President Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

NewsNation is making changes to its top leadership, with Michael Corn becoming president of programming and specials and Cherie Grzech upped to president and managing editor of news and politics.

Former President Donald Trump was found in contempt of court and fined $9,000 today for violating a judge’s partial gag order.

Fox News is refusing to pull down sexually explicit images of Hunter Biden after his attorneys claimed that their publication was part of a conspiracy to defame their client.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The three Paramount Global executives installed to run the company after Bob Bakish was removed as CEO sought to reassure employees that they have a long-term strategy. On Monday, Paramount Global said Bakish was stepping down as CEO and leaving the board. In his place, the company established an “Office of the CEO” committee led by three divisional heads: George Cheeks, president and CEO of CBS; Chris McCarthy, president and CEO, Showtime/MTV Entertainment Studios and Paramount Media Networks; and Brian Robbins, president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon.

Kim Kardashian has gone back to blonde!

After trying to reassure Wall Street with their brief opening remarks at the Paramount Global earnings call, the trio executives named to the newly formed Office of the CEO looked to do the same with the company’s employees rattled by the sudden ouster of longtime CEO Bob Bakish amid sale negotiations with Skydance.

Alexandra Jarvis is coming for the Oppenheim Group.

Paramount Global‘s CEO Bob Bakish is out. The executive who has been a presence at several iterations of the company since 1997 will exit, effective immediately. A triumvirate of division heads — Brian Robbins, George Cheeks and Chris McCarthy — will step in to lead the company for now in a new office of the CEO.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Vietnamese French director and screenwriter Tran Anh Hung has been named as president of the jury for the upcoming Shanghai International Film Festival. The festival, which runs June 14 to 23, said that his works “blend the expressions of Eastern and Western cultures, with sensitivity, delicacy, and a romantic style.” His films include: 1992’s “Scent of the Green Papaya”; 1995’s “Cyclo,” starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai; 2009 English-language thriller “I Come With the Rain,” starring Josh Hartnett; and “The Taste of Things,” which earned him the best director prize at Cannes last year. The jury president role marks a return and a promotion for the director. He was previously on the Shanghai festival’s jury in 2011, when he also screened his “Norwegian Wood.” SM Cinema, the largest exhibitor in the Philippines, is to open giant screen Imax cinemas in three new venues.

Deep Bagchee, a driving force behind the launch of ITVX, is exiting to become President of CNBC International.

Kenneth Huang was known for his particular taste in wine. Whether in his favorite corner of Cut, the Michelin-starred steakhouse at the Beverly Wilshire, or in the Peninsula Shanghai, Huang would summon a bottle of Opus One to the table. He would tell guests that he had a private reserve of the Napa Valley vineyard’s 2011 vintage, which retails for up to $2,000 a case. Someone who regularly dined with the financier says she drank so much Opus One that she got sick of the bourgeois Bordeaux. 

The Social Network, focusing on the January 6 riots.The screenwriter, who also created The West Wing, won an Oscar for his work on the 2010 drama, which looked at the origins of Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg.Sorkin spoke on a new podcast interview about the January 2021 riots, which saw supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump storm the Capitol building in Washington D.C.

Ellise Shafer The full Cannes Film Festival competition jury has been revealed. Joining president Greta Gerwig to award this year’s Palme d’Or will be “Killers of the Flower Moon” Oscar nominee Lily Gladstone; “The Three Musketeers” star Eva Green; “Lupin” lead Omar Sy; Ebru Ceylan, who co-wrote the 2014 Palme d’Or winner “Winter Sleep”; director Nadine Labaki, whose “Capernaum” won the Cannes jury prize in 2018; director Juan Antonio Bayona, whose latest film “Society of the Snow” was Oscar-nominated for best international feature; Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, who will next appear in Pablo Larraìn’s “Maria” alongside Angelina Jolie; and director Kore-eda Hirokazu, director of the 2018 Palme d’Or winner “Shoplifters.” The competition lineup for the upcoming festival includes “All We Imagine as Light” by Payal Kapadia; Sean Baker’s “Anora”; Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice” from Ali Abbasi; Andrea Arnold’s “Bird,” starring Barry Keoghan and Franz Rogowski; “Caught by the Tides” by Jia Zhang-Ke; Jacques Audiard’s “Emilia Perez” with Zoe Saldaña and Selena Gomez; “The Girl With the Needle” by Magnus von Horn; Miguel Gomes’ “Grand Tour,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Kinds of Kindness,” starring “Poor Things” actors Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe; “Beating Hearts” by Gilles Lellouche; “Limonov: The Ballad” by Kirill Serebrennikov; “Marcello Mio” by Christophe Honoré; Francis Ford Coppola’s epic passion project “Megalopolis,” starring Adam Driver; “Motel Destino” by Karim Aïnouz; Paul Schrader’s “Oh, Canada,” led by Richard Gere and Jacob Elordi; Paolo Sorrentino’s “Parthenope” with Gary Oldman; David Cronenberg’s “The Shrouds”; Coralie Fargeat’s body horror “The Substance”; and “Wild Diamond” from Agathe Riedinger.

