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Last year, Saturday Night Live aired a sketch in which Ryan Gosling and Mikey Day played two complete strangers who inexplicably resemble Beavis and Butt-Head. And since pretty much any SNL sketch that seems to work will be quickly repeated until the joke is no longer funny, the pair reprised their roles for the red carpet premiere of Gosling’s movie The Fall Guy.

If this sketch proved anything, it’s that Beavis and Butt-Head are creepy as hell when brought to life with human actors. They looked less like beloved cartoon characters, and more like nightmarish David Lynch creations going through a mid-life crisis.

But weirdly enough, we were almost subjected to live-action versions of the dim-witted duo nearly three decades ago.

In 1996 Beavis and Butt-Head Do America brought the MTV characters to the big screen for the first time, with a cross-country animated adventure that featured the voices of stars like Demi Moore,...

Paramount Global and its predecessor companies have gone through several tumultuous decades. Here’s a timeline of key events that led up to the company’s most recent M&a drama, in this week’s cover story: What Went Wrong: Inside Paramount’s Failed Merger Talks and the Battle to Salvage the Company.

March 4, 1987: Sumner Redstone’s National Amusements Inc. acquires Viacom for $3.4 billion

March 11, 1994: Viacom acquires control of Paramount Communications for about $10 billion

Sept. 7, 1999: Viacom announces deal to acquire CBS Corp. for $35 billion

March 16, 2005: Sumner Redstone shocks Hollywood and Wall Street with plan to split Viacom and CBS Corp. into separate entities

Dec. 31, 2005: Viacom and CBS Corp. split is completed. Tom Freston named CEO of Viacom; Leslie Moonves to lead CBS

Sept. 5, 2006: Sumner Redstone fires Tom Freston as CEO of Viacom, naming Philippe Dauman as his successor

Oct. 16, 2014: CBS Corp. launches...

It had all the elements of a good action movie – jeopardy, revenge, a mega budget – with even some casualties thrown in (albeit corporate).

The Bob Iger vs Nelson Peltz (who?) war is over now and Iger has won. But some filmmakers and ticket buyers might wonder: Did any of it matter? Would a modest change on the Disney board of directors have had any impact on the future of entertainment? (Peltz himself runs a hedge fund called Trian Partners and has no background in entertainment.)

To be sure, it’s been a good show, albeit a throwback to an era when Hollywood was run by Big Personalities, not monoliths like Amazon or Apple. The battles of that era were ego wars, not proxy wars — Redstone vs Diller or Murdoch vs Ted Turner, with bewildered stars and their reps huddled in the middle.

But now Iger has won – again. The onetime...

Just weeks after the company he founded entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy last May, Shane Smith jetted to the French Riviera. But this wasn’t a vacation for the 54-year-old flamboyant former Vice CEO to drown his sorrows. Smith landed in Cannes on a mission to save the media company that he had started as a scrappy punk music magazine in Montreal three decades ago from the financial scrap heap.

Smith, the brash face of Vice, had been quietly operating behind the scenes since stepping aside as CEO in 2018. In his new capacity as executive chairman, he worked the phones and hustled for deals as only he knew how. Now, accompanied by his chief of staff, Alon Soran, he was at Cannes Lions, the annual advertising confab that attracts the monied set looking to do business, desperate to ensure the company he had built didn’t disappear into liquidation and irrelevancy.

In...

Jonathan Dolgen, the former head of Viacom Entertainment and a former top 20th Century Fox executive, died Oct. 9 of natural causes in Los Angeles. He was 78.

For a decade, from 1994 until 2004, the hard-charging Dolgen led Viacom’s film, television and amusement parks, as well as Simon & Schuster and its music publishing operations, establishing a reputation for smarts, drive and relentless focus on costs and efficiency in operations. He took the reins of Viacom’s entertainment assets not long after Sumner Redstone prevailed in a long and public battle with Barry Diller to acquire Paramount Pictures in September 1993.

“You come to work in the morning,” Dolgen once told the New York Times in a profile shortly after he took the job at Viacom. “And you work 12 hours, and then you’re off 12 hours. And then you come to work again, and you push, and keep pushing, and learn, and keep learning.

Jonathan Dolgen, the tough-minded dealmaker and skillful numbers-cruncher who spent a decade at Viacom working for Sumner Redstone and alongside Paramount Pictures head Sherry Lansing, has died. He was 78.

Dolgen died Monday evening of natural causes at UCLA Medical Center surrounded by his family, a publicist announced. He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in 2012.

