BOM bought by IMDB

Interesting news today:

Amazon-owned film credits database has acquired Box Office Mojo, the popular website that tracks film grosses.

source

Interesting...

Now the question becomes... did things just get better, or worse?

Man I hope not worse. LOL That would be a travesty.

Well, after a spell of delays, BOM has seemingly gotten its updates more streamlined and done quicker, so maybe IMDb can take a cue from that.

Hopefully Scott Holleran gets fired as a result of the merger. That guy seemed to only talk about Ayn Rand instead of you know, talk about movies.

I hope shit gets better.

I love going onto IMDB boards and laughing my ass off at the trolls and flame wars, but I want a frigging better movie filter system so that there is accurate information.

I'm also hoping that all statistics are free now. I don't want to pay seventy dollars to get the whole site.

Just received this e-mail from Box Office Mojo:

We are excited to announce that Box Office Mojo has
been acquired by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of
Amazon.com, Inc. This is a major landmark in the nine
year history of our company.

Box Office Mojo will continue to operate as a
standalone business and produce analysis and the most
comprehensive box office tracking freely available
online. Our headquarters will also remain in the Los
Angeles area.

We expect this change to allow us to expand our
offering to readers like you by leveraging IMDb's
comprehensive database of movies and those who make
them. IMDb is committed to further developing the Box
Office Mojo brand and building upon the success of the
past nine years.

Our readers have been a vital component in our
success, and we are grateful for your continuing
support. Please feel free to email us with your
questions or feedback at mail@boxofficemojo.com.

We realize this is important news for our community,
and we are confident that this acquisition will
benefit Box Office Mojo readers and provide us with
many opportunities for future growth.

So, now a sales based company is managing two of the bigger, if not biggest, movie sites. I see us indie lovers will once again find no love in any direction...

It was bound to happen. You're going to see a LOT more consolidation of this kind on the Web over the next 18 months... We're at the beginning of another dot-bomblet. I will not be surprised, for instance, to see Wikipedia acquired by Google (or Microsoft) at some point in the not-too-distant future. For that matter, I think MSNBC is probably on its last legs, and the next few years could witness a real contraction in the number of full-time broadcast networks (NBC being very much an endangered species, along with CW). CNN and CBS will likely combine their news operations shortly. And I fully expect Bloomberg to become the Accu-Weather of business reporting.

Certain movie studios are also potentially in big, big trouble. I foresee DreamWorks (no longer, 'SKG') to be fully absorbed by Universal before the end of 2010. Paramount, like Columbia, could well end up being a subsidiary of Sony (especially if that company acquires Viacom -- and I fully expect whatever corporation to hold the Sony name, going into the future, to rival or perhaps even surpass WB for sheer size, scale and market share).

And don't even get me started on the newspaper industry. A SIGNIFICANT number of dailies will be sold off or ceasing operations over the next half-decade... The Tribune Company's in real trouble, the future for Advance Publications looks particularly dicey, The New York Daily News is about to fold or be auctioned off, and any number of small-market and suburban publications are no more than one year away from pulling down their mastheads. The New York Times will survive, but likely as a 'niche' publication along the lines of Investor's Business Daily. The major players going forward are likely to be Belo Corp., Gannett and, of course, NewsCorp.

It's just part of the normal Darwinian economic cycle of innovation, introduction, competition, adversity, retrenchment, bankruptcy, consolidation, innovation, and BOM's been needing more polish and professionalism, lo, these many, many years. It is, to quote Martha Stewart (and, really, no one ever should, absent a loaded gun pointed at their temple), "a good thing".


One nation, under Fox.

Edited to add: Chin up, mfrendo, it's not the end of the world (as we know it, and I feel fine). There has, arguably, never been a better time for the independent film... With the increasing affordability of professional-quality digital camera rigs, off-the-shelf production editing software and the growing number of digital-effects-savvy artists out there, it's more likely we'll see more, better and bigger-performing "indie" titles, than that we'll see commensurate increases in the profitability of large-budget Hollywood studio productions. In fact, one could argue that, past 2010, the current era of the effects-driven, A-list-cast, big-investment would-be 'blockbuster' is potentially at an end. Which isn't to say that there won't be any more $100M+ films being made, but that they will be far, far fewer in number and will take on much less risk-acceptant material, a bad result perhaps for the general filmgoing public but potentially a very exploitable vacuum for the niche or art-house filmmaker who doesn't require more than $15-$20M to bring his / her vision to fruition. Remember, it was the near-artistic and -intellectual bankruptcy of the major players in the early '90s that brought about the Age of Miramax, which in turn fostered the explosion of cutting-edge cinema nurtured by such concerns as Samuel Goldwyn, Newmarket, ThinkFilm, Lions Gate and Dimension, as well as new-generation festivals like Sundance and SXSW, that continues to this day. Sure, we'll see some wholly lamentable retrenchment and contraction in the market, as we did earlier this year with New Line, but on the whole both the number and quality, not to mention the potential marketability, of either avant-garde or truly independent films is very much on the rise. (Just look at the last twelve months: ten, five years ago, could films like Be Kind Rewind, Bella, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, In Bruges, Fireproof, Juno, Pineapple Express, Role Models, Run Fat Boy Run, Slumdog Millionnaire, Under the Same Moon, W., or Zack & Miri (Make a Porno) POSSIBLY have received mainstream media attention and national releases? ...Not to mention Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, Tropic Thunder, or anything with Tyler Perry's name on it? True, not all of the above listed films came out of the weeds, and a few (Sweeney Todd, certainly) would probably have been made in any of the last three decades owing to pedigree, but, still...) This is a PHENOMENAL time for film.

