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  • All Blogs/ Entertainment Industry Insights: Jan. 24 2023

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New Projects - Oscar Nominations - Netflix Q4 Numbers - Regional Theatre Shake-Ups

By Abigail Hardin, January 24, 2023

Eye709
Happy Tuesday, UTD!

Oscar nominations were this morning. Read below about snubs, surprises, and overall nomination counts.

We have three great workshops lined up for February. We're holding two sessions of our ever-popular SEEKING REPRESENTATION 101 workshop. I hope you can join us for one of these sessions where we will help you create a representation campaign with focus. We will show you how to create a list of agents & managers seeking talent like you and how to best structure your cover letters to get noticed.

On February 6th Annie will be on a dynamite panel for The League of Professional Theatre Women talking about How to be the CEO of your Artistry. The panel includes NELLE NUGENT (5-time Tony winner Broadway Producer, co-founder East Coast Chapter of the Producers Guild of America), HANSOL JUNG (Playwright of Wolf Play, Soho Rep & MCC Theater and Writer on Pachinko for Apple+), MFONISO UDOFIA (Playwright of Sojourners, runboyrun, Her Portmanteau), and JONA XIAO (Actress, Producer, and Founder of Career ACTivate). Read more on this empowering event.

All three events are free but require registration. Space is limited, register today!

Create a great week! 🌷

Oscar Nominations

Nominations for the 95th Academy Awards were announced this morning. Here is the complete list of the nominations. A24's mulitverse-spanning EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE scored a leading 11 nominations this morning, followed by Searchlight's THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN and Netflix's ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT with nine apiece. The ceremony is set for Sunday, March 12, and will be hosted by Jimmy Kimmel and will air live on ABC.

Analysis and op-eds will surely pour in over the coming weeks, but for now here is a first look at snubs and surprises from this morning's nominations. One of the more serious snubs would have to be that the academy failed to nominate a single female for Best Director. While WOMEN TALKING was nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, director Sarah Polley did not receive a Best Director nomination. Hey Academy, 🙋‍♀️ you 👏 can 👏 do 👏 better! 👏

Here are few more snubs and surprises:

In other awards news, yesterday the Razzie Award nominations were announced. The Razzie Awards "celebrate" the worst films of the year. This year BLONDE received the most nominations including "Worst Picture" and Tom Hanks scored two nominations for "Worst Actor" and "Worst Supporting Actor" for Disney's PINOCCHIO and ELVIS respectively. 😬 The "winners" will be announced on March 11th, the day prior to the Oscar ceremony.

Movie Theatres & Festivals
Regal Closes 40 Locations

Regal Cinemas' beleaguered parent company Cineworld is leaning on their chapter 11 bankruptcy to break the lease of 40 Regal Cinemas across the nation. High school me is heartbroken that the Regal Cinema in Union Square is on that list. I can't even fathom union square without the Regal. But then again that's what I said about Virgin Records. The only constant is change (especially in NYC), am I right, or am I right?

Other rejected leases in this latest batch include the former Arclight space in Sherman Oaks, the Fenway Stadium theater in Boston, and locations in Miami, Sant Fe, Las Vegas, and Washington, D.C.

Sundance Film Festival

Sundance Film Festival kicked off this past Thursday with in-person programming for the first time since the pandemic. Sundance is "the most important domestic festival and it's the first of the year," said IFC Films president Arianna Bocco, who like many industry execs is stoked to be returning to the vibrant Park City moviegoing environment. The festival "will be an interesting barometer of where we are in the marketplace whether positive or negative."

Eyes are all focused on the Streamers, who became dominant buyers of niche movies pre-pandemic. While typically strong purveyors of indie titles, the question remains, will streamers buy at the same level? With the uncertainty surrounding theatrical releases in general, will indies have a resurgence? How will a looming recession and corporate cost cutting across media and tech sectors affect deal making? Could a possible writers strike cause folks to buy more and offset the aforementioned concerns? Take a deep dive at the themes and trends the industry is looking to learn from this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Industry News
🍑 Georgia Tax Credits

There were several articles in last week's Industry Insight Email on Tax Cuts and Incentives and the news keeps coming. The Georgia film and TV tax credit grew to a record $1.3 billion last year, as the state continues to be the nationwide leader in filming incentives. The state's tax credit is not capped, which means that all eligible productions qualify for a 30% break on their in-state costs. The next largest incentive programs are in New York and California, where they are capped at $420 million per year.

The Georgia Legislature has rejected calls in recent years to cap the program. In 2020, the state Department of Audits and Accounts found that most of the benefit went to out-of-state companies and workers, and suggested imposing a cap. The annual figure represents about 5% of the state's general fund budget and is slightly more than the state spends each year on its prison system.

Major Casting Director News

Warner Bros. Television's head of New York casting Findley Davidson has exited after 15 years with the studio, launching her own independent casting office, Findley Davidson Casting. She exits amid ongoing cost-cutting initiatives at parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. Read more on this casting update.

Netflix Q4 Report

It was a big week for Netflix as the streamer released their Q4 report and their stock surged the highest closing price since last April. In Q4, Netflix added almost 7.7 million global subscribers in the period, reaching 230.75 million, far exceeding analysts' consensus forecast. Beyond the subscriber tally, the results were more mixed, with revenue inching up just 2% and earnings per share missing estimates by a large margin. Also announced in the Q4 report, co-founder Reed Hastings is stepping down from his Co-CEO title and handing the position to longtime exec Greg Peters, who shares it with Ted Sarandos. Hastings is now executive chairman.

During a Q4 earnings interview Netflix's new co-CEO duo, along with Hastings discussed the leadership change and more details on the earnings report. While they didn't break down the performance of Netflix Basic With Ads, which launched in the U.S. on Nov. 3 at $6.99 per month, 30% less than the regular Basic plan without ads ($9.99 per month), the company sees positive trends with the newly launched ad-supported tier. It seems not many existing customers are switching from an ad-free plan to ad-supported. The new ad-supported tier seems to be attracting new customers which is a win for the streamer. Similar to Hulu, which has offered an ad-supported tier for over 10 years, Netflix anticipates half of its users will be on ad-supported in the end.

Later in Q1, Netflix expects to more broadly roll out its paid sharing program through which it's looking to convert unauthorized password-sharing accounts to paying customers. The company didn't reveal other new details but said it expects that will likely result in paid net adds to be greater in Q2 than in the current quarter. Based on Netflix's test runs in Latin America, the company expects some "cancel reaction," according to Peters, which will hurt near-term member growth.

More Articles:

Regional Theatre
Traditional Programming & Shakeups at the office

With regional theatres trying to lure audiences back, there has been a slight uptick in "traditional" programming. "The audience has sort of withdrawn from risk to a large degree," said HowlRound co-founder David Dower, who is currently executive director of Club Fugazi, a commercial theater in San Francisco. "So things that are familiar are doing better. That's always been true, but for some reason it is true now to a greater degree." And while some theatres have trimmed the number of productions in a season, you wouldn't be able to tell by the volume of 23-24 season announcements and EPA/audition posts lately.

The New Year has always been a busy time for regional theatre production planning and this year is no exception. During this transitional and planning time there have also been quite a few changes to executive leadership. Here are just a handful from the last few weeks.

Use the Up-To-Date Actor to search for regional theatres in your area and find out what shows are included in their season. Also check out which plays and musicals are the most produced in the upcoming season!

Theatre Quick Bites