ViacomCBS: Last News

CBS — bringing the rest of Paramount with it — is back at its longtime upfront home, Carnegie Hall, and the network’s late-night host Stephen Colbert is back onstage ribbing his employer.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorParamount Global’s stock price shot up more than 10% in early trading Tuesday following the news that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has scooped up more than $2 billion worth of shares in the company in recent months.Paramount stock opened Tuesday at $28.47 after closing Monday at $28.02, before Berkshire Hathaway’s stock purchases were disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.Berkshire Hathaway has been in an investor in one of Paramount’s predecessor companies, Viacom, in the not-too-distant past. Buffett’s purchases of late suggest that he sees the company as under-valued, or that he expects the company to be involved in M&A .Paramount Global, which changed its corporate moniker from ViacomCBS earlier this year, has struggled with the conventional wisdom that the company is too small to compete in what is fast becoming a global content marketplace.

Paramount+ will welcome back yet another South Park special event when June rolls around.

Paramount Global shares were down about 1% midway through the trading day after the company reported a mixed bag of first-quarter results.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentVivendi, the parent company of French pay TV company Canal Plus Group and advertising banner Havas Group, saw its revenues increase by 13.4% to €2.3 billion ($2.4 billion) during the first quarter of 2022.The company’s financial results were mainly driven by the growth of Canal Plus Group, Havas Group, as well the Vivendi Village, which is behind live events, and the video game outfit Gameloft. Results also took into account Prisma Media, the recently acquired publishing group.

Paramount Global is raising $1 billion in fresh cash through a bond sale expected to close March 29.

Paramount International boss Raffaele Annecchino has talked up the streamer for “launching quicker than others” in key European markets, as he unveiled a tied-up with global Lupin and Narcos production house Gaumont and set titles from France, Argentina and Germany.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterSam Schles, a longtime creative executive under the ViacomCBS content umbrella, has joined Madica Productions.Schles has been named vice president of scripted development at the label — a spinoff of the prominent Hollywood PR agency Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis — whose credits include the Netflix’s “Ginny and Georgia” and the Leonardo DiCaprio-produced digital series “Stay Wild.”Schles will report to Madica’s managing director Jeff Tahler. She began her career at Comedy Central, where she would eventually serve as director of talent and development.

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.

The Girls On The Bus‘ long journey to the small screen has come to a successful conclusion with a straight-to-series order at HBO Max. The drama series adaptation of Amy Chozick’s best-selling book Chasing Hillary, from Julie Plec, Chozick, Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. TV, originally landed at Netflix with a series order three years and moved to the CW for development earlier in this broadcast cycle.

the new Beavis And Butt-Head film, scheduled for release this year.The recent ViacomCBS Investors Event (February 15) covered a variety of news – including the announcement that ViacomCBS will now go under the Paramount name – among which were some updates on some of the company’s major upcoming projects.It was confirmed that the two-season order of the Beavis And Butt-Head TV show that was originally set to air on Comedy Central has changed, with a new season set to be featured as part of the Paramount+ SVOD (subscription video on demand) service.More than 200 remastered episodes of the original Beavis And Butt-Head series will also be available through Paramount+.The synopsis of the forthcoming movie – now officially titled Beavis And Butt-Head Do The Universe – reads: “In perhaps the dumbest space movie ever made, Beavis and Butt-Head are sentenced to Space Camp by a ‘creative’ judge in 1998. Their obsession with a docking simulator (huh huh) leads to a trip on the Space Shuttle, with predictably disastrous results.“After going through a black hole, they re-emerge in our time, where they look for love, misuse iPhones, and are hunted by the Deep State.

Yellowstone TV franchise is set to continue with 1932, as well as more of its other prequel series 1883.Yellowstone stars Kevin Costner, Wes Bentley, Kelly Reilly, Luke Grimes, Cole Hauser, and Gil Birmingham. The show follows the Dutton family, owners of the largest ranch in Montana, and various family dramas at the ranch and the bordering Broken Rock Indian Reservation, national park, and developers.1932 will see a new Yellowstone origin story set to follow a new generation of Duttons against the desolate backdrop of the Western expansion, Prohibition, and the Great Depression, according to Entertainment Weekly.Paramount+ has also announced more of spin-off show 1883, but did not confirm whether that would mean a renewal or more episodes.

