Santa Monica Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Jack Lee, who co-fronted the influential L.A. band the Nerves in the late 1970s and saw his songs turn into major hits for Blondie and Paul Young, died May 26 in Santa Monica, Calif. at age 71. His death was revealed Wednesday in a press release, which revealed Lee died after battling colon cancer for three years. Although Lee had not had much public visibility in recent years, “he never gave up on his music,” his family said in a statement, “to the very end. His guitar, right by his side. He lived his songs. One by one they told the story of his life. Some dreams die. His never will.” His greatest success as a musician came with a pair of high-profile covers. Blondie recorded an extremely faithful cover of the Nerves’ “Hanging on the Telephone” in 1978 that remains one of the group’s most instantly identifiable signature songs to this day. (Blondie’s version went to No. 5 in the U.K., although, as an FM hit, it never charted in the U.S.) Paul Young found success in 1983 with “Come Back and Stay,” a song the Nerves wrote but never recorded; it first appeared on a Lee solo project a couple of years before Young had the hit. (The cover reached No. 4 in the U.K. and No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100.) Young recorded a total of three Lee songs for his Euro-chart-topping debut album that year.

Peter Meyer, a beloved Hollywood manager and the founder of Meyer Management, passed away at the age of 68 on May 14, the news of which was shared in a statement by his sister Patricia K. Meyer. The industry veteran, known for being a rep to A-listers like Tom Hanks and Kevin Costner, died after a five-year battle with Sarcoma at a Santa Monica hospital.

Sophia Scorziello editor Peter Meyer, beloved entertainment industry manager, died on May 14 at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif. after a five-year battle with sarcoma, his sister Patty K. Meyer shared. He wast 68. Meyer was an agent and manager to numerous Hollywood industry professionals. Since 1990, he represented clients under his agency, Meyer Management. “He was known and beloved by hundreds of industry pros,” Patty said. Most recently, he represented rights holders and producers on Denzel Washington’s “The Equalizer.” Meyer attended Yale University where he wrote his senior thesis, “MGM and the Studio System in the Age of Mass Production.” The thesis was later published as an award-winning book and was also printed in Variety.

Rihanna is stepping out for the night!

Chris Hemsworth and Matt Damon are enjoying a night out!

Ben Affleck and his son Samuel were spotted on a coffee run. The two were seen carrying various drinks as they left a Starbucks in Santa Monica.The pair appeared to be in a good mood as they left the store, with Affleck wearing a cap, a white t-shirt, a blue puffer jacket, jeans, and some cool sneakers.

CBS’ The Late Late Show With James Corden might not be airing new episodes anymore, but the music lives on: The house band for the show was among the honorees at this week’s Film and Television Composer Awards.

Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello aren’t looking like exes anymore!

Rihanna is stepping out in style for the night!

Indiana Jones catches flak from his wife.Harrison Ford — who will reprise his role as the iconic archaeologist in “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” opening June 30 — is still getting grief from wife Calista Flockhart about his profanity-laced interview with the Hollywood Reporter from earlier this year.In fact, it made the 80-year-old screen legend playfully ask a reporter to leave “f—kin’ A” out of a story after he said it during an interview.“My wife is still giving me me s–t about that Hollywood Reporter thing, an I’m trying not to say that too much,” Ford told the Esquire writer in a new cover story. “Me and the writer were sitting on folding chairs in a horse stall. It didn’t feel like a formal enough atmosphere to have to clean up my language.

Bobby Kotick has a secret: He was ready to buy Time Warner a few years ago.The CEO of Activision Blizzard drops this nugget early on while sitting at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters for his first extensive interview since 2012. It’s a Friday afternoon in mid-April, which means the office is mostly deserted. Huge replicas of characters and actual backdrops from the video game giant’s roster of franchises — including Call of Duty, Diablo, Overwatch and Candy Crush — dot the landscape of the open-architecture space. The quiet in the building and the low midafternoon light give the place a slightly spooky, fun house vibe. “We’d take their IP and turn it into games. They’d take our IP and turn it into film and television, and we’d have an extraordinary company,” Kotick says, sketching out his vision for a deal in an alternate universe in which AT&T never bought Time Warner and Activision took it on instead. In reality, the Justice Department lost its lawsuit to block the sale of Time Warner to AT&T. But during the first half of 2018, when the fate of the $85.4 billion Time Warner purchase hung in the balance, Activision Blizzard took a cue from its “Call of Duty” commandos: It stockpiled financial ammunition and waited patiently for an opening to pounce.

