City Sandbox Showbiz Latest News and Updates

A public memorial service for 5-time Grammy winner and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Naomi Judd, who died last week at 76, will air live on CMT this weekend.

Slipknot have partnered with the makers of the virtual gaming world The Sandbox to launch KNOTVERSE, billed as “a fully immersive space to host Web3 experiences” curated by Slipknot and their Knotfest brand.The long-running heavy metal band are said to be bringing their self-curated Knotfest festival brand and media site “into the metaverse” with the partnership, which they first teased last week.Establishing “a one-of-a-kind meeting place for heavy music culture in the metaverse”, KNOTVERSE will host an array of Web3 experiences such as unique NFTs, generative collections, metaverse concerts, gaming, fan and festival experiences, unique collaborations, merchandise, new music and real-life events.Set to be known as KNOTVERSE LANDS within The Sandbox‘s virtual world, Slipknot’s dedicated area will inherit Knotfest’s “dark carnival theme and integrate more than 20 years of Slipknot themes and imagery”.The team behind The Sandbox, which is described in a press release as “part-virtual real estate, part-amusement park”, will work closely with Slipknot to bring these ‘Lands’ to life within the game’s shared digital space. Snoop Dogg, Adidas and The Walking Dead are among the artists and brands to have already established partnerships with The Sandbox.Speaking about the partnership, Slipknot’s M.

EXCLUSIVE: The 2022 CMT Music Awards have added more performers to its inaugural broadcast on CBS.

Snoop Dogg has gone meta.

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorYuga Labs, the company that created the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, has raised $450 million in funding that gives it a post-money valuation of $4 billion, the company announced.The round was led by venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z crypto fund. Other investors joining the round included game studio Animoca Brands and its subsidiary The Sandbox; investment firms LionTree, Sound Ventures and Thrive Capital; and crypto players FTX and MoonPay.The company said it will use the funds to “scale its rapidly growing team, attract the best talent across creative, engineering and operations functions, and for joint ventures and partnerships it has planned.” On Friday, the company teased a new metaverse project, dubbed Otherside, designed to integrate avatars from other NFT projects.

Chris Willman Music WriterSandbox Entertainment president-CEO Jason Owen, one of Nashville’s top management figures, has signed a deal with Sony Music Entertainment’s Premium Content Division to produce long-form film, television and digital projects, with the “definitive” June Carter Cash documentary among the first of their collaborations to be announced.The companies say that over a period of years they plan to develop “a library of projects that tell the stories of music, history, and culture set in the South” — very familiar stomping ground for Owen, a leading figure in Nashville’s music industry who currently helps guide the careers of Kacey Musgraves, Dan + Shay, Little Big Town, Faith Hill and Kelsea Ballerini. The June Carter Cash doc will combine interviews with family members with archival footage culled from “unprecedented access to the Cash estate,” much of it, of course, related to her husband Johnny Cash or her lineage before that as part of the 20th century’s first family of country music.

DEALSHarbourView Equity Partners has acquired the publishing catalogue of Luis Fonsi. “This remarkable acquisition grounds us firmly in our mission to support creators and maximise value for all and is a fantastic addition to our existing portfolio of iconic intellectual property”, says founder Sherrese Clarke Soares.Warner Music has partnered with The Sandbox to build a music-themed world on the gaming platform. “As a first-mover, Warner Music has secured the equivalent of beachfront property in the metaverse”, says Oana Ruxandra, Chief Digital Officer at Warner Music.

Chris Willman Music WriterWhen contemporary Nashville artists and songwriters talk about perfect modern country songs, many of them wind up circling around one in particular: the Miranda Lambert-sung “The House That Built Me.” The co-writer of that and other classics over the last few decades, Tom Douglas, is the narrator and subject of a film, “Love, Tom,” just announced as coming out exclusively via the Paramount Plus streaming service on Feb. 24.A trailer for the project has the world-class songwriter appearing in a variety of Nashville locales, including the Ryman Auditorium, the Shelby Street Bridge downtown, a truck and a front porch, as he offers narration derived from a well-remembered, inspirational acceptance speech he gave upon being inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2014.

EXCLUSIVE: Burgeoning documentary production company Sandbox Films has hired Patrick Hurley to fill the newly created position of Distribution Producer, also announcing today that it has launched construction on a new headquarters in New York City.

CNBC report details that since Facebook announced that it would be making the move towards the metaverse, prices of virtual reality plots have shot up by 500 per cent in the last few months.According to the report, the Toronto-based company Tokens.com, has dropped $2.5million USD (£1.84million GBP) on a patch of virtual land in Decentraland – a metaverse based around crypto with its own currency.“The metaverse is the next iteration of social media,” said Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Tokens.com, which invests in NFTs and metaverse real estate. “You can go to a carnival, you can go to a music concert, you can go to a museum.”Meanwhile, another virtual real estate development company, Republic Realm, also spent $4.3million USD (£3.1million GBP) buying a plot of land in Atari’s The Sandbox metaverse.The metaverse refers to 3D virtual worlds based on the idea of a new way of social interaction.

