Tech

SAG-AFTRA has struck a deal with celebrity video platform Cameo to cover the brand deals that members make through Cameo for Business (C4B) under a guild contract. The new pact, “C4B x SAG-AFTRA Agreement,” will allow SAG-AFTRA members to count C4B earnings toward health and pension benefits, just as those earnings become a growing concern

UPDATED: It’s the big launch day for Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max — and the newly revamped streaming service encountered some technical problems right off the bat. The company said the issues have been “minor” and were swiftly fixed. On Tuesday morning, subscribers took to social media to complain that they were having problems logging in

Meta is offloading Giphy — which maintains the world’s biggest database of animated GIFs — to content marketplace company Shutterstock, taking a steep loss on the forced sale. Shutterstock is paying $53 million for Giphy. Three years ago, Meta (then Facebook) bought Giphy for $400 million. However, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruled

Max, Warner Bros. Discovery’s bulked-up and revamped streaming service that takes the place of HBO Max, makes it U.S. debut on Wednesday (May 23). Max makes several subtle enhancements aimed at making the service easier to use and more engaging — while execs say it should also be more stable than HBO Max. According to

With HBO Max turning into Max, Warner Bros. Discovery is introducing a higher-priced plan — $19.99 per month — with an expanded bouquet of 4K Ultra HD content aimed at pushing customers to the pricier package. On Monday, the company announced that the 4K tier will feature more than 1,000 films and episodes in 4K

It’s the beginning of the end for Showtime as a standalone brand. Paramount Global will launch the newly integrated Paramount+ With Showtime service in the U.S. on June 27, establishing it as the company’s top-tier streaming product. As previously announced, the Paramount+ With Showtime plan will cost $11.99 per month — up from $9.99/month, but

On Tuesday, May 23, HBO Max is going away — when it will be reskinned as Max, stocked with more than twice the total amount of programming. Max’s expanded streaming menu includes the addition of hundreds of episodes of Discovery+ shows, and it’s set to get dozens of new TV shows and movies over the

Instagram has stopped working, as users worldwide took to other social media platforms on May 21 to complain that they can’t log in or use the photo app. “My Instagram,” “Y’all Instagram” and “My IG” were all quickly trending topics on Twitter after users realized the platform is down. Instagram has yet to comment through

A veteran of Pixar, Blue Sky, and DreamWorks Animation, Spanish creative Rodrigo Blaas brought two decades of Hollywood experience to Madrid when he co-founded his own studio, El Guiri. And so, when Hollywood came knocking, Blaas answered with a bit of Spanish flair. “Some opportunities put you in a place to embrace the unknown,” Blaas

Hank Green, the popular YouTube video creator and VidCon co-founder, announced Friday that he has been diagnosed with cancer. In a video posted Friday on YouTube, Green said he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a type of cancer of the lymphatic system (which is part of the body’s immune system). But he said he will

UPDATED: Disney’s content culling from Disney+ and Hulu is coming as early as next week — with the media company pulling off at least four dozen titles, including series “Willow,” “The Mysterious Benedict Society” and “Dollface,” and movies such as “The One and Only Ivan.” At the same time, CEO Bob Iger told investors last week

It’s 9 a.m. on Thursday morning, but Emma Chamberlain has already been up for three hours. Clad in an all-gray Thom Browne set, she perches on a deep-seated sofa, surrounded by tall posters of images from her newly unveiled campaign with Canon. In one, she poses in a red carpet-ready gown, a camera in hand;

Apple TV 4K owners can now watch up to four simultaneous streams on the screen at once — a new multiview feature designed to spur sports fans to subscribe to the MLS Season Pass soccer package. With the customizable new multiview experience in the Apple TV app on Apple TV 4K, users can see up

Showing that people can’t resist the offer of getting something for nothing, startup Telly said more than 100,000 people registered to get a free 4K TV set that displays a continuous rotation of ads on a second screen within the first 36 hours of launch. Telly CEO and founder Ilya Pozin, who previously co-founded free-streaming

Shares of Netflix jumped more than 10% Thursday on news that the streamer had signed up almost 5 million customers for its ad-supported plan within six months of launch and that more than 25% of new signups are on the advertising tier. At Netflix’s first-ever upfronts event Wednesday — held virtually — the company announced

