CEO Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor In the end, Bob Iger didn’t have to break a sweat to fend off Nelson Peltz. No question, Disney did have to spend tens of millions of dollars to fight the proxy battle with the activist investor, which came to a head on Wednesday with the Mouse House’s annual shareholders meeting.

Scoring a big and costly win Wednesday against Nelson Peltz’s second attempt to get on the Disney board, Bob Iger was both gracious and a little biting in victory.

Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger touted as a “win-win” the recent settlement of litigation with the Ron DeSantis-appointed special district board that oversees the company’s Florida theme park properties.

A council who 'stonewalled' a family after they challenged its decision to deduct £2,000 a year from a man's benefits has been forced to review the case after a High Court challenge.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor It’s official: Disney shareholders shot down activist investor Nelson Peltz‘s effort to win seats on the Mouse House’s board of directors. Investors voted to reelect all 12 of the company-backed board members, including CEO Bob Iger, ending the most expensive corporate proxy fight in history.

Disney has succeeded in barring Nelson Peltz from its board of directors as shareholders at the company’s hotly anticipated annual meeting today voted for the company’s slate of 12 nominees. It was a months-long bitter and costly fight.

Cinereach has announced a new direction for the organization under the leadership of new CEO Jennifer Strachan.

Naman Ramachandran Toonz Media Group and Be That Spark Corp, a joint venture between BLKBX Originals and Zuroam Media, have signed a co-production and co-distribution agreement for upcoming 3D animated series “Little Sparks.” “Little Sparks” is based on the children’s book series “A Little Spark” by Chris Parsons, recipient of the Mom’s Choice Award Gold Medal for family-friendly media. The books will be adapted into a CGI animated series aimed at the four to eight age group.

The CEO of ABS-CBN has lifted the lid on how the media conglom’s first collaboration with former network rival GMA typifies a new era of business for the Filipino company.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Marketing veteran Scott Donaton has joined VersusGame, an AI-powered interactive content company, as chief marketing officer. Donaton, most recently senior VP of marketing at Disney’s Hulu, will oversee all marketing functions for Versus, including brand strategy, communications, content, social media and consumer insights. Donaton had joined Hulu in 2019; he introduced the streaming industry’s first branded entertainment practice before exiting Hulu in the spring of 2023.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief YG Entertainment, the firm behind K-pop sensation Blackpink, has appointed Yang Min-seok as its new, sole CEO. The younger brother of company founder Yang Hyun-sun, he was previously joint CEO with Hwang Bo-kyun. The announcement was made shortly after YG’s annual shareholder meeting that closed the books on a year in which revenues climbed 65% to $430 million. The firm, which recently denied that it had paid $30 million to retain its position with Blackpink (but saw the girl group’s individual members sign personal representation contracts with other agencies) is busily launching BabyMonster, another all-female act that is seen in some circles as a successor to Blackpink. BabyMonster, which was formed late last year through reality TV show “Last Evaluation 2023,” is a seven part group with members from Korea, Thailand and Japan.

EXCLUSIVE: The former UK chief of one of Europe’s biggest production giants has been drafted in by Channel 4 to advise on the formation of its in-house productions unit.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Warner Bros. Television Group chairman/CEO Channing Dungey is returning to the Banff World Media Festival this June to serve as one of its keynote speakers, the event announced on Wednesday. Dungey joins a lineup that also includes Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade as a summit series keynote.

Elon Musk is backing Nelson Peltz in the proxy battle for the future of Disney.

The minutes are ticking down to the close of Disney’s bitter proxy fight with Nelson Peltz, whose attempt to scale the board is a direct challenge to CEO Bob Iger.

Katcy Stephan Miramax has appointed Jonathan Glickman as its new CEO, effective immediately. The global studio has also acquired certain film, television and other projects of Panoramic Media, the independent film and TV production company founded by Glickman in 2020.

Endeavor Group Holdings, parent of talent agency WME and controlling shareholder in combat sports powerhouse TKO Group, is going private.

Wednesday executive producer and former MGM President of Motion Picture Group Jonathan Glickman has been officially named CEO of Miramax, taking over for Bill Block who exited.

School pupils in South Ayrshire will soon be able to compete with others in the area to win prizes using the behaviour change app, LitterLotto.

Selena Kuznikov Visual effects house DNEG has acquired the exclusive license to Ziva from Unity. The company will also onboard a significant proportion of the Ziva team.

A new banking hub in Stockport will open this week, it has been confirmed. Located in the Village Square in Bramhall, it will offer counter service operated by the Post Office, where customers of all major banks and building societies can carry out regular cash transactions.

