Two weeks to Season 3 of Game Of Thrones. Here’s a quick new trailer:
And here’s a quick reminder to be happy that of the Time Warner arms to be making this show, it’s HBO and not the CW:
Episode 2 is scheduled to go up this afternoon, we’ll add it at the time.
(January 23, 2012 – New York, NY) DC Entertainment, home of the world’s greatest super heroes, today unveiled an unprecedented giving campaign to fight the hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa. This multi-million-dollar commitment over the next two years will be supported across all Warner Bros. Entertainment’s and Time Warner’s businesses and feature DC Entertainment’s iconic Justice League characters, including Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg, issuing the call to action, “We Can Be Heroes.” The announcements were made at a press conference today in New York by Barry Meyer, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros.; Jeff Robinov, President, Warner Bros. Pictures Group; and Diane Nelson, President, DC Entertainment.
We Can Be Heroes will be supported via promotional exposure across all of Time Warner’s divisional advertising platforms (Warner Bros., Turner Broadcasting, Time Inc., HBO), generating millions of consumer impressions and creating crucially needed awareness of this crisis worldwide. Save the Children, International Rescue Committee and Mercy Corps will equally share a corporate donation of at least $2 million over the next two years comprised of cash donations, employee matching funds and consumer matching funds.
DC Comics has already had a large job exodus from New York to Los Angeles, and now there are signs that what’s left may have to pack up soon, as well as the rest of Time Warner. Deadline Hollywood has the story:
CEO Jeff Bewkes told staffers in an email that the company’s preparing to evaluate “our office footprint in the New York metropolitan area and develop a long-range plan to meet our future needs.” The team leading that process — to be run by Chief Financial and Administrative Officer John Martin and Global Real Estate SVP Tom Santiago — probably won’t make a decision until the end of 2012. Then it could take years to implement. The corporate ranks and cable channels including CNN probably will stay in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle; the company owns about 1 million square feet in the building. But Time Warner leases an additional 3 million or so additional square feet of office space in the New York area. The agreement for the publishing unit’s operations at the Time & Life building expires at the end of 2017, while the one for HBO’s home on 6th Ave runs out in 2018. There are plenty of options in Manhattan, including the new World Trade Center. But neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut probably will try to persuade Time Warner to move some of its operations, and jobs.
via Time Warner Launches Review Of NYC Office Options.
Everybody’s waiting for the tablet computer to see what it could do to the comics industry. Thanks to Time and Sports Illustrated, we have a potential preview:
Boy, wouldn’t it be great if DC Comics were published by Time Warner?
No?
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that DC was thinking about this stuff, at least?
More in this New York Times article.
Trying to follow the lengthy legal entanglements between parties over beloved properties is never fun or easy. Just as you forget about a lingering case, it re-enters the headlines. Such is the case with the court ruling this week that J.R.R. Tolkien’s estate can not seek punitive damages from New Line Cinema over profits earned by the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
According to the AP story, “New Line’s attorneys successfully argued that Tolkien’s heirs had to demonstrate a ‘public wrong’ under New York law – which governs the contracts – to claim punitive damages if they win at trial. Jones ruled that the heirs’ grievance ‘is clearly seeking to vindicate private wrongs’.”
The laws suit continues to move toward its October 2009 trial date as the estate is suing for $150 million in compensatory damages in a breach of contract suit. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones ruled this week that the plaintiffs have established a legal basis for the fraud claim against the studio which is a part of Time Warner.
Among the claims are that millions in profits were funneled into an advertising expense line and offices built in New Zealand for production of the Lord of the Rings trilogy have subsequently been used for other studio projects.
The estate claims they have yet to see money despite the trilogy earning some $6 billion. As a result, they are seeking the court to order the currently planned two film adaptation of The Hobbit to be halted.
Our step-brothers over at Cinematical report Warren Ellis’ Red has been optioned by Summit Entertainment. It will be written, or at least first-drafted, by Whiteout‘s Erich and John Hoeber.
It seems DC Comics owner Warner Bros. (well, DC is a division of Warner Bros, which is a division of Time Warner, which ate the cow that ate the dog that ate the cat) has permitted Ellis to join Max Allan Collins’ Road To Perdition (you know; the one with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman) as a DC Comics-published movie handled by another outfit. They seem to focus on capes.
Reports about the faithfulness of the adaptation differ; we’ll see when the movie is cast, re-written, filmed and edited. But every non-cape comics adaptation is a victory, ergo kudos to Ellis.
BoingBoing recently put the spotlight on Warner Bros. decision to shut down a series of original art auctions on eBay benefitting a childhood cancer charity. Apparently, many of the pieces of art in the auction (which the organizer had requested of his contacts in the comics community and they were more than happy to provide) depicted DC characters such as Batman and Superman.
From organizer Thomas Denton’s blog, Say It Backwards:
I just got notice that two of the Superman related auctions have been removed from the site and the rest are probably next. I don’t know what to do now. I have to start canceling auctions and issuing refunds. That means all the fees and such I’m now responsible for which is money i just don’t have, and I have no idea if I’m still obligated to the middleman ebay uses for their charity auctions.
…
I am heartbroken. I am really sorry to any one this is any trouble for. Legally, I was in the wrong. I used their intellectual property without their permission. I’m not going to play the victim on that front. I swear I just wanted to do something good.
Denton offered some further thoughts on the whole kerfuffle in a later post, as well as notice that he would probably be shutting down his site — which had been a vocal supporter of all things Superman and DC over the years — once the dust had settled.
For those who came in late… As has been widely reported, the Federal District Court ruled somewhat in favor of the estate of Jerry Siegel in its lawsuit to have all publishing rights to the Superman story in Action Comics #1 be taken from Time Warner’s DC Comics subsidiary and given to Jerry’s heirs. The decision runs 72 pages, but at heart is the judge’s ruling that because the property existed before Action#1, “work for hire” stipulations do not apply.
The New York Times did a good job covering the story; Mark Evanier, as would be expected, did a better job. For one thing, Mark got co-creator Joe Shuster’s first name right. The New York Times did not.
Whereas there is much cause for celebration, before we start dancing in the streets we should look at what’s at stake here.
Only the original concepts – only Superman, Clark Kent, the costume as portrayed in that initial story, and the abilities unique to Superman in that story – are in play. Perry White, the Daily Planet, Lex Luthor, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Bizarro, kryptonite, Jimmy Olsen and the rest are not on the table. Only the domestic rights are in play, and even then the estate would be in something of a co-ownership position with DC Comics. So don’t look forward to that Eros Comics Superman series quite yet.
Sadly for the Siegel family, this does not bring to an end a fight started by Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster 60 years ago. Actually, it’s just warming up.
Columns / Glenn Hauman / News
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