The butler did it. Despite a clutch of new films in theaters this weekend, Lee Daniels’ The Butler topped them all, serving up $25 million, according to studio estimates. The victory came as a surprise to some analysts, who expected summer’s latest superhero flick, Kick-Ass 2, to whip the competition. But Butler trounced the newcomers among critics, and connected solidly with fans. About 73% of reviewers recommended the movie, while it scored an 81% approval rating among moviegoers, says survey site Rottentomatoes.com. The movie earned an “A” among audiences, says pollsters CinemaScore.
The Forest Whitaker drama also benefited from canny timing, says Box Office Mojo’s Ray Subers, who notes that similar August dramas including Julie & Julia, Eat Pray Love and The Help all enjoyed August debuts above $20 million. “One of The Butler‘s biggest advantages is its very strong release date,” Subers says. “After a few months of big-budget, male-skewing blockbuster fare, female-skewing adult dramas have consistently done good business” at summer’s close.
Posts published in “Business/Finance”
Spike Lee has surpassed his Kickstarter goal of $1.25 million, with 4 days remaining in his campaign. The 56-year-old director launched his campaign on July 21, in an effort to raise money to make his next film. Lee describes the movie as a “psychological bloody thriller,” about human beings who are addicted to blood (and not a remake of Blacula). Since launching his campaign 26 days ago, Lee as amassed more than 5,400 financial backers, (including Magic Mike director Steven Soderbergh) and raised $1,304,000.
But Lee’s Kickstarter campaign wasn’t a seamless endeavor. The Do the Right Thing director generated strong criticism from the media. Weeks ago Lee made an appearance on Bloomberg TV’s Street Smart and had a heated debate about the backlash he’s received for using Kickstarter. During an interview with theGrio’s Chris Witherspoon, Lee talked about his reason for using Kickstarter.
“I needed to go to Kickstarter to get this film made because this is not necessarily a Hollywood film, Lee said. “It’s more like an independent film.” The 56-year-old Brooklyn native then said he doesn’t envision his contemporaries in the industry, like Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg or Clint Eastwood, following in his footsteps and turning to Kickstarter to fund their future films. “Anybody could do this, but Steven Spielberg,” Lee said. “Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, Scorsese, they don’t have to do that.” Why? “Because they don’t have to do it,” he said. “They’re great filmmakers and they’re beloved by the studios.”
Lee’s next film, which is scheduled to hit theaters in October, will be his remake of the Korean thriller Oldboy.
article by Chris Witherspoon via thegrio.com
Mellody Hobson, 44, and George Lucas, 69, have welcomed their first child together into the world, according to reports. Their daughter, Everest Hobson Lucas, was born on Friday, August 9, various sources say, and was reportedly carried via a surrogate. Hobson and Lucas recently married in late June at Lucas’ Skywalker ranch in Marin County, Calif. Hobson, the president of the financial management firm Ariel Investments, had been dating Lucas, one of the most successful producers and directors in Hollywood history, for several years before their nuptials. This is Hobson’s first marriage, and a second for Lucas.
Hobson, an on-air personality who offers financial advice for CBS, is also the chairperson of Dreamworks animation. Lucas, creator of the Star Wars film franchise, previously made headlines through selling his production company Lucasfilms Ltd. to the Walt Disney company for $4.05 billion in October 2012. In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Hobson credited her strong bond with Lucas to their both being, “extraordinarily open-minded people” who “are open to what the universe brings us.”
Keeping an open mind allowed each partner to perceive the value in the other. “We didn’t have preconceived ideas about what a partner should be, and so we allowed ourselves to discover something that was unexpected,” Hobson said.
Everest is Hobson’s first child. Lucas also has three adopted children who are now adults.
article by Alexis Garrett Stodghill via thegrio.com
Can a company pay its workers well and also make money? Many aren’t quite hitting the right balance. Hundreds of dissatisfied workers at major American companies like Wal-Mart (WMT), McDonald’s (MCD) and Wendy’s (WEN) have joined protests nationwide in the past year demanding higher wages and better benefits. One company that hasn’t had to deal with such strikes is Costco (COST).
The no-frills warehouse chain pays its hourly workers an average of just over $20 an hour, compared to just under $13 at competitor Wal-Mart. Even President Obama praised Costco in a recent speech about helping the middle class. The recession has been good for companies that targeted budget-minded customers. Sales at Costco have grown an average of 13% annually since 2009, while profits have risen 15%. Its stock price has more than doubled since 2009.
