Zynga Poker has been around since 2007, and it’s finally launching multi-table tournaments. Evidently, this is such a big deal that Zynga has teamed with comedian Rob Riggle to launch them.

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Zynga, which was acquired for $12.7 billion by Take-Two Interactive in 2022, announced that Zynga Poker is launching multi-table tournaments to players around the world. This highly-requested feature puts players at the center of the action, letting them compete in real-time across multiple tables in a high-stakes tournament setting.

Camila Cabello opted for a strapless look for the inaugural “We, The Dream” Gala on Wednesday in New York City. The singer joined high-profile guests and distinguished attendees who were honored with various awards for justice and environmental reform during the evening’s proceedings...

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While attending the event, Cabello introduced honoree Leah Thomas. Thomas, who founded the non-profit Intersectional Environmentalist, a leading resource hub for diverse and accessible climate education, received the Dream Maker Award. Along with Thomas, Jessica Jackson received the Dream Legacy Award and Sheriff Eric S. Higgins received the Dream Future Award.

We're taking a closer look at the unique items from The War Within Collector's Edition, including the Gryphon Rider Statue! Thank you to Blizzard for sending us this awesome gift.

Celebrating both the upcoming WoW expansion and 20 years of World of Warcraft, this collector's edition has a lot to commemorate. So in addition to receiving a deluxe box, art book, commemorative pin, and epic edition rewards, you'll also receive a beautiful Gryphon Rider statue, ready to soar the skies of Azeroth--or your office desk.

We've taken pictures of all the goodies in this post (with a bonus cat for scale), and if you're interested in one for yourself, this collector's edition is still in stock on the Blizzard Gear Store for $180 USD.

The stats are impressive enough: In just three-and-a-half years of existence, Pinky Promise Films have produced a dozen films (including festival hits like Andrea Arnold’s recent Cannes entry “Bird” and Laurel Parmet’s Sundance breakout “The Starling Girl,” plus much-hyped new features from Scarlett Johansson and Gia Coppola), grown to six total employees, and debuted one heck of a cute website.

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But for founder and CEO Jessamine (AKA “Jesse”) Burgum and president Kara Durrett, there’s another, slightly less quantifiable measurement they really like to see grow: people are calling them to produce their projects.

Imagine Entertainment, Adobe and The Film Zone announced a new partnership for its inaugural social-first short film festival.

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The “From Minutes to Movies ShortFest” opened festival submissions Tuesday. This new collaboration seeks to platform burgeoning filmmakers and creators looking to cross over into longer formats. With Imagine’s resources, Adobe’s mentorship and The Film Zone’s social reach, this festival will attempt to set creators up for success in the entertainment industry.

With Pride season nearly upon us, music fans are busy buying tickets to their local Pride festivals. But if you can’t make it to an in-person celebration this year, don’t worry — Billy Porter, Orville Peck and plenty of others are here to help.

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On Wednesday (May 15), iHeartMedia and P&G announced the lineup for their fifth annual Can’t Cancel Pride event. Taking place on June 12, the livestreamed event will feature a series of appearances and performances from stars including Porter, Peck, Allison Russell, Ben Platt, David Archuletta, Meghan Trainor, Melissa Etheridge, Raye and Victoria Monét.​​

The Meteor and Audible Inc. celebrated In Love and Struggle, Volume 3: The Future is Around Us at the Minetta Lane Theatre in NYC on Saturday, December 16.

Comic Relief US hosted its inaugural Winter Féte in NYC on Tuesday, supporting their mission to leverage the power of entertainment to raise funds and awareness to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty.

The night honored Funny or Die owner and chairman Henry R. Muñoz III with the first-ever Visionary Award, with special introductions from First Lady Dr. Jill Biden, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and The View co-host Ana Navarro.

El Big Apple Circus ya arrancó sus funciones en Nueva York y para esta temporada 2023 llegó acompañado de un importante colaborador: el circo alemán Circus-Theater Roncalli. Desde el momento en que las luces se atenúan y el escenario se ilumina,  “Journey to the Rainbow” muestra un despliegue de talento único que incluye a malabaristas, trapecistas, payasos, bailarinas, entre otros artistas que componen el show.

