Viacom Inc.’s management shake-up continued Wednesday with another senior executive — Doug Herzog, president of the Music and Entertainment Group — announcing his departure. Herzog was part of the executive team at MTV during its early years, and helped usher in the reality TV movement with such shows...
The future of Ryan Kavanaugh’s Relativity Media, the beleaguered mini-studio that exited bankruptcy about nine months ago, is murkier than ever. Relativity Studios President Dana Brunetti, the movie producer who was seen a key part of Kavanaugh’s plan to turn the struggling film and TV company...
Fandango is preparing to enlarge its physical presence in Los Angeles as the digital entertainment company expands its business portfolio, moving beyond online movie ticket sales and into video on demand and social media. The company said it will move its headquarters from the Sawtelle area to...
Katie Couric is returning to NBC’s “Today” show for a weeklong fill-in stint at the morning program’s anchor desk next month. Couric will be back alongside Matt Lauer for the week of Jan. 2, according to people at the morning program who are familiar with the plan but not authorized to discuss...
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” is expected to rule the box office during the long Christmas weekend, despite a glut of new films jostling for moviegoers’ dollars. The second weekend for the Lucasfilm prequel is expected to easily top newcomers, including the new animated musical “Sing,” the romance-in-space...
AMC Entertainment has won approval from the U.S. Department of Justice to buy Carmike Cinemas for $1.2 billion, clearing the way for an acquisition that will create the biggest U.S. movie theater chain. But AMC will have to sell off some theaters and other holdings in order to satisfy regulators....
Tribune Media Co. has agreed to sell Gracenote, its digital entertainment and data business, to Nielsen Co. for $560 million. Emeryville, Calif.-based Gracenote provides video, music and sports databases to power TV program guides, music search engines and other digital entertainment platforms....
In the new movie “The Great Wall,” Matt Damon helps Chinese warriors defend their country against fearsome monsters attacking the famous landmark. Now the big-budget film is testing the market for a different kind of cross-border collaboration — U.S.-China co-productions. The $150-million movie...
It’s the lunch hour at Russell Simmons’ downtown Los Angeles office, and the hip-hop mogul’s scrappy video team is setting up cameras in their break room. Simmons’ squad of Internet personalities and producers clear away pizza boxes for their live Facebook shoot, in which they rib each other in...
Hollywood is headed toward another record year at the box office thanks to a lineup of blockbuster films, from the private lives of pets to foul-mouthed superheroes. But while projections of $11.3 billion in U.S. and Canada ticket sales would seem like a cause for celebration, the rosy numbers...
It took 16 years for ABC’s “Good Morning America” to end the historic streak by NBC’s “Today” as the most-watched program in morning television in 2012. Toppling the mighty “Today” was so significant that Ben Sherwood, ABC’s news president at the time, was elevated to run parent company Disney’s...
The highly anticipated Star Wars spinoff “Rogue One” is off to a forceful start at the box office, a good sign for the Walt Disney Co.’s first so-called standalone movie as it seeks to expand the lucrative film series. “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” grossed an estimated $29 million in domestic...
Media mogul Sumner Redstone will no longer hold a voting role on Viacom Inc.’s board of directors after the company’s annual meeting in February, according to a regulatory filing. Redstone will still serve as chairman emeritus, but will step down from the Viacom board. Redstone, who has been in...
For months, the Walt Disney Co. downplayed expectations for its forthcoming “Stars Wars” film. Speaking at a Wall Street conference in September, Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger said the new movie, “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” was “an experiment of sorts” and one he didn’t expect to top...
Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox finalized its $14.8-billion cash bid for full control of the pay-TV giant Sky on Thursday, triggering what could be a rigorous regulatory review in Europe. If approved, Fox would take over a business that it launched 25 years ago and would further the company’s...
Warner Bros. Pictures’ production head Greg Silverman is stepping down in a major shakeup at the Burbank movie studio seeking to reclaim its perch as Hollywood’s dominant player. Silverman, 44, will leave his position at the beginning of next year and start a production company on the Warner Bros....
