Sony Promotes Entertainment PR Chief Robert Lawson to Head of Corporate Communications in Tokyo

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Sony Pictures Entertainment is upping its head of television Ravi Ahuja to president and chief operating officer of the entire studio. While not explicitly stated by SPE chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra in his internal memo regarding Ahuja’s appointment to the No.

Three years after arriving to Sony Pictures, Ravi Ahuja, has been named President and Chief Operating Officer of Sony Pictures Entertainment, effective April 1.

Two-time Grammy Award winning singer and songwriter Gloria Gaynor will be the subject of a new biopic under the Robin Roberts Presents banner for Lifetime.

EXCLUSIVE: After a five-year run at the company and the recent acquisition of Oscar nominee Io Capitano, Robert Aaronson has been promoted to Executive Vice President of Cohen Media Group (CMG).

New York Dolls’ David Johansen, John Lyon and more.The lawsuit was in an effort to regain control of the artists’ masters, and has finally come to a settlement after years of closely-watched class-action litigation against major record labels over copyright law’s termination right.Announced in court papers last week, the agreement between the music label and the musicians will resolve a case which saw artists accuse Sony of unfairly rejecting their efforts to invoke termination – a federal law that’s supposed to let authors take back control of their works decades after they sold them away.Per Reuters, Johansen, Lyon and Paul Collins sued Sony Music back in 2019, accusing the label of barring their termination notices for their music and proceeding to sell it without permission. The case had ben on pause for settlement since 2021.The musicians based their claims off of a part of the Copyrights Act.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Sony‘s PlayStation has joined the long list of video game companies hit by layoffs in 2024. Approximately 900 Sony Interactive Entertainment employees, or 8% of PlayStation’s global workforce, will be impacted by the cuts, per outgoing-CEO Jim Ryan. Employees across the Americas, EMEA, Japan, and APAC regions will be affected and several studios, including PlayStation’s London studio, will shutter.

“Oppenheimer” co-star, Cillian Murphy, smashed his head open while fluffing a pillow she gave him to help him sleep while shooting the boffo box-office movie.Blunt, 41, was on ABC’s “JKL!” with Murphy, 47, and “Oppenheimer” co-star Robert Downey Jr., 58.She told Kimmel how she bought Murphy, who stars as J. Robert Oppenheimer — the so-called “Father of the Atomic Bomb” — a special pillow to help him get a good night’s sleep.But things went awry from there in the middle of the night.“I just felt [what] Cillian needed, even more than food, was sleep on this movie,” Blunt said in reference to the “Peaky Blinders” star losing a lot of weight for the role to play the rail-thin Oppenheimer.“So I got him this very beautiful pillow that I’m obsessed with … it’s a Hästens pillow.

Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Chief Communications Officer Robert Lawson is being upped to SVP, Corporate Communications for the entire Sony Group. The new job will bring Lawson, a nine-year vet of the Culver City lot who was a key consigliere during the 2014 cyber-attack, to Sony HQ in Tokyo, Japan, reporting to Sony Group Corp Chairman and CEO Kenichiro Yoshida.

Moonbug Entertainment, the CoComelon producer owned by Candle Media, has appointed Courtney Holt as the company’s first Global Head of Music and Strategic Audio Initiatives.

EXCLUSIVE: LA’s J Creative Entertainment is expanding into content production, launching a production arm that will develop Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and Filipino stories for global audiences.

Ansel Elgort has picked up a new hobby, and he’s showing it off while going shirtless!

Filmmaking duo Veronika Franz And Severin Fiala, best known Goodnight Mommy, which was Austria’s 2014 entry for Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, and the Riley Keough-led The Lodge, have signed on to direct the horror feature A Head Full of Ghosts. Production is set to begin later this year.

HBO has several highly anticipated titles premiering on its network and Max in 2024, with “True Detective: Night Country” and “Tokyo Vice” Season 2 already bowing. Kate Winslet in “The Regime” is the next big title to drop next month, but after that comes “The Sympathizer,” Park Chan-wook‘s latest foray into TV.

Sony is rewarding its game show chief.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Sony Pictures Television vet Suzanne Prete, who has driven the studio’s game show division since its launch in 2022, has been upped to president. The exec will continue to report to Sony Pictures TV chairman Ravi Ahuja, who announced the news Thursday in a memo to staffers.

Naman Ramachandran “A Head Full of Ghosts,” an adaptation of Paul Tremblay’s Bram Stoker Award-winning novel, will be directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. The horror feature will be adapted and directed by Franz and Fiala, the filmmaking duo best known for horror-thriller hit, “Goodnight Mommy,” which was selected as Austria’s 2014 Oscar entry, and the Riley Keough-led “The Lodge,” which premiered at Sundance and was acquired by Neon in 2019. Their next film, “The Devil’s Bath,” is competing for the Golden Bear at the ongoing Berlin Film Festival.

Refresh for latest…: Sony Pictures Entertainment recorded profits of $281 million for the third-quarter of fiscal year 2023, a 57% hike versus the comparable period in 2022. Revenues were also up 5% to $2.473 billion.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor How big was the Taylor Swift effect on the Super Bowl? Her impact on viewership of CBS’s Super Bowl LVIII telecast will continue to be debated even after ratings for TV’s biggest event of the year come out. But it’s undeniable that Swift — who jetted from Tokyo to Las Vegas to cheer on beau Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s Super Bowl — has ratcheted up interest in the NFL and is responsible for recruiting a new cadre of fans to pro football.

win in a row (in overtime, no less!), and Taylor Swift—who has cemented herself as the most famous WAG in the world—celebrated with Travis Kelce the best way they know how: by kissing on the field.After securing the win, the tight end spoke to—or rather, serenaded—the crowd, and the camera panned to the superstar for reaction shots. Just after, he found his girlfriend to celebrate the Super Bowl win with a few hugs and kisses.Swift could also be heard saying “unbelievable,” and whispering into Kelce's ear (her hand covering her mouth—a move she's started doing after at this year's Golden Globe Awards).Before Swift and Kelce found each other, she was first spotted with Kelce's mom Donna, and the two were sweetly holding hands. Adorbs!The occasion was also a reunion for Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce.

Caroline Brew editor Travis Kelce capped off the Kansas City Chiefs’ third Super Bowl win, and second in a row, by kissing his girlfriend Taylor Swift on the field after the game. The Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers in a thrilling, defense-heavy game that went into overtime.