A native of Queens and a former Wall Street lawyer, Dolgen also held top positions at Columbia Pictures, Fox and Sony Pictures before becoming the first top executive recruited by Redstone for the newly merged entertainment conglomerate forged by Viacom’s $8.2 billion purchase of Paramount Communications.

“I had known Dolgen off and on over the years when I was a motion picture exhibitor, even before I gained control of Viacom,” Redstone recalled in his 2001 book, Passion to Win. “He was with Columbia Pictures, and I remember sitting with him in one particular meeting that became rather heated and thinking,...

According to Whats-On-Netflix.com, 2009's "Star Trek" and 2012's "Star Trek Into Darkness" are going to be removed from Netflix in October of 2023. Their removal indicates that an era is over. 

The handlers of "Star Trek" have, ever since the late 1960s, been very good about letting the shows remain available. Even before home video, "Star Trek" was put into seemingly eternal syndication, able to be enjoyed pretty much in perpetuity. Older Trekkies may also recall the Columbia House VHS days, when eager Trekkies could subscribe to a mail-in service that would deliver cassettes -- containing two episodes apiece -- directly to their doors. Eventually, "Star Trek" would be released in season-by-season DVD box sets, followed by massive proliferation across many major streaming services. Ultra-crunchy Blu-rays also eventually crept into the marketplace.

A lot of Trek's widespread availability stems from Janet Jackson's infamous wardrobe malfunction during Super Bowl Xxxviii...

Apple TV+ today released the trailer for ‘The Super Models’, the highly anticipated four-part documentary event spotlighting the remarkable careers of Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. The series is set to premiere globally on September 20, 2023.

Each episode features never-before-seen commentary from some of the biggest names in fashion and culture, with contributors including Fabien Baron, Jeanne Beker, Emily Bierman, Tim Blanks, Martin Brading, Paul Cavaco, Carlyne Cerf De Dudzeele, Grace Coddington, Sante D’orazio, Charles Decaro, Arthur Elgort, Edward Enninful, David Fincher, Tom Freston, John Galliano, Garren, Robin Givhan, Tonne Goodman, Michael Gross, Bethann Hardison, Marc Jacobs, Kim Jones, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Rocco Laspata, Suzy Menkes, Isaac Mizrahi, Michael Musto, François Nars, Todd Oldham, Hal Rubenstein, Anna Sui, Annie Veltri, Donatella Versace and Vivienne Westwood.

‘The Super Models’ travels back to the 1980s, when four women from different corners of the world united in New York.

As Vice Media, the brash company that once had ambitions of replacing legacy news giants, files for bankruptcy protection, with $834 million in debt obligations, its finances are coming into focus.

While its largest creditors include Fortress Investment Group (with a $474.6 million claim), there’s several media companies that are listed as top unsecured creditors that aren’t insiders, as outlined in its filing in the United States Bankruptcy Court for Southern District of New York on Monday. The filing estimates there are more than 5,000 creditors. Given that Vice lists $350 million in assets, many creditors are likely to take a loss during Chapter 11 proceedings.

Among them, CNN Productions is listed as having a $3,798,333 claim, HBO is listed as having a claim of $1,763,157 while A&e Networks is listed as having a claim of $937,500, per the filing. Tech firm Wipro, Amazon Web Services, ad agency Horizon Media, Greek media giant Antenna TV...

On February 1, 2004, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake performed live at the halftime show of Super Bowl Xxxviii. The duo performed Timberlake's song "Rock Your Body" and gyrated suggestively. Then, as had been choreographed, Timberlake removed a piece of Jackson's costume, intending to reveal her bustier. He, however, accidentally pulled off too much of said costume. Jackson was exposed for half of a second, but it scandalized the world, and the phrase "wardrobe malfunction" immediately entered the lexicon. Many late-night talk show hosts were eager to joke about it, and some media watchdog groups clucked their tongues in disapproval. 

CBS, who broadcast the Super Bowl, was ultimately not charged any fines, nor was MTV who produced it, although MTV was banned from producing any further halftime shows. The scandal caused a schism within Viacom, CBS' and MTV's parent company. Les Moonves, head of the CBS side, began to develop increasing shared animosity toward Tom Freston,...

Last week, Nrdc (Natural Resources Defense Council) hosted its annual New York fundraising comedy event, “Night of Comedy”, at Casa Cipriani New York.

