Michael Cieply: For Hollywood, Q1 Was A Bust; Will CinemaCon Bring Some Q2 Hope?
deadline.comAll due respect to Godzilla, but the first quarter of this year was a bust for Hollywood. There’s no getting around it. The news read like an April Fool’s joke without a punchline.
Disney gave up its fight with Florida, better to face its battle with investor Nelson Peltz (which reminds the ancient among us of the last century’s fight with investor Saul Steinberg, whose failed takeover bid inadvertently created the Walt Disney Company as we know it).
Paramount Global’s debt is down to junk, and Paramount+ is weirdly removing some of its hotter kids’ titles from the streaming mix.
AMC is scratching for cash and peddling stock. The Alamo Drafthouse chain is for sale. At the box office, Q1’s big hit was Part Two of a re-imagining of a science fiction novel that ran hot when I was in the eighth grade—in other words, a long time ago.
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