Garry Shandling, the writer, actor, producer and comedian best known for his long-running and influential HBO series The Larry Sanders Show and his groundbreaking sitcom It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, died today at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 66. No cause of death was released. Shandling was born…

One day before The Avengers opens big in North America, Marvel has been hit with a merchandise lawsuit. The lawsuit is over the "Iron Man's Lair Play Box" – or rather, the lack of it. Box-A-Mania are claiming that Marvel Entertainment knowingly misrepresented licensing rights that it held and its ability to execute…

UPDATE, 3:10 PM: CEO Bob Iger told analysts that Disney hasn’t seen much change in consumer spending plans as a result of the stock market gyrations and recession talk over the last few days. He adds that he doesn’t think that price discounting at the theme parks is “something we’ll have to do quickly.” In the…

The movie moguls hate it whenever their studios are judged by market share. Which is why it’s so much fun to spotlight at the end of the year. Final figures aren’t in yet, but the order isn’t going to change: Warner Bros is No. 1 (for the third straight year), followed by Paramount, then Fox, then Disney, then Sony…

UPDATE: The Walt Disney Co was the last major studio and network to report quarterly earnings, and its fiscal 3rd quarter profit rose 40% on the strong box office grosses from Pixar’s Toy Story 3, Marvel’s Iron Man 2, and Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland 3D. As promised, here is an earnings roundup showing that Big Med…

The Warner Bros/Legendary Pictures’ Inception is now only the 5th film this year to gross over $100M in its first week of release joining Toy Story 3, Alice In Wonderland, Iron Man 2, and the Twilight Saga: Eclipse. But it’s the only 2D original film to do so. Warner Bros says the official number going into today…

HOLLYWOOD, CA (June 29, 2010) – Paramount Pictures announced today the studio has crossed the $1 billion mark at the domestic box office, making it the first studio to accomplish the milestone this year. This marks the fourth year in a row that Paramount was the first studio to cross that plateau. Something no studio…