Sumner Redstone: Last News

It was an intimate cocktail party. Tom Cruise wore a cheerful smile so I couldn’t resist the opportunity to test it. “For someone who’s just been fired, you look very happy,” I said. “Sumner Redstone figured you would be angry by the press release.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Four members of Paramount Global‘s current 11 board of directors will step down, the company disclosed, coming as the company has stepped up talks with Skydance Media about an M&A deal. The four directors — Dawn Ostroff, former chief content and advertising business officer of Spotify; Nicole Seligman, former president of Sony Entertainment; Frederick Terrell, vice chairman of investment banking at Wells Fargo; and Rob Klieger, partner at Hueston Hennigan LLP, who had served as legal counsel to Sumner Redstone — will not stand for reelection at Paramount Global’s annual meeting, set for June 4.

Paramount Global shares, which soared Wednesday on news that Apollo had made an $11 billion offer for Paramount Pictures, has slumped today after a report splashed cold water on the scenario.

The Offer is the name of a series on Paramount+. Now, it could be the logline for Paramount Global.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Paramount Global has clinched a deal that is crucial to its future — but it’s not the transaction that Wall Street has been buzzing about for a few weeks. Paramount Global and Comcast have set a new carriage agreement covering Paramount’s cable channels and CBS-owned stations. The pact averts the prospect of a blackout for CBS stations and Paramount channels across Comcast’s cable systems, which reach about video 14.5 million subscribers and 29 million broadband subscribers.

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor Producer Steven Paul has optioned the rights to “Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy,” with plans to develop the nonfiction bestseller by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams as a TV series. The book, published by Penguin Random House in February, tells the sordid, behind-the-scenes story of the battle for control of Sumner Redstone’s media empire. The book has been the talk of the town in Hollywood as industry insiders learn the unvarnished details behind the recent history of Sumner and Shari Redstone, Viacom, CBS Corp., Leslie Moonves and a host of other prominent figures. Paul is in the process of recruiting a writer to develop the property as a limited series through his SP Media Group. The deal was brokered for Stewart and Abrams by CAA’s Ron Bernstein and SP Media president Scott Karol.

From the outset, Sumner Redstone was a curiosity.

As Paramount Global prepares to report quarterly earnings Thursday, with CEO Bob Bakish presiding and Shari Redstone happily ensconced as non-executive chair, a new book is bringing forth some interesting (and at times lurid) revelations about the company’s tortuous journey.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media Analyst What began for a pair of New York Times reporters as an investigation into managerial malfeasance ended up turning into a family drama. While it was the actions of Viacom founder Sumner Redstone and CBS Corp. CEO Leslie Moonves that first attracted James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams to what became their new book, “Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy,” it was a third figure who ultimately loomed larger for Stewart. “We had Shari Redstone, the much under-appreciated — to put it mildly — daughter of Sumner Redstone thrust into a world that was not of her choosing, in an attempt to gain control of the companies and the family legacy,” he said on the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business.” “So that became the much bigger story. It’s a corporate story, it is a MeToo story, but it’s much bigger than that.”

Afternoon subscribers. Max Goldbart here with your weekly dose of International Insider news and analysis and it’s been as busy as ever over the past seven days. Scroll down for more.

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.

Few have loomed so large and for so long over the entertainment industry as famously autocratic late billionaire Sumner Redstone, who passed last year at 97 years old after years of illness and isolation, not to mention rampant rumors of incapacitation and bitter infighting among his family and a couple of his significantly younger former girlfriends and care takers. The media magnate was the majority owner and chairman of the National Amusements theater chain, through which he and is family controlled (and still control) majority voting shares of ViacomCBS, the parent company of Paramount Pictures, CBS, BET, Showtime, MTV and Comedy Central.

For more than 100 years, the Paramount brand has stood as a symbol for the golden age of Hollywood filmmaking. On Wednesday afternoon, executives from ViacomCBS made the case for why Paramount and its gleaming mountain logo will be what pushes the entertainment conglomerate into the streaming era.

CBS stockholders can continue to pursue a lawsuit over the 2019 merger of Viacom and CBS, a Delaware judge has ruled.

millennial beauty on the block.Meet Yael Shelbia, the Israeli stunner just crowned 2020’s winner of TC Candler’s annual “100 Most Beautiful Faces of the Year” list. “I’ve never come first at anything … it’s very nice,” the 19-year-old, who is currently doing her mandatory military service in the Israel Air Force, told the Times of Israel.The hot model and fledgling actress is also No.

Mae Hamilton Though she bought it not even three years ago, Sydney Holland — the 48-year-old self-proclaimed philanthropist, producer, art collector and ex-flame of recently-deceased billionaire media tycoon Sumner Redstone — has hoisted her stylish Pacific Palisades mansion onto the market.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorViacomCBS shares were up more than 5% in trading Friday, reflecting renewed investor interest in the company following the death earlier this week of chairman emeritus Sumner Redstone.The movement for ViacomCBS shares comes on a down day overall so far for the NASDAQ index. News of the Redstone’s death on Aug.

What's the path forward for ViacomCBS after media mogul Sumner Redstone's deathat 97? Most Wall Street observers expect no strategy changes given that the executive didn't have any involvement in major company decisions in recent years. But some suggest there will be less soap opera-type focus on the Redstone family than in the past, which has at times distracted from the focus on the business.

As fate would have it, I believe that I was the last journalist to interview Sumner Redstone, who diedon Aug. 11 at 97.

Ted Johnson Senior EditorSumner Redstone had a long history of challenging the status quo — via litigation that often revealed questionable practices in the entertainment business and also laid bare more than a few of his personal squabbles.“When your life depends on it, you must wage war,” Redstone wrote in his 2001 memoir, “A Passion to Win,” in which he devoted many pages to explaining his legal battles. The mogul who died Aug.

«Sumner was a true industry titan, a brilliant and driven pioneer whose influence on the media and entertainment landscape cannot be overstated,» said a statement from ViacomCBS CEO Bob Bakish. ViacomCBS Chair Shari Redstone said in a statement, «My father led an extraordinary life that not only shaped entertainment as we know it today, but created an incredible family legacy. Through it all, we shared a great love for one another and he was a wonderful father, grandfather and great-grandfather.