Seth Meyers speaks onstage during Nrdc's Night of Comedy

Credit/Copyright: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Nrdc

The evening paid special tribute to Nrdc Honorary Trustee and “Night of Comedy” Founder, Anna Scott Carter, for her tremendous service on behalf of Nrdc and its mission to safeguard the earth and the natural systems on which all life depends.

Presented in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery, the evening was hosted by Seth Meyers and featured performances by renowned comedians Mike Birbiglia, Michael Che, Chloe Fineman, Nick Kroll and Hasan Minhaj–all of whom came together in support of Nrdc’s on-going work to fight climate change and protect public health.

Anna Scott Carter and Graydon Carter were joined by David Zaslav and Jim and Penny Coulter as National Co-Chairs.

“It was like a palace of pitching. There’s never been any place like it.”

An agent friend was describing the sprawling and frenetic Netflix reception lobby, which was an almost weekly destination for him and clients. It was so packed with dealmakers that projects were often re-shaped and re-packaged even before the Netflix pitch took place.

Given news of 450 layoffs at the streamer, the pitching palace has become a cathedral of calm. With Netflix likely to lose 2 million global subscribers this quarter, its present priority is to trim costs while building an ad-supported tier to generate fresh revenue.

The behavior of Netflix employees has reflected this change. “I’m taking pitches for shows all morning, then checking out job possibilities in the afternoon,” reports one Netflix executive I’ve known for years. “If I hear one more person lecturing me about ‘resilience,’ I’ll deck him.”

Inevitably, turbulence in...

David Zaslav, who is famously gregarious and high-energy, has been oddly quiet lately with an absence of media interviews or social events on his schedule. Even his regular booth at the Polo Lounge has been somnolent.

That’s about to change: Zaslav arrived back in Hollywood yesterday and the industry has been forcefully reminded that “the deal” is real.

As federal regulators and other random bureaucrats remove their barriers, the long-awaited entity called Warner Bros. Discovery becomes a functioning reality in four short weeks.

There are high expectations of imminent moves that will impact the power structures spanning television, movies and news.

For over a year the managements of Warner Bros, CNN, HBO and beyond have labored in a bureaucratic cloud, with executives implementing policies they knew were likely evanescent.

So now starts the guessing game. Who will be anointed to fill the $43 billion power vacuum? Barred from occupying offices...

Yes hosted the Yes 20th Anniversary Celebration on Thursday, September 23, at The Maybourne Beverly Hills, where they honored Willow Bay and Bob Iger for their decades-long support of the organization.

Christina Aguilera performs onstage during the Yes 20th Anniversary Gala

Credit/Copyright: Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Yes 20th Anniversary Gala

The Gala, which celebrated Yes’ extraordinary 20 years of changing lives through education, brought in over $5M for the organization. The special event was hosted by select Yes scholars and alumni, and was presented by The Walt Disney Company.

Mellody Hobson and David Geffen served as Co-Chairs for the Gala. The two took to the stage to introduce honorees Willow Bay and Bob Iger, and present them each with a Yes Award for their generous contributions over the years. Beyond providing invaluable resources for students, Bay and Iger have personally advocated for and supported scholars, from arranging school transportation to championing grants and charitable partnerships.

Tom Freston, a founder of the MTV network, once observed: “What’s fascinating about the future is that so many people claim to understand it.” In 2006, Freston, then CEO of Viacom, was fired by Sumner Redstone, who explained that “Freston doesn’t understand the future.” As it turned out, Redstone had failed to understand the present.

The incident was brought back to mind last week when Sumner’s daughter, Shari, led the charge to dismiss Jim Gianopulos as Paramount’s CEO. Again, “the future” was the issue. And the muddled leaks further confused the present.

Gianopulos’ departure had an “end of an era” aura to it because he and Disney’s Alan Horn have long been revered as movie statesmen, representing a supportive, mentoring style of studio management. Sony’s Tom Rothman remains the lone generational survivor – more on him below.

Inheriting the top film post at Paramount will be Brian Robbins,...

The success of MTV in the 1980s also helped propel the careers of many executives still working in music today, several of whom are featured in the A&e documentary “I Want My MTV” (read Variety‘s review), which premieres tonight (Sept. 8). Among those first employees: John Sykes, now the chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and president of iHeartMedia Entertainment.

“The people assembled were the best thing about MTV,” Sykes says, giving full credit to Bob Pittman, the corporate visionary who was essential in bringing MTV to life and now runs iHeartMedia as its CEO and chairman. “None of us had any experience in television — we came from the music business, from Conde Nast, from marketing firms — so that’s why MTV looked like nothing else on television. But that was the plan from day one, to create something that was completely different than the status quo.

