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    How ‘No Other Land’ Became an Unlikely Box Office Success

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    The Oscar-winning documentary has surpassed $2 million at the box office despite the lack of a traditional distribution deal.“No Other Land” has racked up festival awards, critical acclaim and the Oscar for best documentary feature. Yet the film, a narrative exposé about Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes directed by two Palestinians and two Israelis, has not been acquired by a traditional North American distributor. This is partly a reflection of the collapse of studio interest in newsy documentaries as well as hesitance around a movie that condemns Israeli policies.But as the filmmakers rolled out the movie without the marketing muscle and prestige of a typical release, it has flourished. By the admittedly parched standards of post-pandemic theatrical releases of topical documentaries, it is a hit.“No Other Land” has been a top 25 film each of the past three weeks since its Oscar win, according to the film database Box Office Mojo, with ticket sales set to eclipse $2 million domestically by the end of next weekend. It was playing on 130 screens across the country last weekend, a small number when compared to the thousands of a studio blockbuster, but robust given its circumstances. (The film’s theatrical rights have been acquired in more than 20 other countries.)“Documentaries are having a harder time theatrically these days,” said Connie White, who has programmed “No Other Land” at a dozen theaters from Brookline, Mass., and Pleasantville, N.Y., to Tucson, Ariz., and Omaha. “This is remarkable.”At Film Forum in Manhattan, “No Other Land” sold out seven shows its opening weekend in February and a week’s worth of evening screenings after its Oscar win. It “is shaping up to be among the highest-attended films in our 55-year history,” said Sonya Chung, the cinema’s president and director.At the national Alamo Drafthouse chain, which screens studio tentpoles like “Captain America: Brave New World” and “Snow White,” “No Other Land” has been the 14th-biggest film since its Jan. 31 release, a spokesman said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Inside the Sean ’Diddy’ Combs Hotline: The Makings of a Mass Tort

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      In a room full of cubicles, workers in headsets read from their computer screens, addressing callers who dialed a 1-800 number. They have a script.“Were you or your loved one sexually abused by Sean ‘Love’ Combs, known as Diddy, Puff Daddy and P. Diddy?”“If the abuse occurred at a party, please list the name of the party. What kind of party was it?”Their employer, Reciprocity Industries, is a legal services company located in a low-slung building in Billings, Mont., more than 2,000 miles from the Brooklyn jail where Mr. Combs awaits trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.For years, the company has helped seed litigation by fielding complaints from people hurt by natural disasters, weedkillers or abusive clergy.Now it’s the central collection point for sexual assault allegations against Mr. Combs.When a call related to Mr. Combs comes in, Reciprocity employees walk callers through a questionnaire that asks them to share the details of their complaints, including potential witnesses.Janie Osborne for The New York TimesSome complaints come in through the phone, others arrive online in response to ads promoted on Facebook and Instagram. (A news conference where a backdrop displayed the hotline in large red numbers made headlines last October.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Ye’s Website Selling T-Shirts With Swastikas Is Taken Down

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      A commercial for the shirts aired in some local markets during the Super Bowl, days after the rapper and designer called himself a Nazi on social media. The website was taken down Tuesday.Ye, the rapper and designer formerly known as Kanye West, aired a commercial in some markets during the Super Bowl that promoted a website selling a single product: T-shirts with swastikas.In the 30-second commercial, Ye appears to be filming a close-up of his face while lying in a dentist’s chair. “I spent, like, all the money for the commercial on these new teeth,” he said, smiling into the camera. “So, once again, I had to shoot it on the iPhone.”Ye then directs people to his online store, Yeezy.com, which was selling only one item as of early Tuesday: a $20 white T-shirt with a black swastika. According to Variety, when the commercial aired Sunday night, the website was selling a range of non-branded clothing, but shortly after it was selling only the shirt with the swastika.On Tuesday morning, the website for his store appeared to have gone offline, replaced by a message that said, “This store is unavailable.” A spokesperson for Shopify, the online platform that processes the website’s orders, said that Ye’s online store “did not engage in authentic commerce practices and violated our terms so we removed them from Shopify.”The ad aired days after Ye unleashed a rant on social media in which he called himself a Nazi and professed his love for Adolf Hitler. He later deactivated his X account.On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League condemned the commercial, writing on X that “there’s no excuse for this kind of behavior.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Television

