Sony: Celebs Rumors

EXCLUSIVE:  Jonathan Gist has joined Sony Pictures Entertainment as Executive Director of Global Intersectional Marketing, supporting all of the studio’s labels, including Columbia Pictures, 3000 Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Screen Gems, Affirm Films and Sony Pictures Animation.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorUniversal Music’s share of Todd Moscowitz’s Alamo Records was acquired by Sony Music Entertainment for around $125 million, with a total purchase of between $188 million and $225 million, according to Universal’s recent earnings report and an educated estimate by Music Business Worldwide published Thursday.The company, which was founded as a joint venture with Universal Music Group by the former 300, Warner Music and Def Jam exec in 2016, has been on a hot streak in recent years with Blackbear, Lil Durk and Rod Wave. Sources told Variety at the time that there was a buy/sell negotiation in the months leading up and UMG opted to walk away.While some sources at the time of the June 2021 deal put the sale price at $250 million, MBW spied an item in Universal Music Group‘s recently-issued annual fiscal report stating that Sony Music paid €102 million (around $123 million, which MBW rounded up to $125 million) to buy UMG’s interest in Alamo, which was presumably 50%, with Moscowitz owning the other half.

EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Robinson’s The Nemesis Saga novel series is getting the small screen treatment. Project Nemesis, the first book in Robinson’s series, is being developed for television by Sony TV and Neal H. Moritz’s Original Film (The Boys), with John Wick helmer Chad Stahelski set to direct and executive produce.

EXCLUSIVE: Luke Macfarlane (Brothers & Sisters), Tre Hale (Love and Monsters), Carla Gallo (Neighbors) and Andrew Lopez (Blockers) round out the ensemble cast of Apple’s Platonic, joining Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen in the comedy series from Nick Stoller, Francesca Delbanco and Sony TV.

Copyright Royalty Board to increase mechanical royalties from music streaming services like like Spotify by 32% immediately — or from 9.1 cents to 12 cents per track.The rate had been disputed by the DSPs — including Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Pandora and Google (YouTube) — leading to a legal deadlock that threatened the ratification of the rate in the 2023-2027 period. Rightsholders and trade groups were aiming for 15 cents, and the streamers argued to maintain the 9-cent rate.The motion states that the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) along with  Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group, as well as qualified copyright owners, have come to an agreement with the rate change effective immediately.

The Prince of Tides is the latest high-profile feature film that is being eyed for a television spinoff.

Thania Garcia Sony Music Entertainment is officially in production for a Cyndi Lauper documentary titled “Let The Canary Sing,” a feature-length film that promises to explore the singer’s 30-plus year career.The film, which is being made in partnership with Lauper herself, will be directed by award-winning documentarian Alison Ellwood, who most recently directed the Emmy-nominated two-part documentary, “Laurel Canyon.” Ellwood has also previously collaborated with Fine Point Films on “The Go-Go’s,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and went on to win Best Music Film at the Critics’ Choice Awards.“Like many people, I assumed when Cyndi Lauper burst onto the music scene in the early ’80s, that she was another young star experiencing a meteoric rise to fame and success thanks to MTV,” said Ellwood. “Her music videos were wild and colorful, her songs like ‘Girls Just Want to Have Fun’ were infectious.

LEGALA trial start date for FKA Twigs’ physical and mental abuse case against actor Shia LaBeouf has been set for 17 Apr 2023, according to Rolling Stone.——————————————————-DEALSSony Music Publishing has signed Kal Lavelle – co-writer of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shivers’ – to a global publishing deal. “I am very blessed to be part of the Sony Publishing family”, says Lavelle. “And that’s exactly how it feels, like a family.

