Audiovisual Production

FEELY, Mont.—Helen Mirren had her shoes off and her feet propped close to a hissing propane heater. With co-stars Harrison Ford and Timothy Dalton she was huddled in a nook of a hollow building, a film set that looked like a stately stone-and-timber lodge on a snowy hill outside Butte, Mont. The actors were keeping warm while running dialogue for an outdoor scene they had tried in vain to shoot two days earlier, when subzero temperatures made it impossible for them to enunciate their…

The two stars of the 1968 version of “Romeo and Juliet,” directed by Franco Zeffirelli, have sued Paramount Pictures for more than $500 million, alleging they were sexually exploited during a nude scene in the film when they were teenagers. Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet, was 15 years old when the movie was filmed and Leonard Whiting, who played Romeo, was 16. Both are now in their 70s and…

Bob Iger had been out of Walt Disney Co. DIS -0.45% for nearly a year, but as most people around him knew, he had never really let go. Acting almost as a shadow CEO, he had undermined his successor and provided an ear for unhappy Disney executives, some of whom he had mentored. When the call to return as chief executive came, it was from someone on his old team. Mr. Iger later told people he had an inkling of how the script would go. For nearly three…

An advertising slowdown, economic worries and strains of the shift to streaming have many major media companies in cost-cutting and layoff mode.News organizations, TV networks, movie and television studios, and entertainment giants laid off hundreds of workers over the past week alone, including Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s WBD -0.69% CNN and Paramount Global PARA 1.04% ‘s television-production units. The moves come…

A major outside shareholder in News Corp NWSA 2.00% and Fox Corp. FOX 0.97% opposes a plan by Rupert Murdoch to recombine the companies and wants other alternatives considered, including a breakup of News Corp.Independent Franchise Partners, a London-based investment firm and one of the largest non-Murdoch holders of both News Corp and Fox, said it told a special committee of News Corp’s…

Walt Disney Co. DIS -1.40% has brought back the CEO responsible for its pivot to streaming. As he returns, Robert Iger has to navigate a competitive landscape that is far more challenging than when he left less than three years ago.Investors say Mr. Iger is facing the same predicament as other leaders of large entertainment conglomerates: finding ways to grow and improve the streaming unit’s profitability without cannibalizing its…

“We’re not concerned at all about creating any confusion,” he said in an interview with CNBC later that afternoon. Less than a month later, the two men were at odds over Mr. Chapek’s plan to lay off tens of thousands of workers at Disney’s theme parks as Covid-19 hit, say people familiar with the men. Soon after that, Mr. Iger announced he was taking a more active role because of the pandemic, leaving Mr. Chapek to feel as though he had been undermined from the start, according to people familiar with the…

The top two entertainment executives at CBS are leaving as part of a broader restructuring at the network and its parent company, Paramount Global. PARA -6.69% CBS’s head of entertainment, Kelly Kahl, and his top lieutenant, Thom Sherman, will leave their posts at the end of the year, the company said. Amy Reisenbach, an executive vice president at CBS Entertainment, will assume Mr. Kahl’s position. Ms.…

The Black Panther has retaken the throne at the box office.“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” the long-awaited superhero sequel from Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios, grossed $180 million in North America and $150 million in overseas markets in its opening weekend, the second-best theatrical debut of the year and 13th-highest opening weekend gross of all time. Based on the Marvel Comics stories set in the fictional African kingdom of Wakanda, the first “Black Panther” movie grossed $202 million domestically in its opening…

FanDuel is the market-share leader in online sports betting in the U.S. Photo: Richard B. Levine/Zuma Press…