In just five days, ‘Avengers: The Endgame’ earned more than $1.2 billion at the global box office shattering the previous record for the highest weekend total of $641 million set by ‘Avengers: The Infinity War’ in 2018.The previous record holder was ‘The Fate of the Furious’ that earned $443 million during its opening weekend in 2017.
Additionally, no film has ever averaged more than $59,000 per theater, a record set by ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ in 2015.
Netflix has said it doesn’t intend to ever run traditional ads.But advertising industry experts aren’t so sure that will be the case.
During a panel at IAB’s Digital Content NewFronts on Monday, executives from YouTube, JPMorgan Chase, the UM agency and MediaLink were asked about Netflix staying ad-free.
Shares of Walt Disney have risen by ~15% since the company’s announcement of its new $6.99 per-month Disney+ streaming service starting later this year.The company plans to stream family-friendly content and will be undercutting the price of the standard Netflix charges by nearly 50%.
This strategy, according to many analysts, could hit Netflix with stiff competition as it has thus far enjoyed a near monopoly in the online streaming space.
A random survey of 602 current Netflix subscribers reveals that 14.5% of the current users are willing to switch to Disney+.
According to a Variety report, Netflix has inked a $60 million three-project deal with singer-songwriter Beyonce Knowles-Carter.
Citing unidentified people familiar with the matter, the report suggests that the first of the three projects is “Homecoming,” which features a behind-the-scenes documentary about Beyonce’s 2018 Coachella performance."Homecoming" reportedly costs around $20 million, according to the Variety article citing the anonymous sources.
However, a representative for the artist didn’t respond to Variety’s requests for comment.
Netflix fell about 1% after reporting its first-quarter earnings after the bell Tuesday.The company posted quarterly revenue that beat estimates but included light guidance for the following quarter.
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The company expects to reach 60 million to 90 million subscribers by the end of fiscal 2024, with Hulu and ESPN+ following close behind.
The company plans to buy back streaming rights from Netflix, especially its films and kids series.Even though foregone licensing revenue will result in a $150 million decrease in operating income this year, the company will be soon able to recuperate the losses as more of its content comes off Netflix.
The company also has the advantage of adjusting some of its ledgers to show a credit for the movie studios and media networks.
Disney announced pricing for its new streaming service on Thursday, and it’s surprisingly low: $6.99 per month and $69.99 annually (or $5.83 per month).The service won’t include any advertisements.
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Food and entertainment specialist, Dave &Buster’s, just ended a difficult fiscal year but signs are hopeful for the year to come.
This quarter the company benefited from favorable weather and calendar shifts that moved important holidays like Christmas and New Year from weekend to weekdays.Special mention goes to improved menu and popular menu items that brought market share gains.
The video gaming sector also benefitted from its shift toward offering exclusive branded games, including hit virtual reality titles. ‘Dragon frost’VR joined ‘Jurassic World’, ‘Halo’, and ‘Connect 4 Hoops’ as customer traffic drivers.
Previously, the firm had expressed doubts about how the company’s ‘Stubs A-List’ subscription program would sit with customers.
The ‘Stubs A-List’, costing $24 per month, allows subscribers to see up to three movies per week, with no blackout dates.The company launched Stubs A-List program after its MoviePass’ program failed last year.
‘Avengers: Endgame’s' advance ticket sales helped restore faith in the company’s subscription policies that so far have been struggling since last year.
Analysts at Cowen upgraded Disney stock, as they expect that the entertainment giant’s upcoming video streaming platform and the next ‘Star Wars’ would prove to be strong tailwinds.
Cowen raised its rating on Disney to outperform from market perform, and also increased its 12-month price target to $131 from $102.He estimates a $3 billion calendar year operating profit to come from Disney’s movie production unit Studio, while being particularly optimistic about the Q4 calender year 2019 releases ‘Frozen 2’ and ‘Star Wars Episode IX’.
Cowen is also hopeful that Disney’s new streaming platform “is well positioned to have an extremely strong launch that surpasses consensus subscriber expectations”.
AMC Entertainment's stock climbed +10% Monday, following B. Riley FBR analyst’s upgrade on the company.
Analyst Eric Wold raised his rating to buy from neutral, citing impressive advance ticket sales for the movie 'Avengers: Endgame', which he believes should be a substantial boost to AMC’s business.He also sees strong potential in the movie theatre chain’s Stubs A-List program, which allows moviegoers to watch up to three films per week.
