David Ellison’s Paramount has sued Warner Bros. Discovery — the smaller firm’s latest move to block Warner’s $72-billion sale to Netflix.
The lawsuit, filed Monday morning in Delaware court, asks Warner and its chief executive David Zaslav to produce more information about Warner’s deliberations and decision to select Netflix, ending the hotly contested auction on Dec. 4.
Last week, Warner’s board unanimously rejected Paramount’s $30-a-share proposal that included a personal guarantee by Ellison’s father, the tech billionaire Larry Ellison, to cover the equity portion of Paramount’s deal. Paramount is waging a hostile takeover, asking Warner investors to sell their shares to Paramount.
Paramount Skydance’s lawsuit contends that Warner’s board breached its disclosure duties “by failing to provide full, accurate, and truthful information” to investors. Paramount, however, stopped short of asking the court to block the Netflix deal.
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Instead, Paramount said it was simply seeking access to information to allow shareholders to evaluate the competing offers — Paramount’s or Netflix’s — “while reserving the right to seek further relief as appropriate.”
Separately, David Ellison said Paramount was preparing a proxy fight and would nominate its own slate to serve as Warner’s board.
The move came the morning after the Golden Globes ceremony in Beverly Hills, in which Zaslav’s warm relations with Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, were on display. Both Warner Bros. Discovery and Netflix had a strong night at the award show, which was televised by Paramount’s CBS network.
Paramount has asked for an expedited hearing.
In its lawsuit, Paramount accused Warner board members of misleading shareholders and concealing its financial analysis on how much Warner’s basic cable channels, including CNN, HGTV, Food Network and TNT, are worth.
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Netflix’s $27.75 a share offer does not include Warner’s cable channels. Netflix is only interested in HBO, HBO Max streaming service and the venerable Warner Bros. television and movie studios.
In contrast, Paramount’s $78-billion offer is to take over all of Warner, including the TV channels. Warner last summer announced plans to spin off its cable channels into a new company, Discovery Global. Its investors will get stock in the new company.
However, the new shares have not been priced and Paramount has argued they won’t be worth much. “We have analyzed [the Discovery Global channels] as having zero equity value,” Ellison wrote to shareholders. That makes Paramount’s $30 a share offer higher, Paramount argues.
A Warner Bros. representative did not provide immediate comment. Netflix declined to comment.
Neither Netflix nor Paramount has raised its bid since the submitted formal proposals on Dec. 4. Paramount, in its lawsuit, alleged that Warner board members acted hastily, approving Netflix’s deal — its total enterprise value would be $82.7-billion — even though Paramount told Zaslav and Warner’s top banker on Dec. 4 that it hadn’t submitted its “ ‘best and final’ offer.”
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Paramount has submitted eight proposals to Warner since Sept. 14.
In a Monday letter to shareholders, David Ellison wrote that Warner has “provided increasingly novel reasons for avoiding a transaction with Paramount.”
“Paramount started this process about four months ago with a private offer at a significant premium to WBD’s $12.54 share price, and our pursuit culminated in the $30 per share all-cash, fully financed proposal we made before WBD entered into the Netflix transaction,” Ellison wrote.
“We are committed to seeing our tender offer through,” Ellison said. “We understand, however, that unless the WBD board of directors decides to exercise its right to engage with us under the Netflix merger agreement … this will likely come down to your vote at a shareholder meeting.”
Paramount has set a Jan. 21 deadline for Warner investors to tender their shares, although that deadline could be extended.
This time 36 years ago, Fabrice Morvan was preparing for his first Grammy Awards. It had been a wild few years for the 23-year-old Parisian and his best friend Robert Pilatus from Germany. The duo known as Milli Vanilli had rocketed to fame, going from obscure dancers in Munich to dominate the pop music scene. Not only were they nominated for best new artist, but they were expected to perform live. Underneath it all, the pair were quickly reaching their breaking point.
Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence” was nominated for both song and record of the year. Indeed, for the tens of millions of Milli Vanilli fans who bought their records, the 1990 Grammy ceremony marked an end of innocence of sorts. To this day, Milli Vanilli are the only artists in the history of the Grammys to have their award revoked.
L-R: The pop duo Milli Vanilli comprised of Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, the subject of the Paramount+ documentary Milli Vanilli, streaming on Paramount+ beginning October 24, 2023.
(Ingrid Segeith/Ingrid Segeith/Paramount+)
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“Rob and Fab,” as they were known, never sang — live or in studio — on any of the smash hit singles from their 6x platinum debut North American album, “Girl You Know It’s True.” Their Grammy performance was them lip-synching to a playback.
