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.

The state of Germany’s film industry, most notably its proposed new film funding laws, has been a worrying issue for their entertainment landscape. A last-minute clarification has made for many happy faces in the industry, but what’s the core deal? Our Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment attorney, Brandon Blake, has the full story for us.

Brandon Blake

The Film Funding Law

As with most European film industries, Germany’s depends heavily on governmental subsidies. The current film funding legislation is set to expire at the end of December 2024. This could have left the entire country’s industry at a standstill without a clear deal. 

Alas, the deal isn’t everything that was hoped for, with considerable election campaigning (most of it fractious) interfering on all fronts. So, the new deal isn’t without controversy, especially among more progressive members of the industry. 

However, there are considerable changes that should make projects easier to approve, including pre-approval for those with a proven track record in the country and more. This should help increase Germany’s competitiveness on a global scale. 

Good News Overall 

However, the German film industry is happiest to have clarity going ahead into the new year. As we noted above, this has been a difficult period to get any sense from governmental institutions, as they focus more on campaigning than getting the job done. 

It also represents one of three key reforms the industry hopes for. The others are a new tax incentive model to make Germany more competitive on that front and a potential law that will push streaming platforms to invest in local productions. However, these will have to wait for the new government, whatever form it takes. 

Perhaps the most exciting development for those in the industry is automatic approval for funding from the German Motion Picture Fund (GMPF) and German Federal Film Fund (DFFF), which mostly work with higher-end productions. This will allow German producers to claim up to 30% of local production costs back. 

Overall, it looks like there’s extra reason for the German film industry to celebrate over this festive season, and plenty more to come, too.

There’s some more good news for indie producers to round out the year. With the backing of RedBird Capital, 3 talented entertainment industry stalwarts have announced the formation of Prologue Entertainment, a new studio focused primarily on indie film and TV. Brandon Blake, our entertainment lawyer on the ground from Blake & Wang P.A., unpacks what we know so far. 

Brandon Blake

Premium Scripted Content

Prologue Entertainment will bring together Lloyd Braun, Noah Oppenheim, and Sarah Bremner at the helm, each well-established industry veterans. Jeff Zucker will oversee RedBird’s investment in the new entity. 

To begin with, the studio will focus mostly on scripted fiction for both the film and TV markets and already has three projects lined up for production. The Root of All Evil is a psychological thriller based on real reporting from a Mexico City exorcism, while Trapped is being billed as a “female survival thriller.” An unnamed project for Netflix directed by Kathryn Bigelow is now also in post-production.

A Familiar Crew

Many in the industry will recognize Braun from his time as ABC Entertainment Television Group’s chairman, where he helped bring popular projects like Desperate Housewives, Lost, and Grey’s Anatomy to life. He most recently served as the Head of Yahoo! Media Group and as Chairman of WME.

Meanwhile, Bremner oversaw the TV and film slate as President of ARRAY Filmworks, including Oscar nominee White Tiger, alongside other key projects. She also spent 5 years working with the Netflix Original Film Group that brought us Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Oppenheim served as President of NBC News, overseeing their business and editorial operations alongside their global bureaus and digital platforms. He’s perhaps best known as the co-creator of Netflix’s Zero Day. His chops as a writer speak for themselves, too, with a win for a screenplay (Jackie) at the Venice Film Festival, and a co-writing position on the team for the immensely successful Maze Runner trilogy.

It’s always exciting to see a new indie studio launch, especially as demand for smaller films is on the rise at the box office. Let’s hope to see many more exciting new projects from this stable.

AMC, despite some noted successes over the last few years, simply can’t seem to catch a break. Possibly as AMC seems to have repeatedly failed to learn its lesson on clear communication with stockholders. After AMC again took a significant beating on the stock market this week, our Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake, takes a look at what lessons AMC needs to learn— and what sparked the sudden downturn this time.

Brandon Blake

Stock Drop After SEC Filing

Overall, AMC shares dropped by 9% in the wake of news revealed from a recent SEC filing. This filing revealed that the company intends to sell off roughly 50M in stock shares, primarily to strengthen its balance sheet and reinvest in its core business. These proceeds are also earmarked to fund its ambitious “GO Plan,” which it announced last month.

It’s likely this focus on upgrading their facilities was sparked by news that Regal, too, is looking at a luxury overhaul for 425 of its theaters to revitalize them for the new face of exhibition. While AMC has taken great strides in addressing the balance sheet issues that have plagued it since the COVID lockdowns, it still needs to address its outstanding debt burden as well. AMC currently has about 375M shares outstanding.

Anger from Investors

AMC has, however, incurred the wrath of many of its stockholders on the back of the announcement. AMC netted some publicity in the early post-COVID era as it became a core focus of the short lived “meme stock” movement. While this was its salvation at a particularly rocky time, it does mean that AMC has drifted away from private asset companies as its major shareholders into an individual investor-controlled situation since 2021. This means that its current shareholder base is not always the most experienced in the ups and downs of the stock market itself.

Current investors reacted poorly to the news, fearing that this stock divestiture would dilute their investment positions. Others feel that the move will dilute the many gains the theatrical industry has seen over a bumper Thanksgiving period. While ups and downs are the nature of the market, AMC’s stock value has dropped 21% over 2024. Clearly, it’s time to take a different approach to communicating its financial needs to its unique stockholder base, or market punishment will continue to follow.