Month: November 2019

Worldwide royalty collections for creators of music, audiovisual, visual arts, drama and literature reached a record €9.65 billion in 2018 ($10.74 billion), according to the 2019 Global Collections Report published today by CISAC (the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers). The organization represents 232 member societies in 120 countries, totaling more than 4
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Betty McLeish (Helen Mirren) is a widow in her 70s who lives in a home full of tasteful pastel furniture in a calmly boring suburb of London. She’s sweet, pretty, pert, and polite, with glowing skin framed by an impeccable gray-white coif; if Doris Day had been a conventional middle-class Englishwoman, she might have looked
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Cinema Libre Studio has acquired Chinese drama “Enter the Forbidden City” and will release it in the U.S. in early 2020. Directed by female filmmaker Hu Mei and written by Zou Jingzhi (Zhang Yimou’s “Coming Home,” Wong Kar Wai’s “The Grandmaster”), the historical epic won the Chinese American Film Festival’s top prizes for best director
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The $16.7 billion Asia Pacific market is the world’s No. 1 box office region, commanding a 40.6% share of the global total despite trade tensions between the U.S. and China, MPA and former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd said at the Asia Society’s U.S.-Asia Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles. “Whether you like it or not,
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Amid some streamlining at Warner Bros.’ unscripted and alternative television division, Shed Media general manager Pamela Healy, Telepictures’ creative affairs exec vice president Stuart Krasnow and some development execs from each team are exiting, a source familiar with the matter has confirmed to Variety. Potential back-office efficiencies are also being considered between both groups’ operations
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Bob Weis, the president of Walt Disney Imagineering and creative executive of the Shanghai Disney Resort, has outlined a cooperative rather than competitive view of newcomers to China’s theme park industry. “A rising tide raises all boats,” Weis told Variety on the sidelines of the Asia Society’s U.S.-Asia Entertainment Summit in Los Angeles. “The more there
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London-based financier and producer Anton, which already fully finances a slate of its own feature films and short-form content, as well as co-financing big-budget TV shows like HBO/BBC’s “His Dark Materials,” is moving into the development and production of its own scripted series, Anton founder Sebastien Raybaud tells Variety. The 8-year-old company, named after Russian
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SPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Rest in Pieces,” the eighth episode of “American Horror Story: 1984.” It’s almost time for the big finish on “American Horror Story” Season 9. The penultimate episode of the “1984” season, entitled “Rest in Pieces,” started on the day before Halloween, 1989, and saw a
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Federal prosecutors have filed charges against two former Twitter employees, who are accused of working on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to access account information of dissidents. Ahmad Abouammo and Ali Alzabarah each worked for the company from 2013 to 2015. The complaint alleges that Alzabarah, a site reliability engineer, improperly accessed the
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Warner Bros. Entertainment marketing chief Blair Rich sat for a thoughtful and candid conversation about the ups and downs of an eventful year at her studio on Wednesday, when the executive was honored with Variety‘s first-ever Marketing Visionary Award. At the inaugural Visionaries Breakfast, presented by Spotify at the Sunset Tower Hotel in West Hollywood,
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In today’s film news roundup, Dean Devlin raises funds, Jason Cassidy gets a promotion and Music Box buys Werner Herzog’s documentary about Bruce Chatwin. FINANCING Dean Devlin’s Electric Entertainment has closed a $60 million syndicated corporate credit facility. SunTrust Robinson Humphrey is serving as the sole lead arranger and SunTrust Bank is the administrative agent. The
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Star power is always a draw at the American Film Market, led this year by Rachel Weisz playing Elizabeth Taylor in See-Saw’s “A Special Relationship.” It’s a roll of the dice for independently financed projects. A pair of Diane Keaton projects — “Book Club” and “Poms” — were major draws at the last two AFMs.
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November 6, 2019 3:52PM PT In today’s TV news roundup, Netflix dropped the trailer for Iliza Shlesinger’s latest comedy special and ATX Television Festival announced its first wave of programming.  FIRST LOOKS Netflix has released the official trailer for Iliza Shlesinger‘s latest comedy special, “Unveiled,“ premiering Nov. 19. In the special, Shlesinger dishes newly-wed lifestyle,
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Indie production company Hot Snakes Media, whose credits include TLC’s “Breaking Amish” and Animal Planet’s “Extinct Or Alive,” has tapped veteran media executive Colleen Conway Grogan as their senior vice president of development. Grogan will focus on expanding the company’s scripted and unscripted slates, as well as being involved in its efforts in podcasts and
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Jason Cloth, founder and CEO of Toronto-based Creative Wealth Media, is backing two major studio slates (Warner Bros. and MGM) and has committed more than $750 million to major films and TV series through its Bron Creative partnership. Notable projects include “Fences,” “The Morning Show,” “Bombshell,” “The Addams Family,” “A Simple Favor,” Tom Hanks’ “Greyhound,”
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