Shares of ViacomCBS are down more than 20% in early trading as Wall Street digests the company’s streaming strategy, outlook and financials announced after the market closed Tuesday, and clearly has some issues.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorShares of Paramount, the new corporate name of ViacomCBS, took a dive after the media conglomerate told Wall Street that it was more aggressively equipping itself for battle in the streaming wars.The stock was down more than 15% in premarket trading Wednesday, coming a day after Paramount’s 2022 investor day presentation that detailed revised financial forecasts including a bigger capital outlay for its streaming strategy, led by Paramount Plus.Investors were apparently unnerved about the heavier investment Paramount plans to make in the streaming biz — it plans to boost spending on streaming content to $6 billion by 2024, versus $4 billion previously — and the resulting hit to profitability. Bank of America Securities analyst Jessica Reif Ehrlich downgraded her rating on the stock, from “buy” to “neutral,” and cut her 12-month price target on the stock from $52 to $39 per share.SEE ALSO: As ViacomCBS Becomes Paramount, an Energized Company Solidifies Its Streaming Playbook“We commend management for taking a bold approach, but near-term headwinds will drive Y/Y declines in CY22 and CY23 OIBDA [operating income before depreciation and amortization] and pressure already depressed FCF [free cash flow] levels,” Reif Ehrlich wrote in a note to clients.In reporting Q4 2021 results, the company said Paramount Plus netted 7.3 million new subscribers to stand at 32.8 million at year end.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorIn their last outings as leaders of ViacomCBS, the executive team led by Shari Redstone and Bob Bakish finally started to sound like they have a solid plan to compete in streaming.On the day ViacomCBS unveiled its corporate rebrand to Paramount, starting as of Feb. 16, the company put on a nearly three-hour virtual presentation for investors that demonstrated how much its operations have been turned inside out to focus on streaming growth opportunities.

The CFO of ViacomCBS, soon to be known as Paramount, said Tuesday that the company is looking hard for “efficiencies” at its traditional businesses to divert as much cash it can to streaming, where investment will hit an estimated $6 billion in 2024.

“Teen Wolf” will howl again.

John Krasinski announced that A Quiet Place III had officially been greenlit during the ViacomCBS Investory Day.The project, which is currently in development, will be produced by both the 42-year-old filmmaker, who appeared in and worked on the previous two films in the series, and Michael Bay.The forthcoming entry in the highly successful horror-suspense franchise is currently set to make its debut at an unspecified date in 2025. Returning for more:John Krasinski announced that A Quiet Place III had officially been greenlit during the ViacomCBS Investory DayKrasinski previously directed, co-wrote and starred in the first film in the A Quiet Place franchise, which was released in 2018.The feature also starred his wife, Emily Blunt, as well as Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe.

The hit series Yellowstone is becoming a mothership with yet another prequel.The Paramount+ streaming service said it has ordered the series 1932, about the roots of the Dutton ranching family first introduced in the contemporary drama Yellowstone. The new chapter will focus on the Duttons during Prohibition and the Great Depression, Paramount+ said.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterParamount Global (formerly known as ViacomCBS) expects to direct-to-consumer content spending to increase to more than $6 billion in 2024, the company revealed Tuesday during its Q4 earnings and streaming investor day presentation.This is a jump from its previous guidance, which was that Paramount expected streaming content spend to exceed $5 billion 2024, including $4 billion of expenses associated with its DTC services. In 2021, Paramount spend $2.2 billion on direct-to-consumer content.Additionally, Paramount CFO Naveen Chopra said that the company formerly known as ViacomCBS is increasing its DTC revenue goal to over $9 billion for 2024.

Paramount+, which has been rolling out to dozens of global territories over the past year, will reach the key European market of France as part of a wide-ranging partnership with Canal+.