It was the night before Christmas in the United States, and I had several presents left to wrap. Thanks to my niece and nephew – both of them youngsters under the age of 10 – I also had a few complicated gifts with power issues to handle, like obscurely-sized batteries to locate and USB cables to hook up.
In other words, exactly when I should have been focused on the duties of a childless uncle – and make no mistake, children expect better gifts from an uncle with no children of his own to think about – I am instead sitting on the floor, mesmerised by the streaming download version of The Interview, the Sony Pictures comedy that has caused worldwide controversy.
A brief recap, for anyone who hasn’t followed this story for the past few weeks. And just to be clear, that’s impossible for anyone in Hollywood to fathom. We’ve been thinking and talking about nothing else since the story broke. Sony Pictures Entertainment produced and was planning to release a raucous and rude comedy, starring Seth Rogen and James Franco (both of whom have appeared in idiotic – but hilarious and successful – comedies together) about two American journalists who are somehow roped into visiting North Korea with the express purpose of assassinating its leader, Kim Jung-Un.
The picture – which I can now confirm, since I’ve been watching it for the past 45 minutes – depicts exactly that. There is an actor playing the actual, living leader of North Korea, and if the news accounts are correct his head explodes in many directions close to the end.
For its temerity in producing this film, Sony Pictures was subjected to a cyber-attack, and last week announced that it wasn’t going to release the movie at all. But last week, as anyone who has ever met a studio executive can tell you, is a long time ago.
After a blizzard of public statements, each one contradicted by the next, the brain trust that runs Sony Pictures Entertainment finally landed on a decision: the movie, which had once seemed too controversial to release into theatres (there were threats of terrorist actions in retaliation to its theme) would now be released into a limited number of cinemas and, on Christmas Eve, be available for streaming downloads over the internet.
So right when I should have been tending to my family obligations, I’m watching this ridiculous movie and I can only drum up one response.
This? This is what the whole thing has been about? This intermittently and often misaimed picture caused one of the world’s largest multinational corporations with a universally recognised brand to convulse itself in fearful contractions for the past four weeks?
Not to mention getting the US president involved, but let’s be honest: he’s going to be gone in two years, cast into irrelevancy and retirement like all the other former presidents. But Sony, it has at least another 10 or 20 years of profitable business to look forward to – or, now that I think of it, maybe a lot fewer years, now that we know exactly the kind of people who are running its movie division.
But as I sat there, surrounded by wrapping paper and scissors and Sellotape and unwrapped gifts, what I was really watching is the future of Hollywood. No, I don’t mean that Hollywood will from this point onwards allow a foreign dictator to control its slate of pictures. What The Interview has done, from a business perspective, is prove that a streaming video release, direct to the internet, is a viable way to distribute a picture.
A lot of people are going to watch this silly and inconsequential comedy – and for the record, there are some genuine (though quite off-colour) laughs in this movie – and Sony and the rest of Hollywood are about to discover just how possible it is to promote and release a major motion picture without going through the cinemas first.
And that’s ironic, because it was the cinema owners who first refused, a long, long, long two weeks ago, to show the movie in the first place. All they’ve accomplished, it will turn out, is to prove that you really don’t need to show a movie in their theatres at all.
A few of us in Hollywood – and every living soul under 35 – were baffled by how long it took Sony to come to the obvious and only solution, to realise that almost every television set in the country (and most of the developed world) is nothing more than a glorified internet-connected monitor. “Put the movie on the web” we were all shouting in unison.
It took Sony longer than it should have done to figure it out – it always takes studio executives extra time to grasp the obvious – but now that they have, it’ll be hard for them to look at the next pictures in the pipeline, controversial or no, without contemplating this kind of release.
What started as a humiliating black eye for a powerful and far-reaching movie studio may, in the end, turn out to be a watershed moment for Hollywood. And maybe even a profitable one, too.
It’s almost as if this entire episode was planned, as if this was just a piece of diabolically brilliant movie promotion.
Trouble is, I’ve met most of the people in charge over at Sony. Take my word for it: if they were that smart, they’d have made a funnier movie.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
Profile
Company name: Jaib
Started: January 2018
Co-founders: Fouad Jeryes and Sinan Taifour
Based: Jordan
Sector: FinTech
Total transactions: over $800,000 since January, 2018
Investors in Jaib's mother company Alpha Apps: Aramex and 500 Startups
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Indoor cricket in a nutshell
Indoor Cricket World Cup – Sep 16-20, Insportz, Dubai
16 Indoor cricket matches are 16 overs per side
8 There are eight players per team
9 There have been nine Indoor Cricket World Cups for men. Australia have won every one.
5 Five runs are deducted from the score when a wickets falls
4 Batsmen bat in pairs, facing four overs per partnership
Scoring In indoor cricket, runs are scored by way of both physical and bonus runs. Physical runs are scored by both batsmen completing a run from one crease to the other. Bonus runs are scored when the ball hits a net in different zones, but only when at least one physical run is score.
Zones
A Front net, behind the striker and wicketkeeper: 0 runs
B Side nets, between the striker and halfway down the pitch: 1 run
C Side nets between halfway and the bowlers end: 2 runs
D Back net: 4 runs on the bounce, 6 runs on the full
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
The biog
Hometown: Cairo
Age: 37
Favourite TV series: The Handmaid’s Tale, Black Mirror
Favourite anime series: Death Note, One Piece and Hellsing
Favourite book: Designing Brand Identity, Fifth Edition
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Gender equality in the workplace still 200 years away
It will take centuries to achieve gender parity in workplaces around the globe, according to a December report from the World Economic Forum.
The WEF study said there had been some improvements in wage equality in 2018 compared to 2017, when the global gender gap widened for the first time in a decade.
But it warned that these were offset by declining representation of women in politics, coupled with greater inequality in their access to health and education.
At current rates, the global gender gap across a range of areas will not close for another 108 years, while it is expected to take 202 years to close the workplace gap, WEF found.
The Geneva-based organisation's annual report tracked disparities between the sexes in 149 countries across four areas: education, health, economic opportunity and political empowerment.
After years of advances in education, health and political representation, women registered setbacks in all three areas this year, WEF said.
Only in the area of economic opportunity did the gender gap narrow somewhat, although there is not much to celebrate, with the global wage gap narrowing to nearly 51 per cent.
And the number of women in leadership roles has risen to 34 per cent globally, WEF said.
At the same time, the report showed there are now proportionately fewer women than men participating in the workforce, suggesting that automation is having a disproportionate impact on jobs traditionally performed by women.
And women are significantly under-represented in growing areas of employment that require science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills, WEF said.
* Agence France Presse
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Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