Thania Garcia Universal Music Publishing Group has signed Dave Bayley of Glass Animals to an exclusive, global publishing agreement. Glass Animals, who are signed to UMG’s Republic label in the U.S., were  named Group of the Year for Variety’s Hitmakers.Jody Gerson, chairman and CEO of UMPG, said: “I am a Glass Animals fan and I am especially delighted to work closely with UMPG’s global creative teams to amplify Dave Bayley’s talents as a writer and producer, not only for his band but also for other artists who inspire and excite him.”Glass Animals manager, Amy Morgan of September Management, added, “After the success of ‘Heat Waves’ and ‘Dreamland,’ the next chapter for Dave is going to be a really important one.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefFilm adaptation rights to hit Indian novelist Chetan Bhagat’s 2016 acclaimed book “One Indian Girl” have been acquired up by Sony Pictures International Productions. The studio plans a Hindi-language adaptation that will go into development later this year. Bhagat’s book, which broke pre-sale records on Amazon India when it was launched, revolves around a high-flying woman financier who is intelligent and successful, but finds it difficult to find love.

was scuttled during development in favor of rebooting the character from scratch.Now more details about what Raimi had planned for “Spider-Man 4” have surfaced, as the “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” director confirmed he was considering having Bruce Campbell play Mysterio in the next film – and introducing another iconic Spider-Man villain. “We had other things in mind, too, but that was one of them,” Raimi told Rolling Stone. “And I missed Kraven the Hunter.

EXCLUSIVE: Jon Watts has withdrawn as the director of Fantastic Four, the reinvention of the venerable Marvel Comics series at Marvel Studios and Disney. Watts just directed Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios film that grossed $1.89 billion to become the sixth highest grossing film of all-time. Nothing sinister here; Watts just needs a break from the superhero realm after completing the Spidey trilogy with Tom Holland and Zendaya. He had expected to make Fantastic Four his next film, the third feature iteration of that franchise and first since Disney acquired Fox, which controlled the franchise. Watts has spent the better part of the last decade directing and promoting the Spider-Man films, after being hired off Cop Car, a small budget indie thriller that premiered at 2015 Sundance. He needs a breather.

Cynthia Littleton Business EditorAtlas Entertainment, which scored a box office hit this year with Sony Pictures’ “Uncharted,” has taken legal action to block a crypto firm from marketing a new coin tied to the movie based on the hit PlayStation video game.Atlas Entertainment insiders were shocked last month to see online references to an “Uncharted” coin with PR materials that referenced Atlas Entertainment, used the company’s logo and even referencing Atlas’ historic movie credits such as “The Dark Knight” and “Wonder Woman.”Last week, Atlas Entertainment attorney Bert Deixler, of Kendall, Brill & Kelly, sent a cease and desist letter to Net Savings Link and Silverbear Capital, two entities cited in the PR materials that alerted Atlas to the unauthorized use of its moniker. Net Savings Link issued a press release on April 6 announcing the launch of the UNCHARTED token, which asserted that “Uncharted is backed by Atlas Digital Entertainment, a subsidiary of Atlas Entertainment.” “This partnership intends to have NSAV and UNCHARTED explore the infinite possibilities of NFT as a creativity infrastructure and to subvert existing content and value sharing models with community co-creation,” the April 6 release stated.The release appears makes a subtle distinction in spelling the token in all capital letters, while references to Atlas use the conventional spelling with only a capital U.

Mike Fazioli If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. If you took the evolution drawing showing the progress from ape to man and replaced it with televisions, it would be a long line of large, heavy monkeys for about 60 years, and then a very rapid transformation to the slim, upright human that is today’s Smart TV.Even that plasma TV you owned a mere dozen years ago would be a hairy knuckledragger. Why? Chances are it didn’t have internet connectivity or apps, and it most definitely did not stream.

EXCLUSIVE: The Goldbergs star Wendi McLendon-Covey has signed a first-look deal with Sony Pictures Television, the studio behind the hit ABC comedy series. Under the pact, McLendon-Covey will develop for the studio across all platforms.

J. Kim Murphy Longtime executive producer Harry Friedman is coming out of retirement to serve as showrunner for the upcoming second season of NBC’s “Capital One College Bowl.”Friedman had previously retired in 2019, concluding a successful 25-year run as executive producer on Sony Pictures Television’s “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.” Friedman was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame after leaving the pair of game shows.The hire reunites Friedman with Village Roadshow Entertainment Group CEO Steve Mosko, whose Village Roadshow TV produces “College Bowl” with Universal TV Alternative Studio.

