Yahoo Once Considered Buying Netflix — but Unfortunately Acquired Tumblr Instead, Ex-CEO Says

Director Ric Roman Waugh’s drab film fumbles and grumbles through Iran, the United Arab Emirates and eventually Afghanistan as the hunt for CIA Agent Tom Harris (Butler) intensifies. “Kandahar,” to its credit, aspires to be deep. Geopolitics come up, as does the Taliban’s mangled interpretation of the Quran, along with ISIS and other aftershocks of American wars in the Middle East.Really, though, it is just another tiresome and impenetrably brooding Gerard Butler movie in which no event seems to matter any more than the next one — and grimaces are mistaken for drama. Before ho-hum Harris goes on the run, he is posing as a utility worker in Iran while attempting to destroy a nuclear plant.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The four-season run of “Succession,” HBO’s highbrow family corporate drama, is coming to its conclusion — with the show giving viewers no clear tea leaves on what the future holds for Waystar Royco or the media conglomerate’s internecine clan. Will one of the Roy progeny ultimately take the throne as the new CEO, fulfilling the prophecy implicit in the show’s title? Or will Waystar Royco wind up in the clutches of GoJo? Ahead of the series finale’s airing on Sunday, May 28 (on HBO and the newly relaunched Max), wagering site DraftKings drew up hypothetical odds for the likeliest outcomes. SEE ALSO: Jeremy Strong’s ‘Succession’ Method Acting Was So Intense That He’d Practice Asking Strangers Where the Bathroom Was

Kandahar is the latest from director Rick Roman Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Greenland), starring frequent collaborator Gerard Butler, along with Travis Fimmel, Navid Negahban, Ali Fazal, and Bahador Foladi in an action drama that lacks imagination. With the script penned by Mitchell LaFortune, these particular types of stories often suffer from narrative sameness: westerner travels to the Middle East, things go boom, westerner saves the day, the end. 

Marvel’s Cinematic Universe.The actor joined the MCU as Yelena Belova in the 2021 film Black Widow, before later starring in Disney+ series Hawkeye. She’s set to reprise the role in upcoming superhero team-up film Thunderbolts, opposite Sebastian Stan and David Harbour.Speaking in an interview with Time about juggling indie projects with the MCU, Pugh said: “So many people in the indie film world were really pissed off at me.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor If you’re sharing your Netflix password with someone who doesn’t live with you, get ready to pay up — it will cost $7.99 per month extra to add another user to your account. On Tuesday, Netflix said it is launching its crackdown on illicit password sharing to its biggest market, the U.S., angling to squeeze a bigger chunk of change from customers who share their logins with friends and family outside their household. “Your Netflix account is for you and the people you live with your household,” Netflix says in an email to U.S. customers. To share Netflix with someone outside of your household, you can transfer a profile to a new membership that someone else pays for, or you can buy an extra member for $7.99/month in addition the cost of the main subscription.

Florence Pugh has not been immune to unraveling projects. In an interview as one of 's 2023 Next Generation Leaders, the Oscar nominee candidly addresses how a movie can sour before it ever reaches a theater. «A whole film set, it’s everybody making a huge effort because they want to be there,» the actress explains.

Joe Otterson TV Reporter Lionsgate has acquired the worldwide distribution rights to the the Biblical epic series “The Chosen.” Three seasons of “The Chosen” have been produced to date. Seasons 1 and 2 are available on Peacock and Amazon Prime Video, while Season 1 is also on Netflix. It is also availabile in France on Canal+, the Netherlands on NPO, Spain on MovieStar and Poland on TVP. A fourth season, from creator, director, and producer Dallas Jenkins and starring Jonathan Roumie, is currently in production. It has also pulled in $35 million at the box office in special event theatrical releases The Come and See Foundation will retain and manage licensing rights for all activities within the non-profit sector.

