Author: Deadline

Warner Bros Discovery said Monday that it plans to add veteran tech investor Anton Levy as an independent director on its soon-to-expand board of directors. The company’s existing board, which consists of 13 directors, today approved an expansion to 14 timed to the annual shareholder meeting later this spring. Levy is currently an Advisory Director at General Atlantic and previously served as General Atlantic’s Co-President and Chairman of Global Technology. He has led many of General Atlantic’s most notable investments in leading tech firms, among them Airbnb, Alibaba Group, Crowdstrike, Facebook, Klarna AB, Mercado Libre, Slack, Snapchat, Squarespace and Uber.…

Richard Norton, a legendary Hollywood trainer and bodyguard, fight choreographer, stuntman and actor in the Mad Max franchise, has died at the age of 75, his wife Judy Green announced on Instagram. “I am numb and devastated, I have no words I have lost my everything,” she wrote in the caption, alongside a photo of her, Norton and their Husky. “I know there is, and will be lots of love and shock that we have lost this incredible human being. The love ❤️ of my life. I’m using this time to come to terms with my great loss.” In the…

CPH:DOX has crowned winners at the latest edition of the renowned nonfiction film festival in Copenhagen. The DOX:Award, the festival’s top prize, went to Always, the directorial debut of Deming Chen. The film tells the story of a young poet, 8-year-old Youbin, who lives “deep in the lush mountains of Hunan province” in southern China. “There’s a huge difference between nothing and small things. But life is in fact made up of many, often unnoticed, small things. We need the sensibilities of artists to show us the greatness of the little things,” noted the DOX:Award jury comprised of Rikke Tambo…

This is a nifty indie weekend with a busier and higher profile limited release schedule than we’ve seen in some time. The Ballad of Wallis Island, The Friend, Grand Tour, Viet And Nam, Holy Cow and documentaries The Encampments, which is super timely, and Secret Mall Apartment are peppering theaters in major markets. Many have festival imprimaturs from Cannes on down and great Rotten Tomatoes critics scores. In moderate release, Sony Pictures Classics is out with Steve Coogan in The Penguin Lessons. Limited openings: Watermelon Pictures debuts Macklemore-produced The Encampments at the Angelika, which has been adding shows, and the…

These aren’t fun times for billionaires, even though their number keeps proliferating along with their numbers — there are now at least 17 documented “super billionaires” with assets of more than $100 billion. Still, Elon Musk’s Tesla dealerships are being torched, Jeff Bezos’ newspaper is under siege, and Mark Zuckerberg is trying to suppress a new book titled Careless People. Even Larry Ellison and his son David are having trouble closing their Paramount deal as new interlopers and random Trump bureaucrats intrude. It’s no wonder that Billions, the TV series, ended its run. Walt Disney, for one, would have been…

EXCLUSIVE: William Moseley (The Chronicles of Narnia franchise) and Mark Valley (Boston Legal) are leading Luca Elmi‘s new film Hostage, a thriller that will soon wrap principal photography this week in Kentucky. Written by Drew Ingram and produced by his Stagmoor Studios, Hostage follows a charismatic politician’s road to the governor’s office as it takes an unexpected twist when he becomes embroiled in a high-stakes hostage situation that forces him to confront his past and threatens to derail his path to power. Moseley stars as ‘Logan Marshall,’ a man in his prime; a rising political star and the Independent candidate…

EXCLUSIVE: Rachel Morrison has come aboard to direct Love of Your Life for Amazon MGM Studios. Julia Cox wrote the script, and Ryan Gosling and Jessie Henderson are producing. Plot details are under wraps. Deadline was first to report the major script sale in October after an intense bidding war. Numerous bids were proffered when CAA dropped the spec on the town, and one of the most intriguing came from Taylor Sheridan and Temple Hill’s Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey, who were ready to pay $2 million together with a greenlight and a theatrical release, and a blind script deal.…

Ari Emanuel, the new executive chairman of WME Group, is taking out $175.8 million in cash as Endeavor is acquired by Silver Lake Partners. The transaction announced this morning creates a private company its new owner valued at $25 billion Endeavor stakeholders are rolling chunks of their current ownership into the new private entity, but not all. Emanuel, who is also CEO of TKO Group, amended his rollover commitment to extract the cash. He is rolling over significant ownership interest in the old Endeavor valued at $290.3 million, which is $26 million more than initially agreed upon last year, according…

Although Harvey Weinstein isn’t attending any red carpet events these days, one exclusive event took him off the guest list before his fall from grace. In his new book When the Going Was Good, former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter revealed that the disgraced producer and convicted sex offender was the one celebrity “banned” for life from the publication’s highly-coveted Oscars party. Carter wrote in the book, which is available Tuesday, that Weinstein “regularly showed up with more guests than his invitation indicated and would bully the staff,” according to Page Six. “He got banned from everything because he was…

Amanda Seyfried is forever indebted to Mean Girls. In an interview on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Seyfried reflected on the 2004 teen comedy and the “unadulterated fun” she had while making the film when she was 17. Host Josh Horowitz reminded Seyfried how loved the film is to this day. “Until the day you die, a 14-year-old girl will come up to you every day and quote you as if it just came out the day before.” Horowitz said. “I hope they quote it on my grave,” said Seyfried, who played Karen Smith in the movie. “That’s an organic…