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) and Nordic streamer Viaplay has agreed a multi-year extension to their content partnership, bringing the likes of Kraven The Hunter, Madame Web and Morbius to the Nordics once they debut.

Sam Raimi stepped into the offices of Sony Pictures in an impeccable black suit to pitch himself to direct “Spider-Man.” He had no reason to expect he would get the job.“My agent, Josh Donen, said, ‘They want to be honest with you. There’s about 18 directors they’d rather have than you on a list,'” Raimi recalls. “And I said, ‘OK, well, tell them I’m number 19.'”When Raimi finally did get a meeting, he found himself in a room that included Sony Pictures CEO John Calley, Columbia Pictures chair Amy Pascal, Marvel Studios chief Avi Arad, Sony film executive Matt Tolmach and the film’s producer, Laura Ziskin.

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures’ Stage 6 Films has acquired international rights (outside of China) to the dark comedy Bodies Bodies Bodies, from director Halina Reijn (Instinct).

EXCLUSIVE: After helping steer the ship as the main director on Marvel’s Hawkeye series, Rhys Thomas has been set to direct Mark Canton and Gianni Nunnari’s Robotech for Sony Pictures. The film is currently in development with the script by Marcum & Holloway with a rewrite by Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka. Harmony Gold also is involved.

CinemaCon, the annual trade show for theater owners, is a good time for studios to flex their wares and Sony Pictures did that last night at the annual exhibition in Vegas. First up, there were some minor modifications to the two “Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse” sequels.

Sony has confirmed that Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support will be coming to the PS5 this week, with developer support also coming to a few select titles.As outlined in a blog post yesterday (April 25), VRR will come to the PS5 via a global update over “the next few days” which will automatically enable it with compatible games, and if the console is connected to an HMDI 2.1 VRR-compatible TV or monitor.Sony claims that VRR will be coming to “Call Of Duty: Vanguard, Destiny 2, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Resident Evil Village,” and many more “in the coming weeks”.VRR can also be enabled for any game on the PS5 in the console’s settings, but Sony warns that the experience can vary dramatically due to the game being played, its own settings, the TV being used and any potential visual modes selected in the game itself.VRR operates independently from a game’s frame rate, and essentially allows the console and game to dynamically alter how often it refreshes an image. This helps prevent in-game stutter and screen tearing as VRR interacts with potential changes in the game’s frame rate, which makes the visuals much smoother.To check VRR is working on the PS5, or to turn it off, players can go to the screen and video tab under system settings.More details about VRR on the PS5 can be found here.In other news, it looks like Sony Interactive Entertainment has formed a “preservation team”, and it will likely focus on keeping older PlayStation games available on current consoles.

Sony has formed a preservation team, which will likely work toward keeping older PlayStation games available and playable on newer consoles.Yesterday (April 25), Garrett Fredley – a senior build engineer at PlayStation – posted on LinkedIn that today was “my first day as a senior build engineer for PlayStation, working as one of their initial hires for the newly created preservation team!”While the post has since been deleted (a screenshot is visible here), Fredley shared the following:“Game preservation was my first career passion. It was my first foray into the world of software engineering / dev ops, and into a world that so many are unaware of.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterGet ready for more Venom.Sony Pictures has greenlit a third installment of the Tom Hardy-led “Venom” franchise, following the back-to-back box office successes of 2021’s “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” ($502 million globally) and 2018’s “Venom” ($856 million globally).The studio also announced plans for another “Ghostbusters” installment, which will serve as a follow-up to 2021’s reboot “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” ($200 million globally). Sony revealed its plans for both sequels during its Monday evening presentation at CinemaCon, the annual trade show for theater owners.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film WriterBenito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known by his stage name Bad Bunny, has been cast as the newest Marvel hero in Sony Pictures’ portfolio of the super characters — and will lead the standalone comic book film “El Muerto.”“El Muerto” is set to hit theaters on Jan. 12, 2024.Introduced by Sony Motion Pictures Group president Sanford Panitch at CinemaCon, the annual gathering of movie theater owners in Las Vegas, Ocasio will be the first ever Latino actor to headline a live-action Marvel movie.“To bring El Muerto to life is just incredible ..

