Hollywood’s focus on big-budget films and 3-D effects that command higher ticket prices will likely drive box-office sales to a record $11 billion this year even as some fans shun the rising cost of a night at the movies.
A surcharge for 3-D movies may push revenue past last year’s $10.6 billion, Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com [...]

Movie Prodoucer Joel Silver has produced some of the biggest action hits of the last 20 years, including the ‘Lethal Weapon’ and ‘Matrix’ movies. Accustomed to big budgets and huge egos, Silver now faces the music along with the rest of Hollywood as movie budgets get cut and producing deals are scarce.
JOEL SILVER stands on the Warner [...]

Everywhere you look in the entertainment world these days, you see more and more people crossing the digital divide, using a staggering array of new devices to read books, watch TV shows, listen to music and, yes, even read the newspaper. Amazon recently announced that it now sells more e-books than [...]

In an era when outside movie capital is tough to come by, David Ellison, the 27-year-old son of Oracle founder and Chief Executive Larry Ellison, has raised $350 million to co-finance movies with his studio partner Paramount Pictures.
The funds — $150 million in equity and a four-year, $200-million revolving credit facility led by JPMorgan Chase – will enable [...]

In April, Jeffrey Katzenberg, the chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, voiced public fury at Warner Brothers for having abruptly converted its “Clash of the Titans” into 3-D and releasing it a week after his company’s 3-D film, “How to Train Your Dragon.”

Mr. Katzenberg may have had more on his mind than [...]

Divas populate the walls of Leah Weil’s office in the Thalberg building on the Sony lot: Patti LuPone, Alicia Keys, Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand. But a decade into her run as the studio’s top lawyer, Weil presides over perhaps the most drama-free operation in town. The senior executive vp and general counsel of Sony [...]

Hollywood talent agent Ed Limato, a powerful industry player for more than three decades, has died. He was 73.
Limato died July 3 of lung disease at his Beverly Hills home. He had been hospitalized repeatedly at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles in recent months for undisclosed medical reasons.
Most recently with WME, Limato has repped [...]

The way people talk about the movie business these days, you might expect Hollywood itself to show up in the death montage at next year’s Oscar ceremony. Heavily hyped films are fizzling. Online filesharing is cutting into box office receipts. The city’s reliance on sequels and remakes has gotten so intense that it is now [...]

In Hollywood, the deal is king. Deals are how scripts get optioned, how stars and directors get signed up, how films make it to production. A good one can mean financial security and a name above the title. A bad one can be as dispiriting, gruelling and financially ruinous as building your dream house on [...]

Almost one month after Guillermo del Toro dropped out of directing “The Hobbit,” “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson is in talks to helm the two films in the franchise. While we wait for the studios involved or Jackson’s manager to confirm, there are lots of questions that remain before [...]