During the same period, discount retailer Wal-Mart’s sales grew an average of 4.5% each year, profits rose 7%, and its stock price increased 70%. Costco seems to be investing some of those profits back into its employees. Cesar Martinez, a 37-year-old fork lift operator, has worked at a Costco in North Carolina for 19 years. He makes $22.82 an hour, gets health benefits and a pension plan. He manages to save, and doesn’t worry about hospital bills for his daughter, who suffers from asthma.
2 Guns, a buddy cop comedy-thriller featuring Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg, was the top weekend film in U.S. and Canadian theaters, collecting $27.4 million for Universal Pictures. (CMCSA). A tale of undercover lawmen trying to catch a drug kingpin, 2 Guns taps the bickering buddy movie formula successfully mined by Hollywood in films such as Lethal Weapon and marks the seventh No. 1 weekend opening this year for Universal, part of Comcast Corp. “The chemistry is obvious in the film,” Nikki Rocco, president of distribution for Universal Pictures, said in an interview. “Hopefully, it finds its own life in a marketplace that’s very crowded.”
Washington plays Drug Enforcement Administration agent Bobby Trench, while Wahlberg is cast as U.S. naval intelligence officer Marcus Stigman. The two reluctantly work undercover as members of a narcotics syndicate. When their attempt to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel goes haywire, they are disavowed by their superiors and can only count on each other. “This is a business where being No. 1 is always wonderful,” Rocco said. “It’s nice to be on a roll.”
Returning film The Wolverine was second with $21.7 million and The Smurfs 2, a family feature combining animation with live action, opened with $18.2 million in receipts for Sony Corp. (6758) to place third.
article via bloomberg.com
The White House gathered a group of non-profit workers, educators, and startup founders to be honored on Wednesday as “Champions of Change for Tech Inclusion.” As part of the White House Tech Inclusion initiative, the event recognized tech leaders working to expand opportunities within the tech field for young innovators, specifically minorities, women and girls, and individuals underserved or underrepresented.
Kimberly Bryant, founder and executive director of Black Girls Code, Kathryn Finney, founder and managing director of digitalundivided, and founder and executive director at iUrbanTeen Deena Pierott are among the 11 change-agents that were honored during the event. President Obama and his administration are committed to expanding opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), vowing to increase the number of STEM graduates by one million over the next ten years. That prompted the chief executive to launch White House Tech Inclusion efforts, which are geared toward providing tech skills and opportunities to the next generation of innovators in the United States. Comedian and author of New York Times bestseller How To Be Black Baratunde Thurston served as moderator for the Champions of Change discussion.
In January, the Obama administration organized the White House Tech Inclusion Summit where five new programs were announced.
article by Janel Martinez via blackenterprise.com
Thousands of minority- and women-owned entrepreneurs will have the chance to audition to appear on ABC’s reality show Shark Tank, providing them an opportunity to gain much needed capital for growing their businesses. Casting directors will hold an open call on Friday, August 23, in Washington, DC during the Kingonomics Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Investment Conference. The event’s organizer, Rodney Sampson, recently signed on with Shark Tank Executive Producer Mark Burnett as executive in charge of diversity and outreach at One Three Media, a joint media and production venture between Burnett and the Hearst Corporation.
Kingonomics is the title of Sampson’s book, which is an interpretation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s economic vision for jobs and financial freedom for all Americans; through his lens as a serial entrepreneur and accredited investor primarily in technology and new media. The Kingonomics Conference, done in collaboration with the SCLC Poverty Institute, will bring together experts in capital raising strategies including crowdfunding, angel investment, and venture capital. The daylong forum and Shark Tank casting call also coincides with activities on Capitol Hill surrounding the 50th Anniversary celebration of the historic March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
Now in its fifth season, Shark Tank is a competition reality-based television series that features a panel of self-made multimillionaire and billionaire entrepreneurs/judges who consider offers from aspiring entrepreneurs seeking investment capital for their businesses or products. The Emmy Award-nominated series features investor billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks; business mogul and brand expert Daymond John, founder of FUBU clothing line; inventor and “Queen of QVC” Lori Griener; real estate mogul Barbara Corcocran; technology innovator Robert Herjavec; and, venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary.
Sampson was tapped personally by Burnett (Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice, The Voice) to spearhead his television production company’s diversity efforts. The two had worked together on the hit television miniseries The Bible; the 10-hour drama that ran on the History Channel in March 2013. Burnett and his wife Roma Downey scripted and produced the show. Sampson served on the show’s advisory board in a diversity and inclusion role to insure conversations around people of color were authentic.
Burnett sought Sampson’s assistance when he learned the ratings for the Shark Tank revealed a larger African American and female audience on Friday night at 8 pm ET.
