Max Password Sharing Crackdown Is Coming

Warner Bros. Discovery said a password crackdown for its Max streaming service is coming later this year, joining competitors Netflix and Disney. TheWrap reports: JB Perrette, WBD’s CEO and president of global streaming and games, said the initiative would launch later this year with a broader rollout in 2025. “We think, relative to the scale of our business, it’s a meaningful opportunity,” Perrette said during Morgan Stanley’s 2024 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The push to crack down on password sharing comes as Warner Bros. Discovery narrowed its streaming loss to $55 million during its fourth quarter of 2023, down from a loss of $217 million a year ago. For the full year, it swung to a profit of $103 million, compared to a loss of $1.59 billion in 2022.

Looking ahead, WBD said its DTC business would have “modestly negative” EBITDA in the first half of 2024 before turning profitable in the second half. WBD is targeting $1 billion of direct-to-consumer EBITDA in 2025. In its fourth quarter, Warner Bros. Discovery added 1.8 million subscribers in its direct-to-consumer division for a total of 97.7 million. The DTC segment’s results include Max, Discovery+ and traditional HBO cable subscriptions. Parrette also discussed interest in transactional ads, notes Ars Technica. Per Perrette: “On the ad format size, we’ve made lots of improvements from where we were, but we still have a lot of ad format enhancements that will give us more things that we can go to marketers with, [like] shoppable ads [and] other elements of the ad format side of the house that we can improve.”

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Disneyland’s New ‘Pixar Place’ Hotel is Like Visiting the Studio

The Orange County Register reports:

The new Pixar Place Hotel next door to Disneyland and Disney California Adventure is designed to look like you’ve walked onto the Pixar Animation Studios campus in Emeryville with concept drawings, character maquettes and final designs sprinkled throughout the hotel. “For those of you who are into the creative process, I think you’ll be really happy. This hotel really celebrates that,” Pixar Chief Creative Officer Pete Docter said during the opening ceremony for the hotel. “You get to see rough drawings, color studies and animation sketches as the animators were working. It really feels like you’re walking into Pixar in a way when you step in here.”

The multimillion-dollar transformation of the former Paradise Pier Hotel into the new Pixar Place Hotel debuted on Tuesday, January 30 after three years in the making at the Disneyland resort in Anaheim. The front lobby of the hotel is intended to feel like a gallery of curated artwork and custom creations inspired by Pixar’s famed studio in Northern California. The rear lobby takes visitors through the animated filmmaking process from hand-drawn sketches to wire-frame character designs. Red, yellow and blue bursts of primary colors serve as bold accents at the front desk in contrast to the muted colors of modern hotel designs.

More details from the Los Angeles Times:

The showcase piece of the lobby is a large mobile, situated above the Pixar lamp and ball, with abstracted, stained glass-like figures from “The Incredibles,” “Wall-E,” “Finding Nemo” and more. They are flanked by colored panels, which react to the music played in the area, an effect that is of course better seen in the evening.

“Pixar is a balance of sophistication and whimsy that really is core to their values,” said Kirstin Makela, an art director at Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s secretive arm devoted to theme park experiences. “They’re a studio that’s been at the cutting edge of what they do. They take it very seriously that their characters are represented in that high esteem that they deserve because they are works of art. “So it really is about creating a space that feels like a living art gallery that allows for the work to be elevated and feel celebrated, and allows for the work to get that dynamic pop of color and energy,” Makela continued…

[I]ncluded in the rooms is the hardbound “The Art of Pixar” book, and various depictions of the Pixar lamp and ball, from an actual lamp on the desk to traces of the ball and the lamp in the bedding, carpeting and decorative pillows…

In a sampling of room rates throughout the year, I found nothing lower than $405 per night for a standard room, and about $100 more for high-traffic holiday months.

