Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hit theaters Friday, but even though Disney’s last big film, Pixar’s Turning Red, skipped theaters almost entirely to stream on Disney Plus, don’t expect Doctor Strange to be streaming anytime soon. The company’s other theatrical releases have been all over the map. Encanto spent a month in theaters before streaming. For Marvel’s Eternals, …

Twitter advertising executives made little more than a veiled allusion to how Elon Musk, a self-styled “free-speech absolutist,” is poised to take over Twitter as the company made its flashiest pitch of the year to marketers and brands Wednesday, praising advertisers as its trusted partners who “stand with us.” “It has been a quiet month at Twitter,” JP Maheu, leader of the …

Yellowstone is, by far, the Paramount Network’s biggest hit. It’s also one of the biggest hits on cable television, bar none. The season 3 cliffhanger finale in 2020 drew the biggest audience of any scripted TV show on cable that year, with 7.6 million viewers watching it. The season 4 premiere in November on the Paramount Network nearly doubled that, with 14.7 million viewers.  So …

HBO Max is the premium network’s subscription streaming service that bundles together all the movies and shows on regular HBO with an extra streaming-only library of more shows, movies and originals.  Keep in mind, HBO Max killed off its weeklong free trial a while ago. And while it became closely linked to the pandemic-era practice of streaming new theatrical movies the same …

Netflix laid off workers at its Tudum fan website Thursday, a culling that comes less than five months after the streaming service launched the site and a week after Netflix reported its first subscriber loss in a decade. The drop in viewers has buffeted Hollywood’s confidence in streaming as the engine for future growth, casting new scrutiny on Netflix for any …

Spotify added 2 million new subscribers in the first quarter to hit 182 million paying members at the end of March, the music streaming service said Wednesday. Spotify also said 422 million people used its service at least once a month, which includes people who listen free with advertising. That’s up 19% from a year earlier.  The increase in subscribers was slightly shy …

YouTube is updating a feature of Shorts, the video giant’s competitor to TikTok, that lets creators “remix” segments from other Shorts or YouTube video into their own posts. After introducing the ability for Shorts to sample audio from other videos, YouTube is starting to roll out the ability to sample a short video segment of any eligible YouTube video.  Videos …

The Infinite wasn’t my first instance of traveling miles to try a virtual-reality adventure since the world reopened. But it was the most epic. A massive installation that lets you explore a life-size, virtual replica of the International Space Station, The Infinite is the largest in-person VR exhibit of its kind. And as the world haltingly reopens amid COVID-19 flareups, …

Discovery and WarnerMedia closed their $43 billion megamerger Friday to form the combined company Warner Bros. Discovery. The consummation of the deal unites Discovery, known for reality shows and unscripted programming on its cable networks and streaming service Discovery Plus, with a Hollywood powerhouse in WarnerMedia, home to streaming service HBO Max, the Warner Bros. movie studio and TV channels like HBO, CNN, TBS and more. Their combination …

Bridgerton’s second season was Netflix‘s No. 1 most streamed title last week, with subscribers watching more hours of it cumulatively in a single week than any show on Netflix since Squid Game. And catch-up viewing of Bridgerton’s first season revived it as Netflix’s No. 2 most watched programming.  In the week ended Sunday, Netflix customers globally streamed 251.7 million hours of …