The real singing was done by paid session vocalists John Davis, Brad Howell and Charles Shaw while Rob and Fab captivated with their charisma, athletic dance moves and eye for style. In the wake of the fallout, Milli Vanilli remained steadfast that what they did was wrong. There was, in fact, plenty of blame to go around even if Rob and Fab suffered the brunt of it.
“They removed the platinum records from the wall at Arista,” says Morvan, now 59. He is perched on the edge of a poolside lounge chair from a boutique hotel in the heart of Hollywood. It’s a sunny December day, but he’s dressed all in black with glasses to match, slim fingers adorned with a custom silver skull ring. He loves the sunshine, but offers for my sake to move somewhere in the shade. Able to pass for decades younger, he now basks in life on the other side of infamy.
“They say the truth will set you free. The truth takes the stairs while the lies take the elevators. And that is true,” Morvan said. “So finally, after 35 years, my truth comes to the surface.”
(Stephen Shadrach)
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Now, in a redemption as astounding as his rise, Morvan is back in the running for the 2026 Grammys as the only person in Recording Academy history nominated after a prior revocation.
This time, the voice is unmistakably his. Nominated in the audio book, narration, and storytelling recording category for his memoir “You Know It’s True: The Real Story of Milli Vanilli,” Morvan’s lilting French dialect and soft tone are hypnotizing and he has a natural knack for storytelling. The recording was performed alone in his home studio.
“They say the truth will set you free. The truth takes the stairs while the lies take the elevators. And that is true. So finally, after 35 years, my truth comes to the surface,” he contends. “And people, they get it, they understand that.”
Sadly, Rob Pilatus isn’t here to see it. Unable to handle the fallout and struggling in addiction, he died in 1998. In one of the more moving parts of his memoir, Morvan speaks to his former partner, laying bare for the first time some of the more unhealthy aspects of their relationship but in a way that makes clear his love for Pilatus runs deep.
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After Pilatus’ death, Morvan tried his best to move on. He taught French at a Berlitz school for a while when not performing at small venues. “I’m not even looking at becoming big,” he told Times journalist Carla Rivera in a 1997 profile. He even had a stint on radio hosting “Fabrice’s Fabulous Flashbacks” for KIIS-FM. But he always returned to making music.
“Music was always there with me,” he says, his excitement building. So when it came to moving forward in life, and, I said, ‘OK, what am I going to do?’ Music kind of popped up and said, ‘Hey, show me how much you love me.’ And then I worked on that, and I learned how to play guitar, and I learned how to produce, and I learned how to write … it allowed me to take the pain away, to remove it.”
But after 20 years in Los Angeles, Morvan felt it was time to leave “Hotel California,” as he calls it, for opportunities in Europe. In a follow-up Zoom call from his home in Amsterdam, he confides that he almost felt like giving up, but figured maybe a change of scenery was what he needed.
“I was very disillusioned,” he says, headphones crowning his dreadlocked updo. “I found a producer that I could work with and build something with, but due to certain circumstances, it didn’t come together. So I met some Dutch people that wanted to launch a fashion line. And I heard that Holland was a place where dance music was evolving.”
Becoming a DJ, he played festivals and kept Milli Vanilli’s legacy alive, performing with a live band.
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Morvan with his wife Tessa van der steen and their four children
While preparing for a project about 15 years ago, Morvan met his current partner, Tessa van der Steen, who is Dutch and works as a health and fitness coach and alternative medicine practitioner. Together, they have four children: a 12-year-old boy, 9-year-old girl, and a set of 4-year-old twin boys.
During Milli Vanilli’s heyday, powerful male (mostly white) figures held the cards, but in this phase of his life it’s women who play big roles. Not mentioned in his book is Kim Marlowe, who Morvan say, in the 1997 Times article was his manager and best friend. They at one point married; Marlowe quietly filed for divorce in L.A. in 2024.
Van der Steen, however, is the love of his life. She had no idea who he was when they first met, he was simply “Fabrice.” And according to Morvan, she is fiercely protective. “Fab is the most loving partner and father I could ever imagine,” Van der Steen writes over email. “We are soulmates. We have been together for more than 15 years. We understand each other, and it happens often that we are thinking of the same things, without saying a word.” She champions his efforts to release original music and continue performing.
In recent years, changes in culture, technology and the music industry have opened up conversations casting Rob and Fab in a more sympathetic light. Morvan himself took part in the well-received 2023 Paramount+ documentary “Milli Vanilli.” That same year, “Girl You Know It’s True,” a well-made biopic directed by Simon Verhoeven, came out.
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And Morvan was caught off guard when Ryan Murphy featured Milli Vanilli prominently in his 2024 series on the Menendez brothers, a move introducing the group to new generations unfamiliar with the story. Motivated by the renewed interest, he recorded a stripped down, acoustic version of the Diane Warren-penned hit “Blame It on the Rain.”
