15 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Streaming

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.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
BTS, live on Netflix.

You’ll be able to livestream the famous K-Pop group’s first concert in three years on March 21st, the day after the new BTS album comes out. You might want some coffee, though; the show starts at 7AM ET that day.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
More about the Sora AI videos coming to Disney Plus.

Disney’s deal with OpenAI includes a plan to allow Sora users to create 30-second clips featuring over 250 Disney characters while some will appear in curated vertical video feeds inside Disney Plus, CEO Bob Iger told investors on Monday. Iger said the feature could arrive “sometime in fiscal 2026,” adding the company hopes to allow Disney Plus subscribers to create them directly on its platform:

What this deal does is by giving us the ability to curate what has been basically created by Sora onto Disney, is it jumpstarts our ability to have short form video on Disney Plus.

Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
$7.3 million a day.

That’s how much Disney says ESPN and its sports business lost in income during the 15-day YouTube TV blackout late last year, totalling $110 million. That’s almost double the daily hit analysts had estimated at the time, and it’s just for sports, not counting any hit to ABC or Disney’s entertainment channels.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Disney might have a new CEO sooner than expected.

Current CEO Bob Iger has apparently said he plans to step down before the end of the year, and the company’s board of directors are set to vote next week on who should be his successor, The Wall Street Journal reports. The frontrunners are reportedly Josh D’Amaro and Dana Walden.

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Andru Marino
Are Netflix’s podcasts actually podcasts?

Though Netflix originals The Pete Davidson Show and The White House with Michael Irvin look and feel like a podcast, they lack a lot of features podcast listeners are used to, like RSS feed downloads and chapter markers. Here’s my take.

Netflix is eating Hollywood — because it has to
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What the bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery says about the future of Hollywood, with Puck’s Julia Alexander.

Nilay Patel
Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Peacock adds 3 million subscribers as losses grow.

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.)

Andrew Webster
Andrew Webster
An introduction to the wasteland.

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.

Lauren Feiner
Lauren Feiner
TikTok moves to settle a major social media addiction case shortly before trial.

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.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Jessica Jones has been born again.

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.

Truth and AI in MinneapolisTruth and AI in Minneapolis
David Pierce
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Bears. Beets. Battle royale collaboration.

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.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
A Darth Maul redemption arc?

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.

Charles Pulliam-Moore
Charles Pulliam-Moore
Maul’s to the wall.

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.

Andrew Webster
Andrew Webster
For All Mankind is back in the spring.

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.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
YouTube says that an issue with a special captions format is temporary.

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.”

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Netflix says it’s using AI to improve subtitle localization.

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.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Netflix’s “cloud-first games strategy” is one of its focuses for 2026.

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.)

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Live-action Universal films are coming to Netflix “much sooner than expected.”

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.