Viaplay and Starz, a Lionsgate company, have agreed a long-term partnership that makes Viaplay a new home to streaming service Starzplay in the Netherlands. All new Starzplay Originals will be available through Viaplay as part of a regular subscription, along with Starzplay’s line-up of films and series from Lionsgate and other major Hollywood studios, when […]
Celebrity free and unbroadcast due to a diversity controversy with its organisers, the Golden Globes were dominated by SVoD players – and particularly HBO Max. Its show Succession claimed the Golden Globe for best drama, while Hacks was named best comedy. HBO claimed six Golden Globes in all. The others – with regards to series […]
The classic movie VoD service Entclick has relaunched on a new platform powered by Redge Media. It features a modern look and feel, and an intuitive user interface. It is multiscreen, including Connected TVs. The content is available in 4K and in a fully secured manner. Redge Media has served for this end-to-end deployment, including […]
The top 50 UK film and TV companies have seen their turnover rise by 15.4 per cent in the last year to £8.1 billion (€9.5bn) as streaming services’ demand for content drives growth in the industry, shows research by accountancy and business advisory firm, BDO LLP. The appetite for streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon […]
Unity, the video game software company, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Weta Digital, co-founded by Hollywood director Peter Jackson, for $1.6 billion (€1.38bn). Unity has specifically acquired its artist tools, core pipeline, intellectual property, and award-winning engineering talent. The Academy Award-Winning VFX service teams of Weta Digital will continue as a standalone […]
Hollywood has dodged a damaging strike as the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) agreed with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) on improved working conditions in the sector. With a deadline just hours away for a strike that threatened to bring US productions to a halt, the organisations agreed a […]
A report from investment bank Morgan Stanley looks at the impact Covid has had on the film industry and with movie-going restarting assesses future industry prospects. But there’s one powerful message from the bank; the streamers are winning. “The movie business is dead, long live the movie business,” says Morgan Stanley. “Since the onset of […]
Molten, an enterprise cloud platform built from the ground up, has raised $7 million (€6m) in total seed funding, with investments from top Hollywood and tech luminaries as well as venture firms to help the company further develop its solution and operations. The seed round was led by Abstract Ventures; with participation from Ashton Kutcher, […]
Major US talent agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA) is to acquire rival ICM Partners in a move that will leave Hollywood with just three major agencies.The terms have not been revealed but the deal will leave just CAA, WME and United Talent Agency. The private equity-backed CAA will add ICM’s publishing arm to its interests, […]
Motion Pictures Laboratories (MovieLabs), a technology joint venture of the major Hollywood studios, has published the first version of a common ontology for production technologists designing software-defined workflows (SDW) for the M&E industry. The Ontology for Media Creation (OMC) provides a conceptual framework and a set of defined terms to enable both people and software […]