As recently as November, Milli Vanilli came up in the zeitgeist, sparked by a comment on X by veteran producer Jermaine Dupri commenting on AI “artists” charting on Billboard.
Of course there are still detractors, but in an era in which public cancellations abound and apologies are scrutinized for any whiff of inauthenticity, Milli Vanilli’s wrongdoings can now seem quaint.
Benjamin Matheson, assistant professor at the University of Bern’s Institute on Philosophy, studies collective shame and writes on celebrity apology. He offers the startling thought that certain fans might be more willing to forgive a moral wrong, even an egregious one like unlawful intercourse with a minor in the example of director Roman Polanski, as opposed to artistic deception because it can be seen as more authentic.
“I think that perhaps,” Matheson writes over email, “Milli Vanilli suffered because they were an early ‘created’ pop band, and the public hadn’t been acclimatized to this kind of music. Whereas now I think people are much more comfortable with autotuning, AI music, and so on — though I’d love it if there was a bit more push back on this kind of thing.”
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Morvan has plenty of thoughts on the state of the music industry past and present. He welcomes the change in perspective, and while he doesn’t live in regret, looking back, he would give his younger self a little advice.
“Keep working on your craft now. No matter what, and don’t ever start drugs. And don’t let your buddy Rob start with that. With those two, things would have been different.”
The pop duo Milli Vanilli comprised of Rob Pilatus(left) and Fab Morvan are the subject of the Paramount+ documentary Milli Vanilli, streaming on Paramount+ beginning October 24, 2023.
(Paul Cox/Paramount+/Paul Cox/Paramount+)
When the Los Angeles Tribune editorial staff selected “Girl You Know It’s True” as its movie of the year, Morvan met Parisa Rose, his co-writer and executive producer for the recording of the memoir. Rose, a first-time author and mother of two, first met Morvan when she interviewed him for the quirky paper — now in its fourth revival. She is now chief operating officer of the Tribune, which has expanded to include a publishing house.
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Rose, who grew up in Pasadena, helped Morvan reckon with parts of his background he had long buried. One of the most compelling parts of the memoir is when he breaks the fourth wall, narrating letters to individuals from his past.
“You need to say everything you have never said before to them that you’ve always wanted to say,” she says of the exercise they conducted for the interludes. “You need to know that this is the last conversation you will ever have with them. And you need to imagine they are sitting across from you now.” Reached over the phone, Rose said she also helped with research, uncovering details on the seaside sanatorium in France where Morvan spent much of his early childhood.
A great part of Morvan’s motivation for the memoir was to leave a legacy for his kids. His oldest son is getting into music and recently found an old Milli Vanilli vinyl and plays it along with Daft Punk and Michael Jackson. Remaining “zen” about the idea of winning, he’s enjoying the moment. And the big dreams never die. He plans to tour in the next year and come back to perform in America. And who knows? Maybe one day he can play Coachella.
He’s particularly thrilled over his Grammy outfit, a collaboration with Spanish designer Helen López, whom he previously worked with on a Milli Vanilli-inspired line. “When you’ll see what I’m wearing … you’ll see that I don’t play,” he says with a twinkle in his eye. “No matter what the outcome in life, you have to just be, be in the moment. Enjoy the moment. Whatever happens will lead you to something else. I have no expectations.”
A still from ‘Valavaara’.
| Photo Credit: Morph Productions/YouTube
Moments before the intermission of Valavaara (meaning favouritism), the movie’s lead character, Kundesi (Vedic Kaushal), lets out a huge cry of desperation. The scene is a testament to debutant director Sutan Gowda’s control over the craft, as he ensures we are as anxious and stressed about the film’s central plot point as the little boy, Kundesi. We then see a subtle yet “mass” interval bang, as Kundesi breaks the fourth wall with a smile.
Just like the scene, Valavaara maintains a nice balance of tension and hope throughout its nearly two-hour runtime. Kundesi’s trouble arises when his cow goes missing. Without the cow, he can’t think of going back to his house to face his father, whom he hates and fears in equal measure.
Kundesi often wonders why his father (Malathesh HV) is disgusted with him. The little one’s disappointment grows manifold when he sees his father showering his younger brother, Kosudi, with unconditional love. Kundesi’s biggest respite is his mother, who means the world to him. The bonding reimagines Kannada cinema’s familiar trope of mother sentiment with several poignant moments.
One of the film’s strong suits is the comedy; the humour is drawn from hilarious situations and funny dialogue, mostly involving a carefree, aimless youngster, Yadhu (a charming Abhay), who often secretly meets his girlfriend to make love. Yadhu’s arc blends nicely with Kundesi’s pursuit of getting back the cow.
