Know What's Happening in Entertainment
Know What's Happening in Entertainment
Nintendo and Illumination target $200M-plus Easter opening for “Super Mario Galaxy”
The upcoming “Super Mario Galaxy” film is being positioned to generate more than $200 million domestically over the Easter holiday weekend, leveraging the franchise’s multigenerational appeal. Analysts reference the 2015 “Avengers: Age of Ultron” $191 million opening as a performance benchmark.
Also developing:
By the numbers: K‑Love seeks FCC approval to acquire WFCC
Actor Timothée Chalamet’s remark that “no one cares about opera” sparked a swift backlash that opera companies turned into a viral marketing campaign. Major houses such as Seattle Opera, Washington National Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera launched discount codes and flash‑sale videos referencing the comment. The posts amassed hundreds of thousands of likes, shares, and comments, driving ticket discounts for productions like Carmen and Akhnaten. The initiative demonstrated how a single pop‑culture moment can be leveraged to boost attendance and brand visibility.
AI agents are being layered onto media analytics pipelines, promising automated insights for streaming publishers. However, a single erroneous data point—such as a telemetry delay—can poison the entire chain, turning a glitch into a strategic misstep. The risk is amplified...
Warner Music Group’s subsidiary WMG Acquisition Corp. has secured a $1.645 billion credit agreement with JPMorgan, consolidating its fragmented 2012‑era debt into a single package. The deal includes a $1.295 billion term loan to retire existing term‑loan obligations and a $350 million revolving...
Salem Media Group reported a 10.5% drop in 2025 revenue to $212.7 million, largely driven by $24 million in asset sales. Despite lower operating costs, the broadcaster posted a $34.6 million net loss, a swing of 313.9% from the prior year’s profit....
#OpenAI is putting #Sora inside #ChatGPT. Existing data suggests consumer demand for AI video may underwhelm relative to ChatGPT's 920 million weekly chatbot users. For Disney, its licensed 200-plus characters will be available to these audiences under strict conditions that...
Blackpink returned with the five‑track EP Deadline, debuting at No. 2 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart and entering the Billboard 200 at No. 8. The release sold just under 41,500 copies, far behind Bruno Mars' The Romantic, which opened with 93,500 units and...
EditShare will demonstrate its latest AI‑powered media operations and high‑performance NVMe storage at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas. The company is emphasizing Analytical AI, which automatically extracts speech, faces, text and scene data to enrich video files with...
Sony Pictures Television announced that Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman will leave the nonfiction division they have led since 2022. The unit will be folded into President Katherine Pope’s portfolio, joining her scripted and kids businesses. Sony originally acquired Holzman...
Playboy announced Phillip Picardi as its chief brand officer and editor‑in‑chief, making him the first openly gay leader of the iconic men’s lifestyle brand. The appointment follows a broader editorial overhaul that includes a revived print edition, a Substack newsletter,...
The DOJ reached a settlement with Live Nation‑Ticketmaster that stops short of a breakup, instead imposing a 15 % fee cap on tickets sold at Live Nation‑owned amphitheaters and requiring limited transparency for artists. The agreement also obliges Ticketmaster to open...
Bell withdrew its April 2025 complaint after reaching a distribution agreement with Telus for five discretionary channels—Oxygen True Crime, USA Network, CTV Nature, CTV Speed and CTV Wild. The dispute originated from Bell’s claim that Telus favored Rogers’ new channels...
Salem Media, a publisher of conservative and Christian spoken‑word content, released its full‑year 2025 earnings on Wednesday. The report provides annual revenue and profit figures but omits any fourth‑quarter breakout. Detailed financials are gated behind a premium membership, limiting immediate...
The Kyiv Independent, launched just before Russia’s invasion, has scaled from an 18‑person startup to a leading English‑language outlet with over 27,000 paying members and three million monthly readers. In 2025 the newsroom recorded a 78% increase in membership while...
Dionne Warwick has filed counterclaims against Artists Rights Enforcement Corporation (AREC) in the Southern District of New York, accusing the firm of siphoning millions of dollars in royalty income over a 23‑year relationship. Warwick seeks at least $1 million in punitive...
