1. Low-budget horror film The Purge is expected to come away with a $35 million opening weekend, more than ten times the film’s production budget of $3 million. The Purge grossed $17 million on Friday and was #1 at the box office this weekend. Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing opened strong as well, grossing more than any limited release since The Place Beyond the Pines.  Much Ado About Nothing is one of several recent films, including Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha and Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, shot in black-and-white.

2. News reports this week have revealed that the U.S.’s National Security Agency has been data mining from major internet and social media companies, in addition to monitoring Verizon phone records of U.S. citizens. So far, nine media companies are alleged to have cooperated in the PRISM program: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, AOL, and Apple. Many have denied having any knowledge of PRISM .

3. AT&T joins DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Guggenheim Partners, Yahoo and a handful of other entities as potential bidders for ownership of Hulu. Reports suggest that AT&T may join with former News Corp. head Peter Chernin’s Chernin Group to purchase the company together. Bids for Hulu have reportedly ranged from $500 million to $1 billion depending on stipulations regarding content deals with the present owners of the company, Disney/ABC and News Corp.

4. A company named MiKandi produced the first pornographic app designed for Google Glass. Google responded by banning pornographic apps, defined by the company as “Glassware content that contains nudity, graphic sex acts or sexually explicit material.” On a related note, fearing that the head-mounted display technology would enable cheating and card-counting, New Jersey casinos have banned the use of Google Glass. Somewhat ironically, use of Google Glass was also restricted from a recent Google shareholders meeting.

5. A new study by the Council for Research Excellence and financed by Nielsen reveals that online streaming services like Netflix and Hulu provide the majority of mobile television consumption on smartphones and tablets. Netflix and Hulu accounted for 64% of TV watched on smartphones and 54% on tablets, while broadcast and cable network’s websites or online applications accounted for only 26% of mobile TV watching.

6. On June 6^th, American film actress Esther Williams passed away at the age of 91 in Beverly Hills. Williams was a competitive swimmer who became a MGM contract star in the 1940s. According to The New York Times, Williams was one of the top 10 box-office Hollywood stars in 1949 and 1950. Her films at MGM often involved spectacular swimming sequences, many choreographed by Busby Berkeley.

7. At Cannes, Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adele – chapitre 1 & 2) won the Palme D’Or by a unanimous vote from a jury headed by Steven Spielberg. Though critics have generally responded favorably to the film, some prominent voices have criticized the film’s graphic sex scenes for reproducing, or being constructed according to, a hetero-normative male gaze. Manohla Dargis and Julie Maroh, author of the graphic novel on which the film is based, have both voiced opposition to the film’s sexual representation of the lesbian couple.

8. The penultimate episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones, “Rains of Castamere,” shocked fans and resulted in a flurry of press about the episode’s graphic violence. Popular news outlets weighed in on the episode as one of the most violent in TV history. Author George Martin explained his reasoning behind writing the “Red Wedding” chapter in interviews.

9. Amazon Studios announced that they would produce five original series available exclusively on Amazon Prime. These include, ‘Alpha House,’ a political satire created by Garry Trudeau, starring John Goodman, and ‘Betas,’ a comedy about “young entrepreneurs attempting to make it big in techland.”

10. In Netflix-related news, the trailer for Netflix’s newest original series, ‘Orange is the New Black,’ is now available online. The series, which is about a bourgeois Brooklyn woman’s stint in a female prison, will debut on July 11 with all 13 episodes available to stream. Netflix also recently did not renew their licensing agreement with Viacom, leaving Netflix subscribers bereft of kid-friendly programs like ‘Dora the Explorer’ and ‘Spongebob Squarepants.’  In response, Amazon struck a licensing deal with Viacom for Prime Instant Video. In addition to the kid-friendly fare, Amazon also plans to make available other Viacom titles like ‘Workaholics’ and MTV’s ‘Awkward’ on Instant.

1. The 66^th annual Cannes Film Festival wrapped up on Sunday, with Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color (French title: La Vie d’Adèle – chapitre 1 & 2) taking top honors, winning the Palme D’Or. The French film is the first adaptation of a graphic novel to win top honors at Cannes. Joel and Ethan Coen’s Inside Llewyn Davis came in second place in competition, earning the Grande Prix.

2. Other awards in competition included the Camera D’Or prize, awarded for best first feature film, which went to Singaporean filmmaker Anthony Chen for Ilo Ilo. The Prix du Jury went to Like Father, Like Son directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu. Best director (Prix de la Mise en Scene) was awarded to Amat Escalante’s Heli, and best screenwriter to Jia Zhangke for A Touch of Sin.  Berenice Bejo and Bruce Dern both received awards for acting performances, in Ashgar Farhadi’s The Past and Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, respectively. Dern beat out Michael Douglas, who was favored to take best actor honors. (Incidentally, Soderbergh’s Behind the Candelabra won no awards in competition, but brought in 2.4 million HBO viewers on Sunday night.)

