Paramount Global Promotes Pam Kaufman to President, Consumer Products and Experiences

Kevin Hart announced on Tuesday he is merging his Laugh Out Loud and HartBeat Productions to form HartBeat, a global, multi-platform media company. HartBeat launches with a $100M investment from private equity firm Abry Partners, which took a minority investment in the new company. As part of the deal, Abry Partners partner Nicolas Massard will be joining the HartBeat board.

EXCLUSIVE: Meghan Leathers (Don’t Look Up) has signed on for a role in Paramount+’s crime thriller Finestkind, from Academy Award-winning writer-director Brian Helgeland. She joins an ensemble that also includes Tommy Lee Jones, Ben Foster, Toby Wallace, Jenna Ortega, Aaron Stanford, Scotty Tovar, Tim Daly, Lolita Davidovich and Clayne Crawford, as previously announced.

President Emmanuel Macron has won France’s presidential run-off, beating far-right rival Marine Le Pen, according to the exit polls. Mr Macron would be the first French president in 20 years to win a second term, which lasts five years, since Jacques Chirac in 2002.

Elsa Keslassy International CorrespondentEmmanuel Macron, the incumbent President of France, has been re-elected for a second term, beating far-right candidate Marine Le Pen with a projected 58.2% of the vote. Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National party, got an estimated 41.8% of the vote, according to the Ipsos-Sopra Steria polling institute.Macron, a 44-year old, pro-E.U.

Naman Ramachandran PBS Distribution will be the North American distribution partner for West Road Pictures and All3Media International series “Ridley.” It stars Adrian Dunbar (“Line of Duty”) as Detective Inspector Alex Ridley, who has retired from the police after 20 years of dedicated service. Now working in a consultancy role, Ridley resumes his partnership with his former protégée, DI Carol Farman (Bronagh Waugh, “Unforgotten”), when she turns to him for help on a complex murder investigation.The series, which consists of four two-hour episodes, is currently filming across Northern England, and will premiere on ITV in the U.K.

Pam Grier doesn’t look back that often. If she did, she said this week from New Mexico, “I’d be drinking.”But when Turner Classic Movies host Ben Mankiewicz called to ask if she’d consider being the focus of the new season of his podcast “The Plot Thickens,” she knew she had to do it. She’d listened to and loved the previous season that explored the career of Peter Bogdanovich and had an idea of what it would entail.

Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish made $20 million in 2021, a drop from when he made $38.9 million the year prior.Bakish’s pay was disclosed in an SEC filing on Friday for Paramount Global, formerly ViacomCBS. Bakish did not receive a bonus in 2021 or receive any new stock awards, and his total pay came from $3.1 million in salary and $16.8 from a non-equity incentive plan. Unlike other media conglomerates, ViacomCBS did not cut the salaries of its executives in 2020 as the pandemic took hold, though most of his earnings that year came from stock awards in what was ViacomCBS’ full first year.

EXCLUSIVE: Deadline has the first pair of exclusive tracks from Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli’s score for The Thing About Pam, which is set for release via Milan Records on April 15, following the airing of the NBC true-crime ratings hit’s finale.

Banijay Launches French Format Fund

Lily James poses alongside her Pam & Tommy co-stars Sebastian Stan and Seth Rogen as they arrive at Deadline Contenders Television at Paramount Studios on Sunday (April 10) in Los Angeles.

EXCLUSIVE: Face/Off and Hacksaw Ridge producer David Permut has acquired Steve Lillbuen’s true crime book The Devil’s Cinema about Canadian filmmaker Mark Twitchell who was convicted of first degree murder in 2011.

Happy Friday readers. Tom Grater here looking back on the week’s top international headlines.

CAA has acquired full ownership of CAA-GBG Global Brand Management Group, a joint venture formed in 2016.

Showtime and BET Networks executive Michael Crotty has been promoted to COO & CFO, Paramount Global Premium Group, which includes Showtime Networks, BET Networks, Paramount Television Studios and Bellator.

Paramount+ announced today that its four-hour docuseries Ghislaine — Partner in Crime, exploring the life of Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, will be available for streaming in full starting April 7.

Damon Wayans (Fox’s Lethal Weapon) and Pam Grier (Jackie Brown) have signed on to star alongside Hailey Kilgore, David Iacono and Jeremie Harris in the noir thriller Cinnamon, which will debut exclusively on Fox’s free streaming service, Tubi, later this year.

Katherine Tulich Paramount Australia and New Zealand has greenlighted Helium Pictures’ eight-hour scripted drama “Paper Dolls” for Network 10 and Paramount Plus Australia. Production is set to commence in Sydney later this year and will premier on 10 in 2023.Set in 2000, “Paper Dolls,” which is produced by Helium Pictures, follows the meteoric rise and fall of fictional girl band Indigo, a manufactured pop group born on one of the first reality talent TV shows.The drama focuses on five women aspiring for pop stardom only to find their dream of fame compromised by what it takes to achieve it. At first competitors and then confidants, as Indigo achieves instant success and stardom, their secrets threaten to tear the band apart, particularly as one member, returning to the music industry, threatens to implode the group as she seeks revenge on a former record label that wronged her.

Eric Kops has been elevated to the new role of Lionsgate’s Head of Global Communications & Earned Media in the conglom’s motion picture division.