For years, Netflix has been the anchor tenant at Sunset Studios, making the ICON building its Los Angeles headquarters and occupying the EPIC and CUE buildings as part of the complex on Sunset Boulevard. The […]
Erik Hayden
31 posts
In December 2018, director Alan Elliott was over the moon. Amazing Grace, his long-shelved Aretha Franklin concert film that had faced years of legal setbacks in a battle with the singer’s estate had just set […]
It’s been over two months since Casey Wasserman made the surprise move under pressure to put his namesake company up for auction after facing an artist exodus when his decades-old emails with Ghislaine Maxwell surfaced […]
At the 2014 Oscars, best supporting actor nominee Bradley Cooper took a selfie with host Ellen DeGeneres and a bunch of A-listers, among them Angelina Jolie, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Meryl Streep, Lupita Nyong’o and […]
After nearly three decades, Netflix founder Reed Hastings is stepping down from the board of directors at the streaming giant. The exec will focus on his philanthropic efforts and won’t stand for reelection at the […]
After driving the price tag up to chase Netflix away, David Ellison pulled off a coup in late February with a $111 billion deal for Paramount to devour Warner Bros. Discovery. Until then, criticism of […]
A Senate hearing over Paramount‘s blockbuster $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery will move forward without the sale’s primary player David Ellison. The mogul’s Paramount policy team informed Sen. Cory Booker, the top […]
Across the United States, the volume of movie and TV on-location production filming slowed in the first quarter of this year, with one state marking an exception: New Jersey. The Garden State made gains in […]
A new report from YouTube reveals how the cratering of traditional U.S. studio animation and the aging of a digital-first audience may be expanding opportunities for independent digital animation. The latest research from the company’s […]
F. Scott Fitzgerald declared, in his posthumous Hollywood novel The Last Tycoon, that there are no second acts in American lives. Jeff Shell, now felled from his presidency of Paramount, is living proof. The catalyst […]
Lawyers at CAA were alarmed by the leaks, which could bring far more pain than bad publicity. It was January, days after news spilled that it had lost a legal battle over the high-profile exits […]
Adam Fogelson is seizing his moment. The chair of Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group is coming off a string of major hits, including the threequel Now You See Me: Now You Don’t ($243.7 million worldwide on a […]
On August 13, 1982, Universal released teen comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High in theaters, marking the directorial debut of Amy Heckerling from a screenplay by Cameron Crowe. The film, featuring a breakout performance from […]
When J.J. Abrams’ shingle Bad Robot revealed April 2 that it was shuttering its L.A. office, the news hit the industry like a thunderbolt. But really, the company’s downsizing had been months in the making, foreshadowed […]
The inspiration for Warner Bailey’s popular Instagram account Assistants vs. Agents was an in-joke among support staffers at WME in 2017. Knowing that reps’ assistants would check out their mail before their bosses did, then-assistant Bailey and […]
On April 3, TMZ held court with Rhode Island Rep. Seth Magaziner, who hosted a Real Housewives of Rhode Island watch party the night before. During the show, Harvey Levin radiated outrage, wondering if the […]
Marcus Theatres, the fourth largest movie theater chain stateside following AMC, Regal and Cinemark, has found its new chief in a longtime executive. The Milwaukee-based exhibitor has named Jeffry F. Tomachek as president, succeeding Mark A. […]
As Starz gets set for its first shareholder meeting as a spun off, pure-play TV production brand without its Lionsgate studio sibling, the company has disclosed its C-suite pay for top execs. Jeffrey Hirsch, who […]
You’ve spent a career focused on film development, and currently have a first-look movie deal at Warner Bros. after your exit as studio chief, what was the calculation to expand your banner to TV? I […]
A month ahead of its annual shareholder meeting, major theater chain Cinemark has disclosed its pay for its C-suite, with its top executive seeing a 10 percent bump in compensation for 2025. Sean Gamble, 51, […]
On Feb. 28, 1986, Paramount unveiled John Hughes’ high school feature Pretty in Pink in theaters, where it would go on to gross $40 million in its run and become a breakout for Breakfast Club […]
On Tuesday afternoon the bomb dropped. OpenAI was closing down Sora, and its Disney deal was over. The big video-generation tool that was supposed to turn Disney+ into a user-generated paradise — or a field […]
On an otherwise normal hour of CNN last week, viewers may have been greeted by the title card “Global Report: War With Iran” and an array of correspondents fanned out across the Middle East — […]
Premium cabler Starz is reorienting itself in its post-Lionsgate era and making a notable round of layoffs. The company cut 7 percent of its workforce on Friday in what has been described as a shifting […]
Even ardent journalists don’t go through what Frederik Pleitgen just endured. The German-born CNN journalist spent nearly 24 hours traveling overland from Armenia to Tehran —where he was promptly confronted by rampant bombing that threatened […]
The state of Illinois appears to be taking a growing share of Hollywood’s overall production spending pie by attracting a mix of indies, high-profile series and streaming shows. And it doesn’t hurt having three Chicago […]
During a new round of belt-tightening across Hollywood, major talent agency WME is cutting about 30 staffers across a range of divisions, about 3 percent of staff. Leaders Christian Muirhead and Richard Weitz unveiled the […]
Behind closed doors, Rebel Wilson‘s crisis public relations team discussed plans to create anonymous websites that accused the producer of The Deb of sex trafficking as part of an alleged smear campaign solicited by the […]
Richie Merritt didn’t even know who Matthew McConaughey was when a casting pro waltzed into his high school in the 2010s, intent on finding a teen to co-star with the actor in a film. Then […]
Few could have predicted Disney’s Zootopia 2 would become the top-grossing 2025 film ahead of Avatar: Fire and Ash, collecting $1.86 billion in worldwide ticket sales, or that Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch would place among the three movies […]
For all the talk about how much the Academy Awards have changed in recent years, one key facet has remained remarkably constant: the category lineup. Aside from the two sound categories merging, there have been […]