Entertainment:
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Cinedigm has acquired North American theatrical, digital and
home entertainment distribution rights to the documentary “A Brave Heart: The
Lizzie Velasquez Story”
·
Universal Pictures stepped up to make the year’s biggest
material deal in the 7 figure range to acquire the untitled musical comedy
feature that “The Comedians”
·
With several virtual-reality companies expected to release
consumer headsets this Christmas, Hollywood is developing projects to make sure
new buyers have something to actually experience with them
o
http://www.wsj.com/articles/hollywood-plays-to-virtual-reality-1429125999?mod=WSJ_hp_RightTopStories
·
AXS TV has renewed “The X Factor UK” for a second consecutive
year.
·
Sony’s experience offering “The Interview” simultaneously
online and in theaters following last year’s hacking imbroglio whetted Netflix
appetite for doing the same with other films, execs said today in a conference
call with Wall Street analysts
·
Universal Pictures has entered into a two-year, first-look
production agreement with Robert Kirkman's Skybound Entertainment
·
“SMOSH: The Movie” the latest low-budget film stuffed with
YouTube stars and set for a multi-platform distribution blitz, will premiere
July 23 in Anaheim
·
Possibly former actor Paul Giamatti is one of six guest
directors of National Geographic Channel’s new series “Breakthrough” which NGC
is producing in partnership with General Electric and Ron Howard/Brian Grazer’s
Imagine Entertainment and Asylum Entertainment
·
Warner Bros-based Gulfstream Pictures is making a formal foray
into TV with the launch of Gulfstream Television, which has inked a two-year
overall deal with Warner Bros. TV
·
Dreamworks Animation paid Jeffrey Katzenberg $6.4MM in 2014 –
down 52.7%
·
Two weeks after its U.S. debut at the “Furious 7” premiere at
the TCL Chinese Theater IMAX in Hollywood, the company behind the theater’s new
razor-sharp laser projectors and overwhelming sound system gathered all its top
brass to put the system through its paces before a critical group of media and
exhibitors from as far away as Australia
o
http://deadline.com/2015/04/imax-with-laser-projectors-chinese-theater-richard-gelfond-1201410901/
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See below for Cannes’ biggest snubs and no-shows
·
AwesomenessTV has lined up a three-stage release window for
teen musical drama “Side Effects” season three, which will debut Friday on
NBCUniversal’s E! Entertainment cable net as a 90-minute movie
o
http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/e-awesomenesstv-side-effects-youtube-musical-drama-1201473544/
·
Google’s YouTube is teaming with Earth Day Network and the
Global Poverty Project to live-stream the Global Citizen 2015 Earth Day event
in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, which is set to feature performances from
Usher, Fall Out Boy, No Doubt, Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Mary J. Blige, Train
and My Morning Jacket
·
Digital distribution companies TuneCore and Believe Digital
have announced a partnership today (April 16) which they hope will improve the
services they provide to their customers -- and give them increased leverage
for negotiations with digital services like Spotify and Tidal
·
Vine superstar-turned-major label recording artist Shawn
Mendes is aiming for a No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 albums chart next week
·
In its first quarter earnings report of 2015, released on
Wednesday, Netflix said that it now regrets the deals it made with Australian
Internet providers, Optus and iiNet, to offer Aussie Netflix users unmetered
data
·
Watch as J.J. Abrams talks “Star Wars: Episode VII” and
(hopefully) reveals the first trailer
·
A year after acquiring the Spanish fibre-to-the-home (FTTH)
and cable operator, ONO, Vodafone has finally presented a merged telecom offer,
Vodafone One, which focuses on video-on-demand (VOD) services and advanced
pay-TV through TiVo, marking a serious comeback for the British telco to the
Spanish TV sector
o
http://www.rapidtvnews.com/2015041637949/vodafone-one-tv-offer-launched-in-spain.html#axzz3XUXP3Xxu
Tech:
·
Andreessen Horowitz announced today that it’s launching a new
policy and regulatory affairs unit, and that it has appointed Ted Ullyot,
Facebook’s former general counsel, to lead the shop - Ullyot, who worked at
both the White House and the Department of Justice before coming to the Valley,
will be tasked with helping the firm’s portfolio companies see eye to eye with the
government regulators
·
Microsoft and Yahoo today finally announced a renewed search
alliance, which includes amendments to the two companies’ earlier partnership
·
Twitter has made changes to cut off Meerkat’s access to
Twitter’s social graph, and even began pushing celebrities and publishers to
stop using Meerkat
·
TechCrunch Disrupt is coming to New York May 2-6, and
announced the full agenda.
