SEC Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Shares in Dish Network continued their multi-day slide on Tuesday, falling another 6% to a 14-year low of $11.41, after the pay-TV and wireless provider confirmed its systems were hit by a cyberattack.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Dish Network is working to recover from a cyberattack that disrupted its internal servers and customer-service operations — and said the hack may have resulted in the theft of personal information. On Feb. 23, Dish execs announced on the operator’s earnings call that the company had experienced a network outage. After an investigation by cyber-security experts and outside advisers, Dish determined that the outage was due to “a cyber-security incident and notified appropriate law enforcement authorities,” the company disclosed in an SEC filing Tuesday. On Monday, Feb. 27, Dish said, it “became aware that certain data was extracted from the corporation’s IT systems as part of this incident” and said it’s possible that an investigation “will reveal that the extracted data includes personal information.”

The road to recovery. Bristol Palin shared an update on her health with fans following her ninth breast reconstruction surgery last month.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer A former MoviePass executive was arrested Tuesday on charges that he embezzled $260,000 from the company to pay for a party at Coachella Music Festival. Khalid Itum, 42, was indicted on two counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering. The charges allege that Itum submitted sham invoices to MoviePass to pay for the marketing event, which he had run through a separate company that he owned and controlled. MoviePass collapsed in 2019, after losing hundreds of millions of dollars on its all-you-can-watch theatrical subscription business. Last November, the two top executives — Theodore Farnsworth and Mitch Lowe — were indicted on securities fraud charges for allegedly deceiving investors about the sustainability of the business.

Warner Bros Discovery chief executive David Zaslav earned $232 million in excess compensation in 2021, according to As You Sow’s latest annual ranking of the most overpaid CEOs among S&P 500 companies. Amazon, Apple, Disney and Netflix are also high up in the group’s ninth report that looks beyond total pay in its own attempt to quantify overpay and draw attention to some pressing issues in the space.

Mini Eggs often begin appearing on shelves well before Easter, but nobody complains as they're a great chocolate treat.

Disney CEO Bob Iger today called Marvel chairman Isaac Perlmutter’s backing of activist investor Nelson Peltz “a curious dynamic.”

Disney has finally unveiled the date for its annual meeting of shareholders, a virtual event to be held Monday, April 3 at 10 am PT.

Nicola Peltz's scathing text messages which left her former wedding planners in tears and drinking shots of tequila have been revealed in court.

Regal parent Cineworld said it’s opted to pursue a sale of assets and the process “is well under way” with non-binding bids due Feb 16.

Investor Nelson Peltz’s broadside against the the Walt Disney Co., and the prospect of rare proxy fight at the media giant, stunned media circles this week — and a flurry of SEC filings over the past few days suggest plenty more fireworks to come.

Apple CEO Tim Cook came close to $100 million in total compensation for the second straight year, taking home $99.4 million in fiscal 2022, according to a proxy statement filed with the SEC.

Netflix has hired PayPal veteran Jeffrey Karbowski, 45, as VP and Chief Accounting Officer.

Channel 4 privatization is off the table.

Exhibition giant Cineworld, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. last September, has said it will not sell off any of its assets individually, and has clarified that neither it nor its advisors have participated in discussions with AMC regarding the sale of any of its cinemas. This comes about two weeks after AMC said it held talks with lenders about potentially acquiring theaters from the portfolio of its rival.

A well-kent face was spotted at Glasgow's Irn-Bru Carnival on Friday afternoon with many youngsters left star-struck when 'Peter Pan' turned up.

AMC Entertainment said it held talks with lenders about potentially acquiring theaters from the portfolio of bankrupt rival Cineworld, which owns Regal Cinemas.

Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has unloaded another 22 million shares of his publicly-traded electric automaker Tesla, raising north of $3.5 billion.

Warner Bros Discovery now expects to incur total pre-tax restructuring charges of $4.1 – $5.3 billion, which includes $2.8 – $3.5 billion of content impairment and development write-offs as it takes a hatchet to its programming. That’s well above the merged company’s initial announcement of charges for $3.2 – $4.3 billion related to its restructuring and transformation initiatives, which included $2 – $2.5 billion on th content side.

Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch Family Trust will not vote in favor of a Fox-News Corp. merger unless the combination has the blessing of special committees of outside directors, and of non-Murdoch affiliated stockholders.

BuzzFeed announced that it was cutting the size of its workforce by 12%, the latest media company to go through layoffs amid worsening economic conditions.

AMC Networks, whose CEO Christina Spade resigned last week, said Monday its board has named James Dolan “interim executive chairman.”

