Its a beautiful day in Africa-America when we see major television, movie, and streaming services battling over black talent.
Amazon has scored a victory in the black talent battles by stealing away Donald Glover from FX. According to The Hollywood Reporter Glover has secured an eight-figure deal that will have him working on a number of projects for Amazon’s Prime streaming service. The deal includes a new show titled “Hive,” that will reportedly feature a Beyonce like figure with Glover taking executive producer credits. The project, from “Watchmen” writer Janine Nabers, is gearing up its writers room for production and an interesting name is among those writers. None other than with Malia Obama is joining the writing staff.
You may remember Glover, who raps under the handle of “Childish Gambino” as the hero in his production “Guava Island.“
One interesting part of Glover’s Amazon deal is that Amazon is creating a special channel for Glover to showcase his will work and other curated content on Amazon’s Prime Video hub. It’s not clear if Glover will have control over the curated works on his own channel.
Glover’s high-profile deal follows days after he announced his upcoming Amazon Studios series “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” a new take on the 2005 action comedy, co-starring “Fleabag” creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge.
Jay-Z
Mr. Entrepreneur himself is breaking out yet again with another venture. This time Jay-Z is jumping into bitcoin.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z hooked up to pledged 500 bitcoin, that’s around $23.3 million in everyday money, toward ₿trust, an endowment to fund bitcoin development. Dorsey announced the partnership on Twitter. According to Dorsey development will initially be focused on teams in Africa and India but added that he and Jay-Z plan to give “zero direction” to the plans.
Dave Chapelle
“Chapelle’s Show” is back on Netflix after the streaming service removed it at the request of the shows creator Dave Chapelle. According to Chapelle Comedy Central, which owns the rights to the show was licensing the program, making money from it, but Chapelle was getting nothing from the deal.
The Mark Twain award winning stand-up comic alleged that his contract with Comedy Central owner, ViacomCBS, has allowed the company to license the series without his approval and locking him out of royalties for his work.
Chapelle thanked Netflix chief Ted Sarandos for sticking by him and addressing his troubled relationship with Comedy Central.
In a new video Chapelle says; “This is a very important moment. I want to thank Ted Sarandos at Netflix, a CEO with the courage to take my show off its platform at a financial detriment to his company, just because I asked him.” He goes on to speak about the power of his fans for rendering the show “worthless” by simply not watching it.
The move seems to have worked as Chapelle states that ViacomCBS “made the past right” and “did something very courageous.” He adds: “After all these years, I can finally say that Comedy Central, it’s been a pleasure doing business with you.”
