News
July 18, 2014
Weekly Update from Film Ontario, July 18, 2014
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Happy Friday! All five lead Mayoralty candidates have confirmed their participation for our moderated discussion on Toronto's Screen-based industry, September 3rd, 9:30 - 10:30am, at SIRT on the Pinewood campus. We are closer to a solution to the TFWP challenges; meetings with the Federal folks have been positive. Our thanks go out to the CMPA for taking the national industry lead on the file. If you have a stalled application, I urge you to contact both Marc Seguin marc.seguin@cmpa.ca at the CMPA, and Janice Reid Johnston jreidjohnston@omdc.on.ca at the OMDC for assistance, and to help track the problems. Wishing you a lovely weekend! Sarah Ker-Hornell Weekly Update from Kelly Graham-Scherer, Los Angeles Representative Happy Friday everyone, Though speculation on the upcoming Emmy awards grabbed most of the headlines last week, the lobby to increase California's film and television tax credits continues its battle for the hearts and minds of both politicians and the general public. In light of a recent big announcement regarding incentives awarded to the aerospace industry, the author of the film industry tax credit expansion bill made his case in a prominent Los Angeles Times editorial piece this week. The second quarter statistics from film permitting and lobby group FilmLA were widely reported this week. As detailed in Variety below, a shift in the timing of TV production — with more early summer premieres — is being credited for a 33.7% surge in second-quarter TV activity in the Los Angeles region as compared to last year. Another story grabbing headlines in LA and across the country this week is the attempted acquisition of Time Warner by 21st Century Fox. As reported in the L.A. Times below, although Time Warner - which owns HBO, Warner Bros., TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network and CNN - has rejected Fox's $80 billion offer, analysts believe that Fox will probably sweeten the pot to try to make a deal happen. The possible merger of Fox with Time Warner lent urgency to this week's testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation to discuss the adverse effect of "weak net neutrality regulations" and media consolidation on the creative community. As reported in the Times below, The Shield show runner Shawn Ryan spoke on Wednesday on behalf of the Writer's Guild of America. A recent meeting I had to discuss how Ontario content creators might work with Xbox Studios was rendered moot with yesterday's announcement that Microsoft would lay off 18,000 people. As detailed in Deadline below, both the company's plans to produce original, scripted content and Xbox Studios will be shuttered in the coming months. And finally this week, the Hollywood Reporter had an interesting piece on how the battle among digital players has proved a boon to content owners. As detailed below, streaming services are paying big bucks to ensure they get access to the most popular television programs. |