On a cool November evening in New York City, a swarm of hundreds of drones gracefully buzzed over the Hudson River, taking shape above a darkened ship floating in the water. What followed was a veritable procession of Walt Disney Co. intellectual property, paired with music from Disney classics. The drones formed one character or scene after another, including the...

After years of investor concerns about advertising market trends, streaming losses, cord-cutting in the streaming age eating away at Hollywood giants cable networks units, their former core profit growth engines, and competition from technology giants, a whiff of entertainment optimism is sweeping across Wall Street as the calendar changes from 2024 to 2025. Dare We Say Were Optimistic? Wells Fargo...

After publicizing misconduct allegations over the filming of It Ends With Us, Blake Lively has sued Justin Baldoni for sexual harassment and orchestrating a campaign to smear her. Lively, in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in New York federal court, accuses Baldoni and his public relations team of marshaling a sophisticated, multi-tiered plan to undermine her reputation in retaliation for...

Fallout from an alleged campaign to smear Blake Lively over the filming of It Ends With Us has sparked another lawsuit, this time against The New York Times for libel. Justin Baldoni, in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Tuesday, accuses the Times of conspiring with Livelys public relations team to advance an unverified and self-serving narrative...

Wicked brought in a staggering $5 million last week, marking the highest weekly gross in history for any Broadway show. That total, which was accumulated across nine shows last week, rather than the typical eight, is also a record for the show, which has been running on Broadway since 2003. The musical brought in $2 million more than the prior...

In 2022, the stocks of Netflixand most Hollywood studiosfell to earth. Then in 2023, major media and technology players had another grim year with investors as faith in streaming took another hit. But in 2024, signs of progress in streaming business profitability and renewed MA talk helped the stocks of some of the sector biggies. And heading into 2025, some...

It may not be a happy New Year for New York Knicks and New York Rangers fans, as a carriage dispute between MSG Networks and the cable operator Optimum could see games go dark come 2025. Optimum, the pay-TV brand of Altice, operates in most of the New York City suburbs and in parts of the city itself. MSG Networks,...

In legal circles, it wasnt the monetary figure in Disneys $15 million deal to resolve defamation claims from President-elect Donald Trump that was surprising, or even the fact that the network settled at all. It was the timing. Disney opted to dispose of the case before trying its luck on summary judgment, a routine step in civil litigation in which...

Howl CEO Li Haslett Chen is stepping down from the board of directors at Warner Bros. Discovery. The Hollywood studio in a regulatory filing on Monday announced the departure of Haslett Chen, who was named as an independent director and board member at WBD in April 2022. Her exit, set for Jan. 31, could open the way for a high-profile...

Donald Trump has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to delay implementation of a law subjecting TikTok to a national ban on Jan. 19 if its parent company doesnt sell the platform. The President-elect, in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting neither side filed on Friday, says he can reach a deal to balance the national security and First Amendment considerations posed by...

For the Hollywood-centric, the holiday-of-your-choice festivities and the countdown to the New Year mean a different set of seasonal rituals: the accountants tally up the box office returns and the critics make up their Top Ten lists. The first has the advantage of mathematical precision, the second the satisfaction of taste-mongering, and together they neatly encompass the commerce and art...

Richard Parsons, the former Time Warner chairman who became a go-to executive brought in to steady such troubled organizations as CBS Corp., Citigroup and the Los Angeles Clippers, died Thursday. He was 76. Parsons diedat his Manhattan home of bone cancer, Ronald S. Lauder, a member of the Este Lauder board and a close friend, told The New York Times....

To say Netflix has a lot riding on the return of Squid Game is an understatement. The South Korean series immediately emerged as a flagship show when it debuted three years ago. Since then there have been countless Halloween costumes worn, tickets to live Squid Game experiences sold, and ample anticipation for the shows return to the streaming service. And...