Category Archives: Financial

In true Hollywood fashion, the Academy Awards promise a cliffhanger finale to the tight race for best picture Oscar between favourites 12 Years a Slave and Gravity but also a happier ending when it comes to the weather.

In true Hollywood fashion, the Academy Awards promise a cliffhanger finale to the tight race for best picture Oscar between favourites 12 Years a Slave and Gravity but also a happier ending when it comes to the weather.

Media giant Time Warner’s revenue rose 7 per cent to US$4 billion (NZ$4.8b) in the December quarter, helped in part by the release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which is on the way to becoming a US$1b movie. The latest Hobbit film was only released on December 13, near the end of Time Warner’s financial quarter, so the latest revenues include just a couple of weeks of the film’s returns.

Paul Walker’s teenage daughter is the sole beneficiary of the actor’s estate, which is valued at an estimated US$25 million (NZ$27.8 million), court records show. The star’s final will and testament was filed January 28 in Santa Barbara and calls for his father to serve as executor of the estate and for his mother to serve as guardian of the actor’s 15-year-old daughter.

During the past three years, the Court Theatre has been an oasis away from the tough realities of a city recovering from disaster. But any New Zealand theatre must face harsh realities of its own: competing for arts funding, a small population to draw punters from, and a post-recession ticket sales slump.

Serious financial problems mean the stage is set for Takapuna’s Bruce Mason Centre to be taken over by Auckland Council’s venues organisation.

Jonah Hill was so desperate to work on The Wolf of Wall Street that he lobbied Leonardo DiCaprio for the role, accepted the minimum wage – then ended up with bronchitis for snorting fake cocaine.

REVIEW: First things first, this Hollywood recreation of one of Japan’s greatest stories is, despite reports and the financial bath it’s taken, not the worst movie ever made. The 2013 comedies Movie 43 and Scary Movie 5 make this look like Seven Samurai in comparison.

Robert Redford may have been one of the noteworthy exclusions in Thursday’s Oscar nominations, but as the actor-director kicked off the 30th edition of his Sundance Film Festival, he made the point that film is not all about Hollywood anyway.