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PRODUCERS GUILD UNVEILS NOMINATIONS
The Producers Guild of America has tapped "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "Frost/Nixon," "Milk" and "Slumdog Millionaire" as nominees for its top feature award.
The winner, determined by voting of the 4,000 members of the PGA, will be announced Jan. 24 at the Hollywood Palladium.
The PGA's announcement Monday contained no major surprises. Nominees for its Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award include Kathleen Kennedy & Frank Marshall and Cean Chaffin for "Benjamin Button"; Christopher Nolan, Charles Roven and Emma Thomas for "The Dark Knight"; Brian Grazer, Ron Howard and Eric Fellner for "Frost/Nixon"; Dan Jinks & Bruce Cohen for "Milk"; and Christopher Colson for "Slumdog Millionaire."
The group also announced its documentary feature nominees: Simon Chin for "Man on Wire," Julie Bilson Ahlberg and Errol Morris for "Standard Operating Procedure," and Carl Deal and Tia Lessin for "Trouble the Water." The PGA launched the category last year with "Sicko" winning the first trophy.
Animated feature mentions went to Clark Spencer for "Bolt," Melissa Cobb for "Kung Fu Panda" and Jim Morris for "Wall-E." "Ratatouille" won the award last year.
HOMEVIDEO BIZ TAKES HIT IN 2008
Homevid execs don't have quite as much to cheer about at CES this year.
The biz, which had hoped for a turnaround by the end of 2008, is instead headed to the tech confab on a down note.
Final year-end results won't start to trickle in for a few more days, but there's little doubt that homevid spending ended down for the year. The vid biz is famously squishy about its sales figures, but all indicators point to a second consecutive decline, with Blu-ray gains unable to make up for declining DVD sales throughout the year.
The last available figures show DVD sales 5%-6% behind 2007 levels. Blu-ray sales jumped fourfold, making up a couple percentage points of the DVD deficit. Overall disc sales are expected to end 3%-4% below 2007's $15.38 billion tally when the last disc sales for 2008 are calculated.
Total consumer spending on discs, rental included, should top $20 billion, as it has every year since 2002. However, that number is also projected to be down several percentage points from 2007's $22.9 billion tally. Rentals were trending flat; downloads are not yet a meaningful part of the equation.
Preliminary year-end projections are falling in line with scaled down expectations for 2008, a challenging year for the vid biz, which is grappling with a transition to high-def formats and digital downloads. In 2007, the sector posted its first major spending decline, 3.1%, and execs had hoped for a turnaround when Warner Bros. effectively ended the format war by abandoning the rival HD DVD format on the eve of last year's CES.
Still it could have been worse; the biz was not hit as hard by reduced holiday spending as other sectors. The day after Christmas, MasterCard's Spending Pulse predicted that holiday general retail sales were down 5.5%-8%. Other yuletide economic indicators were gloomier: The Air Transport Assn. projected holiday air travel was down 9%. Car sales have been even harder hit lately.
WATCH FILMS
CLASSIC FILMS
BY GENRE
Doubt
Gran Torino
The Wrestler
The Reader
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Valkyrie
Bedtime Stories
Marley and Me
Milk
Slumdog Millionaire
The Day the Earth Stood Still