The reminders came often from Sumner Redstone, self-made architect of a vast media empire.

“Viacom is me,” he once told Fortune magazine. “I’m Viacom. That marriage is eternal, forever.”

“I’m in control!” he chided Mel Karmazin in a nationally televised news conference as the executive tried to outline his vision for the newly merged Viacom and CBS. “Remember — I’m in control!”

The late Frank Biondi Jr., who engineered a series of key deals in the 1980s and ’90s as Viacom CEO, once acknowledged to the New Yorker‘s Ken Auletta that it could be frustrating toiling in semi-obscurity. “Sumner is the embodiment of this place,” he shrugged.

Redstone, who died Wednesday at age 97, personified more than just a single company. He came to represent a media and entertainment era when deeply flawed, nakedly ambitious, larger-than-life personalities single-handedly set the agenda.

“Sumner Redstone was, for all his business thuggery,...

As top executives from CBS and Viacom celebrate a new merger and the hard work behind it, Wall Street has questions about the combined company’s operating structure and next steps.

Analysts pressed the company Tuesday for more information about certain elements of the merged owners of the CBS broadcast network; Showtime pay-cable channel; Paramount movie studio and Nickelodeon kids-media empire. They are not convinced the current management structure, which puts CBS CEO Joe Ianniello in charge of CBS-branded assets and makes Viacom CEO Bob Bakish the head of the whole company, will allow for maximizing assets. And they want more information on expected results from using the combined company to boost revenue from streaming-video and new kinds of data-and-technology-enabled advertising.

During a call with investors, Bakish and Ianniello sketched a vision that includes generating new money from direct-to-consumer venues like the ad-supported streaming outlet PlutoTV and the CBS subscription-based...

The meetings are conducted with the secrecy of a national security briefing. Attendees pledge not to disclose deliberations. Attorneys steadfastly stonewall reporters who try to probe the proceedings. And no one ever alludes to the fact that there is a ghost in the room.

At stake is a $30 billion merger of two revered publicly held companies, CBS and Viacom – a deal that will likely trigger a new cycle of corporate mega-deals, perhaps reshaping the landscape of the media industry.

And the ghost? It’s Sumner Redstone, age 97, the master dealmaker responsible for creating the teetering corporate edifice. His presence still hovers over the company, but his mental health is the subject of litigation, as is his potential influence over the deal. His secret trust documents may

impose inhibitions on future maneuverings, given that he and his daughter, Shari, still control by far the most shares in this public company.

Given his addiction to corporate intrigue,...

John Singleton flashed an ear-to-ear grin. “I feel vindicated,” he told me. “I also feel rich. This is my definition of a good time.”

The scene was the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. We were having a drink to celebrate Singleton’s latest coup. He had carefully organized a bidding war among distributors for his latest production, Hustle & Flow, and had come away with a $9 million payday. The same bidders who had turned Singleton down pre-festival, when he’d asked a mere $1.5 million for his self-financed movie, were now courting him.

“I had put my you-now-whats on the line to get this film made,” the filmmaker told me. “Now the very people who rejected me want to be my partner.”

To orchestrate the bidding war, Singleton, smiling and, as always, gracious, had carefully staged three separate Sundance screenings but kept invitations under wraps, thus making them seem like a hot ticket.

The new, eagerly awaited Motley Crue biopic, based on Neil Strauss’ best-selling 2001 book, “The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band,” premieres today on Netflix after a seemingly endless 13 years in development hell.

Those anticipating “a fun ‘80s music movie,” as Crue bassist Nikki Sixx puts it, will inevitably be stunned by the final product, a dark-laced cautionary tale that balances the thrill of making it as a rock god against the downside of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll excess. “The Dirt” takes the “A Star Is Born” theme of the perils of fame and convincingly sets it in the late ‘70’s/early ‘80s punk/metal milieu of Hollywood, complete with a recreation of the Crue’s legendary party house just up the block from the Whisky, where one of its memorable scenes takes place.

“There’s no varnish in this movie, no whitewashing,” insists one of the film’s producers,...

MySpace, which was once the most trafficked website on the internet, has admitted that some 50 million user-uploaded songs as well as other files have been lost due to a server malfunction.

Concern has been mounting on Reddit and on social media over the past year as users who kept their files on MySpace started having trouble accessing their music. The affected files are from 2003 and 2015 and come from about 14 million recording artists.

