Disney+ Hotstar Sheds 12.5 Million Subscribers in Fiscal Q3 Amid Strategy Shift; Streaming Losses Narrow

During Sunday’s season finale of “The Real Housewives of Atlanta”, Sanya Richards-Ross reflected on her painful pregnancy loss.

As Hollywood waits for the WGA’s official response to the AMPTP’s latest contract offer, a ray of sunlight emerged for comedy/variety writers in the latest back-and-forth.

EXCLUSIVE: Amid a focus on content curation and Disney-owned IP, Disney+ is not proceeding with The Spiderwick Chronicles, its live-action series adaptation of the popular children’s fantasy books, Deadline has learned.

Netflix continued to add subscribers in the U.S. at a high rate in July after initiating a crackdown on password sharing in May, according to new data from research firm Antenna.

EXCLUSIVE: Leading Bollywood production house T-Series is making its first foray into web series with crime thriller Kaala for Disney+ Hotstar. 

The idea of exclusivity with streaming services is starting to lose its meaning quite a bit. During the pandemic, it felt as if streaming services couldn’t spend enough money to grab up as many “exclusive” films and TV series to draw in subscribers.

As told to Crystal Echo Hawk is the founder of IllumiNative, a Native women-led racial and social organization dedicated to highlighting—and challenging—the narratives thrust upon Native American communities. She is also the co-host of the American Genocide podcast, which investigates allegations of Native American genocide at a former Indian Boarding School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota.

Telegraph that Walt Disney Studios’ upcoming adaptation — which has already been blasted for being “politically correct” after leaked images showed the seven dwarfs reimagined as “magical creatures” of all sizes and genders — is “insulting” and “woke.”“I mean, it’s a whole different concept, and I just totally disagree with it, and I know my dad and Walt would also very much disagree with it,” he told the Telegraph.Studio bosses have “destroyed” his father’s creation,” said 91-year-old Hand of the adapted edition to his dad’s famed work, according to the outlet.The Mouse House’s modern take on the animated original, which was based on the 1812 Brothers Grimm fairytale, will see a character named “Jonathan” in place of Prince Charming, 22-year-old Hispanic actress Rachel Zegler as Snow White and dwarfs that Disney has said “avoid reinforcing stereotypes.”There have also been rumors that Disney has ditched the film’s classic song, “Someday My Prince Will Come.”“I think it’s pathetic that people feel that way… these are art forms in the world of film today,” Hand said of the updates, which he predicts will make young viewers — especially those who “have never seen the original” — “misunderstand” the film.Meanwhile, her successor as the titular character, Zegler, has blasted the original storyline as being “extremely outdated” with a prince whose behavior is similar to that of a “stalker.”“The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with the guy who literally stalks her.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief The number of paying streaming subscribers at China’s Tencent Music Entertainment hit 100 million in the June, the company said Tuesday as it revealed its second quarter financials. Subscriber numbers increased by 20% year on year and by 5 million quarter on quarter, to hit 99.4 million, the company said. That increase helped quarterly revenues from music subscriptions to rise by 37% year-on-year to RMB2.89 billion ($399 million).

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez announced Friday that they will establish a Maui Fund in response to the deadly wildfires that began earlier this week, dedicating $100 million to the cause.

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez announced Friday that they will establish a Maui Fund in response to the deadly wildfires that began earlier this week, dedicating $100 million to the cause. «Jeff and I are heartbroken by what’s happening in Maui,» Sanchez wrote on Instagram. «We are thinking of all the families that have lost so much and a community that has been left devastated.

Disney is following through on stated plan to raise streaming prices (welcome news to investors if not to many consumers), as well as launching a bundled version of Disney+ and Hulu and expanding the ad-supported version of Disney+ to Europe and Canada.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney, trying to swing its streaming business into the black, has set substantial price hikes for Disney+ and Hulu standalone premium plans in the U.S. — while also rolling out a heavily discounted Disney+/Hulu ad-free combo bundle. As of Oct.

Disney saw direct-to-consumer losses shrink and adjusted EPS top estimates for the three months ended in June as CEO Bob Iger said the company’s on track to exceed $5.5 billion in anticipated cost savings.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Nexstar reported its second-quarter 2023 earnings Tuesday, revealing the TV stations group giant had turned a profit of $153 million in Q2, while its CW broadcast network posted a loss of $78 million for the April-June quarter. For the CW, which was formally acquired by Nexstar in October 2022 from Paramount Global and Warner Bros. Discovery, a year-over-year comparison can’t be drawn based on the lack of financial results disclosed publicly by its former parent companies.

Paramount Global had a rocky June quarter in film as Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, not surprising, found it tough going against last year’s Top Gun: Maverick.

Naman Ramachandran Disney+ Hotstar India’s Syria-set thriller series “The Freelancer” is in the works. Based on the bestselling 2017 book “A Ticket to Syria” by Shirish Thorat, the series is from showrunner Neeraj Pandey (Disney+ Hotstar’s Special Ops franchise), produced by Friday Storytellers and directed by Bhav Dhulia (Netflix’s “Khakee: The Bihar Chapter”). Pandey said: “’The Freelancer’ is a high-scale thriller series that unfolds an extraordinary rescue operation of a young girl held against her will in a war-torn Syria.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer AMC Networks reported its second-quarter 2023 earnings Friday, revealing it had lost 500,000 more subscribers across its portfolio of niche streamers and was down 17% in U.S. ad sales for the April 1-June 30 period. AMC Networks lost 300,000 subscribers across its streaming services in Q1, falling from 11.8 million at the end of 2022 to 11.5 million by March 31.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Warner Bros. Discovery appears to have bigger digital plans for Charles Barkley and Anderson Cooper. Warner Bros.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Warner Bros. Discovery lost 1.8 million streaming subscribers from April 1-June 30, the quarter during which it launched new combined streamer Max. Streaming subscribers across WBD’s HBO, Max and Discovery+ now total 95.8 million, per the company’s Q2 earnings report released Thursday.