Since I’m obviously not going to find the time to write up individual takes on these stories.

  • Summer ticket sales were up worldwide, helped at the end by late summer entries like The Help and The Debt that had some impact with adult audiences. Higher ticket prices overall as well as 3D tickets helped that of course but looking for good news is a willful act since things weren’t up all that much and ticket sales themselves – the actual number of tickets sold – is down to the lowest number since 1997. So fewer people are actually going to the theater but those that are pay more, which probably isn’t sustainable.
  • Speaking of summer movies Andrew Hampp at AdAge has a report card for the studios and how they did with their mid-year releases.
  • Andrew also interviews Anne Globe, head of worldwide marketing at Dreamworks, about how she approaches potential marketing partnerships with online players like Zynga and other startups.
  • Mashable is starting its own entertainment-focused spin-off site. That just kind of formalizes the increasing amount of entertainment coverage they’ve been doing over the last couple years.
  • Searches for movies are happening earlier and earlier (probably a result of teaser campaigns kicking off) and Google is looking to capitalize on that by making sure studios are aware of advertising options that can go along with that.
  • Speaking of which, the entertainment industry (not just Hollywood) will spend $1.26 billion on online advertising this year and spending will top $2 billion by 2015 according to eMarketer’s estimates.
  • Scott Feinberg is joining The Hollywood Reporter as an Oscar-season writer.
  • Mitch Galbraith, the former COO of FunnyorDie.com, is launching a movie recommendation social network. Flickme will try to feed you recommendations about what your friends like and what you’re likely to enjoy. I’m laughing on the inside.
  • The Weinsten Co. is launching an indie label (wait, I thought they were an indie label?) that will focus on new distribution solutions. And in its attempt to basically catch up to Magnolia Pictures they’ve poached an exec from Magnolia Pictures.
  • Studios are certainly aware of mobile marketing options but aren’t quite sold on their effectiveness, thereby putting them in the same boat as (let me check…) every other industry in existence.
  • Prescreen is an interesting new social discovery platform that’s positioning itself to independent filmmakers as a way to bring an audience to a movie without doing a lot of advertising and other marketing.
  • Part of the (mostly ridiculous) rules clarifications handed down by AMPAS regarding Oscar campaigning involves directions to not slam or otherwise badmouth of other films on social networks. If you take complaining about movies off of social networks you barely have social networks.
  • Check out the finalists for this year’s Hollywood Reporter Key Art Awards.
  • CARU has flagged a batch of ads for Captain America, Transformers 3 and other PG-13 films that ran in shows and magazines aimed at those under the age of 13 for review. But the studios have said they weren’t accidental but placed there intentionally and the MPAA seems to be shrugging this off. Perhaps the organization is unaware of the fact that this is bad idea.
  • A company called Fizziology has listed the top 10 movies from the summer/fall as ranked by social media chatter.