With comedy, timing is everything. So it's funny that a bunch of Hollywood humor headliners chose to launch their new Web site, Laugh.com a good year after the Internet bubble had burst
Most of the major U.S. cinema chains are facing bankruptcy. And that's just the way Philip Anschutz likes it. The conservative Denver billionaire is in the market for movie-theatre chains, with plans to turn them into digital distribution centres for the latest releases.
Pop.com, one of the most hyped entertainment dot-coms, may have finally found a way to success. As Wednesday drew to a close, word leaked out that Pop.com was on the market, and that IFilm Corp. was the likely buyer.
The movie industry won its first Internet-related copyright fight Thursday when U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered a permanent injunction against hacker magazine 2600.com for posting a controversial link to information on how to illegally unscramble DVDs for playback on Linux operating systems.
Women may now outnumber men on the Internet, but online entertainment is still a man's world.
After two sizable rounds of funding, three relaunches and one major management overhaul following a major scandal, the Digital Entertainment Network has given up the ghost, sources said.
It's the greatest job in the space-time continuum, and I get to watch," intones a tripped-out Stephen Dorff in a voice-over to his new movie, Quantum Project. The actor's latest film, a 32-minute sci-fi love story that will be screened this week at Cannes, France, represents a milestone on the old-to-new-media continuum. Unlike most films that will be shown at the festival, Quantum Project's producers won't have to land a distribution deal before audiences can watch the movie. The tale of a physicist's passion for a painter is the first direct-to-Internet feature film. It hit computer screens May 5.
Last night, while TV fans were giving a nod to their small-screen faves at the TV Guide Awards in Los Angeles, Web audiences were being treated to another angle: the madness that is backstage. "I wanted people to feel they were allowed to eavesdrop in places they wouldn't normally be," Don Mischer said Sunday night.
Last month, the Endeavor Talent Agency in Beverly Hills unveiled a big idea: Form an editorial board with Broadband Interactive Group to dream up broadband programming for the Internet.
The Digital Entertainment Network has withdrawn its plans to go public, and its chief executive officer and chief operating officer have left the company. Sources had expected the moves, which had been reported earlier in The Industry Standard.
Elaborate booths have always been a part of the annual conference for the National Association of Television Programming Executives. This year was no different, featuring a virtual indoor compound from Buena Vista Television, and several on-site executive suites from other programming companies, all profering lavish spreads of delectables and nightly three-martini cocktail parties. Each unit was decked out with the company's logo, plush carpet, mood lighting and music. All in the hopes of enticing syndicators to pick up shows like The Lost World, The Invisible Man and Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.
If dot-coms seemed to compete with any of Sundance's non-Internet sponsors this year, the festival wouldn't let the dot-coms join in the sponsor games. But the Net companies came out in force, anyway.
The Digital Entertainment Network, or DEN, is back in the news again over management issues. The company is expected to announce next week that CEO Jim Ritts is stepping down after losing a political battle with other management and the company's board, sources said this week.
Kenneth Wong is employee no. 1 of an Internet startup - the guy who's supposed to transform a big idea into a big company. It's not an unfamiliar refrain. But instead of a garage in Silicon Valley, he works out of a basement in the San Fernando Valley. And his employer isn't just any Internet startup - it's Pop.com, the online entertainment venture from DreamWorks SKG, Imagine Entertainment and Vulcan Ventures.
Matt Farber left MTV Networks Online last spring after eight years, just as the company was really getting the Net - an achievement for which Farber deserves much of the credit. In the spring he joined former NBC executive Neil Braun at iCast, only to leave in the fall, following Braun out the door as he departed over disagreements with iCast parent CMGI. Now, Farber's taken a job as president and COO of Tonos.com, the Los Angeles-based music site started by Carole Bayer Sager.
