Ben Silverman will be leaving his job as co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and Universal Movie Studios to head a new venture with Barry Diller’s IAC/InterActiveCorp focusing on producing and distributing multimedia content.
NBC named Jeff Gaspin, president and chief operating officer of the company’s cable entertainment group, to replace him. Gaspin also will keep his current duties as the new chairman of NBC Universal’s television entertainment unit.
IAC said Monday it is forming a new production company led by Silverman that will look to bring advertisers into further into the development process on new media products.
In an interview, Silverman said the company will develop content and marketing across every medium, “from Twitter to television.” He said the idea is to break out of the old media paradigm that centered on the 30-second TV spot.
“Attention is the toughest commodity to harness,” he said. “To get people’s attention you have to disrupt, you have to make things part of the culture, not just part of the marketing.”
IAC hopes to take advantage of Silverman’s broad media experience in the new venture.
He helped produce the “The Office” and the reality series “The Biggest Loser.” Before joining NBC, he had launched his own independent production company, Reveille.
In a statement, Diller, IAC’s chairman and chief executive, called the new company, “a next generation enterprise that bridges the gap between traditional television and the Internet.”
IAC said it will provide an undisclosed amount of initial capital but hopes to spin the venture off into a separate entity. The company launches formally in September.
IAC said Silverman, who started as co-chairman of NBC in June 2007, will continue to have a relationship with the network through its new company. He plans to stay on for the next few weeks to help with the transition.
Review: Director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17” Starring Robert Pattinson
So you think YOUR job is bad?
Sorry if we seem to be lacking empathy here. But however crummy you think your 9-5 routine is, it'll never be as bad as Robert Pattinson's in Bong Joon Ho's "Mickey 17" — nor will any job, on Earth or any planet, approach this level of misery.
Mickey, you see, is an "Expendable," and by this we don't mean he's a cast member in yet another sequel to Sylvester Stallone's tired band of mercenaries ("Expend17ables"?). No, even worse! He's literally expendable, in that his job description requires that he die, over and over, in the worst possible ways, only to be "reprinted" once again as the next Mickey.
And from here stems the good news, besides the excellent Pattinson, whom we hope got hazard pay, about Bong's hotly anticipated follow-up to "Parasite." There's creativity to spare, and much of it surrounds the ways he finds for his lead character to expire — again and again.
The bad news, besides, well, all the death, is that much of this film devolves into narrative chaos, bloat and excess. In so many ways, the always inventive Bong just doesn't know where to stop. It hardly seems a surprise that the sci-fi novel, by Edward Ashton, he's adapting here is called "Mickey7" — Bong decided to add 10 more Mickeys.
The first act, though, is crackling. We begin with Mickey lying alone at the bottom of a crevasse, having barely survived a fall. It is the year 2058, and he's part of a colonizing expedition from Earth to a far-off planet. He's surely about to die. In fact, the outcome is so expected that his friend Timo (Steven Yeun), staring down the crevasse, asks casually: "Haven't you died yet?"
How did Mickey get here? We flash back to Earth, where Mickey and Timo ran afoul of a villainous loan... Read More