Paramount’s Communications & Corporate Marketing Chief To Exit, Group Will Report To Brian Robbins On Interim Basis

“It’s still progressing.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor After months of on-again-off-again haggling, Skydance Media submitted a newly revised offer for Paramount Global. The revised bid would reduce the amount Skydance and its financial partners would pay Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, and reallocate that more equitably to the company’s nonvoting Class B shareholders, Variety has confirmed. Skydance would also put in more cash upfront to swing the deal, sources said.

EXCLUSIVE: The Paley Center for Media has appointed four new trustees to its board and added some high profile executives to its L.A. contingent as it ramps back up on the West Coast.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have officially been married six years! Amazing!

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Julia Phelps, Paramount Global‘s executive VP and chief communications and corporate marketing officer, is exiting after almost 20 years with the company and predecessor Viacom. Phelps had long worked with Bob Bakish, who was ousted as CEO of the company last month and replaced by a three-exec committee. Phelps, in a memo to her team Friday, said she will leave Paramount at the end of May.

Lori Beth Denberg is the latest Nickelodeon star to speak out against Dan Schneider.

Lori Beth Denberg, the former Nickelodeon and All That star is making claims against Dan Schneider.

Shari Redstone strolled onto the red carpet in New York City tonight for the premiere of Paramount Pictures IF, John Krasinski’ star-studded PG adventure that opens this weekend. She was there to support studio chief Brian Robbins.

Lioness — the Taylor Sheridan drama starring Zoe Saldaña and Laysla De Oliveira — has been renewed for a second season by Paramount+.

Paramount Advertising President John Halley was preparing to preside over an upfront pitch to Publicis, one of the four major holding companies in the ad business, when big news crossed the wire.

Warren Buffett says he has sold all of his shares in Paramount Global at a significant loss.

Paramount Global says Chris McMarthy is the company’s “interim principal executive officer,” a necessity required by the SEC that apparently does not signal he has more decision-making power among a trio of top executives who stepped up to replace Bob Bakish this week in a new Office of the CEO.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPADTED: After months of M&A talks, Paramount Global and controlling shareholder Shari Redstone might be going it alone after all — for now. Insiders tell Variety that the expectation at the company is that neither of the two offers in play — Skydance Media-RedBird Capital Partners and Sony Pictures Entertainment-Apollo Global Management — will come to fruition. And Redstone is said to have reluctantly concluded that a deal with David Ellison’s Skydance, a longtime partner of Paramount Pictures, will not be possible.

The clock is ticking down to midnight, the end of a month-long exclusive negotiating window between Paramount Global and Skydance Media. The David Ellison company has been circling Paramount for months and lobbed several offers to buy out Shari Redstone‘s controlling stake, backed by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Gerry Cardinale’s RedBird Capital.

Three days after he was named to the newly formed Office of the CEO of Paramount Global, George Cheeks, President and CEO of CBS, faced reporters at the unveiling of the broadcast network’s fall 2024 schedule.

Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament is back. While studios during Covid wildly embraced the theatrical day-and-date model when cinemas were closed, they soon realized there’s nothing more profitable than a theatrical release and the downstreams that come with it. If anything, theatrical is the advertisement for a movie’s longevity in subsequent home entertainment windows. Entering the conversation in 2023 were the streamers, such as Apple, who have also realized the necessity of theatrical to eventize their movies. The financial data pulled together here for Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament is culled by seasoned and trusted sources.

Partners Sony and Apollo have formally reached out to Paramount‘s special board committee asking to discuss a potential $26 billion offer, Deadline has learned. It comes as Par’s exclusive negotiating window with David Ellison‘s Skydance is set to expire.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor In the latest twist in Paramount Global‘s M&A saga, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Apollo Global Management reportedly have made a bid to take Paramount private with an all-cash buyout offer of $26 billion. Sony and private-equity giant Apollo submitted an offer letter Wednesday to Paramount Global, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The report comes as Paramount Global board’s special committee established to consider M&A proposals is evaluating the best and final offer from Skydance Media to merge Paramount and Skydance, while keeping Paramount Global public.

Katcy Stephan Missy Elliott is joining Universal Pictures’ untitled Pharrell Williams and Michel Gondry musical project. She joins Halle Bailey, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Oscar nominee Brian Tyree Henry and Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph in a coming-of-age musical set in Virginia Beach in the summer of 1977 and inspired by the Atlantis Apartments, located in Williams’ childhood neighborhood. Michel Gondry (“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “The Science of Sleep”) is set to direct the project based on a script by Martin Hynes (“Toy Story 4,” “The Magician’s Elephant”) and Steven Levenson (“Tick, Tick…Boom,” “Fosse/Verdon”).

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Amid Paramount Global’s removal of Bob Bakish as CEO and the ongoing uncertainty of a company sale, it was business as usual for the first quarter at the media conglomerate — which included a $1.3 billion charge for content write-offs as well as layoffs. Paramount Global reported Q1 2024 earnings Monday, announcing Bakish’s exit and the installation of an unusual three-in-a-box “Office of the CEO”: CBS’s George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks, and Paramount Pictures’ Brian Robbins.