We’ve been watching the looming split between Lionsgate Studios and Starz for a long while now, primarily as the necessary SEC proceedings slowly worked their way through the courts. They have tentatively suggested that an official shareholder meeting be held by the end of April. Now, it seems that the news is official. To share more, we have entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake of Blake & Wang P.A. 

Brandon Blake

Special Shareholder Meeting

Lionsgate Studios and Starz will, indeed, honor that tentative promise after all. It was announced last week that the final shareholder vote will go ahead on April 23 this year, which is the last formal step required before the separation of the two entities. All shareholders on record as of March 12 this year will have a ballot open to them at the meeting. 

The State of the Separation

This has been a long time coming for the two entities— so long, in fact, that one of the first setbacks was the pandemic itself. However, despite the many roadblocks that managed to interfere along the way, the split itself seems to have been one of the most amicable and simple of the M&A activities we’ve seen of late. This is likely due to a shared group vision of each entity’s future prospects. 

This separation builds on a trend we have seen throughout the industry in recent years. Comcast, for example, is currently in the process of spinning off its remaining NBCUniversal cable networks into a company tentatively named SpinCo (for now) as a standalone publicly traded entity. That deal is currently set to close by the end of the year.

When the Starz/Lionsgate split finally closes, Lionsgate Studios will be 88% owned by Lionsgate itself. For now, however, it seems the deal is full steam ahead for an end-April closing. 

With the prospect of a strong recovery for the post-pandemic box office finally becoming a reality, will the promised new influx of Apple and Amazon MGM new films help ensure the strong slates needed for real growth? Our local entertainment lawyer, Blake & Wang P.A.’s Brandon Blake, takes a look.

Brandon Blake

New Entrants to Theatrical Spaces

Currently, the 2025 wide-release slate by pure release numbers is still below the volume we saw in 2019. However, it has significantly improved from the last few post-pandemic years, something we have highlighted is critical to maintaining theater-going momentum and interest.

Historically, Amazon MGM has only pushed films into theatres on a limited scale, mostly to cater to awards season requirements rather than as major releases in themselves. However, they recently expressed that they are anticipating growing to around 16 wide releases annually by 2027 and have already amplified their existing theatrical output. Interestingly, they’re also moving to in-house distribution rather than using third parties.

Likewise, we have seen Apple promise to beef up its number of theatrical releases as part of a wider push to build its brand. Again, historically, they have been shy about courting cinema screen time, so this is a big departure.

Indie Studios Help Significantly

These releases from mainstream studios are important to keeping theatre-going numbers high. Let’s not overlook, however, that independent studios like A24 and Neon also helped boost the number of cinema goers tremendously last year. These indie releases, alongside some successful alternate media releases like concerts, have likewise played a key role in keeping audiences interested and invested in cinema-going as part of their daily entertainment rather than just occasional blockbuster premiers.

Encouragingly, we have seen similar life cycles for theatrical releases to pre-pandemic trajectories despite the shortening of theatrical windows and the addition of PVOD releases to the mix. All in all, the theatrical release model is showing fantastic signs of recovery, and with more theatrical output from a broader range of studios, we’re well set for that long-awaited return to prominence. 

Disney may be well-positioned to knock Netflix off of its streaming pedestal— at least if their gains with their streaming bundles continue through the year. With immense customer traction, they’ve made significant gains in closing the gap with Netflix, as well as a substantial reduction in customer churn. To tell us more, we have entertainment attorney from Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake.

Brandon Blake

Was Bundling the Secret All Along?

Of course, we’ve seen some steep subscription price increases from Disney throughout the 2024 and 2024 periods, so a rise in revenue alone was almost guaranteed. More importantly, however, their most recent findings suggest that their focus on bundling their various entertainment services with competitor streamers has made great strides in reducing customer churn. It’s suggested that 80%, or four-fifths, of their 1.6M subscriber gains in the July-December period are still with the Disney-Max bundle 3 months later. Additionally, their main bundle saw 10% more customer acquisitions than the Disney+/Hulu offering, and 20% more than Max alone, which also has bundles on offer.

