Sony is buying ‘Destiny 2’ developer Bungie for £2.6billion

It’s a very big day for Snoop Dogg!

Wednesday press release from Berkshire Hathaway’s Business Wire.The 50-year-old rapper, whose given name is Calvin Broadus Jr, acquired the company from private equity controlled MNRK Music Group, the release said.“I am thrilled and appreciative of the opportunity to acquire the iconic and culturally significant Death Row Records brand, which has immense untapped future value,” Snoop Dogg said, according to the release.“It feels good to have ownership of the label I was part of at the beginning of my career and as one of the founding members. This is an extremely meaningful moment for me.”It wasn’t clear how much Snoop paid for the label, which filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and was sold six years later as founder Suge Knight battled legal and financial troubles.

Dave Chappelle threatened to pull his investments in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where he lives, over a potential new housing development in the area. Chappelle's father worked at a college in the Ohio village and the comedian spent summers there growing up. In 2020, news also broke that Chappelle would purchase a former Miami Township fire station in the area and convert it into a comedy club.

Snoop Dogg has acquired the brand that launched him, Death Row Records. He did so just days before he and the label’s co-founder Dr. Dre will take the stage during the Super Bowl Halftime Show before an audience of close to 100 million people.

Zooey Deschanel (New Girl, (500) Days of Summer) will star alongside Zachary Levi and Lil Rel Howery in Sony Pictures’ live-action adaptation of Harold and the Purple Crayon, from Oscar-nominated director Carlos Saldanha (Ferdinand, Rio films), Deadline has confirmed.

Forbes just revealed their Highest-Paid Entertainers of 2022 list, and the person at number one might surprise you.

While three generations of Spider-Men recently blew the lid off “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which has grossed $1.7 billion worldwide—the sixth-highest film of all time and about to surpass James Cameron’s “Avatar” at the domestic box office with $749 million—with the help of Doctor Strange and Marvel, though we shouldn’t forget that at the end of the day, these are Marvel-produced films that are owned and distributed by Sony Pictures.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaOscar winner Russell Crowe has entered the Spiderverse.The “Gladiator” star has joined the cast of “Kraven the Hunter” in an unspecified role. Aaron Taylor-Johnson is starring in the title role as one of Spider-Man’s most deadly antagonists.J.C. Chandor, who previously oversaw “All Is Lost” and “Triple Frontier,” is directing.

Oscar winner Russell Crowe (Gladiator, The Loudest Voice) will star alongside Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Sony Pictures’ Marvel film Kraven the Hunter, from director J.C. Chandor (A Most Violent Year, Margin Call), Deadline can confirm.

The project has famously been through multiple iterations, but this is as far along as the casting has been at any stage.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorMoonbug Entertainment is expanding its kid-vid footprint by snapping up Little Angel, a big producer of YouTube videos and songs for preschoolers.Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. The acquisition is Moonbug’s first since it was bought in a $3 billion deal by Candle Media, the next-generation media roll-up venture headed by former Disney execs Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs and backed by private-equity firm Blackstone.

EXCLUSIVE: Growing theatrical distributor and streamer MUBI has picked up all rights from The Match Factory to Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Oscar breakout Drive My Car for Latin America, India, Malaysia, Africa (excluding French language Pay-TV rights) and the Middle East (excluding Israel and Turkey).

Days Gone 2, director Jeff Ross has revealed he had plans for an Uncharted prequel.Speaking to Sacred Symbols+ (and transcribed by VGC), Ross said that after the sequel to Days Gone wasn’t greenlit, the team started looking at other Sony titles. One of the potential games was a prequel to Uncharted featuring “Victor Sullivan at the age of 25 in a very stylised world where… it would be around 1976 it think is where we figured out his age might be.”“A young sexy Victor Sullivan, to me, would have been like Sean Connery,” said Ross, comparing the character to James Bond.“He busted out of the Navy for reasons, and I thought seeing him young and trying to figure out his way in this world going from trying to be a soldier or you know a military man to now I’m just out on the streets and I’m gonna become a hustler,” he explained.Inspired by films such as Joker and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Ross wanted to pull from that era “without leaning into the cheesy parts of the ‘70s.”However plans stumbled when they couldn’t find many “opportunities for shootouts”.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaScreen Media has acquired North American rights to “9 Bullets,” a new crime thriller with “Game of Thrones” star Lena Headey and “Avatar’s” Sam Worthington. The studio is planning a day-and-date release in April. “9 Bullets” centers on a showgirl (Headey), who risks everything when she rescues a young boy after his family is murdered by her ex-boyfriend, who also happens to be the local crime-boss (Worthington).

Microsoft purchase of Activision Blizzard is causing concern for smaller game developersLast month it was announced that Microsoft was acquiring Activision Blizzard for around £50billion, followed by news at the end of January that Sony would buy Bungie for £2.6billion.Now multiple indie developers have spoken to the BBC about their concerns with the Microsoft acquisition, and what it could mean for them.Director at Kitfox Games Tanya Short – the developer of Boyfriend Dungeon – said: “This Activision acquisition strikes fear in us because it makes it so much more obvious – maybe they could dominate the rest of the year and then what do we do?”“Conceivably, indie games outside of these services might lose engagement as subscribers focus most of their attention on games they can access for free within the service,” adds Yura Zhdanovich, founder and director at Sad Cat Studios.The Federal Trade Commission is set to investigate the deal and whether or not it would harm the competition. FTC Chair Lina Khan is an advocate for a more assertive approach when handling deals.

EXCLUSIVE: Actress and filmmaker Romola Garai, whose directorial debut Amulet played at Sundance 2020, is working on a raft of projects including a re-team with Amulet producer Matthew James Wilkinson (Yesterday).

CAROL Vorderman has swapped her luxury mansion for a campervan. The 60-year-old splashed out on a £40,000 motorhome after leaving her sprawling pad when she put it on the market for £2.6m.

CBS is rebooting late-‘90s fantasy newspaper drama Early Edition and has handed the project a pilot order.

HBO has closed a deal for Doomsday Machine, a limited series about Facebook starring Emmy winner Claire Foy as embattled tech giant COO Sheryl Sandberg and executive producing as well. Anonymous Content (Spotlight, Mr. Robot) and wiip (Mare of Easttown, Dickinson), which took the project to the marketplace in October, will co-produce with HBO.

Netflix’s The Mitchells vs the Machines, produced by Sony Pictures Animation, received an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature this morning. Along with Flee, Mitchells is one of only two animated films nominated that aren’t made by Disney.

Jimi Hendrix’s former bandmates, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, who allege copyright infringement.As reported by Variety, the lawsuit has been filed in London’s High Court, with Redding and Mitchell’s heirs seeking royalties and claiming they own a stake in the band’s music.This new lawsuit follows a filing made by Sony Music and the Hendrix estate in a Manhattan federal court last month, which states that the estates of Redding and Mitchell do not have the right to sue them for copyright claims.This came after Sony Music received a letter in December from British lawyer, Lawrence Abramson, which noted that the label owed Redding and Mitchell’s estates performance royalties for roughly 3billion streams of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s songs.However, a lawyer for Sony Music and Hendrix’s estate alleged that both Mitchell and Redding signed away any rights to the music in the early 1970s. Abramson argued in response that “none of the parties would have been able to foresee or contemplate” the digital media revenue at the time of signing.The new UK-based lawsuit seeks a declaration of copyright ownership in the musical works, sound recordings and performers rights, and damages as well as an account of profits plus interest on that figure and legal costs.Hendrix died in September 1970.