EXCLUSIVE: Led by Michael Cho and Tim Lee, Olive Hill Media has joined Sandbox Films and Impact Partners to support the Penny Lane helmed documentary entitled Confessions of A Good Samaritan.  Olive Hill Media past projects include Hulu’s SXSW 2021 title We Work: Or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, MGM Studio’s Cannes 2021 title Flag Day, and Tribeca 2021 title Stockholm Syndrome among others coming down the pipeline. 

NFT collector has spent $450,000 (£339,837) for a plot of virtual land to be Snoop Dogg‘s neighbour in the rapper’s new interactive world.‘Snoopverse’ is a digital community that resides within The Sandbox, an Ethereum-based platform for creating and monetising online hangout spaces and gaming experiences.By being Snoop’s virtual neighbour, fans will be given access to exclusive, members-only parties at a digital replica of his California mansion – which is currently still being

No one seems more determined to will their franchise into being than Ivan Reitman and his Ghost Corps. company.

Jennifer Yuma editorSundance Institute and Sandbox Films announced 12 filmmakers who will be in the next batch to receive support for their projects, along with eight films selected to receive unrestricted and non-recoupable grants totaling $255,000, through the Sandbox Fund.The Sandbox Fund aims to elevate the voices of independent artists working in the realm of science and nonfiction storytelling as they produce and promote work and discourse the highlights that overlap science and art in

positively freaking out on Twitter after, calling it “hilariously violent and heartfelt,” an “epic all-out war story,” “weird and wonderful,” and “complete mayhem” with real “emotional stakes.”The screening was followed up with a live Q&A with the director and Gunn addressed being given free rein to play inside the DC sandbox of characters and take chances.“I mean, the amount of film directors or more specifically writer/directors, writers, or directors who have been able to come and play in a

Todd Spangler NY Digital EditorIn a move with big implications for digital advertising, Google is pushing back its plan to kill off third-party cookies — which many advertisers use to track ads — in its Chrome web browser until starting in mid-2023.Originally, Google had planned to phase out cookies in Chrome by early 2022, as part of an initiative it has dubbed Privacy Sandbox.The delay is related to “our engagement with the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)” — the

Fox is getting further into the country music scene. The network has handed a series order to Monarch, formerly known as the Untitled Country Music Dynasty drama, from Melissa London Hilfers.

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorSolomon Sounds, ne Solomon Sobande, the former manager of the late rapper and songwriter XXXTentacion, has joined Capitol Records as senior vice president of A&R, reporting to Capitol Music Group (CMG) chairman and CEO Jeff Vaughn. Sounds is tasked with signing and develop artists for the company’s flagship label.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and Media“Fire of Love,” a new feature-length documentary from “The Last Season’s” Sara Dosa, will examine the love story between two intrepid scientists who died in a volcanic explosion.The film will be co-produced by Sandbox Films, the company behind Werner Herzog’s “Fireball” and the recent Sundance winner “All Light, Everywhere,” as well as producer Ina Fichman’s Intuitive Pictures (“The Oslo Diaries”) and producer Shane Boris’s Cottage M (“Stray”).

Eddie Huang in the final moments of our conversation. The disclaimer is unanticipated if completely unnecessary, considering Huang, a restaurateur-turned-memoirist-turned-culture critic-turned-filmmaker, has been outspoken about what's important to him his entire career, but never solely to provoke.Sure, his reaction to, the ABC series inspired by his memoir about growing up the child of Taiwanese immigrants, caused its fair share of hubbub.

Also Read: Why 'Fireball' Producer Sandbox Films Doesn't Need Talking Heads to Make Smart Science DocumentariesThis is Anthony’s second feature following 2017’s “Rat Film” that was nominated for a Gotham Award and uses a rat problem in Baltimore in order to examine the history of the city.The producers on “All Lights, Everywhere” are Riel Roch-Decter and Sebastian Pardo for Memory, and Jonna McKone. It is executive produced by Greg Boustead and Jessica Harrop for Sandbox Films.

Also Read: Why 'Fireball' Producer Sandbox Films Doesn't Need Talking Heads to Make Smart Science Documentaries“Fireball” is a visually stunning, globe-trotting documentary that takes both Herzog and Oppenheimer all the way from the Northern parts of Scandinavia to Antarctica, as well as to India and the Caribbean.

Jimmy Kimmel would not recommend taking medical advice from Adam Carolla.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaSandbox Films, a new production company that will back documentary films about scientific inquiry, is launching at the Toronto Intl.