Rise hosted its third annual NYFW Survivor Fashion Show. Notable attendees included Moira Forbes, AnnaSophia Robb, Chloe Flower and MSNBC correspondent Katie Phang joining other survivors and allies down the runway in top designer labels. This year’s show also advocated for a multilateral treaty between states from all five UN global regional groups that protects survivors over abusers, the next phase of Rise’s efforts to advocate for sexual assault survivors worldwide.

Talent manager Chris Kiely has been promoted to Partner at Authentic Talent and Literary Management. Kiely’s new role will see him take on increased responsibilities in hiring, recruitment, and the establishing and maintaining of agency relationships, while continuing his day-to-day business as a manager and his mentorship of junior employees. 

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The promotion follows Authentic founder and CEO Jon Rubinstein’s 2021 decision to steer the company away from a single leadership structure, with growth instead being driven by a larger partnership group.

Hall of fame game designer Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims) is making a blockchain video game for the masses, not for NFT shoppers, he tells Axios...Wright’s project is called VoxVerse. It is a virtual world set on a massive cube, where players should be able to own land, create attractions, mine for resources and socialize (release date TBD).

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And the project is being orchestrated by crypto gaming boosters Gala Games, which has spent over $25 million funding the effort.​ Gala wants Wright’s game to help popularize its Vox characters, which are digital collectibles, or NFTs. The most recent Vox offered by Gala, based on Trolls characters from Dreamworks, went on sale last week for .888 ETH (about $1,300) and will guarantee early dibs on land in VoxVerse.

Fractional-ownership firm Arrived lets buyers pay as little as $100 for shares of rental properties. The company recently raised $25 million, with Jeff Bezos' personal investment company pitching in. Arrived plans to use the money to expand from 19 to 40 cities and into short-term rentals.

Producer Glenn and Director Jaimie Selke discuss "CoComelon LIVE! JJ's Journey" coming to local Pennsylvania markets.

Moneá Eskridge and X’zavieyan Green knew they were falling in love on their very first date while listening to ‘90s R&B after a hike. Their connection was so natural, X’zavieyan said he felt like they had known each other “forever.” The two met in July 2020 after matching on BLK, a dating app for Black singles, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. When they’re not physically together, they FaceTime around the clock.

Piaggio Fast Forward, maker of the gita (jee-tah) personal robot, shared details about work it’s undertaking with industrial technology services provider Trimble using the Boston Dynamics API to create robots that follow construction workers.

Denny's Director of Diversity explains why the path to a more inclusive, equitable future requires buy-in and action at every level.

Climate issue: The cost of comprehensive cover could become exorbitant, even as it is needed more than ever.

The net worths of Hong Kong's ultra-wealthy are more volatile than the net worths of their counterparts in any other region in the world, according to Capgemini's 2019 World Wealth Report.

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Hong Kong's wealthiest residents often enjoy the greatest profits when the markets are bullish, but experience the steepest losses during market routs, Capgemini's Deputy Head of the Global Financial Services Market Intelligence Strategic Analysis Group Chirag Thakral told Business Insider.

A lot of companies want to undertake a digital transformation, but not all understand how much of a long-term, sustained effort is required to make that transformation a reality. That's a lesson Art Hu, CIO of Lenovo, learned when the PC maker went through its own transformation. In an interview with The Enterprisers Project, Hu explains how digital transformation works at Lenovo.

German software giant SAP unveiled a new version of HANA, the company’s bread-and-butter database, as well as a new marketplace that will let HANA customers selectively add new “micro-services” or software capabilities to their database as needed.

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Micro-services, as the name implies, are small but potentially useful pieces of software or specialized data streams that can be pulled into other programs.

In the last year, Burgum and Durrett produced and/or financed festival hits “The Last Showgirl,” starring Pamela Anderson, “I Don’t Understand You” and Andrea Arnold’s “Bird.” They recently wrapped “Eleanor the Great,” Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut starring June Squibb.

The shingle is committed to bring diverse voices to the screen; however, for female filmmakers, “I think we have a pipeline issue. Right now everyone is leaning on filmmakers who have had success in the past which tends to not be diverse voices. The industry needs to lift up a new generation of filmmakers,” says Burgum.

