Videoage International March-April 2020

4 World March/April 2020 V I D E O A G E (Continued on Page 6) 52 eps. x 7 min. Target 4-7 y.o. Gender Neutral ©2020 MOPI / MondoTV Savin Planet E S ome publications turn to TV production in order to make ends meet. Condé Nast, publisher of Vanity Fair , Wired, GQ , Vogue , and the New Yorker , among other titles, entered the TV field in 2011, and now is solidifying its position in Hollywood. Those are the five titles that are at the core of Condé Nast Entertainment’s (CNE) video production strategy now headed by Oren Katzeff. Other publishing groups that include People Magazine and Southern Living (both owned by TV station group Meredith), and The New York Times Company are also producing video content, with the Times producing a documentary series on Hulu and FX. CNE’s feature film, City of a Million Soldiers , is scheduled to come out this June (the film is from a story taken from a New Yorker article). Other CNE projects include IP from Vanity Fair ’s articles. Recently, CNE sold two series to Netflix. According to the Wall Street Journal (part of the FOX TV group), CNE generates about Magazine Publishers Cash-In On Branded Original Video Content $200 million in annual revenue. CondéNast’s CEO is Roger Lynch, a former Sling TV (part of Dish Network) executive. StockMarket andOscar’s Worth E ven before becoming a revelation at the Oscars’ 2020 event, before MIP-TV was cancelled, South Korea was designated as MIP-TV’s “Country of Honor.” The industry has already quantified the worth of an Oscar. But it still remains to be seen what this MIP-TV honor is worth. AfterwinningfourOscarsatthe 92nd annual Academy Awards, including“Best Picture”and“Best Director,” the stock of Barunson Entertainment, the South Korean production company behind the award-winning Parasite , jumped 19 percent. The Los Angeles- based JC Group, an investor and Parasite distributor, gained 2.4 percent on the stock market. The owners of JC Group, Miky Lee and her brother Jay, are the grandchildren of Samsung’s founder, B.C. Lee. Parasite has already grossed $165 million worldwide (in- cluding $35 million in the U.S.). Parasite ’s Oscar winning 50-year old director Bong Joon Ho, is a familiar face in Hollywood, where he has directed several films. Friends Lures In Streaming Friends A T&T is betting big on a reunion special with the cast of Friends to launch its HBO Max streaming service this spring. AT&T’s Warner Bros., which produced Friends for NBC from 1994 to 2004, is producing the special, and it is offering to the series’ six stars — Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer — between $2.25 million and $2.5 million each. The original offer was $1 million each, but the stars refused. The series has been very popular in reruns on linear television, as well as on Netflix, which held all streaming rights until last year, when Warner Bros. outbid Netflix for streaming rights with a five- year $425 million offer.