Wold seems to be viewing AMC’s Stubs A-list as a meaningful substitute to Movie Pass’ subscription service, for cinephiles.
After only 25 days in theaters, Disney’s (DIS) ‘Captain Marvel’ crossed the $1 billion mark last Tuesday with $645 million of earnings through international ticket sales.Domestically, the film earned $358 million.
Similarly, other superhero films like DC’s “Aquaman” earned 70% of its $1.14 billion from markets outside the U.S., as did “Avengers: Infinity War,” which garnered $2.04 billion last year, more than 66% of which was from foreign markets.
But credit should also go ‘Infinity War,’ which hinted at its cliff hanger ending that only a female superhero could defeat Thanos.
Tickets for ‘Avengers: Endgame’ also sold quickly, as evidenced by Atom Tickets’ sales of this movie at three times more than ‘Infinity War’ last year.
The Marvel movies have collectively earned more than $18.5 billion, or an average of $880 million per film.
Viacom had also previously said that it offered options to AT&T to reduce customers’ bills. AT&T had hit back claiming that some of Viacom’s channels were losing popularity, and called it “a serial bad actor” in negotiations with pay-TV companies.
If the dispute hadn’t been resolved, DirecTV customers could have lost access to Viacom channels like Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount."We are pleased to announce a renewed Viacom-AT&T contract that includes continued carriage of Viacom services across multiple AT&T platforms and products," the companies said in a statement Monday.
Viacom shares surged as much as +8% on the news.
High-stakes meetings continue on the Fox lots after the $71B Disney/Fox deal, as CEO Lachlan Murdoch assembled the employees of new Fox (FOX +2.8%, FOXA +3.3%) for a town-hall gathering.
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Less than a month before WrestleMania 35 in East Rutherford, New Jersey, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. WWE 3.45% stock ripped higher Thursday after the company got its highest Wall Street price target yet.
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Roku shares have a quick rebound on Thursday, following Needham analyst Laura Martin’s upped her price target on the stock.
While re-iterating her “buy” rating on the media streaming device maker’s stock, Martin raised the price target to $85 from $65.The analyst indicated several factors supporting her decisions, such as Roku’s user growth opportunities from upcoming streaming platforms of Walt Disney and Apple, advertising revenue to non-linear TV, and possibilities that the company might be acquired.
Shares of Roku gained more than +3% on Thursday - partly offsetting their -14% decline the previous day following downgrades by analysts at Macquarie Research and Loop Capital on overvaluation concerns.
The deal involves Disney’s acquisition of Fox’s entertainment assets in exchange for Disney divesting Fox's 22 regional sports networks.
In light of the agreement, the companies confirmed that they are expecting Fox to distribute all issued and outstanding common shares of Fox Corp. to the 21CF shareholders at about 8 a.m.ET on March 20, 2019.
Holders of the 21CF common stock will then be given a deadline of 5 p.m. on March 14 to elect the form of consideration they wish to receive in the acquisition.
According to the terms of the deal, Disney is likely to pick up the studio, a controlling stake in Hulu, a suite of entertainment channels like FX and Nat Geo and some other assets.
Roku stock was downgraded to “sell” from “hold” by Loop Capital analysts, causing the shares to lose more than -4% in pre-market trading Wednesday.
Loop Capital analysts argued that shares of the digital media player/streaming service company were overvalued, and therefore they could no longer hold the “hold” rating.
Last month, Roku reported its latest quarterly earnings of 5 cents a share beating analysts’ expectations.However, analysts at Wedbush at the time downgraded the stock to “neutral” from “outperform”, citing possibilities of higher spending by Roku and therefore lower operating margins than the analysts’ had previously estimated.
Buckingham analyst Matthew Harrigan cited heated competition in the video streaming space as a crucial factor behind the rating downgrade.
Traditional, long-standing media/entertainment giants are looking to expand their digital presence, which could potentially intensify competition to current streaming leader Netflix. Walt Disney will roll out its streaming platform (called Disney+), while AT&T (via WarnerMedia) is set to launch its own by the second half of the year.Comcast is planning to enter the streaming market in 2020 through NBC Universal.
What’s more, Amazon Prime has apparently been upping the ante against rival Netflix.
Streaming giant Netflix has acquired rights to the 1967 multigenerational masterpiece novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by the Colombian Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.Rodrigo and his brother Gonzalo Garcia Barcha will act as executive producers on the project, which is set to be filmed predominantly in Colombia.
A Spanish TV series is not unprecedented in Netflix’s viewership history.