Established streaming industry leaders like Netflix and Amazon are facing more competition than ever. Now legacy entertainment giants are in the game with their own subscription services, like Peacock, HBO Max, Paramount Plus, and the Disney Plus / Hulu / ESPN Plus bundle, while Apple TV Plus attacks around the edges. Meanwhile, the rise of ad-supported free platforms like Roku Channel and Pluto TV has attracted enough attention that Plex, YouTube, and Amazon’s Freevee are trying to get a chunk of the action too.
What the bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery says about the future of Hollywood, with Puck’s Julia Alexander.
As part of Comcast’s latest earnings report, the company said that its streaming service now has 44 million subscribers, while losses increased to $552 million in the last three months of 2025 — up from $372 million at the same time last year.
(Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.)
[The Hollywood Reporter]
Ahead of the finale for Fallout season 2 next week, Amazon has started dropping episodes of the first season on YouTube so you can get a taste of the post-apocalyptic series for free. That finale, meanwhile, will be available a little early, streaming at 9PM ET on February 3rd.
It follows Snap in reaching an agreement to resolve the first of several cases slated to go to trial this year about social media’s alleged harm to users, an attorney for the 19-year-old plaintiff confirmed. That leaves Meta and YouTube as defendants in the case going to jury selection today.
Disney Plus is teasing Jessica Jones’ return to the MCU in this new teaser trailer for Daredevil: Born Again’s upcoming second season, and it looks like the detective is going to be knocking heads.
Soon, you’ll be able to play as The Office’s Dwight Schrute and Michael Scott in Fortnite when new skins of the characters debut in the game’s item shop. It’s one of Fortnite’s stranger collaborations, but it makes more sense when you consider how many people are still watching the show.
While the new trailer for Disney Plus’ Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord series doesn’t at all make the Sith Lord look like a heroic figure, it does suggest that meeting his new apprentice is going to reveal new things about his character when the show premieres on April 6th.
Ahead of debuting a trailer for its new Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord animated series tomorrow, Disney Plus has shared a short (and inky) teaser that makes it seem like the Sith Lord’s lightsaber is going to be seeing plenty of action.
Season 5 of Apple TV’s alternate reality sci-fi series starts streaming on March 27th. It picks up with Mars now home to “a thriving colony with thousands of residents and a base for new missions that will take us even further into the solar system.” You can get a taste of that in the extremely brief new teaser.
Last week, it was reported that on videos uploaded with the SRV3 (aka YTT) format, which allows for styling captions with things like bolding and custom colors, the captions wouldn’t appear.
But YouTube says it has “temporarily limited” uploading SRV/YTT captions “as they may cause video playback to fail for some viewers.”
As part of its earnings report released on Tuesday, Netflix also said it has launched AI-powered tools designed to “connect members with the most relevant titles for them to watch.” It also plans on building upon its AI advertising tools that already allow companies to blend Netflix’s IP with their ads.
[Netflix]
Netflix, in its Q4 shareholder letter, says that early results for its cloud-streamed TV games launched last year are “encouraging.” It’s going to expand the lineup in 2026 with games like its new FIFA football sim. (No mention of new games available on mobile.)
[Netflix]
Originally, the live-action movies were going to come to Netflix starting in 2027, but What’s on Netflix reports that they’re appearing starting this year, beginning with Megan 2.0 on January 26th. The films still stream on Peacock first before jumping to Netflix.
Rather than science and the modern world, the new channel looks back and tells stories from our past. The first episode is the fascinating tale of Zheng Yi Sao, the Pirate Queen of China. The art style is also quite different, more painterly. You can watch the first episode below.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck went on the Joe Rogan Experience to promote their new film The Rip, and ended up sharing some very depressing details about Netflix’s love of repeated exposition dumps and its approach to filmmaking in this age of constant distraction. As Variety reports:
“The standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you usually have three set pieces. One in the first act, one in the second, one in the third,” Damon explained. “You spend most of your money on that one in the third act. That’s your finale. And now they’re like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes? We want people to stay. And it wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching.’”
Videos that include topics like reproductive rights, self-harm, suicide, and abuse will be able to earn more revenue now as long as they don’t include graphic scenes or descriptions, as spotted by Tubefilter.
Previously, videos that even mentioned potentially controversial topics would often be demonetized.
A content deal has reportedly been struck that will see the BBC producing original shows for YouTube, giving the UK broadcaster access to younger audiences and advertising revenue overseas — something it desperately needs to bolster ad-free funding at home. The deal could be announced next week.
[Financial Times]
As part of a multiyear agreement, Sony Picture Entertainment films will stream on Netflix worldwide following their “full theatrical and home entertainment runs.” The deal is worth more than $7 billion, Deadline reports. Netflix already has Pay-1 rights in the US and other select territories.
That’s George R.R. Martin, in a big profile published by The Hollywood Reporter. Relatable.
The piece also details new work being done on a potential Game of Thrones sequel series featuring Jon Snow; Arya Stark might be in it, too. But that show is in “very early development,” THR says.
[The Hollywood Reporter]
