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      in Television

      Netflix and Amazon Drive Bump in TV Show Market

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      Netflix and Amazon are driving a small bump in the market for TV shows after a major slowdown.It has been nearly seven months since Hollywood resolved its strikes, but momentum still hasn’t taken hold in the entertainment industry. “Survive till ’25” has become an informal slogan among entertainment workers.But the global market for ordering new TV shows is beginning to show some signs of life, and it’s been overwhelmingly driven by two players — Netflix and Amazon.Netflix greenlit more scripted television projects through the first quarter of this year than in any quarter since 2022, according to Ampere Analysis, a research firm. Amazon had its most active quarter since Ampere started tracking market activity five years ago, the firm said.Many of their competitors are still taking a more cautious approach. As a result, Netflix and Amazon collectively accounted for 53 percent of the scripted television series orders among the major studios through the first three months of the year, according to Ampere.Most of the series orders have been made internationally. Netflix has been particularly active in Britain, Germany, Spain and South Korea, the research showed, while Amazon has been investing aggressively in India.Netflix and Amazon have also purchased more projects in the United States compared with the tail end of 2023, but the increases have been more modest. Netflix had its most active quarter domestically since the first quarter of last year. Amazon had its biggest quarter since the spring of last year, according to the research.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Trump Biopic ‘The Apprentice’ Nears Distribution Deal

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      “The Apprentice,” a dramatized origin story about Donald J. Trump, has faced fierce criticism from the former president and his allies.Hollywood executives love to characterize themselves as fearless. The truth is that they spend most of their time trying to minimize risk.It’s why theaters are clogged with vacuous sequels. It’s why so many Hollywood power players hide behind P.R. people. And it’s why all of the big movie studios and streaming services — and, in fact, most indie film companies — declined to distribute “The Apprentice,” a dramatized origin story about Donald J. Trump that the former president has called “malicious defamation” and showered with cease-and-desist letters.But the movie business still has at least one wildcatter: Tom Ortenberg.Mr. Ortenberg, 63, and his Briarcliff Entertainment are pushing to complete a deal to acquire “The Apprentice” for wide release in theaters in the United States in September or early October — close enough to the presidential election to bask in its heat, but far enough away to avoid final-stretch media overload. Briarcliff’s pursuit of the $16 million film was confirmed by five people involved with the sale process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private negotiation.“Tom’s got more courage than most people in Hollywood combined,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s film school. “His interest in this kind of movie involves business, of course. He sees money to be made by leveraging millions of dollars in free publicity. But part of it is wanting to do his bit. He’s liberal and cares about social issues.”Hurdles remain, the people cautioned. “Apprentice” producers cobbled together the money to make the movie from various sources. One was Kinematics, an upstart film company backed by Dan Snyder, the former Washington Commanders owner — and a Trump supporter. Kinematics, which invested about $5 million, would need to sign off on the Briarcliff deal and has balked, calling the offer subpar, according to the five people involved in the sale process. The Kinematics snag was reported earlier by a Puck newsletter.So producers have put together a package to buy out Kinematics at a premium. The sides are now haggling over terms, including the timing of payment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      How Netflix’s Corporate Culture Has Changed

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      The company’s latest internal memo about its corporate culture is more about how it expects employees to behave than what it wants to become.Netflix has long been a company known for its secrets: no Nielsen ratings, little feedback on why shows are canceled, no box office numbers for the rare movies that are actually released in theaters.Yet for a place defined by its opaque approach to the outside world, the streaming giant has long been aggressively transparent internally. The company’s philosophy was immortalized in 2009 when Reed Hastings, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, first laid out the corporate ethos in a 125-slide presentation that introduced new buzzy phrases like “stunning colleagues,” “the keeper test” and “honesty always.”The presentation, with its insistence on constant and unfiltered candor, felt both brutal and refreshingly antithetical to Hollywood’s normal way of doing business. To the frustration of former employees and current competitors, it may just be the blueprint that has enabled Netflix to have so much success while its rivals have stumbled.Three more culture memos have followed over the years. Before being released, they are pored over and analyzed for months by top executives. At the same time, any employee can pop into the Google Doc where the memo is being assembled to leave a thought or a comment.The latest iteration of the document, which was released internally on May 8 and will soon be made public, underwent eight months of vetting and received 1,500 comments from employees, according to Sergio Ezama, Netflix’s chief talent officer. It is five pages long (half the length of Mr. Hastings’s final memo in 2022), and some core tenets have changed, however slightly.When Mr. Hastings titled his 2009 presentation “Netflix Culture,” he gave it the subhead “Freedom and Responsibility.” The idea was that Netflix trusted its employees to act in the best interest of the company. If you want a vacation, take a vacation. If you have a baby and need to go on leave, go on leave. Documents were shared widely throughout the company without any fear of leaks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Inside Out 2’ Returns Pixar to Box Office Heights

