Charles Pulliam-Moore | The Verge

Netflix can’t fire its way out of this downward spiral

2026-10-23T09:14:38-04:00

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. | Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images

Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters assured investors this week that they have nothing to be concerned about. Sure, the company was going to lay off 1,000 employees, downsizing its product, tech, and legal departments, and was ousting its chief content officer, film chairman, and film vice president. But it had also hired a new COO — “one of the most effective at-scale operators in the entertainment industry,” Sarandos said — to turn things around.

Though executive shake-ups aren’t uncommon, having so many of them back to back would send a concerning message even in the best of circumstances. With Netflix, however, the situation looks undeniably grim given the streamer’s recent troubles with missed ad revenue targets, sluggish growth, and a failed attempt at acquiring Warner Bros. Losing WB to David Ellison’s Paramount was a huge blow — that merger would have given Netflix an easy way to expand its catalog, grow its user base, and build a more established presence in movie theaters. The company now has to navigate those challenges on its own while also figuring out why its current content slate hasn’t resulted in record profits.

Sarandos admitted that Netflix needs “better execution” in the US

While Netflix has put out some well-received fare like East of Eden, Adolescence, and The Diplomat, the company is well known for canceling series before they’ve even had a chance to build an audience. People frequently complain that they rarely see advertisements for Netflix’s new projects, but when they do, it tends to be for weird misfires like The New Stanford Prison Experiment and Wonka’s The Golden Ticket. In each of the recent executive firings, you can see Netflix trying to signal to investors and the public that it has a clear understanding of what hasn’t been working with its output from the past few years. There’s no denying that Netflix’s recent lineup has been lackluster, but these issues feel like they’re endemic to the company itself rather than something that can be blamed solely on a trio of executives.

Sarandos insisted to investors that Netflix’s “content around the world is largely working,” but he admitted that the company needs “better execution” in the US, where business is “just not growing as fast as it could or as fast as we’d like.”

Netflix’s push into more markets around the globe was largely led by Bela Bajaria, who led TV and content at Netflix over the past decade. Bajaria ushered the streamer into a new era of being a hub for unscripted programming, sports, and internationally produced projects. Bajaria is part of the reason that a Netflix subscription gives you access to WWE and Lupin as well as Bridgerton.

On paper, Bajaria did exactly what she was hired to do. She expanded and diversified Netflix’s library of content, hoping to attract more people to the platform. Bajaria was instrumental in the production and rollout of international series like Money Heist and Squid Game — the latter of which became a global phenomenon and boosted subscriptions while also winning the streamer a few Emmys. Netflix’s current approach to acquiring and distributing international programming has been so successful that Sarandos said the company has no plans to change its strategy. But it seems that success was not enough to protect Bajaria’s job.

In a statement about incoming COO Peter Rice’s hiring and Bajaria’s dismissal, Sarandos thanked her for her “dedication, innovation, creativity and leadership” and said he was grateful for “everything she’s done to help Netflix entertain the world.” But that gratefulness didn’t exactly gel with recent reports that Bajaria is being used as a scapegoat and was axed with little notice.

Film chairman Dan Lin — who joined Netflix in 2024 and reported directly to Bajaria — exited Netflix in a somewhat similar fashion to his former boss. After years of courting filmmakers with massive production deals, Netflix hired Lin to help it rein in its spending. Lin had a strong track record of producing financial hits for other studios, like Warner Bros.’ The Lego Movie and Disney’s live-action Aladdin. Lin also appointed Doug Belgrad as VP and tasked him with overseeing Netflix’s lineup of original content. By all accounts, Lin did exactly what Netflix courted him for, and his mind for austerity was aligned with the company’s larger goals. But as The Hollywood Reporter notes, Lin’s brusque personality could sometimes lead to friction with some of the high-profile talent Netflix is in business with, like Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew auteur Greta Gerwig and AI startup InterPositive founder Ben Affleck.

Price hikes have undoubtedly soured some people on the platform

While much of Netflix’s recent programming is the product of Bajaria, Lin, and Belgrad’s leadership, they were not the only people responsible for turning the streamer into what it is today. In recent years, Netflix has also gotten into podcasts and gaming — initiatives that have often felt like desperate attempts at clawing back attention from rivals like YouTube, TikTok, and any one of the free ad-supported television platforms on the market. The fact that there are so many other different services that Netflix’s subscribers might prefer to spend more time on is one of the biggest challenges. And many of these competitors have become more attractive to customers as Netflix has continuously raised its prices.

Aside from introducing ad-supported tiers, forcing subscribers to pay more has been Netflix’s primary method for revenue growth. Netflix isn’t unique in that regard — all of the major streamers are doing it — but it has undoubtedly soured some people on the platform at a time when its offerings haven’t always felt like they justified their price. Even when Netflix has stumbled its way onto unexpected gems like KPop Demon Hunters, the company doesn’t always seem to have the strongest game plan to capitalize on their success. Rice’s hiring does suggest that Netflix knows it has to do things differently, and his past may provide some insight into the streamer’s future plans.

Before coming to Netflix, Rice served as 21st Century Fox’s president until the studio was acquired by Disney. Rice became Walt Disney Television’s chairman in 2019 and oversaw production for a number of the company’s networks, including ABC and FX. And after being fired by Bob Chapek in 2022, Rice pivoted into producing projects like Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, 28 Years Later, and the upcoming Elden Ring movie. Rice’s roots in traditional studio film development points to Netflix getting even more serious about screening its films in theaters. The streamer already has plans to give The Magician’s Nephew and the KPop Demon Hunters sequel sizable theatrical runs, and it is currently trying to secure Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi’s La bola negra an Academy Award at the upcoming Oscars.

Having a larger presence in movie theaters won’t solve all of Netflix’s problems, but it could help shift the way that people perceive the platform and its catalog. And in Sarandos’ assertion that Rice has a deep understanding of talent relationships, you can hear that the co-CEO is banking on his new COO to convince filmmakers that Netflix is where they need to bring their latest ideas. Rice’s hiring makes for a compelling narrative about Netflix finding its way forward by relying on the instincts of an industry veteran known for effortlessly jumping between the film and TV worlds. But that narrative doesn’t feel quite as convincing when you look back at the way Netflix’s partnerships with directors like David Fincher, Shawn Levy, and Noah Baumbach resulted in some pretty terrible projects.

