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How In The Entire Heck Did The Winnie-The-Pooh Horror Movie Get Made?

Sure, Disney owns the animation rights, but the story and characters came out of copyright on January 1, 2022. And director Rhys Frake-Waterfield "wasted no time jumping on the opportunity to incorporate the characters into his microbudget slasher flick." - Time

Everything Everywhere All At Once WiBig At Directors Guild

In another potential Oscars signal, the small-budget domestic science fiction movie that could racked up another win for writer-directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan. - The Hollywood Reporter

Will Disney Dump Hulu?

The trials and tribulations of the large streamers seem somewhat petty - and yet the Mouse just announced plans to cut 7,000 jobs. Will some of those jobs come from one of the OG streaming sites? - Vulture

The Netflix Password Crackdown Backlash Is Part Of Something Much Bigger

"There was a moment in which it felt like the desires of users and the desires of Big Tech aligned, especially in the pandemic. ... Now, we’re at odds over who is bringing value to whom." - Slate

The BAFTA Nominees Aren’t So White Anymore

Or at least, following not so hard upon the all-white 2020 actor nomination slate, not this year. - The New York Times

US Movie Releases Are No Longer Necessary For International Success

The U.S. theatrical market is no longer always an accurate model. Certain genres, particularly action and thriller, tend to out-perform globally — there’s a reason why those Gerard Butler and Liam Neeson movies sell out every film market — while others struggle to transfer domestic success to foreign shores. - The Hollywood Reporter

What Membership Data Say About Health Of Public Media

Median Membership Revenue for the three-month period from October through December is down 0.6% year-over-year. TV and joint-licensee stations saw a decrease of 0.7% in membership revenues while radio stations achieved a slight gain of 0.9% after 9 months of declines. - Current

Why Exactly Is That BBC Documentary About Narendra Modi So Controversial? (An Explainer)

For a start, the TV film — titled India: The Modi Question — deals with a very sore subject for the Prime Minister: his role, when he was chief minister of Gujarat state, in the 2002 sectarian riots that saw more than 1,000 people killed, most of them Muslims. - The Guardian

The Biggest New Bollywood Hit, The Comeback For Its Biggest Star, Has Quite A Lot At Stake

Before Pathaan — which just knocked Avatar 2 out of the top spot on the global box office chart — Shah Rukh Khan hadn't made a movie in five years. And Modi's Hindu-nationalist government had been going after him.  This new film, unsubtle in many ways, is a subtle retort to Modi. - Vox

Streaming Has Upended How Writers Get Paid. New Contract Negotiations Will Be Tough

The streaming revolution has upended the old system of compensation. The syndication market for TV shows has all but disappeared, and residuals from movies have also waned as theatrical attendance has sharply declined, eroding the residual income for writers. - Los Angeles Times

The Podcasting Industry Slams On the Brakes

Several major podcast publishers have had layoffs, and "Amazon, SiriusXM, NPR and Spotify have all curbed podcast budgets in the last year, sometimes allowing expensive deals to sunset or canceling others before they closed."  As one analyst put it, "The dumb money era is over." - The New York Times

Dallas Morning News Guts Its 19-Year-Old Spanish-Language Paper

Dallas County’s population is 40% Hispanic/Latino (1.05 million people) and 34% of residents speak Spanish at home, according to 2020 census data (though Latinos were also heavily undercounted in that census). - NiemanLab

The Terrible State Of The Modern Rom-Com

The connection between love interests, once a central element of the rom-com, has in recent years seemed secondary at best; now it’s actually plausible that someone might try to add it in post. - The New Yorker

After Banning The BBC’s Modi Documentary, India Sends The Tax Police To Raid Its Offices There

"More than a dozen income tax officials first entered BBC newsrooms (in Delhi and Mumbai) early Tuesday, seizing accounts, financial documents, and phones of BBC employees. ... The searches came weeks after the BBC aired ... India: The Modi Question, (which) examined Modi's role in anti-Muslim riots ... in  Gujarat in 2002." - NPR

Public Television Is Irrelevant. Let’s Fix It

The time is right to revisit and revise the Public Broadcasting Act. A revised and reauthorized act would identify and direct resources to needs that contemporary telecom content providers are not meeting and adjust the allocation of federal appropriations. - Current

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