Bryan Lourd Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

walk around just oozing charm and charisma, right? Like, that part's not news. But imagine if George Clooney was coming at you with all of that movie star dazzle while actually falling in love with you. Maybe it's just the way he tells the story, but Clooney's description of meeting his future wife, , on The Drew Barrymore Show has everyone, Drew Barrymore included, desperately clutching at their hearts to keep from swooning. After first acknowledging that he was immediately smitten with Amal as soon as he saw her, Clooney got to the really adorable stuff.

Jack Dunn CAA appointed Thursday nine managing directors and new membership for its agency board. The managing directors will work on a wide range of strategic and operation matters while the agency board will focus on organization, dealmaking, sustained innovation and development and training.

Creative Artists Agency has reintroduced managing directors, naming nine today, and announced a big expansion of its agency board as its leadership structure evolves.

Bill Maher tapes his show, which means news that breaks on Friday is usually not mentioned.

Bill Maher is leaving his agency.

CAA‘s headquarters in Century City has been evacuated after a threatening phone call was made to the uber-agency Thursday, prompting the quick exit of all personnel from the building at 2000 Avenue of the Stars.

CAA reminded its staff about its common sense social media policy.

Maha Dakhil, who was Co-Head of Motion Pictures at CAA, has stepped down from leadership and resigned from the agency’s internal board after her controversial comments on Israel’s response to the Hamas terror attacks.

The hottest place to be this weekend in Los Angeles was the Brandi Carlile & Friends concert at the Hollywood Bowl!

Bryan Lourd shot back at eyebrow-raising comments by longtime rival agency CEO Ari Emanuel on Thursday, regarding recent litigation brought on to CAA by actress Julia Ormond. Emanuel, CEO of the parent company to WME, attended Bloomberg’s Screentime conference this week and called for Lourd and his longtime partner Kevin Huvane to “take a leave of absence” amid a lawsuit from Ormond. That suit charges The Walt Disney Company and CAA with compliance in abuse Ormond says she suffered at the hands of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein.

Ari Emanuel took some shots during his latest public appearance.

CAA had been silent all day Wednesday since Julia Ormond named the uber-agency and Disney in her sexual battery lawsuit against the imprisoned Harvey Weinstein, but tonight the Bryan Lourd-led company is calling its inclusion in the calling the action “baseless,”

Elizabeth Wagmeister Chief Correspondent Julia Ormond, the English actress best known for her roles in ’90s films such as “Legends of the Fall,” “First Knight” and “Smilla’s Sense of Snow,” is suing Harvey Weinstein for sexual battery. Ormond is additionally suing CAA, The Walt Disney Company and Miramax.

Variety first reported.A lawsuit was filed on Wednesday morning in the New York Supreme Court.The disgraced movie producer — who is currently serving a 23-year sentence in jail for rape — allegedly sexually assaulted Ormond in 1995 after a business dinner.The “Sabrina” star was reportedly “lured” into a private room with Weinstein, who asked her to give him “a massage, climbed on top of her, masturbated and forced her to give him oral sex.”Ormond then told her agents at CAA, Bryan Lourd and Kevin Huvane, about the incident that transpired.The court docs state that the men advised against speaking out and did not give her their protection.The “Curious Case of Benjamin Button” star is suing the talent company for negligence and breach of fiduciary duty.The Walt Disney Company was the parent corporation that purchased Miramax — the film production office that Weinstein and his brother Bob founded in 1979 — in the 1990s.Ormond is coming at the two brands for negligent supervision and retention.“Our client has suffered tremendously both personally and professionally due to the assault by Harvey Weinstein, and the failure from Disney, Miramax and CAA to prevent it and to appropriately respond when she reported what happened,” Ormond’s attorneys said in a statement.

UPDATED with deal closing: CAA and Artémis on Monday said that its deal for Artemis to acquire a majority stake in CAA has officially closed.

EXCLUSIVE: The Republican contenders for his old job were debating up at the Reagan Library in Simi Valleylast night, but today Barack Obama was in town seeking more higher ground.

“It’s the Alex Mahon show,” was how one seasoned British TV executive characterized the industry’s biennial gathering in Cambridge, chaired by the Channel 4 CEO. 