·
The Wikimedia Foundation has been steadily rolling out updates
to the Wikipedia mobile experience in recent months, and today that trend
continues as the organization rolls out a brand-new iOS app
·
Yahoo is expanding its “caller-id” feature, allowing you to
hook-up your contact’s Twitter and LinkedIn profiles to contact cards, making
them more data rich
·
Today IAC’s five-year-old dating service HowAboutWe announced
a new direction that’s centered around getting you on a date as soon as
possible. They call it “on-demand dating”
·
Tinder, the developer of the immensely popular swipe-left or
swipe-right dating app, has just released an update which connects the app
directly with Instagram
·
Karlin Ventures is hoping to help develop rising, technology
executives--particularly those at the VP level--with a new program it is launching
today called Karlin Fellows
·
Spotify is gearing up for a streaming war, with the music
services' new hire of four Washington, D.C. lobby firms Tuesday
·
See below for an interesting article on Y Combinator’s
president, Sam Altman
·
See below for an article on why Waze is partnering with
government entities
·
Apple Watch pre-orders surpassed 2.3 million units, claims new
estimate
Deals:
·
Ola, the largest rival to Uber in
India, has announced that it has raised a $400MM Series E round to fuel further
expansion in India
·
Etsy began trading on the Nasdaq at
$31.86 a share — a big pop from the $16 a share price the company set yesterday
- the company is now being valued at more than $3.5B
Business:
·
Netflix reported its first quarter financial performance,
including revenue of $1.57B and adjusted earnings per share of $0.77, with GAAP
profit per share of $0.38. The market had expected the company to earn and
$0.69 per share on revenue of $1.57B
o http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/netflix-adds-4-9m-new-members-in-q1-sending-shares-up-more-than-10/
·
Apple has teamed up with The Conservation Fund to purchase
about 36,000 acres of private forestland in Maine and North Carolina, land that
will be sustained and harvested for packaging future products
·
On Tuesday morning, the chief executives of 500 of the
nation’s largest companies will receive a letter in the mail that will most
likely surprise them - the sender of the letter is Laurence D. Fink, chief
executive of BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world
·
Brait, the South African investment firm, said on Thursday
that it had agreed to acquire an 80 percent stake in Virgin Active, the health
club chain that is partly owned by the billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin
Group
·
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. posted the highest earnings per share
in more than five years as all of its major businesses topped analysts’
estimates and the firm paid out a smaller portion of revenue to compensate
employees
·
Standard & Poor's has downgraded Greece's credit rating to
CCC+ with a negative outlook, citing a substantial risk of a default due to the
country's drawn out negotiations with its creditors
·
Target has agreed to reimburse about $19MM to financial
institutions which had issued MasterCard-branded cards that were a part of its
massive data breach in 2013
Exec Moves:
·
Carlyle Group has enlisted Mike
Duke, former Chief Executive of Wal-Mart, to the executive team the asset
management firm taps for advice on consumer products and retail deals
·
Devon Dolan will be leaving his post
at ROAR to move to NYC – he will be joining Cinetic Media as a film finance
associate
·
Ben Bernanke, the former Federal
Reserve chairman and one of the world's most closely watched economic thinkers,
is joining one of the most successful hedge funds as an advisor
·
Jim Amos, who spent about 30 years
in distribution at Sony Pictures Entertainment, is joining STX Entertainment as
senior VP of theatrical distribution
Startups:
·
Spring, the Instagram for shopping,
has today closed $25MM in Series B funding led by Box Group, with participation
by Yuri Millner, Groupe Arnault, Google Ventures, and Thrive Capital
·
A new company out of London,
tray.io, has built a platform that it calls an “integration marketplace,” which
wants to make costly IT integrations a thing of the past
Government:
·
Following a series of disappointing data releases, China
reported its inbound FDI stayed robust in the first quarter of 2015, while
outbound flows posted a milder rise. Foreign direct investment in the country
rose 2.2% on year in March
·
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu blamed the United
States and its allies for the conflict in Ukraine, saying their drive to bring
Kiev closer to the West was a threat to Moscow and had forced it to react
·
Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio would "of course"
go to the gay wedding of someone he cared about, he told Univision's Jorge
Ramos Wednesday, likening it to attending a wedding for someone who was
previously divorced
·
Angry South African mobs went after foreigners and
foreign-owned businesses in Durban this week, leaving five people dead
·
On Wednesday, the board of the Clinton Foundation voted to
accept large donations from only a handful of foreign governments and to give
regular updates on who is contributing to the foundation
Other:
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British snowboarder Billy Morgan landed the world's first
1,800 quadruple cork on the slopes of Livigno, Italy, on Tuesday. Morgan
competed for Great Britain at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, and finished 10th
in the men's slopestyle final event