3. Awards were also given in the festival’s sidebar competitions. The Missing Picture, by Cambodian director Rithy Panh, took the Un Certain Regard prize. The top award in the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar went to Guillaume Galliene’s Me, Myself and Mum. A student at the Art Institute of Chicago, Anahita Ghazvinizadeh, won the Cinefondation competition awarded for the best student film. Ghazvinizadeh will receive €15,000 ($19,555) and the opportunity to screen a feature film at a future Cannes festival.

4. Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color has initiated much discussion about the jury’s inclination this year toward pictures with unconventional or challenging stylistics and thematics. A story of a teenage woman’s lesbian romance, Blue is the Warmest Color, features extended graphic sex scenes between the two characters, leading some to defend the film against claims that it is a “blue” film. Moreover, Blue is the Warmest Color was one of several LGBT-themed films to receive recognition at Cannes. Alain Guiraudie’s sexually explicit thriller, Stranger By the Lake, won the award for best queer film and the Best Director prize in the Un Certain Regard sidebar. In addition, Gallienne’s French-language Me, Myself and Mum tells the autobiographical story of a boy who grows up identifying as female. As mentioned above, the film won the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar.

Blue is the Warmest Color (La Vie d’Adèle – chapitre 1 & 2)

5. Speaking of the Palme D’Or winner, Sundance Selects has reportedly acquired Blue is the Warmest Color for U.S. distribution, but no release date has been announced. Sundance Selects has also purchased U.S. distribution rights to Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Like Father, Like Son, a melodrama about two families who discover their young sons were switched at birth. Like Father, Like Son is the first Japanese film to win the Jury Prize in over 25 years. Sundance Selects’ acquisition continues the company’s relationship with that director, as sibling company IFC Films has released two of Kore-eda’s films in the past, Still Walking (2008) and Nobody Knows (2004). Sundance Selects’ other acquisitions include Clio Barnard’s The Selfish Giant, which won the Europa Cinemas Label for the best European film, and Francois Ozon’s Young & Beautiful. The company also pre-bought U.S. distribution rights to the Dardennes’ Two Days, One Night starring Marion Cotillard. The film is currently in pre-production.

6. Not to be outdone, The Weinstein Company acquired six films at Cannes in addition to two acquisitions for Radius-TWC, the company’s “multi-platform arm.” Pre-buys included U.S. distribution rights to the Todd Haynes-directed Carol, which will be based on a Patricia Highsmith novel. Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska are slated to star. Other TWC pre-buys included distribution rights for Suite Francaise in multiple territories including North America, Latin America, Russia, Germany, and Australia. Suite Francaise will be directed by Saul Dibb and will star Michelle Williams. In addition, after screening only seven minutes of a promo reel, TWC paid $6 million for rights to Philomena . The Stephen Frears-directed film stars Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. Finally, The Weinstein Company acquired Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film, The Young and Prodigious Spivet, an English-language 3D release, whose trailer and one sheet were recently made available online.

7. Despite comments from buyers that the festival offered fewer “surefire titles,” Lionsgate reportedly broke a Cannes market record by earning more than $250 million in foreign sales, up 50 percent from the company’s sales last year at the festival. Lionsgate sold foreign territory rights to 9 features including the final two films of The Hunger Games series and Roman Polanski’s Venus in Fur, which was in competition. The company also made acquisitions of its own. Lionsgate reportedly paid over $2 million for U.S. rights to the English-language Blood Ties, directed by Guillaume Canet and starring Clive Owen.

The Lunchbox

8. Sony Pictures Classics purchased North American rights to The Lunchbox, winner of the Viewer’s Choice award at Critics’ Week. The film is directed by Ritesh Batra and features Life of Pi star Irrfan Khan. SPC, who distributed A Separation in the U.S., also picked up Farhadi’s The Past. The company will also handle U.S. distribution for Jim Jarmusch’s late entry to the festival, the retro-cool vampire pic Only Lovers Left Alive, which stars Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston and received positive response at the festival.

9. Here are some other distribution deals: Magnolia Pictures acquired the U.S. rights to a Western film with the promising title of Bone Tomahawk, the first feature by director S. Craig Zahler. Kurt Russell and Peter Sarsgaard are slated to star in the film. Ryan Gosling’s first directing effort, How to Catch a Monster sold in over 20 territories, with Warner Bros. purchasing the U.S. rights to Gosling’s film. CBS Films paid $4 million for domestic distribution rights to the Coen Bros.’ Grande-Prix winning Inside Llewyn Davis. Though not acquired at Cannes, Sophia Coppola’s much-anticipated The Bling Ring will premiere stateside at the Seattle Film Festival and then open on June 14. A24 will distribute the film.

