The Chernin Group Leads Acquisition Of 25% Of Pop Culture Lifestyle Brand Funko; Peter Chernin & Bob Iger To Advise Its Board

Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs have been around the media business long enough to resist the temptation to overreact to Netflix’s latest travails. Even though their emerging investment firm, Candle Media, owns two key Netflix suppliers—CoComelon production company Moonbug Entertainment and Fauda producer Faraway Road—they don’t seem too concerned that Netflix may topple from its perch. (And at press time, the previously unthinkable scenario has become a lot more, well, thinkable.)

Bob Iger has become an investor in and advisor to Gopuff, a nine-year old commerce platform first started by two Philadelphia college students to deliver late-night snacks, hookahs and tobacco products.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorBob Iger, Disney’s former CEO and chairman, is now a part-owner of Gopuff, a company that provides quick-delivery services in 1,200 cities worldwide that counts Selena Gomez among its investors.The amount of Iger’s investment in Gopuff wasn’t disclosed. He will become an adviser to the company’s co-founders and co-CEOs Yakir Gola and Rafael Ilishayev and the rest of the executive team to “help deepen Gopuff’s consumer engagement and growth globally,” according to a statement.Gopuff, founded in 2013, says it has raised $4 billion to date — and has a $15 billion valuation.

is a rare show built for streaming that gives newsmakers the opportunity to have candid conversations and an open dialogue about the issues of the day and whatever is on their minds,” Wallace said in a statement. “I’ve never had more fun developing a program and am looking forward to bringing it to both HBO Max and CNN audiences.”After a nearly two-decade run at Fox News, Wallace left the network in December 2021 for a job at CNN, where he was then positioned as an anchor for CNN+.Wallace began hosting “Who’s Talking?” at the launch of CNN+, before the streaming service was shut down 30 days after it launched by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery.

GoPuff hearkens to its smoky origins, the e-commerce platform now delivers a dizzying variety of products, the likes of which can be found in grocery and convenience stores, and aims for a 30-minute delivery window. The firm announced on Wednesday that Iger, former chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company and himself a bit of a serial investment dabbler, would be joining as an adviser and financial backer.Starting at $2.95, GoPuff will deliver just about anything – from toothpaste to a bottle of whiskey – and is one of the more advanced companies thriving in the “instant commerce” space.

Sex-positive vibes for each and every age, even the 50+-year-old crowd? Yes, please. Following its terrific reception at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year.

Shah Rukh Khan’s Knight Riders Group has acquired the rights to own and operate Abu Dhabi Knight Riders, a franchise in the United Arab Emirates’ new T20 cricket league.The investment is led by Khan, along with Juhi Chawla and her husband Jay Mehta. It is the fourth Knight Riders-owned T20 franchise, after previous team launches in the Indian Premier League (IPL), Caribbean Premier League and Major League Cricket in the U.S.T20 is a quick-play, made-for-TV version of cricket, a sport that is wildly popular in the Indian subcontinent and parts of the Middle East.

While the idea of ESPN going “over the top” as a stand-alone streaming offering has been bruited about for years, Disney CEO Bob Chapek enthused about the scenario and describe it as an inevitability during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

EXCLUSIVE: The Corleone family has finally come together for a real Italian dinner. In this clip from the May 12 episode of The Offer on Paramount Plus, Francis Ford Coppola (Dan Fogler) greets the cast of The Godfather for their first gathering before shooting commences on the film.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorThe Chernin Group, Peter Chernin’s investment firm, announced that it is buying 25% of Funko, the pop-culture collectibles company, leading a group of investors that includes former Disney chief Bob Iger.The consortium led by TCG will make a $263 million strategic investment in Funko, acquiring 80% of ACON Investments’ shares in Funko Class A common stock for $21/share. Along with Iger, investors in the consortium include eBay and Rich Paul, CEO and founder of Klutch Sports Group and UTA’s head of sports.Shares of Funko shot up more than 40% in after-hours trading on the investment news as well as Funko’s first-quarter 2022 earnings report topping Wall Street expectations.“We believe Funko is significantly undervalued in the public markets and at this highly attractive entry price provides a runway of opportunity and growth potential,” Peter Chernin said in a statement.

The high priest of May the Fourth, Mark Hamill, has been doing a three-day walkup on Twitter to the most holy of Star Wars holidays: Star Wars Day. His latest is an irresistible installment today that invokes the song “Surfin’ Bird” by The Trashmen.

David Zaslav and Endeavor’s Ari Emanuel scored nine-figure compensation packages, a Day-Glo illustration of the lengths that board rooms go to reward the men (and it is exclusively men) at the top. Those gaudy figures came largely in the form of stock options, which means the take-home pay could shrink if the market takes a nosedive, but both men are still among the most richly remunerated in this or any industry.

Anna Tingley The best shows and movies immerse viewers so convincingly into their respective universes that even the most mundane activities or objects can be seen as fixtures of the show, given a whole new meaning when interacted with in the real world.One of the most pervasive of these fixtures? Food.Take Bobby Bacala’s Baked Ziti in “The Sopranos,” the one left in the freezer for months after his wife dies, that he can’t bring himself to eat until Janice practically force feeds it to him through his grief and tears. Or, a few hundred miles north in Stars Hallow, where you can hear the rapid-fire dialogue of the “Gilmore Girls,” fueled by their never-ending supply of black drip coffee from Luke’s Diner.

Dana Walden knew she was part of a historic Hollywood moment when she drove onto the Disney lot the following day for the first time as an employee. The executive, who is now chairman of entertainment for Walt Disney Television, knew she had an enormous job to integrate two studios — 20th Television and what was then ABC Studios — in addition to steering ABC Entertainment and adding Hulu Originals soon after she started.

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson made a surprise appearance at CinemaCon during Warner Bros.’s presentation on Tuesday night, working the crowd and wooing some of the exhibition heavyweights like AMC’s Adam Aron and Cinemark’s Sean Gamble, all as he hyped up “Black Adam” and “DC League of Super Pets,” each with new trailers. At first, it looked like The Rock would be phoning it in with a taped appearance, but it turned out he was sitting in front of a backdrop of a Hawaii horizon and instead walked through the crowd and then out on stage. Johnson truly played the part of the biggest movie star in the world and made his pitch about how his Seven Bucks Production is working to bring people back to theaters with both of his DC films.

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music CriticProducer T Bone Burnett has long promised the development of a new analog format that he promised would improve on both vinyl and CDs, as well as digital streaming and any other existing recorded music medium. Now, he appears closer to reaching that goal with the news that he has been in the studio with Bob Dylan, re-recording some of the legendary singer-songwriter’s classic songs with the purpose of introducing the new ultra-high-fidelity medium.Details are scarce about when the Dylan recordings might come out — not to mention the new hardware that will be required to play them.

Lea Michele and Jonathan Groff got pretty intimate during Broadway’s “Spring Awakening”, which premiered in New York City back in 2006.