Today In Entertainment MAY 03, 2021
What's news: Two Monday mega-deals as Verizon sells its media business and Meredith Corp. sells its local TV stations, Marvel titles and dates Black Panther 2 and Captain Marvel 2, Demon Slayer slays Mortal Kombat at the box office, AI is invading the dubbing space, an industry-favorite L.A. hotel vetoes panic buttons for employees, how Germany's film and TV industry got back to work. Plus: Remembering Olympia Dukakis, and a new era at CBS News. --Alex Weprin Big Deal Monday The first weekday in May is kicking off with a pair of multi-billion dollar deals that will see one telecom giant exit the media business, and a media giant exit the local TV business... ►Verizon is exiting the media business. The telecom giant is selling Yahoo, AOL and the remainder of its Verizon Media brands to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal announced Monday. The new company will be called Yahoo and will continue to be run by CEO Guru Gowrappan. Verizon will retain a 10 percent stake in the new company, and LionTree, which served as the lead financial advisor on the transaction, will also be an investor alongside Apollo. Under the terms of the deal, Apollo will pay Verizon $4.25 billion in cash and preferred interests of $750 million. --Verizon had purchased both Yahoo and AOL for nearly $9 billion just a few years ago. More recently, the telecom company sold HuffPost (which it acquired in the AOL deal) to BuzzFeed in an all-stock deal. Verizon Media includes Yahoo, which still has significant scale through its Yahoo News and Yahoo Finance portals, as well as Yahoo's popular email service. It also owns AOL.com, which remains a popular homepage for many web users, as well as some niche news sites like Engadget and TechCrunch. Verizon Media also includes an advanced advertising business, which was created by merging the adtech teams of Yahoo and AOL. The story. +Analysis: The sale continues a trend of digital media consolidation, with BuzzFeed and Vice Media said to be pursuing SPAC deals, and Group Nine Media launching a SPAC of its own with the intent to merge with whatever company it acquires. Yahoo and AOL, both web 1.0 holdouts, still have significant marketshare thanks to their early dominance of the internet. It isn't clear how Apollo plans to more efficiently monetize them, though the business unit has seen its fortunes (and revenues) rise in the past few quarters under Gowrappan. ►Meredith Corp. is selling its local TV business to Gray Television for $2.7 billion. The deal will see Meredith spin out its national brands business, which includes titles like People, Better Homes & Gardens, and AllRecipes. Gray is already one of the largest owners of local TV stations, with a presence in 94 markets. The deal with Meredith includes 17 stations in 12 markets, including Atlanta's CBS affiliate WGCL, Las Vegas' Fox affiliate KVVU, and Phoenix's CBS affiliate KPHO. The story. +Analysis: Gray has been on an acquisition streak, buying Quincy Media for $925 million earlier this year. Gray subsequently sold some of those stations to Byron Allen as part of a regulatory agreement. The Meredith deal however gives Gray a slate of stations in key swing states, and some major TV markets. The deal with Meredith, if approved, would solidify Gray as one of the "big three" TV station owners alongside Nexstar and Sinclair. Another independent station owner, EW Scripps, has also been on an acquisition streak, buying ION Media in a $2.65 billion deal backed by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Box Office ►Box office: Japanese anime blockbuster Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train edged out video game adaptation Mortal Kombat at the weekend box office, according to Sunday estimates. Demon Slayer grossed $6.4 million from 1,925 theaters for an impressive 10-day domestic total of $34.1 million for Aniplex and Funimation, and north of $450 million globally. --Warner Bros.' Mortal Kombat took in $6.2 million from 3,113 cinemas for a 10-day domestic tally of $34.1 million. Final numbers will be released Monday, and could change the order. Both films fell steeply in their second weekends of play. That's not entirely unexpected for male fueled, R-rated genre pics. The numbers. +In China: Zhang Yimou's spy thriller Cliff Walkers was the best reviewed new release to open over China's lucrative May Day holiday weekend, but it was far from the biggest earner. Youth romance My Love, from Beijing Enlight Pictures, overcame withering reviews to dominate the start of the long holiday frame, earning $65.1 million from Friday to Sunday. Cliff Walkers landed second with $38.8 million, according to data from regional box-office tracker Artisan Gateway. More. ►Just in: Marvel Studios news. Marvel Studios has unveiled a few tidbits as well as its first Eternals footage in a sizzle reel intended to entice audiences to return to movie theaters as they reopen. Marvel revealed that the upcoming sequel to Black Panther will be titled Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Captain Marvel II has been titled The Marvels. The story. ►Behind the Screen: New AI tool offers subtitling and dubbing alternative. The system, from the U.K.'s Flawless, is designed to create lip-synced versions of movies and other content in multiple languages, Carolyn Giardina reports. --"The process begins with recording an actor speaking the dialog in the required language, as one would in a dubbing process, explains co-founder and filmmaker Scott Mann. The new audio and picture would then be delivered to Flawless, which would effectively use its AI-driven system to create a lip-synced picture. Mann