In order for Netflix to really turn the ship around, it has to realize that content is only one piece of the puzzle. Splashy new movies and series won’t mean much if people don’t feel that the service is financially accessible, but Netflix’s vague allusions to “improving” monetization suggest that the service is only going to get more expensive. Right now, Netflix needs to be focused on demonstrating that it has a clear plan for how it can move into the future. The company can start by acknowledging the larger issues with its business model instead of simply throwing executives under the bus.

New York’s first microdrama film festival searches for its audience

2026-10-23T08:01:30-04:00

Actors Taye Diggs, Autumn Federici, Gary Entin, Troy Brookins, Edmund Entin and Eric Guilmette attend the world premiere of Microhouse Films and Lifetime's Reunion Island during the ALZA Festival. | Getty Images for Lifetime.

It remains to be seen if people really want to watch vertical content on horizontal TV screens, but many filmmakers and creators were confident that their latest projects would play well at Alza — New York City’s first microdrama film festival. Founded by former Tribeca Festival chief operating officer Pete Torres, Alza, which took place October 16th through 18th, was billed as a showcase for the “the creativity, innovation, and growing cultural impact of stories made for the vertical screen.” The festival featured a selection of microdrama and film premieres as well as industry-focused panels with executives who all seemed to genuinely believe that vertical entertainment is going to be an integral part of the future.

That proposition felt rather dubious as I sat down in an AMC theater in Manhattan for screenings of director Jerry Bradford’s vertical adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and the original Billionaire’s Broken Vow starring Eric Roberts. Though both of those projects were full-length features, they were filled with jarring jump cuts and abrupt soundtrack changes that reminded me how the films are cut up into short “episodes” for microdrama apps. That wasn’t as much of an issue with shorter series like the romantasy horror Blood Surfer or collections of videos like disability rights activist Lachi Music’s “Glam Struts.” But it was still very strange to see content that was clearly meant to be watched on phones being projected in the center of massive screens in the same theater that’s currently showing Resident Evil, The Social Reckoning, and You Can See Everything.

Most fans of vertical videos and microdramas consume them through their mobile devices, but platforms like Instagram and Vurt have been rolling out dedicated smart TV apps that are designed to keep vertical video viewers glued to their couches. The popularity of YouTube — which you can access in so many different ways — has spooked major streaming services like Disney Plus, Netflix, and HBO Max into experimenting with feeds of vertical clips. Alza was filled with people who were confident that they were leading the charge to legitimize vertical content as an art form that’s going to revolutionize the entertainment industry. There’s no denying that some microdramas have been wildly successful, but Alza’s programming left me doubtful that the future is vertical.

As odd as I personally found much of what was playing at Alza, it did seem to entertain some of the festival’s other attendees, many of whom were middle-aged women. None of the screenings were packed, but while watching a few steamy, romance-forward dramas, I was surprised to hear peals of laughter and gasps coming from the front of the theater, where festival staffers encouraged people to sit in order to have the best viewing experience.

“We’re making content that speaks to mainstream women who are part of this mobile-first movement.”

Appealing to female viewers has been one of the primary goals of GammaTime, the microdrama platform founded by former Miramax CEO Bill Block. When I spoke with Block and GammaTime’s head of development, Amy Sullivan, they told me the platform’s library of content has been designed to appeal to viewers and their general moods at different points throughout the entire day.

“We’re making content that speaks to mainstream women who are part of this mobile-first movement, who are on their phones in the mornings, the afternoons, at night,” Sullivan explained. “We have easy watches, we have rom-coms, and we have stuff that’s a little spicier — but not too salacious — for perhaps later at night. We’re trying to meet everyone where they are at every time of day.”

Block pointed to daytime TV watchers as one demographic that GammaTime has been especially interested in bringing into the fold. Though soap operas are still very popular in the US, their overall ratings have been declining in recent years as people’s attention has been pulled elsewhere. Block insisted that rather than disappearing, traditional daytime TV viewers have been migrating to other sources of entertainment, like on-demand streaming services and social media platforms.

“They’re still here, but they’re watching this while they’re pretending to work a little bit at the office,” Block said, referring to people who fire up microdrama apps for a quick hit of fun. “They’re at home, too, but this is the new daytime, the new 5–6PM, and the new 10PM plus.”

Block and Sullivan noted how, even when overall production costs are kept low, operating as a successful studio is still very expensive. It takes a lot of money to reach different demographics of potential viewers while maintaining various ad partnerships, which is why GammaTime has outsourced much of its marketing efforts overseas.

“We’ve got an edge in Tel Aviv, and I would honestly say the brains of the operation is our partner Slava Mudrykh and his customer acquisition, AI, and marketing teams,” Block said. “Because this is all Instagram and TikTok — that’s where you’re acquiring [new users.]”

“There’s so much nebulosity in this space, and it just seems like a lot of times, nobody actually watches the stuff they’re making.”

Microdramas are often characterized by AI-generated special effects and melodramatic soap opera energy, and I saw plenty of both from many of the projects I screened during Alza. As more companies try to build a presence for microdramas in the West, it is still somewhat hard to imagine this kind of content taking off the way it has in China. Even though Salvador Paskowitz — who cowrote The Age of Adaline — won Alza’s best director award with his 90-minute comedy Layover, he expressed some skepticism about verticals / microdramas’ potential to be a lifeline for filmmakers and actors who have been struggling to find production work in Los Angeles. In Paskowitz’s view, this kind of entertainment has stopped being a viable way for production workers to build careers because of the sudden influx of generative AI.

“Companies like ReelShort and DramaBox were kind of the first wave of these newer verticals, but because they’ve gone so crazy with AI, I think of them like cruise ships that have run themselves aground,” Paskowitz told me. “Now there are a lot of American companies that smell an opportunity, but there’s so much nebulosity in this space, and it just seems like a lot of times, nobody actually watches the stuff they’re making.”

Paskowitz believes that filmmakers owe it to their audiences and the brands that they work with to put out projects that actually look good. He also thinks that because studios that want to become the “HBO of verticals” now have an “AI slop button to press,” they’re losing sight of what people really want to watch. Paskowitz was adamant that using gen AI in any capacity for film production is a slippery slope that can quickly lead to the erasure of the human element. That, he said, is why Layover was produced traditionally.

