece opening in cinemas in the US- and the momentum is only growing. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyers with Blake & Wang P.A., shares the great news.                                              Brandon Blake Biggest North American Opening Hailing from Studio Ghibli and the greatly esteemed mind of animation filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron took a total of 12.8M from theaters in its opening weekend, including a very strong $4M debut Saturday- the dynamic duo’s best results in the North American market yet.   This was despite an overall rather soft se...

  A Brief Peek at the Thanksgiving Box Office With the Thanksgiving weekend now fading behind us, the next big milestone for holiday releases, what is the state of the domestic box office? Blake & Wang P.A.’s Brandon Blake, our local entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles in the USA, sums up the state of affairs.                               Brandon Blake The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Takes Black Friday The top spot for the weekend goes to Lionsgate’s new Hunger Games prequel, with a 3-day of $28.8M and a 5-day of $42M. It is projected that the film should be traveling on about $100M by the time you read this, likely closing at $150M domestically.   Usually, we’d see a Disney release in this spot, but their run of Box Office misses continues with the release of the animated Wish . Instead, it barely managed to cling to a number 3 spot, at just $19.5M in total as...

  This year has been tough on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Since February, we’ve seen the HFPA undertake near-complete reform. This comes only after pressure from Golden Globes broadcaster, NBC, alongside other interested parties including Amazon, Netflix, and Warner Media. The issue? The organization has been accused of being anachronistic and severely lacking in diversity, with not one black journalist on the roll at the time. The issue reached a head when NBC canceled the 2022 Golden Globes in order to allow the HFPA time to reform. Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer , examines the new reformations for us.  Brandon Blake - The Entertainment Lawyer The enforced reformation hasn’t been without protests, of course. Primarily around the fact that all members had to reapply under new, strict criteria, including proof of active employment. This reapplication will need to happen every year, too. Rejected applicants hav...

There have been suggestions of a looming IATSE strike for several weeks, and it finally looks like the matter will go to a general vote as of October 1st. Should it be authorized, the strike will lead to a national shutdown across the film and TV industries. We turned to entertainment attorney and industry expert, Brandon Blake, for all the details to know for now.                                          Brandon Blake - Managing Partner at Blake & Wang P.A There’s no secret that conversations around worker’s rights (as well as wealth inequality) have been holding the headlines of late. Below-the-line workers’ issues have been highlighted, especially through a key anonymous social media account, over the last year and a bit, exacerbated by the pandemic.  IATSE’s concerns center on a contract-negotiation impasse between them and studios, compelling the union to move ahead w...

  If there’s a pandemic success story to celebrate, it has been the rise and rise of F9 . This week we see Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings surge to a surprising $70M opening, giving it an opening night that surpasses F9s . Will it be able to sustain the success? We asked Brandon Blake, L.A-based entertainment attorney , to weigh in on this strong opening. Brandon Blake It’s been a little over two years since we’ve had a full MCU movie release, and now within short months, we’ve seen 2 of the planned phase 4 films hit the circuit. While Black Widow had a same-day streaming release, Shang-Chi will be a theater exclusively for the next 45 days. It’s a strategy that wasn’t without debate, and Disney has been open in calling this- the first theatrical-only release since the beginning of the pandemic- an experiment. It’s a stance that has earned them some understandable kickback from the stars involved, but the movie does seem to ha...

  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...

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...

BLAKE & WANG P.A Entertainment Attorney Los Angeles were thrilled to announce earlier this week that L.A cinemas have been given the green light to reopen. Today, we look a little deeper at who won’t be turning on the lights any time soon. With L.A moving to the ‘red tier’, indicating 2 million citizens vaccinated and an overall reduction in COVID-19 cases and transmissions, cinemas are finally free to reopen at a measly 25% capacity. All the same, this represents a giant leap forward for the U.S’s largest movie market. Coming so soon on the heels of New York City reopening, this restores a huge chunk of the nation’s movie-going market, and should provide some much-needed impetus to the exhibition industry as a whole. While it’s not exactly a return to normal, at least hope for a recovery is on the way. We’ve seen- and reported on- many key L.A venues that have pushed to turn the lights on as soon as possible. By 26h March (or very shortly after), we will likely see a huge swathe ...

We’ve finally seen what Disney+ had up its sleeves for European Originals. A dazzling slate of 10 shows, including those aimed for their general entertainment brand, Disney Star, has been released this week. It’s anticipated this will jump to 50 international titles by 2024. BLAKE & WANG P.A Entertainment Attorney Los Angeles dive in deeper. This planned rollout will see local content pitched to Disney’s 95 million subscribers, across their 58 territories. The first 10 slated shows will roll out in Italian, German, French, and Dutch. Supposedly, a UK slate of programming is also on the cards. This EU-focused bundle features comedy, drama and docu-series. While Disney+ will continue to carry the bulk of their family-friendly creations, Star will cater to an older audience, something like Hulu. Disney Star officially launches on 23rd February 2021 and will remain a title within the Disney+ bouquet. Eight of the ten slated foreign titles will stay on the Star network, hoping to act a...

  This week we see WGA West President David A. Goodman go on record as ‘very pleased’ that the 34-month agency campaign from the WGA has drawn to a close. David Goodman further states that they have ‘achieved their goal’, with the talent agencies representing their writers now sharing aligned goals with the WGA itself. It’s pretty clear they are glad to see issues such as packaging fees and agency-owned production entities put to rest, deeming them ‘problematic business practices’ from the start. As Goodman himself puts it, ‘a writer’s agent should make more only when his client does.’ While the core idea of packaging- bringing together the separate creative elements of a show in one bundled whole- is perhaps not all that worthy of worry, the WGA has long maintained that they create a conflict of interest for the agent. As a knock-on effect, the agent has an incentive to low-ball their writer-client in favor of agency-owned production interests. In fact, the WGA has claimed this to...