says it is largely an automated process of retiming mouth movement, but then digital effects artists would finesse the results as needed before Flawless would deliver the final version to the client." The story. ►Industry-favored hotel Mr. C vetoes panic buttons for employees. Union workers at the L.A. hotel (where Harvey Weinstein allegedly raped an actress) demand heightened security, citing examples of guests exposing themselves to employees, Gary Baum writes. The story. Remembering Olympia Dukakis ►Obituary: Olympia Dukakis, the dignified actress who received a supporting Oscar for her performance as Cher's nitpicking Brooklyn mother in Moonstruck, died Saturday. She was 89. Dukakis died in New York, her brother Apollo wrote on Facebook. "After many months of failing health she is finally at peace and with her [husband] Louis." --The late-blooming star also was known for her turn as Clairee Belcher, a woman of fiber and the elegant widowed friend of Ouiser Boudreaux (Shirley MacLaine), in Herbert Ross' Steel Magnolias (1989), and she portrayed a personnel director in Working Girl (1988) and a principal in Mr. Holland's Opus (1995). The obituary. +The tributes: Cher, Bradley Whitford, George Takei shared their memories of the actress. More. ►Restart Berlin: How Germany's film and TV industry got back to work. In the first of a THR series on the state of international production hubs post-pandemic, we look at the success of Berlin, whose film and television industry has kept the cameras rolling, despite the country's ongoing lockdown. The story. ►A new era at CBS News: In an email sent Monday morning with the subject "Into the future," CBS News president Susan Zirinsky officially passed the baton to Neeraj Khemlani and Wendy McMahon. --"There are few times in a career where you get to experience something truly transformational. Today, a new CBS News – a reconfigured division in partnership with the CBS Stations and Digital with the scale to position us for the future – is launched. The transformation is now," Zirinsky wrote in the email, which was obtained by THR, "Wendy and Neeraj, two extremely experienced media executives, are the right people to lead this newly formed division. They are smart, engaged leaders with deep roots in the news business. They know CBS News. They are big thinkers with a bold vision for the future. We are in great hands. I really applaud George [Cheeks] for coming up with what I think is an innovative, bold, transformative, enlightened news division." --In an email of their own, Khemlani and McMahon expanded on the vision for the new business group: "We fully embrace the vision George Cheeks has for this new division – News, Stations and Digital working hand-in-hand – creating a new pathway to the future. It’s a bold outlook that gives us opportunities to innovate and grow. One strategy, built on a foundation of important journalism, the relevance of our local stations and the clear promise of streaming." --"We have big ambitions that will be realized by bringing the thousands of people of CBS News, Stations and Digital together in creating an unmatched media organization, with each and every one of us—in front of and behind the camera—fully invested in and accountable for our broadcast strength and digital future," their email adds. "This new vision is unique to CBS – we are not saddled with the siloed structures and business models of our competitors. We are already in position to build at scale the premier local-to-global streaming news experience." In other news... --Though the 2021 Tribeca Festival is set to take place largely in-person across New York City, the fest is making select films available to audiences throughout the U.S. via its newly launched online platform, Tribeca at Home. --Following claims of sexual misconduct against Noel Clarke, British police have now confirmed that they received a report linked to allegations of sexual offences committed by a male individual. --Chloé Zhao, Kelly Marie Tran, Riz Ahmed, Padma Lakshmi and others are being honored as a part of nonprofit collective Gold House's fourth annual A100 List to celebrate Asians and Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) and their impactful contributions to society. --Los Angeles' New Beverly Cinema, which is owned and operated by Quentin Tarantino, has set a reopening. In a post shared on its social media channels and website Saturday, the historic revival theater announced plans to reopen on June 1. --Doug Liman is spotlighting common tech issues in a spot for Verizon's 5G network that claims to leave these problems behind and be "built" for gamers. --John Oliver wasted little time diving into his main story on Sunday's Last Week Tonight, spending most of his show debunking the myths surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines. --Netflix has unveiled the first image of 1899, the hotly-anticipated new mystery series from Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar, creators of global hit Dark. What else we're reading... --'John Swartzwelder, Sage of The Simpsons: The first major interview with one of the most revered comedy writers of all time" [The New Yorker] --"'It’s all about what makes you feel good': Billie Eilish on new music, power dynamics, and her internet-breaking transformation" [Vogue UK] --"Golden Globes organization vowed to change. Then came turmoil. What went wrong?" [LA Times] --"NewFront speakers see advertisers changing channels from traditional TV" [Broadcasting & Cable] Today's birthdays: Frankie Valli, 87, Christina Hendricks, 46, Desiigner, 24, Michael Kiwanuka, 34, Rob Brydon, 56.
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