London Riots Spark Fears for Entertainment Businesses...

Civil unrest dominates British news programs.
LONDON – Entertainment attractions, cinemas and London's West End theaters will all be holding their collective breath to see if the civil unrest, looting and rioting of the past two nights spread to the heart of the British capital.
The localized rioting in the North London borough of Tottenham Saturday evening in the wake of a vigil outside a police station for the death of local resident Mark Duggan, shot by police, sparked looting in other hotspots across the capital including an attempt to loot shops at Oxford Circus, in the heart of the West End.
The riots and political fallout from the unrest – which included the early return from vacation of the U.K. government's home secretary Theresa May to deal with the growing concerns among the public, politicians and police alike – were enough to knock all other news down the media agenda ladder.
Sky News, the BBC, ITV and other television news bulletins led with the tales of looting and rioting in the British capital, while on the radio it led the agenda for most of Monday, knocking the ongoing phone-hacking fallout at News Corp and the financial debt crisis causing global stock market turmoil off the top.
Buildings in Tottenham had been set alight as well as police cars and buses Saturday night and further violence subsequently erupted in Brixton in South London before violence erupted in Hackney in East London late Monday afternoon and Lewisham town centre.
Many of the reports in the media noted the huge use of social media such as BBM and Twitter by the looters to communicate with one another in coordinating civil unrest.
But it remains business as usual for the cinemas, theaters and other entertainment attractions with no reports of forced closures amid fears that the violence, looting and property damage may spread.
A spokesperson for the Cinema Exhibitors Association, the trade body repping movie theater operators across the capital, told The Hollywood Reporter it was not policy to advise its membership on what to do in such a situation.
The CEA noted it will put any members in touch with the Metropolitan Police Force for advise and it would be up to its membership -- Odeon Cinemas, Cineworld and Vue Entertainment included -- to put into force any contingency plans to deal with the situation.
After the July 7 London bombings in 2005, the cinemas refused to close in a bid to present a British stiff upper lip attitude to the terror attack.
But this time, with riot police, dog patrols and a Metropolitan Police pledge to put more visible cops on the beat in the coming nights, it will remain to be seen if punters continue to visit cinemas, theaters and entertainment attractions.
It being the height of the summer, industry observers think London's summer population of tourists will help keep numbers buoyant.

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U.S. Buyers Back in Business at Cannes

