Netflix ‘Open’ to Licensing Big Video Game Titles

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterKorean zombie thriller “All Of Us Are Dead” has become Netflix’s fifth most popular non-English-language series debut, Variety has learned exclusively.On Tuesday, “All of Us Are Dead” debuted on Netflix’s all-time rankings, which tracks the streaming service’s Top 10 most popular non-English TV series based on hours viewed in their first 28 days on Netflix, in the fifth-place slot. Its entrance bumps “The Queen of Flow,” which was previously at 10th, off the list.At No. 1 on the list is still, of course, the Korean mega-hit “Squid Game,” which racked up 1.65 billion hours viewed in its first 28 days post-launch.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSPOILER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched “Child Care,” Monday’s episode of “9-1-1: Lone Star.”Baby made three for Judd (Jim Parrack) and Grace (Sierra McClain) on last week’s “9-1-1: Lone Star” — and on Monday’s episode, an estranged teen son and his mother made five. Totally unbeknownst to Judd and Grace, he had a son Wyatt (Jackson Pace) with Marlene Harris (Robyn Lively), a barrel racer he can hardly remember having met at the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo in 2005.On Monday’s “9-1-1: Lone Star,” that boy comes to find Judd with the help of an online DNA ancestry website and Judd and Grace, just getting the hang of taking care of newborn daughter Charlie following her birth at the tail end of the Fox drama’s weeks-long ice-storm plot.

J. Kim Murphy Netflix has been in the original programming business for a whole decade now, as Feb.

On Feb 6, 2012, Lilyhammer, starring The Sopranos and E Street Band’s Stevie Van Zandt, marked the first original series to premiere on Netflix and introduced the binge model of releasing full TV seasons at once. The streamer’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos marked the anniversary with an essay posted on Netflix’s Web site and a video chat with Van Zandt in which the two reminisce about how the show got on Netflix and its legacy.

It was an episode that saw viewers hide behind their sofas as one team spelt 'arctic' wrong for their educational video game on The Apprentice. The teams had to develop their own video games, and Artic Saviour ended up losing out. As a result, they headed back to the boardroom to be grilled by Lord Alan Sugar on what went wrong.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAmazon significantly beat fourth-quarter 2021 earnings estimates but narrowly missed on revenue, reporting Thursday a profit gain of almost $12 billion thanks to its investment in electric car company Rivian.Net sales for the quarter were up 9% to $137.4 billion. After some favorable adjustments that excluded the $1.3 billion impact from year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates throughout the quarter, net sales increased to 10%.The tech giant revealed in its Q4 earnings results that it is hiking the price of its Prime service from $12.99 to $14.99.The company said: “With the continued expansion of Prime member benefits as well as the rise in wages and transportation costs, Amazon will increase the price of a Prime membership in the U.S., with the monthly fee going from $12.99 to $14.99, and the annual membership from $119 to $139.” Click here to sign up for Variety‘s free Strictly Business newsletter covering earnings, financial and investment news, and more.Wall Street analysts forecast earnings per share (EPS) of $3.58 on $137.56 billion in revenue, per Refinitiv data.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterDiscovery CEO David Zaslav just added another big item to his long to-do list in preparation for the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger: Find a strong replacement for CNN chief Jeff Zucker.Zucker shocked the industry by stepping down from WarnerMedia, where he was CNN president and chairman of news and sports for WarnerMedia, after an investigation into the conduct of now-fired CNN anchor Chris Cuomo revealed that Zucker had not disclosed that he had a consensual romantic relationship with a colleague. The colleague who went unnamed in Zucker’s resignation memo to staff is Allison Gollust, CNN’s chief marketing officer and a longtime Zucker lieutenant going back to their respective tenures at NBC.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterParamount Plus has renewed its revival of “The Game” for Season 2.Starring Wendy Raquel Robinson and Hosea Chanchez, the show is a continuation of the-CW-network-and-later-BET-show of the same name. “A modern-day examination of Black culture through the prism of pro football,” “The Game” follows the team as they face racism, classism and more, all while fighting for fame, fortune, respect and love.“The Game” revival also stars Adriyan Rae, Vaughn Hebron, Analisa Velez and Toby Sandeman.The first iteration of “The Game” debuted on The CW in 2006.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterThe Los Angeles Rams beat the San Francisco 49ers 20-17 on Sunday to clinch the NFC Championship in a Fox primetime broadcast that drew more than 50 million viewers. That makes it the most-watched NFC Championship since 2014.A total of 50,420,000 viewers tuned in across Fox, Fox Deportes, Fox Sports streaming platforms, NFL Digital and Yahoo! Sports properties for the telecast. Viewership for the game peaked at 55,218,000 from 9:15-9:30 p.m.

