Almost quarter of shareholders at BSkyB oppose chief's £7m pay

Jeremy Darroch, CEO of BSkyB. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe for the Guardian

Almost a quarter of BSkyB's shareholders rebelled against the £7m pay package of chief executive Jeremy Darroch and other top executives at the pay-TV company's annual general meeting on Friday.

Almost 23% voted against BSkyB's remuneration report – with a further 0.6% abstaining, which is often viewed as a protest vote – after several shareholder advisory services flagged concerns over the way top executives are paid.

Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox voted its 39% stake in favour of the pay deal – meaning that of the independent shareholders who voted, some 42% opposed the pay plans.

Darroch took more than £7m in overall remuneration and share award payouts in the year to the end of June, including a maximum bonus of £1.9m, totalling about eight times his base salary.

Finance chief Andrew Griffith pocketed £1.5m.

Prior to the AGM in Edinburgh a number of investor advisory firms had flagged concerns over BSkyB's incentive structure.

Pirc advised a no vote, calling elements of the remuneration report potentially "highly excessive" with the possibility of "misalignment of executive interests with those of shareholders". ISS and Manifest also highlighted issues with BSkyB's remuneration in their reports.

Twice as many shareholders voted against Sky's remuneration policies this year as did in 2012.

A Sky spokeswoman said: "Our remuneration policy aims to align executive pay directly to the interests of our shareholders. We recognise there can be a difference of views but our policy is working well in support of our overall strategy: the performance of the business is excellent and we are delivering strongly for shareholders."

Pirc also advised shareholders to vote against the reappointment of James Murdoch as a director, citing "concerns over his fitness to serve" following his handling of the phone-hacking scandal when he was chairman of News International, the UK publisher of now-defunct News of the World.

"We consider James Murdoch's conduct, including his failure to initiate action on his own account on a number of occasions, to be both difficult to comprehend and ill-judged," said Pirc.

"In our view, James Murdoch's conduct … repeatedly fell short of the exercise of responsibility to be expected of him as CEO and chairman."

However BSkyB shareholders were willing to leave the scandals of the past behind – in 2011 a third of independent shareholders voted against Murdoch's reappointment when he was still chairman – with 96% voting to reappoint him as a director on Friday. Only 3.9% of shareholders that voted opposed him, 0.2% abstained.

At last year's AGM in London Murdoch was labelled by one investor as "toxic", although 95% voted for his reappointment. There was no such reaction from those that made the trip to Edinburgh this year.

The location and small number of shareholders in attendance perhaps explains how Darroch avoided a grilling over BT's shock £900m snatching of Champion's League football TV rights from BSkyB.

Jittery shareholders wiped £1.6bn off the satellite broadcaster's share price following the announcement earlier this month.

However, this concern did not carry to yesterday's AGM, which was all over in 20 minutes, with just a single question coming from the floor. Darroch was asked, rather politely, about the future plans for Sky Sports – BT was not mentioned.

He responded by arguing that Sky has the "strongest sport service in the UK" offering a huge breadth and depth of programming beyond football.

He highlighted coverage of the Ashes cricket series in Australia, ATP tour tennis finals, the autumn rugby internationals and the end of the 2013 Formula One and US golf seasons as examples of the expanse of content this month.

At a conference in Barcelona earlier this week Darroch said that he would be keen to cut a wholesale deal with BT for its sports channels, his first public comments since the telecoms company won the Champions League rights.

"It has to be a two way thing, so we'd want reciprocity in terms of supply," Darroch said on Wednesday. "So if we can get there with BT, my position has always been very open to do that."

Lana Del Rey donates $10,000 to Daniel Johnston film

Singer pledges $10,000 towards the making of Hi, How Are You Photograph: Andy Sheppard/Redferns via Getty Images

Lana Del Rey and rapper Mac Miller are among the financiers for a new film starring Daniel Johnston. Both musicians have contributed money toHi, How Are You, a short film looking back on Johnston's "most prolific and maddening era".

Earlier this month, director Gabriel Sunday launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for the narrative short that he begun shooting at this year'sOpen Borders arts festival. In the film, Johnston himself reflects on the making of his seminal 1983 album. "But as Daniel tells his stories, the rabbit hole gets deeper and deeper and time and reality begin to bend," Sunday said in a promo video. "What starts out as this interview spills into a world where Daniel's art and characters and music come to life."

As one of the United States' most idiosyncratic artists, Johnston has fans in unlikely quarters. Miller, a chart-topping Pittsburgh MC, donated $10,000 (£6,200) toward the short, and will purportedly receive a "one-of-a-kind", autographed organ, original artwork, and an executive producer credit. Del Rey and her boyfriend, Barrie-James O'Neill, also donated $10,000, entitling them to a "signed Smurf ukulele" and their own producer credits.

