Disney’s Announcement Of ‘Frozen 3’ Came As A Surprise To Franchise’s Songwriters

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, led a delegation of lawmakers last week for meetings in Hollywood and Silicon Valley, with an eye toward gathering information on how the two California-centric industries interact with Beijing.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Wanda, the Chinese conglomerate that once threatened to take over Hollywood, has put up for sale the Hoyts cinema chain in Australia that it bought in 2015. Hoyts is Australia’s second largest movie theater operator with 46 multiplexes housing 412 screens, according to 2022 data from Screen Australia. It also owns Val Morgan, Australia’s biggest cinema advertising firm.Wanda Cinema Line, itself China’s biggest theater operator, has appointed Credit Suisse and Nomura to handle the sale. Bidders are understood to have access to a “stapled debt” package (a line of agreed financing arranged by the banks) if the potential buyer cannot arrange sufficient finance of their own. A first deadline for bids is set at the beginning of May, with final offers to be submitted by the end of June.

A bird flu death has been recorded in China with a woman becoming the first person ever to die from the H3N8 strain.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The Jackie Chan-starring stunt-man comedy drama “Ride On” pratfalled its way to first place at the mainland Chinese box office with a lowball $11.7 million opening. Still, that was enough to beat another new release, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which ranked fourth over the latest weekend. Chan is an enduring, but fading, star in China and in the past his new release titles were often scheduled for the three biggest holiday seasons. “Ride On,” which sees Chan in an ode to the stunt players he has worked with, was released two days after the Ching Ming (Wednesday 5 April) holiday, when many folks honor their ancestors. Its opening three days were enough to depose “Suzume” from the top spot, where “Suzume” had ranked for the previous two weekends. “Suzume” earned $8.0 million over the latest weekend in China, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. That gives it a $103 million cumulative after 17 days in mainland theaters, a China record for a Japanese animation film.

Olivia Culpo and Christian McCaffrey just announced they're engaged!The happy couple took to Instagram on Friday to announce their engagement with a series of black and white photos. In the carousel post, the San Francisco 49ers star can be seen down on bended knee, as Culpo holds her hands together in front of her face in what appears to be a total surprise moment.The proposal took place Sunday at the luxury Amangiri Resort in Canyon Point, Utah, where they were surrounded by a sweet flower arrangement and, of course, breathtaking red rocks.

Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and other industry executives are meeting privately this week with members of Congress to discuss how to respond to China’s strong-arm tactics to stifle and censor filmmakers.Several members of the House Select Committee On the Chinese Communist Party attended two meetings with filmmaker groups Wednesday, and plan to meet Friday with Apple Inc.

Fans of Disney and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson have a big reason to celebrate this week. In Disney's annual shareholder meeting, led yesterday by CEO Bob Iger, Johnson was featured in a special pre-recorded message to announce the big news that the 2016 hit "Moana" is going to be revived in an upcoming live action remake.

Disney fans can anticipate seeing the magic of  in a reimagined, live-action world! Dwayne Johnson, who voiced Maui in the 2016 animated musical, is producing the remake and will reprise his role as the grand demigod of the wind and sea.Johnson and Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the news during Disney’s annual shareholders meeting Monday.“I’m deeply humbled and overcome with gratitude to bring the beautiful story of Moana to the live-action big screen," Johnson said in a pre-recorded video from Hawaii. «This story is my culture, and this story is emblematic of our people’s grace and warrior strength.

Former Old Trafford striker Danny Welbeck has told Evan Ferguson that he would come under “a bit more scrutiny” at Manchester United should he make a transfer and encouraged him to stay at Brighton.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” opened in fourth place at the mainland China box office with a muted $5 million haul. Top honors belonged to Japanese animation film “Suzume” for the second weekend. “Suzume” incurred a 55% week-on-week drop, falling from $49.6 million in its opening weekend, to $22.1 million in is second, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. After ten days in Chinese theaters, “Suzume” now has a cumulative total of $80.6 million. Nevertheless, its lead at the top of the box office chart was unassailable. The weekend’s best-placed new release title was “Hachiko,” a Chinese retelling of the Japanese tale of a dog which faithfully waited at a station for its master years after his death. (The story was previously given a U.S. version with Richard Gere in the lead human role.) It earned $8.9 million (RMB61.2 million) in its opening weekend.

