The Walt Disney Studios has partnered with Microsoft to move key parts of its movie-making and distribution processes to the cloud. The five-year partnership is being spearheaded by Disney’s Studio… | Continue reading
The Walt Disney Co. has struck a long-term deal with historic Pinewood Studios outside London to take nearly all its stages, backlots and other production accommodation. The arrangement is expected… | Continue reading
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the latest big name star to set up a project at Apple. Variety has learned from sources that Gordon-Levitt is set to star in, write, and executive produce a drama series cur… | Continue reading
Patreon, the subscription-based fan platform, is eyeing a range of new services to support creators — including potentially providing loans at some point, CEO Jack Conte said. Conte, speaking… | Continue reading
Netflix has shipped a total of 5 billion DVDs to its customers since first sending out those iconic red envelopes 21 years ago. The milestone was announced by DVD.com, the Netflix subsidiary that i… | Continue reading
Studios seemingly threw caution to the wind at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, shelling out top dollar in hopes of finding the next indie sensation. A few Hollywood companies saw those sh… | Continue reading
Spotify today extended the free-trial period for its Premium service from one month to three, tripling the amount of time listeners can take full advantage of the streaming giant’s offerings withou… | Continue reading
Get ready to re-enter the Matrix. Lana Wachowski is set to write and direct a fourth film set in the world of “The Matrix,” with Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss reprising their roles as Neo and T… | Continue reading
Apple Music today launched the “Shazam Discovery Top 50,” a weekly, global ranking of 50 artists that it describes as “on the move and trending” — in other words, new and emerging artists. While th… | Continue reading
Disney will begin its international roll-out of Disney Plus on the same day – Nov. 12 – that the direct-to-consumer service launches in the U.S., with a push into Canada and the Netherlands, follow… | Continue reading
Streaming entertainment is smacking into the wall of the paradox of choice — and the cost to consumers of piecing multiple services together. The boom in subscription streaming services has given c… | Continue reading
Amazon and Netflix are soon to get some Gallic competition from Team France. French regulators gave the green light Monday to plans by the country’s heavyweight broadcasters to launch a joint… | Continue reading
Woodstock 50 is officially off, multiple sources tell Variety. Vendors and stakeholders were notified this morning, July 31, that the beleaguered festival was not going on. The festival was origina… | Continue reading
Russian Instagram influencer Ekaterina Karaglanova was found dead Friday inside a suitcase in her Moscow apartment, according to police. The 24-year-old social media personality, who boasts more th… | Continue reading
Barely a page into the book “Spotify Untold,” Swedish authors Jonas Leijonhufvud (pictured at left) and Sven Carlsson paint an odd scene. The year is 2010 and Spotify co-founder and CEO… | Continue reading
ByteDance, the company behind the hugely popular TikTok app, is working on its own phone. A ByteDance representative confirmed the company’s plans for a mobile phone in a conversation with Re… | Continue reading
Netflix and Amazon Web Services are among the newest members of the Academy Software Foundation, a group dedicated to promoting the use of open source software in Hollywood that is being spearheade… | Continue reading
Amazon has picked up “The Expanse” for a fifth season. The announcement was made during the Television Critics Association summer press tour on Saturday. Season 4 of the series is set t… | Continue reading
Rutger Hauer, the versatile Dutch leading man of the ’70s who went on star in the 1982 “Blade Runner” as Roy Batty, died July 19 at his home in the Netherlands after a short illne… | Continue reading
Oculus VR headset users just got one more video service to watch in their virtual living rooms: Amazon’s Prime Video service went live on Oculus Go, Quest and Samsung Gear VR headsets with a … | Continue reading
Rutger Hauer, the versatile Dutch leading man of the ’70s who went on star in the 1982 “Blade Runner” as Roy Batty, died July 19 at his home in the Netherlands after a short illne… | Continue reading
A collision of recent events promises to change the way Hollywood gets paid for toiling in TV. The traditional concept of profit participation is being redefined to reflect the new realities of the… | Continue reading
In recent months, YouTube creators say they’ve been swamped with a flood of manual claims from copyright owners — sometimes for just a second or two of a song. Now the video platform ha… | Continue reading
Sony Pictures Entertainment’s Sony Innovation Studios has acquired Nurulize, a startup whose software lets users edit, color and enhance volumetrically captured images in a real-time collabor… | Continue reading
