Netflix Is Shutting Down Its DVD Business

EXCLUSIVE: On the third day of its first strike in 15 years, the Writers Guild of America closed down Wall Street drama Billions for several hours Thursday.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor As the Writers Guild of America goes on strike, late-night television has been put on pause, including NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” which is on an indefinite hiatus. Multiple sources confirm to Variety that, in the unlikely event the strike is resolved in the coming weeks, “Succession” star Kieran Culkin is scheduled to take the stage at Studio 8H on May 13, with musical guest Labrinth, while “The White Lotus” star Jennifer Coolidge is set to close out “SNL’s” 48th season with Foo Fighters. This would have been Culkin’s second time hosting following his season 47 appearance. After being brilliantly imitated by “SNL” cast member Chloe Fineman, Coolidge would have made her long-awaited debut on the show.

Earlier this week, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) announced that Hollywood writers would go on strike.

Saturday Night Live fans, want to know what you are missing?

EXCLUSIVE: Unstable, the Netflix comedy series starring Rob Lowe and his son John Owen Lowe, is the latest show to have production hit by the writers strike.

Naman Ramachandran India is the fastest growing market market in the world for giant streamer Netflix and Monika Shergill, VP, content, for the country, has a clear plan to keep the trajectory going. “A healthy streaming business, according to us, has to be built on the strong fundamentals of engagement, where we are doing very well, and revenue and profit as a global service. We are a profitable service – in many of our markets, we are on the path to profitability,” Shergill told Variety. Earlier this year, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos had said that content watching grew by 30% last year in India and revenue grew by 25%. In a subsequent earnings call, Sarandos addressed the importance of pricing in India, saying: “We’ve got to get pricing and the main payment methods right.”

King Charles' sister Princess Anne doesn't believe a "slimmed down" monarchy is a move the king should make. "Well, I think the ‘slimmed down’ was said in a day when there were a few more people around," the Princess Royal told CBC News in an interview that aired days before King Charles III's coronation. Princess Anne was seemingly referring to the death of Queen Elizabeth II, along with the loss of other senior royals in recent years.

Netflix has said it will invest $2.5BN in South Korean series, films and unscripted shows over the next four years.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Global streaming giant Netflix has publicly committed to spending $2.5 billion (approx. KRW3.34 trillion) on South Korean film and TV production over the next four years. The total is double the amount it has spent in Korea since 2016, the company said. The promise was made by Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, at a meeting in Washington DC with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol. “We were able to make this decision because we have great confidence that the Korean creative industry will continue to tell great stories. We were also inspired by the President’s love and strong support for the Korean entertainment industry and fueling the Korean wave. I’d like to personally thank the President for his kind response letter,” Sarandos said in a statement.

filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, Netflix’s executive chairman and former co-CEO Reed Hastings raked in approximately $51.1 million in total compensation last year, up from the $40.8 million he received in 2021. Hastings’ package included a $650,000 base salary, approximately $49.4 million in stock options and $1 million in other compensation.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Reed Hastings, who stepped aside as co-CEO of Netflix in January, and co-chief Ted Sarandos both saw double-digit increases in their compensation packages for 2022, with their total pay topping $50 million each. Hastings’ total pay last year was $51.07 million, $49.4 million of which was in stock option awards, up 25% from 2021, the streamer disclosed in its 2023 proxy statement Friday. Sarandos’ pay jumped 31.5% in 2022, to $50.3 million, comprising $20 million base annual salary, $28.5 million in stock options and $1.79 million in other compensation (including $1.43 million in residential security costs). In stepping down as co-CEO, Hastings will take a huge pay cut: For 2023, as executive chairman, he’s eligible to receive a $500,000 base salary plus $2.5 million in stock options, according to a Netflix 8-K filing with the SEC. In the co-CEO role, he stood to make $34.7 million this year, mostly in stock.

Reed Hastings saw his total pay package jump by about $10 million last year to $51 million on a new stock option grant. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos pulled in total compensation of $50.3 million, up from $38.2 million, also on a bigger option grant.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor BuzzFeed is shutting down BuzzFeed News because it is not able to turn a profit, according to a memo CEO Jonah Peretti sent to company staff Thursday. The digital publisher is laying off 15% of its employees, or about 180 people, across BuzzFeed News and other divisions. Going forward, BuzzFeed will concentrate its news efforts in a single profitable news organization — HuffPost, which it acquired from Verizon in 2020, per Peretti’s memo. The company’s flagship BuzzFeed.com site will remain in place. “While layoffs are occurring across nearly every division, we’ve determined that the company can no longer continue to fund BuzzFeed News as a standalone organization,” Peretti wrote.

Netflix Orders Season 2 Of ‘Rana Naidu’

Naman Ramachandran “Rana Naidu,” the Indian adaptation of “Ray Donovan,” has been renewed for a second season by Netflix. The news emerged the same day that Netflix announced a 1.75 million jump in subscriptions worldwide. The action thriller that stars Venkatesh Daggubati and Rana Daggubati trended on the No.1 spot as the most watched series in India for three consecutive weeks after launch last month and continues to be in the top 10 series in India for the fifth week in a row. It trended in Netflix’s global top 10 for non-English TV for two weeks after it launched on March 10.

Ted Sorrandoes was asked point-blank in Tuesday’s quarterly earnings call about resisting Netflix’s current reluctance to give their films conventional theatrical releases, a stance that has now put the company at odds with most of their streaming competition. The short answer: Don’t stop a horse in mid-stream.“The film division is doing great,” stated Sarandos. “They really are building out some great films.

Netflix is owning up to the long delay they had with the Love Is Blind live reunion.

Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company will likely spend roughly $17 billion on content in 2024, steady with 2023 levels.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters revealed what exactly went wrong with the live “Love Is Blind” Season 4 reunion special on Sunday — and how they plan to fix the problem with other live broadcasts moving forward. “We’re really sorry to disappoint so many people,” Peters said during a prerecorded Q1 earnings interview Tuesday. “We didn’t meet the standard that we expect ourselves: to serve our members and just be clear from a technical perspective. We’ve got the infrastructure. We had just a bug that we introduced, actually, when we implemented some changes to try to improve live-streaming performance after the last live broadcast, Chris Rock[‘s ‘Selective Outrage’] in March. We just didn’t see this bug in internal testing because it only became apparent once we put multiple systems interacting with each other under the load of millions of people trying to watch ‘Love Is Blind.'”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix doesn’t want Hollywood writers to go on strike — but the streamer has a “pretty robust slate of releases” that will help it weather a walkout better than others, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said. His comments, on the company’s first quarter 2023 earnings interview, come a day after Writers Guild of America members overwhelmingly passed a strike authorization vote, giving union leadership the power to call a strike once the contract expires on May 1. “We respect the writers, and we respect the WGA,” he said. “We couldn’t be here without them. We don’t want a strike. The last time there was a strike, it was devastating to creators. It was really hard on the industry. It was painful for local economies that support productions. And it was very, very, very bad for fans.”