Weekly Screen Buzz

There was a lot of buzz in the screen world this week, which began in earnest with the Golden Globes. There were some incredible "round table" footage of directors and actors, the deal with Warner Bros.Discovery and Tom Cruise, the completion of the Blumhouse and Atomic Monster merger, the press tour for Masters of the Air, Sundance chatter, and more chatter about the Skydance owners looking to make another bid for Paramount. Amazon is about to "Eat the TV Universe" - this means that on 29 January, Prime will make its ad tier the default for its tens of millions of subscribers, a move that could unravel how advertisers deal with TV broadcasters and scare off rivals with its massive scale".

A big week for the industry.

• The Golden Globes were a bit different this year as we all know, but in amongst the beauty and glamour of Margot Robbie, the brilliance of Christopher Nolan and Cillian Murphy and Lily Gladstone's beautiful acceptance speech, I realised that there is some absolutely exceptional film and TV right now and we are SO very lucky to be able to watch such film and TV brilliance. Many have said that the era of 'Peak TV' is over, and again theatrical distribution will experience losses this year (due to the 2023 strikes) but I do not think I have ever seen such RELENTLESS DEDICATION to both the craft and art of filmmaking and the business of filmmaking that I do now. I can't help but think that this is a very exciting time for the industry even in the face of the thousands of lay offs the industry is experiencing.
• Masters of the Air will premiere on AppleTV on 26 January. From the trailers we see something very special again from Amblin and Playtone (of course!!). I have always been an avid fan of Band of Brothers (recently watching the series again), and I can't wait to see this story from WW2. AppleTV has shown some great TV in the past year with Slow Horses, Silo, Ted Lasso and The Morning Wars and this week Criminal Record. Monarch: Legacy of Monsters was great, particularly Godzilla in the final episode. Will we have Season 2?? Taking a much firmer stance in sports and sports docu-series, The Dynasty: New England Patriots which goes inside the 20 year history of the franchise - their unique culture and chemistry that fuelled an incredible 6 Super Bowl wins, will premier on 16 February.
• Quarterly reporting season begins this week and next week with most companies reporting 4th quarter and full year earnings for 2023. Netflix - 24 January, Alphabet (Google/You Tube) - 31 January, Mattel and Disney - 8 February. More to come on reporting season over the next few weeks as I will be posting on each company separately as they report their earnings.

Until next week's Screen Buzz...thanks for reading!!

Susie