Adds Durrett: “Unfortunately it’s only gotten harder for everyone, especially POC and underrepresented filmmakers. I think during the pandemic there was a movement to really encourage for DEI programs to exist, and now that so many companies have downsized, they tend to be the first ones to go.”

As the gaming industry embraces the live-service model, some publishers are baking film and TV adaptations into their business plans from the start to help extend the lifespan — and revenue-generating potential — of their top titles...

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“Collaborating with IP, and IP collaborating with you on a game, is very interesting to us, because you want to create awareness, and you want to create something fun for your players,” said Zynga evp of mobile studios Yaron Leyvand. “And I think you can achieve both with it — you just need to find the right fit.”

Kit Harington has returned home to Westeros for the the launch of new RPG puzzle mobile game “Game of Thrones: Legends.”

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Harington shows up in the “Game of Thrones: Legends” trailer, which dropped in connection with the game’s launch Thursday, playing himself as he becomes deeply immersed in the mobile game and starts seeing White Walker-esque blue eyes appear in the people around him while he plays...

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“Obviously, when there will be a new piece of content out, this is a treasure for game makers to think about how we can do new thins with it,” Zynga mobile games executive vice president Yaron Leyvand said. “But there’s so much content in ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘House of Dragon’ already, we can create events and systems and characters. There’s so much depth here that, regardless, we will do updates from that and things that are related to the existing show. And when a new season or show will be out, this will be another event for celebration.”

The King in the North has returned.

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Today, Zynga is rolling out the global launch of its new mobile game, Game of Thrones: Legends—complete with Kit Harington channeling his role as Jon Snow in the marketing campaign. This is the first time Harington has returned to the world of Game of Thrones since the series ended in 2019.

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Gabrielle Heyman, vp of global brand sales and partnership at Zynga, said the company was excited to get Harington on board.

In Star Wars: Hunters, you can play as two Jawas in a trench coat, a precariously balanced sibling duo that slings scrap metal. It’s the kind of wacky, creative premise that should tell you all you need to know about the newest Star Wars video game — this time from gaming behemoth Take-Two (the parent company behind everything from Grand Theft Auto to NBA 2K).

The new game, available now on Nintendo Switch and mobile (with cross-platform saves), combines the hero-shooter genre with the familiar locales of everyone’s favorite galaxy far, far away.​

Unless you’ve been living off the grid somewhere in the mountains that surround Park City, you know that the entertainment industry has long promised to increase representation on screen and off — to largely no avail.

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Enter Henry R. Muñoz III, owner and chairman of Funny or Die. ​[He] is at Sundance as the executive producer on the feature film “In the Summers,” starring René Pérez Joglar (a.k.a. the Puerto Rican rapper Residente). I chatted with Muñoz in the L.A. Times Studio on Sunday to learn how Funny or Die fits into his larger mission, why this fight is personal and his hopes for America.

The depths of a global pandemic might seem like the wrong time to throw caution to the wind and pursue an entrepreneurial path, but that's exactly what actress and producer Burgum decided to do.

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In 2020, she founded Pinky Promise, a production and financing company that's backed several successful films — like last year's "Honk For Jesus. Save Your Soul," which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was distributed by Jordan Peele's Monkey Paw and Focus Features. Other projects include "If You Were The Last," featuring Anthony Mackie and Zoe Chao; and the forthcoming film "I Don't Understand You," starring actors Nick Kroll and Andrew Rannells," that saw Burgum and her team decamp to Rome for filming. Another project in development is Scarlett Johansson's directorial debut.

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Burgum, 27, has raised more than $23 million in private funds from limited partners, and her all-women team focuses on films that celebrate the work of creative personalities from marginalized constituencies.

Entertainment Correspondent Daneida Polanco interviews clowns, acrobatic bicyclists, and opening Juggler of The Big Apple Circus. This season, their show "Journey to the Rainbow" includes acts from across the world.

Cheddar News spoke with Big Apple Circus CEO Marty LaSalle who began as a juggler in the ring with the circus and discussed its operations, collaborations and its legacy. Cheddar News also got a chance to see juggler Noel Aguilar in action and discuss what's it like performing on the big stage.

The air was filled with animated conversation that was occasionally broken up by laughing and applause. As we paid tribute to this venerable organization, it was a night of joy, introspection, and appreciation.

