As CBS relentlessly advertised its streaming service during the Super Bowl last night, subscribers to that service were having trouble watching the game. CBS All Access, which will be rebranded as Paramount+ in March, crashed for many viewers just as the game started. The problem was quickly fixed, and most users reported missing only a few minutes of the game.
A pandemic that has killed nearly half a million Americans was never going to stop the National Football League and its media partners from doing their darndest to put on the Super Bowl. But Covid-19 will still severely diminish what’s normally one of the biggest global TV events of the year.
When you watch the Super Bowl Feb. 7, you won’t see a Budweiser ad. You won’t see commercials for other Super Bowl mainstays like Coke, Pepsi, or Hyundai either. You’ll still see a ton of ads—many from companies you might not have heard of yet—but the event will have a very different feel from what you’re accustomed to.
It took only a few weeks for a group of Reddit users to send GameStop’s stock soaring and throw Wall Street into a frenzy. It took even less time than that for Hollywood to decide to turn the ongoing story into a movie.
While Netflix, Disney, and other media conglomerates were battling it out for streaming TV dominance, another type of streaming war was raging. And this one now has a decisive winner.
Video game usage is surging to record highs, enriching game developers and console makers, and boosting sales for e-commerce platforms. Just about the only part of the industry that hasn’t benefited is brick-and-mortar retail chains like GameStop, which still rely on physical sales in a world swiftly transitioning to digital transactions.
With Disney’s US theme parks either closed or operating at severely limited capacity, the Mouse House is taking the opportunity to make a change that’s long overdue: It’s removing the racist elements from one of its most famous rides, Jungle Cruise.
During the National Football League’s AFC championship broadcast last night, viewers were treated to a series of commercials from ViacomCBS touting its newly rebranded streaming service, Paramount+. Central to the ad—and to the service’s pitch to consumers—was the boast that Paramount+ includes live sports among its various offerings.
Critics and fans blamed much of the critical decline of HBO’s Game of Thrones on the fact that the TV show had outpaced the rate at which author George R.R. Martin could write the books on which it was based.
Two of Netflix’s three most popular original series ever are heist dramas. And neither of them are in English.
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Millions of Americans watched Joe Biden’s televised inauguration today. For Trump supporters, the event was covered quite differently than those watching network TV.
Netflix cynics, look away: The streaming company declared it doesn’t need to borrow money anymore, rebutting what’s been a common criticism of the service for a decade.
The next phase of Marvel’s superhero cinematic universe—the most expensive and highest-grossing film series of all time—will begin with a television sitcom.
Netflix and Disney each enjoyed success with new original shows in 2020, from Tiger King to The Mandalorian. But no series was nearly as popular as one that went off the air eight years ago.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the film studio MGM pumped out 50 new movies a year, most of which featured the world’s biggest stars at the time: Judy Garland, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and countless others. MGM co-founder and lead executive, Louis B. Mayer, famously boasted that the studio had “more stars than there are in the heavens.” Not long after that, antitrust regulation and the advent of television ended Hollywood’s system of studio dominance, and no company has been as prolific since.
The green screen has been a staple of film and TV sets for decades, dating back to The Thief of Baghdad in 1940. It served its purpose well, allowing filmmakers to layer spectacular landscapes and futuristic settings onto its blank canvas in post-production. But now, Hollywood is adopting a new technology that makes the process of rendering imaginary worlds much more seamless.
As Fox News fends off challengers Newsmax and OANN in the battle to curry favor with Donald Trump and his supporters, many are wondering if the conservative US cable news network might evolve into a less obsequious media outlet once Trump is no longer in power. Fox’s coverage of the Jan. 6 riot at the US Capitol building gave us a definitive answer to that question.
A violent, potentially armed mob of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol today in an insurrection over the 2020 presidential election results. As of this writing, they have breached the building, smashed windows and pushed past security, and are banging on the doors of the US House chambers, where Congress had assembled to certify Joe Biden’s victory. At least one woman has been shot, according to CNN.
Netflix is paying TV mega-producer Shonda Rhimes more than $100 million to make hit shows. That is an enormous sum for a single creator—but if her first series under the partnership is any indication, it’s going to be a smart investment.
Wonder Woman 1984 catapulted the entertainment industry into an era in which big-budget Hollywood films can debut on streaming platforms. But it also signaled a growing problem that will plague studios as they rely more in streaming: internet piracy.
If you thought 2020 was a strange year for the movies, get ready for 2021.
Streaming has given consumers more choice about what to watch than ever before. It’s also led to a lot of confusion about how and where they can watch TV shows among the plethora of platforms and services. The average US consumer subscribes to about three streaming video services out of the dozens of options available to them.
On Christmas Day, the biggest Hollywood movie of the year will debut online. In the US, Wonder Woman 1984—the sequel to the 2017 superhero blockbuster Wonder Woman—will be available to subscribers of the HBO Max streaming service on the same day it premieres in theaters. So instead of watching it on the big screen, where virtually all films of its kind have been seen throughout history, most American audiences will just cozy up on their couches and hit play.
