“Dolphin Tale 2” may splash ahead of thriller “No Good Deed” and four-time box office winner “Guardians of the Galaxy” this weekend.

The aquatic family film is expected to gross up to $22 million, according to people who have seen pre-release audience surveys. This would put it in a tight competition for No. 1 with “No Good Deed,” which is expected to gross $19 million to $21 million.

Meanwhile, Marvel’s “Guardians” will likely add $7 million to its $297-million gross, putting it on track to be the first film of 2014 to pass the $300-million milestone.

Though the movie industry suffered its worst May-to-Labor Day season since 1997, when factoring in inflation, the newcomers will likely help shake off the summer slump.

With the lack of family films to choose from this summer, younger audiences and families are expected to gravitate to “Dolphin Tale 2.” On Thursday, the film had notched a positive 60% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film, which stars Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman,...

Hollywood took its show to Washington this week.

Actor RJ Mitte of AMC's hit series "Breaking Bad" joined various other actors, makeup artists, costume designers and story board artists to give lawmakers a behind-the-scenes look at the "creativity, talent and innovation that drive the American film and television industry."

Titled "Beyond the Red Carpet: Movie and TV Magic Day," the Wednesday night event was billed as an industry showcase that featured various booths and exhibits at the Cannon House Office in the nation's capitol. 

Participants included a costume designer from AMC's series "Turn," a makeup artist from the SyFy series "Face Off," and supervising animators for the Elsa and Anna characters from Disney's hit movie "Frozen."

“The extraordinary range of skills and talents showcased today offers a glimpse of what the creative community does every day to bring great stories to audiences around the world," said Ruth Vitale, executive director of CreativeFuture, which advocates...

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing Hollywood actors and other performers, has struck a deal with the major studios on new contracts covering animated production.

After four days of negotiations, SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers said they had reached agreements on new contracts for television animation.

The terms of the deals will be presented to the SAG-AFTRA National Board of Directors on Oct. 12, the groups said in a joint statement.

Contract terms were not disclosed. The agreements are expected to be modeled on a master contract covering movies and prime-time TV that was approved by members in August.

That contract included modest pay rate hikes and a slight increase in contributions that producers will make to the union's pension and health plans. SAG-AFTRA is Hollywood's largest union with more than 165,000 members.

Twitter: @rverrier

U.S. advertising revenue for YouTube, the biggest Internet video website, could reach $1.13 billion in 2014, according to a report from research firm EMarketer.

That would be an increase of 39% from 2013, EMarketer said Thursday.

However, the research company estimated that YouTube's share of the U.S. digital video advertising market will decline in the face of rising competition from companies including AOL and Yahoo, which are expanding their online video businesses.

This year, YouTube's estimated market share could decline to 18.9%, compared with 21.2% in 2013, the report said.

Meanwhile, EMarketer said video ad revenue for AOL could increase 20% this year, thanks to more full-length shows, short-form videos and professionally produced programs that attract advertisers. AOL commissioned its first long-form series, "Connected," in April.

Though Yahoo's ad sales are currently in decline, they're expected to grow in 2015, EMarketer said.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, declined to...

The season premiere of Gordon Ramsay's "Hell's Kitchen" helped Fox tie NBC for No. 1 Wednesday night in the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic, according to preliminary Nielsen ratings.

However, live coverage of President Obama's 9 p.m. EDT address delayed some programming, making ratings for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox approximate.

In its two-hour run, "Hell's Kitchen" averaged a rating of 1.4 in the key demo (1.5 in its first hour, 1.3 in its second), down from last season's premiere, which earned a 2.0.

With Ramsay's reality show and the presidential address, the network averaged 4.2 million viewers, making it the third most watched overall. 

On NBC, the combination of Obama's address and "America's Got Talent" averaged 10.7 million viewers, making it the most-watched program of the night. It earned a rating of 2.0 in the key demo. 

With about 8 million viewers, the network was the most watched of the night.

Meanwhile, on CBS, "Big Brother"  once again won in the key demo, with a rating...

It's a sweltering 90-degree day, and 17-year-old Dash Dobrofsky, who normally spends his summer days hanging near Tower 26 on the beach in Santa Monica, is inside a Melrose Avenue cake shop, a crisp, white apron over his bro tank and a camera crew over his shoulder. He and his friends Jacob and Ava, each with their own unfrosted cake, are in the middle of a decorating session when things get competitive between the two male cast members of the teen YouTube reality show "@SummerBreak."

Dash sketches a black frosting mustache on his cake. Ava decorates hers with small, intricate floral designs. Jacob starts to write all three of their names on his, but then leaves out Dash. It's an Ava and Jacob cake now.

"Dash, you don't make the cut," Jacob says. "Your name doesn't fit on my masterpiece." The three friends laugh, cut into their cakes and pull out their phones. Selfie time. They click and hit "send."

