Funding Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Patients in Renfrewshire are set to benefit from improved lung disease care thanks to new investment by Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland (CHSS).

The Biden Administration is letting it be known that, if the nation does not get a requested $22 billion in supplemental Congressional funding for Covid, there will be “fewer vaccines, treatments and tests for the American people.”

Rail funding cuts will increase the risk of serious train crashes, trade unions have claimed.

The headteacher of a Manchester primary school has backed calls for the Government to inject millions more pounds into school breakfast provision. Ruth Perry, head of school at Newall Green Primary School in Wythenshawe, said without a charity's help, some of the children 'would be starting class hungry'.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterEntertainment-focused private investment firm Coral Tree Partners has closed its inaugural round of funding with committed capital of approximately $470 million, well above the initial target of $350 million.Per Coral Tree, inaugural fund was “significantly oversubscribed above its original hard cap” and “received strong support from a range of high‐quality institutional investors, including endowments, foundations, insurance companies, pension plans, institutional family offices and funds‐of‐funds.”Founded by former Shamrock Capital Advisors partners Will Wynperle and Alan Resnikoff, Coral Tree Partners is focused on investments in the media, entertainment, marketing services, and communications industries, lower middle market buyouts, and late state growth equity investments. Currently, the Los Angeles-based company has two investments to its name: Loaded, a Santa Monica, Calif.‐based global talent management and marketing firm that works in the gaming influencer market, and Subject Matter, a Washington, D.C.‐based strategic communications, creative content, advertising and government relations firm.Along with Wynperle and Resnikoff, the Coral Tree Partners team includes Mike DiLorenzo, Matt Greenzang and Jake Simons, who have worked with the founders previously, as well as a group of executive advisors comprised of several CEOs, including the former CEOs of Giant Creative, Learfield Sports, MarketCast and Questex.“Our investment experience in our sectors combined with our lower middle market focus differentiates us in the market,” Wynperle said.

NEW YORK -- A coalition of arts organizations is distributing more than $4 million in aid to nonprofits around the U.S. that have sustained losses during the pandemic.The Literary Arts Emergency Fund, established in 2020, includes the Academy of American Poets, the Community of Literary Magazine & Presses and the National Book Foundation.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorMusical theater has become a thing on TikTok. This Sunday, for example, “The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical” became the first project that originated on TikTok to win a Grammy.Now the popular video-app maker announced that it commissioned its first original musical, called “For You, Paige,” led by Daniel Mertzlufft — the creative force behind viral hit “Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical.”“For You, Paige” will be available to livestream on the @TikTok account on Thursday, April 14, at 7 p.m.

'Serving the community since 1903' reads a proud proclamation on its website. Now Salford Lads Club, a jewel in Greater Manchester's cultural crown and a vital asset for the city's youth, has secured much-needed funding to continue doing just that.

the much-criticised Brexit deal – which, former minister David Frost recently admitted, presents “a whole set of problems” for touring musicians and their crew – and to help reset the live music industry following the COVID-19-enforced shutdown of recent years.Help Musicians has today (March 29) announced that it will be providing £250,000 in financial support for touring musicians, with artists eligible to receive up to £5,000 each towards “their plans to drive their careers forward and propel their forthcoming releases”.The financial support is expected to help cover touring expenses, session musician and crew fees, PR and marketing, merchandise, a proportion of international administration fees (such as visas and carnets) and more.Help Musicians is also seeking to provide advice to musicians by funding 30-minute consultations with Viva La Visa, a service pioneered by the Incorporated Society of Musicians and The Musicians’ Union.“Through this support, the charity aims to help musicians re-build their careers post-restrictions and provide practical advice to musicians wishing to tour,” a press release further explains. “The service will help them better understand the complex requirements from working/traveling abroad, and mitigate against the financial risks now associated with touring, especially in Europe.

Lise Pedersen Among the filmmakers taking center stage at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival’s financing and co-production platform, CPH:FORUM, is China’s Jialing Zhang with her new project “The Total Trust” (a working title).Her previous doc, “One Child Nation” (pictured), which she produced and co-directed with Nanfu Wang, picked up the Grand Jury Prize in Sundance in 2019.Shot in China, “The Total Trust” explores the Chinese government’s digital social control system – the most sophisticated in the world – and the effect it is having on the population.Its producers say most of the filming is complete and they will be seeking to fill the €350,000 ($385,000) funding gap out of the film’s total budget of €1 million ($1.1 million) at CPH:FORUM.