Subscriber churn has been a growing problem for streaming services across the board, as subscribers dip in and out according to their viewing preferences. As a comparison, Netflix’s figures lie in the 55% range, despite offering more programming, as does the premium Disney+/Hulu/ESPN bundle. 

A Change Ahead for the Streaming Industry?

Naturally, it would be foolish to make sweeping pronouncements on a single quarter, no matter how successful. However, it does show that cross-company bundling has (or, at least, is perceived to have) more value for customers than within-service bundles like Max or Disney’s flagship offerings. Especially when it comes to addressing that thorny issue of churn. 

In a landscape that has also seen the average price of streaming offerings rise sharply, there’s obvious customer appeal in offering avenues into two different services through the same subscription cost. Will we see other services jump on this cross-platform model? Can Disney and Max sustain these gains? And will we finally see serious competition for Netflix’s premiere streaming position? It will be interesting to see how the rest of the year unfolds. 

Ne Zha 2 is now, officially, the highest-grossing animated film of all time— and almost no one saw it coming. What started as a fun title for the Chinese Spring and Lunar New Year Festival has turned into a market phenomenon. Here’s entertainment lawyer from Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake, with the happy news.

Brandon Blake

Breaking Inside Out 2 Record

As of Wednesday last week, Ne Zha 2 has now officially passed Inside Out 2’s $1.699B record to take the title of top-grossing animated film of all time. Perhaps more remarkable, however, is that $1.7B of that is from its home market alone, with the film only just expanding to further international markets last week. Its total to date is at $1.72B and is expected to keep rising. This also gives it the No. 8 spot on the overall movie earnings of all-time list. 

Where to from Here?

Currently, it is predicted that the film will close in China at $2.08B. If it achieves this, it will finish around the No. 5 spot on the all-time chart. More notably, however, this will build on a record it has already set when it crossed the $1B mark in a single market. Seeing a $2B single market release would be amazing, indeed. It has already had its Chinese box office run extended further and will remain in theaters there until March 30. It has yet to be released in Hong Kong. 

It’s been a truly remarkable run for a film no one, including Chinese critics, had on their radar going into the Chinese New Year. Now the first non-Hollywood movie to make it to the billion-dollar club, alongside its slew of other records, its international expansion is definitely going to be something to watch. 

Last week, Domain Capital Group announced it would be co-financing a rather ambitious slate of new films in partnership with Paramount. To share more insight into the coming deal we have entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake, of Blake & Wang P.A. 

Brandon Blake

30 New Pictures

Although Domain has not released details on how much of each upcoming release it will be co-financing, we do know that there will be 30 films covered under the deal, across a variety of budgets. Under certain circumstances (not yet revealed), the deal may be automatically extended to 40 pictures. 

Domain has already had some notable successes working in tandem with Paramount in the past, including on Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Gladiator II. The upcoming Paramount releases The Smurfs Movie, The Naked Gun, Novocaine, and The Running Man will also be part of the deal.

Building Domain’s Film Library

Judging from comments from Pete Chiappetta, Domain’s Managing Director of Media, Entertainment & Technology, the end goal of the new deal is to build up Domain’s own film library to put to work for its investors. This may hint at their, or Paramount’s, expansion into the third-party licensing space down the line, a strategy that has worked rather well for several other streamers, Netflix included. 

It certainly seems as thorough as they are hoping to build this initial deal into a long-term relationship across the board. Domain has partnered in a co-financing deal with Warner Bros before, and can, in fact, claim a share of their highest-grossing movie, Barbie. They also helped bring Wonka, The Color Purple, and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom to our screens. 

For these Warner Bros. Discovery deals, Domain had a 10% stake in each title, so we can assume the Paramount deal is working within similar parameters. With such lofty targets set, it will be interesting to see what comes of the new deal. 

