VOTING IN SESSION - One Page Screenplays! CLICK HERE and watch the 10 One Page Finalists and VOTE on your favorite. WINNING VOTE gets made into a film
AUDIENCE Comments VIDEO from WILDsound's December Festival
YESTERDAY'S POLL
What's the BEST LOVE STORY film ever made?
The Notebook - 40% Casablanca - 30% Titantic - 13% Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - 10% The Princess Bride - 4% WALL-E - 3% TOP Write in BALLOT: True Romance
A depressed holiday season pushed the recorded music industry deeper into its continued slump as overall album sales hit only 428.4 million, a 14% drop from 2007.
It was the eighth consecutive year that music sales have dipped. The holiday season - Nov. 17 through Dec. 28 - was down 19% from 2007. This year saw 80.1 million album sales vs. 98.7 million a year ago. Data released Wednesday by Nielsen Soundscan further drove home the notion that the marketplace has shifted to digital tracks, sales of which were up 27%, hitting 1.07 billion.
Downloads now account for 32% of all music purchases. Current physical albums were down significantly more than catalog titles. Current was of 23% while the older stuff dipped 14%. On the digital side, though, catalog was up significantly more than current albums. Catalog was up 37% o 31.5 million; current was up 27% to 34.3 million. Every genre was down - classical was off 26%, both R&B and rap were down by more than 19%.
STUDIOS TURNING KIDS TOYS INTO MOVIES
The output of Hollywood studios may soon resemble a living room of unwrapped Christmas gifts.
Studios are about to embark on a flurry of projects based on popular toy brands, ranging from action figures to board games to Hot Wheels. It's a trend that has sent Hasbro, Mattel and other toymakers searching through their vaults to license their most prized properties.
The challenges are obvious: Although the names are familiar, the toys come with little or no built-in story lines. This can result in well-crafted crowd-pleasers like "Transformers" -- or fall flat like 1985's "Clue."
But when Hasbro's "Transformers" became a summer box office juggernaut for DreamWorks and Paramount in 2007, studios quickly took note of the franchise potential of popular toy brands.
Neither Hasbro nor the studios wasted any time setting up a "Transformers" sequel, and also greenlit a live action version of "G.I. Joe." Across town, Universal brokered an even bigger deal: An overall pact with Hasbro to turn Monopoly, Ouija, Battleship and Candy Land into pics.
Toy rival Mattel hopes its film projects will not only strike a chord with audiences at the megaplex, but also send toys flying off store shelves.
CLASSIC FILMS
BY GENRE
The Reader
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Valkyrie
Bedtime Stories
Marley and Me
Milk
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Nothing Like the Holidays
Yes man
Slumdog Millionaire
Frost/Nixon
The Day the Earth Stood Still