Sir Rod Stewart has been helping people in Ukraine escape their war-torn homeland.

Ed Meza @edmezavarDespite expectations to the contrary, the share of Europe’s audiovisual market controlled by U.S. players grew by only four percentage points from 1996 to 2020, reaching 31%, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory’s 2022 Key Trends report.It’s one of a number of surprising results identified by the study, which the Observatory presented on Thursday at a special event at Series Mania in Lille, France.When excluding European public broadcasting rivals, the share held by U.S.-owned companies climbs to 44%, with heavyweights Sky, Netflix, Amazon and Dazn accounting for two-thirds of that figure.Looking specifically at all SVOD subscriptions in Europe, however, Netflix, Amazon, Apple and Disney dominate, accounting for 72% in 2020, with 40 other players making up the remaining 28%.

Naman Ramachandran The BBC World Service has sought and will receive £4.1 million ($5.4 million) in additional funding to counter disinformation around the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. The emergency funding would to help the BBC “continue bringing independent, impartial and accurate news to people in Ukraine and Russia in the face of increased propaganda from the Russian state,” the U.K.

Brisbane-based Citipointe Christian College is once again in the news, this time for asking teachers and staff to sign employment contracts that threaten to sack them for being openly LGBTQI.LGBTQI advocacy group Just.Equal has said that school should be stripped of public funding. “Religious schools cannot continue to defy discrimination laws and public opinion, and expect to receive public funding,” Just.Equal Australia spokesperson Brian Greig said in a statement.  “There comes a limit where taxpayers should no longer be expected to fund bigotry, and Citipointe has reached that limit.” Protests Outside Citipointe Christian College (Screen Grab of Nine Entertainment video)According to The Guardian, the employment contract for teachers was dated in February, after the controversy erupted over the enrolment contract. The document says that teachers agree to work within the statement of faith of International Network of Churches that runs the school. “It is a genuine occupational requirement of the college that the employee not act in a way he knows, or ought reasonably to know, is contrary to the religious beliefs of the college,” the contract says.“Nothing in his/her deliberate conduct should be incompatible with the intrinsic character of their position, especially, but not only, in relation to the expression of human sexuality through heterosexual, monogamous relationships, expressed intimately through marriage.”In a statement, Citipointe college said that it was reviewing the employment contract. “Citipointe Christian College can confirm that no member of staff has had their employment terminated for failing to sign their employment contract,”  the school said in a statement published on its website. “One staff

A historic clock tower at a former Diggle pallet works is to be repaired, town hall chiefs have agreed.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefChinese streaming video platform iQiyi has announced plans to raise $285 million from a private placing of shares, part of which will be taken up by parent company Baidu.The move comes in the same week that the NASDAQ-listed company said it was suspending its weekend live broadcasts of English Premier League football (soccer) due to the sport’s public displays of solidarity with Ukraine.iQiyi is understood to have informed the Premier League that it would be removing the coverage following the league’s announcement that a “moment of reflection and solidarity” would be held before matches at the weekend. Several teams also displayed armbands in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag.

Worsley and Eccles South MP Barbara Keeley has hit out at the government over its use of ‘regressive’ taxation to fund adult social care.

Work to improve road safety on an accident blackspot between Blackness and Linlithgow has been agreed.

Antenna, a data firm tracking subscriptions in streaming and other sectors, has wrapped a $10 million Series A funding round, with backers including UTA Ventures and Dick Parsons’ Imagination Capital.

An “unfathomable” decision to slash £2million of funding for West Dunbartonshire’s most deprived children has been slammed as new stark figures revealed the attainment gap is widening.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorSpotter, a two-year-old startup that acquires rights to the video catalogs of YouTubers, announced $200 million in new funding led by Japan’s SoftBank. Spotter said that gives it a valuation of $1.7 billion — and will let the company invest $1 billion with YouTube creators.The Series D in financing from SoftBank Vision Fund 2 follows the $555 million in funding Spotter raised across three previously undisclosed rounds of financing.

Uprooted,” which investigates the 1986 unsolved hanging death of Keith Warren, a 19-year-old Black man from Silver Spring, Md. But nobody wanted the project. Then, after George Floyd was murdered in May 2020, Speaks and McDonough began receiving phone calls.“Suddenly people came out of the woodwork and were interested and wanted to have a conversation about making the series,” Speaks recalls.

