‘Dune’ Producer Legendary Entertainment Sells $760 Million Stake to Apollo

EXCLUSIVE: Professional basketball player and producer Jarnell Stokes has signed with Babette Perry at Innovative Artists, who will rep him for both on-camera and production deals.

Wilson Chapman editorForbes Entertainment and Entertainment One have partnered to produce multiple projects based on the alleged bitcoin laundering operation of Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein, the companies announced Wednesday.As reported by The New York Times, Morgan and Lichtenstein were arrested on Feb. 8 under charges relating to a 2016 hack of the Bitcoin virtual currency exchange.

Kendrick Lamar is set to perform new music during a headline show in Milan, Italy, this summer.The Compton rapper is thought to be working on the long-awaited follow-up to his April 2017 album ‘DAMN.’, though speculation about a possible new single emerging before his performance at the Super Bowl Halftime Show last weekend went unfounded.Lamar has now announced a new live date at the Ippodromo SNAI San Siro in Milan as part of the Milano Summer Festival. The rapper is set to perform on June 23, where he will showcase new material.When translated from Italian, a description on the festival organisers’ website reads: “Kendrick Lamar returns to Italy with a super anticipated show which, produced and distributed by Vivo Concerti, will see him perform – after 8 years from his first performance in Italy, in 2014 – at the Milan Summer Festival (Ippodromo Snai) [on] Thursday 23 June 2022”.A post shared by Milano Summer Festival (@milanosummerfestival)The description then promises that Lamar “will play the pieces of the new album, long awaited by the fans” during his Milan show.You can find tickets and more information about Lamar’s Milan gig by heading here.The rapper has not announced any further tour dates at the time of writing.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentEdouard Weil and Alice Girard, the producers of Audrey Diwan’s Venice Golden Lion-winning “Happening” and Valerie Lemercier’s Celine Dion movie “Aline,” won the Toscan du Plantier Award at a fancy Paris ceremony hosted by the Cesar Academie. Weil and Girard, who run the Paris-based production banner Rectangle Productions, were selected by 1,557 voters, including all the artists and crew members who have been nominated at the Cesar Awards since 2008, as well as the 164 members of the Association for the Promotion of Cinema.Besides “Happening” and “Aline,” Rectangle Productions delivered several other critically acclaimed films within the last year, including Jean-Christophe Meurisse’s “Bloody Oranges,” Gaspar Noé’s “Vortex” which played at Cannes.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix won a 6-way bidding battle for the rights to turn the short story Backwards into a feature. Free Guy helmer Shawn Levy is attached to direct. He and Dan Cohen will produce for 21 Laps, and Joby Harold and Tory Tunnell will produce for Safehouse.

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar nominee Naomi Watts is set to star in The Friend, based on Sigrid Nunez’s hit book about a woman’s bond with her Great Dane.

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a hot one that’ll spice up the virtual EFM this week. Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios is launching sales on Chris Pine’s directorial debut Poolman, which the Star Trek actor will star in alongside Oscar nominees Annette Being and Danny DeVito.

K.J. Yossman “The Crown” producers Left Bank Pictures are making “Palomino – a new female-led series – for Netflix.The eight-part series revolves around Erin Collantes, a British teacher in Spain who gets caught up in a “brutal” supermarket robbery.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has set female-led action adventure series Palomino from Sony-backed The Crown producer Left Bank Pictures, with filming set to get underway later this year in Barcelona.

Utopia has taken U.S. rights to writer-director-producer Lena Dunham’s latest directorial Sharp Stick which made its world premiere at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. A theatrical release is planned for later this year.

EXCLUSIVE: Actor-producer Noree Victoria (Queen Sugar, American Crime Story) is making her feature directorial debut with An Arrangement, a psychological thriller marking the first produced film from TV writer Helen Shang (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings Of Power, Hannibal).

Naman Ramachandran Lifted Entertainment, the ITV Studios label behind “I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!,” “Dancing on Ice and “Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway,” has promoted Richard Cowles to managing director, following the appointment of previous MD Angela Jain as ITV Studios’ first director of unscripted in the U.K.Cowles joined Lifted in 2012 as creative director, overseeing I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!,” led on the relaunch of “Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway” after a five-year hiatus and also led on the development of global hit “Love Island.” He was elevated to director of unscripted in 2019, during which time the label secured a commission with ITV for Simon Cowell’s “Walk The Line.” Applications are now open for the new season of “Love Island,” which will be filmed in a villa in Mallorca.Meanwhile, “The Emily Atack Show,” produced by Universal International Studios’ Monkey, is six more episodes on ITV2. Attack will feature her trademark impressions, mischievous sketches and comedic skits.

Legendary Entertainment, the studio behind “Dune,” is selling a stake of $760 million equity stake to the investment company Apollo, the companies announced on Monday. The minority investment comes as Legendary concluded its most profitable year to-date in 2021 on the backs of “Dune” and “Godzilla vs.

Elizabeth Wagmeister Senior CorrespondentAfter Lena Dunham’s new movie “Sharp Stick” was criticized on Twitter by an autism activist who claimed she was approached to be a consultant on the project, the filmmaking team behind the Sundance film says that the central character, Sarah Jo, was never written to be on the spectrum. Producers say the drama about a young woman’s sexual awakening was inspired entirely by creator Lena Dunham’s personal journey, dealing with severe endometriosis which resulted in a hysterectomy.“Sarah Jo was never written nor imagined as a neurodivergent woman,” a spokesperson for the film says, in part, in a statement to Variety.

Dani Dyer has been enjoying a romantic getaway to Milan alongside her footballer boyfriend Jarrod Bowen. The Love Island star, 25, recently jetted off with West Ham United ace Jarrod, also 25, for a mini-break, having gone public with their romance last year. The couple looked as loved-up as ever in a string of snaps shared to social media, with Dani documenting their trip over on her popular Instagram page.

Wall Street Bets, the Reddit hub of memes and financial advice responsible for fueling the GME surge was so initially anti-GameStop that early investors like Farris Husseini — an Alabama data visualizer — were banned from posting about the company because it annoyed so many users. “GameStop was hated among gamers, like hated,” Jeff Tarzia, a former video game tester and one of the stock’s few early supporters, says in the documentary.

Jeff Goldblum loved walking the Prada runway at Milan Fashion Week. The ‘Search Party’ star strutted his stuff along with ‘Twin Peaks’ star Kyle MacLachlan, and he enjoyed the “fun opportunity” of sashaying down the catwalk for the Italian fashion house’s Autumn/Winter 2022 menswear collection - which was inspired by work uniforms - despite being a relative newbie to the fashion industry. In a chat for Interview magazine with 43-year-old designer Mel Ottenberg, the 69-year-old actor said: "I was enjoying myself, I must say.

K.J. Yossman The latest accounts for Fulwell 73, the U.K.-based production company behind “The Late Late Show With James Corden,” reveal a company turnover of £32.4 million ($42.9 million).Fulwell 73 was founded in London in 2005 by childhood friends Ben Winston (who co-executive produces “The Late Late Show”), Leo Pearlman and Benjamin and Gabriel Turner.

Mónica Marie Zorrilla Wolf Entertainment, the producer behind beloved TV franchises “Law & Order,” “One Chicago” and “FBI,” are teaming up with partner Universal Studio Group to create a sales boutique focused on the international format distribution of its shows. Today, CEO Dick Wolf and USG Chairman Pearlena Igbokwe announced that the unit will be led by sales and production executive vet Leslie Jones.“We are getting back into the format business, and I am thrilled that Leslie is back doing what she does best… selling international formats of our shows,“ Wolf said in a statement.