Entertainment:
·
China’s Huayi Brothers Media and South Korea’s Showbox
Mediaplex have struck a three year co-production agreement which will spawn at
least six movies
·
Whipclip is launching an iPhone app today that makes it easy
and legal to find and share some of your favorite TV clips
·
Rdio is giving 20 labels the opportunity to curate their own
station and have it featured on their site
·
Michael Keaton will return to “Saturday Night Live” for the
third time as host on April 4 with Carly Rae Jepsen as musical guest in her SNL
debut
·
Channel 4 acquired a stake in factual indie producer Renowned
Films
·
In another sign of Hollywood's ailing postproduction economy,
Technicolor, Hollywood's storied postproduction house, is closing two of its
facilities in the U.S. and UK
·
Steven Spielberg is set to direct “Ready Player One” the
highly anticipated project based on the popular sci-fi book by Ernest Cline
that takes place in a virtual world
·
United Talent Agency is becoming more aggressive on the
commissions collection front with a series of lawsuits filed this week against
former clients over money allegedly due
·
Pitbull launched his own SiriusXM channel, dubbed
Globalization (also the name of his most recent album)
·
Kanye West has left CAA to join UTA
·
MarVista Entertainment has concluded a number of license deals
with leading broadcasters
Tech:
·
Amazon’s Unlimited Everything plan means that users can now stash
all of their digital files in your own private Amazon cloud locker for $60 per year
·
We Heart It, a visual bookmarking service popular with
teenaged girls, is transforming itself into a messaging app with the launch of
new feature called Postcards
·
Meerkat has confirmed a $12MM investment from some of
Hollywood’s biggest names including Jared Leto, CAA, WME, Raine, UTA, and more
·
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a comment today
pushing against a rising media narrative that it may have gone too easy on
Google during its multi-year antitrust probe on the search company’s ranking of
results to benefit its own products
·
Amazon’s Angie’s List competitor, called “Amazon Local
Services,” has been rebranded as “Amazon Home Services” ahead of a larger
launch happening Monday
·
Facebook is expanding LiveRail, the video ad platform that it
acquired last year, with support for non-video mobile ads
·
Facebook introduced the ability to embed Facebook videos on
other websites
·
Twitter has launched live-streaming video app Periscope,
developed by the startup it bought earlier in 2015 for a reported $100MM,
upping the battle with overnight mobile-app streaming sensation Meerkat
o
http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/twitter-launches-periscope-live-streaming-video-app-1201460654/
·
Microsoft's universal apps are now called Windows apps, and
will no longer be referred to as Metro, Modern, or anything else
Deals:
·
Salus Capital Partners, a RadioShack lender, has asked U.S.
Bankruptcy Judge Brendan Shannon to intervene in the auction of the electronics
retailer, saying its $271MM joint bid to liquidate the chain was
"materially superior" to that of Standard General
·
Yesterday, six-year-old financial planning startup LearnVest
was acquired by 158-year-old Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company
Business:
·
Frank & Oak, an online retailer of men’s apparel and
goods, is today announcing plans to launch six different long-term pop-up shops
across the United States
Exec Moves:
·
Catherine Cai, a longtime Merrill
Lynch banker, will take over as chairwoman and head of the China business
·
Three months after Endemol Shine
Group laid out the top executive structure for its international operations,
Co-CEO Gary Carter has announced his departure from the company
·
Sky Deutschland has appointed
Carsten Schmidt to succeed Brian Sullivan as chief executive effective 24 June
2015
Startups:
·
Steller is a story-telling app that
has been around since the beginning of 2014, but today the company has
announced a huge overhaul of the app’s UX to make editing and creating that
much simpler
·
Chosen launched an invite-only beta
of its battle of the bands app today on iOS
·
Roposo, a social network and
discovery platform for fashion products based in Gurgaon, announced today that
it has raised $5MM in new funding from Tiger Global
·
August, which creates technology
that allows physical environments to seamlessly respond to users' behavior,
raised $38MM in its Series B
Government:
·
Greece is optimistic about reaching a deal on economic reforms
with its European partners early next week
·
Egypt and Saudi Arabia are planning a ground operation in
Yemen, Egyptian officials said Thursday, a day after Saudi Arabia began bombing
Houthi rebels in the country
Other:
·
The co-pilot of the downed Germanwings Airbus 320 who
"intentionally" crashed the plane, according to French officials, has
been identified as 28-year-old German national Andreas Lubitz
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