But none of the photos of themselves or their cake masterpieces ever makes it to their...

A former unpaid intern for “Late Show With David Letterman” has dropped her class-action lawsuit against CBS and Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants, days after filing the suit.

The suit “is discontinued in its entirety without prejudice,” says the notice of discontinuance filed Wednesday in New York Supreme Court.

Mallory Musallam’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of six years’ worth of unpaid “Late Show” interns, accused the defendants of violating minimum-wage and overtime laws. It alleged that they intentionally minimized labor costs by giving work to unpaid interns instead of having paid employees stay extra hours or hiring additional employees to do it.

As a “Late Show” intern from approximately September through December 2008, Musallam typically worked more than 40 hours a week and did not receive any pay or academic or vocational training, the suit said. Her tasks, it says, included “research for interview material, deliver film clips from libraries, running errands,...

Some on Wall Street have been urging Time Warner to spin off its crown jewel -- HBO -- into a separate company.

But Jeff Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, said he had no intention of hiving off HBO.

"We are not going to do that," Bewkes said Wednesday during the 23rd annual Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York. 

Bewkes also said he wasn't interested in a partial IPO or setting up a tracking stock for investors who wanted to own a piece of the premium pay channel.

Instead, Bewkes said, he was more focused on having the company's three business units -- HBO, Turner Broadcasting and Warner Bros. in Burbank -- work together. Setting up a stock for HBO would be too disruptive.

Time Warner has faced pressure on Wall Street to detail its strategy to grow its earnings and share price ever since Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox made an unsolicited bid earlier this summer for Time Warner. 

Time Warner refused to entertain discussions with Fox about a takeover. Fox's bid then...

Monthly views of YouTube network Maker Studios' videos have increased to 9 billion, according to the Walt Disney Co. Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo.

That's more than double the 4 billion monthly views the Internet video company was pulling in when Disney acquired it this spring in a deal worth as much as $950 million.

Disney regards the Culver City network as "mostly a distribution play" for its entertainment franchises, Rasulo said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference on Wednesday.

"We saw that as a very obvious way for us to get our content into this short-form system and into this digital-media system in a rapid way," he said.

Indeed, buying Maker was a way for Disney to get its content into a large audience that skews young. Maker has amassed about 450 million subscribers for its channels by personalities including PewDiePie and the Shaytards.

But, Rasulo said, Disney's plans for Maker go far beyond distribution.

"We believe that Maker will be a big studio just like the...

"America's Got Talent" elevated NBC to No. 1 in the key demographic and overall, according to Nielsen.

About 9.7 million people tuned in to the Nick Cannon-hosted reality show to watch the season's top 12 acts. The episode earned a rating of 1.9 among the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic. Only six acts will advance to the finals. The winner will be announced during next week's season finale.

According to data provided by Canvs, a social TV platform created by social-media insight firm Mashwork, there were 40,204 tweets about Tuesday's episode, of which 14,648 contained reactions. "Amazing" was the most common reaction, in 57.9% of the reaction tweets, followed by "good" at 9.5%.

Performer Mat Franco was the most mentioned in tweets with reactions, with viewers expressing disbelief at his performance.

Also on NBC, the "Food Fighters" season finale earned a rating of 1.0 in the key demo, down 9% from last week. The Adam Richman-hosted show was the third-most watched of the night, with 4...

Electronics giant Sony Corp. now has rights to nearly two dozen Viacom television networks -- including BET, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon -- to include in its upcoming cloud-based TV service.

The deal, announced Wednesday, represents a new chapter for Viacom. The New York media company said the Sony deal marked the first time that it was providing its networks to an Internet-based television and video-on-demand service.

“Given our young, tech-savvy audiences, our networks are essential for any new distribution platform, and we’re excited to be among the many programmers that will help power Sony’s new service and advance a new era for television," Viacom Chief Executive Philippe Dauman said in a statement.

Cable programmers, including Viacom, have had to walk a fine line when providing their valuable content, such as "SpongeBob SquarePants," to so-called over-the-top Internet based services. 

They do not want to alienate traditional pay-TV companies, such as Comcast, Time Warner...

The 7-year-old music streaming service Deezer has amassed 16 million users, including 5 million paying subscribers, from 180 countries. Though it's the second-biggest such subscription service in the world, U.S. music listeners have never had access.

That's about to change, but the long-anticipated U.S. launch of one of Spotify's biggest rivals comes with a big asterisk.

On Wednesday, the Paris-based company said it has teamed with the wireless speaker firm Sonos for a version of Deezer that streams so-called hi-resolution audio, hoping to introduce better sounding tracks to the music streaming world.

While companies such as Spotify and Apple's Beats Music have tried to gain market share by going after general music fans, Deezer is looking for more specific customers -- those who are tired of poor audio quality from MP3s and Internet services.

It's an unusual roll-out tactic for a company looking to enter such a large music market where there already multiple popular digital music...