Magnify Digital announced that Te Māngai Pāho, New Zealand’s national Māori screen fund, will deploy its AI‑driven audience intelligence platform ScreenMiner across about 150 funded productions each year. The platform aggregates quantitative metrics and structured qualitative feedback from digital channels, delivering decision‑ready insights...
The University of Illinois partnered with Grass Valley and integration firm Tab M Solutions to complete Phase 1 of a hybrid IP broadcast production hub for Fighting Illini Productions ahead of the 2025 football season. The system employs a hybrid SMPTE ST 2110/SDI architecture, deploying...
Libsyn, a leading podcast hosting platform, reported a 48% year‑over‑year increase in advertising revenue for 2025, driven by 4.8 billion ad impressions and record creator payouts. The company also disclosed that upfront advertiser commitments have doubled heading into 2026. In conjunction...
The Washington State Association of Broadcasters (WSAB) announced a search for a President & Chief Executive Officer to guide the organization through a period of transition and opportunity. The new leader will oversee advocacy at state and federal levels, drive...
Mediagenix announced an upgrade to its Semantic Intelligence engine, aiming to turn raw title and rights metadata into actionable commercial insight for studios and networks. By embedding advanced semantic modeling—originally built by its 2024 acquisition Spideo—into its Title Management platform,...
Universal Music Group’s CEO Lucian Grainge highlighted superfans as a massively under‑monetized segment, noting the company’s 1,600 direct‑to‑consumer stores now generate hundreds of millions in revenue. Goldman Sachs projects the superfan opportunity to reach $4.3 billion annually by 2026, while Luminate...
The episode dives into Suno AI, a leading AI music generation platform that recently hit $300 million in annual recurring revenue and boasts 2 million paid users. Hosts discuss how Suno’s studio lets creators generate individual stems or full tracks, enabling musicians...
YouTube generated $40.4 billion in ad revenue for 2025, overtaking the combined $37.8 billion earned by Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Financial analysts at Moffett Nathanson value the platform at $500‑$560 billion, positioning it as the world’s largest media company by ad sales. The...
Rico Nasty has entered a global representation agreement with United Talent Agency, tasking agents Caroline Yim and Jon Briks with expanding her career beyond music. UTA will target live‑touring slots, brand collaborations, and broader entertainment opportunities. The deal follows the...
Michael Brandvold and Dave Cool discuss superfans on the Music Biz Weekly podcast, highlighting their outsized role in streaming, ticket sales, and merchandise revenue. They explore methods to identify superfans using data analytics and direct engagement, and debate the balance...
Johnny and Iz Harris have launched Newpress, a production company and community platform designed to incubate creator‑journalists. The venture, built on the success of Johnny Harris’s 7.5 million‑subscriber YouTube channel, already backs three flagship shows that blend deep‑dive reporting with high‑production...
Publishers are abandoning reliance on social platforms and rented traffic as Google’s zero‑click search results erode referral visits. The article argues that participation‑driven experiences—embedded comment streams, community tools, and real‑time interaction—create a defensible moat. By shifting engagement to owned properties,...
This has always been true. Net vs. gross. Agents and managers are paid on gross, not net. They are incentivized to fill schedules with breakeven shows. Classic principal-agent problem. If you pay attention as an artist, you end up with...
A limited‑edition Fanta can celebrating Xbox’s 25th anniversary was spotted in Canada, featuring the Call of Duty logo and the franchise’s iconic Ghost character. The promotion, shared by CharlieIntel and Klobrille, is being interpreted as the strongest hint yet of...
Germany’s football federation announced a switch from long‑time kit partner Adidas to Nike, with the new deal valued at over €100 million annually—about twice Adidas’ previous contract. The move ends a partnership that supplied the iconic three‑stripe shirts for four World...
Eight out of ten Performance Max advertisers are now seeing connected‑TV impressions on YouTube, a shift driven by Google’s expanded CTV capabilities. Since Q2 2025 the platform has auto‑generated TV ads from product‑feed images, and in January 2026 introduced shoppable CTV formats...
Canal+ announced a multi‑year partnership with Google Cloud to embed the latter’s generative AI suite into its European and African services beginning June 2026. The collaboration will power AI‑driven video indexing, multimodal metadata creation, and hyper‑personalized content recommendations on the Canal+...
