News

It’s been a kaleidoscopic and crazy week, stuffed with meetings and showcases, holiday receptions, and random conversations across what I like to call the Golden Triangle, the Westside Los Angeles neighborhoods and suburbs where startups and tech giants, social-media influencers, and new kinds of entertainment companies are haphazardly creating a New Hollywood, and a new relationship between creators and fans.

At the same time, I’m seeing more of Old Hollywood – if not all of it – starting to figure out how to live with the new stars, platforms, and business models. It’s been a messy transformation, but it’s been damned fun to watch.

For instance, I met with my friends at RelishMix, which advises networks and studios about the social-media conversation around their films and TV shows. Too often, RelishMix will find the majority of the cast on a film is “not socially active,” with little or no social-media presence.

Days after five of its films leaked online, Sony has seen a huge spike in followers of its main Facebook page and in viewers of trailers to some of the leaked films, says social-media consultancy RelishMix.

It doubtless is small consolation for Sony executives after the five films – including Oscar hopefuls Fury, Annie, Still Alice and Mr. Turner – ended up on file-sharing sites last week. But all the noise over the leaks also seems to have propelled considerable interest in Sony’s movies on its own official social-media outlets, says Marc Karzen, RelishMix’s CEO.

Among the data points Karzen noted:

Sony’s official Facebook page jumped a whopping 1.6 million likes on Thanksgiving Day. Normally, Karzen said, Sony’s Page adds about 900 likes a day. The top trailer for the Annie remake starring Jamie Foxx and Quvenzhane Wallis nearly doubled its daily views, going from 18,000 a day to 35,000. Views of...

Final Update Monday, 1:08Pm: As expected, Big Hero 6 cruised to the top of the box office weekend. Not so expected: Chris Nolan’s saga Interstellar fell short of $50M. Distrib Paramount insisted that the sci-fi genre and film’s record IMAX run would keep Sunday drops to a minimum and help the weekend become one of only four ever feature two moviesing open north of $50M. But it fell short.

Not an issue for BH6, which landed right within estimates and, given the dearth of family fare and its strong exits, should have a solid run into Thanksgiving. It’s exits are terrific, it’s got an A CinemaScore, and kids are notorious repeat viewers,.

But a standard Sunday fall for Interstellar kept the film from the $50M mark, or even Paramount’s Sunday estimates. Still, for a nearly three-hour film that’s scored solid exits and is...

In all today’s news about The Colbert Report host taking over as host of Late Show sits one question David Letterman never really tried to answer: How will Stephen Colbert use social media to lock in a young, eagerly sought TV audience that isn’t much interested in mainstream entertainment? Related: CBS’ Late-Night Drama Not Over Yet The social-media crews behind late-night competitors Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel have been flooding online audiences with viral YouTube videos and nifty posts on Twitter and Facebook, each trying to grab audience attention that will translate to TV ratings. Now, the team behind The Colbert Report, itself a social-media power, will attempt to transition its audience to broadcast TV and Late Show. Deadline reached out to our pals at RelishMIX, who analyze social-media engagement for TV shows and films, for a quick look at who’s doing what right now on Facebook,...

In the days since Jay Leno’s last night hosting The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon‘s social-media team has ramped up and dramatically increased The Tonight Show social-media engagement — positioning NBC’s decades-old late night for social-media dominance online even before Fallon debuts this evening as host of The Tonight Show. According to analyst RelishMIX, Fallon’s team jumped The Tonight Show engagement by 12.3 times (see graphic) in the seven days following Leno’s final show February 5, compared with 2.5 times for rival Jimmy Kimmel’s team. Engagement means, basically, how many people are watching, sharing and reposting a show’s content, according to RelishMIX CEO Marc Karzen. The company tracks social-media effectiveness and engagement for TV shows, movies and video games, analyzing how much fans of a given show are watching YouTube videos (and for how long), how often they’re posting and reposting material, and otherwise sharing and talking...