K.J. Yossman Emma Thompson rallied for creatives on Thursday, saying she finds the word “content” offensive. “I think the relationship between the executives and the creative branch just has to be much, much closer,” she said during an in-conversation with CAA boss Bryan Lourd at the Royal Television Society conference in Cambridge on Thursday afternoon.

EXCLUSIVE: “The UK’s role in the media multiverse” will take up plenty of airtime at the RTS Cambridge Convention, according to Theresa Wise, as the great-and-the-good of the TV industry prepare to gather for the biannual get-together.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Anna Wintour was running over an hour late. It was an anomaly for the regimented and exalted editor of Vogue, who typically works through lunch but dined that day with her old friend Bruce Bozzi. Tucked away at the Italian spot Via Carota in New York’s West Village, she was unusually candid about showing up for personal relationships while creatively navigating Condé Nast. They weren’t alone.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer A studio head once told me that CAA’s top three leaders – Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane and Richard Lovett – had claws beneath their velvet gloves. It was a backhanded compliment, as the CEO was praising the trio’s devotion to their incredibly famous clients while also bemoaning their hard-driving negotiating style.

Creative Artists Agency has a new majority owner in French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault. After months of negotiations. Artémis, the Pinault family’s investment company, has agreed to acquire the majority stake in CAA that was previously held by global investment firm TPG.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault has completed his acquisition of a majority stake in Creative Artists Agency. Through his family investment company Artemis, Pinault replaces private equity player TPG as the primary holder of one of Hollywood’s superpower talent agencies.

EXCLUSIVE: It’s a scorching 90 degrees in Rome at the end of July, but producer Lorenzo Mieli isn’t breaking a sweat.

Naman Ramachandran James Corden and Emma Thompson are among the industry leaders featuring in the speaker lineup of the U.K. Royal Television Society’s annual convention.

James Corden is to give his first industry interview since leaving the Late Late Show and returning to the UK at the RTS Cambridge Convention next month.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer The Minions are about the get the white glove treatment, as Variety has learned that CAA has signed Illumination CEO and prolific animation producer Chris Meledandri as a client. Meledandri, who founded the company and is responsible for two of the four highest-grossing animated franchises of all time (“Despicable Me,” “Ice Age”), will be represented by a team including the agency’s co-chairman Bryan Lourd. Illumination has an exclusive financing and distribution partnership with Universal Pictures, most recently delivering this year’s $1.3 billion baby “Super Mario Bros.” starring Chris Pratt and Anya-Taylor Joy.

“To survive in Hollywood, all you need is an occasional miracle.”

Piers Morgan Added To RTS Cambridge Lineup

Marc Malkin Senior Film Awards, Events & Lifestyle Editor SAG-AFTRA held an informational meeting for about 500 people over Zoom on Monday afternoon. Among those who signed on were actors Lupita Nyong’o, Vanessa Kirby, Melissa McCarthy, Vanessa Hudgens, Lucy Liu,  Laverne Cox, Michael Stuhlbarg, Paul Walter Hauser, Jon Huertas and Josh Pence, according to a source. CAA’s Bryan Lourd, Faith France and Ryan Abboushi also attended, as did UTA’s Kristen Saig and Kris Heller of APA Agency. Publicists included Mara Buxbaum, Jill Fritzo, Luke Windsor, Brianna Smith and Cheryl Maisel. The meeting was led by SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland. The guild shared a one-sheet of talking points for participants. Among the bulleted items on revenue sharing, health care and retirement, online casting platforms and artificial intelligence, the memo states, “Without a transformative change in SAG-AFTRA’s current contract with the AMPTP, the acting profession will no longer be an option for future generations of performers, and actors already working in the industry will need to pursue other careers in order to survive.”

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer SAG-AFTRA has agreed to a last-minute call for federal mediation of its contract, but indicated it will not extend its deadline for deciding whether to go on strike beyond Wednesday at midnight. That would appear to leave relatively little time for a mediator to avert a strike, which could begin as soon as Thursday morning. In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, the union emphasized that “time is running out” and made clear that relations between the two sides have become extremely strained. “The AMPTP has abused our trust and damaged the respect we have for them in this process,” the union said. “We will not be manipulated by this cynical ploy to engineer an extension when the companies have had more than enough time to make a fair deal.”