“I’m even against doing hybrid productions because it’s easy to start cutting corners, and the public is going to see,” Paskowitz explained. “That idea sends chills through my body because it starts with ‘Let’s replace that tree, let’s replace all these buildings, let’s replace all the background work.’ And then at some point, it’s ‘Look, we’ve come so far. Let’s just replace all the actors.”

Something that struck me as the festival continued was how — while some projects featured AI elements — the vast majority of them starred human actors who all seemed very proud of their work and excited to share it with the public. These microdramas might not win any awards outside of Alza, but there are real people making them. That might also be why I was so surprised to hear Block jokingly say that the rise of vertical content “is all part of the decline of the West.”

After our interview, Block and Sullivan repeatedly stressed that he wasn’t being serious, which may be true given the line of work they’re in. But even if Block was just kidding, his words stuck with me because it feels like there may be some truth to the idea of decline. Verticals / microdrama production has become a multibillion-dollar industry because we live in a society that encourages us to engage with almost every aspect of our lives through the tiny screens that stay in our pockets. It’s no surprise that Hollywood sees vertical microdramas as the next big thing. But their cheesiness, lackluster production values, and formulaic stories don’t exactly make them feel ready for the red carpet treatment.

Additional reporting by Andru Marino.

The tech backlash is now in theaters

2026-10-16T12:26:17-04:00

Though movies about disruptive tech founders are nothing new, 2026 has been unusually stacked with features that take a much more critical look at how Silicon Valley is reshaping our reality. Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning frames Mark Zuckerberg as a robotic villain whose ambitions are destabilizing society. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s You Can See Everything paints a damning picture of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes as she prepares for her ongoing stint in prison. After years of being widely celebrated as a visionary, you can see how the larger narrative around Elon Musk has shifted in projects like Alex Gibney’s Musk documentary. And while Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial is a dark comedy, it is also a character study that makes Sam Altman look like a manipulative sociopath.

Even though some of these movies are fictionalized dramas, each of them draws from the wealth of critical reporting that has revealed their subjects to be less-than-savory characters. You get the sense that these filmmakers are trying to tell stories that are meant to resonate with audiences whose views of Big Tech have long since begun to dim. But it also feels like some of Hollywood’s biggest studios are finally embracing the idea that the tech backlash isn’t letting up anytime soon.

Especially when you compare them to classics like The Social Network, the latest wave of cinematic dramas based on Silicon Valley power struggles has been far less sympathetic to their central figures. David Fincher’s 2010 film starring Jesse Eisenberg presented Zuckerberg as a complicated and misunderstood savant, but The Social Reckoning builds its story around the idea that the Facebook / Meta head is a man whose obsession with growth poses an existential threat to democracy. By focusing on the allegations leveled by whistleblower Frances Haugen, the movie is able to highlight Zuckerberg’s public transformation into a powerful executive who wields autocratic control over a multibillion-dollar social media empire.

What The Social Reckoning lacks in timeliness (The Wall Street Journal began reporting Haugen’s warnings in 2021) and stylistic flair, it makes up for in the way it connects Facebook / Meta’s past internal decisions to events that are still playing out in real time. The movie’s scenes that dig into Instagram’s negative impacts on teens’ mental health and the relationship between Facebook’s algorithm and the spread of misinformation feel as if they’re speaking directly to present-day concerns about how much influence Meta has over people’s lives. Similarly, Gibney’s Musk documentary acts as both a chronicle of the xAI / SpaceX head’s past and an inquiry into why the public was ever willing to let Musk accrue so much power within governments across the world.

Musk’s response to Gibney’s film has been telling. X has blocked the feature from being advertised on the platform, and Musk — a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” — has threatened to take legal action against Gibney for producing a “hit piece.” It wasn’t entirely surprising to see Musk personally badmouthing a project that casts him in a negative light, but it was curious to see the Musk ads initially missing from other social media platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Though the Meta subsidiaries and YouTube ultimately reversed their decisions, TikTok has stuck to its guns — which feels notable given the company’s indirect connections to the Trump administration by way of Skydance Corporation CEO David Ellison. David’s father — Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison — is a longtime Donald Trump supporter and one of the American billionaires who led the consortium of investors that purchased TikTok’s US business late last year. Ellison has reportedly promised Gibney that Musk will air on HBO (now a part of Skydance) sometime next January. The film is currently screening in select theaters, but it is hard to argue that it hasn’t had to deal with an unusual amount of outside interference in the weeks leading up to its release.

Guadagnino’s Artificial — which was originally going to be released by Amazon — also faced unexpected marketing challenges this year. The streaming giant backed out of its deal to distribute the film this past June, just months after announcing that it was investing $50 billion in OpenAI. All of that made it seem very much like Amazon and other studios financially involved with AI companies might be cooling on the idea of releasing projects critical of the technology’s creators. Now that Artificial has begun screening and people have a sense of how it takes Altman to task, it’s easy to see why Amazon didn’t want to have its name attached. More than anything else, that decision may be what convinces people to see Artificial in theaters when it releases widely on December 25th, and OpenAI’s impending IPO could make the movie’s messages about Altman feel that much more relevant.

What sets Fielder’s You Can See Everything apart from each of these other recent tech films is how direct a view it gives you into the actual life of its subject. The documentary’s production began well after Holmes had already been sentenced to more than 11 years in prison, and Fielder uses his access to grill her about why she doesn’t believe that she defrauded Theranos investors. Invited to live with Holmes and her partner William Evans in a rental home during the month before she was set to begin her sentence, Fielder allows himself to become a character who can’t entirely tell whether his hosts’ supposed wish for radical transparency is genuine.

That central tension turns You Can See Everything into a surprisingly fascinating watch that challenges you to consider who’s actually in control of the documentary. Throughout the movie, Fielder repeatedly wonders if Holmes is using him as part of her recent PR campaign, and he leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions.

It often feels like Fielder is asking viewers to really listen to how Holmes presents herself on camera and then reconcile that person with what you might have read about Holmes in the news or seen in Hulu’s The Dropout. Whether or not Holmes is really just a committed performer who’s trying to manipulate the public shapes every beat of the film, and it makes You Can See Everything feel like a truly in-depth and honest examination of one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous figures — one who’s already captured so much of the public’s attention.