“The challenge he said is that most of the companies that pitch are white males,” recalls Sampson. “He decided that he wanted diversity and inclusion to be intentional not just on Shark Tank or one show but all of his properties. That is what led to me becoming the first head of diversity and inclusion inside of the organization.”
Sampson is charged with identifying and attracting a more diverse pool of inventors and entrepreneurs. “Our goal is for at least 20% of the companies that pitch on the show to be minorities.”
The Shark Tank open casting call is a great forum he says especially given that access to capital remains the most important factor limiting the launch, expansion or growth of minority-owned businesses. Moreover, less than 3% of venture capital is invested in women owned and operated enterprises; less than 1% goes to African-American run businesses.
article by Carolyn M. Brown via blackenterprise.com
(Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP)
WASHINGTON — As state health exchanges continue to announce lower-than-expected rates for health insurance, experts say both state and regional issues play a part in how much a consumer will pay for insurance beginning in January. Several factors come into play: a state’s regulations, how many insurers will participate in the state and federal exchanges, and what kind of a risk those insurers are willing to take.
“There is tremendous existing variation within the rates in the states now,” said Sherry Glied, professor of health policy and economics at Columbia University and former assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. “It’s hard to compare the old rates to the new.” Maryland’s insurance commissioner said Friday that the expected new rates for residents who will need to buy insurance starting Oct. 1 are up to 33% lower than expected, and that coverage for a 21-year-old non-smoker could cost as low as $93 a month.
In Connecticut, insurer HealthCT announced plans that would drop an average of 36% from its original proposal in the individual market; and Nevada will sell plans to young adults to cover catastrophic health situations for less than $100 a month. An HHS report released this month showed that silver health exchange plans — the lower cost plans that uninsured people are more likely to buy — are an average 18% lower than anticipated in the 11 states the department studied. “We know the rates are coming in lower than we expected,” Glied said. “They’re coming in well below the Congressional Budget Office’s estimated rates, which people thought were optimistic.”
These new rates apply only to those who are currently uninsured and who will be buying insurance through the state or federal exchanges. A health exchange or marketplace is a website that allows consumers to choose from several different private insurers. Under the 2010 health care law, Americans who buy health insurance on the state exchanges can choose from four types of plans — bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Bronze has the lowest levels of coverage and cost; platinum is the elite and most expensive. Industry surveys and records from Massachusetts, which enacted a health care law in 2006, show the overwhelming majority of people buy either bronze or silver plans.
The biggest fear for many people these days is whether their nest egg will last throughout their retirement. One way to avoid outliving your money is to work longer—on your own terms. While you may not be able to retire at 65 (or don’t want to), if you’re doing work that you enjoy in your own business, setting your own schedule, and fulfilling goals that you’ve set yourself—it may not even feel like work.
Many Baby Boomers and retirees plan to start a business or are already self-employed, and many of their businesses are turning a profit. Pursuing professional dreams while working for themselves has enabled many older self-employed workers to secure their financial future. A recent survey by AARP found 10 percent of workers ages 45 to 74 plan to start a business and 15 percent of workers in this age range are already self-employed. Some started a business due to a job loss, others had already retired but weren’t ready to fully stop working.
On average, self-employed workers who are in their 40s or 50s spend nearly two decades working for themselves, the study found. “What we see is that most of the individuals that start businesses later in life represent professional services,” said Jean Setzfand, vice president for financial security at AARP. “Whether it be lawyers or accountants, data processing that tends to be more of what we see in terms of older self-employed workers.”
Mary Parker, a 59-year-old entrepreneur, spent more than three decades navigating two challenging industries before taking the helm of her own firm. After being downsized from her job as at auto manufacturing plant early in her career, Parker saw a job opening for a security officer. Some people may have seen that as a step down from the managerial role she previously held. Yet, she saw the long-term potential of taking this position and started to learn the security business from the ground up.
“In terms of career opportunities, you never really think about a security guard being anything other than a guard. What I learned was the security industry is a very lucrative industry,” she said. While rising through the ranks in that field, she felt she would be best fulfilled if she was running her own firm. “Although my career in corporate America was very successful, I just believe that any time you work for other people there are so many limitations,” she said.
Like many self-employed workers, including Boomers, Parker focused on providing a service. In 2001, Parker founded ALL(n)1 Security Services, based in Atlanta, Ga., which provides security personnel and technology. As CEO, she runs a multi-million dollar enterprise with more than 200 employees. See video of her story below:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZCGBuYDdNA&w=560&h=315]
Parker isn’t alone in her accomplishments. Most of those surveyed by the AARP said their businesses were successful. “Once you have the life experience, you probably have a shorter pathway to being successful and that is something we’re seeing,” AARP’s Setzfand said. Nearly three-quarters of older self-employed workers surveyed by AARP indicated that their business made a profit in 2011. This may explain why 9 out of 10 self-employed older workers believe it is not likely that they will have to give up working for themselves in the next year.
