Latest in Sean Parker

After a distinguished run as the visual effects house that brought to life Gollum, King Kong and other incredible creatures for Peter Jackson's Middle Earth films and other film spectacles including James Cameron's Avatar sequels and Avengers: Endgame, Weta Digital is making a major expansion. Jackson and Fran Walsh's…

Four years ago, the in-home day and date venture Screening Room polarized exhibitors and studios even as its backers and superstar director/shareholders promised windfalls as high as $8 billion in annual revenue to be split between movie makers and exhibitors from the affluent but homebound 25-39 demo. The disruptive…

BREAKING: Sean Parker has become a minority equity investor in Weta Digital, the Wellington, New Zealand-based company formed by Peter Jackson and led by Senior Visual Effects Supervisor Joe Letteri that does the visual effects for some of the biggest event pictures being made by Hollywood studios, including Avatar…

Plaxo, a digital address-book organizer that presaged social networking in the early 2000s, has been shut down by Comcast. In a message on its home page, Plaxo bid a straightforward farewell, saying no new accounts can be created and service will wind down on Dec. 31. Consumer data will be purged beginning on Jan. 1…

EXCLUSIVE: California and Hollywood have been very good to Hillary Clinton and her run for the White House this year – which is why the former First Lady is coming back to L.A. for another deep pocket fundraiser. The presumptive Democratic nominee will be feted at Sean Parker and wife Alexandra's home on June 28, I've…

What does a master disruptor like Peter Jackson do after he stares down the possibility of failure that would have bankrupted a studio, and instead finds that gambling on his vision for JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth bore six blockbuster films that grossed nearly $6 billion, won 17 Oscars and left behind a pile of VFX, 3D…

Sean Parker is the tech billionaire behind Napster and a founding partner of Facebook who recently turned his attention to disrupting the movie biz with The Screening Room. Now he has a new frontier in his sights: cancer. Parker said today he is donating $250 million to six cancer centers in the U.S. to fund immune…

The International Union of Cinemas, a European org repping exhibitors across 36 territories has issued a statement this morning against Sean Parker and Prem Akkaraju’s Screening Room concept. The International Union of Cinemas (UNIC), the European trade body representing cinema associations and key operators from…

Adding their voices to the growing chorus of disapproval, the UK’s Cinema Association Friday released a statement blasting Sean Parker’s planned home movie service The Screening Room as “a massive risk” and “an unprecedented opportunity for film piracy.” The group, which reps more than 90% of the British exhibs…

Oscar-winning Imagine Entertainment partners Ron Howard and Brian Grazer have issued the following statement in favor of the Screening Room, Sean Parker and Prem Akkaraju’s day-and-date streaming concept. Their response comes a little more than 24 hours after Peter Jackson expressed his vocal support of the proposed…

EXCLUSIVE: The roster of filmmakers who’ve become shareholders and advocates to Sean Parker and Prem Akkaraju is expanding. I’m told that  Martin Scorsese, Taylor Hackford, Frank Marshall and even more can be added to a reported list that includes Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, JJ Abrams and Imagine’s Ron Howard and…

Today our sister publication Variety reported on the Screening Room, a new first-run movie service being pitched around town by Napster co-founder and former Facebook president Sean Parker. His twist on an old idea that has been thwarted before by exhibitors would be that major studio releases could be accessed via…