      How Going to Commercial During the Super Bowl Works

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      Television commercial breaks are the bane of every N.F.L. fan. They interrupt a game already riddled with stoppages, bombard viewers with come-ons and force fans and players in the stadium to stand around for about two and a half minutes, sometimes in the freezing cold.Yet commercials are the lifeblood of the N.F.L. Without them, broadcasters could not afford to pay the league billions of dollars for rights fees, money that goes to paying players’ salaries and much more.Most games have 18 commercial breaks. A few timeouts, like at the end of the first and third quarters and at the two-minute warnings, are fixed. The league and networks avoid taking breaks if a team’s opening drive of the game ends quickly, because they want fans to settle into the broadcast. If all goes well, the last commercials run at the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter.Most commercial breaks, though, are chosen in real time as league executives, network producers and officials on the field look for natural breaks in the action. Finding them is more art than science because every game unfolds differently, with long drives, three-and-outs, injury timeouts and coaches’ challenges.League officials sit in the press box during games and help determine when to take commercial breaks.Caroline Gutman for The New York Times“Our fans know that the commercial breaks are coming,” said Mike North, vice president of broadcast planning and scheduling at the N.F.L. “The whole idea from where we sit is to try to use those breaks to cover downtime: resetting the field after a score; if there happens to be an injury, hopefully a minor one; or an instant replay review when the referee goes to the sideline.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      The Best and Worst Super Bowl Commercials, Ranked

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      Here is our critic’s evolving survey of this year’s Super Bowl commercials, from best to worst.Here is my annual critical ranking of the Super Bowl commercials. This is the pregame edition, with all the available national ads that I could track down; the list will be updated after Sunday’s game.The trends so far? Nothing controversial, as you would expect, but also — and perhaps for associated reasons — very little creativity. It’s a bad year for ads; the ones at the top of this list aren’t much better than average. More spots than usual depend entirely on the appeal of a relatable celebrity (who is almost certainly male). Concepts beat ideas — there is a lot of fussy, overly complicated silliness and not much in the way of simple, effective storytelling or mood setting.(You may not see every commercial listed here during the game, and you may see commercials not listed here. The various broadcast and streaming platforms will carry different selections of ads, and some ads will only be shown in certain regions.)No. 1National Football LeagueN.F.L.The N.F.L.’s own feel-good promo, “Somebody,” is affecting in a highly produced, can’t-we-all-just-get-along manner. Its implicit endorsement of diversity and inclusion offers a muted contrast to the league’s decision to forgo the “End Racism” end-zone slogan.No. 2Stella ArtoisWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Wicked’ and the Merchandising Juggernaut That Eclipses ‘Barbie’

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      The new movie’s tie-ins are the logical endpoint for a Broadway show that always intended to be huge. The “Wicked” product line ranges from Mattel versions of Glinda and Elphaba, far left, to tumblers and Crocs, all sticking to the green-and-pink color scheme of the show and film.Mattel; Stanley; CrocsIt started with the dolls.As a longtime fan of “Wicked” who grew up collecting Barbies, I was immediately intrigued by the Mattel creations resembling Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo in the movie version of the Broadway musical. They were perfectly rendered in likeness and even sang snippets of “Popular” and “Defying Gravity.” I’ll admit, I coveted them.But that was just the beginning of the “Wicked” merchandise. Soon my Instagram and X feeds were inundated with pink and green collaborations. Some made sense in the context of both the movie and the stars. Why, of course Grande’s R.E.M. Beauty brand would feature a line of “Wicked”-inspired goods. She might as well promote both her performance and her entrepreneurial venture at the same time.Other “Wicked” products ranged from the functional to the positively ridiculous, but they all contributed to the sense that “Wicked” was absolutely everywhere, making it perhaps one of the most marketed movies in recent memory, surpassing even the hot pink inundation of “Barbie” last year.I discovered many of these via the X account Wicked News Hub, which posts every tiny update about the film and its promotional path. It is run by a lawyer in Manchester, England, who started it out of a love of all things Grande. (He asked to keep the identity behind the account private.) “Although I expected a lot of collaborations, from tracking ‘Wicked’ news over the years, even I was surprised by the incredible amount of collaborations and goodies,” he wrote in an email.There are “Wicked” versions of the TikTok-popular Stanley Cups, which according to some reports caused pandemonium when they were released in Target. They seem like your standard drinking vessel, but the film promotion capitalized on the fervor. There are “Wicked”-themed Crocs. (The Glinda ones have heels.) There are “Wicked” clothing lines for the Gap, H&M, Bloomingdale’s and Forever 21. You can buy “Wicked” Legos and “Wicked” Monopoly. There are even “Wicked” hair dryers. (The Mattel dolls weathered a minor controversy when the packaging accidentally bore the URL for a porn site, not the movie.)Starbucks has an enormous “Wicked” line that includes bedazzled tumblers and two themed drinks: Glinda’s Pink Potion and Elphaba’s Cold Brew. While getting a boring plain latte, I sampled the Elphaba, assuming the Glinda would hurt my teeth. It was minty.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Paramount Takes Promotional Stunt to New Level for ‘Gladiator II’

