Flower boxes plan had holes in it
A LONDON short-films specialist is on course to land its best Oscars season ever for boxoffice takings.
Distributor Shorts International said the nominees in the three short-film categories — live action, animated and documentary — had landed $1 million over their opening weekend.
Last year the nominated shorts took $3.5 million between nominations and the movie awards ceremony.
This year’s nominees include Pixar animation Bao, pictured, and Lifeboat, a documentary on volunteers plucking refugees out of the sea.
Shorts International, which also owns the ShortsTV channel, will release the films onto 600 screens across Europe, the US, Canada, Latin America, South Africa and Australia.
The Oscars are on February 24. AS FLOWER deliveries company Bloom & Wild prepares for a busy Valentine’s Day, co-founder Aron Gelbard recalls a costly early lesson. He’d slashed the price of its slimline packaging by buying 1000 boxes in bulk. But the first 20 flower deliveries all turned up mouldy. “We hadn’t thought to ventilate our boxes,” he says in private equity firm Piper’s latest How I Grew My Brand podcast. “We had to throw away the remaining 980.” Schoolboy...
CHELSEA’S Sydney Arms, known as London’s racing pub and a haunt of the sport’s big names including Richard Hannon and John McCririck, is on the market again, this time with an asking price of £3.05 million. That’s £500,000 more than it changed hands for little more than three years ago, when Greene King sold the freehold to an Italian private investor. The pub is let on a long-term lease to the Thoroughbred Pub Co, whose directors include Richard Morecombe, co-founder of broker and investment bank Whitman Howard. Agent Coffer Corporate Leisure has the job of selling it, but given there’s been no racing for the past six days due to the equine flu outbreak, trade must be a bit quiet.
CRYPTO has its critics but Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is still a believer. Asked on Twitter how much bitcoin he holds, Dorsey coyly said “enough” but did vouchsafe that he shunned other virtual currencies. Bitcoin has collapsed in the past year but, with an estimated worth of some $5 billion (£3.9 billion), presumably he can take the hit. When the topic moved on to his preferred tipple, Dorsey chose red wine — presumably after checking his portfolio.
TAKEABAO LONDON SHORT-FILMS FIRM SET FOR RECORD OSCAR TAKINGS