Disney Will Pay $60 Million a Year for 66 Character.AI Employees
Disney plans to pay $60 million a year in salaries to 66 employees hired from Character.AI, and has set aside a $30 million retention pool. Over three years the compensation…
Netflix Replaces Its Content Chief and Cuts Nearly a Thousand Jobs
Netflix named Peter Rice, a former Disney executive, as chief content officer on October 15, replacing Bela Bajaria. The appointment takes effect on October 26, and Mr. Rice will oversee…
Netflix Cuts About 1,000 Jobs While Co-CEOs Vow to Spend Where It Counts
Netflix said on October 14 that it would eliminate about 1,000 positions, roughly 6 percent of its workforce, in its largest round of cuts since 2022. Product, technology, legal and…
Character.AI Files for Chapter 11 With Disney as the Opening Bidder
Character.AI filed for bankruptcy protection in Delaware on October 12, setting up a court-supervised auction of a company that helped define the market for chatbots built around companionship rather than…
Character.AI Files for Chapter 11 With Disney as Its Opening Bidder
Character.AI, the startup that persuaded millions of people to spend their evenings talking with invented characters, asked a Delaware court for bankruptcy protection on October 12, and the sale that…
The Super Bowl, Now Behind a Subscribe Button
For half a century, the Super Bowl has been the one night when broadcast television could count on the whole country showing up at the same time, on the same…
A $110 Billion Bet on Bigness in Hollywood
At the final bell on Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery shares stopped trading on the Nasdaq. By the time the new company opened on the New York Stock Exchange under the…
Paramount Hands Mattel’s Kreiz the Job of Putting It Back Together
The clearest line on Ynon Kreiz’s résumé is a doll. As chairman and chief executive of Mattel, he took Barbie, a plastic toy more than six decades old, and turned…
Disney Raises Disney+ and Hulu Prices for the Fourth Time in Four Years
When Disney+ launched in November 2019, it cost $6.99 a month and carried no ads. The ad-free version of the same service now costs $21.49, more than triple the original…
Disney+ Adds Advertising to Every Subscription Tier
The notice arrived quietly, tucked inside an updated user agreement. Around September 20, Disney+ subscribers began receiving word that the streaming service had changed its terms: advertising would now run…
