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.
The Dealer will be a crime series following a casino dealer who starts gambling herself to fund her wedding. Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk will produce the show, though he isn’t writing or directing this time.
As reported by Bloomberg, the revised deal would replace Netflix’s existing agreement to acquire WBD’s studio and streaming business in a cash and stock transaction. The rumored change comes as Paramount continues to press WBD to accept its “superior” $108 billion all-cash deal for the entire company.
A mysterious kaiju is stirring up trouble in this new teaser for season 2 of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. The new creature seems bigger than King Kong and more menacing than Godzilla, but we’ll have to wait for the season’s premiere on February 27th to learn the monster’s name.
If you have a few hundred hours to spare, you can watch every episode of Survivor for free starting January 24th, as reported by TheWrap.
Episodes will be available on-demand and air in order on a 24/7 Survivor channel before Survivor 50 premieres on February 25th on CBS and Paramount Plus.
We’ve got something special for you today. It’s my friend Hank Green, longtime internet creator, science educator, and viral TikTok star, interviewing Dropout CEO Sam Reich, now in full video on our Decoder YouTube channel.
Hank did this episode as a guest host last summer while I was out with our new baby, and it’s a fan favorite, bringing together two internet personalities that’ve known each other for a very long time and who have a lot of inside knowledge about how the internet, Hollywood, and entertainment all intertwine. We think it’s one of the best episodes of Decoder we put out last year, and it’s honestly just a really fun conversation. Here’s the full transcript in case you want to read, rather than watch, the interview.
The new teaser trailer for the second season of Netflix’s live-action One Piece adaptation introduces the show’s take on Baroque Works, the superpowered crime syndicate fixated on toppling the Arabasta Kingdom and taking out anyone who gets in their way. The new season drops on March 10th.
“The Hulu app is no longer available in the Nintendo Switch eShop with support for the application ending on February 5, 2026,” Nintendo says in a support document. It originally launched way back in 2017.
During the Winter Olympics next month, Peacock will expand on features like multiview and its whiparound Gold Zone show with curated “Rinkside Live” behind-the-scenes angles. For some figure skating events that will add a Coaching Cam view during the routines, as well as a view of team benches during some hockey games.
Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos availability will be extended across Peacock’s live sports throughout 2026, and the streamer has committed to supporting Dolby Vision 2 and the Dolby AC-4 audio codec when they launch later in the year.
While there currently aren’t any Dolby Vision 2-capable TVs, we’re expecting to see some release in 2026.
The team formerly at Boss Fight Entertainment, which worked on Netflix’s Squid Game mobile game before being shut down last year, has formed a new studio called Sunwise Games. The studio is working on a new, original game.
“I created Sunwise because it’s the change I want to see in the games industry: clear scope, ethical monetization, and teams built to deliver reliably over time,” founder Irin Berry says in a statement.
The secret to Netflix’s biggest hit wasn’t its love of the past, but how it spoke to the present.
If you believe internet rumors claiming the Stranger Things finale had “two hours” cut from its two-hour runtime, and have ignored actors and others saying that the claim is fake, the show’s creators have responded.
Asked about it by Variety, Matt Duffer said, “Obviously, that’s not a real thing,” while Ross Duffer added, “I don’t think there’s a single cut scene in the entire season.”
Personally, I don’t have superhero movie fatigue. The powers aren’t the problem; I just think we need a little more comedy and a little less fate-of-the-world drama! This one is Wonder Man, an 8-episode miniseries coming January 27th to Disney Plus. It’s meta in more ways than one.
The main Stranger Things series is coming to an end when the final episode is released tomorrow, on New Year’s Eve at 8PM ET.
Netflix released this new trailer for the finale, which is also going to be shown in theaters, where people can watch together regardless of their familiarity with “shipping” and/or fandom designation.
Did the new Knives Out’s impressively ornate seminary gym seem a little familiar? It’s not just you, it was one of the world’s subtlest Rickrolls.
Hulu has started promoting Malcolm in the Middle: Life’s Still Unfair, a four-episode revival of the original 2000s sitcom. You can watch the first teaser trailer below, with the show set to release on April 10th, 2026.
John Madden, that is, filling the shoes of the legendary NFL coach and commentator, in David O. Russell’s upcoming biopic for Prime Video. There’s only the briefest still of a video game shown in this short teaser trailer, and a quick glimpse of John Mulaney as EA exec Trip Hawkins.
Madden is scheduled for release on Thanksgiving Day, 2026.
In an Elite Daily interview ahead of this week’s penultimate release, series star Gaten Matarazzo referenced the “Stonathan” pairing and said he liked the idea behind “Steddie” fanfics.
But saying the “Byler” shipping between Will and Mike, was “very funny. I see them as just very good friends,” seemingly went too far for some, with social media posts targeting the interviewer, and some even claiming it was a fake quote.
Once you’ve watched the Pluribus (or, actually, Plur1bus?) season finale and read through Andrew Webster’s review, it’s time for Apple TV’s 20-minute behind-the-scenes video with Vince Gilligan & Co.
Junichi Okada talks about the new Netflix series and how his role as action planner touches nearly every part of it.
Last week, we talked about how Warner Bros. — quite reasonably! — had some agita about David Ellison’s bid for the company. Well, what do you know, David’s daddy is going to personally guarantee the offer. Also, since the last time we talked, Jared Kushner backed out of the nepo baby bid.
On Thursday night, the White House Live News section featured YouTuber @RealMattMoney, for reasons that remain unclear. According to Bloomberg, “The White House is aware of the incident and looking into the matter, a White House official said on the condition of anonymity.”
Not nearly enough people are talking about Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone’s masterpiece of a film, Bugonia. But that should change once the movie makes its Peacock streaming debut on December 26th.
The Screen Culture and KH Studio YouTube pages have suddenly disappeared, taking their fake clips with them, reports Deadline. An earlier Deadline investigation showed how they operated, mixing official movie footage with AI-generated images, which some movie studios were profiting from by claiming the ad revenue they brought in.
YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon provided this statement to The Verge:
After their initial suspension, these channels made the necessary corrections in order to be readmitted into the YouTube Partner Program. However, once monetizing again, they reverted to clear violations of our spam and misleading metadata policies, and as a result, they have been terminated from the platform.
Ads are everywhere, and only spreading, with Apple adding more to App Store searches and Peacock fitting them into its profile page. Fortunately, the Verge comments will always stay a safe space.
WesSouza:
This is ridiculous.
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