Donald Trump’s reaction to last night’s White House Correspondents Dinner shows the much-indicted ex-POTUS still sucks at being the butt of a joke.

Colin Jost, the featured entertainer at this year’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, went all in on Donald Trump and his legal troubles, got in a few zingers about Joe Biden’s age and finished his gig by telling a long story of how the president is a “decent” man.

Joe Biden got in a few zingers at his rival Donald Trump, but he devoted a large part of his remarks to the serious threat to democracy.

Michaela Zee Colin Jost, the co-lead of “Saturday Night Live’s” long-running “Weekend Update,” is hosting the 2024 White House Correspondents Dinner Saturday night in Washington, D.C. The annual event, which typically consists of the night’s comedian roasting powerful political figures and various media outlets, is expected to feature an election-year roast from President Joe Biden.

Jack Dunn Gayle Nachlis, longtime agent at William Morris Agency and former executive director at Women in Film, has died. She was 72. Nachlis died April 21 in her home surrounded by family after a battle with throat cancer, according to Women in Film.

Ben Croll Recently launched media institute Agog is the latest organization to recognize XR (extended reality technology including VR) as a tool for empathy and an accelerator for social change. Co-founded by climate journalist Chip Giller and Wendy Schmidt, philanthropist, investor and Schmidt Family Foundation president, the new initiative will act as a hub, plugging producers into the non-profit sector, supporting XR creators and educational projects, and acting on the same beliefs that have animated much of this year’s NewImages presentations – that new media exposure might play a seismic role in shaping the wider world.

What in the David Eason nonsense is this?!

Cynthia Littleton Business Editor IATSE negotiators are bracing for the next phase of contract negotiations with Hollywood’s major studios and streamers after the conclusion this week of talks with all 13 West Coast local union on the craft-specific aspects of a new master contract. On Monday, IATSE and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers will shift the focus of negotiations to wages, residuals, working conditions and the use of artificial intelligence in production.

President Joe Biden is opening up about his mental state following the deaths of his wife Neilia and their infant daughter.

President Joe Biden wasn’t tossing out too many laugh lines Friday during his live appearance on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show, but maybe he was saving them for his comedian-in-chief role at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday.

Steven Spielberg has made no secret of his support for Joe Biden’s reelection, and now the Oscar winner is rolling up his shirt sleeves for the team.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Bob Bakish may be out at Paramount Global before any sale or merger deal for the media company is completed. The board of directors of Paramount Global, including controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, have discussed a plan to oust Bakish as CEO, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing anonymous sources. Instead, the company would form an “Office of the CEO” comprising Paramount Global’s division heads to run operations on an interim basis, per the report.

There were so many celebrities in attendance at the Tiffany & Co. event last night and we have photos of all the A-List stars.

Jack Dunn “Rosemary’s Baby” prequel “Apartment 7A,” starring Julia Garner and directed by Natalie Erika James, will premiere exclusively on Paramount+ ahead of the Halloween season. Roman Polanski’s 1968 horror classic was produced by Paramount, starring Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes as a young couple who are trying to start a family but find themselves tormented by strange neighbors.

Kim Kardashian is back in the White House!

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, had a compensation package worth $35.47 million in 2023, as he saw his pay rise 11% from the year prior. Roberts, who oversees the cable giant and NBCUniversal, last year had a salary of $2.5 million, stock awards worth $15 million, stock options worth $9.2 million and a $8.55 million cash incentive bonus. In 2022, his compensation totaled about $32.1 million.

TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance has said that it has no intention of selling the business, and would rather see the platform shut down.The news comes after the US passed a law forcing the company to sell the hugely popular social media platform, or see the app banned in America.The sell-or-ban measure was issued into law by US President Joe Biden earlier this week (April 24), following a long-running dispute over claims that the company’s ownership structure could allow the Chinese government to gain access to the data of its millions of American users.To date, over 30 American states, Canada, and the European Union have separately banned the app from use on government-owned devices over concerns it could be a security risk. India banned the app nationwide in January 2021, while Taiwan and Afghanistan did the same in 2022.The bill was first brought up last month, when the US House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 24 to 16 to give President Joe Biden the power to enforce a ban on the social media app over concerns that the app is a national security threat and a Chinese espionage tool.This week’s ruling was voted for with an overwhelming majority of 79 to 18, and was signed by President Joe Biden.