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Just minutes before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was set to get underway in April 2023, New York Post editor-in-chief Keith Poole and star columnist Miranda Devine were on a mission to find an extra seat. Inside the Washington Hilton hotel, the pair had a very special guest that they needed to accommodate and their table was oversubscribed. After some musical chairs among staffers, Vivek Ramaswamy spent much of the evening talking with Poole, a Brit feted as a “boy wonder” in Murdoch circles. Poole, who like all Murdoch editors has a direct line to “the boss,” had already created waves in his handling of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential announcement. “Been There, Don That” was the headline that was tucked away on page 26 of the Nov. 22, 2022, edition…
Adam Wingard The director’s Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire nearly doubled tracking expectations for its box office bow, and with $361.1 million globally so far, Legendary is very happy. Martin Gero and Dean Georgaris NBC cancels the showrunners’ Quantum Leap reboot after it wrapped season two as one of the broadcast network’s lowest-rated scripted originals. Caitlin Clark and Kamilla Cardoso The NCAA stars help lure 18.7 million viewers (a record for women’s basketball in the U.S.) to witness South Carolina’s finals win. Sylvester Stallone The action icon was accused of mocking background actors on the set of his Paramount+ show Tulsa King. A casting agency has quit, and the director denies the claim. Showbiz Stocks $169.67 (+0.6%) APPLE (AAPL) Investors brushed off antitrust concerns surrounding the tech giant. $10.97…
After merging Endeavor and William Morris to form WME in 2009, it took a decade of private equity-fueled deals (nabbing IMG for $2.4 billion; gaining control of UFC) to realize Ari Emanuel’s dream of leading a public company. It only took three years for it to end for Endeavor. Investors didn’t know how to value disparate assets (in a firm encompassing both Professional Bull Riders and Hollywood agents). Here’s a close read on how Emanuel’s IPO goal was reached and ultimately unwound. The Fine Print of the Go-Private Move … While the move to take Endeavor private is a reversal for Silver Lake and the executives running the company, Ari Emanuel, and Mark Shapiro will all be the beneficiaries of some generous deal-related bonuses. Other financial side effects: It Incentivizes…
The moment that it started to seem possible that Bob Iger could lose the battle to keep dissident shareholder Nelson Peltz off the Disney board was on March 21, when leading proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services announced its support for the activist investor. Days later, the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) took it a step further, saying it was voting its shares not only for Peltz but for his associate, former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo. Now that it’s over, it’s fair to ask: What were they thinking? ISS explained its decision by rattling off a string of issues, but the big one was succession, which had been notoriously botched with the Bob Chapek interregnum after Iger had postponed his retirement no fewer than four times. “Dissident nominee Peltz,…
NOV. 21, 2022 $99.79 A day after Bob Iger rejoins Disney, replacing Bob Chapek, under whose tenure Disney’s share price began to slump. FEB. 9, 2023 $111.87 Nelson Peltz’s Trian abandons proxy fight the first time, and Disney shares went up. NOV. 30, 2023 $92.39 Trian signals a new fight as Disney shares once again slump amid a larger Wall Street pullback on streaming. JAN. 16 $90.29 Disney makes its case against Peltz, arguing that the 81-year-old activist does not have any media experience and suggests that ousted Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter is behind the move. FEB. 7 $108.80 Disney’s share price jumps as Iger announces an animated Moana sequel, a $1.5 billion deal with Epic Games and the Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie on Disney+. APRIL 3 $123.69…
NBCUniversal chief content officer Donna Langley was there. So was Sony head Tom Rothman. Bob Iger was one of the few Hollywood heavyweights who couldn’t make it, but at least he had a good excuse, still in the midst of a vicious proxy battle with investor Nelson Peltz. The event: The grand unveiling to the titans of the film industry of Megalopolis, the self-funded epic from Francis Ford Coppola, legendary director of the Godfather trilogy. The March 28 screening — held at 10 a.m. at the Universal CityWalk Imax theater — was also attended by such Coppola-verse luminaries as nephew Nicolas Cage, The Godfather series star Al Pacino and Spike Jonze, Coppola’s ex-son-in-law. Two of the film’s stars — Shia LaBeouf and Coppola’s sister, Talia Shire — were also on…
