Lego Ventures, the investment arm of the Danish toy company, named Cecilia Qvist, formerly Spotify’s global head of markets, as its new head. With Qvist’s appointment, Lego Ventures will boost its focus on two strategic investment spaces: digital play and “super-charging education,” Lego Group said in a statement. Qvist had joined Spotify in 2017 and
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Over the course of 19 seasons, “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” has documented the rise of the Kardashian-Jenner clan from a relatively unknown affluent Calabasas family to Hollywood ultra-elite. It followed in the footsteps of such reality hits as “The Hills,” “The Simple Life” and “The Girls Next Door,” and laid the foundation for fellow,
After a year in which most people were stuck indoors, it should come as little surprise that streaming platforms skyrocketed in popularity over the past 12 months. For the first time ever, subscriptions to streaming services surpassed one billion, reaching 1.1 billion globally. At the same time, box office receipts plummeted because movie theaters across
Facebook has a team of engineers working on next-generation computing devices and interfaces. The group on Thursday provided a first look at its latest prototype: a wrist-based controller that uses a combination of artificial intelligence and input from a wearer’s nervous system to interact with VR and AR environments. Initially, the prototype of Facebook’s AR
When Jeff Lima, an actor of Puerto Rican descent (“Chicago Fire”), began auditioning for television and film work, he noticed something dejecting. “Early on, I can’t tell you how many of the same characters I was going out for,” says Lima, 30, of the stereotypical hardened-Latino roles he was presented with. “Back then I tried
Hollywood producers and filmmakers think they know what audiences want after a roughly a year of being stuck in their homes, cut off from friends and family while a global pandemic raged. “People want to escape,” predicts Milan Popelka, chief operating officer of FilmNation, the company behind “Arrival” and “Late Night.” “Stories that are more
At the end of 2019, singer Jason Derulo’s career was at a low ebb. While the singer had enjoyed a string of multiplatinum singles and Teen Choice Awards in the early 2010s, he hadn’t had a major hit in several years, and an attempt at branching into acting — er, in the epic star-studded flop
The Oscar nominations announced on March 15 didn’t offer too many surprises, but the race for best picture in this unconventional year is still wide open. Here’s how one of these five nominees could win the top trophy on April 25. “Mank” (Netflix) If you’re the most nominated film of the lot — ”Mank” leads
YouTube Shorts, YouTube’s answer to popular short-form video app TikTok, is now available to a small group of U.S. users in a beta — slated to come to everyone in the next few weeks. For now, YouTube Shorts doesn’t include any ads or offer other monetization features for creators, but YouTube will begin experimenting with
As more and more artists have learned in the nearly 15 years since Spotify first launched, the way that it pays out streaming royalties is very, very complex, based on a dizzying number of factors that add up differently for each artist. On Thursday morning, the company made a welcome step toward demystifying that process
Award-winning author Paul McAuley’s acclaimed science fiction novel “Austral” is set for an epic series adaptation from Circle of Confusion Television Studios and ITV Studios’ Big Talk Productions (“Baby Driver”). “Austral” is an expansive drama set in Antarctica during the year 2098, decades after the melting glaciers have given way to a new frontier of
After relying on Regina King to tout the its Escalade and Winona Ryder and Timothee Chalamet to generate buzz for its new electric Lyriq, Cadillac is continuing down the promotional road with celebrities. Sofia Vergara, Joe Manganiello, the Jonas Brothers, Tiffany Haddish, and Twitch and Allison Holke appear in a new series of videos that
Fresh off the success of HBO Max release “It’s a Sin,” which built on the achievement of 2019’s “Years and Years,” Welsh writer-showrunner-producer Russell T. Davies is set to receive the 2021 Canneseries Excellence Award. The plaudit will be presented to Davies on March 23 during an online conversation hosted by Canneseries, the Cannes International
Vice reported nearly £160 million ($222 million) in revenues across its U.K. businesses in 2019, with “Gangs of London” producer Pulse Films driving the company’s production gains. Filings posted to the U.K.’s Companies House reveal that Vice U.K. revenues — which span Vice U.K. Limited, covering digital and Virtue, as well as Pulse Films, Vice
Peacock is unlocking the full run of “The Office” for free for one week, as NBCUniversal continues to find new ways the use the immensely popular sitcom as a carrot to draw users to its streaming service. Peacock is making all nine seasons of original series — plus special episodes and behind-the-scenes clips — available