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[HarlemAmerica] had the pleasure of introducing the honorees and speakers, as well as sharing some of my thoughts about two of the honorees, president Michael Pugh of Carver Federal Savings Bank and director Joy Bivins of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Everyone (sic) of the honorees—from businesspeople to public officials to community institutions—had significantly aided the Chamber’s aim of economic empowerment and cultural preservation.

THR spoke with Muñoz, CEO Mike Farah and chief creative officer Joe Farrell about Funny Or Die’s 15-year milestone; how [new owner Henry] Muñoz is helping to transform the company into a more inclusive, independent studio; why its Roku film Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (starring Daniel Radcliffe and premiering Nov. 4) is the perfect Funny Or Die property; and how its slate still honors their earliest ethos. Says Farrell, “For us, there’s always a sense of joy about putting on a show.”

Seattle-based real estate investment platform Arrived Homes is flush with cash after recently raising $25 million in a venture-capital funding round, and is working to expand its reach in the still-hot single-family rental market.

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Arrived Homes is currently on a pace of acquiring about 30 single-family rental properties per month, with an existing portfolio across 19 cities of some 125 properties valued at about $50 million, according to company co-founder and CEO Ryan Frazier.

Andrew Peterson and Spencer Dent saw an opportunity to digitize — and implicitly streamline — win/loss analyses with Clozd, the startup they helped to co-found in 2017. Clozd delivers win/loss insights based on feedback from recent sales prospects, highlighting the actions a company might take to increase its win rates.

In an endorsement of that approach, Greycroft led a $52 million Series A investment in Clozd that closed today, with participation from Madrona Venture Group and Album VC. It brings the company’s total raised to $56.2 million, Peterson and Dent said, the bulk of which will be put toward platform development.

After the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery in early 2020 and the resulting protests against systemic racism and demands for police and political reform, many corporations pledged to support diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). According to research from Bloomberg, 87 companies made statements on racial justice after Floyd’s murder.

Of these, nearly two-thirds pledged to change their hiring practices and half committed to improving diversity among managers and executives. Now corporate America must deliver on those promises.

Understanding the importance of inspiring engagement through community building, Jonathan has spearheaded efforts that have bolstered BLK’s presence and market share, establishing the app as a platform where Black love in all its forms and expressions can happen every day.

FoodSided compiled a list of Irish Coffee recipes in celebration of Irish Coffee Day. The writer includes a recipe for the Tullamore D.E.W. Nitro Irish Coffee Shot noting that Nitro coffee has been a beverage trend, and crediting Tullamore D.E.W. for bringing the cocktail to National Irish Coffee Day.

HCL Corporate Vice President Shrikanth Shetty and Johns Hopkins University's Dr. Youseph Yazdi spoke with CXOTalk host Michael Krigsman about how technological systems can evolve to improve health through innovation.

The global climate crisis presents a massive challenge for insurers. The most evident risk is for property underwriters. If insurers have not properly accounted for their exposure to extreme weather events - such as hurricanes and wildfires, which are happening more frequently as the world heats up - they could end up with huge unexpected losses.

Seth Rachlin, executive vice-president at consultancy Capgemini, says there are two factors to consider when looking at how climate change alters catastrophe risk: frequency and severity.

Quick service restaurants and small business owners are turning over, revealing demographics that fit neatly with Verifone and Paysafe's collaboration to sell semi-integrated, cloud-based payment terminals.

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Houston-based Paysafe will become the first acquirer to deliver Verifone's Carbon and Engage terminals to those markets with Verifone Connect, which has a tool menu that includes business, marketing and loyalty programs.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere today — or at least it seems that way. The technology certainly holds a lot of promise because it will enable all sorts of automation for business processes that are still largely manual, and deliver more power to data analytics.

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“Artificial intelligence and machine learning has an all-encompassing relationship” with DevOps, says Spandan Mahapatra, business head of the high-tech industry/software segment and business solutions unit at Tata Consultancy Services.

Facebook has been taking heat over the revelation that for two years it miscalculated a key metric, overestimating by as much as 80% the average time people spent watching video on its platform...

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George Ivie, MRC’s chief executive and executive director, says even though Moat is accredited, the MRC would like to see how its technology is specifically integrated on Facebook, and how much data Moat collects directly.