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December 20 - December 26

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In an increasingly tit-for-tat race for production dollars, the California Film Commission has lured Apple TV+’s Bad Monkey to relocate from Florida. The title, which will get roughly $20.6 million, was one of ten projects announced by the state’s film office on Wednesday that will receive tax credits for shooting in California. Other productions include an untitled Disney miniseries ($14.7 million), Whalefall ($10.4 million) and NCIS: Origins ($5.7 million). As runaway production and Hollywood cost-cutting threatens the state’s hold on the film and television business, Gov. Gavin Newsom in October proposed vastly increasing the cap on production tax credits from $330 million to $750 million a year. If passed, the subsidy would be the most generous offered by any state except Georgia, which doesn’t have a ceiling on the amount it gives to productions per year...

British Columbia Boosts Film Tax Credit as Battle for Hollywood Projects Grows. The tax rebate for foreign projects shot locally will jump from to 36 percent. The latest provincial budget has raised the production services tax credit for foreign projects shot locally from 28 percent to 36 percent from Jan. 1, 2025. And tentpole projects with local expenditures exceeding $200 million will receive an additional two percent bonus. The film tax credit boost follows B.C., which depends heavily on Hollywood film and TV production produced locally, feeling the impact of industry shutdowns during the pandemic and last year’s dual Los Angeles strikes. “Our province is home to one of the busiest film and TV production centers in North America,” B.C. premier David Eby said in a statement as Los Angeles productions increasingly opt to shoot outside of California in rival locales, including Canada...

A recent Pew Research Center study found that 54 percent of U.S. adults now get at least some of their information from YouTube newscasters, 25 percent of them on a regular basis. Much of the time, these MCs are providing analysis in real time, sourcing their information from across social media and the internet and relying on their audience to fill in the blanks...

Cheech & Chong are in the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry. Up in Smoke (1978), the first feature from Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong, is one of the 25 “culturally, historically or aesthetically” motion pictures selected for preservation this year, it was announced Tuesday. Among those also making the cut are Angels With Dirty Faces (1938), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Invaders From Mars (1953), The Miracle Worker (1962), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Dirty Dancing (1987), Common Threads: Stories From the Quilt (1989), My Own Private Idaho (1991), No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Social Network (2010)...

Roku is continuing to add exclusive sports rights to its streaming platform. The latest deal will make Roku the exclusive streaming home for the X Games, the extreme sports competition that was founded by ESPN but sold to private equity in 2022. The deal will kick off in January with X Games Aspen, and continue with a “major” summer competition to follow. The X Games will be available on the recently launched Roku Sports Channel, with Roku also launching an X Games FAST channel, and an X Games Zone that functions as a streaming hub for the competition....

Sony Pictures Classics has set a release date of Feb. 14 for Becoming Led Zeppelin on 1000 screens. This is after the exclusive Feb. 7, 2025 Imax one night only early screenings in 18 markets. Watch new trailer above. PREVIOUS: Sony Pictures Classics will open the docu-concert movie Becoming Led Zeppelin exclusively in Imax on February 7. You can watch the trailer above. Ahead of the release, Imax theaters will hold early-access screenings in 18 markets starting February 5. Becoming Led Zeppelin explores the origins of the iconic group and their meteoric rise in just one year against all the odds. Including psychedelic, never-before-seen performance footage, performances and music, Bernard MacMahon’s docu explores the band’s creative, musical and personal origin story. The film is told in Led Zeppelin’s own words and is the first officially sanctioned film on the group...