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www.awn.com/news/att-spin-warnermedia-merger-discovery
Discovery CEO David Zaslav told CNBC that his goal is to hit “2-, 3-, 400 million homes over the long term” — twice the amount of subscribers currently boasted by Netflix. Even prior to the merger, WarnerMedia’s key holdings – Warner Bros., HBO, CNN, DC Comics, among others – control rights to the kinds of pop culture hits that incentivize subscriptions.
www.cartoonbrew.com/business/why-did-netflixs-value-plunge-by-over-20-overnight-212642.html
Netflix is still leading by some way, with 221.8 million subscribers at the end of 2021. Amazon’s Prime Video had around 175 million active streaming users by Q1 last year, although it is not exclusively a streaming service. Disney+ had 118.1 million subs as of October 2021, and is targeting 230–260 million by September 2024.
Netflix’s stock price fell over 20% in after-hours trading, wiping nearly $45 billion from its market capitalization. … Disney shares are down nearly 6% this morning, Roku around 6%, and Viacom 5%. Anxiety spread as some investors worried about how much more the streaming market as a whole can grow. “They’re saying the streaming wars are over,” Rich Greenfield told CNBC’s Fast Money.
It’s important to distinguish here that Disney’s (and other) adaptations stay under copyright, as do other books by the authors. Any adaptations, remixes, or extensions of these stories must be based on the original 1926 works. Also, Winnie-the-Pooh’s pal Tigger first appeared in a book in 1928, so will remain copyrighted for another two years.
Another important addition this year is a library of an estimated 400,000 sound recordings, all released prior to 1923. Due to quirks in how the law has developed, this is the first major batch of recordings to enter the public domain in one go. If you’re looking to soundtrack your film, you can start by exploring this trove of old blues, jazz, classical music, comedy skits, and more (listen to highlights here: www.archeophone.com/arsc-top-ten-nominees/#smith).
https://www.ft.com/content/ae756fda-4c27-4732-89af-cb6903f2ab40
From the Financial Times:
The top eight US #media groups plan to spend at least $115bn on new movies and #TV shows next year in pursuit of a video #streaming business that loses money for most of them.
The huge investment outlays come amid concerns that it will be harder to attract new customers in 2022 after the pandemic-fuelled growth in 2020 and 2021. Yet the alternative is to be left out of the streaming land rush.
Most of the companies — a list that includes The Walt Disney Company , Comcast , WarnerMedia and Amazon — are set to rack up losses on their streaming units. Including sports rights, the aggregate spending estimate rises to about $140bn.
But the fact that even the industry leader must invest heavily to churn out shows and keep pace with competitors has caused some investors to ask whether video streaming is a good business.
Netflix is set to spend more than $17bn on content next year — up 25 per cent from 2021 and 57 per cent from the $10.8bn it spent in 2020. The company expects to break even and become free cash flow positive in 2022.
“The market is increasingly concerned there is no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow”, the bank’s analysts said.
spring2013animationseminar.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/march-27-alex-mcdowell/
www.rinascimentodigitale.it/transmedia.html
“I think that it’s important now for people coming into the entertainment or pop culture business to know that all bets are off, … We don’t necessarily know that film making as we know it will exist in few years.
We don’t know that gaming is going to look the way it (now) looks or TV is going to look the way it looks. There is no doubt that there is convergence happening through these various media”
adsknews.autodesk.com/news/acquisition-software-from-tangent-labs
Autodesk is acquiring LoUPE, the powerful cloud-based production pipeline technology for artists and studios, and the team that created it.
Tangent Labs founder Jeff Bell will be joining Autodesk with his development team.
https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/unity-weta-deal/
variety.com/2021/digital/news/unity-acquires-weta-digital-1235107544/
Under the deal, Unity is obtaining the Weta Digital suite of VFX tools and technology and its team of 275 engineers, who will join Unity’s Create Solutions division.
Joe Marks, Weta’s chief technology officer, will join Unity as CTO of Weta Digital.
Weta Digital’s VFX and animation teams will continue to exist as a standalone entity, known as WetaFX, which is expected to become Unity’s largest customer in the media and entertainment space. WetaFX, with about 1,700 employees, will remain majority-owned by Jackson and led by CEO Prem Akkaraju. The proposed deal is expected to close before the end of 2021, subject to regulatory approvals.
www.awn.com/news/weta-digital-and-sidefx-bringing-houdini-cloud
New WetaH collaboration marks leading VFX company’s second move to integrate top commercial and proprietary applications in a single cloud-based service.
https://www.awn.com/blog/blame-canada-and-covid
deadline.com/2021/08/walt-disney-animation-studios-vancouver-studio-what-if-1234809175/
Effective next year, Walt Disney Animation Studios is throwing the doors open to a new facility in Vancouver, BC that will focus on long-form series and special projects for Disney+. The first in the pipeline is the anticipated, feature-quality musical series Moana.