"Me and @LanaDelRey are both executive producers on a movie. That's tight," Miller tweeted. To celebrate his foray into indie film financing, the rapper also went to get one Johnston's drawings tattooed on his arm.

Although the campaign for Hi, How Are You has already reached its goal, there are still more than two weeks to join the fundraiser. Remaining pledge rewards include thank-you notes, access to the finished movie, and signed drawings by Johnston.

Johnston's most recent studio album was Beam Me Up!, released in 2008.

Warner Bros hints at titles for upcoming Batman v Superman movie

Ready Batman? Here I come … Henry Cavill in Man of Steel. Photograph: Warner Bros/Sportsphoto/Allstar

The upcoming Batman v Superman movie, dubbed Man of Steel 2, is expected to have an official title that fails to mention either of its famous combatants, according to reports. The film, a sequel to this year's Superman reboot, Man of Steel, will see the last son of Krypton take on Gotham's dark knight.

1. Man of Steel 2
2. Production year: 2015
3. Country: USA
4. Directors: Zack Snyder
5. Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill
6. More on this film

Warner Bros registered dozens of web domains in advance of production. The studio broadly hinted about a likely title for Zack Snyder's film, which stars Henry Cavill as Superman. Potential titles include Man of Steel: Battle the Knight; Man of Steel: Darkness Falls; and Man of Steel: Shadow of the Night. Others you might see on screen? Beyond Darkness, Black of Knight and Knight Falls.

Affleck was revealed as the surprise new Batman last September. He reportedly signed on for multiple movies to play the caped crusader and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne. The new Batman has been described by studio executives as a "tired and weary" crimefighter who has "been doing it for a while". The Oscar-winning director of Argo, The Town andGone Baby Gone may also go behind the camera for a future film in the saga. If 2015's Man of Steel 2 is a hit, Warner Bros is expected to produce a Justice League film featuring Superman alongside Batman, Wonder Woman and various lesser-known heroes.

Meanwhile, the studio won the last stage of its extended legal battle over the screen rights to Superman, a decision that allows the current iteration of the DC Comics character to move forward. This week, the US Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit ruled in favour of Warner Bros in its battle with the estates of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Warner Bros hints at titles for upcoming Batman v Superman movie

Ready Batman? Here I come … Henry Cavill in Man of Steel. Photograph: Warner Bros/Sportsphoto/Allstar

The upcoming Batman v Superman movie, dubbed Man of Steel 2, is expected to have an official title that fails to mention either of its famous combatants, according to reports. The film, a sequel to this year's Superman reboot, Man of Steel, will see the last son of Krypton take on Gotham's dark knight.

1. Man of Steel 2
2. Production year: 2015
3. Country: USA
4. Directors: Zack Snyder
5. Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill
6. More on this film

Warner Bros registered dozens of web domains in advance of production. The studio broadly hinted about a likely title for Zack Snyder's film, which stars Henry Cavill as Superman. Potential titles include Man of Steel: Battle the Knight; Man of Steel: Darkness Falls; and Man of Steel: Shadow of the Night. Others you might see on screen? Beyond Darkness, Black of Knight and Knight Falls.

Affleck was revealed as the surprise new Batman last September. He reportedly signed on for multiple movies to play the caped crusader and his alter ego, Bruce Wayne. The new Batman has been described by studio executives as a "tired and weary" crimefighter who has "been doing it for a while". The Oscar-winning director of Argo, The Town andGone Baby Gone may also go behind the camera for a future film in the saga. If 2015's Man of Steel 2 is a hit, Warner Bros is expected to produce a Justice League film featuring Superman alongside Batman, Wonder Woman and various lesser-known heroes.

Meanwhile, the studio won the last stage of its extended legal battle over the screen rights to Superman, a decision that allows the current iteration of the DC Comics character to move forward. This week, the US Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit ruled in favour of Warner Bros in its battle with the estates of Superman co-creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

Hammer to reanimate Abominable Snowman film

'It'll be great when CGI can take care of this' ... Robert Brown and Forrest Tucker in The Abominable Snowman Photograph: Cine Text / Allstar/Sportsphoto Ltd. / Allstar

British horror specialists Hammer Films are to remake The Abominable Snowman, their own 1957 cult classic starring Peter Cushing and Forrest Tucker. The project is being produced by Ben Holden, who is currently producing Hammer's Woman in Black sequel, subtitled Angel of Death.

