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URWERKS – Video
URWERKS offers up this new demo reel that shows what they can do. Pretty cool stuff.
Spiderman now in Action
The filming of The Amazing Spider-Man , the new movieSpider-Man , is about to start, now in New York City, after passing through Los Angeles. The team director Marc Webb is already in town preparing for the action sequences that take place in the streets of Manhattan and the bridges over the Hudson River.
Men in Black III – Lingering Script Problems Slow Production
Now that Men in Black III is once again filming in New York after an interruption in the already-unconventional schedule due to lingering script problems, we’ve seen a few set photos recently. These have included the first look at Josh Brolin, who is playing a younger version of Agent K in scenes involving Will Smith‘s Agent J traveling back in time to the 1960’s. Tommy Lee Jones will again play K in contemporary scenes, but some new set photos from The Brooklyn Paper show some more of Smith, Brolin, and the 60s setting. Take a peek right here.
On locoation at the old Relish Diner in Williamsburg, VA
The Brooklyn Paper article reasonably concludes that the last image depicts, “funky stand-ins covered with lightbulbs to help create the computer-generated magic.” That makes sense, but if you remember back to the first Men in Black, there’s an early scene just after J and K meet up with pawnbroker Jeebs (Tony Shaloub), when a pair of pair of people adorned in black outfits and lightbulbs quickly ride by on a tandem bicycle. Given the specificity of that moment, I’d say we’ll see those two in the new film as they appear in the picture.
The film sees the return of franchise director Barry Sonnenfeld, who has not directed a film since 2006’s RV. Also on board for the film are Rip Torn, Emma Thompson, Jemaine Clement, Alice Eve, and Nicole Scherzinger. Men in Black III is set for May 25, 2012, just about a full decade since Men in Black II. This new sequel will, of course, hit screens in 3D
Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion; creates new business division
The rumors were right. Microsoft announced on May 10 that it bought Skype, an Internet communications vendor, for $8.5 billion.
Instead of trying to mash Skype into an existing Microsoft business division, the company has decided to create a new, separate Skype business division, with Skype CEO Tony Bates as the newly minted President. Bates will report directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
In its press release announcing the deal, Microsoft played up the potential synergies between Skype and its own communications offerings, including its Lync VOIP platform, Outlook mail, Messenger instant-messaging, Hotmail Web mail and Xbox Live gaming service.
“Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Microsoft will continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms,” said the release.
Microsoft offered no timetable or further details as to when and how it will make Skype available as part of any of its existing product offerings.
According to earlier reports, Microsoft was bidding against Google and Facebook for Skype. As my colleague Larry Dignan noted, the $8.5 billion Skype purchase price made for one expensive game of keepaway.
Microsoft and Skype are holding a press conference (hopefully) outlining more particulars of the deal at 11 a.m. ET. There will be a live Webcast(with no follow-up interviews permitted).
Today’s deal with Skype marks Microsoft’s largest acquisition (dollar-wise) in the history of the company. For the past couple of years, Microsoft execs seemingly had decided that Microsoft’s history of assimilating successfully its big acquisitions (aQuantive, Danger, AdECN, Bungie, etc.) was not so great, resulting in the company shying away from anything but relatively minor, targeted acquisitions.
Jeremy Renner Developing a Steve McQueen Biopic
In The Hurt Locker, then-obscure actor Jeremy Renner played the kind of manly hero we don’t see too often anymore. His military bomb technician was an absolutely confident, highly physical, resolutely unreflective, and unceasingly swaggering asskicker. Since that breakout, Oscar nominated performance, Renner has become an action movie commodity, with upcoming roles in Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and The Avengers, and an offer to star in The Bourne Legacy. Apparently, though, Renner is cooking up a project of his own, a biopic in which he would play Steve McQueen, the man who personified the action star Renner is fast becoming.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Renner has formed a production company, The Combine, which he’ll oversee with Don Handfield. The first picture on their plate is the McQueen film, with James Gray, the writer-director of We Own the Night and The Yards, attached to write a screenplay based on the non-fiction booksPortrait of an American Rebel and The Life and Legend of a Hollywood Icon, both by Marshall Terrill. Also on board is commercial and music video director Ivan Zacharias, who would make his feature directorial debut with the untitled McQueen film.
Steve McQueen was the hard-living,womanizing, action oriented tough-guy actor with a love for fast cars and motorcycles. He was the highest paid actor of the 1960’s, and one of the biggest stars of the 1970’s. McQueen defined the modern action star and set an insurmountable standard with his work in films including The Great Escape, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven, The Towering Inferno, Papillon, and The Thomas Crowne Affair.