Even though some of these films have been box office flops, their existence reflects a larger cultural shift in how people are thinking about modern technology and the powers behind it. Hollywood has spent years poking fun at and mythologizing founders, and portions of the industry are finally beginning to take a more critical view. As we continue to deal with the fallout of things like Elon Musk’s tenure at DOGE and OpenAI’s quest to bake generative AI into every aspect of our lives, audiences’ appetites for movies like these could grow. And with all of these founders racing to monopolize the next tech frontier, the entertainment industry will probably have plenty of source material to draw from.

The Social Reckoning is flopping at the box office

2026-10-12T17:21:23-04:00

As important as some of the messages in The Social Reckoning are, the movie has been drastically underperforming at the box office. Per Variety, Aaron’s Sorkin’s follow up to The Social Network only grossed a measly $5.5 million this past weekend against a budget that’s somewhere within the $30–42 million range. That would make it a certifiable flop that’s costing Columbia Pictures (and Sony) quite a bit of money — especially when you compare it to The Social Network’s $22 million opening.

This isn’t entirely surprising given how middling reviews for the film have been. It’s currently got a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has widely been trashed on social media. All of this might be reflective of audiences hoping for a proper sequel to The Social Network, which won three Oscars for its screenplay (written by Sorkin), editing, and score. But it might speak to people not fully clicking with Mikey Madison’s performance as whistleblower Frances Haugen or Jeremy Allen White’s turn as Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz. (Madison, for her part, indicated to The Hollywood Reporter that it was Sorkin’s vision as director that kept from “authentically and faithfully represent[ing] a real person,” which she hopes to do in the future.) It also probably didn’t help that Jesse Eisenberg — who portrayed Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network — had no interest in being in the film, according to Sorkin himself.

Ironically, Blumhouse’s Other Mommy raked in an impressive $27.5 million this weekend, which likely suggests that people are more interested in novel horror as opposed to reminders of how social media has made everyone’s lives worse.

Vurt wants you to look at vertical videos as a genre of their own

2026-10-20T14:40:30-04:00

From Disney Plus to HBO Max, almost every major established streaming service is experimenting with ways to get into vertical content. It’s clear that these companies see video-focused social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram as existential threats. In this arms race for viewers’ attention, it has often felt like everyone is trying to find new ways to exist on people’s phones. But a new startup thinks that the next step in vertical series’ evolution is going to take place on our wide-screen televisions.

Unlike most vertical microdrama / series streaming platforms on the market that have focused on mobile viewing experiences, Vurt has been making a pivot into smart TVs. The company recently launched dedicated apps for Apple TV and Android TV that give users access to 3,500 episodes across more than 100 different shows. Since launching in March, Vurt’s userbase has grown from 10,000 to 675,000 users.

Vurt primarily features the kind of soapy, melodramatic microdramas that have made rival services like DramaBox and ReelShort popular. But whereas those platforms have become inundated with AI-generated slop, the vast majority of Vurt’s series are produced with human casts and crews. And because Vurt monetizes its content through ad partnerships, viewers can watch all of it for free instead of dealing with convoluted microtransactions.

When I spoke with Vurt cofounder / angel investor Hilmon Sorey this week, he told me that the company’s big push into dedicated TV apps was driven by direct feedback from users. People wanted a way to beam verticals they were already watching via their phones onto bigger screens, but Vurt’s development team thought that they could take things a step further.

“At first, we first developed the ability for folks to cast to smart TVs,” Sorey said. “But we decided that wasn’t the best experience because we could leverage all of the technology in those large-screen devices to bring features like HD / 4K video, and the ability to do really high-quality audio.”

To build out its library, Vurt signs licensing agreements with production studios and creators that gives them a 50/50 revenue split. Independent creators can directly submit their projects for distribution on the platform, and once approved, it can be available to stream in just a few days. Sorey said that being fair to creators and taking cues from them are core tenets of Vurt’s corporate philosophy. He also pointed to Vurt’s decision to rely on a “free-to-finish” model as the main way it works to be fair to its users.

“If you are a platform that’s doing your own original content and you don’t have creators to pay, then ‘give us $20 and we’ll give you 500 coffee beans’ kind of gamification is intentional,” Sorey insisted. “It’s a ruse that they can use to boggle your mind because they control that entire content ecosystem.”

Vurt’s foray onto televisions is coming at a time when more established vertical-focused platforms have been looking into ways to exist beyond people’s phones. This past June, Instagram beefed up its TV app to include Reels, disappearing Stories, and horizontally oriented videos — all of which felt like attempts at keeping pace with YouTube. Vurt told me that the company is staying focused on vertical content, but is currently developing new kinds of programming like original series and livestreamed sporting events.

“You’ve got to have your hook to begin and at the tail end of that, you’ve got to thrust them into the next episode by virtue of a cliffhanger.”

In the buildup to launching its TV apps, Vurt consulted content creators about how they like to watch films and TV shows. Many reported preferring viewing things in movie theaters or on big screens because of how immersive those experiences felt. But according to Sorey, the creators also insisted that vertical microdramas can feel just as engaging whether they’re watched on a phone with earbuds in or on a television screen.

“You can have a different kind of immersive experience — even on a wide screen in vertical format — because verticals tell their stories in a very different way,” Sorey said. “You’ve got to have your hook to begin and at the tail end of that, you’ve got to thrust them into the next episode by virtue of a cliffhanger.”

Sorey believes that the stylistic elements vertical microdramas have become known for — formulaic plots, questionable acting, and exceedingly short episodes — make them a specific kind of entertainment that’s distinct from traditional TV shows and films. Those qualities are what tend to make some people see vertical content as unwatchable, but they also seem to be part of what’s keeping Vurt’s users engaged. Sorey says that Vurt has seen overall engagement time increase for viewers using the company’s TV apps. That’s likely because those viewers have a convenient way to consume Vurt’s content without having to pick up their phones.

Though a service like Vurt might make sense for people already hooked on microdramas, what’s far less clear is whether there’s really a broader appetite for vertical videos flanked by blank spaces. With so many other platforms experimenting with ways to turn everything into endless feeds of vertical videos, though, Vurt may be on to something.

