Paramount Global Wraps TV Upfront Pitch Well Before Rivals Launch Their Big Shows

Elizabeth Olsen is taking viewers behind-the-scenes of her and co-star Jesse Plemons’ intimacy scenes in “Love & Death”.

National Amusements, the controlling shareholder of Paramount Global run by Shari Redstone, has received a $125 million preferred equity investment from BDT Capital Partners.

The show is still days away from arriving on HBO, but the months leading up to the release have made “The Idol” a hot-button topic to discuss. And most of the discourse surrounds the behind-the-scenes drama that plagued the production.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter One of the most talked-about titles at this year’s Cannes Film Festival isn’t a movie, but a TV show. “The Idol,” a scandalous, sexy and sure-to-be-polarizing series (think “Euphoria” but set in the world of pop music) about the price of fame, premiered two of the first five episodes at the festival and instantly inspired a thousand hot-takes about all that on-screen nudity, bodily fluids and Hollywood sycophants. But before “The Idol” — the brainchild of “Euphoria” creator Sam Levinson and Abel “The Weeknd” Tesfaye — even made its way to the Croisette, an explosive report by Rolling Stone detailed on-set turmoil, including allegations of a toxic work environment, last-minute script rewrites and budgets gone wild.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Andrew Ross Sorkin is the co-creator of the Showtime series “Billions,” but he isn’t really known for drama in his professional life, just financial reporting. So it came as something of a surprise on Monday, when the CNBC and New York Times journalist got up on stage at New York City’s Radio City Music Hall to tout some of the dramatic fare that NBCUniversal was able to cobble together for the advertisers and media buyers assembled in the audience. It was all part of the industry’s annual “upfront,” when U.S. media companies try to sell the bulk of their advertising inventory before the release of their next cycle of programming.

Paramount Global’s Lawrence Szabo is joining BBC Studios.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Yellow Veil Pictures has acquired worldwide rights to “The Becomers,” a genre-bending comedy from Zach Clark. The company will launch the film at the Marche Du Film in Cannes this week. “The Becomer” tells the story of a body-snatching alien who comes to Earth, reconnects with their partner, and tries to find their way in modern America. “During the pandemic, I binged the original ‘Star Trek’ series for the first time and then I made this movie” Clark said on his latest film. “It felt like life as we knew it was ending, but then again, it also felt like that might not be the worst thing either. ‘The Becomers’ is a story of love, longing, and alienation. A kitsch-soaked, pathos-laden melodrama about our sad, sad planet. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever made and I can’t think of anyone better than Yellow Veil to get it out into the universe.”

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor The upfront presentation that looks most like traditional TV came from a company that likes to tell investors, advertisers and consumers how it’s leapfrogging that entire business. Netflix on Wednesday showed dozens of scripted series and movies that could support advertising — if only Madison Avenue would take a chance and bet on its nascent efforts to sell commercials. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Chris Hemsworth and Julia Roberts were only some of the actors whose efforts could be tied to advertising. Counterparts like NBCUniversal and Fox Corp. were hard-pressed to do the same earlier this week. “We are just getting started,” said Peter Naylor, vice president of global advertising sales at Netflix.

The upfronts may be an annual ritual steeped in TV and streaming advertising, but NBCUniversal gave film more than a fleeting moment in the spotlight during its pitch to media buyers Monday morning.

EXCLUSIVE: RRR and Thor franchise star Ray Stevenson is headlining Frank Ciota’s Cassino in Ischia, a feature which is being produced by Goodfellas and Casino‘s Barbara DeFina.

EXCLUSIVE: Isabelle Huppert (Elle) and Finn Wittrock (Luckiest Girl Alive) have closed deals to star in Free Radicals, an English-language home invasion thriller based on the same-name short story originally published in The New Yorker by Nobel Prize-winning author Alice Munro.

A sweet message. Marilee Fiebig has remained on good terms with Amy Robach‘s daughters following her ex-husband’s public scandal with his former GMA3 coanchor.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Netflix is backing away from the live-in-New-York showcase it planned to hold for advertisers during the industry’s annual week of “upfront” presentations for advertisers, a move that threatens to put a damper on the company’s first big public attempt to woo advertisers to its service. The streaming giant is scrapping the event it planned to hold at its own Paris Theater in New York, slated for May 17, and informed advertisers of the switch Wednesday evening. The decision was previously reported by Adweek. Netflix’ decision takes place amid a massive writers strike that is likely to keep many of the actors, comedians and showrunners who might regularly attend away from the glitzy affairs held by most of the networks each year as part of the upfront, the annual attempt by U.S. media companies to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory attached to their next cycle of programming.

MAMAMOO is ready to take over North America!

‘Gomorrah’ Writers To Adapt David Szalay Novel ‘Turbulence’

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.

Prince Harry‘s ghostwriter is getting candid about what it was really like working with the royal on his explosive memoir, Spare.

His side of the story. Prince Harry‘s ghostwriter, J.R. Moehringer, offered a rare glimpse into the ups and downs of collaborating on the Spare memoir.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish addressed the writers strike during Paramount’s Q1 earnings call Thursday, stating that writers are “an essential part of creating content” and “we hope we can come to a resolution that works for everyone fairly quickly.” However, the Paramount chief added, “it’s also fair to say there’s a really big gap.” “Obviously, we’ve been planning for this, we do have many levers to pull and that’ll allow us to manage through the strike, even if it’s for an extended duration,” Bakish said. “In terms of those levers, we have a lot in the can, so to speak, content in the can. So with the exception of things like late-night, consumers really won’t notice anything for a while. Add to that a broad range of reality, unscripted, where we’re definitely a leader, as well as sports, and that’s not effected, so we can do more in those areas, if necessary.”

Paramount Global fell way shy of Wall Street forecasts with ongoing losses in streaming exacerbated by soft advertising at its TV/Media group last quarter and a dip in filmed entertainment as well. The stock is down sharply — about 14% — in early trading