Hollywood Week: Cannes, Sentencing in Matthew Perry Death, FIFA, BuzzFeed, GameStop, Rex Reed

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Category: Entertainment News

Published on Saturday, 16 May 2026 11:01

Written by Janet Walker

The Cannes Film Festival is in full swing as celebrities arrive from around the world to walk the famed red carpet on the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès, the official entrance for in competition screenings.

Matthew Perry: Addiction Counselor Sentenced

A licensed addiction counselor, Erik Fleming, who sold the actor and celebrity Matthew Perry 51 vials of Ketamine, including the dose that killed him, was sentenced this week.

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Fleming, who admitted procuring the drug from a local drug dealer, was sentenced to three years of supervised released, and a minor special assessment fee of $200.

"In a letter attached to his sentencing memorandum, Mr. Fleming apologized to Mr. Perry's family and wrote that he took "full responsibility for my criminal acts." [. . .] "I'm still in disbelief," Mr. Fleming told the court, adding, "It's truly a nightmare I can't wake up from." He was, he said, "profoundly ashamed" of his actions," The New York Times reported.

Perry, who starred in the 1990's sitcom, "Friends" and went on to star in many films, was found dead in his hot tub on October 28, 2023. The Los Angeles medical examiner ruled the death was a homicide, caused in part from Ketamine.

Over the last year of his life, Perry was involved in the marketing of his memoir, "Friends, Lovers, and The Big Terrible Thing," and left the most lasting contribution as he revealed his constant, daily, struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, in which he explains vividly the effects of his addiction, both in his work and his life.

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Cannes Film Festival Update

The glamours French Riviera, home to the Cannes Film Festival, is buzzing as celebrities, studio executives, media, filmmakers, buyers and sellers descend every May as the film industry gets its first look at potential awards season hopefuls.

Highlights of this years festival include a late night anniversary and commemorative screening of The Fast and Furious. Universal's Donna Langley, and the film's producer Neil Moritz, along with celebrities Vin Diesel, Meadow Walker, daughter of the late Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, and Tyrese Gibson.

Actor John Travolta received a surprise and honorary Palme d'Or, the highest award given at the festival before the screening of his directorial debut "Propeller One Way Night Coach."

Cannes is also presenting honorary Palme d'Or awards to acclaimed Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and legendary performer Barbra Streisand during this year's festivities.

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FIFA Announces Halftime Show Performers

Madonna, Shakira, and BTS have been announced as the FIFA World Soccer Championship's halftime show performers.

The FIFA World Soccer Championships, scheduled for July 19, 2026 at MetLife stadium in New Jersey, is expected to draw a global audience of 500 million viewers.

Madonna, who has won seven Grammy awards headline the Super Bowl halftime show in 2012, Shakira, has won four Grammys, joined Jennifer Lopez during the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show.

BTS, the wildly popular boy band from Korea, are the first Korean group to be nominated for a Grammy and spawned a community base of followers that goes beyond fandom and have recently embarked on an incredibly successful sold-out world tour after each of the members completed their mandatory military service.

"The World Cup begins next month and will take place across 16 cities in the United States, Mexico and Canada, with games airing in the United States on Fox and Telemundo. The halftime show will be produced by Global Citizen, a nonprofit organization that puts on large-scale musical concerts to spotlight charitable issues like hunger and poverty," reported The New York Times.

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Media: BuzzFeed Sells to Byron Allen

Bryon Allen, who looks at the declining media asset BuzzFeed through a unique vision, has recently acquired a 52 percent stake in the entertainment and media company, and expects to turn the fledging digital magazine into a competitor in the streaming market.

"In a $120 million agreement, Allen will take a 52 percent majority stake in the company as well as the CEO role from founder Jonah Peretti, funded by $20 million in cash and $100 million in the form of a promissory note due five years after deal close, which is expected in May," reported The Hollywood Reporter. 

In its heyday, when the upstart digital boasted a valuation of $1.5 billion, the magazine known for listicles and other tantalizing yet nonsensical content, turned down a $650 million dollar deal with the Walt Disney Company and was holding out for the big money the early digital commanded. Proving it could be a player in the contemporary news market, the magazine expanded hiring experienced and educated journalists to lead the news section, for which the digital won a Pulitzer Prize.

The shift of the market and glut of new digitals drove the once leader to its current state of decline. Recently the company announced its quarterly year-over-year advertising revenue had declined more than $3 million from the previous quarter to a net loss of $15.1 million.

Allen, who owns Allen Media Group is expected to take BuzzFeed, which also owns the Huff Post, the one-time leader in digital magazines, and revitalize the digital with a belief of returning the former leader to its once commanding position.  

Ebay Turns Down GameStop

GameStop, the plucky video gamer store, whose claim to fame is its ability to shirk off a short sell, bankrupting more than one billionaire, has made headlines again as it surprised Wall Street analysts with it $55 billion bid for Ebay, the online swap meet giant.

""EBay has officially turned down its lopsided marriage proposal," Don Bilson, head of event-driven research at Gordon Haskett, wrote in a research note. "This news should surprise no one since the odds it would accept Gamestop's brash offer were infinitesimally remote," reported The New York Times.

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Rex Reed, Film Critic, Dies

Rex Reed, known throughout the entertainment industry for his caustic biting sarcasm and acerbic writing style over the last six decades, died this week after a short illness. He was 87.

With much of his adult life spent on writing terrible things about celebrities, and have many papers and magazines pay him to throw garbage into the minds of the reader, his claim to fame seems only to be in a stroke of genius, purchasing a two-bedroom apartment in the famed Dakota building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, in 1969 for $30,000, which is the envy of studio heads, publicist, and even his enemies.

While his acerbic writing style seemed to gain him entrée in  Manhattan's literati,  it fueled the hater economy dedicated to basement dwellers who fantasize about the lives they cannot live and refuse to put effort into building, and hating others who have; dreaming of the time when they can bring them down, knock them around a bit, and give them a taste of being human.

Historians will applaud him for humanizing those on the big screen, and recounting those glamorous days, when celebrities swept in on golden chariots, but as time waits for no one, those days of the grande dames are over, except, of course in the archives and forever captured on celluloid.

Reed explained he "made no bones about his fascination with filmdom's grandes dames of yesteryear — the Dietrichs, Bergmans, Lansburys and Mercouris — and he tended to write about them glowingly. "I am a fan of what was, not what is," he said. Modern actresses barely raised his thick eyebrows. "The old broads are the ones who interest me the most," he once told Newsweek. "Nothing bores me more than these mini-skirted girls with nothing on their minds," reported The New York Times.

The good ole' days, which apparently was his barometer used when faced with interviewing the new generation of talent, seem to be stuck forever in the Golden Age of Hollywood. The rear view can be a time when the hard moments are forgotten, and what remains are those glimmering moments of greatness, like golden nuggets, on the twisted highways of life. He will live on in the achieves, along with those who held his imagination.

Reed covered the entertainment industry for six decades. It seems few will miss him.

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Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five award-winning screenplays "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She has also published "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," a non-fiction narrative, "Days, Times, Seasons, and Events: A Collection of Poetry & Prose," and "Songs of Freedom: A Collection of Biblical Teachings," which can be purchased here. She is a member of the Authors Guild, the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a member of the International Federation of Journalists.