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Avatar VFX Workers Vote To Unionize

Visual effects artists working on James Cameron’s Avatar movies have voted to unionize in a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election. From the Hollywood Reporter: Of an eligible 88 workers at Walt Disney Studios subsidiary TCF US Productions 27, Inc. who assist with productions for Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, 57 voted to join the union and 19 voted against, while two ballots were void. These workers include creatures costume leads and environment artists as well as others in the stage, environments, render, post viz, sequence, turn over and kabuki departments. Management and labor now have a few days to file any objections, and if none are raised, the election results will be certified.

This bargaining unit doesn’t include employees of VFX facility vendors, notably Weta FX, which is the lead VFX house on the Avatar films and employs the vast majority of the more than 1,000 artists who work on a typical Avatar movie. But unionizing the group represents a major inroad for the VFX industry labor movement, believes one VFX industry source who spoke with THR. “While insignificant as a number, this is the core team that answers to Jim Cameron,” says the source. “They are not necessarily impressive in size, but in influence.”

The workers first went public with their organizing bid in December, when they filed for a union election with the NLRB. At the time, participating workers said in public statements that they were aiming to gain comparable benefits and pay to their unionized peers and have greater input into in working conditions. “Every one of my coworkers has dedicated so much time, creativity and passion to make these films a reality. So when you see them struggling to cover their health premiums, or being overworked because they took on multiple roles, or are just scraping by on their wages … you cannot keep silent,” said kabuki lead Jennifer Anaya.

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Writers of ‘Rogue One: A Star Wars Story’ Had Imagined an Even Darker Sequel

The writers of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story “had an idea for a sequel that would have been even darker and more morally ambiguous,” writes Screen Rant:

Rogue One told the story of how the Rebel Alliance gained access to the Death Star plans, and further explored the sacrifices that needed to be made to defeat the Empire. Famously, the movie led straight into the events of Star Wars: A New Hope, and most of its main characters died, so there was never any true hope for a direct Rogue One sequel. However, the writers of Rogue One did once discuss an idea for a thematic sequel that would have delved into the moral ambiguity of the Rebellion.

Co-writers Gary Whitta and Chris Weitz conceptualized a Rogue One sequel show that would have involved a “Mossad-style Rebel team” tracking down fleeing Imperial war criminals after the fall of the Empire. This would have been an interesting continuation of Rogue One’s narrative; a Star Wars show in which the darker side of the Rebel victory could be explored. In that scenario, the Rebels would have had to fight on the offensive, not defensively, reversing the war’s dynamic entirely. The show could have explored how far the Rebels were willing to go to hold onto their hard-won freedom, and whether it mirrored anything the Empire did to hang onto its dictatorship.
At the time Lucasfilm was experimenting with “one-and-done stories within blockbuster movies,” the article point sout. But Solo: A Star Wars Story “was unable to replicate the same winning formula” as Rogue One. “After that, the ideas for Star Wars’ anthology movies fizzled out, essentially replaced with Star Wars TV once Disney+ launched in 2019.”
And in an earlier article, Screen Rant points out that The Mandalorian “has already filled in the story gaps that the Rogue One writers were looking to explore. That series dug deep into the criminal underbelly of the post-Empire galaxy and how the remaining imperial loyalists chose to spend their time.”

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Prime Video Replaces Netflix As No. 1 Streaming Service In US

Prime Video has supplanted Netflix as the No. 1 subscription streaming outlet in the U.S. in an annual ranking compiled by research firm Parks Associates. Deadline reports: The company didn’t disclose its methodology for how it isolates the number of Prime Video subscribers, a metric long cloaked in secrecy due to Amazon’s general reluctance to disclose statistics about its Prime business. Still, Parks has been a reputable tracker of the streaming space for more than a decade. For many years in the 2010s, its rankings looked consistent, with the former “Big 3” of Netflix, Prime Video and Hulu sharing the top three spots, always with Netflix at the top. Today, the rankings are much more fragmented given how many new players have entered the scene. The list reflects total subscribers through September 2022, via the OTT Video Market Tracker, a Parks offering described by the firm as “an exhaustive analysis of market trends and profiles of the nearly 100 over-the-top video service providers in the U.S. and Canada.”