Anna Marie de la Fuente It’s a new dawn for Chile’s audiovisual industry. When Gabriel Boric, Chile’s youngest (at 35) and most left-leaning president since Salvador Allende, was elected in December, his pledge to more than double the state’s contribution to the arts was greeted with great fanfare.  After all, Chile’s prodigious film output this past decade has been remarkable despite the scant public support it has received. “If everything we have achieved in the last 10 years was done with so little money, imagine what we can achieve with an increase in audiovisual funding!” says Constanza Arena, executive director of Chile’s film promotion org, CinemaChile.In recent years, Chile has triumphed at the Oscars, starting when Pablo Larraín’s “No” was nominated for international feature in 2012, and culminating in an Oscar win for Sebastian Lelio’s “A Fantastic Woman” in 2017.

More than £200 million of funding is expected to come to the Scottish Government from the UK Treasury to offset the huge rise in energy bills.

Yacht Club Games – the developer of Shovel Knight – newest title has already exceeded its Kickstarter goal after less than 24 hours.The indie developers announced a new game last night (January 1) and simultaneously opened up its Kickstarter funding only for the goal to be exceeded by the next morning.A requested total of around £230,000 has already been surpassed, and as of publication around £265,000 has been raised with 29 days left for backers to pledge.Called Mina The Hollower, this new game aims to emulate the 8-bit aesthetic of Game Boy Colour titles like Link’s Awakening, whilst running at 60 FPS and in widescreen.A series of stretch goals have also been announced for Mina The Hollower, now that it has reached its funding goal. Some of the tiers include a copy of the game, a CD of the soundtrack, and official pin, a design works book and even the opportunity to help design an NPC.“The biggest risk is that Mina the Hollower may take longer than anticipated,” said the developers in a post.

K.J. Yossman The British Film Institute (BFI) will fund wellbeing facilitators on all projects that it backs, the organization confirmed today.

The tentative agreement for a new three-year film and TV contract covering Hollywood’s Teamsters Local 399 and the Basic Crafts includes higher wages, more overtime penalties and additional money for benefits to secure their pension and health plan. And for the first time, the new contract includes a budget-based new-media deal that eliminates the lowest rung on the pay scale.

Spire Animation Studios has closed a $20 million funding round that includes a strategic investment from Epic Games. It said the fresh funds are earmarked for staff expansion, studio technology and infrastructure build out and creative development. Epic will also join Spire’s board of directors.

Rochdale and Wigan could be in line for most arts funding, a government paper has revealed.

The future of the northern body which drives forward transport reform hangs in the balance amid a Government failure to confirm future funding.

Glasgow residents face a whopping 40 per cent price hike for parking permits if a proposal by a council department is accepted.

The AFL-CIO’s Department for Professional Employees is urging Congress to increase federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to $565 million in fiscal year 2022 and the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to $201 million each – funding levels that were passed by the House of Representatives in July.

A total of £375,000 in funding has been allocated to a Highland Perthshire -based project aiming to tackle visitor management pressures on the River Tay.

Bus services in Greater Manchester could be cut when emergency Covid funding runs out at the end of March, campaigners have warned.

Metrolink bosses can't rule out fare hikes and service cuts if the Government fails to continue emergency Covid funding when the pot runs out in March.

A study released by Women in Film Los Angeles finds that women-owned companies lag far behind men-owned companies in studio-subsidized film and TV deals.The report, titled “Women Entrepreneurs in the Screen Industries: Obstacles and Opportunities” and conducted by Pepperdine University associate professor Alicia Jessop, concludes that only 18.6% of studio-subsidized film deals and 35.7% of studio-subsidized television deals were with women-owned companies and only 18% of production companies with non-studio funding were women-owned.By comparison, the study released on Wednesday states that on average men-owned independent production companies receive more than seven times the amount of funding received by women-owned independent production companies.Said WIF Board president Amy Baer said in a statement: “The origin of this study was actually quite personal to the WIF Board. At a 2018 Board meeting, several highly accomplished women were sharing anecdotal frustrations about the obstacles to launching enterprise in the screen industry, while constantly watching men of equal experience and stature repeatedly and successfully land investment.