Paramount Global Terminates $2.2B Simon & Schuster Sale But Still Wants Out Of Publishing Biz

Paramount Global has announced the seven writers who will be participating Writers Mentoring Program for 2023-2023. Currently in its 19th year and helmed by the Paramount Office of Global Inclusion, the eight-month program provides mentorships, access and opportunity for writers.

Todd and Julie Chrisley may be headed to prison, but if they thought they’d seen the end of their legal woes, they were very wrong!

NBC Universal chief Jeff Shell was coy yet clearly jazzed today about the possible merger of prolific horror producers Jason Blum and James Wan’s respective companies — Blumhouse and Atomic Monster – saying “I can’t confirm it,” but, “If that should happen, we are going to be in an absolutely impregnable position.”

NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell said Peacock has more than 18 million paid subscribers as of today, a nice bump from the 15 million it announced for the quarter ended Sept. 30, driven by programming migrated from Hulu, sports and Universal movies.

Akin to domestic, it was a rather sleepy weekend at the international box office. Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever again won the frame, with $20.2M from 50 overseas markets for an offshore total of $339.3M and a global tally of $733M through Sunday.

The majority of submissions for this year’s International Feature Oscar category deal with serious issues, from major to minor, and while He Shuming’s feature debut Ajoomma (the title translates as Auntie) isn’t exactly the heaviest of them all, it does make a point of focusing on a character type that is vastly underrepresented in cinema across the globe: the older female.

Writer-director Tarik Saleh’s latest film Cairo Conspiracy follows Adam, the son of a fisherman, who is offered the ultimate privilege to study at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the epicenter of power in Sunni Islam. Shortly after his arrival, the university’s highest religious leader, the Grand Imam, suddenly dies and Adam soon becomes a pawn in a ruthless power struggle between Egypt’s religious and political elite.

We’re still buzzing after the season one finale of Tony Gilroy’s fantastic “Star Wars” series “Andor,” a prequel taking place before the events of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.” One of the more well-written and executed modern “Star Wars” projects that showed that there were still some untapped places that creatives could explore within the universe that feel fresh and exciting.

Davy Chou’s “Return to Seoul” is a fast one for the books, a film that (contrary to so much of contemporary cinema) delivers exponentially more than it promises. It begins as a modest, observational slice-of-life drama and slowly transforms into a movie about the lies we tell ourselves — about who we are, what we feel, and what we need.

The longest voting awards committee is underway with the New York Film Critics Circle already naming this AM A24’s Marcel the Shell With Shoes On Best Animated film and A24/Mubi’s Aftersun from Charlotte Wells as Best First Film. In previous years, it can take five hours before the New York Film Critics Circle names Best Picture. We’ll be here for the long haul.

Bento Box And Boulder Media Strike Services Deal

“Return to Seoul” is a film that played at a number of festivals in 2022, most notably TIFF and Cannes, where it earned rave reviews. However, when you look at the lineup of international films vying for Oscar glory, it doesn’t always get brought up.

Netflix & Paramount+ UK To Profile ‘Strip Search Caller’

Christmas fanatics can tuck into their festive feast early, as Heinz is set to restock thousands of its best-selling Christmas dinner in a tin on supermarket shelves this week.

In 2011, director Davy Chou was heading to South Korea for the first time when one of his best friends decided to tag along to show him around “her country.”

The historical drama Corsage centers on the life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1877, yet the film’s writer-director Marie Kreutzer says its message about female oppression still resonates today.

Restructuring, streamlining and realignment. We’ve been hearing that phrasing quite a bit over the past few months as media congloms have been thinning out their top executive ranks and targeting efficiencies to improve their balance sheets in a time when the effects from the pandemic are being exacerbated by the impact of the economic slowdown, high inflation and a looming recession.

EXCLUSIVE: Layoffs are under way at Paramount Global, with several dozen employees expected to leave the company today, insiders have confirmed to Deadline.