On June 1, Adam McKay and his company Hyperobject Industries and Sony Music Entertainment will release “Death on the Lot,” an eight-episode podcast telling the stories of the deaths of James Dean, Hattie McDaniel, John Garfield and other notable Hollywood figures who died prematurely in the 1950s. Variety can exclusively unveil the trailer for “Death

Alibaba, China’s e-commerce and entertainment giant, announced net profits of $10.6 billion for its financial year to the end of March, a year-on-year increase of 39%. The rebound was achieved on revenues of $126 billion that were up by just 2%. Using the group’s preferred non-GAAP measure to exclude extraordinary items, net income rose by

YouTube’s biggest ad innovation for 2023? It might be borrowing a well-worn page from old-fashioned linear TV. At the YouTube Brandcast upfront event Wednesday in New York, execs announced the introduction of 30-second unskippable ads in top-performing YouTube content on TVs — you know, just like the commercials that have run on broadcast and cable

Lila Synder is CEO of Bose Corporation, the consumer audio company which is soon to mark its 60th anniversary. Founded by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Amar Bose, its home has always been within close proximity to Boston and its abundance of student talent. Snyder was one of those grads, earning a master’s degree and

On March 10, 1998, the first DVD from a brand-new website called NetFlix.com was dropped in the mail. The movie was 1988’s “Beetlejuice,” from director Tim Burton with a cast that included a teenage Winona Ryder, who nearly 20 years later would be tapped to star in the series that has become one of Netflix’s

Additive Creative Partners, the digital-focused talent management arm of Brent Montgomery and Jimmy Kimmel’s Wheelhouse DNA, has signed nine top digital content creators as clients, including Lauren Kettering, Legit Tim, YouTube collective TKOR, James Wright and Carrie Berk. Wheelhouse DNA’s Additive launched last year out of Kimmel and Montgomery’s media company Wheelhouse, as the division

China’s entertainment, social media and technology giant Tencent, renewed its profits growth in the first quarter of 2023, after reporting its first decline in 2022. And group revenue beat financial market estimates as China’s post-COVID reopening boosted economic activity. Overall revenues in the three months from January to March 2023 reached RMB150 billion ($21.4 billion),

Elon Musk, after dramatically slashing Twitter’s headcount following his takeover of the social platform, said the company will try to rehire some of them — acknowledging that the job cuts were too deep. Musk has slashed Twitter’s headcount by 80%, from 7,800 to about 1,500, as he has attempted to cut costs and get the

NBCUniversal’s Peacock will have the first-ever exclusive livestreamed NFL playoff game in the U.S. next season — which won’t be available on traditional TV, except in the two teams’ local markets. Peacock will present an NFL Wild Card Playoff game in primetime on Saturday, Jan. 13, 2024, starting at 8 p.m. ET under a deal

Comcast is prepared to sell its 33% stake in Hulu to Disney, but the question at this point is landing on the right price for that, according Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. “I think it’s more likely than not” that Comcast will end up selling full control of Hulu to Disney, said Roberts, speaking Tuesday at

YouTube, already the most popular streamer on big-screen TVs, last month built on its lead as one of the only major services to see viewing time among U.S. TV households increase, according to new Nielsen data. For the period from March 27-April 30, 2023, TV viewing of YouTube videos (excluding YouTube TV) was up 1.5%.

iQiyi, the Chinese video streamer that began a turnaround last year, reported further growth in profits in the first quarter of 2023. It said that daily subscription numbers had grown by 17 million in the past three months. Total revenues were RMB8.3 billion ($1.2 billion), increasing 15% year over year, the company said in a

Amazon Games is taking another shot at Middle-earth. The ecommerce giant announced a deal with Middle-earth Enterprises for Amazon Games to develop and publish a new massively multiplayer online (MMO) game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic “The Lord of the Rings.” The upcoming game, as yet untitled, will be “an open-world MMO adventure in

Weeks after the U.K.’s Competition & Markets Authority blocked Microsoft’s proposed $68.7 billion deal to buy video games giant Activision Blizzard, the European Commission (EC) has granted approval under the EU Merger Regulation. However, the approval, which arrived after an EC investigation, comes with conditions that require Microsoft to fully comply with specific commitments that

Ilya Pozin made a bunch of money when Viacom bought Pluto TV, the free video-streaming company he co-founded, for $340 million four years ago. Since exiting Pluto about a year after that deal closed, Pozin has been working on another startup venture — one he thinks will be a much bigger deal. On Monday, Pozin’s