James Marsden is soaking up the sun on vacation!

EXCLUSIVE: Jet-set, celebrity artist Domingo Zapata will direct an adaptation of his 2017 semi-autobiographical novel The Beautiful Dream of Life.

The WeHo Pride Parade grand marshals were named Thursday and include “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Laith Ashley, Niecy Nash-Betts & Jessica Betts, and Melissa McCarthy. Photo: Jon Viscott/City of West Hollywood

Tina Turner has passed away at the age of 83, after a lengthy battle with a long, unspecified illness.  The legendary singer died at her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland. Her representatives announced the news, saying: 'With her the world loses a music legend and role model. 'Did Tina Turner have any children? Was the singer married prior to her death? Read on below for all you need to know about the legendary vocalist's family.   The 'Queen of Rock 'n' Roll' had two biological children.

Cardi B is celebrating the launch of a new flavor of her Whip Shots alcoholic whipped creams in a figure-hugging bodysuit.

EXCLUSIVE: Producer Moshe Diamant, film financing company Chiltern Media, and the Santa Monica-based sales firm Film Bridge International have set a sales and production partnership to launch at this week’s Cannes Market.

K.J. Yossman Bringing dreams to life is the fastest growing frontier in entertainment. Or if not exactly dreams, then movies, shows, even toys (see: the new World of Barbie immersive experience, which opened in Santa Monica last month) and music (RIP the short-lived Britney Spears-themed The Zone, which launched in LA just two months before the global pandemic hit). The official name for these pop culture encounters is “location-based entertainment” (or LBE for those who work in the field). And as Merlin Entertainments CEO Scott O’Neil and Sony Pictures partnerships EVP Jeffrey Godsick told Variety ahead of the official opening of World of Jumanji in the U.K. this week, with the developments in technology, licensing and audience appetite for IP there’s never been a better moment to be in the LBE business.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large The Daytime Emmys are once again planning to pivot, as next month’s awards show to won’t go forward as previously planned. With the ongoing writers strike, the National Academy of TV Arts & Sciences confirmed on Tuesday that this year’s 50th Daytime Emmys would move from its planned June 16 ceremony to an undetermined later date. “The 50th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards planned for Friday, June 16 on CBS is postponed due to the WGA strike,” NATAS president/CEO Adam Sharp said in a statement obtained by Variety. “In addition, the Creative Arts & Lifestyle ceremony, planned for Saturday, June 17, has been postponed pending a strike resolution. We look forward to our community gathering together as one to celebrate our Golden Anniversary and all of the talented nominees and honorees at a later date.”

Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny turned heads at a birthday bash on Sunday night as they attended in coordinated leather outfits.

Kendall Jenner tucks her hair behind her ear while heading to the Shore Bar in Santa Monica, Calif., on Sunday night (May 14).

So many of Hollywood’s talented young stars all got together in one room last night!

Welcome to Deadline’s International Disruptors, a feature where we shine a spotlight on key executives and companies outside of the U.S. shaking up the offshore marketplace. This week, we’re talking to UK indie veteran Vertigo Films, producer of hit TV shows Britannia, Bulletproof and James Corden and Sally Hawkins starrer Mammals and feature films Monsters, Bronson and Streetdance 3D. Last year, Federation Entertainment acquired a majority stake in the company and we talk about that deal, Vertigo’s pivot from UK indie film to television and why they’re turning their heads back to the indie film space again. 

The wait is over! After nearly a year since Rihanna welcomed her first child with A$AP Rocky, we are finally learning the little guy’s name! And no, his name is not Noah as some people have speculated!

Todd Longwell By the mid-2010s, BondIt Media Capital was thriving, funding 50 projects a year, as well as producing its own slate through its Buffalo8 division. But its post-production pipeline was a chaotic tangle, employing an uncoordinated mix of talent working at facilities spread across the map. Simply put, “it was unsustainable,” says BondIt CEO and co-founder Matthew Helderman. Then, in 2017, an opportunity presented itself: a post-production house was exiting its lease on a 10,000-square-foot space in Hollywood, leaving both the building and an impressive amount of equipment and personnel up for grabs. Helderman and BondIt COO and co-founder Luke Taylor stepped in and Buffalo8 Post Production was born.

