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SO HOW DOES SHARI Redstone get rid of her father’s successor, Philippe Dauman, enabling her to sell the dwindling Viacom assets that Dauman controls and that her father’s failing health and geriatric bouffe have effectively frozen? That’s the question Shari has engaged in a combination of corporate farce and grand strategy, and one that has many hedge fund managers — believing the fate of Redstone’s Viacom and CBS Corp. are the first dominos of a forthcoming media consolidation — on the edge of their seats. When Sumner Redstone, 92, resigned as chairman of CBS and was replaced by Dauman at Viacom on Feb. 2, Shari declined to assume the chairmanship, instead supporting the elevation of CEO Leslie Moonves at CBS and registering the single board vote against Dauman’s move to…
WHEN ATTORNEYS FOR Sumner Redstone revealed in a Feb. 9 court filing that the ailing billionaire’s ex-companion Manuela Herzer stood to inherit $50 million plus his $20 million Beverly Park house, the message was clear: In challenging her dismissal as Redstone’s health-care proxy, Herzer is after the money. But it’s also clear that more than a mere $70 million could be at stake from Herzer’s point of view. The filing confirms that changes in Redstone’s will, made after Herzer was booted from his home in October, ensure those assets will go to the Sumner Redstone Charitable Foundation upon his death. And as Vanity Fair reported in May, Herzer expected to control that foundation upon the 92-year-old’s death. “He’s said to me a million times, ‘Manuela, what’s mine is yours,’ ”…
APPLE CEO TIM COOK is in a pretty enviable position these days. On Jan. 26, the technology giant reported an $18.4 billion profit that ranks as the biggest quarterly payday for a publicly traded company. Sales of Apple Watches, Apple TVs and iPhones never have been higher. So why are investors bailing on Apple stock? Shares were down 10 percent this year as of Feb. 8. Wall Street is worried about where growth will come from in the future, with some analysts predicting that Cook, 55, either wants or will be forced to use some of the $206 billion Apple has saved up to go on a buying spree. What might Cook purchase? Here are five of the most talkedabout targets: 1 Time Warner | MARKET CAP $58.1B Apple’s iTunes…
IN SEPTEMBER, MICHAEL MOORE ANNOUNCED HE had sold his anticipated documentary Where to Invade Next to a new, unnamed company headed by ex-Radius executives Tom Quinn and Jason Janego and Alamo Drafthouse founder Tim League. But as Invade limps into 300 theaters Feb. 12, questions surround the film and the mysterious outfit releasing it. Invade, in which Moore visits countries that offer a better version of the American dream, was set to roll out nationally Dec. 23, then pushed to Jan. 15 and eventually Feb. 12. In December, Moore, 61, said he would embark on a 50-state bus tour to promote the film, but that never happened. (An empty bus with Invade signage instead is making the rounds.) Insiders blame the delays on not wanting the political satire to open…
“As we got to midseason of season two, reality for me had started to set in,” says Cherniss. Weekend Numbers WHEN WGN America revealed Feb. 3 that Manhattan would not air a third season, critics took to Twitter to bemoan the decision. But no one was as broken up as WGN president Matt Cherniss, for whom the John Benjamin Hickey vehicle about the race to build the atomic bomb was his second series order and a key building block as the one-time superstation transitioned into an 80 million-home cable network committed to original prestige dramas. “It’s the least pleasant part of the job, especially for a show as good as Manhattan,” he tells THR of the network’s first axing. But Cherniss felt he had done all he could to broaden…
Forget Von Miller or even Beyonce: The real MVP of Super Bowl 50 might have been Matt Damon. A 30-second spot teasing his return as a CIA operative in Jason Bourne was the most buzzed-about movie trailer on game day, according to advertising metrics firm iSpot.tv. The trailer’s overall social impressions from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube edged out new footage of such summer tentpoles as X-Men: Apocalypse and Captain America: Civil War. The dominant sentiment among the more than 17,000 tweets mentioning Jason Bourne? “Excited,” according to social measurement firm Canvs, which also breaks emotional tweets into such categories as “love,” “good” and “crazy.” Still, not even Bourne was a match for Mountain Dew’s “PuppyMonkeyBaby,” which ranked as the No. 1 commercial of the night. 1 Jason Bourne Universal’s spy…