Garth Brooks admitted he once accidentally showered with Aerosmith's Steven Tyler. Brooks, 61, shared the moment during an appearance on "The Kelly Clarkson Show." "I showered with him," Brooks told Clarkson while the two were discussing Aerosmith.  The country music star and Tyler both performed at a Billy Joel concert in July 2008. "We were playing the ‘Last Play at Shea’(with) Billy Joel.They're getting ready to tear down Shea Stadium in New York, and I go out there, and I'm late anyway, and they just have the baseball showers," he recalled.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney has pegged total cash content spending at around $30 billion for this year — but the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike may drive that down, CFO Christine McCarthy said. “If you haven’t noticed we’re in the middle of a writers strike,” McCarthy said, speaking Wednesday at MoffettNathanson’s Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in New York. The WGA walkout may reduce Disney’s cash spending on content for the balance of the year, she said. At the MoffettNathanson conference, MCarthy appeared alongside Disney president of ad sales Rita Ferro. The two Disney execs spoke a day after the media conglom’s upfront presentation in the Big Apple to ad buyers and brands — which was noticeably light on scripted fare, given the writers strike. Marvel’s Kevin Feige previewed upcoming Disney+ series “Secret Invasion,” featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Don Cheadle, and announced premiere dates for “Loki” Season 2 and “Hawkeye” spinoff “Echo.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Elon Musk, after dramatically slashing Twitter’s headcount following his takeover of the social platform, said the company will try to rehire some of them — acknowledging that the job cuts were too deep. Musk has slashed Twitter’s headcount by about 80%, from 7,800 to about 1,500, as he has attempted to cut costs and get the company in the black. “Some people who were let go probably shouldn’t have been,” Musk said during an interview with CNBC anchor David Faber following the 2023 Tesla annual shareholder meeting Tuesday at the car maker’s headquarters in Austin, Texas. “Desperate times call for desperate measures… Unfortunately, if you do it fast, there are some babies who will be thrown out,” Musk said. Twitter now will probably try to rehire some of the Twitter employees that were let go, he said.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Javier Bardem is gushing over Austin Butler’s work as Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen in “Dune: Part Two.” “Seeing him bald or seeing him with hair, he’s an amazing creature to look at,” Bardem told me at the world premiere of “The Little Mermaid” in Los Angeles. “You can look at him for hours and go, ‘Oh, my God — how beautiful you are.’” Bardem continued, “On top of that, he’s so nice. He’s so generous, so funny and so committed. He has done an amazing job. I’ve only had a couple of moments with him, but I would see him and it was like, ‘Wow, [he] is the character.’” Feyd-Rautha is the evil nephew of Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård) and the brother of the sadistic Glossu Rabban, played by Dave Bautista. The two brothers are in competition to become the Harkonnen family’s successor on the planet Arrakis.

EXCLUSIVE: Jennifer Lopez appeared on television screens across the U.S. this Mother’s Day weekend.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In what may have been an highly unconventional job interview, NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino hosted a discussion with Elon Musk about Twitter’s content policies and approach to working with marketers at an industry conference one month before Musk announced that he’d hired her as the social network’s CEO. The April 18 keynote conversation was billed as a talk about Musk’s “Twitter 2.0: From Conversations to Partnerships” at MMA Global’s Possible marketing event in Miami. Yaccarino told Musk that marketers want “protection for their ad campaigns,” with content moderation policies ensuring that “provocative speech” is properly labeled. She applauded Twitter’s announcement last month to promote “freedom of speech, not freedom of reach,” under which the company said it will limit the reach of tweets that violate policies concerning hateful conduct and violent speech.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Elon Musk claims he’s hired someone to replace him as CEO of Twitter. But for now, the tech tycoon isn’t revealing who that is. “Excited to announce that I’ve hired a new CEO for X/Twitter,” the mega-billionaire tweeted Thursday. “She will be starting in ~6 weeks! My role will transition to being exec chair & CTO, overseeing product, software & sysops.” Back in December, Musk said he would step aside as Twitter’s chief executive once he found “someone foolish enough” to take over the role. Even then, however, the billionaire will retain control of the social network and remain closely involved in running it. Musk closed a $44 billion deal for Twitter in October 2022, but he’s since said he now values the company at less than half that — at $20 billion.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor BuzzFeed’s revenue was down substantially in the first three months of 2023, dropping 27% in the period — and the company projected sales would be off as much as 29% for Q2. Given the decline, last month BuzzFeed announced it was shuttering its unprofitable BuzzFeed News division and laying off about 180 people across the organization, about 15% of its employee base. “We have reached an inflection point in digital media. Over the last few months, we have made significant strategic and organizational changes to position the business for long-term growth. Peretti continued, “By leaning into Creators and AI, I believe we can unlock new opportunities across our portfolio of trusted brands — including Tasty, First we Feast, Complex, HuffPost and BuzzFeed,” Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed founder and CEO, said in announcing the Q1 results.

Marissa Mayer, the former CEO of Yahoo, is recalling her time at the tech company and opening up about some regrets.

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor Orville Peck may be nervous about bringing drag queens onstage during his concerts in red states, but he refuses to let fear get in the way of fighting for LGBTQ rights. “We played Knoxville, and we did Memphis, and we played a few places in Tennessee and just the South in general. And I doubled down, and I had a drag queen come out in the middle of the show, and I would do a big speech,” Peck tells me. “To me, drag is extremely important not just because a lot of my lovely dear friends do it,” he continues. “It’s a cornerstone of not just gay culture but gay civil rights. It is literally why I have the ability to be an openly gay man in country music. Was I scared? Yes, but I did it anyway because sometimes you just have to do something no matter what.”

AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron said the giant movie theater chain will start making its own candy line that will be cheaper for patrons, and for the company, given price hike by sweets manufacturers post-Covid.

Tech Brew, Former Google executive and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer talked future plans and past regrets, which included a moment of reflection when she looked back on the unsavory results of acquiring Tumblr over Netflix or Hulu, two of today’s most prominent streaming services.When asked about one thing she would’ve done differently during her time at Yahoo, she gave three examples. First, she noted she would’ve hired a different COO (“I would have hired [current Integral Ad Science CEO] Lisa Utzschneider, who became my chief revenue officer. And that would have been great.”) Second, she named the acquisition of Tumblr as a misfire, at least in part because it came at the cost of snagging Netflix or Hulu.

launch its rebranded Max streaming service on May 23, plans to focus on family-friendly content. “The more people that use it in the family, the more engaged people are, the broader the offering, the lower the churn,” Zaslav noted.