THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
Twitter will be acquired by an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk for $54.20 per share in cash in a $44 billion transaction; once complete, Twitter will be a privately held corporation.
The notably litigious Musk says the vast investment supports his interest in “free speech.” The Washington Post, owned by the world’s second richest man, reports that the deal will “put Twitter in the hands of the world’s richest man and one of its most popular users, with more than 83 million followers.” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: “Become pretty clear over the past few years that Musk, like Trump, has one true gift perfectly suited for the age: getting attention. The Twitter acquisition makes a lot of sense.” CNN: “Musk has repeatedly stressed in recent days that his goal is to bolster free speech on the platform and work to ‘unlock’ Twitter’s ‘extraordinary potential.'” Economics blogger Joseph Politano: “The clear financial benefit for Elon Musk doesn’t come from Twitter’s returns per se but from his ability to leverage social media to get retail investors to pile into Tesla and his other holdings.” Bloomberg Opinion’s Tim O’Brien: “Musk’s Twitter deal math is sketchy—he’s going to saddle it with billions of dollars of debt, possibly suffocating it. More important: He isn’t up to the task of running a social media company in an era of dangerous and divisive viral propaganda.”
Robert Reich: “Musk’s real goal has nothing to do with the freedom of others. His goal is his own unconstrained freedom–the freedom to wield enormous power without having to be accountable to laws and regulations, to shareholders, or to market competition.” Journalist Judd Legum of Popular Information: “I have no idea if Musk will be able to buy Twitter and, if he does, how Twitter might change. But it underscores the importance of making sure you do not rely exclusively on algorithms controlled by tech companies to get your news. Take control of your information flow now.”
-30-
May 1, 2022
"Netflix, the great disrupter whose algorithms and direct-to-consumer platform have forced powerful media incumbents to rethink their economic models, now seems to need a big strategy change itself. It got me thinking about the simple idea that my film and TV production company Blumhouse is built on: If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!). This approach has yielded movies as varied as Get Out (made for $4.5 million, with worldwide box office receipts of more than $250 million), Whiplash (made for $3.3 million, winner of three Academy Awards), The Invisible Man (made for $7 million, earned more than $140 million) and Paranormal Activity (made for $15,000, grossed more than $190 million).From the beginning, the most important strategy I used to persuade artists to work with me was to make radically transparent deals: We usually paid the artists (“participants” in Hollywood lingo) the absolute minimum allowable by union contracts upfront, with the promise of healthy bonuses based on actual box office results—instead of the opaque 'percentage points' that artists are usually offered. Anyone can see box office results immediately, so creators don’t quarrel with the payouts. In fact, when it comes time for an artist to collect a bonus based on box office receipts, I email a video clip of myself dropping the check off at FedEx to the recipient."
Jason Blum Sees Room For "Scrappier" Netflix
| April 30, 2022
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Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild
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| January 24, 2022
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
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