Warner Bros. Discovery HR Chief Adria Alpert Romm to Retire, WPP’s Jennifer Remling Named as Successor

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Even Meghan Markle can’t fathom what has made her old USA Network drama “Suits” pop off on streaming services this year, but she’s here for it. While walking the red carpet at Variety’s Power of Women event Thursday, Markle, The Duchess of Sussex, was informed by Variety’s senior entertainment writer Angelique Jackson that the legal drama has now crossed 45 billion minutes streamed on Netflix and Peacock combined, as of Nielsen’s latest weekly streaming report, released earlier Thursday.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Former head of drama development at Disney’s 20th Television Michelle Mendelovitz has been named head of Mattel Television Studios. In her new role, Mendelovitz will oversee the development, production, and distribution of Mattel’s slate of episodic content on broadcast and streaming globally.

Texas congressman Joaquin Castro has taken to X to slam Warner Bros Discovery for axing the $70M Coyote vs. Acme for a reported $30M tax writeoff. That said, as we first reported, the studio is changing course this week and screening the film for potential buyers, i.e. Amazon Prime (a leading contender), Apple and Netflix. This pivot by studio brass was made after a weekend in which the studio’s phone rang off the hook by the creative community over the cancelling of the finished film, as well as an outcry by the pic’s composer Steven Price among others online.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The publisher of best-selling romantasy book “Fourth Wing” is working to “swiftly” resolve the “frustrating” misprint issues with “Iron Flame,” the sequel from author Rebecca Yarros, which sold more than half a million copies on its Tuesday release day alone. Entangled Publishing, the owner of Red Tower Books, the imprint behind “Fourth Wing” and “Iron Flame” issued a statement to Variety on Friday, following numerous social media posts and online customer reviews that cited misprints with physical hardback copies of “Iron Flame,” as well as the new holiday edition of “Fourth Wing,” both released Nov. 7.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for the Season 1 finale of “Gen V, titled “Guardians of Godolkin,” now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video. You’ve had a week since the “Gen V” Season 1 finale to theorize about where Marie (Jaz Sinclair), Andre (Chance Perdomo), Jordan (Derek Luh/London Thor) and Emma (Lizze Broadway) are at the end of “The Boys” spinoff’s cliffhanger episode. So, do you have a plausible explanation for the medical facility with no doors that the four supes are stuck in? It’s OK, we don’t either, and just like “Gen V” showrunner Michele Fazekas, star Luh is no help to us by keeping his lips sealed — even though he’s finally allowed to talk about the Amazon series after the SAG-AFTRA strike ended — and refusing to be the spoiler-ific Tom Holland of the Vought Cinematic Universe.

Coyote vs. Acme composer Steven Price has blasted the David Zaslav cost-cutting Warner Bros Discovery administration for axing the animated Looney Tunes hybrid live-action animated film.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer NBCUniversal has laid off less than 50 employees across three divisions: Peacock marketing, NBCUniversal Entertainment and ad sales. The majority of these cuts, approximately 30 to 40, were made at Peacock as part of a restructuring under CMO Shannon Willett, a source within the company told Variety.

Just over a year after scrapping “Batgirl,” Warner Bros. and David Zazlav have killed off another nearly completed feature that was meant to be an HBO Max release and vaulted it instead.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Another Warner Bros. movie bites the dust. The studio no longer plans to release “Coyote vs.

In another maneuver by the David Zaslav-run Warner Bros Discovery to kill movies, we hear on very good authority that Warner Bros will not be releasing the live-action/animated hybrid Coyote vs. Acme with the conglom taking an estimated $30M write-down on the $70M production. We understand the writedown for the pic was applied to the recently reported Q3.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SPOILER ALERT: This article contains massive spoilers for Rebecca Yarros‘s best-selling fantasy novel “Fourth Wing” and its sequel “Iron Flame,” released Nov. 7. It could be a while before the “Fourth Wing” TV series that’s in the works at Amazon makes it to the screen, but with the release of the sequel novel titled “Iron Flame,” we have more than enough source material to begin anticipating the small-screen adaptation that’s set to cover all five planned books in the series.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Disney+ topped 150 million streaming subscriptions by the end of its fiscal fourth quarter of the year, up from 146.7 million in the previous quarter. On Wednesday, Disney reported Core Disney+ subscriptions are at 112.6 million subs, as of the quarter ended Sept. 30, and the India-based Disney+ Hotstar is at 37.6 million.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Nebula, which launched in 2019, describes itself as a creator-focused, creator-built, creator-first premium streaming service — akin to a Netflix or Hulu, but with the ethos of Patreon. The four-year-old indie streaming service, which is backed by creator-owned management company Standard and a minority stake held by Curiosity Stream, costs $5 a month or $50 a year and currently totals 650,000 subscribers and passed 100,000 daily active users in October.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “The Boys” Season 4 will pick up where “Gen V” Season 1 left off, just ahead of an in-universe presidential election. And from the looks of the first promo images released by Amazon for the new episodes of “The Boys,” the Vought supes led by Homelander (Antony Starr) are going to have a good Election Day, and Billy Bucher (Karl Urban) and The Boys are going to be left crushed by defeat.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav opened the company’s quarterly earnings presentation with remarks on the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, remaining “hopeful” that the work stoppage will end “soon” following the Hollywood studios’ move to adjust AI language in its “last, best and final offer” to the actors union. “We are hopeful we will reach a resolution to the SAG-AFTRA strike soon,” Zaslav said during WBD’s third-quarter earnings call Wednesday.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Warner Bros. Discovery narrowed its third-quarter loss as the media giant, grappling with billions of dollars in debt as a result of the 2022 merger that created it, saw the box-office success of “Barbie” offset by a 12% decline in advertising at its portfolio of TV networks. The owner of CNN, the Warner Bros.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Nexstar reported its third-quarter 2023 earnings Wednesday, revealing TV ad revenue was down overall 23% for the July-September quarter. Meanwhile, the CW network made quarter-over-quarter progress on its path to profitability by narrowing its losses to $60 million. For the CW, which was formally acquired by Nexstar in October 2022 from Paramount Global and Warner Bros.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer The Roots founders Questlove and Black Thought‘s have sold a significant stake in their production company Two One Five Entertainment to Peter Chernin’s content studio The North Road Company. Under the pact, North Road will finance future film, TV and other creative projects from Two One Five, which previously produced the Oscar-winning documentary “Summer of Soul,” “The League” and “Descendent.” The partnership will also see North Road helping Two One Five expand its scripted slate after years of mainly focusing on unscripted content.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Rita Wilson and more stars performed as a tribute to U.S. veterans and their families at the New York Comedy Festival and Bob Woodruff Foundation’s Stand Up for Heroes event Monday. Held at David Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the night included performances from musicians and comics, including Stewart, Springsteen, Wilson, Josh Groban, John Mellencamp, Tracy Morgan, The War and Treaty, Jimmy Carr, Ronny Chieng and Shane Gillis.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SPOILER ALERT: This article contains spoilers for Episode 8 of “Gen V,” the Season 1 finale (“Guardians of Godolkin”), now streaming on Amazon’s Prime Video. Marie (Jaz Sinclair) survived her first semester at supe college Godolkin University — barely — but it doesn’t look like she’s going into a second one any time soon. As the Season 1 finale of “The Boys” spinoff “Gen V” concludes, Marie and her friends stuck inside some kind of hospital room with no doors and no clue how they got there. For now, “Gen V” co-showrunner Michele Fazekas is mum on what comes next.