The company, now a unit of Meredith Corp., blamed a server migration gone wrong, replying to users inquiring via email that files had been “corrupted” during the process. “Any photos, videos, and audio files you uploaded more than three years ago may no longer be available,” a MySpace statement said, according to numerous media reports over the weekend. “We apologize for the inconvenience and suggest that you retain your back up copies.”

On message boards and on social media,...

It’s taken eighteen years for Motley Crue biopic The Dirt to go from print to screen. Long-time manager Allen Kovac, who is exec producing the Netflix feature film, tells Deadline why it took so long to adapt the memoir and how they wanted to create “Boogie Nights-meets-Goodfellas” set in the debaucherous world of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

The film, which debuts on the Svod platform on March 22, tells the story of notorious Sunset Strip glamrockers Motley Crue – Vince Neil, Tommy Lee, Nikki Sixx and Mick Mars and is based on Neil Strauss’ book The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, which was published in 2001.

It’s a raucous story that includes rampant drug abuse – Sixx was famously pronounced dead after a heroin overdose – manslaughter – Neil killed his passenger in a 1985 drunk driving accident – and the film opens with a graphic oral sex scene involving Tommy Lee.

After being praised by stars Claire Danes and Liev Screiber and AMC Networks boss Josh Sapan for being a steady hand at Showtime, David Nevins offered praise of his own to the power of television’s “oral culture.”

The Center for Communication gave Nevins the Frank Stanton Award, adding his name to an honor roll over three-plus decades that includes John Landgraf, Tom Freston and John Malone. A luncheon for the award at the Pierre Hotel featured remarks mostly toasting — but also lightly roasting — Nevins, followed by thoughts from the honoree.

Elaborating on his sentiment about TV being “the last bastion of oral culture,” Nevins described the simple but powerful way that ideas go from a creator’s mind to the screen. “Somebody walks into an office, tells a story, and if it’s a really good and compelling story, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars get invested.

With Les Moonves having self-immolated, the intriguing question about CBS and Viacom comes down to this: Can a corporation successfully re-invent itself when its merger status is still unresolved and its management still up in the air? Shari Redstone has won her battles with her father and now with the old CBS board — a formidable triumph of dynastic empowerment –but the pressure is now on every segment of the company to prove its post-revolution viability.

The new CBS board, which hasn’t even met yet, now confronts not only a Moonves succession battle but also growing disarray within CBS News, signaled by the angry departure of its 60 Minutes boss Jeff Fager. Fager succeeded the brilliant and famously petulant Don Hewitt, who invented 60 Minutes; his demise stems from a toughly worded internal memo to a staff reporter — an incident which many CBS staffers feel has been mishandled at the corporate and news division levels.

The fall of Les Moonves is stunning for the sheer velocity with which one of the most powerful moguls in the media business got dethroned.

Once regarded as creative executive with few equals, Moonves now leaves a complicated legacy clouded by the allegations of sexual misconduct made this summer by a dozen women. The 68-year-old boss finalized his exit today after weeks of speculation about his fate as chairman and CEO. For CBS — and, really, the entire television industry, which is at the crescendo of Emmy time and on the verge of a new fall season — the question will be how it emerges from one of the longest shadows ever cast by an entertainment executive.

CBS appears eager to publicly distance itself from Moonves, already pulling his bio from the corporate website. It wasn’t that way when Leslie Roy Moonves first came to CBS in 1995 as president of entertainment,...

David Nevins, president and CEO of Showtime, will receive the top award (and the good-natured roasting that often comes with it) at the annual luncheon benefiting the Center for Communications.

The organization, founded in 1980 by CBS icon Frank Stanton, has an educational mission to further opportunities for the next generation of media professionals and bridge the gap between academia and industry. In order to raise funds for its programs, it holds a yearly lunch event at the Pierre Hotel.

Recent recipients of the not-for-profit group’s award for excellence, which is named for Stanton, have included Shane Smith of Vice, former mayor and media exec Michael Bloomberg, and Ted Turner. The honoree often draws tributes and zingers from notable guests. AMC Networks CEO Josh Sapan’s retinue included Fred Armisen and the late Joan Rivers; Smith’s award came with remarks from former Viacom CEO Tom Freston and Johnny Knoxville.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of the social networking app Bumble, has been named to the board of directors for Imagine Entertainment, the company announced Tuesday. Wolfe Herd joins Tom Freston, Jeff Sagansky, Michael Lynton and Richard Rosenblatt as a non-voting member.

She will become the first woman on the company’s board.