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      The studio plans to air the same 60-second trailer on 4,000 TV, radio and digital channels on Monday.For a snapshot of what movie marketers think it now takes to get the public’s attention — even for a sequel to a popular movie — consider the astounding stunt that Paramount Pictures has planned for “Gladiator II.”On Monday at 9 p.m. Eastern, Paramount will debut a final 60-second trailer for the film on more than 4,000 television networks, digital platforms, local stations, Spanish-language outlets and radio stations simultaneously.Based on average audience totals for a Monday evening, the trailer could reach roughly 300 million potential customers, according to Marc Weinstock, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution. “We aimed to create a big moment to match the scope and grandeur of Ridley Scott’s epic film,” Mr. Weinstock said.The promotional tactic is known as a roadblock, and marketers have used them for decades. But the number of channels is typically much smaller. In what was described by Variety magazine in 2009 as the largest roadblock ever, Sony Pictures Entertainment simultaneously aired ads for the disaster movie “2012” on 450 television networks.Mr. Weinstock would not say how much Paramount is spending on Monday’s stunt. According to a “Gladiator II” producer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with the studio, the airtime was relatively inexpensive to purchase — about $2 million in total, with a spot during “Monday Night Football” as the most expensive. Wavemaker, a media agency, helped Paramount coordinate the effort.Marketing a movie used to require little more than buying ads on NBC on a Thursday night when millions tuned in to watch shows like “ER” and “Friends.” With the intense fracturing of the media landscape, however, studios have been forced to conjure up ever more provocative ways to grab attention. A single premiere? How quaint. Paramount staged “Gladiator II” red carpets in Australia, Japan, Ireland, France, Denmark and Britain in recent weeks. On Monday, a premiere in Los Angeles will involve the construction of a faux coliseum on Hollywood Boulevard.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in Music

      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Empire: Winnowed, but Still Weighty

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      The music mogul’s business portfolio has shrunk, in part because of multiple sex abuse allegations, but his wealth remains a critical factor as his criminal case unfolds.In arguing to keep Sean Combs in jail until his trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, prosecutors have portrayed him as a lavishly wealthy, well-connected music mogul who would be well positioned to flee. In court papers, prosecutors cited media reporting that estimated his wealth at close to a billion dollars.But as Mr. Combs’s reputation has unraveled amid a wave of high-profile lawsuits and criminal charges, so has his business portfolio. Once a major brand ambassador and chairman of a media platform, he has been forced to withdraw from those roles. In June, several months before Mr. Combs was indicted, Forbes estimated his net worth at $400 million, down from $740 million in 2019.Mr. Combs’s fortune has been at the forefront of his public persona since the 1990s, when the success of his hip-hop and R&B label, Bad Boy Entertainment, meant he was known as much for his high-flying, champagne-popping lifestyle as the music he produced.One year ago, Mr. Combs, who is known as Diddy, was at the helm of an ever-growing portfolio: He was a record label founder, a liquor promoter, a cable TV and digital media chairman, a philanthropist and a fashion executive with a label called Sean John.Mr. Combs has gained prominence as a record label executive, a liquor promoter and the founder of a cable TV and digital media platform.From left: Theo Wargo/WireImage, via Getty Images; Stan Honda/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Revolt TV“He was a larger-than-life marketer,” said Dessie Brown Jr., an entertainment consultant who long viewed Mr. Combs as a model for building a career. “He always talked about being like a ringleader in a circus.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Music

      How Levi’s Turned a Beyoncé Song Into an Ad Campaign

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      The denim brand was looking for ways to sell more apparel to women, and the megastar gave them a natural spokeswoman thanks to a song on “Cowboy Carter.”Kenny Mitchell, the chief marketing officer at Levi Strauss & Co., knew his team needed to move fast after Beyoncé released the track list for her album “Cowboy Carter” in March. Out of the 27 songs listed, one provided the denim brand’s marketing department with a huge opportunity: “Levii’s Jeans.”While in Paris to celebrate his wife’s 50th birthday, Mr. Mitchell was communicating across time zones with his team back at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to figure out how they could capitalize on the moment. When the songs dropped that week, Levi’s had landed on adding an extra I to the brand’s Instagram name, as Beyoncé had with her song.Still, Mr. Mitchell thought the brand could go further.“Once that album came out, it was obviously a moment where we said, Hey, maybe we can start to have some conversations about whether a deeper partnership makes sense,” Mr. Mitchell said.Soon after, Levi’s reached out to Beyoncé and her team. The two camps had already worked together on various campaigns and creative projects over the years. She had worn their jeans when she was a member of Destiny’s Child in the early 2000s, making Levi’s one of the first brands to collaborate with the group, and she continued to incorporate the brand in her solo career..What soon became apparent for executives at Levi’s after the release of “Cowboy Carter” was that Beyoncé could be the key to achieving one of the company’s top strategies: convincing more women to shop the brand.A third of Levi’s shoppers are women. The plan, executives say, is to bump that to 50 percent.Levi’s has tried several strategies over the years to appeal to women, including a line called Lady Levi’s.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More