One of the bright lights of this year’s awards season, BAFTA best actress nominee Bukky Bakray of the film “Rocks” will star in forthcoming BBC One and Netflix drama “You Don’t Know Me.” Produced by Snowed-In Production and co-produced with Netflix, the show has now begun filming in Birmingham. The project is an adaptation of Imran
The BBC has unveiled a six-year plan that will see the corporation expand key services outside of London and further afield in the U.K. with a pot of $978 million set aside for the undertaking. Going forward, a majority of the Beeb’s TV programs will be made across the country rather than primarily from London,
Hong Kong’s FilMart wrapped up its 2021 edition – and second successive wholly online edition on Thursday. Organizers reported that the four day event (March 15-18) had welcomed “nearly 7,000 industry participants from 81 countries and regions over four days, with the release and promotion of some 2,200 film and television productions.” That total was
After years of pining for Hollywood accolades, China has more to celebrate about the Academy’s nominations this year than it has in nearly a decade. But its own politics have prevented its media and many of its citizens from rejoicing. While Beijing’s submission, the propagandistic volleyball drama “Leap,” fell flat, Taiwan’s “A Sun” was shortlisted
Altered Innocence has picked up U.S. rights to Kateryna Gornostai’s debut feature film “Stop-Zemlia,” which just had its world premiere in the Generation 14plus section of the Berlin Film Festival. The film follows Masha, her two best friends, and the rest of their class through parties, field trips and romance in their last year of
The NewFronts are returning this spring with marketing pitches from more than 30 digital media companies — and, like last year’s event, the four-day series will be entirely online. The 2021 NewFronts will run May 3-6, 2021, with presentations to held from 12-4 p.m. ET each day. Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade group that
Comcast-backed Sky Studios has launched a new production outfit. Transistor Films, a wholly-owned factual and unscripted shingle, will be headed by producer Danny Tipping (pictured). The company, based in London, launches under the new label this week with executive producer Ned Parker, series producer Zoe Hines and development executive Jason Oates joining the company. Most
“Did you think you were making a French independent film?” rails literary agent Vincent (Mikaël Chirinian) in French independent film “The World After Us.” He’s angry with his callow young client, Labidi (Aurélien Gabrielli), because Labidi has abruptly changed tack on a novel that’s already been optioned, and has also changed its title to, inevitably,
Oliver Twist meets “The Death of Mr. Lazarescu” in Ferit Karahan’s sophomore feature, “Brother’s Keeper.” Set in a snowbound boarding school on the eastern edges of Turkey, the film tells the story of a boy desperate to get help for his sick friend yet stymied at every turn by bullying teachers and corrupt administrators. While
Around the same time that Emmy-nominated writer-director Sally Aitken’s latest film was debuting in the World Documentary section at Sundance, the New York Times ran a piece on the alarming decline in the worldwide shark population, citing a 70% reduction since the 1970s. It’s a statistic — possibly conservative given the underreporting from some parts
“The things of my mother’s that I kept don’t suit the place now,” says Glenda (Nia Roberts) absently as she preps dinner in her modernist sculpture of a house, set on a remote hillock. “They feel … primitive.” Lee Haven Jones’ sharp, striking Welsh-language SXSW midnight movie “The Feast” is designed as a critique of
A North American rights deal for mainland Chinese fantasy action film ‘God of War II, was one of several film sales deals struck by Hong Kong’s Media Asia at the recent European Film Market and the ongoing FilMart. Directed by Cai Cong, and starring Charles Lin, Liu Yuxi and David Wu, the film was completed
Seasonal beach towns feel haunted once balmy temperatures start to tumble. Remove the cheery masses, ice cream vendors and sizzling sands overtaken by crowds, and you’ll be left with eerily quiet streets, alongside waves echoing with distant memories of summer days. Set on one such mostly vacant (and likely fictional) island getting ready to shutter
U.S. entertainment financier Library Pictures International has struck a three-year deal to co-finance a slate of Korean-language movies from Next Entertainment World (N.E.W.). Library’s investment will include finished films, films currently in pre-production, as well as projects developed over the course of the next three years. The company was started in 2008 as a local distributor
Striking a middle ground between teen fantasy “The Craft” and deadly serious political allegory “The Handmaid’s Tale” is “Witch Hunt,” writer-director Elle Callahan’s second feature. Her first, the 2019 “Head Count,” was a strikingly assured supernatural mind-bender, albeit one a little too understated for some genre fans. By contrast, this sophomore effort is comparatively conventional