City Durban Showbiz Latest News and Updates

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Endeavor, three years after the sports and entertainment company went public, announced that it has entered into an agreement to be acquired by private-equity firm Silver Lake. The deal gives Endeavor an equity value of $13 billion, the companies said.

Leo Barraclough International Features Editor Global Screen, the Munich-based international sales outfit, has boarded worldwide sales on “The Trek,” the upcoming first feature from leading South African cinematographer and director Meekaaeel Adam. The film is a horror-Western, in which starvation, suspicion and madness plague a family as they cross the Kalahari Desert under the eyes of primeval spirits.

EXCLUSIVE: On the heels of her debut feature In the Summers‘ world premiere at Sundance, where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Directing Award in U.S. Dramatic competition, writer-director Alessandra Lacorazza has signed with UTA for representation in all areas.

Anna Marie de la Fuente With the exception of Nigeria’s Nollywood, which produces an average of 2,500 films a year, Africa’s “potential as a film powerhouse remains largely untapped” despite great strides in production, according to a Unesco report. Brazil’s Spcine, the city of São Paulo’s film-TV body, is hoping to change the status quo.

Naman Ramachandran Lila Aviles‘ “Totem” has won the global feature award at the annual Jakarta Film Week. The film previously won awards at the Berlin, Hong Kong, Durban and Beijing film festivals. The direction award for best Indonesian feature film went to Jeremias Nyangoen’s directorial debut “Women of Rote Island.” The film bowed at Busan earlier in October.

Naman Ramachandran Devashish Makhija’s survival thriller “Joram,” which is playing at the Busan International Film Festival, will be released theatrically worldwide by Zee Studios in December. The film, which premiered at Rotterdam earlier this year, is in Busan’s A Window on Asian Cinema strand. Eminent actor Manoj Bajpayee, who previously starred in Makhija’s 2016 short “Taandav” and played the title role in “Bhonsle,” plays Dasru, a tribal migrant worker in Mumbai whose past catches up with him and he must flee with his infant daughter Joram.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Ari Emanuel reportedly made an offer that Elon Musk could refuse. Last year, Emanuel, chief executive officer of media and talent-representation conglomerate Endeavor, texted his friend Musk with an offer to take on the job of managing Twitter, according to “Elon Musk,” Walter Isaacson’s sprawling new biography of the techno-titan. Emanuel, in a three-paragraph text sent on the Signal encrypted messaging app, proposed that he and Endeavor would run Twitter (which is now called X) on Musk’s behalf, per Isaacson’s book.

UFC, the mixed martial arts powerhouse, has officially tied the knot with Vince McMahon’s professional wresting juggernaut WWE, creating a new company called TKO Group that starts trading on the New York Stock Exchange today.

Vertigo Films & Haifaa Al Mansour Join Saudi Female Filmmaker Program

Naman Ramachandran XYZ Films will represent documentary “London Recruits” for North American sales, it was revealed at the ongoing Durban FilmMart. Directed by Gordon Main, the film sheds light on a pivotal moment in South Africa’s history. In 1970, the struggle against the apartheid government in South Africa developed a new secret weapon. Oliver Tambo hatched a plan to infiltrate young British activists into the country, posing as tourists. Their mission, in the face of brutal lockdown by the racist regime, was to help inspire ordinary South Africans to join a liberation movement that would never give up till freedom was won. To mark the partnership, Ronnie Kasrils, now 86, the former underground African National Congress (ANC) freedom fighter at the heart of the story, participated in detonating a bucket “leaflet bomb” outside the market hotel. These were the devices deployed in 1970 by amateur secret agents that Kasrils recruited in London on orders from Tambo. The devices brought messages of hope from the banned ANC to the South African population at large.

Reuters reported.Heresniak had claimed in the suit, which had sought class action status, that by delaying disclosure of his purchases of Twitter stock, Musk cost him and other shareholders $156 million. It was filed in May 2022, about a month after the company had accepted Musk’s buyout offer.

