Publicly traded, Englewood, Colo.-based cable and communications company Liberty Media Corp. has completed its acquisition of Four Media Company (4MC), the Burbank-headquartered, publicly held firm that is parent to several post/visual effects facilities (i.e. Santa Monica-based R!OT; Company 3, Santa Monica; Encore Hollywood; Anderson Video, Universal City, Calif.; 4MC Asia, Singapore)….Actor/director Christopher Reeve has signed with New York-based TAG Pictures for representation as a commercial helmer….Director Joe Chapura has joined Sandbank Films, New York….Venice, Calif.-based Lux Pictures has entered into an agreement with Frontier Pictures, London. Per the deal, Lux will handle Frontier directors Michael Abel, Robert Dowling, Grey Lipley and Aernout Overbeeke in the U.S. Lux’s directorial lineup—including Tom Finerty, April Greiman, Michael Oblowitz, Hugo Pallete and Mitchell Walker—will be repped in the U.K. by Frontier….Animation director Graham Morris has signed with Los Angeles-based Duck Soup Studios for exclusive spot representation….Director Duncan Sharp has come aboard Marina del Rey, Calif.-based spot production house Life of Riley.…Robert Wherry, former managing director and head of East Coast sales for bicoastal HKM Productions, has become a partner in bicoastal Go Film, the shop founded by executive producer Jonathan Weinstein….Tim Cloherty and Peter Klinger have opened Sound of Science, a New York-based music and sound design company….
James Earl Jones, Lauded Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies At 93
James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen — eventually lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, "The Lion King" and Darth Vader — has died. He was 93.
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York's Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.
The pioneering Jones, who was one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors and was given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.
"The need to storytell has always been with us," he told The Associated Press then. "I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn't get him."
Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit "The Great White Hope," the writer Alex Haley in "Roots: The Next Generation" and a South African minister in "Cry, the Beloved Country."
He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as... Read More