Director and writer Courtney Hoffman has come to Chelsea Pictures for U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content. Launching off of a lauded career in costume design working with director Quentin Tarantino on The Hateful Eight and Edgar Wright on Baby Driver, Hoffman wrote and directed her debut short, The Good Time Girls, a Western starring Laura Dern which garnered wide acclaim. Along with her inaugural advertising work directing the first ever global campaign of three rich visual TV spots for WhatsApp by Meta, Hoffman showcases her dedication to female-forward, highly creative and visually bold stories.
“I am so thrilled to be joining the team at Chelsea Pictures, founded and run by creative and powerful women I admire,” Hoffman remarked. “I’m looking forward to creating visual, narrative and dynamic commercial work together for many years to come.”
Coming up in costume design, Hoffman worked on over 50 films, TV shows and commercials, collaborating with prolific creators such as Terrence Malick, Steven Soderbergh and Tim Burton to name a few. She also styled dozens of large campaigns; her last spot as a designer was Alma Ha’rel’s “Thank you Mom” for P&G. Hoffman translates her on-set experience into a flawless precision of vision while adding a dash of her contagious wit. In a fun twist, her former career is immortalized on screen as she portrays the costume designer in a scene with Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood.
Prior to joining Chelsea, Hoffman had been repped by RadicalMedia in the U.S. advertising market.
Chelsea U.S .VP/executive producer Donna Portaro, said, “Courtney is the full package…Wonderful with talent direction, wonderful with story, a fresh visual take on each project she touches… and really collaborative to work with! I’m so happy to be working with her again!”
In addition to her commercial work, Hoffman has experience directing music videos, including a NYT-selected clip for Margo Price. In television, Hoffman is currently creating two shows: Kentucky Blaze, a mother-daughter pot comedy inspired by Miley and Tish Cyrus for Peacock; and Drama Majors, a mental health mystery (developed for Sony) inspired by her NYU Tisch college friends.
Taking on the film world, Hoffman’s female driven ‘70s trucker and moonshine action comedy, The Sisters of Scott County, is in development with JJ Abrams’ Bad Robot and is currently casting.
Hoffman is repped by Lief in the U.K. and EU.
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads — essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More