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      The sequel was expected to collect at least $145 million in the United States and Canada over the weekend, about 60 percent more than anticipated.Pixar is finally back in fighting form.The Disney-owned animation studio’s 28th movie, “Inside Out 2,” arrived to roughly $145 million in estimated North American ticket sales from Thursday night to Sunday, ending a cold streak that began in March 2020, when theaters closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.It was the second-biggest opening weekend in Pixar’s 29-year history, trailing only the superhero sequel “Incredibles 2,” which arrived to about $180 million in 2018.“They’re back,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said of Pixar. “This is a sensational opening.”Based on prerelease surveys that track audience interest, box office analysts had expected “Inside Out 2” to take in about $90 million in the United States and Canada over the weekend. That total would have been strong — on par with opening-weekend ticket sales for the first “Inside Out” in 2015.“Inside Out 2” sold an additional $125 million in partial release overseas, bringing its worldwide opening total to around $270 million, analysts said. The PG-rated movie cost an estimated $200 million to make and at least another $100 million to market.“Inside Out 2,” about a 13-year-old girl and the personified emotions inside her puberty-scrambled mind, received exceptional reviews. Ticket buyers gave the movie an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls, the same score the first film in the franchise received.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 175 Shares189 Views

      in Television

      HBO Could Use a Hit and ‘House of the Dragon’ Could be the Answer

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      The network has hit an unusually fallow period. Executives hope “House of the Dragon,” which returns Sunday, could be the start of a new winning streak.The dragons are back. And not a moment too soon.On Sunday, “House of the Dragon,” the “Game of Thrones” prequel series, will return to HBO for its second season. The show became a bona fide hit in its first season, in 2022, and helped kick off a torrid winning streak for the network that included the beloved sophomore season of “The White Lotus”; the premiere of a new hit, “The Last of Us”; and the decorated final season of “Succession.”But over the past year, HBO has encountered a fallow stretch — unusual for America’s pre-eminent premium television network.There have been disappointments (the music drama “The Idol” and the Kate Winslet-starring limited series “The Regime,” for instance), and delayed premieres because of the double Hollywood strikes last year. According to one widely used industry metric, Max, the 13-month-old streaming service that houses HBO’s shows, has plateaued during that time. One high-ranking executive at Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO’s parent company, chalked up Max’s slow start to “probably the lightest content slate we’ve ever had.”HBO’s one-year slowdown could be underscored when Emmy nominations arrive next month, usually a cause for celebration for the network. But in contrast to previous years, shows from HBO and Max will not be favorites in some of the major categories, including drama, a category that HBO dominated at the most recent Emmys.According to some award forecasters, HBO could finish third among networks in total nominations, which would be its lowest ranking since 1996. HBO executives acknowledged that they were anticipating reduced award recognition this year. But they said they were looking to the months ahead, starting with this weekend.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      “The Interview”: Ted Sarandos’s Plan to Get You to Binge Even More Netflix

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      If you’re anything like me, you probably spent some large portion of this week sitting on your couch watching Netflix. I love rom-coms — my latest obsession is a Turkish series called “Thank You, Next” — and the more rom-coms I watch, the more of them Netflix feeds to me. Maybe you’ve had this experience with sports documentaries, or thrillers, or biopics. It’s something we’ve all gotten used to. Which means, as I’m pressing play on whatever comes up next, I’m not really thinking about the people who are deciding what I’m consuming. And that’s why I wanted to talk to Ted Sarandos.Listen to the Conversation With Ted SarandosNetflix won the streaming battle, but the war for your attention isn’t over.Sarandos, 59, has been at Netflix for 24 years, nearly as long as Reed Hastings, one of the company’s two founders. He is now co-chief executive and is in charge of Netflix’s creative output. He oversaw the company’s early expansion into streaming and pioneered the binge watch. Under him, Netflix developed that powerful algorithm that knows just what to serve up next. He was also the guy who greenlit Netflix’s early original productions, like “House of Cards,” making Netflix into a studio, not just a platform. And he has led the company as it has ventured into reality TV, prestige film and live entertainment — including a just-announced deal to broadcast some of the N.F.L.’s Christmas Day games.Sarandos seems to be very good at giving us more of what we want. And after a crackdown on password-sharing (which Sarandos tells me is still in progress), his company has come out on top in the crowded streaming wars (if you set aside YouTube, which Sarandos does not). That doesn’t mean everything is rosy all the time now — the company has had several rounds of layoffs in the past few years — but Sarandos, along with his co-chief executive, Greg Peters, has put Netflix in a dominant position. Has this been good for us? Or for culture? When we talked recently, with viral clips of Netflix’s Tom Brady roast flying all over the internet, I asked him.You have an unusual background for a Hollywood or tech C.E.O. I would agree with that assessment. My parents had four kids in their 20s. So these were kids raising kids really. Our house was always chaos. And my only escape from that chaos was that little box. I watched a lot of television. Most of my upbringing, we never had all the utilities on at the same time. So the gas would be cut off, and then the phone would be cut off, and the electric, but never all simultaneously. But for some reason we had a VCR. And total happenstance, the second video store in the state of Arizona opened up two blocks from my house.Do you remember the first thing you ever checked out in the video store? Yeah, it was a filmed version of the Willie Nelson Fourth of July picnic. [Laughs.] More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      In New TikTok Trend, Parents Dance Like It’s the ’80s and Bring Down the House

