December 5, 2018 2:00PM PT Indian OTT service, Eros Now is set to launch a 100 new Originals, Eros Digital COO Ali Hussein revealed to Variety. He is a panelist at Singapore’s Asia TV Forum & Market. Eros Digital is an arm of Bollywood studio Eros International. “Over the last six to nine months what
Tech
The battle for eyeballs in the already-crowded Indian OTT space is set to intensify further. Former tech company, MX Player is about to join the fray as a streamer. MX Player began life as a cross-platform media player developed by South Korea’s J2 Interactive. In June 2018, Times Internet, part of India’s giant Times conglomerate
Facebook’s aggressive business practices are again in the spotlight, after a massive batch of documents released by a U.K. parliamentary committee showed how Facebook has used access to user data to reward friendly partners and punish rivals. The 250-page report, which includes numerous internal company emails, detail how Facebook granted favored partners — including Netflix
Quibi, the upcoming video service founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP CEO Meg Whitman, is getting two shows from Stephen Curry’s Unanimous Media as well as director Catherine Hardwicke. Katzenberg and Whitman announced the new projects at Variety’s Innovate summit in Los Angeles on Wednesday, where the duo also shared some additional details on
Jodie Foster will lead her first-ever online course in filmmaking, through a partnership with internet startup MasterClass. In the class, set to debut in early 2019, Foster will “share what she has learned from her five decades of experience on both sides of the camera,” MasterClass said in announcing the deal. “In her class, she
December 5, 2018 8:53AM PT Now that 2018 is ending, Twitter is sharing some of the topics that got people talking this year, including the most-tweeted video games in the U.S. Unsurprisingly, Epic Games’ popular battle royale title “Fortnite” tops the list. “Fortnite” is a pop culture phenomenon with over 200 million registered players. It
Comcast customers on its Xfinity X1 set-top platform will be getting access to Amazon Prime Video starting this week, making Comcast the first U.S. pay-TV operator to integrate the ecommerce giant’s video-streaming service. Prime Video joins Comcast’s collection of third-party entertainment services it provides through X1, including Netflix, YouTube and Tubi, which are integrated into the X1 set-top
Companies in the media sector are generally progressive in embracing digital tech to adapt their businesses — but they are more reluctant than other industries to move forward with artificial intelligence, among other emerging technologies, according to new research from PwC. Per PwC’s survey of 1,000 U.S. executives for its “2019 AI Predictions” report in
Chas Smith, general manager of Roku’s hardware business, plans to retire and is expected to leave the company at the end of the first quarter of 2019, Roku announced. The company said it has a search underway with an executive-placement firm to find a successor for the exec. Smith is senior VP and GM of
Twitter has unveiled its top-trending topics and tweets of 2018, with Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, and BTS commanding the most popular posts. Leave it to Gaga to write a tweet six years ago that becomes the third-most-quoted tweet of 2018. In 2012, the singer tweeted a random string of numbers and capitalized letters, which has
Few music executives have the range of Troy Carter, who over the past decade managed Lady Gaga from unknown status to superstardom, made big strides in smoothing Spotify’s relationships with the artist community, and continues to navigate complicated terrain as the special entertainment adviser to the Prince estate, which has resulted in a thorough archiving
December 4, 2018 3:11PM PT Digital movie sales and rentals are finally starting to gain traction, thanks to such innovative digital retailers as FandangoNOW, which is being inducted into Variety’s Home Entertainment Hall of Fame on Dec. 4. A business unit of Fandango, which sells movie tickets, FandangoNOW furthers the company’s mission of ubiquitous movie
There are some who say Issa Rae videos should come with a warning label: Her work, particularly her groundbreaking YouTube web series “Awkward Black Girl” and award-winning HBO TV series “Insecure,” can be a little addictive. Maybe it’s because we’re all a little awkward, we’re all a little insecure and so we can relate.Or maybe
The old Hollywood saying “perception is reality” rings true in new media. Just ask Susanne Daniels, global head of original content at YouTube, who is being inducted into Variety’s Home Entertainment Hall of Fame on Dec. 4. Earlier this year, YouTube’s subscription streaming service was rebranded to YouTube Premium, shedding the YouTube Red moniker it
December 4, 2018 2:47PM PT Popular mobile game “Trivia Crack” is launching a new game mode for players in the United States this week known as “Trivia Live.” The mobile trivia title is looking to compete with the recent trend of live trivia games by bringing real-time quizzes to players. Those who answer the most