Plus, I predict that we're about to see a genuine revolution, led by capable and imaginative young auteurs armed with little more than handhelds and Microsoft Office products, to rival the late-'60s-to-mid-'70s rennaissance that gave the world such multimedia luminaries and guerilla artisans as Warren Beatty, Francis Ford Coppola, Milos Forman, Dennis Hopper, Stanley Kubrick, Barry Levinson, George Lucas, Terrence Malick, John Milius, Mike Nichols, Sydney Pollack, George Romero, John Schlesinger, Martin Scorcese, Ridley Scott, Steven Spielberg... even [sigh] Woody Allen. (Chien better be on a smoke break.) The Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Group has been to the '90s and '00s, what the USC School of Cinematic Arts was to the '70s and '80s and Walt Disney Feature Animation was to the '50s and '60s, an incubator and nursery of talent ultimately infesting, infecting and transforming the entire industry and advancing the art form as a whole. Where might the genius of the next generation's cradle, its schoolhouse, its fertile soil lie? WETA? Rockstar Games? JibJab? YouTube? Who knows, some future Best Director nominee may employ nothing more sophisticated than a camera phone and Windows Movie Maker.


2011 Best Picture Winner Ass, brought to you by Carl's Jr. Carl's Jr. F@$% you, I'm eating.

Aside: mfrendo, I believe this is the first actual, germane discussion we've had, but I've been skimming your FM posts and have looked forward to the day of our meeting for some time now. Well met, and I look forward to reading your thoughts and engaging you in future.

I assume you probably don't watch it (though of course could be wrong), but Jon Stewart went on a slightly similar tangent on The Daily Show last week, regarding the death of print media.
http://gawker.com/5106410/daily-show-on-death-of-print

becs, you are correct (having a 50%-50% chance), I did NOT see that Daily Show clip... until now, that is. My thanks.


My very favorite weekly publication gets it right again...and early

ETA: Thanks for brining this to our attention, Keyser. Have some whiskey on the house.

ETA2: Following up on my earlier predictions, prognostications and wild speculations: Here are a pair of stories cut-and-pasted from todays' IMDb Studio Briefing --

More Studio Cutbacks -- This Time At Fox
17 December 2008 1:49 AM, PST

Twentieth Century Fox Television said Tuesday that it has begun reducing the budgets of all its productions, across the board, by 2 percent. A studio spokesman said: "In these challenging economic times, we've asked all of our showrunners to trim their production budgets by 2 percent, an assignment which they have all embraced. Everyone understands that revenues are down and these steps are necessary to protect our business."


Pink Slips Fly At CBS
16 December 2008 1:54 AM, PST

CBS was hit by a wave of new layoffs Monday that included CBS Paramount Executive VP Maria Crenna and the studio's comedy head, Brian Banks. Fewer than 50 staffers at CBS Entertainment are believed to have been handed pink slips, all of them in the network's comedy, drama or alternative development units. Daily Variety, citing no sources, reported today (Tuesday) that it was unlikely that any further personnel cuts would occur in the near future.

I just keep trying to win the BOM derby so I can get a free upgrade to premium, or whatever they call it.

Who killed the newspaper?

The pencil-pushers to cut the arts sections and therefore made every paper the same. Well, them and Rupert Murdoch.

is there a possibility to combine with this one: https://thefantaverse.forumotion.net/free-for-all-f5/bom-bought-by-imdb-t122.htm#2931 ? just to add these on the other post to have all in one place? admins, anyone?

They've just been merged.

Buscemi wrote:They've just been merged.

super!

I received as well that e-mail, BUT what we don't know so far is if it will be everything free or not...

BOM were never free- they have a membership in which you get access to even more info- but I would be annoyed if all figures needed membership

yeh, id be pissed if that would be the case. But with imdb being fairly good i think u can predict that at least the weekend actuals, release schedule will be still there. u can get them alot of other places anyway