The Social Reckoning is a tepid thriller that reminds us of how we got here

2026-10-08T04:51:46-04:00

When David Fincher’s The Social Network premiered in 2010, many people still thought of Mark Zuckerberg as a genius who had revolutionized the world by creating Facebook. Writer Aaron Sorkin’s script was critical of Zuckerberg’s character and his ruthless approach to doing business, but it also helped mythologize the co-founder at a time when the general public was much more enchanted by Silicon Valley. When Zuckerberg said in 2014 that he’d been hurt by the film’s depiction of him, Sorkin said he was “sorry that it did” and admitted that he “wouldn’t want a movie made about the things I did when I was 19 years old,” either. Sorkin’s apology was a reflection of how much grace the public was willing to extend to the world’s (then) youngest billionaire. But in 2026, it is hard to imagine anyone having all that much sympathy for the man running Meta.

The film lacks the propulsive energy that made The Social Network feel operatic.

Similar to the way The Social Network spun details from Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires into a riveting drama, writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning weaves a narrative around The Wall Street Journal’s bombshell reporting with Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. Billed as a companion piece rather than a direct sequel, The Social Reckoning chronicles Haugen’s time within Facebook and uses her story to illustrate how the company’s focus on exponential growth turned it into a societal threat. Zuckerberg looms large in the movie, but Sorkin feels far more interested in focusing on the friction that exists between traditional media and tech giants.

Though The Social Reckoning’s core messages about how our lives have been negatively impacted by the rise of social media algorithms are potent, the film lacks the propulsive, thrilling energy that made The Social Network feel operatic. The film does an excellent job of presenting our present day reality as the end result of events Zuckerberg and Facebook helped facilitate. But for all of its insight, The Social Reckoning still feels like a feature that’s arriving a little too late to have a meaningful impact.

The Social Reckoning spends much of its 112 minute runtime ping ponging back and forth through the years when Haugen (Mikey Madison) worked as a product manager on Facebook’s civic integrity team. As the film opens in 2019, Haugen’s just beginning to understand how hate speech and misinformation are being amplified by the platform’s algorithms. Haugen genuinely believes that Facebook could take steps to mitigate these harms if any of her colleagues would take them seriously. But when she realizes that no one else in the company is willing to speak up about Mark Zuckerberg’s (Jeremy Strong) single-minded focus on boosting Facebook’s engagement at all costs, she turns to Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White).

Sorkin presents Haugen and Horwitz as uneasy allies. The duo both understand that Facebook is the news for millions of people, but the only way they can report the truth about what’s happening within the company is by doing things the old fashioned way. You can hear echoes of Sorkin’s The Newsroom in Horwitz’s quippy exchanges with taciturn bureau chief Christina (Betty Gilpin) and overworked interns (Aidan Laprete, Kelley Pereira) about the importance of their work. The film frames its reporter characters as competent heroes who are trying to do the public an important service. It does not consistently do the same for the whistleblower, and Sorkin writes Haugen’s dialog with a degree of levity that often feels at odds with the gravity of the larger story.

Madison and White try their best to turn Sorkin’s script into dialog that sounds like it might be spoken by regular humans.

The Social Reckoning feels most like a proper thriller in tense moments when Haugen and Horwitz are secretly meeting in parks and hotel rooms to pore over damning internal documents detailing how Facebook was well aware of its products’ potential to do harm. The movie effectively depicts Facebook — in its pursuit for growth — knowingly becoming a place where conspiracy groups could thrive and radicalize people. Sorkin doesn’t go so far as to solely blame Facebook for turning the modern internet into a nightmare that’s flooded with ragebait and intentionally deceptive information. But The Social Reckoning does make the implicit argument that things might not be so bad today if Zuckerberg had acted more conscientiously in his quest to stay one step ahead of his competitors.

Though Madison and White try their best to turn Sorkin’s script into dialog that sounds like it might be spoken by regular humans, the writer-director’s penchant for rapidfire back-and-forths gets the better of him here. Sorkin clearly wanted to make The Social Reckoning as dense with information as he possibly could, but in doing so, he made it harder for the movie to work as an entertaining drama. The Social Reckoning truly shines in its handful of scenes that zoom in on an older, more calculating Zuckerberg as he’s preparing to speak at Congressional hearings. Whereas Jesse Eisenberg played Zuckerberg in The Social Network with a quiet vulnerability, Strong leans into an unsettlingly robotic aura that makes his performance feel studied. Strong’s Zuckerberg gives you the distinct sense that he is a man whose success is a testament to his willingness to prioritize profit over people’s well-being.

Especially for those who didn’t follow the Wall Street Journal’s Facebook reporting in real time, The Social Reckoning may serve as a useful recollection of how the company was — at one point, at least — held somewhat accountable for its actions. But the movie also serves as a bleak reminder of how there still hasn’t really been a substantive reckoning that fundamentally changed the way people interact with Meta’s (née Facebook) products. Sorkin seems to believe that a day may come when the public decides that companies like Meta can’t be trusted with the power to shape our perceptions of reality. It’s a hopeful thought, but in 2026, it feels like a dream that has already gotten away from us.

The Social Reckoning also stars Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Magnussen, Patrick Fischler, and Nelson Franklin. The movie hits theaters on October 9th.

Correction, October 7th: An earlier version of this article misstated that David Fincher apologized to Mark Zuckerberg. Aaron Sorkin is who apologized.

Netflix is pivoting away from prestige

2026-10-02T16:30:26-04:00

Many of Netflix’s biggest critically acclaimed hits have been the products of its multiyear production deals with noted directors like David Fincher and Shawn Levy. In the past few weeks, though, the streamer has brought some of those partnerships to an end in a way that feels indicative of a larger strategic shift. With rival studios Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery on the verge of a megamerger that will reshape the entertainment landscape, Netflix is clearly thinking about how it can continue to hold its own in the ongoing streaming wars. But as the company charts its path forward, its plan to court subscribers might not put so much emphasis on big-name moviemakers.

