Disney has filed a lawsuit seeking to stop Redbox from selling digital codes for purchasing Disney movies to download or stream. In October, Redbox launched a service offering “digital…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:18AMLive, from China: It’s Bytedance. If you live outside of Asia, you’re about to get more familiar with the five-year-old internet news and video aggregator. Bytedance is already a…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:48PMKevin Spacey’s $90 online class on acting is no longer available from MasterClass, a move that comes after the actor was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy two decades ag…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:02PMFandango plans to acquire longtime competitor MovieTickets.com, in what would be the union of the industry’s two biggest online movie-ticketing services. Financial terms of the deal, …
SOURCE: Variety at 01:30PMDisney’s cable networks group has brought together shows, movies, games, and other content from its three networks — Disney Channel, Disney XD and Disney Junior — into a si…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:00PMPlaybuzz, which develops tools for creating interactive media and distributes branded content, has raised $35 million in Series C funding. The round was led by Viola Growth with participatio…
SOURCE: Variety at 08:00AMDisney’s internet-media group on Friday is debuting “Club Mickey Mouse,” which puts a social-media spin on the 62-year-old “Mickey Mouse Club” franchise, and in…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00AMMusical.ly has rolled out a significant redesign of its social video app, with the goal of expanding service’s appeal beyond the millions of teen girls who make up its core user base. …
SOURCE: Variety at 07:00AMYou’re sitting down in front of a screen looking at an image of yourself, as if facing a mirror. Then a tiny elephant saunters into the frame, plops down next to you — and proffers …
SOURCE: Variety at 02:22PMThe Walt Disney Co. is launching its fourth annual incubator program, announcing 11 technology and media companies — including Epic Games, Brit + Co and Samba TV — that will receive fun…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:00PMMusical.ly, the lip-syncing social video app popular among teen girls, is stirring professionally produced content into its mix of user-generated content. The fast-growing startup has inked …
SOURCE: Variety at 08:00AMDisney chief Bob Iger confirmed the company received a threat from cybercriminals who claimed to have stolen the digital copy of a movie — reported to be “Pirated of the Caribbea…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:57PMMusical.ly, a startup that has more than 200 million users for its video-sharing app, is planning to launch original programming on the service this summer and is in talks with media compani…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:09PMCheddar, which bills itself as a “post-cable” financial news network for millennials, announced $19 million in third-round of financing led by Raine Ventures, along with strategi…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:48PMMaker Studios was once a sprawling agglomeration of some 60,000 YouTube channels. Now Disney, which has owned Maker since 2014, has dramatically pared back the unit’s focus — aimi…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:01AMLive.me, a one-year-old startup that makes a live-streaming video app, has banked $60 million from investors including its majority owner, Chinese app developer Cheetah Mobile. Live.me is in…
SOURCE: Variety at 02:52PMVerizon, which is in the midst of closing its deal for Yahoo, is open to M&A talks with the likes of Comcast, Disney and CBS, CEO Lowell McAdam said in an interview with Bloomberg. A Ve…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:15PMApple could potentially find the cash to pull off a $200 billion-plus takeover Disney — creating a company worth $1 trillion with “almost limitless opportunities in content and tech…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:00AMYouTube is heading back to the desert: The video giant will exclusively live-stream the first weekend of Coachella 2017 for the seventh year in a row. From April 14-16, Coachella’s You…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:32PMDisney’s Club Penguin — the multiplayer online game that has kept kids entertained for more than 11 years — shut its doors for good at 12:01 a.m. PT on March 30. But Disney is hop…
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00AMAT&T is aiming to herd more moviegoers into theaters with its buy-one-get-one-free ticket offer for customers — though it’s still limited to Tuesday screenings. The telco announc…
SOURCE: Variety at 10:39AMMaker Studios is shrinking: Parent company Disney is laying off 80 staffers in a restructuring of its publishing and digital media division, which includes Maker. Disney declined to reveal w…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:30PMMaker Studios is gearing up for some major cutbacks in personnel as Disney looks streamline its digital-video division to operate more efficiently — and produce bigger, more bankable …
SOURCE: Variety at 05:08PMLaurene Powell Jobs is no longer Disney’s largest single shareholder, after she recently reduced her ownership stake in the Mouse House by half, regulatory filings show. Powell Jobs, t…
SOURCE: Variety at 11:24AMDisney will discontinue the Club Penguin subscription social game for desktop and mobile devices, and at the same will launch a new mobile game featuring the cartoon aquatic birds in March. …
SOURCE: Variety at 10:25AMSnapchat has pulled Disney-ABC Television Group into its expanding original programming orbit, with the parties setting a pact under which the Mouse House’s TV division will produce s…
SOURCE: Variety at 12:00PMBAMTech, Major League Baseball’s streaming-video unit backed by Disney, has entered into a multiyear deal with Riot Games to deliver “League of Legends” eSports content aro…
SOURCE: Variety at 01:12PMSpanish-speaking moviegoers will have more options for listening to films en Español in cinemas, under multiyear pacts that app startup MyLingo has reached with Disney, Paramount Pictures …
SOURCE: Variety at 08:00AMNaturally, there’s a virtual-reality companion for the “Assassin’s Creed” movie starring Michael Fassbender based on Ubisoft’s popular video-game franchise. To …
SOURCE: Variety at 09:00AMTwitter is shutting down Vine, and pioneering live-streaming app Meerkat is dead. But that doesn’t mean short-form clips and live video are dead-end businesses. Two-year-old startup Mu…
SOURCE: Variety at 03:52PMMaker Studios has unveiled a slate of 15 original series rolling out this fall and winter on its game channel Polaris and newly relaunched comedy channel The Station. And the Disney-owned mu…
SOURCE: Variety at 04:23PM
