Why Big Streamers Are Thinking Small at Film Festivals
Apple’s Best Picture win in 2022 for CODA, a family drama acquired at the 2021 Sundance Festival for $25 million, once resonated as a validating moment for streaming services’ flashy spending at film festivals. Years later, the big picture regarding festival spend couldn’t be more different. As reflected in Luminate Intelligence’s new State of Film Industry 2026 report, […]
Gaming Industry Off to a Shaky 2026
In recent years, January has been a troubled month for the video games industry. While publishers on the early side of earnings season typically get to boast holiday sales, they also tend to announce heavy layoffs around this time, and 2026 is no exception. Israeli mobile games company Playtika led January with 500 job cuts — 15% of […]
‘Zootopia 2’ Strengthens Sequel-Gap Strategy for Studios
As it nears $1.7 billion in global box office grosses toward the end of its run, Disney’s Zootopia 2 could very well become the highest-grossing animated film ever in the West, if not a close second, to 2024’s Inside Out 2, the current record holder. 2025 was already a big year for animated film. China’s Ne Zha 2 achieved the highest […]
‘Fallout’ Series Return Highlights Tricky Cross-Media Truth
When the second season of the Amazon series Fallout premieres today, a unique distribution arrangement via Samsung Gaming Hub will accompany it. Consumers can access the first season of Fallout for free, while season two can be streamed through a Prime Video subscription and, most importantly, a video game within the franchise, Fallout 76, can be played through the hub’s Xbox app. It’s […]
Netflix Gaming Pivot Is Really About Catching Up to YouTube
Earlier this month, Netflix launched its first “Game Night” event, a cluster of easily accessible party games that families and friends can play together in person on their smartphones with a built-in controller app, in tandem with their TV sets. Four years after the formation of Netflix’s first video game division and following several closures of its […]
How Film Franchise Power Shifted in 2025
Five years on from COVID, established IP remains an integral component of the challenged film exhibition environment. But what has noticeably changed is which franchises do the heavy lifting. 2025 was the first year since 2021 in which franchises account for more than half of the wide-release output across the seven major studio slates, including […]
‘Black Phone 2’ Cements R-Rated Horror Streak Ahead of ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’, ‘Predator’ Popularity Tests
Blumhouse finally caught up to its peers last month with Black Phone 2, the go-to horror film of this Halloween season. The supernatural slasher first opened to $27.3 million domestically, which was more than any of the cumulative grosses earned by the prodco’s prior 2025 efforts, including M3GAN 2.0’s somber summer run that stopped the seemingly budding franchise dead in its […]
Saudi Bid for EA Could Leave the Game Giant’s Valuable IP Hanging
When Microsoft completed its mammoth deal to acquire Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard in 2023, Electronic Arts became the largest standalone Western video game publisher.
Blumhouse, Microsoft, Google Leaders Weigh in on AI: ‘My Biggest Professional Fear’
OpenAI’s Sora 2 app update kicked off October with existential questions for Hollywood and the tenacity of corporate-owned IP.
Examining Hollywood’s Increasingly Asymmetrical Embrace of Gaming IP
Newly christened Paramount Skydance turned heads in September with a major deal for a Call of Duty film.