Riza Aziz, producer of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” was arrested Thursday in Malaysia in connection with the looting of a massive investment fund set up by his step father and former Prime Minister o… | Continue reading
Starting July 4, MoviePass will be out of commission for the next several weeks — at least — with the struggling theater-subscription service provider saying it needs to fix technical i… | Continue reading
Amazon isn’t amused by HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” most recent episode, which included a takedown of the ecommerce giant’s warehouses. Oliver, in the sh… | Continue reading
UPDATED: iHeartMedia will begin trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on July 18th, as a direct listing rather than an initial public offering, the company announced today. The move is similar… | Continue reading
In a pair of cost-cutting moves, Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media is shuttering the Topic Magazine digital publication dedicated to nonfiction storytelling and is dropping its funding for politica… | Continue reading
The Writers Guild of America has hit back at Hollywood agents with accusations of collusion following a pair of lawsuits alleging that the guild is abusing its collective bargaining authority. With… | Continue reading
A new study from GLAAD shows a significant decline in LGBTQ acceptance among young Americans aged 18-34. In a national survey among U.S. adults called the Accelerating Acceptance Index, the percent… | Continue reading
Google has quietly removed the Google Play Movies & TV app from its Daydream VR platform. The app allowed users to rent, buy and watch movies and TV show episodes from the Play Store in a virtu… | Continue reading
Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg and CEO Meg Whitman offered an in-depth look at their new short-form video service during the Produced By conference on Saturday in Los Angeles. Quibi (short for “q… | Continue reading
The Pokemon Company introduced “Pokemon Sleep” during its press conference on Tuesday, a new app intended to make sleep more fun. The “Pokemon Sleep” app and game tracks a u… | Continue reading
YouTube is taking additional steps to restrict the possibility that children will be targeted by predators on the video platform — including banning young kids from live-streaming with adult … | Continue reading
CANNES — Netflix’s “How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)” kicks off with a police special unit, automatic rifles trained, moving in silently for asking. The target, a buff teen drug dealer, at wo… | Continue reading
Sports Illustrated over the decades has chronicled stellar match-ups, blow-outs, squeakers, sudden deaths and photo finishes. Now it’s getting ready to take on a whole new kind of game. Publisher M… | Continue reading
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai gave a thumbs-up to T-Mobile and Sprint’s proposed $26 billion merger, after the companies committed to enhanced 5G buildout commitments and agreed to spin off Sprint’s … | Continue reading
Google will shut down Jump, its cloud-based video stitching service, this summer. The company emailed creators Friday afternoon to tell them that Jump would be shuttered on June 28, and detailed pl… | Continue reading
Sony Music Entertainment is diving into the red-hot podcasting biz. In its first move into the space, the company has formed a joint venture with two veteran podcast producers: Adam Davidson, a New… | Continue reading
Disney is now the only one with its hands on Hulu’s steering wheel. Disney and Comcast announced a deal under which Disney will assume full operational control of Hulu, effective immediately.… | Continue reading
Rupert Murdoch opened Fox Corp.’s Investor Day presentation on Thursday with a promise that the slimmed-down company will be a Wall Street growth story. Murdoch, Fox Corp. chairman, told the … | Continue reading
“Conan” host Conan O’Brien was sued in July 2015 by Robert Alexander Kaseberg, who accused O’Brien and others on the TBS show of stealing five jokes from Kaseberg’s Tw… | Continue reading
High Fidelity, the virtual worlds startup led by Second Life founder Philip Rosedale, laid off 20 staffers, or about 25% of its staff, this week. Rosedale said in a blog post that the company was c… | Continue reading
As Google is further integrating the Nest brand, it is also introducing some significant changes to the way Nest products will work. The most notable one: The company will discontinue its Works Wit… | Continue reading
In the end, it wasn’t meant to be. Microsoft had pulled out all the stops for its Build 2019 developer conference keynote Monday morning. The company had partnered with Epic Games and Industrial Li… | Continue reading
An ad agency in Belgium revealed its latest bid to hook gamers and other internet users prone to rage over slow connections: “Raging Banners.” VOO, one of Belgium’s main telecom p… | Continue reading
“Star Wars” actor Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the original trilogy, died on Tuesday, his family announced on his Twitter. He was 74. He died at his North Texas home surrounded… | Continue reading