Month: February 2022

Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who accused the royal of sexual abuse, have reached an out-of-court settlement. According to court documents filed Tuesday, Andrew will donate funds to Giuffre's charity in support of victims of sexual assault. The amount of the settlement and donation was not disclosed. Giuffre accused Prince Andrew of assaulting her on three separate occasions when she was 17, which Prince Andrew has denied. In a lawsuit filed in New York in 2021, Giuffre said the assault was made possible by the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. She alleges Epstein trafficked her to Prince Andrew.  Prince Andrew claims to have no recollection of meeting Giuffre. The two, however, were photographed together when Giuffre was a teenager. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epst...

ViacomCBS will change its corporate name to Paramount as of Feb. 16, calling the move an effort to adopt “an iconic global name” to reflect the conglomerate’s increasingly worldwide focus. The company’s shares will trade on the NASDAQ index under the ticker symbol PARA (for Class B common shares), PARAA (for Class A common), and PARAP (for Class A preferred). The moniker makeover was announced Tuesday by ViacomCBS chair Shari Redstone and president-CEO Bob Bakish in a memo to staffers. The news came the same day that ViacomCBS is hosting a nearly three-hour investor presentation to tout its global streaming strategy and plans for expanding the Paramount Plus streaming service and other businesses in the U.S. and abroad. CBS is a foundational name in broadcasting — the C...

EXCLUSIVE: Even though the second film doesn’t bow until the spring, Paramount Pictures and Sega Corp are moving fast to build on their growing Sonic the Hedgehog universe with projects in both the film and TV realms. Paramount and Sega have commenced development on a third feature film installment to the franchise, while Sega and Paramount+ are developing the first-ever original live-action Sonic series, to launch in 2023. It will feature the character Knuckles, with Idris Elba returning to voice the role after it debuts in the sequel movie that bows April 8. The announcement was made during Tuesday’s Viacom Investor Event where Brian Robbins, President and CEO, Paramount Pictures & Nickelodeon; Chief Content Officer, Movies, Kids & Family – Paramount+, delivered the n...

The amount and details of the settlement were not disclosed in a court filing on Tuesday. Andrew was sued in August by Virginia Giuffre, who said she was recruited as a teenager by Epstein and his longtime paramour, Ghislaine Maxwell, in Palm Beach, Fla., where Epstein maintained a villa residence. She alleged that the couple introduced her to Andrew, who was a friend of theirs. Story continues below advertisement Giuffre, now a 38-year-old mother living in Australia, alleged that she was forced to have sexual encounters with Andrew in New York, in London and on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean in the early 2000s, when she was 17. The settlement puts to rest a legal drama centered on one of the most famous people to have had social ties to Epstein, a multimillionaire investo...