Entertainment Lawyers

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...

                                                                                            Brandon Blake Amazon has canceled HBO Max subscriptions as of last week, as WarnerMedia leaves its bouquet of channels. Anticipating significant subscriber loss with the move, HBO Max has announced a dramatic price cut to head off the potential hemorrhaging. With such a major entertainment business move afoot, we asked entertainment lawyer Los Angeles and industry expert, Brandon Blake, to weigh in on the implications.  Amazon Prime Video subscribers accounted for just north of 5 million HBO subscribers, so this is no small shift. Will the lure of 50% off for the first 6 months be enough to entice these lost subscribers back, or at least to bring in replacements? ...

Marketing in the digital era can be a double-edged sword. While smart social media tie-ins are a relatively cheap way to gain a lot of traction, it’s also easy to get lost in the crowd. It’s almost inevitable that film marketing will have to evolve for the new century if their IPs want to stay relevant and draw crowds who have a ton of entertainment options competing for their attention. This week we’ve seen some innovative and daring marketing for the fourth installment of the Matrix franchise hit the screen-  Brandon Blake, an entertainment lawyer with decades of experience in the industry, explores one of the most interesting trailer launches we’ve seen in years. Brand Blake - Managing Partner at Blake & Wang P.A. With The Matrix ’s strong takes on tech, social engineering, and society as a whole, perhaps it’s not all that surprising to see something novel emerge from its marketing stable. Fans are being offered a sneak peek at film footage through the site WhatIsTheMatrix...

  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...

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...