Producing Various and Sundry Writing

Mickey Mouse & the Public Domain: A Deeper Dive

I’ve already done a couple public domain posts this year, notably the one for Public Domain Day and one on Monday about how people are, predictably, already having fun with the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse which entered the public domain in the U.S. on January 1st. But if you just want to get deeper into the legal philosophy behind public domain and also how that particularly involves Mickey Mouse, I have a couple…

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Producing Various and Sundry Writing

Well, That Didn’t Take Long: Steamboat Willie Edition

I didn’t post this last week, but I actually saw some news even as I was posting about Public Domain Day last Monday: people aren’t wasting any time, Disney’s legendary legal ferocity be damned. One Steamboat Willie-themed Kickstarter launched on January 1st, there are memes aplenty (see image above), and –of course– there’s a horror movie. There’s plenty more in the works, as Sian Cain details for The Guardian (which also touches on the horror…

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Producing Various and Sundry

Now Playing: Detailed Public Viewership Stats for Netflix

I still should work on a wrap-up post regarding last year’s Hollywood Strikes, but one of the outcomes the unions were able to negotiate was visibility about the success of shows on streaming services. In what definitely feels like an effort to guide that narrative, Netflix released a heretofore unprecedented amount of data publicly in December regarding how many people watched what on their service. You can get a summary, watch a half hour press…

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Producing Various and Sundry Writing

Public Domain Day, 2024

Last year I mentioned making a Public Domain Day post a tradition and so: Happy New Year to All! Plus, welcome to the public domain for so many goodies. For a great overview of said goodies on offer, check out this article from Aaron Moss over at Copyright Lately. Moss is an intellectual property attorney and is quite ready to delve deep into all things copyright. I appreciate that he goes beyond the much-covered fact…

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Acting Producing Writing

Watch this (Streaming) Space!

Like many, many other people, I had hoped that the end to the WGA strike would lead to a quick negotiation with SAG-AFTRA in its wake. Unfortunately, the AMPTP has evidently walked away from the negotiating table because learning nothing is… a power move? I’m not sure. Anyway, I am already speculating on what the future will bring, because even though we’ve heard a lot about how streaming isn’t the most lucrative business model ever…

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Producing Writing

Ghost Light on the Sound Stage: Tentative WGA Deal Being Reviewed

So I’ll have a longer post in October as previously mentioned, but for those seven or nine people actually getting some updates about the strikes from this blog, a tentative deal has been struck between the AMPTP and the WGA as reported various places. As you’ll see in the article linked above, there are several procedural steps that are not perfunctory that involve the WGA West and East boards validating the deal and then, importantly,…

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Producing

Swift Karma in the Entertainment Industry

The Hollywood strikes continue and have no end in sight as I mentioned in my last post. So, with that “no news is bad news,” I thought I’d share some good news for this Labor Day. Now, I’m more of a Tom Swifty fan than Taylor Swift fan, but besides knowing that “girl can write a song,” I appreciate how she’s taken the “with great power comes great responsibility” challenge seriously. You see, she’s made…

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Acting Producing Writing

WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike Update

So, it’s August and both the screenwriters and the screen actors are still striking. The WGA is meeting about returning to the negotiating table this Friday, but that doesn’t mean their strike is ending and, at the time of me writing this, there’s no news on AMPTP talking with SAG-AFTRA (though per that article, they’d be happy to). I’ve gone back and tagged all my relevant posts about the strike(s) for ease of reference, but…

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Acting Producing

When Actors Ain’t Got Time for Your Drama, Ya Done Wrong

As of Thursday, July 13th, SAG-AFTRA is on strike, joining the WGA, which has been on strike since the beginning of May. Considering I posted about that strike, it made sense to post about this as well, but boy howdy has there been a lot in the past 10 days or so. In terms of overall covereage, Alissa Wilkinson, over at Vox, has one of their excellent explainer articles. Kim Masters and Matt Belloni banter…

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Producing Writing

What do Hollywood Business Models have to do with the Writers’ Strike?

Yes, I am continuing to follow news about the Writers’ Strike and, yes, given my previous posts of Adam Conover videos, there was really doubt I’d post a video with Adam Conover talking about the Writers’ Strike? (I mean, he was one of the WGA folks in the negotiating room): One of the arguments you hear early in the video goes something like this: That got me thinking about how the studios are defining “profitable,”…

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