News
October 31, 2014
Weekly Update from Film Ontario, October 31, 2014
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Happy Friday - and Happy Halloween!! With everyone so very busy, am happy to see that so many of you will be attending our AGM next Wednesday! There is still some room, so do rsvp if you haven't already to sarah@filmontario.ca. Looking forwards to a fun and informative night. See you there! Happy trick or treating, Sarah Ker-Hornell ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Weekly Update from Kelly Graham-Scherer, Los Angeles Representative Happy Halloween everyone, You're receiving this report early because I'll be out of the office on the 31st celebrating what sometimes seems like the biggest holiday of the year in Los Angeles. I look forward to connecting with many of you over the next few weeks during AFM. The Los Angeles Times, a regular chronicler and champion of good news stories related to local production, published a feature this week about Marvel's Agent Carter series currently shooting in L.A. FilmLA President Paul Audley is quoted in the story below saying: "The idea that some of these large budget dramatic series are returning to L.A. is exciting to us because TV dramas are one of the most economically valuable forms of production". An appeal to get filming hours extended in downtown Los Angeles was roundly rejected this week. As detailed in Deadline below, last April L.A. City Council asked city officials to report on the possibility of expanding filming hours but the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council has reported back that it “vehemently opposes” the expansion of film hours". As production business in Pittsburgh continues to expand, so follows productions infrastructure. As detailed in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette below, construction on a new studio in the city is expected to help "provide significant competition to Hollywood, Toronto and other hot production areas". There were a number of reports this week on the visit to Los Angeles of China's richest man, Jack Ma, the founder of on-line retail giant Alibaba. As detailed below, Ma spent this week visiting major studios and one likely agenda item is Internet streaming of films and other content. Like Amazon in the U.S., Alibaba is the dominant player in online retailing in China — and could use that clout to give Hollywood a new pipeline into millions of Chinese households. Finally this week, DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. reported a stronger-than-expected profit in the third quarter, fueled by the box-office success of How to Train Your Dragon 2. As reported in the L.A. Times below, Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg has been actively shopping the studio and was in talks last month to sell the company for $3.4 billion to Japanese telecommunications giant SoftBank Corp, but people close to the discussions say those talks have quieted. |