Deals were few and far between for American companies in recent years with the exception of Sony Pictures Classics and IFC Films, which picked up finished titles.
CANNES -- U.S. buyers are aggressively hunting down deals on the Croisette, buoyed by box office hits like The King¹s Speech and Black Swan, movies made outside the Hollywood studio system.
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In recent years, U.S. buyers, battered by a downturn at the specialty box office, were relatively quiet at Cannes. Companies such as Sony Pictures Classics and IFC Films continued to pick up finished titles playing the festival, but otherwise, deals were few and far between.
This year, with the success of Swan and King's Speech fresh in buyers' minds and with a swath of new distribution companies like FilmDistrict, Relativity Media and Open Road Films, the U.S. domestic acquisitions biz is seeing a bounce back. Like Screen Gems, Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment, these new kids on the block are looking for midrange product they can open nationwide.
Only three days into the festival and market, a number of checks have already been written, from smaller specialty titles to larger, more commercial projects. On Thursday evening, a bidding war ensued over Pathe's Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady. The Weinstein Co. and Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Co. won out when offering nearly $7 million, a hefty sum and Pathe's asking price. Bidding had started at $5 million.
Like TWC and Yucaipa, Roadside Attractions and Mickey Liddell had teamed up in their play for Iron Lady, considered an obvious awards play because of Streep. Roadside's presence in the bidding signals the company¹s confidence and heightened profile in the wake of Winter's Bone and Biutiful.
"For high profile titles, there is a very active market this year," Roadside's Howard Cohen said.
In terms of specialty titles like Winter's Bone, other projects getting a close look during Cannes are Walter Salles' On the Road, the film adaptation of Jack Keroac's classic tome and starring Sam Riley as Sal Paradise and Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty. Insiders say footage of the film will be shown to domestic buyers here on Sunday evening. On the Road is produced by Francis Ford Coppola, Film4 and MK2.
And a select group of domestic distributors will get a chance to see footage from the Winnie Mandela biopic Winnie, starring Jennifer Hudson and Terrence Howard, according to one buyer.
U.S. companies are even making prebuys. Earlier this week, Peter Schlessel and Bob Berney's FilmDistrict acquired U.S. rights to Arabian Nights. Chuck Russell will direct the pic, starring Liam Hemsworth. Inferno, which is handling worldwide sales, is producing the movie. Arabian Nights is FilmDistrict's second Cannes buy of the day after romantic comedy Playing the Field, starring Gerard Biel and Jessica Biel. The movie, now in production, also stars Judy Greer, Dennis Quaid, Uma Thurman and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Nu Image/Millnneium Films is producing.
IFC has pre-bought Something in the Air, taking North American rights to the new drama from French director Olivier Assayas, whose last film, Carlos, won a Golden Globe. IFC also has picked up Something from France's MK2. Other script-stage projects that are in play for a domestic deal, in addition to foreign sales, include the Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy starrer The Wettest County in the World. John Hillcoat is directing the movie, which is based on Matt Bondurant's novel and follows three brothers in the bootlegging business during Prohibition. Nick Cave wrote the adapted screenplay. Glen Basner's FilmNation is repping worldwide rights on Wettest County. Several offers have been submitted, according to one insider.
And there could easily be a deal for domestic rights to Inferno's The Host, based on Twlight author Stephenie Meyer's book. Andrew Niccol is directing the film, which Inferno is also shopping to foreign buyers. And there's a second Meryl Streep project in possible domestic play, Great Hope Springs, from Mandate Pictures and also starring Steve Carell. Lionsgate Intl. is handling worldwide rights to the movie, which David Frankel is directing. The film also stars Jeff Bridges.
On the eve of Cannes, CBS Films won a heated bidding war for U.S. distribution rights to the Daniel Radcliffe-starrer The Woman in Black, a gothic horror thriller that James Watkins will direct from a script by Jane Goldman (CBS is eyeing Wettest County, but securing rights to Woman in Black was its foremost goal out of Cannes).
Among the more traditional deals for finished product, Sony Classics acquired North American and Latin American rights to writer-director Joseph Cedar's competition drama Footnote on Friday ahead of its gala premiere. The film follows what happens between a father and his son, highly competitive professors, after one is chosen to receive a great honor. SPC acquired In a Better World and The Secret in Their Eyes at previous Cannes markets and both won the best foreign-language prize at the Oscars.
The Weinstein Co., in another Cannes buy, picked up worldwide rights outside of Asia and French-speaking Europe for Dragon (Wu Xia), the martial arts film noir from director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Bodyguards and Assassins), starring Donnie Yen, which is screening Out of Competition here.

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Industry News: Walt Disney Studios executive details counter offensive against DVD industry woe

Cheap DVD rentals, Internet movie piracy, and a sour economy: These are the causes of the storm ravaging Hollywood's home entertainment business.

Walt Disney Studios Distribution President Bob Chapek, addressing Wall Street analysts attending Disney's investor conference Thursday in Anaheim, cited all three factors as contributing to the industry-wide decline in DVD sales. And on top of that, he added, new technologies such as Blu-ray high-definition discs, aren't growing quickly enough to offset the declines.

Chapek said Disney is doing what it can to entice consumers to buy its movies, by offering new forms of packaging that offer greater perceived value, such as the "Beauty and the Beast Diamond Edition," which included Blu-ray and DVD discs.

Disney is also willing to experiment with "release windows," as it did in issuing Tim Burton's movie "Alice in Wonderland" on DVD three months after its theatrical premiere (instead of the usual four-month wait).

Chapek said Disney would also seek higher margins from the rental business, increasing the wholesale price it charges for the DVDs sold to discount movie rental services Redbox and Netflix. He noted Disney will drop the wholesale price to $10 for each DVD six weeks after its goes on sale retail.

The timing is slightly different from what we initially reported, which indicated Disney would make the movies available to Netflix and Redbox beginning 28 days after their initial DVD release. But Chapek's announcement confirms the main significance of Disney's shift in strategy with Netflix and Redbox: By charging the retailers more at the wholesale level, the movie studio hopes to mitigate the effect low-cost rentals will have on higher-margin DVD sales.

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