As we’d expect from one of the hottest sports moments of the year, the Super Bowl weekend traditionally sees a very sluggish domestic box office. With studios and distributors keen to see the momentum gained in 2024 carry forward into the 2025 box office landscape, what were the results from this key weekend on the calendar? Generally, quite positive, as entertainment lawyer Brandon Blake, of Blake & Wang P.A., is here to share.

Brandon Blake 

Best Post-COVID Result

Was it a record-beater? No, as we would expect. However, this weekend’s box office will be one of the strongest overall results for this weekend since the pandemic disruptions. Dog Man turned in a solid performance, landing at $13.7M in takings over what was actually its second release weekend. We haven’t seen that since Death on the Nile in 2022, which only claimed $12.8M over the same weekend. 

Ironically, 2022 is the weekend to beat overall, too, with $53.8M across all titles. While the results are still being calculated, this weekend looks to have turned in a healthy $54.4M. 

Indies Perform Well

This weekend also saw two small-budget movies launch, Heart Eyes from Spyglass and Sony, and Love Hurts from Universal and 87North. While both turned in sub-$10M performances, as one can expect from smaller titles, those still represent a milestone recovery point for this critical slice of the box office pie, again building on 2024’s momentum. 

Heart Eyes did particularly well, bringing in $8.5M, with Love Hurts netting a lukewarm $5.8M. Once again, this highlights how important diverse slates including lower-budget titles are for the overall health of the box office, even if they don’t turn in the splashy figures blockbusters can.

While Super Bowl weekend will never be anything to write home about at the box office, the fact that 2025 managed to deliver a very credible performance despite the lure of this iconic part of the sports calendar points to a far healthier and happier box office than we’ve seen in previous years. Let’s hope that momentum continues to build in the rest of the year. 

According to Nielsen’s “Monthly Media Distributor” rankings, Disney has managed to keep YouTube in second place for viewing market share— but it was a close race indeed. To tell us more, we have Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment attorney, Brandon Blake. 

Brandon Blake

December Champions

The ratings cover the entirety of the Disney “empire,” so they also feature ABC and cable channels alongside their streaming platforms. Together, these accounted for about 11.2% of overall TV viewing domestically. YouTube was hot on their heels at 11.1%, however.

Disney also took home the accolades for the most-viewed TV series in 2024. Ironically, their child-focused Bluey IP, with 55.62B (yes, billion) minutes watched throughout the year. In fact, Disney showed all 5 of the Top 5 Series list for 2024 on one Disney platform or another, though not all titles were actual Disney IPs. 

Close Competition

YouTube, meanwhile, seems to be benefiting greatly from parent company Google’s switch to pushing the app as a “viewing destination” for real TV rather than just another video platform. Intriguingly, Paramount Global came in third place, though given its sprawling suite of channels, including CBS and Paramount+, that may not be as surprising as it first seems. It also offers the ever-popular NFL games. 

While it missed the Top 3, Netflix made significant gains, with Virgin River and Squid Game’s second season premiere as well as some select NFL games to offer viewers. They currently sit at around 8% of market share. Warner Bros. Discovery took home 6%, while Amazon Prime also saw a small increase, landing at 4%.

The Roku Channel had its own positive gains as well, increasing by 0.3% to cap out at 2% of the viewing market share. This builds on Roku’s recent bragging that the service now reaches 90M households through its streaming services. All in all, it’s an interesting spread of TV viewership. Now, the real question is whether YouTube can beat out the House of Mouse for that top spot this year. 

The South Korean hit TV show has managed to sustain audience interest through another season. No doubt, much to Netflix’s delight. To share the latest news on this breakout TV series, we have Brandon Blake, entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A.

Brandon Blake

Dominating Streaming Ratings

The many successes of Squid Game’s first season surprised the world, as it got immense audience traction despite being an English dub production. It was inevitable that the season 2 release would attract all eyes. And it certainly has delivered.

The season 2 debut dominated streaming following its release, to the surprise of very few. However, according to Nielsen’s latest streaming report, it even netted itself a record— the highest single week of viewership. 