Under Wolfe Herd’s vision, Bumble, a dating platform where women make the initial connection, has grown to over 35 million users in 160 countries. In 2016, Bumble launched Bumble Bff as a friend-finding feature and followed up on its success with Bumble Bizz for professional networking in 2017.

Also Read: Oscars Academy Has Doubled Non-White Members Since 2016, on Track to Double Women Too

“I deeply admire Whitney as an original thinker and visionary. She is a brilliant young entrepreneur who not only created an incredible global company, but also an empowered and strong community,” said Imagine co-chairman Brian Grazer in a statement.

Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder/CEO of the social networking app Bumble, has been added as a non-voting member of the board of directors of Imagine Entertainment by chairmen Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. She joins Tom Freston, Jeff Sagansky, Michael Lynton and Richard Rosenblatt on the board.

It is the latest in a series of expansion moves by Imagine, which recently broadened into the documentary and branding space with the launch of Imagine Documentaries. It also acquired Jax Media, the company behind the half-hour cable comedies Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, Inside Amy Shumer and Broad City. Earlier this year, Imagine Entertainment and Animal Logic’s joint venture entered into a film partnership with Warner Bros. Pictures Group to co-produce and co-finance a slate of animated and hybrid family films. This follows last year’s $100 million TV co-financing venture with Hong Kong based Tvb, and a co-financing arrangement with CBS Television Studios.

The time has come to augment the endangered species list, with Hollywood media moguls as the latest entries. They used to be the loudest voices in the room, but now you need a scorecard to figure out who’s in charge of what.

Consider this week: The CEOs of At&T and Time Warner took the stand in federal court to slam the Justice Department for opposing their vaunted merger (what will be the fate of CNN and HBO?). Les Moonves must audition again for the (dubious?) privilege of running the newest proposed iteration of CBS-Viacom. With the abrupt dismissal of Gary Barber, MGM shareholders are looking for a new leader and business plan (will the Mark Burnett attachment hold firm?). And tense meetings continue within the newly forged Disney-Fox empire to hammer out a new power structure (will Rupert Murdoch truly limit his clout to the Fox News propaganda machine?...

Getting fired in Hollywood becomes more lucrative every year. Take Viacom. Two decades ago, Frank Biondi left the company with $20 million. Ten years ago, Tom Freston's farewell brought him $80 million. Should Philippe Dauman go, he could be looking at least that amount and likely more (perhaps a lot more depending on vested stock and any settlement). That's mainly a function of climbing compensation at large. When executives sign contracts for a set term, they are due a base salary, targeted bonuses and stock options. So long as they are not fired with cause, those exiting can expect to

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At the 2014 New York Film Festival premiere of “Gone Girl,” Twentieth Century Fox Film Chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos seemed visibly relieved to have Stacey Snider finally join the studio, after months of speculation that this capable executive would join him from DreamWorks. Now, almost two years later —and after a 25-year career at Fox —the studio has confirmed that Gianopulos’ contract will not be renewed after it expires on June 30, 2017, when he will graduate “upstairs” into an executive role at parent company 21st Century Fox.

This follows a transition for Snider that has not been smooth. While the veteran exec has the right mix of skills to run a studio (and did so at Universal with Ron Meyer), knows how to manage a team of executives, and how to develop, produce, and release movies that are smart and four-quadrant friendly, entering the Fox landscape proved to be a challenge.

At the 2014 New York Film Festival premiere of “Gone Girl,” Twentieth Century Fox Film Chairman and CEO Jim Gianopulos seemed visibly relieved to have Stacey Snider finally join the studio, after months of speculation that this capable executive would join him from DreamWorks. Now, almost two years later —and after a 25-year career at Fox —the studio has confirmed that Gianopulos’ contract will not be renewed after it expires on June 30, 2017, when he will graduate “upstairs” into an executive role at parent company 21st Century Fox.

This follows a transition for Snider that has not been smooth. While the veteran exec has the right mix of skills to run a studio (and did so at Universal with Ron Meyer), knows how to manage a team of executives, and how to develop, produce, and release movies that are smart and four-quadrant friendly, entering the Fox landscape proved to be a challenge.

Sumner Redstone has moved to oust Philippe Dauman and four others from the Viacom board of directors in his latest showdown with the media company Thursday. For months, Redstone has taken an increasingly aggressive stance toward Dauman, his former confidante who has remained as Viacom’s chairman and CEO despite lagging corporate performance and sagging stock price. In a move announced by Redstone’s National Amusements Inc., which controls 80 percent of both Viacom and CBS, Redstone named potential replacements for Dauman as well as for directors George Abrams, Frederic Salerno, Blythe McGarvie and William Schwartz. Also Read: Ex-Viacom CEO Tom Freston Calls Philippe Dauman.