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      Videos of parents demonstrating their moves have been a surprise hit on a site where youth rules — perhaps because the trend isn’t played for laughs.TikTok can add a new skill to its résumé: disco time machine.The social platform, normally populated with an endless scroll of Gen Z-ers dancing — mostly in short choreographed routines that have been practiced and perfected — has recently been infused with the energy of a surprising demographic: their Gen X parents.In the viral videos, parents are asked by their adult children to dance as they would have back in the day to the 1984 sonic ear worm “Smalltown Boy,” by the British synth-pop band Bronski Beat. Most posts are tagged #momdancechallenge, #daddancechallenge or #80sdancechallenge, and they have racked up tens of millions of views.The reactions have been perhaps unexpected, because instead of going for laughs, the videos are cool, like really cool, serving as a portal to another era: when dance was more often improvisational and spontaneous, when people felt the beat and found the rhythm organically, moving without the constraints of a horizontal aspect ratio.When Valerie Martinez, 23, asked her mother, Yeanne Velazquez, 58, to participate, it was before the challenge had gone viral, and they had not prepared at all. “I didn’t even play the song for her before,” Martinez said in a phone interview this week alongside her mother. But Martinez was sure Velazquez would deliver, because her mother is always dancing, she said.It was nostalgic for Velazquez, who said that when the song was popular, she was about 19 and would go dancing in the one or two clubs in Puerto Rico, where she lived. Now she and her daughter live in Florida.

      @thatpersianqt she ate with this one I fear #fyp #foryou #80s #80sdancechallenge #momsoftiktok #80smusic ♬ Smalltown Boy – Bronski Beat

      @_miamimonkey Do we all have the same mom? 😂 I thought y’all were joking until I had her do it blindly 😂 @Savvy Sandy #fyp #foryou #foryoupage #80sdancemoves #80smusic ♬ Smalltown Boy – Bronski Beat We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      Where New Yorkers Start Being Polite and Stop Getting Real

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      The Portal, a video art installation connecting the city with Dublin, is open again, now with safeguards. But does changing the rules change the artwork?At 2:45 p.m. on a sunny Wednesday in a plaza near the Flatiron Building, a crowd of a few dozen was watching, and appearing in, New York City’s most infamous new reality show.On a round video screen, encased in a porthole-like structure behind a railing, they could see a livestream of onlookers across the Atlantic, in the center of Dublin. “They can see you just like you see them!” a staff member minding the exhibit told the crowd.Therein lay the attraction, and the problem. The Portal, a two-way-video art installation, opened on May 8, then promptly closed down on May 14, because of “inappropriate behavior.”On the American side, an OnlyFans model had flashed her breasts at Dublin, a stunt that, she later said, netted her a boost in subscribers worth tens of thousands of dollars. From the Irish side, people displayed images of swastikas and of the 2001 World Trade Center attack. The transgressions went viral, not the sort of global connection and sharing that the organizers were hoping for.Who, besides everyone, would have thought that some people would behave badly given access to a public live camera? When the Portal reopened on May 19, it had new hours — 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. New York time — and new safeguards, including a “proximity-based solution” that would blur the livestream if anyone or anything got too close.Today, the crowd was keeping it on, keeping it all on. At least on this side of the ocean. Onscreen in Dublin, a pair of high-spirited lads lifted their shirts and exposed their bellies to America. In a few minutes they graduated to full topless, whirling their shirts over their heads, before they were seemingly encouraged to leave by security.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More