10. Of course, the films were not the only newsworthy events at the festival. Cannes’ black-tie red carpet provided endless grist for the fashion mill. Leonardo DiCaprio auctioned off a seat on his upcoming trip to the moon for $1.5 million. Finally, not one, but two (non-Bling Ring related) jewel heists occurred, leaving luxury joaillier Chopard bereft of over $1 million in jewelry.

Despite the modest budget, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus hoped Superman IV would function as a blockbuster for their independent company, Cannon Films. Superman IV, along with the Stallone vehicle Over the Top (1987), were Cannon’s highest budgeted films of 1987, at around $25-$30 million including prints and advertising costs. A quasi-“mini-major”, Cannon specialized in cheap action films typically budgeted at around $5 million, featuring action stars like Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson. Cannon’s stated production strategies centered on supplying the international market with American films that could be sold abroad based on star recognition. Moreover, Cannon did not rely on a few pricey films as most of its studio competitors did. Instead, the company released as many as 30 films a year, banking on quantity over quality.  Superman IV’s higher budget, though modest by industry norms, was a departure for Cannon.

For Superman IV, Golan and Globus purchased rights for the film from producer Alexander Salkind for a reported $5 million. Cannon was also able to sign on actors Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, and Margot Kidder for the fourth film, no small feat considering Reeve swore off all Superman roles after Superman III (1983). Golan and Globus convinced Reeve to star in the film by allowing him creative input; Reeve received a screenwriting credit and Golan and Globus agreed to produce Reeve’s personal project, Street Smart (1987).

Cannon Films was infamous in Hollywood at the time for their unconventional methods of financing. For one, Cannon was one of the first independent companies in the 1980s to exploit the growing home video market, as Frederick Wasser has noted. Moreover, Cannon took a particularly aggressive approach to pre-sales of theatrical, TV, and home video rights, focusing on foreign sub-distributors. In fact, pre-sales covered as much as 90 percent of Cannon releases’ negative cost, often before production was completed. As one might expect, Cannon had a particularly prominent, sometimes infamous, presence at industry sales events like Cannes and MIFED, where Golan and Globus shopped finished films as well as promo reels of films in production. Yoram Globus summed up Cannon’s strategy in a 1986 interview in the Los Angeles Times: “Cover the downside, dream on the upside and run it as a business.”

Golan and Globus funded much of Superman IV through pre-sales agreements. In April of 1986, Cannon secured a contract of over $100 million with Viacom International, parent company of Showtime, which gave Viacom exclusive broadcast rights to select Cannon films, including Superman IV, not yet in production. Cannon also struck a deal with Warner Communications, Inc., in 1986. Warner purchased all domestic distribution rights–theatrical and ancillary–ain U.S. and Canada. Pre-sales agreements such as these provided the funds to amortize production costs and saved Cannon the $3-$5 million cost of prints and advertising which Warner, as domestic distributor, would pay.

Superman IV performed fairly well on opening weekend in July of 1987. In the U.S., the film opened on a whopping 1,500 screens and brought in around $5 million, ranking fourth at the box office that weekend. In the UK, the film fared slightly better, opening at number two. In the long run, however, the film’s earnings were less than impressive, bringing in $16 million domestically and ranking 69^th among the domestic highest-grossing films of 1987. Abroad, too, distributors complained that they would likely not go into profit with the film. Reviews were also lukewarm. Janet Maslin of The New York Times criticized the special effects as “perfunctory” and “chintzy” and the cinematography “sloppy.”

By 1987 and 1988, Cannon was in dire financial straits due to many box office misses, including Superman IV, a series of risky investments in UK theaters, and bookkeeping practices that overestimated earnings from ancillary markets. As a result, Cannon was more than $200 million in debt and nearing bankruptcy. Warner bailed Cannon out in 1987, purchasing much of the company’s library as well as common stock. Rights to the Superman franchise, licensed to Cannon, were returned to the Salkinds at that time as well. Superman IV was in many ways a smart buy for an independent like Cannon, allowing Golan and Globus to exploit a well known property and star. Though Cannon was able to cover costs through pre-selling the film to domestic and international distributors, pre-selling subsequent rights diminished the company’s ability to reap profits.  Moreover, disappointing opening weekend box office suggested that ancillary markets would likely not make up for theatrical losses. Even Clark Kent couldn’t save Cannon from years of  risky expansion and low-reward pre-sales ventures.