The talent and literary agency Innovative Artists is raising outside cash for the first time. The agency, led by founder and CEO Scott Harris, has raised an undisclosed amount from the private equity firm Coral Tree Partners, led by partner Will Wynperle, which invests in media and entertainment companies. It is the first time in Innovatives 42-year history that it...

A federal court has rebuffed a bid from a trio of music publishers suing Anthropic to stop the use of their lyrics to train the Amazon-backed companys AI system. U.S. District Judge Eumi Lee on Tuesday found that Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO didnt prove that the existing licensing market is being undercut by Anthropic pilfering their...

He has juststepped asideas one of the most influential talent agents of his generation, having shepherded the careers of everyone from Ben Affleck to Matthew McConaughey to Angelina Jolie, but Patrick Whitesell is in no mood to get wistful. My lifes work has been building this company, so in that regard yes, its an end of an era moment. But...

Jeff T. Daniel has been named president of the Shubert Organization, the biggest theater owner on Broadway with 17 of the 41 theaters. Daniel had been working as chief strategy officer at Shubert since 2023, after spending 14 years as co-chief executive officer of Broadway Across America, a major presenter of touring Broadway shows in North America. He will continue...

The U.S. advertising business is entering an uncertain economic environment as the possibility of tariffs, reduced tourism and other factors set to cause the stateside ad market to slow down in 2025, according to Magnas spring 2025s forecast. The media intelligence firm expects ad revenues for traditional media owners (exclusive cyclical ads like politics advertising) to decline by 1 percent...

The Directors Guild of America has appointed negotiations committee leaders for its upcoming 2026 talks with studios and streamers and they are two familiar names. Film and television director Jon Avnet will serve as chair of the unions negotiations committee for its Basic Agreement and Freelance Live and Tape Television Agreement while veteran television helmer Karen Gaviola will serve as...

For the first time in 15 years, the powerful but discreet organization that negotiates union contracts on behalf of Hollywoods major studios and streamers has named a new leader. Gregory Hessinger has been selected to helm the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers as former president Carol Lombardini steps into an advisory position. The change marks a post-strikes shakeup...

Good Night and Good Luck, starring George Clooney, broke the record for highest weekly gross for a play last week, with an eye-popping $3.3 million. That total was brought in across only seven preview performances, and bests the record set by Othello, starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhall. Othello initially broke the record for highest grossing play the week of...

Armada Music Groups dance music investment vehicle Beat Music Fund has acquired the rights to a large portion of the catalog of Canadian DJ, producer and Turbo Recordings founder Tiga, including such titles as Sunglasses at Night, Bugatti, You Gonna Want Me and Lets Go Dancing. Armada, founded in 2003 by Dutch trance DJ and producerArmin van Buuren, Maykel Piron...

The Los Angeles-based Teamsters Local 399 has begun onboarding dozens of new members who work on film and television projects after a pattern of systematic errors, omissions and oversight was alleged to have been uncovered through an audit of the Oklahoma City-based Local 886. After a unanimous vote from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters general executive board sealed the deal,...

When OpenAI unveiled technology called Sora last year that lets people instantaneously generate hyper-realistic videos like a movie trailer of an astronaut traversing a barren desert planet in response to a text prompt of just a few words, it wasnt the quality of the footage that caught Hollywood folk off guard as much as the rapid growth of the technology...

Hollywood will have to navigate a world in which consumers are increasingly choosing to spend more of their time with creator-driven entertainment and social platforms rather than premium content. That is a key takeaway from Deloittes 19th annual digital media trends survey, which asks consumers about their media and entertainment preferences. The survey finds that 56 percent of Gen Zs...

YouTube commanded more TV time than any other media provider in the United States in February, and its top ranking was thanks in part to viewers over the age of 50. The service accounted for 11.6 percent of all TV use in the country in Nielsens rankings of media distributors for the February period (which ran from Jan. 27-Feb. 23)....