News
October 3, 2014
Weekly Update from Film Ontario, October 3, 2014
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Happy Friday! We are pleased to announce that our 2014 Annual General Meeting is set for Wednesday, November 5th at the Park Hyatt Toronto. This year, our Guest Speaker is Please share with your staff/members. We are looking forward to seeing you all there! Sarah Ker-Hornell __________________________________________________ Weekly Update from Kelly Graham-Scherer, Los Angeles Representative The chatter over tax credits continues in California. A panel entitled "How to Stop a Runaway Industry: What Cities Can Learn from the Flight of Hollywood from L.A" was convened in Los Angeles this week and the general consensus was that incentives are not going away anytime soon. Variety has details from the panel below. Rob Astorino, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in New York has made the repeal of the state's film and television tax credits part of his campaign platform. The New York Post has details below, though it should be noted that his opponent, incumbent Governor Andrew Cuomo supports the incentives program and is considered a shoo-in for re-election. Generous tax credits in the U.K. have continued to lure production work across the pond. As detailed in The Guardian below, Disney has been a particularly prolific beneficiary, receiving nearly £170 million ($306 million Cdn) in incentives since the program was introduced in 2007. If you have small children, there's a good chance you're one of the millions of people who have already seen the new animated film Boxtrolls.The L.A. Times this week ran an interesting feature on Laika, the relatively new stop-motion animation company behind the hit. News of a potential sale of Dreamworks Animation to a Japanese telecommunications giant generated a lot of headlines this week. An analysis in the Los Angeles Times below speculates that a potential sale of the company - valued at $3.4 billion - could help the studio weather an increasingly volatile run at the box office. Also generating a ton of headlines this week was Netflix. From the digital distributor's dust-up with the CRTC in Canada, to the announcement of major deals with Adam Sandler, as well as the team behind the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon sequel, Netflix has left no doubt that it will continue to challenge the traditional theatrical and television distribution models. The always readable John Doyle gives his take on the CRTC's fight with Netflix in this week's Globe and Mail. The Verge took an in-depth look at how Netflix's four-picture deal with Adam Sandler will benefit the actor/ producer. And the L.A. Times explains that the Netflix deal for the Crouching Tiger sequel is opening a new front in the long-simmering conflict between Hollywood studios and theater owners: three of the nation's largest theater chains have said they will refuse to screen the film next summer because it will be available on Netflix on the same day it hits Imax theaters. Finally this week, on a lighter note, U.S. filmmakers now have something new in their toolbox. The L.A. Times reports below that the Federal Aviation Authority has made the first step towards allowing the film and television industry to use drones. |