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.”

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor In October, it will be 10 years since Shari Redstone began her campaign to get her family’s legacy in order. Most likely, she hasn’t had a day of rest in all that time. As late as a month ago, Redstone, 70, might have reasonably expected that the sale of the family media empire, Paramount Global, would be done and dusted by the time she marked the 10-year anniversary of the day she had a former girlfriend ousted from the Beverly Park home of her aged father, legendary film and TV mogul Sumner Redstone.

New York City honored late media titan Sumner Redstone by renaming a segment of West 44th Street outside Paramount Global headquarters as Sumner Redstone Way.

Barry Diller said his interest in Paramount Global “unquestionably” pushed Skydance to close its merger with the media company.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Is Barry Diller looking to charge back into Hollywood? IAC, the internet media and publishing conglomerate led by Diller, is “exploring” a bid to acquire Shari Redstone’s National Amusements Inc., the company that owns a controlling stake in Paramount Global, the New York Times reported Monday, citing anonymous sources. IAC has signed nondisclosure agreements with National Amusements Inc. to perform due diligence on a deal, per the Times report.

Paramount Global controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, along with the conglom’s co-CEO troika, waved poms poms tonight to staff about the upside to Skydance’s $8 billion takeover of the storied studio, CBS network and Viacom cable networks.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After months of talks, Paramount Global and Skydance Media officially announced a deal to merge Sunday night. Shari Redstone, non-executive chair of Paramount Global and its controlling shareholder through National Amusements Inc., addressed the pact in a memo to employees, as did the trio of co-CEOs currently leading the company: George Cheeks, president and CEO of CBS; Chris McCarthy, president and CEO, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks; and Brian Robbins, president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon.

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.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After more than six months of on-again-off-again talks, Shari Redstone has ended negotiations with David Ellison‘s Skydance Media about a prospective merger with Paramount Global. Redstone is Paramount Global’s controlling shareholder through National Amusements Inc., which owns 77% of the voting shares in Paramount.

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.

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.