Morgan Stanley Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Economists are warning that an increase to the UK's minimum wage could make it harder to keep inflation low, which could mean it takes longer for interest rates to come down.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Wall Street is betting that Netflix‘s stream machine continued to fire on all cylinders coming into 2024. After netting a whopping 13.1 million new subs in Q4, Netflix is riding a wave of momentum that continues to be buoyed by the paid-sharing strategy, as it converts password borrowers into paying members, according to analysts.

Around 100 hours before the deadline for all Disney shareholders to cast their ballots in the acrid board clash between the Mouse House and activist investor Nelson Peltz, one of the country’s top pension funds just rolled its cannons onto the battlefield.

Rochdale-born businessman and entrepreneur Sir Peter Ogden is no stranger to making investments in his home town. But the many thousands of pounds of donations and funding he has pumped in has always been in the field of education - not football.

As we all know by now, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” set for July 26, is Marvel Studios only film for 2024. Speaking at a Morgan Stanley event yesterday, Disney Chief Bob Iger predicted the film will be “one of the most successful Marvel movies we’ve had in a long time.” Clearly, the hype for the film is rising.

Michaela Zee Lionsgate is expanding the “Twilight” franchise with a new animated series, Variety has confirmed. Michael Burns, vice chairman of Lionsgate, shared the news during a Q&A at the Morgan Stanley media conference on Tuesday, revealing, “We’re going to go out with the ‘Twilight’ series, an animated series, I think there’ll be a lot of interest in that.” Last April, Variety reported that a “Twilight” TV series adaptation was in very early development at Lionsgate Television.

Lionsgate Vice Chair Michael Burns said the company is set to split in two by year end with a first step in early April as the studio merges with a SPAC and starts to trade separately from Starz on the Nasdaq under the stock symbol LION.

Lionsgate is expanding two of its biggest movie franchises, John Wick and Twilight, with new TV series offshoots. The company’s Vice Chairman Michael Burns shared information about the two projects during a Q&A at the Morgan Stanley media conference.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “House of the Dragon” Season 2 will debut on HBO in June. Warner Bros. Discovery streaming and gaming chief J.B.

The forthcoming sports streaming venture backed by Disney, Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery will reach 5 million subscribers in its first five years, according to a projection shared Monday by Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch.

A pair of babies hit the pickleball court in the E*TRADE commercial during the 2024 Super Bowl!

James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley and soon to be a member of Disney‘s board of directors, is not fazed by the possibility of the media giant going through a proxy fight.

The Walt Disney Co. has added former Group CEO of Sky Jeremy Darroch and Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman to its board of directors and said Francis A. deSouza plans to surrender his seat at the end of his term.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Vince McMahon is cashing out. McMahon, the former CEO of WWE, intends to offer 8.4 million shares of Class A common stock in TKO Group, the company formed by the merger of WWE and UFC, which was engineered by Endeavor. Those shares are currently worth about $713 million at TKO’s most recently closing share price.

Fifth Season owner CJ ENM has a new scripted chief in the U.S.

Ron DeSantis has pushed for legal inquiry into Bud Light’s marketing, after a recent ad campaign featuring transgender celebrity Dylan Mulvaney.

company’s mass layoffs. Last year, the company posted profit of $7.47 billion, or $2.72 per share.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor If you want to run ads on Elon Musk’s Twitter from here on out, you apparently will need to pay for verified status — or buy at least $1,000 worth of advertising each month. Twitter said advertisers must subscribe to either Twitter Blue ($8/month and up) or Verified Organizations ($1,000/month) to be eligible to buy ads on the service, according to a notice titled “Building a better Twitter through verification,” shared by social media consultant Matt Navarra early Friday. A request for comment sent Friday to Twitter’s press email account received no response. According to the notice, businesses that spend at least $1,000 monthly in advertising will be automatically verified and receive a gold check-mark badge.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company has reached a new stage of its evolution in streaming and will consider “on occasion” licensing some titles to third parties.

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor Over the past couple of years, virtually every conversation about the challenges facing artists in the music-streaming economy has had one proposed quick fix: Raise subscription prices. As Milana Lewis, CEO of the distribution and payments platform Stem, told Variety last summer, “The price of everything else on earth is going up, and they all keep finding new ways to make subscriptions cheaper” via family and student plans, bundling and other initiatives. Apple Music, Amazon Music and Deezer have already done so, but others remain with the same $10 U.S. monthly price as when they started. New Warner Music CEO Robert Kyncl brings a view from the other side to the top of the music industry: He was head of business for YouTube — where he led a sea change in the streaming giant’s relationship with the music industry by, guess what, introducing a paid music subscription service — and at Netflix, where he presided over the company’s shift from DVDs to streaming.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has revolved around a core group of character for years now. However, Disney’s CEO Bob Iger is suggesting that will change in the coming years.

