Anyone fortunate to have attended CineEurope last week could be forgiven thinking that UNIC’s opening-night Paella was spiced with happy powder. There was a tremendous outpouring of love between colleagues who had not seen each other for years, from studios professing their love for the big screen o…

In only a few days the annual CineEurope convention kicks off in Barcelona, with over four days of showreels, previews, presentations, popcorn, awards, trade show, roundtables, seminars, networking, gossip, parties, paella, Coke & Cava (lots of the latter). We say “annual,” but of co…

Two films, which between them probably earned less in total in cinemas than “Top Gun Maverick” did in a single weekend in an IMAX screen, have nevertheless outperformed Tom Cruise’s career best film when it comes to newspaper headlines in the United Kingdom this past week. “L…

The Marquee will be a little different this week as both our editor, Patrick von Sychowski, and I are just returning from the Cannes Film Festival. Rather than our usual newsletter which features the latest news updates from around the industry, we’re going to change things up by focusing on t…

This week’s Marquee editorial comes to you from both our editor, Patrick von Sychowski, and myself. Looking at the earnings announcements made by some of the leading companies in the exhibition industry over the past two weeks one could easily grow increasingly pessimistic seeing all the red i…

Can one film save cinema? The obvious answer is no. Yet this does not stop excessive expectations from being attached to specific titles on the post-COVID release schedule. The potential and/or actual performance of said title then triggers an outpouring of column-inches predicting that the cinema p…

We’re sending out this week’s newsletter later than our usual Wednesday publication schedule because we were attending CinemaCon in Las Vegas since last Sunday and wanted to bring you all the highlights. Trying to capture all the ceremonies, industry panels, studio presentations and over…

The news that Netflix lost subscribers in the first quarter of this year for the first time in a decade no doubt caused some Schadenfreude amongst cinema operators, scarred as they were by pandemic-induced headlines proclaiming the demise of cinema at the altar of streaming. The news that Netflix lo…

What do “The Exorcist,” “American Graffiti” and “Live and Let Die” have in common? Film history buffs will know that they were the films that American cinema audiences flocked to in 1973. This was the last time we saw an energy shock and price inflation comparable…

As I type these words, executives at Discovery Inc. are putting the finishing touches on their USD $43 billion acquisition of WarnerMedia. The deal was announced last May and came as a shock, since AT&T had just purchased Time Warner three years earlier after a lengthy court battle with the Unit…