OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
NBA star LeBron James, who has become as known for his activism as his basketball playing, was just dealt a tough blow from HBO.
The network has shelved the reboot of the popular 1990s movie “House Party,” being produced by James and his “The Shop” cohost Maverick Carter, OK Player reported.
The movie, which was announced in 2018, was set to be delivered by SpringHill Entertainment and New Line Cinema.
“This is definitely not a reboot. It’s an entirely new look for a classic movie,” he said to The Hollywood Reporter in 2018. “Everyone I grew up with loved House Party. To partner with this creative team to bring a new House Party to a new generation is unbelievable.”
“It’s fun, it [was] an honor when I got the opportunity to produce it [and] reboot the whole movie,” he said to ESPN in 2019. “I had so much fun as a kid watching that movie and when I was growing up as a youngster, I was like, ‘Man, I hope I have an opportunity to go to one of these house parties where it’s just a bunch of fun, joking around, a lot of dancing… People just having a good time.”
But Warner Bros. Discovery has been making massive cuts and this movie happened to be one of them, Variety reported.
“Within the past few weeks, at least six Warner Bros. movies have been removed from HBO Max: ‘Moonshot,’ a sci-fi rom-com starring Lana Condor and Cole Sprouse; artificial-intelligence dystopia comedy ‘Superintelligence,’ starring Melissa McCarthy; Robert Zemeckis’ 2020 remake of ‘The Witches,’ starring Anne Hathaway, Octavia Spencer, Stanley Tucci and Chris Rock; comedy ‘An American Pickle,’ starring Seth Rogen as an immigrant who wakes up after being pickled for 100 years; Doug Liman heist pic ‘Locked Down’ with Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor; and drama ‘Charm City Kings’ from director Angel Manuel Soto.
All six of the films were labeled as ‘Max Originals.’ The removals were noted by users on Reddit in a discussion of the Warner Bros. decision to nix plans to release ‘Batgirl’ — in theaters, on HBO Max or via any other platform.”
Things are getting tough for CNN as it is suffering from its lowest viewership and lowest profits in a long time.
The network continues to lean on reporting about former President Donald Trump but with him not in the White House that could be playing a major factor in its decline, The New York Times reported.
The network has had an average primetime viewership of 639,000 this quarter which represents a 27 precent dip from the same time last year.
It finds itself lagging behind MSNBC, which had its own 23 percent decline in viewership.
At the same time Fox News has seen in increase in its already gigantic viewership of one percent.
This comes as Warner Brothers Discovery has placed Chris Licht in charge of changing the direction of the network from a hyper partisan, liberal bias to straight news, though it appears that transition is not done.
Now, three months into Mr. Licht’s tenure, the network finds itself facing big questions about how it can continue to expand its business with its moonshot streaming service dead and the traditional TV business in structural decline.
Projections from S&P Global Market Intelligence say CNN’s profitability is on a pace to decline to $956.8 million this year. That would mark the first time since 2016 that the network had dipped below $1 billion in profit, according to three people familiar with its operations.
Two people familiar with CNN’s operations said the network’s initial 2022 profitability target was $1.1 billion, which Mr. Licht is on track to miss by more than $100 million. But another person familiar with the matter said that by the accounting of company executives, Mr. Licht was on track to meet a profitability target of roughly $950 million for the year, since the network’s initial budget didn’t account for losses associated with launching the CNN+ streaming service.
The parent company could make cuts at the network if the bottom line in revenue does not improve but, in a recording, Licht said he had not heard about any cuts.
“No one has said to me, ‘You’re going to have to go cut this,’” he said. “I think there’s an acute understanding that they don’t know our business.”
