Oceana Studios, a global entertainment company specializing in films and content production, has officially opened movie and financing divisions. The first major project is the just announced feature Big Gold Brick starring Andy Garcia, Emory Cohen, Oscar Isaac, Lucy Hale and Megan Fox. Sawaf is working as a producer on the movie and Oceana Studios is a financier on the film, which will be directed by Brian Pestos.
“Oceana is about producing and financing films that move audiences around the world,” said producer/director/writer Danny Sawaf, founder of Oceana. According to Sawaf, in addition to Big Gold Brick, Oceana Studios has four more features in development. “The game plan for the studio is to produce five to six films per year,” related Sawaf. “The plan is to build Oceana Studios as a brand itself, where audiences flock to see our releases.” Films in development include Robbery 101, a stylized heist comedy film from writer Scott Reynolds, directors Cary Murnion and Jon Milott, and producer Nick Moceri; La Vida Coca, a gangster anthology consisting of five short films to be directed by five different directors on the Oceana Studios roster; and Open Waters, a thriller written and directed by Sikandar Sidhu about a celebrity actor getting abducted by a fanatical director. Also being produced is an animated feature directed by Lubomir Arsov.
Oceana wants to be a complete studio, said Sawaf. To this end his company recently acquired a percentage of Hanzo Films, an award-winning commercial production house in Dubai. Oceana is also close to partnering with select post houses in both Asia and Europe. “We’ve been strategically forming alliances with companies around the world and our ambitions are much greater than just production and post, we plan to vertically integrate over time,” noted Sawaf.
Oceana’s body of work spans film, TV, commercials and other content forms.
South Korea fines Meta $15 million for illegally collecting information on Facebook users
South Korea's privacy watchdog on Tuesday fined social media company Meta 21.6 billion won ($15 million) for illegally collecting sensitive personal information from Facebook users, including data about their political views and sexual orientation, and sharing it with thousands of advertisers.
It was the latest in a series of penalties against Meta by South Korean authorities in recent years as they increase their scrutiny of how the company, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, handles private information.
Following a four-year investigation, South Korea's Personal Information Protection Commission concluded that Meta unlawfully collected sensitive information about around 980,000 Facebook users, including their religion, political views and whether they were in same-sex unions, from July 2018 to March 2022.
It said the company shared the data with around 4,000 advertisers.
South Korea's privacy law provides strict protection for information related to personal beliefs, political views and sexual behavior, and bars companies from processing or using such data without the specific consent of the person involved.
The commission said Meta amassed sensitive information by analyzing the pages the Facebook users liked or the advertisements they clicked on.
The company categorized ads to identify users interested in themes such as specific religions, same-sex and transgender issues, and issues related to North Korean escapees, said Lee Eun Jung, a director at the commission who led the investigation on Meta.
"While Meta collected this sensitive information and used it for individualized services, they made only vague mentions of this use in their data policy and did not obtain specific consent," Lee said.
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