Sony announced that Persona 5 Royal will join the PlayStation Plus Game Catalog on March 17, available to both Extra and Premium subscribers. The PS5 version and a PS4 Ultimate Edition, which bundles all DLC, will be offered worldwide. This marks the latest high‑profile...
Premium CTV inventory, while more expensive, offers advertisers higher-quality audience engagement. Vevo, partnering with measurement firm Amplified, has produced rigorous attention data demonstrating that premium placements deliver longer view times and stronger brand recall. The partnership’s findings provide concrete evidence...
Companies like Meta subsidize third party developers in various ways to help grow their platforms, then take 30% of the developer revenue right back with the platform tax, which is a wasteful churn. Epic’s tax structure of zero for the first...
Netflix Could Pay as Much as $600 Million for Ben Affleck’s AI Film Start-Up: Report https://t.co/EMp2y3V3u0 via @variety
Coors Banquet has logged five straight years of volume growth, driven largely by Gen Z and younger drinkers. To capitalize on this momentum, Molson Coors is boosting its media budget with a double‑digit increase and re‑entering live‑sports advertising during the 2026 MLB...
SCOOP: Billionaire Tilman Fertitta has been in exclusive talks to buy Caesars Entertainment for around $34/sh. https://t.co/Mz8usEYgRm
Aren’t a lot of these media assets just melting ice cubes that can’t cut it outside the (withering) cable bundle?
The Mechanical Licensing Collective (MLC) and Pandora Media have each filed opposition briefs in their ongoing lawsuit over whether Pandora’s ad‑supported “Pandora Free” service should be treated as an interactive service subject to mechanical royalties. The MLC argues that three...
EXCLU: Following the success of THE HOUSEMAID, Lionsgate is getting in business for the long term with one of its stars as Brandon Sklenar and his Vista Lane banner has signed a first look deal with the studio https://t.co/JCZqVaaTu0
The one BIG move that will tell us if Ellison and Paramount are playing to win. $PSKY $WBD $AMZN The LightShed Podcast, Ep. 304. With @BrandoLightShed and @WaltLightShed https://t.co/YJZW8CaF1O
Calrec will showcase hybrid workflow solutions at the 2026 NAB Show, unveiling its U.S. debut of the IP‑native Argo M audio console. The 48‑fader console packs up to 356 internal DSP channels and supports SMPTE ST 2110 and cloud connectivity. Calrec will also...
Barry Diller says in interview with Graham Bensinger that Paramount was mismanaged for ten years. https://t.co/5f66zaehm7 via @YouTube
Barry Diller on hopes to buy CNN: "I would change everything" Interview with Graham Bensinger. https://t.co/mkgyjN8GTY via @YouTube
The United States Trade Representative released its 2025 Notorious Markets report, highlighting $40 billion in annual losses from music and sports piracy. The 61‑page document catalogs dozens of high‑profile piracy sites such as DHgate, MegaCloud, Private Layer and The Pirate Bay,...
Microsoft says you build next-gen Xbox games by building them for PC. My colleagues @StarFire2258 and @jaypeters are in line for the Xbox GDC keynote, but look at what they spotted. "Next-gen game preservation" and building for PC for next-gen...
Creators Go Pro: Digital Stars Bank Brand Bucks While Talent Agencies and Support Firms Proliferate https://t.co/P1OMksQCSC via @variety
Valve disclosed that 5,863 Steam titles earned over $100,000 in 2025, more than double the 3,000 games that reached the same threshold in 2020. The platform also reported record user activity, with 42 million peak concurrent users and 13.9 million in‑game concurrent...
Game of Streams: David Ellison's Plan to Compete with Netflix called Paramount+HBO Paramount wants to be more than a survivor in the streaming wars. It believes it can catapult itself into a daily use streaming platform that can compete head-on...
Bookwire, a leading ebook distributor, has announced a partnership with AI voice pioneer Eleven Labs to launch AI‑narrated audiobooks. The new titles will be streamed through Eleven Labs' Eleven Reader app and will initially support more than a dozen languages....