Elon Musk made an April Fools’ joke yesterday that he had accepted a job at Disney to help make their content “more woke”.The Tesla CEO took to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter that he also owns, to make the spoof announcement.“Excited to join @Disney as their Chief DEI Officer,” he wrote. “Can’t wait to work with Bob Iger & Kathleen Kennedy to make their content MORE woke! Even the linguini.”Excited to join @Disney as their Chief DEI Officer.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney and CEO Bob Iger have pulled into the lead for their 12 board candidates to win reelection — with activist investor Nelson Peltz trailing — with more than half of shareholder votes cast ahead of the Mouse House’s April 3 annual meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal. Two of Disney’s institutional investors — BlackRock (which owns about 4.2% of outstanding shares) and T. Rowe Price (0.5%) — support the company’s own slate of directors, which include Iger, per the Journal, citing anonymous sources.

Manchester United are pressing ahead with formative plans to restructure the footballing operations department at Old Trafford following investment from Sir Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS Group. His £1.25billion deal was formalised on Christmas Eve and subsequently ratified by the Premier League in February.

Disney may have nudged Nelson Peltz farther from its board as giant BlackRock is said to be backing the company’s slate of directors. The firm is Disney’s second-largest shareholder at about 4.2%.

Russell Martin refused to be drawn on speculation surrounding the future of Southampton's director of football Jason Wilcox after a 3-2 defeat at Ipswich Town on Easter Monday.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Scandal at a film festival is usually generated by provocative auteurs or loose-lipped actors stirring up drama at press conferences. Last weekend’s laid-back Sonoma International Film Festival, held in the heart of California wine country, was a different story. Numerous indie film players spotted Sundance Film Festival director Eugene Hernandez at the event, alongside his two predecessors in the role: John Cooper, who left in 2020, and Tabitha Jackson, who stepped down in 2022.

Warner Bros. Discovery said today that directors Steven A. Miron and Steven O. Newhouse, both of have both notified the board that they have resigned after the U.S. Department of Justice informed them that it was investigating whether their service on the company’s board of directors violated Section 8 of the Clayton Antitrust Act on overlapping boards.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Steven Miron and Steven Newhouse resigned from the Warner Bros. Discovery board after the Justice Department informed them it was investigating “whether their service on the Board of Directors violated Section 8 of the Clayton Antitrust Act,” the company announced Monday. Miron, CEO of media company Advance/Newhouse Partnership and a senior executive officer at the Newhouse family’s investment business Advance, and Newhouse, co-president of Advance, were both independent directors of Warner Bros.

, it-girlies are moving away from beauty, and are instead embracing , sensuality, and “dark feminine energy."Dark feminine energy (DFE) is, of course, more of a mindset. But according to users on Pinterest, whose found that “dark feminine core” queries are rising ahead of spring and summer, the aesthetic consists of garments like elegant corset dresses and leather pants while corresponding glam features and smokey brown eyeshadow.Translation? It's essentially an elevated take on grunge, and vibes with a sexy, sensual, and elegant edge, and it's and Pinterest.“Dark feminine makeup focuses on creating a sultry, sexy, confident, and mysterious look” , professional makeup artist and Pro team member, tells Glamour, pointing to supermodel Gabbriette as a prime example.

Anna Marie de la Fuente Gato Grande, an Amazon MGM Studios company, has upped Megan Espinoza and Moises Amsel to the positions of VPs of Film & TV Development in the company’s newly-launched English-language division. Espinoza and Amsel will assume responsibility for the daily operations of the new unit, focusing on the creation of original intellectual property in English for both TV and film, sourced from Latin American IP.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Neal Freyman and Toby Howell’s “Morning Brew Daily” is coming to indie streamer Nebula in a deal that will see media company Morning Brew launch four news-focused channels on the platform. Beginning Monday, Nebula subscribers will have access to Morning Brew, “Morning Brew Daily,” “Good Work” and “Maxinomics.” Here are the descriptions for the respective channels, per Nebula: As part of the recent reveal of its upcoming slate, creator-owned platform Nebula announced plans for “Nebula News.” According to Nebula, the addition of Morning Brew’s content “signals the first of many channel expansions.” “Devin was integral behind the scenes to the development of Nebula’s early successes, so he has a better understanding than most of what we’re building and why,” Nebula CEO Dave Wiskus said.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Usually, shareholder votes for corporate board directors have all the suspense of a Soviet-style election. Most of the time, director candidates are backed by the company, and they run unopposed — winning election or reelection in a landslide. In 2022, only 75 board-endorsed candidates at companies in the Russell 3000, less than 0.5% of almost 17,500 board members on the ballot that year, failed to get elected by shareholders, per an analysis by the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (which also noted that, while small, the number had dramatically risen vs.

Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott had made some progress before she filed for divorce.

William Earl CalPERS, the influential California pension fund, has voted to shake up the Disney board by backing the election of activist investors Nelson Peltz and Jay Rasulo who have waged a months-long battle with CEO Bob Iger and the incumbent board of directors. The California Public Employees Retirement System told Reuters that the fund had cast its vote for Trian Partners’ Peltz and Rasulo as alternative directors to join the Disney board,.

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.