1. The Abominable Snowman
2. Production year: 1957
3. Country: Rest of the world
4. Runtime: 91 mins
5. Directors: Val Guest
6. Cast: Forrest Tucker, Maureen Connell, Peter Cushing, Richard Wattis
7. More on this film

In the original, Cushing and Tucker play scientists who are searching for the mythical giant beasts in the Himalayas; the Yeti turn out to be intelligent beings laying low until they can reclaim their land from invading humankind. Hammer have said their new version, from Pusher scriptwriter Matthew Read and Angel of Death writer Jon Croker, will be a "modern take" on the story, in which "a scientific expedition's illegal ascent up an unclimbed peak of one of the world's most formidable mountains accidentally awakens an ancient creature that could spell a certain end for them all".

The Abominable Snowman marks Hammer's first major attempt to capitalise on their extensive back catalogue, which takes in some of the most recognisable figures in British horror, including a string of Dracula and Frankenstein films starring Cushing alongside Christopher Lee.

Originally set up in 1934, Hammer flourished in the 1950s and 60s under the stewardship of James Carreras and his son Michael, alongside founder William Hinds and his son Anthony. The company stopped making films in the 1980s and went into virtual hibernation, until it was acquired by successful TV producer John de Mol in 2007. Hammer re-established itself as a serious cinematic force with Let Me In, the remake of the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, before following up with the successful Susan Hill adaptation The Woman in Black, which starredDaniel Radcliffe.

Judi Dench re-introduces herself to America as comedienne of Philomena

Judi Dench and Steve Coogan in Philomena. Photograph: Alex Bailey

Like all the best screen actors, Judi Dench’s face is a kind of pun, working on two levels at once, both twinkly and tart, like someone handing you a Christmas present while sucking on a lemon. Our first sight of her in Stephen Frears' new film, Philomena (out Friday in the US after a successful run in the UK), that face is lit by church candlelight, her eyes brimming, whether from an excess of human kindness or some private pain is hard to say.

A series of flashbacks lay out her story: growing up in Ireland’s County Tipperary, in the 50s, Philomena got pregnant by a local boy and was taken into a Catholic convent for fallen women, where she put in back-breaking shifts in the laundry, only to watch helplessly as her baby boy was passed by the nuns to a wealthy American couple for $1,000. Now she wants to find out where he is. “I’d like to know if he thought of me,” she tells journalist Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan). “I’ve thought of him every day.”Sixsmith comes trailing his own dust cloud. Recently fired from his job as a government spin-doctor, before which he was an anchor for the BBC nightly news, he stares around the room at a Knightsbridge cocktail party as if looking for a crack he can crawl into. When someone suggests Philomena as a “human interest” story, he responds disdainfully, “I don't do ‘human interest’ stories because it’s a euphemism for stories aimed at weak-minded ignorant people.” If you are the kind of movie-goer who just knows, in her bones, that the next scene will show him turning up to meet Dench and take on her story, then you will know exactly the kind of crowd-pleaser you are in for: an odd-couple comedy between the media-savvy cynic and the kindly true-believer, learning to respect one another’s strengths, forgive the weaknesses, before embracing in a puddle of tears in the final reel.

Six Smith Not quite. It’s no disrespect to crowd-pleasers, odd-couple comedies or tears, puddled or otherwise, to say that Frears has fashioned a film just an few inches to the left of that one: smarter and funnier and angrier than you expect – probably his best film since The Queen, with which it shares a beautiful, tick-tock Alexandre Desplat score. Dench is terrific.Best known in the UK as a sherry-dry sitcom comedienne before she starting playing crusty English monarchs in Shakespeare in Love andMrs Brown, she here mixes it up a little for American audiences for the first time. Her Philomena is an ununflappable old dear who boasts of her titanium hips and recounts the plots of whatever bodice-ripper she happens to be reading with a comprehensiveness that rivals that of their author. Coogan’s reaction as he listens, sat in the back seat of an electric cart leading them towards a transatlantic flight – “Oh there’s a series of them” – is an unimprovable modulation of polite agony.

Best It’s Coogan’s best dramatic role to date. Until now he’s had the kind of disjointed, slightly agonized career traditional for British comics trying to make it in the movie business – his haggard, death’s-door lugubriousness is an odd fit for Hollywood, and seemed most at home putting all dramatic pretense aside in Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip, a mockumentary in which Coogan bantered his way around a series of restaurants in the British Midlands with comic Rob Brydon. If anything, Dench is an even better foil for Coogan than Brydon. Any worry that the role pushes the upper limits of her saintliness are offset by some of the unexpectedly salty dialogue she is given, happily detailing her sexual exploits in great detail to a dismayed Coogan, prompting him to mutter “fucking Catholics” – the zinger of the film, accurately summarizing both its backstory, and the vein of anti-clerical anger running through the script.