Two of the biggest personalities in Asian TV’s C-suite say they have stopped worrying and learned to love disruption. After being described as “giants,” HBO Asia CEO Jonathan Spink and Turner’s celebrated Asia Pacific president Ricky Ow took the stage Tuesday in Singapore at the ATF Leaders’ Conference. There they interspersed a series of dire
Recent financial struggles among digital-media companies — including the abrupt shutdown of Defy Media and the collapse and sale of Mic — have highlighted a key lesson for the sector: the need to find reliable, diversified revenue streams. To that point, Turner’s Bleacher Report says it’s raking in some big dough with a new event
Otter Media, the digital-media company owned by AT&T, is undergoing a broad restructuring resulting in the layoff of about 10% of employees across the organization including at Crunchyroll, Fullscreen, and Rooster Teeth, Variety has learned. In addition, AT&T’s WarnerMedia is moving Machinima — the gamer and fandom digital property that has been part of Warner
Like many digital media companies, grew its business on the backs of “influencers” who built their audiences on digital platforms like YouTube. Which worked well … until it didn’t. Listen to this week’s podcast below: “What we did learn was that when you have open platforms that you can very quickly commoditize talent,” observed Kin
“Great animators are great observers, just like actors,” says animator and director Brad Bird, who is being inducted into Variety’s Home Entertainment Hall of Fame on Dec. 4. He should know: Bird is behind such films as “Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles,” “Ratatouille” and, most recently, “Incredibles 2,” with a domestic gross of $608.5 million and
Hulu is doubling down on anime: The streamer, in its biggest deal for anime programming to date, inked an exclusive first-look pact with Funimation to distribute new titles licensed and produced by Funimation starting in 2019. The new agreement comes after Funimation, owned by Sony Pictures Television, ended its cross-licensing deal with rival Crunchyroll earlier this
TV viewers may dislike commercial breaks, but Madison Avenue soon hopes to get them to watch ads during a very different kind of interruption. Coca-Cola struck advertising gold in 1929 by introducing the slogan, “The Pause That Refreshes.” In 2019, there is new hope in a similar concept: a refreshing pause that carries a word
The traditional pay-TV universe of 300-plus channels is going to shrink dramatically over the next 10 years, Hulu CEO Randy Freer predicted — with maybe a dozen cable TV networks still standing. “In the next decade, it’s not going to be about scheduled [linear] networks,” said Freer, speaking at the BI Ignition conference Tuesday in
December 4, 2018 7:37AM PT Live entertainment company LiveXLive wants to make streams of big concerts about a lot more than just the gigs: The Santa Monica-based company is getting ready to unveil a new show format dubbed “LiveZone” at the upcoming Rolling Loud Festival in Los Angeles later this month that will include artist
December 4, 2018 7:00AM PT Get ready to enter the world of “Mission Impossible,” thanks to virtual reality: VR game developer VRWERX has partnered with location-based VR startup Nomadic as well as Paramount on a new “Mission Impossible” VR experience custom-made for VR centers. The experience will allow consumers to explore the world of the
Reddit, the self-proclaimed front page of the internet, is now serving up more than 1.4 billion native video views per month. Reddit released the new data point Tuesday as part of a a 2018 year in review report, which also highlighted continued growth in the site’s popular crowd-sourced “ask me anything” interview format. The social
December 4, 2018 3:27AM PT Some hot production companies are getting “Dirty” for Amazon. Sharon Horgan’s Merman and “Peaky Blinders” producer Caryn Mandabach Productions are developing gritty drama “Dirty” for Amazon Studios alongside Kapital Entertainment. In-demand writer Danny Brocklehurst (“Safe”) will pen and exec produce the series, which promises to be a “funny, filthy, brutally
December 3, 2018 9:10PM PT Since Drake shattered virtually every streaming record with his “Scorpion” album, released in June, it’s no surprise that his 8.2 billion streams in 2018 make him not only Spotify’s most-streamed artist of the year, he’s the platform’s most-streamed artist of all time. “Scorpion” and its song “God’s Plan” also were
December 3, 2018 9:05PM PT Apple Music today unveiled its most-streamed songs and albums of 2018 — and not surprisingly, Drake was at the top of both lists (and had 3 of the Top 5 songs). Just an unsurprisingly, both lists are dominated by hip-hop, pop and R&B. The company also included its editorial selections
UPDATED: After an internet uproar over the possibility of “Friends” leaving Netflix at the end of 2018, the streaming giant announced a renewal to keep the sitcom through the end of next year. Fans of the NBC hit went into a tizzy over the weekend after customers spied a notice on Netflix’s page for the