Regal Cinemas Owner Cineworld’s Top Management to Receive $35 Million to Exit Company – Report

David Nevins is back in business.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music HarbourView Equity Partners, the asset-management company founded by Sherrese Clarke Soares, announced today it has agreed to partner with and purchase “select” recorded-music assets of Grammy-winning rapper-singer Nelly, a rep for the company confirms to Variety. Further terms of the deal were not disclosed, although TMZ reported that the deal was for $50 million and covered half of Nelly’s recorded-music assets. Nelly was represented by Steven Shapiro of Davis Shapiro Lewit & Grabel LLP. The deal includes some of Nelly’s most iconic tracks such as “Ride Wit Me,” “Dilemma” featuring Kelly Rowland, and “Hot in Herre,” both of which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for multiple weeks.

VUE Cinema in the Manchester Printworks will be one of only three cinemas in the UK to showcase a special screening of Oppenheimer on IMAX.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is gunning for the top spot on box office charts. The fifth and final adventure to star Harrison Ford as the legendary, globe-trotting explorer is targeting at least $65 million from 4,500 North American theaters in its opening weekend. The latest Indy installment is also debuting day-and-date at the international box office, where it’s aiming to add $80 million for a global start of $145 million to $150 million. Those ticket sales are decent, especially for the fourth sequel to a decades-old property that’s aimed at older audiences. But Disney spent a mind-boggling $295 million to bring the action-adventure to life. That’s not including marketing costs, such as a no-expense-spared premiere and afterparty at the Cannes Film Festival where much champagne was tippled. Even in the best circumstances, it’ll take a heroic feat — and a lot of nostalgia from long-time fans of the series — for “Indiana Jones 5” to turn a profit in its theatrical run.

A bankruptcy court judge today gave a green light to a reorganization plan for Regal parent Cineworld, the key step needed for the giant movie theater chain to emerge from bankruptcy next month.

Sean Baker has made a name for himself as one of the most acclaimed indie filmmakers working today. And when you talk about “indie” cinema, Baker isn’t making small Netflix features.

Naman Ramachandran The Cineworld Group will file for administration in the U.K., but the business will continue without interruption. Cineworld Group and its subsidiaries had commenced Chapter 11 cases in the United States Bankruptcy Court in September 2022. The group now expects to emerge from the Chapter 11 cases in July and will continue to operate its cinemas as usual without interruption, it said in May. On Monday, the group said it would will apply to a court in England for an administration order. The application would only apply to Cineworld Group plc itself as the listed parent company of the group and not to any of the operating companies or subsidiaries in the rest of the group, which would continue to operate as usual without interruption. Any administration order would not affect the status or rights of any of the group’s employees.

According to a new report, the US Navy heard what they believe was the implosion of the OceanGate Expeditions sub several days ago out in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Ben Croll Director of “Die Hard,” “Predator” and “The Hunt for Red October,” John McTiernan will step into the limelight at this year’s Neuchatel Intl. Fantastic Film Festival (NIFFF), presenting three of his films as guest of honor while serving on the festival jury.  If anything, the choice of honoree was obvious for NIFFF artistic director Pierre-Yves Walder, who calls McTiernan “the Pope of action cinema.” “The very idea of John McTiernan meeting our public will shape the history of our festival,” Walder says. “Because his films fed a shared love of movies, for us in Neuchatel and around the world.”

Christopher Nolan has revealed that early screenings of Oppenheimer have left audiences “devastated”, with some even describing it as a horror film.The biographical drama stars Cillian Murphy as the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is known as “the father of the atomic bomb”, and will be released in cinemas on July 21.“Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated,” Nolan said of early screenings in a new interview with Wired magazine.“They can’t speak.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Christopher Nolan has a warning for anyone purchasing “Oppenheimer” tickets: The film might emotionally destroy you. Speaking to Wired magazine in a new interview, Nolan said that some early “Oppenheimer” viewers have had a visceral reaction to the film, which follows theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) as he creates the atomic bomb to end World War II. “Some people leave the movie absolutely devastated,” Nolan said about early screenings. “They can’t speak. I mean, there’s an element of fear that’s there in the history and there in the underpinnings. But the love of the characters, the love of the relationships, is as strong as I’ve ever done.”