Former Viacom CEO Tom Freston thinks his successor Philippe Dauman is the cause of the company’s current struggles, and called on its board to replace him. Appearing on CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Wednesday, Freston told host Michelle Lee that Dauman, who was named CEO by Sumner Redstone in 2006, is unfit to lead an entertainment company. “You can’t run an entertainment company through lawsuits, through litigation,” Freston said. “I think it requires more deft management than maybe they’ve had in the past. There’s been a series of pretty serious errors.” Also Read: Viacom Board's Open Letter...

The Vanity Fair Oscar party has found a new home in Beverly Hills. The locale is a glass-walled, Basil Walter-designed, 6500-square-foot glass walled structure that filled North Crescent Drive below Santa Monica Boulevard adjacent to the Wallis Annenberg Center. “We’re here for the next three years,” said editor Graydon Carter, “and I’m happy with it.” Despite the openness of the space, it was still a packed room. “Brett Ratner just touched my crotch,” said MTV co-founder Tom Freston. “And you can use that.” Considering the Oscars are about film, it was

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Van Toffler, in charge of Viacom's Music and Logo Group, the umbrella for MTV, VH1, Cmt and all their attendant online properties, has announced he will be moving on in April, to form a content creation and acquisition company. Toffler's departure is the latest in a series of departures of senior Viacom executives who've left the company over the last nine years, some more political than others. Tom Freston, former Viacom CEO, was fired by Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone in 2006 in large part over his losing the bidding war over Myspace to News Corp. And former MTV Networks CEO

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Colin Offland's documentary about Dennis Rodman's hoops diplomacy in North Korea, where he met with dictator Kim Jong Un, will receive a world premiere at the 2015 Slamdance Film Festival, which unveiled its narrative and documentary features competition lineup on Monday. Actors appearing in Slamdance's dramatic competiton films include Pretty Little Liars' star Ashley Benson (Ratter), Helen Rogers and Lauren Molina (both appearing in Body), Alex Karpovsky (Tired Moonlight) and Nick Flanagan (Diamond Tongues). Read more Vice's Shane Smith and Tom Freston on Sending Dennis Rodman to North Korea for HBO  This year's feature film competition has 13 world premieres

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It turns out it is all about who you know, after all – as Academy Award winner Stephen Gaghan is about to demonstrate, by bringing new drama White City to AMC. He will direct the pilot and serve as co-executive producer on the geo-political drama about Western diplomats and journalists in Afghanistan.

The central character will be Jon Liston, described as a ‘war junkie’ who has spent most of a decade in Kabul, up close and personal to the violence and destruction. The notable thing about this new series is that it comes from individuals who have done just that – and have spent time living in the same situation as their leading character.

Co-writers and co-executive producers Nick McDonell and John Dempsey have, it seems, pooled their collective experiences to create a thrilling new drama for the network. McDonell is a novelist and journalist with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan for Time Magazine,...

AMC has found a director for Afghanistan drama White City. The project, recently ordered to pilot, will be helmed by Stephen Gaghan. The writer and director, perhaps best known for his Oscar-winning adapted screenplay for Steven Soderberg's Traffic, also will serve as an executive producer on the project, which comes from novelist Nick McDonell and politico John Dempsey. Chris Mundy and Tom Freston also serve as executive producers.   "Nick and John were actually staying at my house, fresh out of Kabul, when they were going around pitching the show," said Gaghan, who had exceptionally flattering words for

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Via @ZooeyDeschanel

Open Road Films announced on Wednesday that it will release Rock The Kasbah nationwide April 24, 2015. The photo above is from Zooey Deschanel’s Twitter account.

In Rock The Kasbah Bill Murray is joined by Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride and Scott Caan.

Rock The Kasbah is the story of “Richie Vance,” a has-been rock manager who takes his last remaining client on a Uso tour of Afghanistan. When Richie finds himself in Kabul, abandoned, penniless and without his passport, he discovers a young girl with an extraordinary voice and manages her through Afghanistan’s version of “American Idol,” the wildly popular “Afghan Star.”

The film is written by Mitch Glazer and directed by Barry Levinson. Qed’s Bill Block, Venture Forth’s Jacob Pechenik, Shangri-La Entertainment’s Steve Bing and Mitch Glazer are producing Rock The Kasbah. Brian Grazer and Tom Freston are executive producers.