Festive Season Release

Season 2 debuted in the Nielsen week of December 23 -December 29, 2024. Likely, hoping to capitalize on the many people home for the holidays and looking for an entertainment escape from family bickering. It launched on December 26, making it a four-day week for them. All the same, the show racked up 4.9B viewer minutes despite the curtailed week. 

Now, Nielsen only charts appearances, not the actual season, so it’s possible some of the figures could belong to season 1 recaps as well. However, the original Squid Game season made no appearance on the charts for the preceding week. So, we can probably assume most of the glory belongs to season 2 viewership.

This also places it ahead of the season 1 debut week, which took 3B viewed minutes. It earned itself a spot on the non-English series chart within just 3 days.

It’s a popular show and a popular season, and we did see 7 other titles cross the billion-minute threshold in the same period. However, it’s still a remarkable accomplishment for the series and Netflix alike. 

At a difficult time for Hollywood’s home state, there is at least some positive news to enjoy. FilmLA finally saw an uptick in shoot days for the Greater Los Angeles area at the end of 2024. Our local entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake of Blake & Wang P.A., shares the full story. 

Brandon Blake

Ending 2024 on a High Note

While 2024 overall still saw a 5.6% decline in shoot days, that trend showed a significant reversal as we headed into the last quarter of 2024. Shoot days ticked up by 6.2%, finally ending a consecutive chain of 11 quarters where declines were noted.

Even more encouragingly, this increase was seen across all the production types that FilmLA tracks, other than Reality TV. It’s not the most wonderful news— this was still LA’s second-least productive year, second only to 2020— but it is an overall net positive, and that’s still worth a little celebration.

Bright Spots

Nor was it the only bright spot in FilmLA’s latest report. The Feature Films production category saw a massive boost (82.4%) in that final quarter. Most analysts are laying this gain at the door of indie film producers. In fact, this same category saw an 18.8% improvement across the full year. Likewise, scripted TV dramas saw a strong rise, doubling its annual output from 2023 figures. 

While 2025 will be another of those “unusual years” that seem to be the norm in the 2020s, with the impact of recent fire events inevitably taking their own toll on the area, there is some good news ahead for the state, at least. Governor Newsom’s planned expansion of the California Film and Television Tax Credit Program from its current $330M to $750M is still set to go ahead, which will hopefully incentivize productions to return to LA for their shooting needs as well. Right now, California needs all the positive news it can generate, and at least things are looking up for the industry.

As we’ve seen over and over again in the last year, a great box office performance can be an ideal primer for streaming success. It seems Universal is demonstrating this yet again as Wicked shifts to PVOD viewing. Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer Los Angeles, Brandon Blake, takes a closer look.

Brandon Blake

Fantastic First Week

In its first week on PVOD, Wicked has added a further $70M to its takings, bringing in $26M of that on its very first release day. This has propelled it to the highest Day 1 and first week on record for a premium-released theatrical title from Universal. In fact, it has almost doubled its previous record for the Super Mario Bros Movie, which launched at $44M.

The title will remain in an exclusive PVOD streaming window for another 2.5 months until shifting to NBCUniversal’s Peacock service for general streaming. This comes after its 40-day exclusive theatrical window.

A Slight Strategy Change

Interestingly, Wicked saw a small shift in Universal’s typical strategy, which has been to shift movies to PVOD after their fifth weekend in-theater. Instead, they chose to leave Wicked in theaters an extra week to capitalize on New Year’s Eve moviegoers and net some extra publicity along the way, including a Rose Parade float for the movie. 

Although, as we would expect, its PVOD release has impacted the film’s box office takings, it is currently sitting at $453M domestic and $686M globally and added just short of $10M over the past weekend.

Notably, the Universal Group has been one of the few studios to formalize its offerings into set “PVOD windows” in this way, with that exclusive streaming release window now being an integral part of their release strategy. It is estimated to have generated around $1.5B in extra revenue from them. Will we see other studios and distributors look to a similar strategy as we go forward into the streaming era? It will certainly be interesting to watch.