After Selling ‘Ballers’ & ‘Insecure’ To Netflix, HBO’s Max Sees Its Own Viewing Bump, But Don’t Expect ‘Succession’ & ‘The White Lotus’ To Follow

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Do you want a side of fries — or maybe a T-shirt or hoodie — with your next binge-worthy Netflix show? Netflix announced plans to open its first permanent bricks-and-mortar locations, initially targeting two in the U.S. in 2025. (The company has not said where those will be.) The outlets will be kind of mini theme parks: They’ll serve food and drink, sell merchandise and include “immersive” installations based on its hit titles like “Squid Game” or “Stranger Things.” But Netflix’s vision for the permanent retail destinations, as with its other IRL activations to date, is for them to serve primarily as marketing vehicles promoting the core streaming service.

Manchester Evening News readers have been having their say on the issue of 'out-of-town' taxi drivers after Andy Burnham said the widespread practice was 'undermining public safety'. According to a Freedom of Information request submitted by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, 8,952 private hire drivers licensed by Wolverhampton Council are on the roads in Greater Manchester.

Connor Bedard has been called “The Future of Hockey” — since he was 13. Now a ripe old 18, the NHL‘s No. 1 overall pic made his league debut Tuesday, and it became the most-viewed regular-season game ever on ESPN.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is back at the top.

BreAnna Bell Ebony Media Group, the company behind Ebony Magazine, has teamed up with Lionsgate to announce the launch of their joint venture, Ebony TV by Lionsgate. With access to Lionsgate’s expansive library of titles, the FAST channel will be available on Samsung TV Plus starting on Oct.

The smash hit PBS Masterpiece television show Grantchester is returning for a ninth season on both ITV and PBS, but one major character is exiting the series.

Dwayne Johnson after he previously criticised his career transition from the WWE into acting.During a press conference for WWE Fastlane on Saturday (October 7), Cena was asked about the hypocrisy in his feud with Johnson between 2011 and 2013 when he returned to WWE after leaving to pursue an acting career.Since then, Cena has made the same career switch, with roles in the Fast & Furious franchise and 2021’s The Suicide Squad.“I went about it the wrong way,” Cena said at the conference in regards to the feud. “I violated his trust and I made allegations about his perspective that I knew nothing about.“And deep down, I was a fan.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director John Cena was asked at the press conference for WWE Fastlane about his own hypocrisy in his former feud with fellow wrestler-turned-Hollywood-actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Cena has said that his beef with Johnson was fueled by his anger over Johnson abandoning WWE in order to become an A-list Hollywood actor, which is exactly the career move Cena would take himself. Cena admitted in May that he was “short-sighted and selfish” in feuding with Johnson, and now he told press that “I 100% see and understand” how people could consider him a hypocrite for calling out Johnson and then following in his footsteps.

“I wanted to tell a story about the environment that I grew up in but based in the biblical era and merge the two,” Jeymes Samuel told Deadline’s Baz Bamigboye of the idea behind his latest pic, The Book of Clarence at London Contenders. 

release of “The Exorcist: Believer,” filmgoers will once again witness young, possessed girls blaspheming, shrieking and levitating as their parents try to wrest a godless demon from their bodies.What they likely won’t see, however, is their fellow audience members fainting, vomiting and fleeing the theater in terror. That chaotic scene was what was widely reported to have happened all over the world when “The Exorcist” hit theaters nearly 50 years ago in December 1973.In early 1974, a security guard at a Midtown East cinema described screenings of the horror flick to the New York Times.

Edith Wharton‘s final and unfinished novel, “The Buccaneers” is getting an Apple TV+ adaptation. Developed by Katherine Jakeways and directed by “Andor’s” Susanna White and Beth Willis, the eight-episode television series will be making its way to the streaming service in November.

Euphoria executive producer Ron Leshem flew into Spain this week and recalled how Hollywood had initially turned down the HBO hit over concerns about teenage lead characters.

Ben Croll Clad in his familiar accessories of dark suspenders and tortoise-shell glasses, Canal+ Group CEO Maxime Saada cuts a decorous and professorial figure, though the two framed posters of “Scarface” and “The Godfather” that decorate his office walls offer a slightly better insight into the chairman’s inner passions. “[I follow] a logic of intensity,” Saada tells Variety. “As a payTV player, our main objective is not to broadcast content to the widest possible audience in order to lure to advertizers, nor to aim for consensus. We want to inspire passion and fervor, because reactions of ‘not bad’ do not encourage subscriptions.” Saada is being honored at Mipcom with the Variety Vanguard Award.

Jeremy Hunt has admitted he flew in to Manchester from London ahead of the Conservative Party conference rather than taking the train.

Naked Attraction, a British reality series that features a form of full frontal nudity, has been making headlines after it was added to streaming service Max.

HBO has set Jan. 14 as premiere date for True Detective: Night County, starring Jodie Foster and Kali Reis. The network also has released a new trailer for the six-episode series, which will be available to stream on Max. Issa López serves as showrunner, writer, and director of all episodes. 

Casey Bloys is the first senior executive to address the end of the strike publicly.

A cosy pub can be found on its own island less than an hour away from Manchester.

Animation Is Film revealed Thursday that its 2023 edition next month will open with Gkids and Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron, the latest film from Hayao Miyazaki that just opened the Toronto Film Festival. It is getting its U.S. Imax premiere at TCL’s Chinese 6.

Creepy footage shared from an ancient city centre shows a bike cycling itself down one of the streets.