Rock The Kasbah stars Bill Murray as a washed-up rock manger who champions a young Afghan singer in the country’s version of American Idol.

Open Road will release the film on April 24, 2015.

Barry Levinson directs from a script by Mitch Glazer and the cast includes Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride and Scott Caan.

Qed’s Bill Block, Venture Forth’s Jacob Pechenik, Shangri-La Entertainment’s Steve Bing and Mitch Glazer produce Rock The Kasbah and Brian Grazer and Tom Freston are executive producers.

Qed holds international rights.

Organisers at the Toronto International Film Festival have declared September 5 Bill Murray Day.

Rock The Kasbah stars Bill Murray as a washed-up rock manger who champions a young Afghan singer in the country’s version of American Idol.

Open Road will release the film on April 24, 2015.

Barry Levinson directs from a script by Mitch Glazer and the cast includes Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride and Scott Caan.

Qed’s Bill Block, Venture Forth’s Jacob Pechenik, Shangri-La Entertainment’s Steve Bing and Mitch Glazer produce Rock The Kasbah and Brian Grazer and Tom Freston are executive producers.

Qed holds international rights.

Organisers at the Toronto International Film Festival have declared September 5 Bill Murray Day.

Rock The Kasbah stars Bill Murray as a washed-up rock manger who champions a young Afghan singer in the country’s version of American Idol.

Open Road will release the film on April 24, 2015.

Barry Levinson directs from a script by Mitch Glazer and the cast includes Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride and Scott Caan.

Qed’s Bill Block, Venture Forth’s Jacob Pechenik, Shangri-La Entertainment’s Steve Bing and Mitch Glazer produce Rock The Kasbah and Brian Grazer and Tom Freston are executive producers.

Qed holds international rights.

Organisers at the Toronto International Film Festival have declared September 5 Bill Murray Day.

Open Road has set an April 24, 2015 wide release for the Bill Murray-led comedy Rock The Kasbah, about a has-been rock ‘n’ roll manager who takes his last client on a Uso tour of Afghanistan and discovers a young local girl with a golden voice, then manages her through Afghanistan’s version of American Idol. Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Zooey Deschanel, Danny McBride and Scott Caan also star in the Barry Levinson-helmed pic, produced by Qed’s Bill Block, Venture Forth’s Jacob Pechenik, Shangri-La Entertainment’s Steve Bing and Mitch Glazer and scripted by Glazer. Brian Grazer and Tom Freston are exec producers. The April 2015 frame is currently uncontested.

New Girl star Zooey Deschanel spent her summer hiatus from the hit Fox series by shooting a new comedy entitled Rock the Kasbah, which recently wrapped production. To commemorate the end of her shoot, Zooey Deschanel sent out a new photo from the set to her Twitter followers, where she is seen alongside Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Danny McBride and Scott Caan. Take a look at the photo, then read on for more details about this comedy.

Just wrapped “Rock the Kasbah” with all of these crazy dudes! You might recognize them… ;) pic.twitter.com/xvQfOIDHn2

— zooey deschanel (@ZooeyDeschanel) July 30, 2014

The story centers on a downtrodden music producer who finds himself stranded in Kabul, Afghanistan after a Uso tour gone awry. He finds a young girl with an incredible voice, who he leads through the Afghan version of American Idol. We reported back in February that Open Road Films signed on to distribute the comedy.

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Exclusive: Production on the comedy has kicked off in Marrakech, Morocco. Open Road will distribute in the Us in spring 2015 and Qed International handled sales.

As Screen first reported in Cannes, Bill Block’s Qed International licensed a slew of rights to Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions and now Block’s team has closed remaining territories.

Rights have gone for Germany, Benelux and Switzerland (Splendid), Australia (StudioCanal), Japan (Klockworx), Scandinavia (Mis.label), Italy (Eagle), Canada (Vvs) and Portugal (Lusomundo).

Deals also closed in South Korea (Sookie), Middle East (Gulf), Malaysia (Antenna), Turkey (Aqua), Singapore (Cathay-Keris), Iceland (Sam), Greece (Faliro House Productions), Israel (United King), South Africa (Mnet), Vietnam (RainFilm) and airlines (Cinesky).

Spwa picked up the UK, Latin America, Spain, Eastern Europe and pan-Asia satellites.

Bruce Willis, Kate Hudson, Danny McBride, Scott Caan, Zooey Deschanel and Leem Lubany also star in the story of a washed-out rock manager who submits a young Pashtun singer into Afghanistan’s version...