CANNES: BiteSize Entertainment Launches With Film About News Corp.'s Rebekah Brooks

New entertainment venture BiteSize Entertainment announced its launch Friday in Cannes with several feature-film projects, including a movie about embattled News Corp. exec Rebekah Brooks. The company also is developing the Bob Odenkirk-directed dark comedy "Girlfriends Day" and the Willy Holtzman-penned drama "Mad Dogs and Englishmen," which will star Colin Firth as Noel Coward during his two weeks at The Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1955.

BiteSize is the creation of Mevio chairman and CEO Ron Bloom and producers Gene Kirkwood and Ross Elliot, whose Kirkwood-Elliot Productions banner will supply films for theatrical release. The new company aims to become "a modern, vertically integrated entertainment studio that spans multiple platforms," according to a release, including everything from short films and series to feature-length content that can be leveraged using Mevio’s pre-existing online network. BiteSize plans to produce four to six big-budget films per year, a slate of micro-budgeted features and a raft of web series for both studio and indie distribution.

"We are witnessing the emergence of the first new platform for entertainment distribution and consumption in the last 100 years," said Bloom. "But Hollywood has barely begun to take advantage of it. Just as Silicon Valley was the center of the social network revolution, I believe Hollywood will be the epicenter of this entertainment revolution. With BiteSize, we are combining Silicon Valley startup prowess with Hollywood creative genius… reshaping the nature and format of entertainment from short form to feature length."

Kirkwood ("Rocky," "The Pope of Greenwich Village") and Elliot have optioned the rights to the Vanity Fair article “Untangling Rebekah Brooks” by Suzanna Andrews, and they have partnered with Odenkirk-Provissiero Entertainment and Mary Jane Skalski on “Girlfriends Day,” which will star Odenkirk, Bryan Cranston, David Cross, Amber Tamblyn, David Koechner and Fred Armisen. Written by Odenkirk and Eric Hoffman, “Girlfriends” is aiming to shoot this summer.

BiteSize is based in Los Angeles, where it is building a studio at the W Hotel in Hollywood, and it plans to have satellite offices in New York, Miami, London and San Francisco.