Storyline: A young boy’s quest to find a missing cow that ties into his familys struggles.
A heart-warming film, Valavaara reminds viewers how the Kannada big screen had missed the feeling of tenderness. The slow-growing friendship between Yadhu and Kundesi is fleshed out beautifully. The writing triumphs, as despite tonal shifts, we are never detached from the proceedings. Every plot point leads to Kundesi’s search for his cow, and every time he messes up, we sigh in disappointment.
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Director Sutan Gowda’s economical storytelling ensures the film isn’t pulled down by melodrama. Valavaara has the spirit of a show-burner, but it never forgets to entertain and engage. The captivating cinematography by Balaraja Gowda and Manikanth Kadri’s moving score elevate the movie.
Some dialogues sound philosophical. The film also slightly overstays its welcome. These are minor shortcomings that can be easily ignored, for Valavaara has several moments that shine thanks to the commendable performances of the lead cast.This is a film that feels like a warm hug.
In “Vanished,” premiering Friday on MGM+, Kaley Cuoco plays Alice, an archaeologist, a fact she repeats whenever she’s asked about herself, without particularly seeming like one, apart from passing mentions of Byzantine caves and “one of the earliest examples of Christian worship” to make her sound professional. Sam Claflin plays Tom, who works for a charity organization dealing with Syrian refugees in Jordan; in a flashback we get to see them meet cute on a dusty Jordanian road, where he has a flat tire and no spare. Alice gives him a lift to camp; they banter and flirt after a fashion. He does something heroic within her sight.
They have been long-distance dating for four years, meeting up, as Alice describes it, “in hotels all over the world” where they “actually want to have sex with each other all the time.” Currently they are in Paris (in a $500-a-night joint — I looked it up). But Alice, now working in Albania, has been offered a job as an assistant professor of archaeology at Princeton, which would allow her to settle down with Tom in a school-provided apartment and “build a life that’s mine, not just uncovering other people’s.” After an uncomfortable moment, he signs on, saying, “I love you, Alice Monroe.”
Would you trust him? Despite the script’s insistence otherwise, Cuoco and Claflin have no more chemistry than figures on facing pages in a clothing catalog. Fortunately for the viewer, Tom disappears early from the action — ergo “Vanished.” The couple are traveling by train down to Arles, where another hotel awaits them, when Tom leaves the car to take a call and never returns; nor can he be found anywhere on the train.
This happily makes room for the more interesting Helene (multiple César Award winner Karin Viard), a helpful Frenchwoman who steps in as a translator when Alice attempts to get an officious conductor to open a door to a room he insists is for employees only, and rules are rules. (Is he just being, you know, French, or is something up?)
They meet again when Alice gets off the train not in Arles but Marseilles; after she has no more luck with police inspector Drax (Simon Abkarian), who insists a person isn’t missing until 48 hours have elapsed, than with the conductor, she’ll turn to Helene again, who has the advantage of being an investigative reporter. (She’s also been made diabetic, which has no effect on the action other than halting it now and again so she can give herself, rather dramatically, a quick shot of insulin. Like Drax begging off because he’s late meeting his wife for an Alain Delon double feature, it’s a tacked on bit of business meant to suggest character.) Together they’ll ferret out and follow clues, as Alice comes to realize that it takes more than the occasional gauzy romantic getaway to really know a person, and Helene gets closer to nailing a big story.
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Directed by Barnaby Thompson, whose credits are mostly in producing (“Wayne’s World,” “Spice World”), and written by his son, Preston — together they made the 2020 film “Pixie” — the series begins with a flash forward in which Alice flees for her life out an upper-story window, signifying action ahead. And indeed, there will be, leading to a climactic scene I don’t suppose was meant to make me laugh, but did, magnifying as it does one of the confrontational cliches of modern cinema. Many of the series’ notions and plot points (though not that particular one) may be found in the works of Alfred Hitchcock — who, you may remember, made a film called “The Lady Vanishes,” from a train yet — though they have been given new clothes to wear. But where Hitchcock never waited long to show you when a character wasn’t what they seemed, that information is held on here nearly to the end, with some added twists along the way to keep you confused.
Cuoco (unusually brunet here), has been good in many things, most notably her funny, winning turn as Penny across 12 seasons of “The Big Bang Theory” and more recently as the hallucinating alcoholic heroine of the “The Flight Attendant,” but she feels out of joint here. She’s not well served by the pedestrian direction and dialogue, but comes across as a person playing a person, rather than as the person she’s playing. Perhaps by virtue of their accents, the French actors feel more real; France, as usual, looks great.
