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Hollywood 3.0: Can Web3 Disrupt Entertainment?

Thursday, Dec. 1 at 6 p.m.
LMU Playa Vista Campus
12105 W. Waterfront Drive, Ste. 200
Los Angeles, CA 90094

Web3 entertainment studio Toonstar brings blockchain tech to Hollywood with “The Gimmicks,” a show that allows fans to impact the plot with NFTs and combines creative storytelling with community participation. Join Toonstar co-founders and LMU experts to discuss the future of the industry.

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About the Event

A panel discussion will be moderated by Carol Costello, LMU special advisor, journalism instructor, and former CNN anchor. Panelists include: John Attanasio '94 and Luisa Huang, co-founders of Toonstar; Rochelle Webb, clinical assistant professor of entrepreneurship at LMU College of Business Administration; and Jay Williams, senior lecturer at LMU School of Film and Television.

About the Panelists

John Attanasio '94
Co-founder, Toonstar

John is CEO + Co-Founder of Toonstar, the Web3 entertainment studio behind "The Gimmicks," a community-driven animated NFT series produced in partnership with Sixth Wall, the digital arm of Mila Kunis’ Orchard Farm Productions. 

Prior to launching Toonstar, he spent over a decade at Warner Bros. and DreamWorks developing franchise properties including Harry Potter, DC, LEGO, Looney Tunes + Shrek and driving innovation in various marketing, business development, digital content creation and tech commercialization roles. 

He’s also a self-confessed media junkie and child of Saturday morning cartoons who’s on a mission to help forge the future of Web3 entertainment + unlock animation for creators around the world.    

Luisa Huang
Co-founder, Toonstar 

Luisa is COO + Co-Founder of Toonstar, the Web3 entertainment studio behind "The Gimmicks," a community-driven animated NFT series produced in partnership with Sixth Wall, the digital arm of Mila Kunis’ Orchard Farm Productions. 

Prior to launching Toonstar, she spent over a decade at Disney and Warner Bros. where she developed strategy across tentpole franchises (Toy Story, Cars, Marvel, Disney Princess), launched digital platforms and drove innovation in digital content creation.

A self-professed tech nerd, she’s on a mission to help forge the future of Web3 entertainment + unlock animation for creators around the world.

Rochelle Webb, MBA
Clinical Asst. Professor of Entrepreneurship, LMU College of Business Administration

Rochelle Webb

Rochelle Webb has specialized in global brand marketing across entertainment, retail and technology sectors. She has worked across brands such as Activision (Franchise: Call of Duty), Quiksilver (Brands: DC Shoes, Quiksilver, Roxy), Apple (Product: iPhone) and Visa. She is globally recognized for her record-breaking brand and product launches where she won media plan of the year and a Grand Effie for Call of Duty’s Black Ops 2 and MW3 product launches.

She left corporate America to run her own marketing and business strategy consultancy, The Dialectic Compound, aiding start-ups with their growth strategy and execution. Six months ago, Rochelle launched a new venture, Optimist Made. It is the new world way of shopping around the world, without actually going there yourself. It makes the inaccessible, accessible. It gives developing fashion designers a destination where they can have a voice to be discovered. When product is sold, Optimist Made then gives back to productive charities around the world.

Rochelle is a Board Member for the Compton Community College and Ad Relief. She has advised start-ups such as Neat Capital, Blue Fever and the Make in LA Accelerator. She completed her undergraduate studies at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, MA and graduated with her MBA from UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business in Berkeley, CA. 

Jay Williams
Senior Lecturer, LMU School of Film and Television

Jay Williams

With over 20 years of senior leadership roles in entertainment, Jay Williams is a highly sought-after creative content strategist, production executive, and advisor for studios, production companies, and brands. Recently Jay produced the 5th annual Infinity Festival Hollywood.

Jay is an Emmy Award-winning veteran producer, senior entertainment marketing executive, and global creative leader developing new narrative paradigms in location-based and experiential programming, Web3, and interactive storytelling. Jay spent 17 years as a senior executive at Walt Disney Studios overseeing creative content on hundreds of feature film marketing campaigns. He subsequently served as CEO of Legion of Creatives, where he produced several innovative cross-platform shows including the Emmy-nominated digital series The Walking Dead: Red Machete for AMC.

Technology-enabled storytelling continues to be a cornerstone of everything that Jay has worked on including his Primetime Emmy Win for the first Virtual Reality Emmy awarded in 2015. As a senior lecturer at LMU’s School of Film and Television, Jay teaches both grad and undergrad students in the business of navigating Web 3.0 and immersive entertainment as well as writing narrative for AR/VR. 

Carol Costello
LMU Special Advisor and Ambassador; Journalism Instructor

Carol Costello

Carol Costello is an award-winning journalist and former anchor and correspondent at CNN and HLN. Her distinguished career as a local, regional, and national broadcaster spans three decades, covering a broad range of world leaders, events, and politics. Costello serves as special advisor and ambassador at LMU and teaches a broadcast journalism course in LMU’s journalism program. She also hosts “I Hate Your Generation,” a podcast series exploring the generational divide. 

In 2001, Costello joined CNN as an anchor on “Headline News.” From 2002 to 2009, she anchored  “Daybreak,” the network’s former early morning news program. And from 2012 to 2018 she anchored “Newsroom.”  She also sub-anchored and was a political reporter for “The Situation Room.”  Costello contributed to CNN.com Opinion from 2015-2017.  In 2018, she hosted HLN's "Across America with Carol Costello."

At CNN, Costello was at the forefront of some of the world’s most significant stories. She was part of CNN's Peabody Award-winning coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill, Hurricane Katrina, and the 2008 presidential election. She also reported on Pope Francis’ visit to the United States, the Boston Marathon bombing, the last space shuttle launch, the Ohio midterm elections, the shooting at Virginia Tech, the tsunami disaster in South Asia, the Russian school hostage crisis, and Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne. Carol interviewed four former U.S. presidents: President Jimmy Carter, President Ronald Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, and President Bill Clinton; and she covered five presidential inaugurations as well as the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections.

Before joining CNN, Costello worked at WJLA-TV in Washington, D.C., where she was an anchor and investigative reporter for five years. Prior to that, she spent three years at WBAL-TV in Baltimore. She began her career as a weekend anchor and reporter for WAKR-TV in Akron, Ohio, then moved to WBNS-TV in Columbus, Ohio, to serve as the station's principal weeknight anchor. Costello earned a degree in journalism from Kent State University in Ohio.

Costello's reporting has been honored numerous times, including a 1991 Emmy Award for a special on crack and cocaine, a UPI award, and several Associated Press awards. She received an Emmy nomination in 1993, then again in 2008 for outstanding coverage of a breaking news story after Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. In 2009, she received an individual Emmy nomination for Outstanding Morning Program.

 

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