Parker certainly intends to keep running her business. Thanks to a diversified portfolio of retirement funds and real estate investments, she said she could retire in a few years, but she’ll probably just keep working. “When I’m ready to retire in the next 3 to 5 years, financially I don’t have to worry about what that will look like,” Parker said. “I will not have to work, although I know I will continue to work.”
report by Sharon Epperson via nbr.com
Warner Bros Turns To Franklin Leonard's "The Black List" To Find Screenwriters In Under-Served Demos
EXCLUSIVE: After using The Black List as a way to scout screenplays worth buying, Warner Bros has made the first alliance between a major studio and Franklin Leonard‘s screenplay evaluation service. The goal is to give opportunities to scribes who might not otherwise get a chance. Using the diversity guidelines from the WGA‘s Executive Summary that shows how far out of the mainstream minorities, women and some other groups are in the makeup of working screenwriters, The Black List will recommend a short list of five writers every six months who come from what the WGA identified as an under-served scribe demographic.
One of those writers will be offered by Warner Bros a two-step blind script deal worth around $93,000. The initial plan is for this program to run for two years, which will mean deals for four writers will get a foot in the door. The first short list of writers will be turned over to Warner Bros around Thanksgiving.
“For a black kid from Georgia, I’m acutely aware of the access issues the industry struggles with, and I’m excited to be part of a first step toward addressing this,” Leonard told me. “I’m optimstic that other organizations in the industry will access this also, both for the purposes of diversity, but also for the benefit of their bottom lines.” Leonard said the program will target “primarily writers of color and women, but also older writers as well, with pre and early baby boomers falling into that category.”
The aspirants can’t have made more than $25,000 from screenwriting fees over their careers, which eliminates scribes who haven’t sold a script in a good long time. “The intent here is to find new voices, and that ceiling is similar to the one used by the Nicholl Fellowship,” said Leonard, who added the relationship with Warner Bros is non-exclusive and came out of an overture from worldwide feature film production head Greg Silverman. The studio has had luck discovering talent through The Black List; most recently it gave a blind script deal to San Francisco ad exec Richard Cordiner after reading his script about the making of the film Jaws.
Leonard is a former exec at Universal, Mirage and most recently Overbrook before he left last fall to focus full time on The Black List with partner Dino Sijamic. The service serves two roles: annually, it canvases 500 development execs to cull a Black List of the best unmade screenplays. It makes money through its team of 40 readers who evaluated about 5500 scripts in the last nine months, and features the best of those submissions in a weekly report that is circulated to 2000 industry professionals who subscribe. WGA members can list information about their scripts free of charge, and outsiders pay $25 to have their scripts uploaded. A critical evaluation of the script costs $50. Those participating in that process can opt in to the Warner Bros. program, with the information accessible through Blcklst.com.
article by Mike Fleming Jr. via Deadline.com
“For a black kid from Georgia, I’m acutely aware of the access issues the industry struggles with, and I’m excited to be part of a first step toward addressing this,” Leonard told me. “I’m optimstic that other organizations in the industry will access this also, both for the purposes of diversity, but also for the benefit of their bottom lines.” Leonard said the program will target “primarily writers of color and women, but also older writers as well, with pre and early baby boomers falling into that category.”The aspirants can’t have made more than $25,000 from screenwriting fees over their careers, which eliminates scribes who haven’t sold a script in a good long time. “The intent here is to find new voices, and that ceiling is similar to the one used by the Nicholl Fellowship,” said Leonard, who added the relationship with Warner Bros is non-exclusive and came out of an overture from worldwide feature film production head Greg Silverman. The studio has had luck discovering talent through The Black List; most recently it gave a blind script deal to San Francisco ad exec Richard Cordiner after reading his script about the making of the film Jaws.
Leonard is a former exec at Universal, Mirage and most recently Overbrook before he left last fall to focus full time on The Black List with partner Dino Sijamic. The service serves two roles: annually, it canvases 500 development execs to cull a Black List of the best unmade screenplays. It makes money through its team of 40 readers who evaluated about 5500 scripts in the last nine months, and features the best of those submissions in a weekly report that is circulated to 2000 industry professionals who subscribe. WGA members can list information about their scripts free of charge, and outsiders pay $25 to have their scripts uploaded. A critical evaluation of the script costs $50. Those participating in that process can opt in to the Warner Bros. program, with the information accessible through Blcklst.com.
article by Mike Fleming Jr. via Deadline.com