Jeremy Renner has an onslaught of starring roles in postproduction or currently filming, and the performance of those films will likely dictate his ability to get his Steve McQueen biopic into production. Brad Bird‘s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol will serve to hand off the spy franchise from star Tom Cruise to Renner, and Marvel’s hoping to give his The Avengers character Hawkeye his own spin-off movie. He’s also Universal’s choice to carry the now Matt Damon-less Bourne franchise, though he has yet to accept the studio’s offer.
White House using Flickr Accounts
The White House posted several images of President Obama and staffers planning and reviewing updates from the military raid that ended in the death of Osama bin Laden.
The White House Flickr account has been used extensively during the Obama administration, showing us candid and behind-the-scenes images from the First Family’s daily lives as well as President Obama’s diplomatic work. In fact, the administration’s overall use of social media has been impressive.
However, few pics from the account will ever get the attention garnered by this historic string of photos. These images show the palpable tension in the Situation Room the night of bin Laden’s death.
In these photos, we see Obama and other high-ranking U.S. government and security officials, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in one of a series of meetings. In these talks, the President and advisors planned and saw executed a successful raid on the bin Laden compound, a high-walled mansion in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad.
23 Million Americans Watch Royal Wedding, Beating U.S. Audience For Charles And Di’s
Almost 23 million viewers in the U.S. watched the coverage of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton from 6AM to 7:15AM ET on Friday across 11 networks. That outpaces the estimated 17 million who tuned in for Prince Charles and Diana’s wedding in 1981, which was carried by the Big 3 broadcast networks in the era before the proliferation of cable. According to Nielsen, the combined viewership for yesterday’s nuptials was 22.77 million on ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo, Univision, BBC America, CNN, E!, FOX News, MSNBC and TLC. In households, the William-Kate wedding drew 18.6 million vs. 14.2 million for Charles-Diana. As for Charles’ wedding to Camila Parker Bowles in 2005, it was watched by 3.65 million viewers.
Netflix earnings Way up despite Growing Competition
Netflix revealed this week that its earnings are up 88% compared to this time last year. The subscription movie service reported a net income of $60 million on its Q1 report.
More than 3 million new subscribers have signed on to Netflix since January, pushing its total number of viewers to 23.6 million — more than those buying Comcast cable alone. (Comcast still has many more subscribers than Netflix does if you count the customers who buy video service alongside voice and Internet.)
Netflix’s earnings have benefited from a price increase on its hybrid service that took effect with its pure streaming plan in November. While the changes were made in Q4 of 2010, they took effect in Q1. Meanwhile, Netflix set a new company record for marketing spend.
Netflix is reaping the benefits of establishing a post-Blockbuster model of video rentals. Several competitors have launched to challenge it in the last 12 months — Hulu Plus and Amazon’s Prime Instant Video. Dish Networks, which purchased Blockbuster in April, will likely launch a subscription streaming effort under that brand.
The competition helps explain why Netfix has a new focus on original content. It has made exclusive partnerships with CBS and Lionsgate, as well as a non-exclusive agreement with Fox in Q1.
“Our competitive strategy relative to other streaming services is simply to grow as fast as we can, so we can afford more content, more marketing, and more R&D than our competitors,” explains Netflix’s Q1 letter to its shareholders.
Obama’s Town Hall Spikes Facebook
On April 20th, President Obama visited Facebook headquarters to hold an online “town hall” meeting focused on the economy and The White House’s proposals for deficit reduction. Questions for the President were submitted in advance via The White House’s Facebook page, through The White House’s website, live from a number of social networks and from Facebook employees in the room.
On the day of the event (April 20th), traffic to WhiteHouse.gov increased 70% when compared to the same day one month prior (March 23rd); moreover, the site’s share of traffic from Facebook increased 712%.
Facebook has consistently been one of the top five traffic drivers to WhiteHouse.gov, but on the day of the town hall meeting, Facebook became the greatest traffic driver for WhiteHouse.gov and represented 28% of all visits going to the website. In addition, 76% of the visits coming from Facebook were new (meaning they had not visited the website in the past 30 days), whereas 67% of the visits coming from Facebook a month ago were new – this indicates that the partnership between Facebook and The White House drove a significant share of new visitors to The White House’s website.
studio systems group 