Cable TV channels that televise games of local professional sports teams are highly popular among sports fans, a Nielsen report commissioned by Fox Sports has found. The study, released Wednesday, revealed that in certain markets, including Detroit and St. Louis, fans ranked the local regional...
YouTube has blocked North Korea's state television channel, which broadcast news on everything from nuclear tests to Kim Jong Un's outings, to avoid breaching American sanctions against the regime. The action apparently was taken not because of the content in the channel but because the North Korean...
Global audiences are expected to display a Sarlacc-sized appetite this weekend for “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” Walt Disney Co.’s first spinoff film in the long-running space opera franchise. The question is how big of a hit it will be, coming only a year after “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”...
A U.S. district judge has sided with Hollywood studios in their legal battle to block VidAngel, the streaming service that lets users filter unwanted language, sex and nudity from movies. Judge Andre Birotte Jr. in Los Angeles granted a preliminary injunction against the Provo, Utah-based start-up,...
The Japanese fantasy animation “Your Name” continued to top China’s box office, adding $15.7 million to its tally this week. Chinese entertainment group Enlight Pictures distributed the movie, which accumulated $71.4 million in 10 days, according to film industry consulting firm Artisan Gateway....
Movie and television studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has invested in Culver City virtual reality gaming start-up Survios, marking the latest move by Hollywood to bet on the cutting-edge entertainment technology. Survios, founded in 2013 to make games for virtual reality devices, said Tuesday it has...
Sumner Redstone’s girlfriend troubles continued to play out in court. Former lover Sydney Holland alleged in a lawsuit Monday that Redstone tossed her out of his home and cut her out of his will after she fulfilled her commitment to love and care for the 93-year-old billionaire. In a breach of...
After flirting with the prospect of reuniting Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp., Shari Redstone on Monday abruptly reversed course, saying the two media firms were strong enough to stand on their own. Viacom shareholders were unnerved by the news, the latest surprise at a company that has been roiled by...
Lionsgate led its rival studios in Golden Globe Awards nominations Monday, thanks to the acclaimed movies “La La Land,” “Hacksaw Ridge” and “Hell or High Water.” The Santa Monica mini-major studio secured a total of 13 nods in film categories from the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., including...
Amelia Su-Lin Crawford stood near the corner of the expansive ballroom and handed out coupons to children’s clothing store Little T’s Boutique. It was the day before the Oscars, and the then-8-year-old child model was working for one of several companies gathered at an Academy Awards gifting suite,...
Cubicle dwellers nationwide may be busting out their ugly sweaters and tuning their ukuleles readying for the annual ritual that is the company holiday party. But Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures are in particularly festive spirits. Their raunchy comedy, “Office Christmas Party,” snagged...
Television network NBC introduced former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as the new star of “The New Celebrity Apprentice” at a media event Friday, but reporters were fixated on the boss who wasn’t in the room: President-elect Donald Trump. Controversy swirled around Trump’s plans to retain his executive...
Five years after abandoning its bid for a British crown jewel amid a corporate scandal, Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox is making another run for full control of Sky, the European pay-TV giant. Fox on Friday disclosed its $14.1 billion offer for Sky, saying the company had agreed in principal...
As a cook at a Carl’s Jr. restaurant in Santa Monica, Rogelio Hernandez, 71, has been flipping burgers for more than two decades. He said his wages have remained stagnant for years, though he did receive a raise of 25 cents an hour a month ago to $11.75 an hour. “Everybody is struggling,” he said...
Fast-food executive Andy Puzder, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to be Labor secretary, could soon find himself meeting regularly at the White House. That’s a long way from the Cleveland bars where his rock bands played back in the 1960s. Puzder, 66, the chief executive of Carl’s Jr....
Lionsgate has won shareholder approval to acquire cable network Starz for $4.4 billion, the company said Thursday, ratifying one of the biggest studio deals this decade. The cash-and-stock deal, first announced in June, was approved by 98% of votes from Lionsgate shareholders and 95% of votes from...
