Independent Artist Group Hires A3 Talent Agent Fatmata Kamara

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran actor and comedian Eddie Griffin has signed with Independent Artist Group across the board, Deadline has learned.

Kurt Badenhausen Longtime sports team owners Josh Harris and David Blitzer have been actively investing in youth sports properties over the last two years. Now, the private equity titans are rolling up those assets into a new parent company, Unrivaled Sports.

The 2024 British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) will take place on December 8 at the Roundhouse in Camden. The ceremony will mark a return for the BIFAs, which were last held at the storied London venue in 2007. 

EXCLUSIVE: Stewart Talent is expanding its Los Angeles Commercial Department with the hire of Valerie Chiovetti. She is coming from embattled KMR Talent, where she spent the last 11 years, and is expected to bring a number of former clients with her to Stewart Talent. 

EXCLUSIVE: Former A3 agents Katt Riley and Nick Beldoch have joined the Lit department at Independent Artist Group, Deadline has learned. Just two of over 25 agents IAG has recruited over the past 18 months, they’ll be reunited at the agency with former colleague Fatmata Kamara, who was hired as a talent agent earlier this month.

EXCLUSIVE: Artist International Group has signed Swedish actor, screenwriter and producer Alexander Karim for management.

EXCLUSIVE: Talent agency KMR Talent has left the Association of Talent Agents (ATA), the trade organization of talent agencies that negotiates agency franchise agreements with the major entertainment guilds and does legislative lobbying on behalf of its members.

Katcy Stephan Verve has hired longtime agent Valarie Phillips. The news comes just two weeks after the agency brought on non-fiction agent Jacy Schleier from CAA. Phillips, who brings more than two decades of agency experience to Verve, was most recently co-head of the motion picture literary department at A3 Artists Agency.

An independent Scotland could slash corporation tax to make it like the Republic of Ireland, Humza Yousaf has suggested.

If you're a Death in Paradise watcher, you've probably wondered how the cast can wear make-up in the heat without it slipping and sliding during filming. In a bid to find out the answers, we reached out to the BBC show's on-set hair and make-up supervisor, Dionne Thomas, to find out some of her secrets.

EXCLUSIVE: CESD Talent Agency has expanded its theatrical talent agent roster with two new hires from the former A3 Artists Agency. Aron Giannini has joined CESD as Co-Head of its L.A. Theatrical Talent Department and Ross Silver as an Agent in its New York Theatrical Talent Department. Their new roles are effective immediately.

Annika Pham U.S. content management, financing and sales banner Cinetic Media has secured world rights to the life affirming doc “Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other,” about legendary photographer Joel Meyerowitz and his wife, artist and author Maggie Barrett. Rising filmmaking duo Manon Ouimet and Jacob Perlmutter of London-based Manon et Jacob are making their documentary debut, with Ouimet serving as producer alongside multi-Oscar nominated Danish producer Signe Byrge Sørensen of Final Cut Four Real (“Flee,” “The Look of Silence,” “The Act of Killing”).

BBC).The ERA’s 2024 Yearbook (published today, March 6), which contains statistics on the music, video and gaming sectors, also found that the UK music market was worth £2.2billion last year. 84 per cent of this was attributed to streaming subscriptions.The number of shops physically selling music, however – like supermarkets and specialist chains – fell from 10,391 to 2,486 in that period.The demand for vinyl records, meanwhile, continued to increase for the 16th year in a row.

Diego Ramos Bechara editor The National Association of Latino Independent Producers and Netflix have announced the third cohort for their Women of Color Incubator — the finalists were chosen from a pool of over 100 applications. The 2023 class of filmmakers are Sonia Gonzalez (“Heartbreak in Another Tongue”), Michelle Salcedo (“Bye Bye Barbarito”), Jackie! Zhou (“Good Boy Banjo”), Lorena Duran (“Last Day Home”) and Fabiola Andrade (“Natural Selection”). Gonzalez is a Mexican-American writer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran rep Pietra Ingenito has joined Prototype Talent Agency as a senior talent agent. Ingenito comes to Prototype following a 5-year stint with A3 Artists Agency, which recently ceased operations.

EXCLUSIVE: Veteran unscripted agent and producer Bill Thompson, former Head Of Unscripted Television at Verve, is launching his own management and production company, Artists Group | Unscripted.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Following on the news that the music industry generated some $9 billion on Spotify in 2023, the streaming giant has revealed that half of that total went to independent labels and artists — $4.5 billion. Streaming has leveled the playing field in many ways since it became the main platform for music around a decade ago, and the fact that independent artists — which Spotify defines as artists signed to a non-major labels or self-releasing — now account for half of that total, for the first time, is evidence.

EXCLUSIVE: Former A3 agent Rob Cassandro has joined the talent department at Innovative Artists.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music As expected, Atlantic Music Group announced on Monday that it will be laying off around two dozen people, with the majority coming from the radio and video departments. In an internal memo to the company’s staff obtained by Variety, chairman-CEO Julie Greenwald said Atlantic will be “bringing on new and additional skill sets in social media, content creation, community building and audience insights” in an effort to “dial up our fan focus and help artists tell their stories in ways that resonate.” The move reflects similar ones at the major labels recently, as they recalibrate to meet the leveling-off of streaming growth.

Aidy Bryant took on her first ever awards show hosting gig yesterday for the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards, and her opening monologue made quite the impact!