San Francisco, October 18, 2011—Dolby Laboratories, Inc., (NYSE: DLB) today enabled the first discrete 7.1-channel surround sound entertainment experience available to streaming media using Dolby® Digital Plus audio. VUDU, a leading subscription-free, video-on-demand movie service and wholly owned subsidiary of…

Movie moguls usually have to grit their teeth during the media company quarterly earnings season as they begrudgingly acknowledge the bombs they had to write off. But the 3Q reports that will begin to come out in two weeks could be different, RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank says this morning. Only one film from…

Disney Announces Two New Pixar Films Who needs Comic-Con when you can do it yourself? That must be exactly what Disney is thinking as it continues its massive second annual Disney D23/ Expo, the “ultimate fan event” taking place all weekend long at the Anaheim Convention Center right next to Disneyland (the name…

A spokesman for DEG: The Digital Entertainment Group says the trade organization didn’t deliberately choose a Friday afternoon to release its dreary new report about consumer spending on home entertainment in the first half of 2011. But from a PR perspective it probably doesn’t hurt to bury news that shows VOD and…

UPDATE: Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films confirmed this Summer 2011 milestone: that the franchise’s fourth film Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides crossed $1 billion in global box office Saturday.  The global cume through Sunday is $1,007.7B, with an estimated $774M of that coming from…

SATURDAY PM/SUNDAY AM, 5TH UPDATE: After last weekend’s disappointing outcome for Green Lantern, Summer 2011 returns with big-time North American grosses. But both Disney’s Cars 2 and Sony’s Bad Teacher cooled off Saturday after a hot Friday. Expect an overall moviegoing total of $176M, up +6% from last year. Here’s…

Clearly, people around the globe are starved for entertainment. For those of you keeping score, Pirates Of The Caribbean 4‘s cume to date is Domestic $221.6M and International $735.2M for a worldwide total of $956.8M. It now stands as the 10th-biggest release of all-time on a worldwide basis, passing Harry Potter And T…

It won’t be a good day on the Disney lot. Today, the studio will tell just under 200 staffers that they are being laid off. Deadline told you this was coming, as part of a restructuring effort, with most of those layoffs coming in theatrical and home video distribution. The fact that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Strang…

UPDATE, 3:30 PM: Things were fine for RealD, until executives started talking. The company’s stock price initially jumped in after-hours trading following a surprisingly strong earnings report. That would be a welcome change for the company whose stock value has dropped more than 29% since mid-May. But investor…

Looks like May wasn’t so bad for movie studios after all. Five of the month’s eight major theatrical releases tracked by SNL Kagan are poised to be profitable. Averaged together, each of the films will generate $464.7 million from theaters, home video, and TV sales. That’s 2.13 times the films’ estimated average cost…

Analyst Richard Greenfield of Wall Street’s BTIG has long been skeptical of claims by Jeffrey Katzenberg and James Cameron that 3D would do wonders for the movie business. But now Greenfield says that 3D is actually hurting the industry: “U.S. consumers are increasingly rejecting 3D movies,” he said in a report today…

Walt Disney Pictures’ Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is staying in the Disney family for its TV window. Cable network ABC Family has acquired the rights to the movie from Disney-ABC Domestic Television. The film, which opened this weekend with $90.1 domestically and $346.4 worldwide, is slated to premiere…