Todd Longwell It is often said that the secret to becoming a successful entrepreneur is finding a need and filling it. When Santa Monica-based BondIt Media Capital launched in 2013, it zeroed in on the deposits productions must leave with SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE and other guilds to ensure that their members get paid in a timely fashion.  The company co-founders — CEO Matthew Helderman and COO Luke Taylor — knew from their experience working in the production trenches that these deposits, which sometimes take up to six months to be returned, can create a significant cash flow problem for low-budget projects during principal photography. 

SoundCloud has launched a new product called “Fans” that provides artists with access to deep user data and makes it easy for them to connect with their most loyal listeners. Now available on SoundCloud for Artists, the tool allows artists to view the platform’s data and sort their most engaged listeners based on factors like comments, listening behavior, sharing habits and location — and even directly message individual fans and share previews of upcoming music, info, sell tickets and merch and more. (There’s also an opt-out for those who don’t want Beyonce cluttering up their DMs.) The program had been in beta for around six weeks but is now ramping up to 60,000 artists who are members of its premium Next Pro tier. The company considered it the next logical step in their fan-powered royalties system, under which the company pays out each listener’s subscriber revenue entirely to the rights-holders or the artists they’ve actually listened to, rather than the all-in model used by most streaming services.

EXCLUSIVE: Action-thriller Classified, starring Aaron Eckhart, Abigail Breslin and Tim Roth, has completed principal photography on location in Malta.

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck get an early start to their day with a stop for some coffees to go on Tuesday (May 9) in Santa Monica, Calif.

Writers Guild of America has notified studios that it will not be running FYC ads for the upcoming Emmy season on its website or in email communications to members, two insiders have told TheWrap.“After deliberation with our legal department, all FYC production is now suspended,” read an email from the guild to studio awards teams obtained by TheWrap. “We understand that this may be frustrating and that you have media already planned, but due to the strike rules, we cannot continue.”The guild is offering studios who have already bought ad space the choice between a full refund or credit towards future FYC ads after the strike concludes.

Add MTV Movie & TV Awards to the list as the latest to be affected by the WGA strike.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large The MTV Movie & TV Awards may still be going on this Sunday without the services of host Drew Barrymore, but the Writers Guild has taken notice. In a short press release on Friday, the guild announced that it would picket outside Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, where the kudocast is set to take place on May 7, at 5 p.m. PT. MTV had already scrapped a red carpet before the show, in the hopes that the awards show would stay off the radar of any pickets. As Variety wrote exclusively on Thursday, Barrymore opted to step down as host of this year’s MTV Movie & TV Awards, in a show of support and solidarity to the striking Writers Guild members. She instead agreed to return and host next year’s edition of the kudocast instead.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large The 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards, which is slated to air live this Sunday from Santa Monica’s Barker Hanger with host Drew Barrymore, will move forward even as a writers strike is now underway. Because it’s live, the kudocast will likely be the first program noticeably impacted by a strike, although insiders close to the show tell Variety they already had multiple contingency plans in place in case. “We are all collectively hoping for the best, we’re hoping for a resolution so that the show can continue on as planned,” one production source told Variety on Monday, prior to the WGA contract expiration and announcement of a strike. “Should we need to pivot, we will. We are working through our contingency plans. This is something that we have been discussing for for quite some time. So we are hard at work. These are very busy hours and days for us… the nature of live events and live shows and live programming is to be able to pivot when things come up. Those are all skills that we have honed very well over the last few years.”

Thania Garcia UMe, the catalog division of Universal Music Group, has promoted Tim Plumley to vice president of media and artist relations. He is based in the company’s Santa Monica headquarters and reports to the executive VP of media and artist relations, Sujata Murthy. “Tim is a key member of my communications team, where he continues to develop innovative new ways to promote our artists and their projects across a wide range of media outlets,” Murthy said. “Tim not only has the trust and respect of our executives and members of the press, but crucially he is viewed as a true partner by our artists and their management teams.” His roster at Ume includes the Band/Robbie Robertson, the Beach Boys, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Zappa, George Harrison, Glen Campbell, Johnny Cash, John Coltrane, John Lennon, Louis Armstrong, Tom Petty, the Rolling Stones and others.

Will there ever be a great book about the film business as it is now?