As Big Media becomes ever more consolidated, Studios71 is preparing to launch a flotilla of startup media businesses in the coming years. The creator services company is designed to fulfill a range of production, marketing, distribution, advertising and sponsorship sales functions for its social media star clients. The end game is to turn personalities into
The South by Southwest Music Festival has announced its initial lineup for its 38th annual event, descending on Austin, Texas from March 11-16. Organizers have revealed the first slate of 149 musicians set to perform during the festival, including Lo Moon (from Los Angeles), Cumgirl8 (New York), Omar S (Detroit), Rawayana (Caracas), Dry Cleaning (London),
Machine Gun Kelly was at the ready when a man rushed the stage during his Forbes Under 30 Summit panel. The pop-punk artist and entrepreneur, whose real name is Colson Baker, was speaking with Forbes editor Kristin Stoller at a packed Cleveland auditorium when someone entered the stage and approached him from behind. MGK leaped
It’s not just X/Twitter: The European Union also has put Meta on notice about the urgent need to address a flood of misinformation about the Israel-Hamas conflict to remain in compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act. In an Oct. 11 letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, European Union commissioner Thierry Breton did not specifically
Anonymous Content, whose recent productions include Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan’s film “Foe” for Amazon Studios, is looking to expand its international footprint, with new ventures planned in Poland, Germany and Australia, top execs announced on Wednesday. Speaking at a panel held at the MIA Market in Rome, Anonymous Content international president David Davoli and
Range Media Partners has signed filmmaker Kat Wood for representation. The U.K.-born and L.A.-based director and screenwriter was a BBC broadcast journalist before making her mark on Hollywood. Wood, who was named to Screen International’s “Stars of Tomorrow” list, has shown her proficiency as a screenwriter, setting up a high-profile genre feature every year for
Taylor Swift‘s “Eras Tour” concert film is projected to open to $100 million at the domestic box office, but the final weekend number will likely be much bigger. The movie, a cinematic rendering of the pop star’s record-breaking, three-hour stadium tour, looks to generate up to $125 million from approximately 3,850 theaters in North America,
The daughter of Stan Lee is launching a new legal fight against POW! Entertainment, the company that holds the rights to her father’s name, likeness and intellectual property. In a lawsuit filed in L.A. Superior Court on Tuesday, J.C. Lee alleges that a series of “suspicious transactions” have diluted her stake in the company. The
New-made furniture, scuffed to look vintage, rarely convinces as anything other than pastiche. Portraits painted as closely as possible to resemble the photographs on which they’re based are a similarly strange phenomenon: admiration for the painter’s skill is undercut by the sense of creative constraint. For the same reasons “The Peasants,” on which married directors
If you expect the Netflix docuseries “Big Vape: The Rise and Fall of Juul” to be the ultimate takedown of controversial e-cigarettes, think again. The four-part series, directed by R.J. Cutler and based on Time reporter Jamie Ducharme’s book “Big Vape: The Incendiary Rise of Juul,” examines all the mistakes Juul executives made, including marketing
Brainstorm Media has acquired North American rights for “Cora Bora,” a millennial comedy starring “Hacks” breakout Megan Stalter and “The Good Place’s” Manny Jacinto. The film, directed by Hannah Pearl Utt (“Before You Know It”) and written by Rhianon Jones, will be released in theaters sometime in February 2024. It follows a struggling musician named
Why did it take five months? That’s the vexing question that entertainment industry insiders are wrestling with even as they cheer the end of the Writers Guild of America strike. Union leaders said it again and again all summer — that Hollywood’s system for collective bargaining was “broken.” Turns out they were right. The economic
In 1937, Walt Disney was desperate to find a way to make “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,”the first feature-length animated movie ever made, actually feel like a feature-length movie. He’d been doing his best to ignore the naysayers who christened the very idea of the film as “Disney’s folly.” But they did trigger a
“Daredevil: Born Again” is undergoing a major creative overhaul, Variety has confirmed. The Disney+ series from Marvel Studios has recently parted ways with head writers Chris Ord and Matt Corman and is currently seeking new writers to revamp the show. Ord and Corman will still be credited as executive producers. And with less than half
Google said it will no longer claim that YouTube TV is “$600 less than cable” in its advertising, after an industry ad-review board found the assertion was potentially misleading. The YouTube TV pricing claim, which had appeared in two of Google’s ads for the service, had been challenged by Charter Communications in a fast-track complaint