Bad Bunny is joining the Spider-Man universe!

Sony wrapped its presentation with footage from George Foreman, showing him as an angry youth turned into a world class fighter and the world heavyweight champion. The pic comes out on April 7 next year, Easter weekend.

$502 million in theaters worldwide without the help of a release in China, while Tom Hardy also had a mid-credits cameo in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” teasing the future of Marvel’s symbiote antihero. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” had a more modest box office run but still did well domestically with $129.3 million grossed in North America and $197.3 million worldwide.

$1.9 billion box office hit in the midst of record COVID-19 infection rates, it was fitting that Sony Pictures was the first studio to make its presentation at CinemaCon 2022 as Chairman/CEO Tom Rothman and his team took a victory lap after a successful winter led by “Spider-Man: No Way Home.”“What are you guys doing here? Don’t you know you’re dead? Not only merely dead but most sincerely dead?” joked Rothman to the CinemaCon attendees as he touted the $3.3 billion that Sony films have grossed at the worldwide box office.Along with the runaway success of “No Way Home,” Sony also released another Marvel hit with “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” which reached $500 million worldwide without the aid of China, while “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” and “Uncharted” also found solid success with domestic audiences. The numbers vindicate Rothman and Sony motion picture group president Josh Greenstein’s pledge at last year’s CinemaCon to commit to theatrical releasing and to be a key part of the pandemic box office rebuilding process.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” the sequel to 2018’s Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” just got bumped from its original release date of this fall to next summer (June 2, 2023). But the hype train stops for no (spider) man, and at CinemaCon tonight, Sony revealed a work-in-progress preview of the upcoming film.Producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller introduced the first 15 minutes, much of which was presented in storyboard and in-progress animation footage. The film starts in Gwen Stacy’s universe, Earth-65, having an awkward conversation with her police officer father who is hunting down Spider-Woman, unaware that his target is his own daughter.

Bad Bunny is already a musical superstar, and soon, he'll be a real-life superhero!The performer is set to join Sony's Marvel Universe as El Muerto, a masked wrestler who inherits powers from his mystical masks. Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group president Sanford Panitch announced the news at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on Monday, adding that the casting makes Bad Bunny the first Latino lead in a Marvel superhero film,«Sometimes we get lucky with the perfect casting, and I think that's what we've got here,» Panitch raved, to which the performer, real name Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, had to agree.«I love wrestling, I'm a pro wrestler, I don't know if you know,» Bad Bunny told the CInemaCon crowd, referencing his Wrestlemania debut. «This is why I love this character.

Sony ain’t afraid of no ghosts, specifically making more Ghostbusters movies. The studio announced today at CinemaCon in a closing sizzle reel that a fifth movie in the series is in the works. No talent attachments were revealed.

It what is not shocking, Sony teased a third Venom movie today, however, just the pic’s logo in a closing sizzle reel. The first two films, which starred Tom Hardy as the Marvel spider-antihero have collectively grossed $1.4 billion at the global box office to date.

Spider-Man comic in which the luchador wrestler attended a charity event organized by J. Jonah Jameson in which he hoped that El Muerto would defeat Spider-Man and unmask him in the ring.

Looking to continue to expand and diversify its universe of Marvel characters, Sony has announced a El Muerto movie is in development with Latin Grammy winner and platinum-selling recording artist Bad Bunny attached to star. The news came out of Cinemacon during Sony’s panel where Bad Bunny made a surprise appearance.

With the box office’s rebound just as 5K attendees are reconvening at CinemaCon in Las Vegas, exhibition and studios can rest easy knowing that there’s a return to a theatrical window. For most studios with tentpole fare, that’s 45-days, and for those titles with less commercial appeal or aimed at specialty audiences, it’s 17 days.