Lior Phillips There’s no formula to emerging from the seemingly endless sea of available music in the past twenty or so years — and yet from kwaito on, South African electronic music has done just that, both directly and indirectly. In the past five to ten years, two offshoots of house music have dominated South African airwaves: gqom and amapiano. The former, pronounced by replacing the “gq” with a Zulu tongue click, was born in the clubs of Durban and embraces a darkness buried in house music’s repetition. The name itself translates to something akin to “bang,” but the Zulu pronunciation demonstrates the more direct, aggressive tone. One of the foremost proprietors is DJ Lag, a producer from Clermont township who blends Zulu chants with eerie, slow-burning synth patches, hard-hitting bass, and rough-hewn rhythms. Tracks like “Ice Drop” (2017) and the 2021 single “Raptor” are still clearly designed to get crowds moving at the club, but there’s a wide-eyed intensity and weight there as well.

A British couple who were 'beaten to death' and thrown to crocodiles by a trio with alleged links to ISIS died due to blunt trauma injury. Rod Saunders and wife Rachel were famous botanists who died in South Africa in 2018.

M-Net Greenlights Season Two Of Fremantle Mystery Thriller ‘Reyka’

EXCLUSIVE: Ava DuVernay’s Array Releasing has acquired Ivan Herrera’s drama Bantú Mama for distribution in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. The company will be presenting the film — which has been named as the Dominican Republic’s 2023 entry for the Best International Feature Film Oscar — on select screens and on Netflix beginning November 17.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Ari Emanuel, the legendary Hollywood agent who is CEO of Endeavor, reportedly got involved in the dispute between Twitter and Elon Musk over Musk’s attempt to nix his takeover of the company — but it’s not exactly clear why. Within the “past few weeks,” Emanuel had reached out to Twitter board member Egon Durban to suggest the social network work with Musk to “find a solution” to their legal fight ahead of a trial scheduled to commence Oct. 17 in Delaware Chancery Court, according to a report by Bloomberg Law citing anonymous sources. Emanuel has ties to both Durban and Musk. Durban, co-CEO of tech investment firm Silver Lake, currently sits on Endeavor’s board. Musk had been on Endeavor’s board of directors before resigning in March 2022.

Image: Bexter IX, Philadelphia, 2018 © Zanele Muholi

Bravo’s “Real Housewives” will be expanding in another continent.

The Real Housewives franchise is getting even bigger!

The recent 10th Durban Pride was smaller than in previous years but no less passionate about demanding LGBTIQ+ equality and safety from hate crimes.

A series of free and very topical queer workshops are being held in Durban as part of the city’s Durban Pride commemorations.

Durban Pride 2019 (Pic: Joy Khumalo)

To mark World Oceans Day on Wednesday, ET Canada is sharing an exclusive look at the Love Nature documentary “The Ocean’s Greatest Feast”.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorThe Federal Trade Commission levied a $150 million fine on Twitter, alleging that the social network profited by allowing advertisers to use private data to target specific users.According to the agency, Twitter violated a 2011 FTC order that “explicitly prohibited” the company from misrepresenting its privacy and security practices. In addition to the $150 million fine, Twitter is banned from “profiting from its deceptively collected data,” the FTC said.In August 2020, Twitter disclosed that it expected to face an FTC fine of $150 million to $250 million related to the allegations.In a blog post, Twitter chief privacy officer Damien Kieran wrote, “Keeping data secure and respecting privacy is something we take extremely seriously, and we have cooperated with the FTC every step of the way.

Shareholders of Twitter voted not to approve Egon Durban’s seat on the social media company’s board of directors at its annual meeting. Durban, the co-CEO and managing partner of Silver Lake, was one of two directors up for election today for a three-year term.

Pinky Shongwe had her life cut short in a suspected hate crime because of who she loved

But first, let me take a selfie! With many of us returning to the gym to tick off our New Year’s resolutions, it’s been revealed that Cape Town is surprisingly NOT the gym selfie capital of Africa.

Netflix is gifting $1M to film and TV students in the Sub-Saharan Africa region.

Andile Zondi was left with head and facial injuries after he and a friend were attacked by a mob in a suspected hate crime in Durban

Jennifer Yuma editorEndeavor Group Holdings has appointed technology executive Jacqueline Reses to its board of directors.The move expands the Endeavor board to eight members: Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, Endeavor executive chairman Patrick Whitesell, Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban and managing director Stephen Evans, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Uncle Nearest CEO Fawn Weaver and former Xerox chief Ursula Burns.