The moon colony is closing down as AMC+ will not proceed with a second season of Moonhaven. Word of the cancellation comes four months after the dystonic sci-fi series was renewed for a second season and days after AMC Networks announced sweeping cost-cutting measures as CEO Christina Spade stepped down, which included laying off 20% of its U.S. staff, and write-downs for up to $475 million as it restructures its business. Up to $400 million of that is for content-related moves the company calls “strategic programming assessments”

AMC Network said today it will take write-downs for up to $475 million as it restructures its business to cut costs. That includes up to $400 million for content it calls “strategic programming assessments” and $75 million for organizational restructuring costs including severance.

Disney said an upcoming restructuring under new/old CEO Bob Iger could result in impairment charges. It also noted that, as expected, it’s acquired the remaining 15% of streaming tech company BamTech it didn’t already own, paying $900 million. The news was tucked in a long year-end SEC filing today after a tumultuous ten days for the company.

Bob Iger, who was reinstalled as CEO of the Walt Disney Co. yesterday, will be eligible to receive up to $27 million in each of the two years he is under contract to lead the company.

Lionsgate this week has started the formalities around spinning off its studio from Starz and anticipates filing the deal with the SEC in March, and completing the separation of the businesses by the end of its fiscal second quarter next September, vice chair Michael Burns said today, officially resetting the timeline for a deal Wall Street’s been anticipating for the better part of a year.  

Famed investor Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway knocked Paramount Global shares higher after disclosing that it has raised his stake in the media company.

Elon Musk has sold nearly $4 billion worth of Tesla stock in the less than two weeks since he closed the deal to buy Twitter. That’s according to CNBC, citing SEC filings.

Publicly-traded in-theater advertising network National CineMedia may be delisted from the Nasdaq stock market if its share price doesn’t perk up.

Former CBS chief Les Moonves and Paramount Global have agreed to pay an additional $9.75 million to resolve an investigation by the New York State Attorney General’s office.

Warner Bros. Discovery will take a hit of between $1.3 billion and $1.6 billon in pre-tax restructuring charges for the third quarter ended in September as part of the ongoing merge of its operations, primary from content write-downs.

Anna Tingley If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, Variety may receive an affiliate commission. The deals continue rolling in this week. Paramount+ is now offering an annual subscription for half off, bringing down the price for its 12-month essential ad-supported plan from $49.99/year to only $24.99/year. The premium, ad-free plan is now $49.99 (normally $99.99). The deal, which runs through Nov. 3, also comes with a free Fire TV Stick Lite, which is capable of streaming 1080p and normally costs $29.99. The limited-time promo is pegged to the UEFA Champions League. The tournament is currently in the group stages, and the year-long subscription will allow you to stream the games live through the Finals on June 10, 2023. Aside from soccer, you can also catch the NFL and SEC on CBS, complete with highlights, replays and expert analysis provided by CBS Sports HQ.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor There’s a new wrinkle in the six-month-plus saga of Elon Musk’s mercurial attempt to buy Twitter. The multibillionaire is being investigated by federal authorities over his “conduct” in connection with his proposed Twitter acquisition, according to a letter from the company’s lawyers filed with the Delaware Chancery Court. The letter was filed Oct. 6 and released publicly Thursday. Twitter sued Musk in the Delaware court, demanding that he fork over the $44 billion he had agreed to under the binding pact reached in April. Twitter asserted that Musk’s legal team “exchanged substantive correspondence” with federal authorities — and that despite Twitter requesting copies of those documents “months ago” they had still not materialized. Twitter filed a motion seeking to have the court order Musk to produce the documents. Its letter cited drafts of a May 13 email to the SEC and a slide presentation to the FTC that Musk’s attorneys had identified as privileged documents.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UDPATED: A Delaware judge granted mega-billionaire Elon Musk’s motion to halt Twitter’s upcoming trial — seeking to compel him to pay what he promised for the company — until Oct. 28 in order to allow the parties to close on the $44 billion deal. Musk, after trying for three months to exit his deal to buy Twitter, in the last few days has grown frustrated that Twitter wasn’t calling off its lawsuit. Lawyers representing Musk, in a filing Thursday with the Delaware Court of Chancery, requested that the trial, slated to commence Oct. 17, be suspended while he works out a deal to finalize the required debt financing to swing the acquisition. Musk expects that to happen by Oct. 28, per the court filing.

sent a letter suggesting they close the deal at the agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share. Twitter ostensibly accepted those terms – but for reasons that aren’t yet clear is dragging its feet on vacating the lawsuit to enforce them.“Astonishingly, they have insisted on proceeding with this litigation, recklessly putting the deal at risk and gambling with their stockholders’ interests,” according to Musk’s filing.Filed in a chancery court in Delaware, the suit seeks to enforce the contract sale that Musk tried to back out of over his concerns about the number of spam accounts among Twitter’s nearly 400 million users.To recap: When Musk first expressed interest in buying Twitter, leadership flew into a panic and introduced a poison pill provision to stop him.