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Spotify Rethinks Rich Talent Deals
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Business
Behind Disney’s Activist Investor Battle: A Marvel Mogul’s Revenge Play
As activist shareholder Nelson Peltz presses a long-shot fight for a seat on Disney’s corporate board, with help from former Marvel honcho Ike Perlmutter, Bob Iger appears to be solidifying his control.
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Business
Attack of the Chatbots: Screenwriters’ Friend or Foe?
Even as products like ChatGPT make advances, top film and TV writers are skeptical that the tech imperils their livelihoods, but some think talent advocates should be proactive about setting rules of engagement for writers.
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Business
A New Era of Noncompetes May Shake Up Hollywood Contracts
If an FTC proposal goes into effect, most contract clauses that bar executives from being hired by rivals could be outlawed: "It would truly be a sea change."
Latest Business
Why a Video Game Studio Is Banking on a TikTok Star to Introduce a Franchise
The timeline for a successful video game franchise usually goes like this: The game comes out and soon becomes popular among players. Avid fans start creating content inspired by the game and their favorite characters, helping bring that IP into pop culture. There might be a movie or TV adaptation. And as more people are […]
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Latest COVID Safety Agreement Extension Loosens Rules When Hospital Admissions Low
The latest extension to Hollywood’s COVID-19 safety agreement loosens protocols when COVID-19 hospital admissions are low. The two-tiered agreement, first put into effect in September 2020, establishes strict protocols (listed under “Part I” of the agreement) when a production is staged in a county or metropolitan area with 14 or more hospital admissions for COVID-19 […]
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Berk Brettler: Hollywood Power Lawyers Talk Teaming Up for New Firm
Blair Berk and Andrew Brettler, two of the entertainment industry’s most well-known and respected lawyers, have teamed up to combine their civil and criminal practices into a one-stop-shop boutique firm. A go-to civil litigator and fixture on THR‘s Power Lawyers list, Brettler has a client including Chelsea Handler, Sydney Sweeney, Amy Robach and Kevin O’Leary. […]
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Wall Street Has a Cautious Outlook on NBCUniversal After Comcast Earnings
Comcast mostly drew a thumbs-up from Wall Street with its fourth-quarter earnings report Thursday that met or exceeded forecasts in key areas. But analysts remain cautious on the outlook for NBCUniversal amid cord-cutting and streaming investments that have affected many media and entertainment stocks. “We’re Warming on Cable, Still Cold on NBCU,” Wells Fargo analyst […]
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Saudi Arabia’s Hollywood Dealmaking Ambitions Grow Despite Backlash
Saudi Arabia and its sovereign wealth fund have quietly — and in some cases, not so quietly — built a multibillion-dollar foothold in Hollywood, four years after much of the industry cut ties with the country in response to the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. This time around, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, […]
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Charter Loses 144,000 Pay TV Subs in Fourth Quarter, Adds 105,000 Broadband Users
Cable giant Charter Communications, in which John Malone’s Liberty Broadband owns a big stake, reported its fourth-quarter results Friday, including slowed broadband subscriber growth and a bigger pay-TV user loss than in the year-ago period. The company, led by its new president and CEO Chris Winfrey, lost 144,000 pay-TV subscribers in its latest quarter, compared with a loss […]
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BuzzFeed Stock Surges After Touting OpenAI Content Generation Plan
BuzzFeed shares soared on Thursday after CEO Jonah Peretti said the company would embrace the application programming interface from OpenAI — the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT and DALL-E — to personalize content like quizzes for users. Shares of BZFD closed at $2.09 on Thursday, with after-hours trading pushing the stock price up higher. The […]
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Hasbro to Lay Off 1,000 Staffers, 15 Percent of Workforce, Amid Cost-Savings Push
The toy and entertainment giant Hasbro says that it will cut its workforce by 15 percent, or 1,000 employees, in the coming weeks. The significant layoffs are part of a larger restructuring and cost-savings effort underway, with the company having already put its TV and film division Entertainment One up for sale. “We are focused […]
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Dotdash Meredith to Cut 274 Staffers Amid “Economic Uncertainty”
Dotdash Meredith, which publishes People, Better Homes & Gardens and InStyle, will lay off 7 percent of its employees. In a memo sent to staff Thursday, CEO Neil Vogel said the cuts were coming as the publisher was impacted by the “broader challenges of the ad industry and of the economy as a whole.” The […]
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DirecTV Adds Conservative Network ‘The First’ to Lineup After Dropping Newsmax
DirecTV is adding a new conservative network to its lineup, one day after it stopped carrying Newsmax and faced pushback from Republican lawmakers. The TV provider said on Thursday it had signed a multi-year agreement with The First, which features shows by Dana Loesch and Bill O’Reilly, to carry the network for free across its […]
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NBCUniversal CEO: “We Are Always Looking for Bolt-On Acquisitions”
Will they or won’t they buy anything? And if so, what? With M&A speculation regularly swirling around the entertainment industry, including NBCUniversal owner Comcast, the cable giant’s executive team was quizzed on its appetite for acquisitions during the company’s earnings conference call on Thursday. Comcast and NBCUniversal have in the past been mentioned as possible […]
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FTX Bankruptcy: Comcast, Fox, CAA, Netflix Listed as Creditors to Crypto Firm
The bankruptcy of crypto firm FTX could lead a bevy of companies with ties to Hollywood out in the cold. Unsealed court filings released Thursday list the corporate creditors of the Sam Bankman-Fried founded crypto firm, and they include many blue chip companies in the technology and media sectors. Among the creditors are Comcast, the owner of […]
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Peacock Tops 20M Subs, Quarterly Loss Widens to $978M, Management Sees $3B Peak Loss in 2023
Peacock, the streaming service of Comcast’s entertainment unit NBCUniversal, grew its revenue and subscribers in the fourth quarter, but its loss widened again compared with the year-ago period. In a conference call, management reiterated that the streamer’s loss would peak this year, predicting a loss of $3 billion. Comcast’s earnings report for the final period of 2022 […]
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Facebook Allows Donald Trump Back on Platform
Former president Donald Trump is returning to Facebook. Two years after the social platform banned him from its service in the wake of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot, the company says that he can now return. “The suspension was an extraordinary decision taken in extraordinary circumstances, Meta policy chief Nick Clegg wrote in a […]
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Madison Square Garden’s Use of Face Recognition Tech Under Investigation by N.Y. Attorney General
New York Attorney General Letitia James is investigating Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. and its reported practice of using facial recognition software to bar lawyers involved in litigation against the company from attending events. In a letter sent Tuesday to Madison Square Garden Entertainment, which owns Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall, the […]
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