Returned Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged that fans had a right to be irked as theme park ticket prices crept higher under the previous regime, and said it wasn’t the best way to manage the brand.

Disney CEO Bob Iger called succession top priority as he moves to turn the company around and, with the board, name a new chief executive before the end of his two-year contract.

Lachlan Murdoch, in his first public comments about a defamation lawsuit against Fox News that’s been grabbing headlines, said he believes the network is even handed and the “noise” is more reflective of the nation’s divided politics than anything else.

Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel ruled out any major stock deal right how and indicated reluctance to increase debt, both at a time when the UFC’s main rival, WWE, is up for sale.

Spotify CFO Paul Vogel said the company’s decision several weeks ago to cut 6% of its global workforce was a “a real positive” in terms of the company being willing to take a hard look at its operations and “evolve.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Never fear, genre fans: Warner Bros. Discovery is intent on mining as much of its tentpole Warner Bros. IP as possible in the near future, whether that be through its upcoming revamped DC Universe, the newly announced “The Lord of the Rings” movies, or more projects based on J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” franchise amid the success of video game “Hogwarts Legacy.” “DC is an enormous opportunity and two important building blocks are in place now with the leadership team, Peter [Safran] and James [Gunn], and James has been breathing comics for as long as he’s been alive, essentially,” Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said during a panel at Morgan Stanley’s investor conference Wednesday. “A great creative leader here. And the second building block that is in place is the one-company approach, because I think you can only manage a franchise if everything is coordinated and the team is working together extremely well. There’s an enormous level of collaboration and joint decision making around what should work hand in hand across the franchise.”

Showtime has been going through downsizing and recalibration since the November ouster of longtime CEO David Nevins and the premium network’s inclusion in Paramount Media Networks President Chris McCarthy’s portfolio. There have been layoffs, series cancellations and an executive restructuring as McCarthy articulated the plans for the network, which will soon be rebranded as Paramount+ with Showtime. They include multiple TV universes built around some of Showtime’s biggest series, including multiple Dexter and Billions offshoots.

Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said the media giant would of course consider alternative proposals for its stake in Hulu but they’d have to top its longstanding agreement to sell its remaining stake in the streamer to Disney next year.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Though Showtime is being rebranded into Paramount+ With Showtime, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish says the Showtime brand is alive and well and more projects based on the cable channel’s most iconic series, including “Ray Donovan,” are in the pipeline for the integrated platform. “We’re not just doing that streaming, we’re doing that linear as well,” Bakish said during a Morgan Stanley-hosted investor conference. “So come sometime this year, when you turn on Showtime linear, it’s going to be Paramount+ With Showtime. And it’s what I call a win-win-win. It’s a win for consumers, because the product is going to be fundamentally better than Showtime. You’re going to get ‘1923’ on it, you’ll get ‘Tulsa King,’ as part of your Showtime subscription. It’s just going to be a bigger, broader product. We fundamentally believe in a broad thesis. So that will work at the consumer level and as part of that, we’re leaning into the Showtime franchises. So you could think about the slate as smaller, which will be less expensive, but also really giving the people what they want — which is more Showtime, maybe more ‘Dexter,’ maybe more ‘Ray Donovan,’ and really leaning into that. And we have some exciting plans there.”

Elon Musk prodded advertisers “to use Twitter yourselves, and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Nexstar is still dark on internet streamer FuboTV on Tuesday, the TV station group giant’s president and chief operating officer explained why. “We are in a dispute with CBS right now over the Fubo situation,” Tom Carter said during a Morgan Stanley-hosted investor conference. “But keep in mind that virtual MVPDs contribute less than 10% of our distribution revenue and our distribution revenue is about half of our total revenue and Fubo is the smallest vMVPD we deal with. So we’re talking about a relatively minor amount of money, quite honestly, to both us and CBS. So it’s kind of easy to pick Fubo as a fight to have.” Nexstar executive vice president and chief financial officer Lee Ann Gliha noted: “We view this as a CBS-only issues and it’s just driven by the specific issues that surround the CBS situation.”

Kim Kardashian is trying to keep the focus on her kids amid Kanye West‘s string of controversies.

Adidas is moving forward with selling Yeezy product designs — just not under Kanye West‘s brand name.

Paramount Global and Walmart have reached a streaming bundle deal that will see Paramount+ offered at no charge to subscribers of 2-year-old loyalty program Walmart+.

Andrew Wallenstein President and Chief Media AnalystThe upstart sports brand Overtime announced a Series D round of funding to the tune of $100 million, with Liberty Media Corp. joining its long roster of investors.In an interview for the latest episode of the Variety podcast “Strictly Business,” Dan Porter, CEO and founder of Overtime, pledged to grow the company’s existing leagues in basketball and football.