On Thursday, Netflix shared that its production deal with David Fincher is coming to an end after six years. First announced in 2020, the partnership — which was originally scheduled to last for four years — gave Netflix the exclusive streaming rights to Fincher’s then-upcoming projects like his Herman J. Mankiewicz biographical drama, Mank. With Fincher having previously executive produced original series for Netflix like House of Cards and Mindhunter, the deal seemed to be a sign of Netflix having faith in his ability to keep audiences riveted.

At the time, Fincher joked that Mank’s critical reception and box office performance before it began streaming would determine what kinds of projects Netflix would let him make. Critics generally praised the film and it was ultimately nominated for 10 Academy Awards — two of which it won. But during Mank’s three-week theatrical run, it only made around $100,000 against a $25 million budget, and once it hit Netflix, it only managed to spend a single day on the streamer’s list of its top 10 most-watched movies (in last place). Though Fincher’s next project for Netflix — 2023’s The Killer — debuted at No. 1 on the chart, the project’s $452,000 box office gross against a $175 million budget made it another financial dud. And with The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth set to show in theaters for two weeks before it hits Netflix on December 23rd, the film could be another example of Fincher delivering a movie that isn’t exactly a huge monetary win for the streamer.

Fincher’s track record with Netflix is somewhat similar to director Shawn Levy’s. After almost a decade of working exclusively with the streamer on projects including Stranger Things, The Adam Project, and Shadow and Bone, Levy announced last month that he had signed a new overall production deal with Disney. Levy — whose directing career began with a number of Disney Channel series — framed his decision to leave Netflix as a kind of homecoming. But it was hard not to see his jumping ship as having been prompted by the way Stranger Things’ final season left audiences and critics disappointed.

The same was true when Stranger Things co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer announced last August 2025 that they were leaving Netflix for a four-year TV / film production deal with Paramount. The brothers could still have a hand in future Stranger Things projects, and their next series — The Boroughs — debuted on Netflix this past May to respectable numbers. But just one month after its release, The Boroughs was canceled.

In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that Levy’s and the Duffer Brothers’ departures were driven by the filmmakers’ desire to spend more time working on feature-length projects. Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter is slated to premiere next May, and the Duffers’ untitled Paramount film will debut sometime in 2028. Though Sarandos framed the filmmakers’ exits in a positive light, they’re part of a larger trend that makes it seem like Netflix is moving on from its era of signing filmmakers to lengthy deals. The company has also parted ways with Marriage Story writer-director Noah Baumbach, whose other Netflix projects, like White Noise and Jay Kelly, failed to make much of a splash.

Netflix is still banking on some directors being a major draw. The streamer’s production deal with Guillermo del Toro is ongoing, and it is treating the first of Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia films as a proper event that will spend seven weeks in theaters before it begins streaming. And while Rian Johnson is taking a break after fulfilling the obligations of his $450 million deal to produce two Knives Out sequels, he could very well come back to Netflix with a plan to make more.

Going forward, it seems like Netflix’s main game plan is to put an increased focus on producing lower-budget series, live events, and sports programming. The company obviously isn’t giving up on movies — Gerwig will direct another Narnia feature and there’s a KPop Demon Hunters sequel on the way — but episodic content has been shown to be much more effective at keeping subscribers coming back.

This is why we’ve recently seen Netflix hyping up strange reality shows like Squid Game: The Challenge, Wonka’s The Golden Ticket, and The New Stanford Prison Experiment. None of those shows exactly come across as must-see TV like the horror series Mike Flanagan produced for Netflix before Amazon poached him in 2022. But that may not matter to Netflix as long as people are watching. After years of spending millions of dollars to produce movies that did not always result in consistent subscriber growth, Netflix appears to be entering a period of making more conservative bets. That might make the service feel a little less premium than it has in the past, but it could help it live to fight another day.

What even is a ‘microdrama’?

2026-10-01T09:30:53-04:00

On Monday, Variety reported that RoseBerry Media is recutting episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbours “into microdramas.” These clips will be available on Epis, a short-form vertical video streaming platform. Though Neighbours ran for 41 seasons from 1985 to 2025, at launch, RoseBerry is only recutting two storylines from the late aughts focused on a character played by the now-internationally famous Margot Robbie.

In a statement about the project, RoseBerry cofounder / CEO Guy Hameiri described Neighbours as “an iconic piece of television history” that’s well suited to be adapted for vertical viewing with the company’s proprietary, AI-powered production workflow. Hameiri also said that he believes the project will demonstrate how “premium vertical television will become a significant new entertainment category” — one that can help introduce new audiences to a classic series.

Variety’s framing of RoseBerry’s new vertical cut of Neighbours as a kind of microdrama is curious. Microdramas are short-form vertical videos often featuring characters who get caught up in convoluted romance plots, which makes them somewhat similar to Neighbours in terms of their shared subject matter. But unlike network television shows with sizable budgets, microdramas are produced on the cheap and crafted specifically to be consumed on mobile. And when you factor in how microdramas tend to adhere to a narrative formula that opens with intrigue and closes on melodramatic cliffhangers, it’s easy to see the format as a storytelling genre unto itself.

Over the past year, entertainment trades’ reporting has made it seem like Hollywood is ready to go all in on microdramas, and that these kinds of projects could help the industry bring much-needed production work back to Los Angeles. It’s unclear whether Variety’s phrasing is reflective of the industry’s definition of microdramas changing, or if studios are just trying to use buzzwords to drum up hype. But if microdramas really are going to be a key part of Hollywood’s future, we should probably all have a general understanding of what they actually are.

Both the amount of money that went into Neighbours and the quality of the cast’s acting make it a very different kind of entertainment compared to the microdramas that have become hits for companies like ReelShort and DramaBox. What RoseBerry is doing with Neighbours is much more akin to what Tattle TV did with Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog earlier this year, and what startup Snips is doing with series like Big Brother and MasterChef. While there might be an audience for these things, it feels somewhat disingenuous to lump them in with the campy, bite-sized series like Forbidden Fling With My Bestie’s Dad that defined and popularized microdramas as a format in the West.

Microdramas originated in China, where they first began gaining traction around 2018 on platforms like Douyin and Kuaishou (both TikTok analogs). Kuaishou’s Unexpectedness — a satirical comedy about a man struggling to achieve his goals — was one of the first Chinese microseries to make a splash, and as the social video platforms embraced e-commerce, brands began to see microdramas as a viable way to market their products to viewers. As the audiences for microdramas grew, more Chinese film / TV production studios began producing microdramas, and by 2021, revenue from short-form video was projected to hit $500 million. That figure was expected to hit $7 billion by 2024 and $16.2 billion by 2030.

