Month: January 2025

Apple reported its latest quarterly earnings results Thursday, revealing all-time record-breaking sales for its October-December 2024 period. For the quarter, the first full quarter during which the new iPhone 16 models were available, Apple drew $69.1 billion in iPhone sales. That’s down slightly from $69.7 billion in the period ended December 2023. To put a positive spine
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Amazon is raising prices on its Music Unlimited plans, coming two months after it added access to Audible’s collection of audiobooks. In a section of Amazon Music FAQs titled “2025 Subscription Plan Pricing Changes,” the ecommerce giant says, “In order to bring you even more content and new features, we’re updating the price of select
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Brendan Carr, the President Trump-appointed FCC chairman, warned the CEOs of PBS and NPR that they “could be violating federal law by airing commercials” — and that he has ordered an investigation by the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau into the matter. For decades, PBS and NPR have engaged in the practice of airing underwriter acknowledgements to
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Eagerly-awaited as one of the star projects of the new Nordic Gateway strand of the Göteborg Film Festival, a new section connecting international features to Nordic partners, “Honor of Persia,” the solo directing debut of French-Iranian actor Zar Amir Ebrahimi, was handed Jan. 30 the inaugural Tint Post-Production Award worth SEK 400,000 ($36,600). Inspired by
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SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers from the series premiere of Hulu’s “Paradise.” In an overly saturated media market, it’s hard for any show to break through. And it becomes even harder when a network or streamer can’t truthfully answer this simple question regarding new TV series: “What’s it about?” So in the case of “Paradise,”
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Bradley Whitford and Allison Janney are back together in the White House again. It’s a “West Wing” reunion in “The Diplomat” Season 3, as Whitford has joined the cast as Todd Penn, husband to Janney’s Vice President Grace Penn. Netflix has released three first-look images from the upcoming season of the political thriller, which is
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Mikey Madison is still processing her Oscar nomination. The 24-year-old actress, known for her roles in the FX series “Better Things,” as well as the films “Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood” and “Scream 5,” has been a working actor for over a decade, navigating the highs and heartbreaks of the industry. But this year,
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Though many of the Grammy week events were canceled due to the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, the Black Music Action Coalition saw an opportunity to shift gears and give back to the community. “Not only was it important for us to keep the spirit moving,” Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, BMAC’s co-founder, president and CEO, told the
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Vocalist Marianne Faithfull, whose 1960s sojourn as a swinging London pop star was succeeded by a striking punk-era artistic rebirth, died Thursday. She was 78. The BBC posted a statement from her family reading, “Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family.” Blond, blue-eyed and beautiful, Faithfull had logged
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Andre Rohe, who previously held senior engineering roles at Meta, YouTube and Google, has been hired to lead a newly created consolidated product engineering team in the Disney Entertainment and ESPN technology group. Rohe reports directly to Adam Smith, chief product and technology officer for Disney Entertainment and ESPN, who joined the company last September.
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Will Smith is stepping into the Matrix. Smith and rapper Big Sean have released the song “Beautiful Scars,” featuring OBanga, along with a “Matrix”-inspired music video. The actor has also announced that he will be dropping a new solo album, “Based on a True Story” — his first full length album release in over 20
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UTA has signed the viral podcast “The Telepathy Tapes,” and its host and creator Ky Dickens, for global representation in all areas. The agency will also represent Dickens’ forthcoming documentary feature associated with the podcast. “The Telepathy Tapes” captured the world’s attention over the holidays, surpassing Joe Rogan to claim the No. 1 podcast spot,
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Two entertainment organizations will host a new “Breaking In” virtual event in February aimed at providing early career professionals information on how to get their foot in the industry’s door. Presented by the Hollywood Radio and Television Society Foundation and Entertainment Industry College Outreach Program, the event will occur Feb. 25 at 4 p.m. PT
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“Forever,” the 1975 coming-of-age novel by Judy Blume, is the inspiration for Netflix‘s newest teen drama. The series is named after Blume’s classic book about two high schoolers losing their virginity, but it isn’t a beat-for-beat adaptation. Instead, “Forever” is described as “an epic love story of two Black teens exploring romance and their identities
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Before they made history playing a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden, “Dimension 20” dungeon master Brennan Lee Mulligan and the intrepid heroes (Lou Wilson, Brian Murphy, Siobhan Thompson, Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, and Zac Oyama) that star on the Dropout tabletop role-playing game TV series sat down with Variety for a game of “Most
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In a major digital restoration initiative, Shout! Studios is bringing five seminal Jet Li martial arts classics to 4K resolution, marking a significant moment for fans of Hong Kong action cinema. The legendary martial artist’s collaborations with directors Gordon Chan, Woo-Ping Yuen and Corey Yuen will debut on digital platforms Feb. 18. The collection includes
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“Train Dreams,” a lyrical drama about a logger whose work developing America’s railroad keeps him laboring in isolation, has sold to Netflix. The film earned rave reviews after debuting at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, with Variety’s Peter Debruge calling it a “modest monument” and praising it for “creating a record that history somehow missed.”
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While there have been many scripted adaptations of true-crime podcasts like “Fight Night: The Million Dollar Heist” and “Dirty John,” far fewer have been transformed into docuseries. But, following the massive success of the audio series “Scamanda,” ABC News Studios and Pilgrim Media Group have teamed up to put the story on the small screen.
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Wholesome Games is set to launch developer Poti Poti Studio’s new puzzle game, “Is This Seat Taken?,” through the company’s Wholesome Games Presents label. The game, which is described as “a heartfelt puzzle adventure that will have you wondering, ‘Does this person really smell that bad?’,” will launch a public Steam demo Feb. 10. It
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Anthony Mackie and Chris Evans spent five years making Marvel movies together as Sam Wilson/Falcon and Steve Rogers/Captain America. Their characters were close friends, with Steve bestowing the Captain America shield to Sam at the end of 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame.” That decision reaches its full potential in Marvel’s upcoming “Captain America: Brave New World,” in
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Sunrise Films has secured North American distribution rights to British film “In Camera,” the feature debut from writer-director Naqqash Khalid, following lead actor Nabhaan Rizwan‘s nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award. The deal, inked with Together Films, sets the film for an April 15 release. The film stars Rizwan as Aden, a young thespian
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NBCUniversal executives offered one statistic during the company’s Q4 earnings call that explains everything about why parent company Comcast is preparing to spin off the bulk of NBCU’s cable channels into a separate company: Some 98% of the viewing of NBCU channels on the Peacock streamer is driven by the NBC broadcast mothership and Bravo.
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