Emiliano De Pablos The Larraín brothers’ indie company Fábula, producer of Oscar winning “A Fantastic Woman,” is preparing tragi-comic docudrama “Los guardaespaldas de Superman” (“Superman’s Bodyguards”). The four-episode, half-hour crime-adventure series, directed by Sebastián Radic (“Instrucciones para Mi Funeral”) and scripted by Rodrigo Bastidas and Rodrigo Muñoz, focuses on a trip Christopher Reeve’s made to Chile in 1987, under Pinochet’s dictatorship, to save the lives of 78 people under death threat. “Superman’s Bodyguards” is one of the five projects selected to form part of Pitch Docudrama, a showcase at Conecta Fiction 2023 edition, which takes place June 26-29 in Toledo, the capital of Spain’s Castilla-La Mancha, just south of Madrid.

EXCLUSIVE: Blockbuster animated feature The First Slam Dunk will open Japan Cuts, a festival of Japanese cinema in New York, which will also feature a special tribute to late Oscar-winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. 

McKinley Franklin editor Historian Kai Bird, co-author of the 2005 book that inspired Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” has shared his thoughts about the upcoming film, revealing that he has high hopes for how it can resonate with the public during a conversation with David Nirenberg at Leon Levy Center for Biography in New York. “I am, at the moment, stunned and emotionally recovering from having seen it,” Bird said. “I think it is going to be a stunning artistic achievement, and I have hopes it will actually stimulate a national, even global conversation about the issues that Oppenheimer was desperate to speak out about — about how to live in the atomic age, how to live with the bomb and about McCarthyism — what it means to be a patriot, and what is the role for a scientist in a society drenched with technology and science, to speak out about public issues.”

The numbers are in!

Executives of Regal parent Cineworld, led by CEO Mooky Greidinger, have agreed to a payout in the $30 million range, Deadline has confirmed, in the event that they leave leave the company as it prepares to exit Chapter 11.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” kicked off at the international box office with $110 million from 68 markets, including a decent $40 million start in China. The seventh installment in Paramount’s action franchise also pulled in $60 million in its North American debut, bringing its worldwide tally to a solid $170 million. Overseas audiences will be key to the theatrical success of “Transformers,” which cost $200 million. Prior entries in the 16-year-old series have earned as much as 70% of overall box office returns outside of the U.S. and Canada. At the international box office, ticket sales for “Rise of the Beasts” are pacing 32% below “Bumblebee,” which is the most recent entry in the series. The newest chapter has managed to set franchise records in eight smaller markets, including Indonesia, Argentina and Peru. The Autobots will take the box office milestones where they can get them.

Manori Ravindran Executive Editor of International Israeli crime drama “Your Honor,” which was adapted by Showtime as the Bryan Cranston-led thriller, has been revealed as the most successful new scripted format in the last three years by U.K. media intelligence consultancy K7 Media. The Yes Studios-produced scripted format has had seven adaptations since 2020, including the Showtime series, alongside versions in India, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and Turkey. Other top-performing scripted formats with five or six new adaptations since 2020 include ITV’s he said-she said thriller “Liar” out of Britain; Stan’s Australian police comedy “No Activity”; Argentinian parenting telenovela “Dear Daddies” from Telefe; and the French showbiz dramedy “Call My Agent!” from M6.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief U.S. film and television content captures 30% of viewing time in key Asia-Pacific territories, according to a new research report by consultancy Media Partners Asia. Korean product takes 40%. The study “U.S. Content in the Asia Pacific” tracked the video consumption behavior between January and March this year of some 40,000 consumers in ten Asia-Pacific markets: Australia, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam. Australia, a $2.2 billion SVOD market, exhibits the highest reliance on US entertainment with 72% of measured SVOD viewership, followed by Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines where U.S. content accounts for 40-50% of viewership on average, with Indonesia close behind at 35%.

William Earl Over five low-budget box office hits and a two-season TV series, “The Purge” saga — which portrays a not-too-distant-future America where all crimes, including murder, are legal for one night a year in order to satiate a bloodthirsty public — swelled into a $450 million franchise. But the first chapter was almost never made. While the film became the defining hit of writer and director James DeMonaco’s career, he says the script was passed over “40-50 times” for being seen as “too anti-American.” “I had this little, strange, dark indictment of American gun culture,” he said. “I hate guns. To me, the scariest thing in the world would be a night where everyone was armed and it was legal to use these firearms. To me, there was nothing scarier than that notion.”