Though microdramas in all languages tend to be seen as lower-quality entertainment, their core appeal is fairly easy to grasp. The series lean heavily into well-established narrative tropes, and their stories are usually designed to leave viewers guessing about what kind of outlandish twists they’re about to see next. Microdramas’ verticality and the way they’re served up in short minuteslong segments makes them the sort of content that’s meant to be consumed through a phone screen. Microdramas’ relatively small production budgets also positioned them to become a viable way for up-and-coming actors and filmmakers to book consistent work. But in recent months, that promise has been waylaid by the spread of generative artificial intelligence.

In China especially, gen AI has had a devastating impact on the microdrama economy for human actors. Ninety-five percent of the Chinese microdramas produced in the first three months of this year were created with AI, which has led to fewer jobs and lower pay. A similar story is now playing out in Hollywood, where actors have reported being pressured by studios to sign over the rights to their digital likenesses. Though the details are somewhat different, presenting repurposed films and TV series as “microdramas” poses a similar threat to the people working in the business because of the way it cuts them out of opportunities like RoseBerry’s partnership with Epis. It’s also unclear how and whether this new vertical presentation of Neighbours might result in royalty payments to the show’s original cast and crew.

Streamers and studios’ interest in vertical content of all kinds has been driven by a desire to recapture some of the attention lost to rival platforms like TikTok and YouTube where microdramas have been able to thrive. For the most part, studios have been leading with repurposed, verticalized clips of preexisting content, which are presented in scrollable feeds that are meant to give you a preview of things that can be watched horizontally. These feeds’ content might be useful for discovery, but very much like microserialized (read: chopped-up) films and TV shows, they aren’t exactly a new entertainment format that seems worth making much noise about.

Traditional microdramas haven’t even really had a chance to live up to all the industry hype, but it feels like companies are already rushing to redefine the format as anything that happens to be short, dramatic, and vertically oriented. Platforms might be more interested in turning old shows and films into clip content because it’s less expensive than producing and building an audience for a wholly original microdrama. That doesn’t lend credence to the idea that this format can actually “save” Hollywood, though — if anything, it makes the industry seem like it’s trying to cannibalize itself.

Pokémon card resellers have turned collecting into an online blood sport

2026-09-25T18:32:28-04:00

Earlier this month, Pokémon card content creator Natalie Roush posted a video to her YouTube and Instagram pages that enraged the larger collection community. In the now-deleted video, Roush shows off two premium boxes of cards that had not yet been officially released, and implores viewers not to be mad. But they were; other creators claimed that cards Roush had purchased were stolen from the manufacturer and mocked her for trying to sell them at exorbitant prices. The Roush situation was a high-profile example of the way Pokémon card collecting culture has been upended by the influencer economy and people trying to profit off the hobby. Though Roush has been relatively quiet in the days since the blowup, Pokémon collectors have been up in arms over a different — but very much related — problem.

When the Pokémon Trading Card Game’s long-awaited 30th Celebration set finally released last week, collectors across the country lined up outside of stores in hopes of getting their hands on some shiny pieces of cardboard. The anniversary set has unusually strong pull rates — the rate at which you’re likely to find rare “chase” cards in a given set — giving more fans the cards they’ve always dreamed of, and potentially upsetting the aftermarket Poké-conomy. Some diehard Poké-fans even camped out overnight because a resurgence in popularity has made the cards much more difficult to find and buy in person. But another group of Pokémon card hunters was able to secure the highly sought-after set without having to travel to physical retailers or navigate the online Pokémon Center.

Those people — resellers who often use automated bots to buy dozens of boxes of cards as soon as they’re available for preorder online — might not have had any intention of collecting the 30th Celebration set for themselves. But they have been trying to offload their spoils at marked-up prices to fans who haven’t had a chance to buy cards for themselves. Most retailers can’t keep cards on shelves, but there are plenty of videos online of resellers showing off piles of product they were able to obtain either by placing orders with bots or using inventory checking programs that alert them when brick-and-mortar stores receive stock. It’s also easy to find footage of resellers getting into altercations over cards, and in one recent instance, a 72-year-old man was arrested and charged with a first-degree misdemeanor for tracking a Pokémon delivery worker’s location with a device secretly planted in her car.

Though flipping trading cards is nothing new, the Pokémon reselling economy has gotten much bigger in recent years as people have taken note of how durable the franchise’s popularity is. Many resellers like BotterBoyNova started off with other kinds of valuable merchandise before realizing that Pokémon products can be sold for far beyond the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, or MSRP. When I spoke with Nova recently, he told me that — like many millennials — he’s been a Pokémon fan since the mid-’90s. Nova was originally a content creator whose videos were mostly focused on reselling sneakers, but seeing how easy it was to profit from reselling Pokémon products convinced him that he needed to get in on the action.

“Resellers in what’s described as the ‘Sneaker Twitter’ space are tapped in with practically every category of collectible that can resell for a profit,” Nova explained to me via Discord. “It’s not a situation where I’m singling out the Pokémon card market. It just so happens that it’s highly profitable and difficult to purchase for MSRP, and those are the conditions that our community specializes in.”

Rather than operating independently, Nova works with Polar Chefs — a “cook group” community that sells monthly subscriptions to a variety of reseller tools and services. Subscriptions range from $660 per year to $75 per month, and they come with access to Polar Chefs’ private Discord server, restock alerts, and a selection of bots that can be used to buy cards. These bots make it easy for people to create multiple accounts on retailers’ websites that are attached to virtual credit cards, while the buyer’s IP address is spoofed with proxies. Technically, this kind of process isn’t illegal — at least not yet; Congress outlawed concert ticket-focused bots in 2016 and lawmakers have proposed doing the same for retail bots. But it does violate most retailers’ terms of service, which is why some resellers’ orders are canceled.

Retail bots aren’t illegal, but they do violate most retailers’ terms of service.