Members of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party plan to meet this week with Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger and Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as screenwriters and other studio executives.

Disney’s former head of communications Zenia Mucha is advising TikTok as the beleagued company fights calls to shut it down in the U.S. on security concerns, Deadline has confirmed. It’s already banned across the Federal government with President Biden recently ramping up demands that the global app’s Chinese parent sell the U.S. business to a company Stateside, or see it vanish.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Zenia Mucha, formerly Disney’s top spokesperson for almost two decades, was recruited to be part of the team that coached TikTok’s CEO for his congressional hearing earlier this month, according to a new report. In addition to Mucha, TikTok tapped former Obama advisers David Plouffe and Jim Messina to prep Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, for more than a month before Chew’s March 23 appearance before the House Energy and Commerce Committee — which observers said only reinforced anti-TikTok attitudes among both Republican and Democratic lawmakers concerned about the app’s Chinese ownership by parent company ByteDance. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mucha could not be reached for comment.

Manchester United manager Erik ten Hag's approach to dealing with stars Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcus Rashford has been compared to how Sir Alex Ferguson chose to keep order in his squad.

Geese have shared the release date and the title track for their highly anticipated second album, ‘3D Country’.The band will release the album on June 23 via Partisan/Play It Again Sam.Explaining the origins of the lead single ‘3D Country’, frontman Cameron Winter said: “The lyrics are this story I had about a cowboy who does psychedelics in the wild west and fries his brain forever. I was imagining at first he’s this stoic, masculine character like out of a Cormac McCarthy novel, but then he unravels and sees his past lives in Ancient Rome, the Great Wall of China.”He continued: “Ultimately he finds himself in the end and it turns celebratory.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief “The Bad Kids,” a hit series from Chinese streamer iQiyi, is to be remade as a Japanese feature film “Gold Boy.” The 12-episode gritty crime thriller depicts the troubles that arise after three children accidentally film a murder. The series was previously licensed to Japanese pay-TV group Wowow.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce and media group, unveiled a top to bottom corporate restructuring that it says is intended to “unlock shareholder value and foster market competitiveness.”  The group, which has a current market capitalization of $228 billion, will split itself into six divisions of differing sizes. Each unit will have a CEO and a board of directors and can pursue independent fund-raising or even IPOs, when they are ready. At present Alibaba has its shares and ADR shares listed in Hong Kong and New York. Some parts of its media business also have their own Hong Kong share listing Alibaba Pictures. (And there is a healthcare business with yet another share quote.)

Disney’s live-action take on The Little Mermaid has been cleared for theatrical release in China, as has Fast X — the penultimate installment in Universal’s long-running Fast & Furious action franchise. Dates are still to be set for both films in the market which has increasingly been handing out day-and-date releases for Hollywood titles even if audiences have been somewhat tepid of late. Hope springs.

Naman Ramachandran Yash Raj Films’ “Pathaan” is the biggest Indian hit of the year so far grossing $130 million. The studio’s Akshaye Widhani also served as a co-producer on the film. Part of the release strategy around “Pathaan” was keeping Shah Rukh Khan away from the film’s promotions, creating curiosity around the superstar’s comeback film, the first time he’d headlined a project since 2018’s “Zero.” “There was a lot of excitement and hunger to see India’s biggest movie star on screen after four years. We wanted to preserve that. So when we got into a room with him to talk about marketing the film, we all felt what if we went with a different strategy this time, which is less is more. So we hold back Shah Rukh, not have him seen pre-release, not have him interact with anybody pre-release,” Widhani told Variety. “But once the the film is out, then we come out into the media. That was a conscious decision and one that paid off well, because the whole excitement to go watch him on screen became even more, and the hunger increased when you didn’t see him. And it worked well for us.”

Blac Chyna is surprising fans with the new comments that she made about Kim Kardashian.