Philippe Bober’s Coproduction Office, whose recent films include Jessica Hausner’s Cannes Competition title “Club Zero” and Ruben Östlund’s Palme d’Or winner “Triangle of Sadness,” has kicked off international sales on Gust Van den Berghe‘s “The Magnet Man.” The Paris and Berlin based production and sales outfit is attending this week’s MIA Market in Rome. Van
Bille August, the two-time Palme d’Or winning director of “Pelle the Conqueror,” is directing a sprawling English language series adapted from Alexandre Dumas’ classic novel “The Count of Monte Cristo” starring an international cast led by Sam Claflin (“Peaky Blinders”). “The Count of Monte Cristo” marks the first series which is entirely produced within Mediawan
All anime, all the time: Crunchyroll, the Sony-owned anime service, announced a new 24-hour free, ad-supported channel in the U.S. to promote the Japanese animation format — and try to win a few new fans for its core offerings. The first services to carry Crunchyroll’s free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel are LG Channels, the
Grab your wallets and head to Amazon, because amongst the massive discounts on skincare and hair tools (including the Dyson flat iron, no biggie), fashion brand JW PEI has marked down the prices on so many purses–including the viral Gabbi Bag, which has been spotted on the arms of A-listers like Hailey Bieber, EmRata, and
Italian distribution and production company Notorious Pictures is expanding into the TV series sphere by snapping up rights to buzzy literary property “Forbidden Notebook,” a 1952 novel by Italian-Cuban writer Alba de Céspedes that has been recently rediscovered and successfully republished in English. De Céspedes has been described by the New York Times as “a bestselling
European Union commissioner Thierry Breton has issued a warning to Elon Musk over “illegal content and disinformation” about the Israel-Hamas war on X, formerly known as Twitter, giving him 24 hours to respond. “Following the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel, we have indication that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal
Ryadh-based media conglomerate SRMG has partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to launch Asharq Discovery, a free-to-view pan-Arabic-language platform with a lineup that includes shows that have never been seen for free in Arabic before. These include international dating reality TV series “90 Day Fiancé” (pictured), reality shows “Gold Rush” and “Wheeler Dealers” and the Morgan
Brussels-based co-production and financing powerhouse Umedia — the backer of recent festival sensation “How to Have Sex” and French Oscar submission “The Taste of Things” — is branching out. Complimenting co-production, tax shelter fundraising and VFX services through subsidiary UFX Studios, Umedia has now launched a development branch to bring in-house productions to the screen.
BÉLA TARR GETS EUROPEAN FILM HONOR Legendary Hungarian director Béla Tarr will receive the Honorary Award from of the Academy President and Board at the European Film Awards on Dec. 9. “With this award the European Film Academy wishes to pay special tribute to an outstanding director and a personality with a strong political voice,
Top Japanese star Yagira Yuga (“Nobody Knows,” “Asakusa Kid”) was front and center of streamer Disney+’s plans when it gave a green light to a second season of drama-horror series “Gannibal.” The creepy show, in which Yagira portrays a damaged police detective on the heels of a gangster-like family in a troubled village, has been
ROME — Film Factory Ent. – a sales agent on “Wild Tales,” “The Clan,” “Close Your Eyes” and “The Kings of the World” – has boarded “Jokes & Cigarettes” (“Saben Aquell”), the latest movie from Spain’s David Trueba which is fast-emerging as one of Spain’s late year Goya Award contenders after a San Sebastian sneak-peek and
Some twenty aspiring film projects have been selected to participate in the inaugural edition of the Qcinema Project Market (Nov. 18-19) that this year represents and expansion of the QCinema Film Festival in The Philippines’ Quezon City. The selected titles include development projects by several of East Asia’s better known independent and art-house directors and
A former producer on “60 Minutes” is suing CBS, CBS News and parent company Paramount Global for gender discrimination, claiming that she was wrongfully terminated from the newsmagazine program. In a complaint obtained by Variety, which was filed on Tuesday in New York federal court, producer Alexandra Poolos says the network fired her after she
The competition continued to heat up during week three of “Dancing With the Stars.” Many of the pairs took on their most challenging routines yet for “Motown Night.” For some, it was all about improvements — and it was a bit easier to get a higher score, thanks to a fourth judge without dance experience, Michael
Universal’s “The Exorcist: Believer” debuted atop the U.K. and Ireland box office with £1.6 million ($2 million), according to numbers released by Comscore. In its second weekend, in second place, Disney’s “The Creator” collected £1 million for a total of £4.1 million. Also in its second weekend, in third position, Lionsgate’s “Saw X” scared up