Using Polar Chefs’ tools, Nova has been able to purchase massive amounts of Pokémon cards at MSRP from various retailers without being blocked by websites’ anti-bot security measures. Nova described his process of securing cards with bots as being “almost completely hands free,” and explained that the real work doesn’t begin until he has to sort and sell his inventory to a couple of bulk buyers.

“During most weeks, I spend less than 3-5 hours a week on the reselling side of things (setting up bots, buying inventory, selling and fulfilling inventory),” Nova said, noting that he’s commonly asleep while pre-programmed bots make purchases for him. “I wait for notifications to come in from Polar Chefs which inform me of releases, bot adjustments I need to make, etc.”

Though it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when Pokémon reselling really exploded in the past few years, the rise of groups like Polar Chefs feels reflective of the way that the creator economy evolved during the covid-19 pandemic. Resellers like Nova are influencers whose videos are designed to sell people on the idea that they could also be making money by flipping cards at scale. And monetized cook groups are prime examples of how online hustle culture has become more focused on the sale of how-to guides and courses for practices that can be seen as morally suspect.

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA – SEPTEMBER 16: Pokémon card collectors wait in line outside a Best Buy store for a chance to purchase the new 30th Celebration set on September 16, 2026 in Pasadena, California.

| Getty Images" data-portal-copyright="Getty Images" />

There’s an argument to be made that the scarcity created by resellers is part of what has driven the popularity of platforms like Whatnot — an online marketplace where people can pay for things like sealed Pokémon products, which are then opened on livestreams by the seller before they’re sent to the buyer. Many Whatnot streamers present themselves as entrepreneurs who are providing their audiences with a helpful service while also entertaining them. But the platform has been accused of operating more like an illegal gambling operation, and there is an entire ecosystem of creators whose content documents Whatnot streamers scamming their customers.

But with the 30th Celebration packs flooding the market with rare cards, the scammers could be out of luck. Over the past week, X and Reddit have been inundated with screenshots from unnamed Discord servers where people claiming to be resellers appear to be melting down over not being able to sell their overpriced cards. One of the more widely circulated images features a person insisting that resellers are “the people that actually ensure [The Pokémon Company] makes money,” while complaining that “there’s literally no value in these sets because everyone can pull the rare bullshit.” In another, a reseller says they are filing a class action lawsuit against The Pokémon Company “for independent vendors who suffered severe financial asset devaluation due to artificial market saturation.”

The absurdity of these posts suggests that they might have been written by people making fun of actual resellers, as does the fact that while searching Discord I found some posts that use the exact same wording. Those posters might have just been looking for attention, but the state of the larger reselling economy does seem to be having a negative impact on Pokémon cards’ availability.

Even though The Pokémon Company is printing more cards than ever, almost everything about the modern aftermarket economy has made it harder for ordinary people — especially children — to participate in the hobby. Nova told me that he thinks casual collectors who just want to pull cool cards for themselves are completely justified in feeling that resellers are making Pokémon less accessible. He also believes that collectors whose interest in the cards is “incentivized by monetary gain” are hypocrites for taking issue with resellers. Aside from actually playing with them, the real fun of Pokémon cards is in the hunt and delight when you’re able to find a pack that shocks you with its contents. It’s an experience everyone’s supposed to be able to enjoy, but it’s being ruined by hustlers.

Paramount will need to release way more movies to make this merger work

2026-09-22T18:26:07-04:00

Now that Paramount has reached a settlement with the 12 states that were suing to block its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the studio is even closer to becoming one of the world’s biggest production houses. In addition to spending at least $300 million more on film and TV projects produced in the US, Paramount says that it will release a minimum of 30 movies annually after it absorbs WBD. On paper, these goals make it sound like Paramount is trying to ensure that the entertainment industry won’t be harmed by its WBD acquisition. But when you look at the studios’ recent output, it seems very much like Paramount CEO David Ellison is making promises to the public that he might not be able to keep.

In a statement about the settlement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta stressed that the settlement was designed to maintain consistent film output and domestic production while “protecting the livelihoods of workers above and below the line.” (Of course, any redundancies caused by a merger of this scale will likely lead to layoffs, which makes Bonta’s claim that the settlement “protects workers, jobs, and Hollywood” questionable in the first place.) In a statement of their own, Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) president Sean Astin and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland thanked Bonta and noted that the settlement represents “the lowest standards that our employers must meet.”

Though the acquisition — which has not yet officially been finalized — would permanently fuse Paramount and WBD, the settlement only requires the newly merged company to adhere to a few rules for just five years. In the first two years, Paramount/WBD has to either put out 30 films annually or pay $30 million per film into healthcare and retirement funds managed by Hollywood’s biggest unions. During the following three years, the merged studio would need to release 32 films annually, and if it fails to meet any of these requirements during this five-year period, it will be forced to sell off its 49 percent stake in Miramax Studios to one of its competitors.

In terms of overall output, these proposed goals would be a step up for both Paramount and WBD as separate corporate entities. Over the past six years (including projects slated to debut later in 2026), Paramount has released an average of 15 films annually while WBD has averaged 17. Assuming that the newly merged studio will stick to Paramount and WBD’s previously announced release slates for 2027 and 2028, it would need to put more than a few new projects on the board in order to avoid multimillion dollar penalties. But that probably isn’t all that much of a concern to Paramount because the settlement doesn’t require the new company to produce the projects necessary to hit its annual movie quota.

Paramount/WBD could fulfill its obligations by distributing films that it acquires from other production houses. These films would carry the Paramount/WBD branding, but they would be the products of labor carried out by teams with no direct connection to the studio. Paramount/WBD could also flood the zone with completely new, original films it greenlights and finances itself. But many of those movies could feel less ambitious because the settlement only requires that 20 percent of them have production budgets over $50 million.

Paramount appears to have convinced Bonta and his fellow attorneys general that absorbing WBD will give it the ability to basically double its usual output. But that logic presumes every single aspect of both studios’ production pipelines will continue to operate normally once Paramount and WBD become one. Though Paramount/WBD could ramp internal production up, what feels much more likely to happen is the studio doing the bare minimum to abide by the settlement’s terms. Everything about this settlement makes it seem like Ellison is playing a long game, and after those guardrails disappear in five years, Paramount/WBD will be in an even stronger position to shape the broader entertainment landscape.