Ever since the LA Times published a February report on corruption within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the governing body of the Golden Globes, the organization has been in turmoil. In addition to shady financial dealings, The Times found that the 87 members of the HFPA included no Black journalists.
As the HFPA tried and failed to get its house in order, groups across the industry continued to push back. Publicists didn’t want their clients to continue to be forced to attend HFPA panels, and Netflix said it was going to stop doing business with the HFPA altogether until the group made more changes.
With pressure mounting, NBC has opted to not air the Globes at all anymore, at least for 2022. It’s unclear where the future of the Globes stands. While the Academy would love to lose its main Oscars competitor, studios may not be so eager for total demise. After crunching the numbers, the Washington Post found that movies that win big at the Globes make an average of an additional $6 million at the box office.
And speaking of box office, according to a Bloomberg report, the stars of “A Quiet Place 2” are not happy that Paramount shortened the theatrical window for their film. While studios have been shelling out big bucks to actors and directors whose movies have gone straight to streaming during the pandemic, it’s not as much of a payday as a huge theatrical hit where stars receive a portion of the back end. This battle between theatrical windows and streaming will likely be one of the biggest ongoing struggles in Hollywood in the coming months.
Finally, Disney added fewer subscribers to its streaming service in the last quarter than it hoped. Analysts had projected Disney+ would have 109 million subscribers, but the company landed at 103.6 million. While it was to be expected that growth would slow as pandemic restrictions ease up and people spend less time in front of their TVs, there’s another trend that has analysts concerned. Because Disney charges less for its streaming service than some competitors, the amount of revenue Disney receives per subscriber is far less than what Netflix gets for every signup. Disney shares suffered a 4% dip in the stock market after the newest numbers were announced.