ITV Studios Sale Rumors Fly, Distributor Consolidation Bites at Energized Mipcom: The Top Takeaways (So Far)

Controversial plans to privatize Channel 4 are set to be dropped as British PM Rishi Sunak reassesses campaign and policy pledges made by his past two predecessors and gears up to set his own legislative agenda, according to new reports.

America’s Cup and Skydance Sports are exclusively partnering for an “all-access, behind-the-scenes” documentary series on the next America’s Cup race, and they’ve enlisted some Oscar-winning talent to help steer the craft.

Dahmer continues to make a killing for Netflix by dominating Nielsen’s U.S. streaming chart for the week of Oct. 3-9..

EXCLUSIVE: Range Media Partners has signed British-Ghanaian writer, director, executive-producer and founder of London based DBK Studios, Koby Adom.

Sky and Peacock are forging a TV adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal with Top Boy showrunner Ronan Bennett attached.

Ryan Murphy has been dethroned. Tembi and Attica Locke’s limited series From Scratch has taken over from The Watcher as the most-viewed series on Netflix last week.

At 15 million paid subscribers, Peacock isn’t on the same level as other streaming services, but NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell says that’s no accident.

The first fully in person Mipcom for three years is winding down as thousands of tired, fuzzy-headed but happy delegates make their way to Nice airport or jump on trains to Paris. The market was set to a backdrop of an industry in a deep state of flux, as new buyers establish themselves and more seasoned ones react and adapt. Below are just some of the key takeaways from three action-packed days on the Croisette. One thing is for sure, while making TV is not the easiest business, the 10,896 attendees RX reported to have attended were simply delighted to be back together in person (last year’s restriction-laden Mipcom was hybrid and attendance figures comparatively low) and the atmosphere was the buzziest for many years, especially when the coffee machines were locked away and the alcohol started flowing. Read on.

Zack Sharf Listings for Jeffrey Dahmer costumes on eBay.com are being pulled this Halloween season. The popular e-commerce website has put a ban on Dahmer costumes because they violate its policy on violent and violent criminals, Buzzfeed News confirms. A surge of listings for Dahmer-related costumes hit the website in the aftermath of Ryan Murphy’s blockbuster Netflix series, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” starring Evan Peters as the serial killer. As reported by Buzzfeed: “A spokesperson confirmed that the selling platform was actively removing these listings and that they were ‘prohibited,’ although some listings are still active at the time of publication…The company policy states that sellers are banned from listing items that ‘promote or glorify violence’ or are associated with violent individuals, the acts for which they gained notoriety, or crime scenes from the past 100 years.”

Inspired by the young adult novel of the same name by Soman Chainani, the latest from Paul Feig, “The School for Good and Evil,” is a major departure for the director most known for his riotous comedies like “Spy” and “Bridesmaids“.

Ryan Murphy’s mega-bucks deal with Netflix is looking like a very smart investment.

For the second week in a row, Luckiest Girl Alive topped the Netflix Top 10 Film Chart globally. The mystery thriller film starring Mila Kunis was the most-watched movie with 57,010,000 hours viewed for the week starting October 10 and ending on October 16.

Netflix said today that its closely watched paid membership number is becoming “just one component” of total revenue growth, so as of the fourth quarter it will stop offering forward-looking subscriber forecasts.

Selome Hailu It’s a good week for Ryan Murphy. Now on the fourth year of his five-year Netflix deal, he’s had the streamer’s most-watched title of the week for four weeks in a row now. For the previous three weeks, it was “Monster,” the limited series starring Evan Peters as serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, which has now shifted to the No. 2 position. At the top of the chart for the Oct. 10-16 viewing window is “The Watcher,” Murphy’s limited series that racked up a chart-topping 125 million hours watched in its first four days of availability. The mystery thriller, co-created with Ian Brennan and adapted from a true story originally told in a 2018 New York magazine story, stars Naomi Watts and Bobby Canavale as a married couple being stalked.

Ryan Murphy is the producer to beat for this week’s Netflix Top 10, as his latest true crime title “The Watcher” dethroned his previous hit “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” with 125 million hours viewed. “Dahmer” still sat at No. 2 on the English TV list, racking up another 122.8 million viewing hours in its fourth week on the chart.“The Watcher,” starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale as a couple caught in an unnerving stalker’s web, is a seven-episode limited series based on the story of the real-life couple who was harassed by the titular unnamed individual.

Meet any high-profile Indian director or producer these days, and the talk is all about bibles, writers rooms and showrunners, rather than making films. Driving down Mumbai’s main artery, the Western Express Highway, most of the billboards are promoting new premium drama series from Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar, rather than the latest Bollywood release.

EXCLUSIVE: Bill Rouhana, CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, will wait as long as it takes — years even — for the right M&A transaction to come together. Two elements must fall into place, in his words: “industrial logic” and “financial excellence.”

Industry veterans Emad Morcos, former OSN Chief Content and Commercial Officer; Amanda Turnbull, who was previously General Manager at Warner Bros Discovery Middle East, Africa and Turkey; and Amel Farag, former Head of Content Commercial Strategy at OSN have joined forces to launch Rise Studios.

Manori Ravindran International Editor Former Warner Bros. Discovery and OSN executives are teaming up to form a new content studio serving the Middle East and North Africa, Variety can reveal. Rise Studios is being set up by industry veterans Emad Morcos, former OSN chief content and commercial officer; Amanda Turnbull, former general manager at Warner Bros. Discovery Middle East, Africa and Turkey; and Amel Farag, former head of content commercial strategy at OSN. Rise will invest in local content and talent in order to launch homegrown film and TV productions on both regional and global broadcasters and streaming platforms.