Members of the Writers Guild of America, East expanded their protest of the New York producing company behind the reality TV series “Pawn Stars” by setting up a picket line in Los Angeles on Thursday, intensifying an already heated dispute with one of the industry’s most prominent producers of...
U.S. senators launched the government’s review of AT&T's proposed takeover of Time Warner Inc. on Wednesday, quizzing company executives on a host of concerns, including whether consumers’ monthly TV bills would continue to climb if the mega-media marriage is approved. The merger review comes amid...
The Breitbart News Network has long prided itself on running inflammatory articles designed to trigger sensitive liberals. But since the election of Donald Trump, the conservative media company has also managed to trigger some of its advertisers, which have yanked their ads from the irreverent...
Director Roman Polanski scored a key legal victory in Poland on Tuesday when the country’s top court rejected an extradition request from the U.S. stemming from the filmmaker’s 1977 Los Angeles case in which he pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor. The Polish Supreme Court in Warsaw ruled...
Youth-oriented fantasies like “Moana,” “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" and “Doctor Strange” have dominated the box office the last few weeks, but now there’s a chance for misbehaving adults to climb the charts. “Office Christmas Party,” a raunchy R-rated comedy from Paramount Pictures...
Alibaba Pictures, the film and TV production arm of Jack Ma’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, has named a new chief executive to grow the upstart entertainment business and contend with what he called “drastic changes” in the Chinese film industry. Technology entrepreneur and Alibaba Pictures’...
A Japanese film about inhabiting other bodies far outstripped competitors in Chinese theaters last week, with American fantasies trailing behind. The animated fantasy “Your Name,” roped in $41.6 million in ticket sales in its first three days, according to film industry consulting firm Artisan...
Netflix Inc. helped make binge-watching a national pastime with its tens of millions of subscribers eagerly gobbling up their favorite shows. But now the streaming giant is facing accusations of a different kind of binging — the poaching of executives from the competition. The company’s recent...
Wall Street may be banking on an eventual CBS-Viacom merger, but don’t count on it in 2016. There were no signs of an imminent deal based on the comments by the top executives at their presentations to the UBS Global Media and Communication Conference held Monday. Neither CBS Corp. Chairman Leslie...
Viacom Chief Financial Officer Wade Davis is spending considerable time in Los Angeles to improve the performance of struggling Hollywood movie studio Paramount Pictures, after two troubled years at the box office. Davis is spending “about half of his time” at Paramount in Los Angeles, Viacom’s...
Last year, Americans collectively spent 31 billion hours watching sports on TV — a 40% increase from a decade ago. They watched football, baseball, basketball, hockey, horse racing, NASCAR, rowing, rugby, soccer and volleyball — even Little League championships and poker games. “Live sports is...
Megyn Kelly’s bestselling memoir is called “Settle for More,” but the star anchor may have to settle for less money if she decides to leave the Fox News Channel. Kelly is said to have not made up her mind about staying with Fox News beyond the end of her contract in July, even with an offer of...
Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Robert Iger has been named to a new policy forum created by President-elect Donald Trump. The President’s Strategic and Policy Forum includes several business heavyweights, among them JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Jamie Dimon, General Motors Chief Executive...
Pressure is mounting on the U.S. government to more closely scrutinize China’s growing ownership of Hollywood’s film industry, this time thanks to a leading Democrat. In a Wednesday letter, Senate Minority Leader-elect Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said China’s investments in U.S. industries, including...
CBS Corp. has secured rights for NFL football games for its streaming service, CBS All Access, providing a significant boost to the two-year-old subscription digital offering. Until now, CBS had been forbidden from showing the NFL games that were broadcast by CBS television stations on the company’s...
Fandango, the largest online ticket seller in the U.S., is looking to take a bigger slice of the growing film market south of the border. The Los Angeles company on Thursday said it had acquired Peru-based online ticket seller Cinepapaya, expanding Fandango’s reach to seven new countries in Latin...
The Breitbart News Network is seeing some of its advertisers head for the exit doors and is responding in typical Breitbart fashion: by going on the counteroffensive, labeling one of them as “un-American” and calling it a war on conservatism. Since Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election,...