CEO: Last News

Lord of the Rings IP owner Embracer Group has seen net sales at its Entertainment & Services division fall by 15%, but is betting big on Middle-earth in coming years.

Vue Names Ian Fraser As Chair

K.J. Yossman “Lord of the Rings” owner Embracer Group delivered a mixed bag during its fourth-quarter 2024 earnings Thursday, revealing that while its adjusted operating profit had risen by 56% to 1.4 billion Swedish krona ($132 million), sales in its entertainment and services division – which currently houses its Tolkien and “Tomb Raider” IP – had dropped by 15%. The Swedish-based gaming conglomerate also revealed CFO and deputy CEO Johan Ekström is set to step down after five years for personal reasons.

EXCLUSIVE: Mrs Wilson producer Snowed-In Productions has hired Victoria Fea, the former ITV commissioner who co-founded Longboat Pictures.

Ari Emanuel tonight left no ambiguity of what he thinks about Benjamin Netanyahu.

UPDATED with latest: At its Max streaming event in April 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery confirmed a new era is coming for Harry Potter fans. The company announced a TV series based on all seven books about the boy wizard written by J.K. Rowling. See below for the most current answers to the most important questions about the project.

Netflix has just released a three-part docuseries exploring the rise and fall of the ill-fated online dating site Ashley Madison, but what happened to the people involved?Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies & Scandal premiered on the streaming service last week (May 15), with one episode charting its rise to prominence in the ’00s, another covering its dramatic fall from grace after a major data breach leaked the personal details of millions of users, and a third looking at the dramatic fallout.The site fashioned itself as a safe place for users to seek an extramarital affair, using the tagline: “Life is short. Have an affair”.

Marc Malkin Senior Editor, Culture and Events Tribeca Festival and Chanel have announced the artists selected for this year’s Artist Awards Program. This year’s participants, who gift an original work to be given to the festival’s winning filmmakers, include Deborah Kass, Erick & Elliot Jiménez, Glenn Ligon, Jenny Holzer, Joiri Minaya, José Parlá, Juliana Huxtable, Maia Cruz Palileo, Paul Anthony Smith and Tourmaline.

Scarlett Johansson does NOT want to be turned into an AI chatbot… And she ain’t about to let ChatGPT use a knockoff version of her voice for theirs!

Hundreds of Yodel staff in Oldham are at risk of losing their jobs after bosses at the delivery service announced a ‘devastating’ closure. Yodel’s distribution site in Shaw, which employs more than 350 people, is to shut.

is likely to emerge as the item liable to make the one per cent weak at their nipped, tucked, and bio-hacked knees.It’s fortuitous then, that last night, Roman luxury behemoth Bulgari showcased one of the most expensive jewelry designs they have ever created: a jaw-dropping snaking diamond choker crafted from a rough diamond totaling 200 carats which is worth a staggering $43 million—worn on the night by longtime ambassador for the brand, Andy Sachs-approved.By The Serpenti Aertena necklace—described as the most precious design that Bulgari has ever debuted—is just one creation crafted to mark the house’s 140th anniversary. It forms the centerpiece of a celebratory collection designed by jewelry creative director Lucia Silvestri, dazzling with coiling snakes, juicy cabochon-cut gemstones and ancient coins, that was unveiled at the historic Terme di Diocleziano—the site of the largest ancient public baths in Rome.

Scarlett Johansson has claimed OpenAI has used a similar voice to hers for ChatGPT, after she denied an offer to collaborate with them in the past.Johansson has claimed the company used her voice to create one if its ‘Voice Mode’ options, even after she declined an invitation from the company’s CEO, Sam Altman.In a statement shared on Monday (May 20), Johansson claimed that Altman sought to “hire” her “to voice the current ChatGPT 4.0 system,” saying that she “could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI.”Johansson declined the offer but when a new voice option named “Sky” arrived recently, Johansson claimed her family and friends contacted her commenting on the similarity of the voices.Her statement read: “My friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ‘Sky’ sounded like me.“When I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered and in disbelief that Mr. Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Swedish director Ruben Östlund, who won Cannes Film Festival‘s Palme d’Or for “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness,” was among the guests at the German Films and Medienboard Reception on May 18 in the garden of the Mondrian Hotel in Cannes. Östlund, who is in the Riviera resort to promote his latest production, “The Entertainment System Is Down,” was accompanied by Philippe Bober of Coproduction Office, one of the film’s producers, and Erik Hemmendorf of Plattform Produktion, Östlund’s Swedish producer. (They are pictured above.) German Films, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, was represented at the event by managing director Simone Baumann, and Medienboard, which is a film fund for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, was represented by its CEO Kirsten Niehuus.

Jamie Lang As part of this year’s Variety Global Conversations at the Cannes Film Festival, representatives from the Czech Republic engaged in a lively discussion about the industry’s state of affairs and celebrated 20 years of involvement at the Marché du Film. Markéta Šantrochová, head of the Czech Film Center at the Czech Film Fund; Pavlína Žipková, head of the Czech Film Commission at the Czech Film Fund; and Petr Tichý, CEO of Barrandov Studio, participated in the talk, moderated by Variety’s Leo Barraclough. According to Zipkova, the Czech delegation wanted to make one key point clear to everyone in attendance: “If there is only one thing you need to remember from this session, it is that the Czech Film Fund production incentives scheme is open.

Stormy Daniels Doc Finds UK Buyer

Jack Dunn As part of Variety‘s Global Conversations Summit at the Cannes 2024 Film Festival, Variety executive editor Tatiana Siegel sat down with New Zealand Film Commission CEO Annie Murray and Philippa Mossman, head of International Screen Attraction at New Zealand Film Commission, to talk about the country’s thriving film industry. Murray’s most recent project with the New Zealand Film Commission is a pop-up intensive film school by writer and director Jane Campion. Campion has hand-picked a class of ten filmmakers from 300 applicants and is taking them through a two-year program where they will develop and shoot original short films.

Ex-MediaLink CEO Michael Kassan has had one of those weeks where you lose one and you win one, kinda.

Scarlett Johansson is speaking out in response to OpenAI’s “Sky” voice character for ChatGPT, which sounds just like her.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have officially been married six years! Amazing!

Al Pacino is set to play a Mafia boss once again in a new kidnapping thriller.Pacino, who has famously played mob bosses and gangsters in films like The Godfather, The Irishman, and Scarface, will play a real-life mob boss in the film Captivated, which has gone on sale this week at Cannes.As per Deadline, the film will focus on Calabrian mafia boss Saro (played first by Tony Kebbell, and then next, in the present day, by Pacino) who kidnaps the grandson of one of the world’s richest men, Jean Paul Getty. The boss puts his organisation at risk when he falls in love with his victim’s mother (played by Katie Holmes) during ransom negotiations that follow.Michael Mammoliti, one of the producers on the project, is the nephew of Saro Mammoliti, one of the main kidnappers.

K.J. Yossman Disney’s U.K. commissioning subsidiary Walt Disney EMEA Productions Limited has reported more than a 50% drop in revenue from the previous financial year.