Funding Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

French Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak has said her ministry is looking at ways to resolve a funding crisis for France’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival after its regional support was cut out of the blue earlier this month.

In a typical household, most of the energy used is on heating. In fact, for the average UK household, heating is responsible for over half of each month’s energy bills, according to a report by Energy Saving Trust.

John Hopewell Chief International Correspondent Brazil is back.  Brazilian President’s Lula Inácio Lula da Silva’s new government, which took office on Jan. 1,  looks set to invest just under $1 billion in 2023 into the country’s audiovisual sector. It’s one of the biggest upticks in government film and TV aid in history, and comes after Lula predecessor Jair Bolsonoro slowed state aid to a glacial pace. The new financial injection should turn Brazil into the film and TV powerhouse of Latin America.  Brazilian audiovisual secretary Joelma Gonzaga told Variety that regulation of global streaming services operating in Brazil, which foreseeably will introduce quotas for Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video and other players, is also on Lula’s government agenda. 

Indonesia’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology is launching a grant scheme to support co-productions between Indonesian and international filmmakers. 

Fyre Fest — claims he has secured adequate funds to pay off his debts, launch a new version of the festival, and develop a Broadway musical about the original event.First developed by McFarland six years ago, the botched festival Fyre Fest was originally set to run over two weekends on a private beach in the Bahamas, but was revealed to be fraudulent once punters arrived on the scene, with inadequate conditions and a lack of food and water.The debacle was then captured in the now iconic Netflix documentary FYRE.Following the failure of the festival, McFarland pleaded guilty to multiple counts of fraud and was sentenced to six years in prison. He was released early from his sentence in 2022, after serving four years.In March this year, McFarland laid out his plans to repay the $26million (£20.9million) he owes to investors.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Funding from Singaporean state sources is involved in two features that make their debut at the Cannes Film Festival this month. A third film, “The Breaking Ice,” is directed by Singapore-born filmmaker Anthony Chen. “We are absolutely thrilled that we have the most number of Made with Singapore films debuting in Cannes this year,” said Justin Ang, assistant chief executive of media, innovation, communications and marketing at Singapore’s InfoComm Media Development Authority.Malaysian-produced “Tiger Stripes,” which will play in the Critics’ Week section, and Vietnamese-made “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell,” which will play in the Directors’ Fortnight section, both received cash injections from the Southeast Asia Co-Production Grant under the ‘Media Talent Progression Programme,’ which is backed by the Singapore Film Commission and the IMDA.

France’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, the world’s biggest festival devoted to short films, is protesting an unexpected funding cut, amid claims by politicians that the move is politically motivated.

The BBC’s content chief has warned that employees face a moment of “great jeopardy” as the British broadcaster wrestles with funding pressures and fierce competition from U.S. streamers.

Todd Longwell It is often said that the secret to becoming a successful entrepreneur is finding a need and filling it. When Santa Monica-based BondIt Media Capital launched in 2013, it zeroed in on the deposits productions must leave with SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE and other guilds to ensure that their members get paid in a timely fashion.  The company co-founders — CEO Matthew Helderman and COO Luke Taylor — knew from their experience working in the production trenches that these deposits, which sometimes take up to six months to be returned, can create a significant cash flow problem for low-budget projects during principal photography. 

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt vetoed funding last week for the state’s public television network, a decision he says was triggered in part by content he has deemed “indoctrination” of children.

LL Cool J’s Rock The Bells said Paramount Global, along with Raine Ventures and Irving Azoff of Iconic Artists Group, led a $15 million funding round for the hip-hop platform, which has also signed a first look deal with Par.

EXCLUSIVE: Retrenchment by many distribution platforms has made for “highly turbulent times” in the documentary industry, the Sundance Institute acknowledges, but with help from a major foundation it is injecting some much-needed positive news into a field beset by anxiety.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Brut, the influential digital media publisher which became one of the main partners for the Cannes Film Festival last year, has just finalized its fourth funding round for approximately $40 million. The company, founded by Guillaume Lacroix, Renaud Le Van Kim and Laurent Lucas six years ago, has enlisted a pair of powerful financial backers: CMA CGM, the world’s third-largest container shipping company owned by billionaire businessman Rodolphe Saadé, which also recently nabbed 10% of France’s second biggest commercial network M6, and the daily newspaper La Provence; and MoonPay, a leading Miami-based financial service company for web3 whose investors include former tennis star Maria Sharapova, as well as Snoop Dogg, Drake and Justin Bieber, among others. Aryeh B. Bourkoff’s LionTree advised the deal with MoonPay.

The project was announced in May last year with artists like Ed Sheeran backing the Own Our Venues campaign. In the months that followed, the MVT raised over £2.3million through a series of donations and investments.“We are delighted to let you know that the Music Venue Properties Board met today and voted unanimously to move ahead with modelling the purchase of the first set of Grassroots Music Venues,” said the MVT in a statement.“This community owned society will now forge ahead to deliver one of the primary long-term goals of MVT; radical change to the ownership of the UK’s grassroots circuit to deliver stable, supported and ethically managed properties that provide long term security for Britain’s fantastic venue operators.”In total, 1261 people contributed to the £2,318,210.

Stretched NHS Forth Valley is facing a huge £40million funding gap for 2023/24 and could be forced to cut beds.

EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has revealed that it will cut its television originals budget by close to £100M ($123M) over the next 12 months as its funding freeze bites.

Local Gaelic backers have welcomed a cash injection from the national body responsible for promoting and fostering the language.

Ambitious plans to make Stockport ‘carbon neutral’ by 2038 have been handed a £1m boost after funding was secured for a number of renewable energy projects. The government has awarded the council more than £300,000 to develop a District Heat Network, which will use renewable energy to heat buildings in the town centre and along the A6 corridor.

Wall Street Journal. Other previous investors in the startup include former chief executive of Microsoft unit GitHub Nat Friedman, and SV Angel, one of Silivon Valley’s most active seed investors.Character.AI does not generate any revenue as stated by a representative for the company.The private company launched an early version of its software, which allows users to create and engage with chatbots that simulate characters or famous people like Vladimir Putin or Elon Musk in September. Former Google Engineers Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas founded the star-up in Nov.

Welp. This isn’t a good look for the Duke and Duchess of York!

Katherine Tulich The Australian International Documentary Conference celebrated a record-breaking edition after holding its first expanded in-person event after two previous hybrid and virtual outings. Held at Melbourne’s Australia Centre for the Moving Image on March 5- 8, the lively four-day conference of industry panels, screenings and networking events was followed by a three-day online international marketplace (March 9 – 11) that drew 820 documentary and factual industry delegates. The numbers were the highest in 20 years and the most attendees since the event relocated to Melbourne in 2016. The third annual awards were also announced on March 8 with the top prize for best documentary feature going to “Wash My Soul in the River’s Flow,” director Philippa Bateman’s portrait of musician and activists Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter.

Michael Winterbottom has devoted much of his filmmaking career to revisiting real-life events through works blurring the boundaries between documentary and drama to various degrees.  

Unpopular Stirling Council budget cuts, including nursery hour cuts and allotment charge rises, could be reversed if the Scottish Government agrees to fully fund Big Noise projects in Stirling.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea Film Festival has announced a dozen projects from young filmmakers from Saudi, and the wider Arab and African region, selected for its development program, the Red Sea Lodge, in collaboration with TorinoFilmLab and sponsored by the Film AlUla film commission. The Lodge is a 10-month mentorship program that has now opened up to African works along with Saudi and Arab projects. Winners will take home a portion of the total $200,000 pot in prizes that will be awarded during the fest’s 2023 edition in December.  The selected projects from Saudi Arabia are:

Sir Rod Stewart is no stranger to charity work and helping others in need. His most recent act of kindness has seen him foot the bill of more hospital scans across the country in a bid to reduce NHS waiting lists.

A partner at American asset management firm Ares remained coy on talk of Manchester United being taken over in the near future, amid speculation the Stateside operation could form part of a takeover bid.

MACRO announced the completion of an over $90 million minority investment led by BlackRock Alternatives, through the BlackRock Impact Opportunities Fund and funds and accounts managed by BlackRock. Harbourview Equity Partners and funds managed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management also participated in the round, joining the list of MACRO’s investors that also includes Emerson Collective, AMC Networks, Essence Ventures, MNM Creative, Raymond J. McGuire, Anré Williams, Clara Wu and others.

Forbes. Founded by former Meta managers Keith Peiris and Henri Liriani, Tome utilizes GPT-3 and DALL-E 2 to produce a presentation in a matter of seconds based on a typed description.

West Dunbartonshire Council’s leader has labelled Scottish Government funding for the area “destructive and unethical.”

Emiliano De Pablos Spain has found a place on the global film industry’s radar as an attractive market for co-producing projects, boosted by its bigger-than-ever-public-sector funding. The trend comes in a moment of maturity for its audiovisual industry, with competitive tax incentives and the emergence of fresh talent, often female, whether directors or producers. Unlike U.S. indie producers, hard hit by streamers pulling back, European counterparts still have public sector financing. But to make movies of any artistic ambition, which might justify that funding and break out to foreign sales and a theatrical release, producers are looking overseas more and to other parts of Spain for production partners.

Parents say they have been left devastated after a popular nursery in Tameside has been forced to permanently close.

Ed Meza @edmezavar German culture commissioner Claudia Roth has called for a fundamental reform of Germany’s €600 million ($640 million) per year film funding system, saying that profound changes in filmmaking, a declining admissions and too much bureaucracy made far-reaching alterations necessary. Writing in a guest column in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Roth pointed to the success of Netflix’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” which has garnered nine Oscar nominations, including best picture and international feature, to illustrate how film production has changed. Roth, who is expected to address the issue at the opening ceremony of the Berlin Film Festival on Thursday evening, noted that the “environment for creating, making and experiencing movies” was changing drastically as streaming and global internet providers make films ever less dependent on television broadcasters and theatrical releases.

EXCLUSIVE: The BBC has defended its decision to produce glossy adverts for Huawei and Chinese state media, saying the contracts are important to funding its international journalism.

Perth and Kinross Council has expressed "extreme displeasure and frustration" at being threatened with financial sanctions by the Scottish Government rather than being given "adequate" funding.

A charity that has supported young people with disabilities and their families for 22 years is having to close as they can, blaming a “perfect of storm” of covid and the cost of living crisis.

Angry Deputy Leader Shaun Macaulay blasted the “Dragons' Den” style distribution of the Levelling Up Fund after North Ayrshire Council had two bids snubbed by the UK Government.