Posts Tagged ‘Carl Icahn’

Lions Gate Entertainment, which is enjoying a wild ride with its “Saw” franchise and its Emmys for “Mad Men,” announced Friday that it was laying off 8% of its workstaff across the board,including production, television, home entertainment, business affairs and legal.

Out of a workforce of 550, the Santa Monica-based studio eliminated 41 positions. The layoffs should save the company some $10 million annually, out of its $140 million overhead.

The moves may come as a treat to corporate raider Carl Icahn, who recently bought about 9% of the company, which many on Wall Street felt as an overture to an corporate raid on the company. Icahn has said he thought Lions Gate was undervalued and could perform better.

The Los Angeles Times take from reporter Claudia Eller on Lions Gate’s woes is below:

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Dan Cox, on special assignment for FishbowlLA, covering the 2008 Sun Valley Media Conference.

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt stunned the hardened journalist crowd at the Sun Valley Media Conference with an unscheduled 75-minute press conference at which they discussed everything — Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! — and their brethren.

A news conference is unusual for the Sun Valley confab because they don’t often cater to journalists and especially not through lengthy pressers.

So what started as a short sit-down with Schmidt turned into a fascinating ride into the minds of the Google executives. And it may be the only time this week, the journos will be faced with deadlines and a hefty pile of interview info to sift through.

The Google trio were relaxed and somewhat light-hearted about the discussion, but they’re ultra-serious about how they handle business.

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Dan Cox, on special assignment for FishbowlLA, covering the 2008 Sun Valley Media Conference.

All’s quiet on the Western Front for Sun Valley. The conference doesn’t officially start until tomorrow, but hundreds of executives, moguls and their families are dribbling in today. A conference shuttle driver said they’re expecting 395 people on the hotel grounds, which is nearly double the number from years past.

Already the few execs at the conference are buzzing about the LiveNation $70 million deal with Canadian rock band Nickelback, which was announced today.

One Allen & Company employee said he was eager to see an interview by Tom Brokaw, who, in between stints on “Meet the Press,” has been invited back again this year. And Gordon Crawford of Capital Research and Management is reportedly thinking about backing Carl Icahn‘s bid for a Yahoo! deal with Microsoft. Crawford’s company owns 16.3% of Yahoo! Crawford is a regular the Sun Valley soiree.

HowStuffWorks.com was acquired by Discovery for $250 million, and is supposed to be “quickly incorporated into programming”. Owners of the site include investor Carl Icahn, and was founded in 1998 by the aptly named Marshall Brain.

Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment is pitching Hitch as a sitcom, but without Smith on camera, only as EP.

HEROES will soon become a graphic novel, written by creator Tim Kring along with Michael Turner and Phil Jimenez. The book is expected out in the UK on November 23rd.

TV Guide launches Hollywood 411, a one-hour daily entertainment news magazine show, in January, and it’s not supposed to be related to the trade directory of the same name. The show will be hosted by Madison Michele and cover entertainment and celebrity news from TV, film and music. Jerry Burke is the EP.

Benjamin Bratt joins ABC’s The Cleaner, to star as a guy who after hitting rock bottom from his addictions, makes a deal with God to help himself and others.