This comes to a head in a final confrontation with those wicked nuns, by which time an added injustice – and a major plot recalibration – throws the movie’s moral balance ever so slightly off. That final injustice is almost intolerable: In the trade-off between Philomena’s forbearance and Coogan’s viperish anger – “It’s the Catholic Church that should be going to confession, not you” he points out – it is Coogan who wins the day, more so perhaps than the filmmakers might have liked.But every time the camera draws close to Dench, she makes the movie hers again. Now 78, her features seem to have grown softer and twinklier with age, but there’s no mistaking the pain in Philomena’s eyes, nor her beady maternal determination to find her missing cub. She’s all soft strength, the performance seemingly crafted from the same titanium as those hips. Make way, Meryl, Cate and Sandra.

Co-operative Bank inquiry ordered as political row intensifies

The inquiry Into the Co-operative Bank is expected to look at fresh allegations of political interference in the runup to the bank's £1.5bn rescue scheme. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

George Osborne on Friday ordered City regulators to appoint a high-profile name to lead an independent investigation into what went wrong at the Co-operative Bank, amid fresh allegations of political interference in the runup to the bank's £1.5bn rescue scheme.

The inquiry will investigate the actions of the bank, financial regulators and the government back to 2008, covering its merger with Britannia Building Society and its aborted attempt to take over 631 branches from Lloyds Banking Group. Both the Labour government and the coalition have faced accusations of interfering in the Co-op.

The inquiry will be expected to look at the latest claims that Lord King, when he was governor of the Bank of England, had told a rival bidder for the Lloyds branches – NBNK – that its bid would never succeed because of a political desire for the Co-op to take control. Neither King nor NBNK could be reached for comment.

Paul Flowers, the shamed former chairman of the Co-op bank, was released from custody on police bail on Friday night after being questioned about supplying drugs. He was bailed until the new year.

Since a video of the Methodist minister handing over cash to buy drugs was published last Sunday, the troubles at the Co-op bank have escalated to recriminations in the political, regulatory and banking worlds as well as ensnaring the Methodist church and a wide range of charities.

The Treasury was criticised on Friday for claiming the inquiry could not be started until City regulators have decided whether to launch formal investigations. Lord Myners, City minister during the banking crisis, said the investigation should begin immediately and questioned why the regulators were being allowed to appoint the individual running the inquiry. "An enfeebled investigation, comprised and emasculated from day one," Myners said.

John Mann, a Labour MP who sits on the Treasury select committee, said the inquiry should be conducted with the oversight of parliament. "Parliament must make its voice heard and establish its own investigation," he said.

The Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, who chairs the committee, said: "I will do what I can to ensure that the review is independent, and is seen to be independent, of both government and regulators."

Flowers was questioned at a police station in Leeds all day after being arrested in Liverpool late on Thursday in what West Yorkshire police described as an "ongoing drug-supply investigation".

Detectives were given 24 hours to interrogate the Methodist minister, starting at 1am on Friday morning. By 5pm on Friday afternoon police had finished questioning him, according to his solicitor, Andy Hollas.

The position of the Co-op bank – which is in the middle of a £1.5bn rescue operation, which will result in bondholders, led by two US hedge funds, taking control – was discussed at a scheduled board meeting of the Prudential Regulation Authority on Friday.

The PRA and the Financial Conduct Authority are expected to announce shortly that they are likely to begin formal enforcement investigations at the bank. The bank has already admitted its accounts for 2012 are facing scrutiny from the FCA and accounting regulators. Its auditors, KPMG, are expected to be called before the Treasury select committee, too.

Flowers resigned from the bank in June 2010 but it is understood he only agreed to stand down from the board of the wider Co-operative Group of supermarkets, funeral homes and pharmacies when he was threatened with an investigation into his expenses. The 63-year-old is being asked to hand back £31,000 of a £155,000 payoff. The Co-op has blocked payment of the outstanding £124,000.

The Group is also expected to come under pressure to block any outstanding potential payments to Peter Marks, the chief executive who left in May after 45 years. According to the annual report, Marks has two outstanding long-term bonuses of almost £1m each. Marks did not receive a payoff.

Flowers's solicitor, Hollas, dismissed as "red-top nonsense" claims his client had been in drug rehab in Merseyside when he was arrested. He said Flowers wanted to seek professional counselling from the Methodist church but had yet to do so. Any such counselling would be for the trauma of losing his mother rather than any alleged drug problem, Hollas added.

He said Flowers had been unable to return to his own home in Bradford since the story broke over the weekend. "The poor man can't go to his own house because of the grey hyaenas from the tabloid press hanging outside his house." Hollas said Flowers planned to release a statement "in due course" but not imminently because anything he said could be seen to impede the police investigation.