Video game developer Hazelight Studios will team with Sonic The Hedgehog co-producer Dmitri M. Johnson and his dj2 Entertainment to bring It Takes Two to screen.

Game of the Year from the Game Awards 2021, will be adapted into a film and a TV series from the writers and producing team behind “Sonic the Hedgehog” and its upcoming sequel. Hazelight is teaming with dj2 Entertainment on the screen adaptations, and the production company has tapped Pat Casey and Josh Miller, who wrote the original “Sonic” and its sequel, to write the adaptation for both the film and series versions. No studio or network is attached to the “It Takes Two” adaptation at this stage.

Wilson Chapman editorMaster Chief is finally gearing up for action.Paramount Plus has unveiled the official trailer for its highly anticipated science fiction series “Halo.” The first look footage also revealed a premiere date of March 24.Based on Xbox Game Studios’ best-selling series of first-person shooter video games, “Halo” is set in the 26th century and focuses on the adventures of Master Chief (Pablo Schreiber), a cybernetically enhanced super-soldier known as a Spartan that defends humanity under the orders of the United Nations Space Command. While plot details of the live-action series are being kept under wraps, most games in the “Halo” franchise focus on the UNSC’s war with an alien theocracy known as the Covenant.

Netflix was left out of an annual index of corporation’s inclusive policies and practices for LGBTQ+ workers, as the HRC Foundation cited how the company handled the release of the Dave Chappelle special The Closer.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterAT&T CEO John Stankey told investors he expects HBO Max to recoup all of the subscribers lost last fall after WarnerMedia pulled HBO from the Amazon Prime Video Channels marketplace in September amid ongoing agita in the TV industry about the fees Amazon takes for facilitating sales of subscription TV services.During AT&T’s hourlong fourth-quarter earnings call with investors on Wednesday, Stankey also noted that market conditions have spurred price hikes by HBO Max rivals, which means that HBO Max is not the most expensive of the major domestic players at present. Stankey didn’t mention Netflix by name, but the inference was clear.Last October, AT&T reported that HBO and HBO Max lost about 1.8 million subscribers in the third quarter after the disengagement from Amazon in the previous month.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterByrde family fans flocked to Netflix to watch “Ozark” Season 4, Part 1, drawing more viewers than any other TV series in its debut week on the streamer.The first half of the final season of the Jason Bateman-led drama landed at No. 1 on Netflix’s English-language TV Top 10 list for the week of Jan. 17-23, with 77 million hours viewed in just its first three days.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterSunday’s Kansas City Chiefs-Buffalo Bills game on CBS was the most-watched NFL divisional playoff game on any network in five years, drawing an average of 43 million viewers, according to Nielsen’s final time-zone adjusted data.The Chiefs’ dramatic overtime win over the Bills, airing from 6:41-10:02 p.m. ET, drew the largest audience for an NFL divisional playoff game since the Green Bay-Dallas game on Jan.

Juvenile Justice.The minute-long teaser follows judge Sim Eun-Seok (played by Hyena’s Kim Hye-soo) as she presides over a juvenile court, where the cases she handles get progressively more violent. “This is why I despise the likes of you,” Sim says to a group of juvenile defendants in the courtroom.

Jennifer Maas TV Business WriterNetflix stock fell more than 10% Monday morning, continuing the steep downward trend it’s been experiencing since the streaming giant reported last week it had ended 2021 with slightly lower-than-expected subscriber gains and anticipated a weak start to Q1.At approximately 11:50 a.m. ET, Netflix stock was trading at $353.31 per share, down from the $397.50 per share the stock closed at Friday.Last Thursday, Netflix reported a net gain of 8.28 million subscribers for Q4, again driven by markets outside North America, to reach 221.8 million total worldwide.