In a cash deal valued at about $44 million, Tewksbury, Mass.-headquartered Avid Technology has acquired Munich, Germany-based NXN Software, a provider of asset and production management systems for the entertainment and computer graphics industries. The acquisition will afford Avid’s film and video post, broadcast and 3-D animation customers the opportunity to access the workflow capabilities of the NXN Alienbrain product line (SHOOT, 10/3/03, p. 15), which has been implemented at such companies as Pixar Animation Studios, Richmond, Calif., and Sony Pictures Imageworks, Culver City, Calif….Michael Antonucci has joined McCann-Erickson Detroit, Troy, Mich., as senior VP/executive director of broadcast production….Director Barbara McDonough has come aboard bicoastal HKM….Producer Oscar Thomas has joined Driver, the New York-based independent agency/production company founded by producers Scott Weitz and J.D. Williams. Thomas had been with Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Miami, as a producer and business manager….Mono-monikered editor Namakula, formerly of Final Cut, New York, has joined Slingshot Edit and Post, New York….Editor Oren Sarch, formerly of The Blue Rock Editing Company, New York, has become a partner in New York-based Convergence Edit….Owner/editor Scott Gaillard has launched Outside Editorial, New York. The shop opens with editors Gaillard, Bill Rohn, Scott Gibney, Jeff Ferruzzo, Steve Evans, Shannon O’Brien, Fran Gullo and Wally Carey, the design team of Jaime Lamond and Riccardo Sinti, and executive producer Amanda Slamin. The same coterie of talent is also on the roster of the Gaillard-owned Berwyn Editorial, which provides services exclusively to New York ad agency Euro RSCG MVBMS Partners. Outside Editorial is the conduit through which this talent is available to the ad community at large….Hip-hop production team Medicine Men has signed with New York music shop Smythe & Co. for exclusive commercial representation.…Composer/producer Drazen Bosnjak of Q Department, Brooklyn, N.Y., has been named senior creative director of bicoastal Face The Music….Radium, San Francisco and Santa Monica, has added head of production Dennis Hoffman, CG supervisor Kirk Cadrette, Inferno artist Jon Wank, digital effects artist Chris Biggs and CG artist/matte painter Darin Hilton.…Suzanne Potashnick has joined New York design/production studio Freestyle Collective as executive producer….
“Mickey 17” Tops Weekend Box Office, But Profitability Is A Long Way Off
"Parasite" filmmaker Bong Joon Ho's original science fiction film "Mickey 17" opened in first place on the North American box office charts. According to studio estimates Sunday, the Robert Pattinson-led film earned $19.1 million in its first weekend in theaters, which was enough to dethrone "Captain America: Brave New World" after a three-week reign.
Overseas, "Mickey 17" has already made $34.2 million, bringing its worldwide total to $53.3 million. But profitability for the film is a long way off: It cost a reported $118 million to produce, which does not account for millions spent on marketing and promotion.
A week following the Oscars, where "Anora" filmmaker Sean Baker made an impassioned speech about the importance of the theatrical experience – for filmmakers to keep making movies for the big screens, for distributors to focus on theatrical releases and for audiences to keep going – "Mickey 17" is perhaps the perfect representation of this moment in the business, or at least an interesting case study. It's an original film from an Oscar-winning director led by a big star that was afforded a blockbuster budget and given a robust theatrical release by Warner Bros., one of the few major studios remaining. But despite all of that, and reviews that were mostly positive (79% on RottenTomatoes), audiences did not treat it as an event movie, and it may ultimately struggle to break even.
Originally set for release in March 2024, Bong Joon Ho's follow-up to the Oscar-winning "Parasite" faced several delays, which he has attributed to extenuating circumstances around the Hollywood strikes. Based on the novel "Mickey7" by Edward Ashton, Pattinson plays an expendable employee who dies on missions and is re-printed time and time again. Steven... Read More