Amazon said last year it has more than 200 million Prime members, with Prime Video among the program’s benefits. Several weeks ago, the company also recently said The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power has been viewed by more than 100 million Prime subscribers worldwide. […] Netflix, meanwhile, has hit a plateau in the U.S., even shedding a small amount of subscribers over recent quarters. The company reported 73.4 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada as of September 30, up 100,000 from the previous quarter but below levels in 2021 and earlier this year.

On a global basis, of course, Netflix continues to lead the field with a bit more than 223 million subscribers. Disney has been hot on its heels, with Disney+ now at 164.2 million and the company overall reaching 235.7 million across Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+. The rest of the 2022 chart looks relatively similar to the 2021 edition, though NBCUniversal’s Peacock broke through to take the No. 10 spot as Showtime dropped out of the picture.

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Adobe Thinks It Can Solve Netflix’s Password ‘Piracy’ Problem

Adobe thinks it has the answer to Netflix’s “password sharing” problem that involves up to 46 million people, according to a 2020 study. TorrentFreak reports: Adobe believes that since every user is different, any actions taken against an account should form part of a data-driven strategy designed to “measure, manage and monetize” password sharing. The company’s vision is for platforms like Netflix to deploy machine learning models to extract behavioral patterns associated with an account, to determine how the account is being used. These insights can determine which measures should be taken against an account, and how success or otherwise can be determined by monitoring an account in the following weeks or months. Ignoring the obviously creepy factors for a moment, Adobe’s approach does seem more sophisticated, even if the accompanying slide gives off a file-sharing-style “graduated response” vibe. That leads to the question of how much customer information Adobe would need to ensure that the right accounts are targeted, with the right actions, at the right time.

Adobe’s Account IQ is powered by Adobe Sensei, which in turn acts as the intelligence layer for Adobe Experience Platform. In theory, Adobe will know more about a streaming account than those using it, so the company should be able to predict the most effective course of action to reduce password sharing and/or monetize it, without annoying the account holder. But of course, if you’re monitoring customer accounts in such close detail, grabbing all available information is the obvious next step. Adobe envisions collecting data on how many devices are in use, how many individuals are active, and geographical locations — including distinct locations and span. This will then lead to a “sharing probability” conclusion, along with a usage pattern classification that should identify travelers, commuters, close family and friends, even the existence of a second home.

Given that excessive sharing is likely to concern platforms like Netflix, Adobe’s plan envisions a period of mass account monitoring followed by an on-screen “Excessive Sharing” warning in its dashboard. From there, legal streaming services can identify the accounts most responsible and begin preparing their “graduated response” towards changing behaviors. After monetizing those who can be monetized, those who refuse to pay can be identified and dumped. Or as Adobe puts it: “Return free-loaders to available market.” Finally, Adobe also suggests that its system can be used to identify customers who display good behavior. These users can be rewarded by eliminating authentication requirements, concurrent stream limits, and device registrations.

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Studio Ghibli Film Catalog Now Available on Digital Rental Platforms

Some of the most acclaimed films in animation history are finally available to rent online. GKIDS, the animation specialist distributer, has released the catalog of acclaimed Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli starting Tuesday. From a report: 22 films from the studio — including Oscar winner “Spirited Away” and nominees such as “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “When Marnie Was There” — will be made available to rent on all major digital platforms, including Apple TV, Amazon VOD, Vudu, Google Play and Microsoft. The films will be be priced at $4.99 per title, and all will be available in HD, with most being offered in the original Japanese language as well as English dubs.

The news marks the first time that Ghibli’s films have been made available via digital rental. The catalogue has been one of the pillars of GKIDS’ business since the distributer acquired the North American film distribution rights to the studio’s films in 2011, followed by the home media rights in 2017 — previously, the majority of Studio Ghibli films were distributed via the Walt Disney Company. Since 2017, GKIDS has partnered with Fathom Events to host a series of limited run screenings of the studio’s films throughout the year. The catalog was made available for digital purchase in 2019, and GKIDS has an exclusive deal to stream the films in the United States on HBO Max, where they have been included since 2020.

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