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Category: Entertainment

  • ‘SNL U.K.’ Budget No Joke at Estimated $2.6 Million Per Episode (EXCLUSIVE)

    ‘SNL U.K.’ Budget No Joke at Estimated $2.6 Million Per Episode (EXCLUSIVE)

    When Sky CEO Dana Strong described “Saturday Night Live U.K.” as a “major investment in the U.K. comedy eco-system” at a showcase for the broadcaster last week, it turns out she wasn’t joking. Variety understands that each episode of the British adaptation is costing around £2 million ($2.6 million).

    Variety has also learned that, unusually for a weekly entertainment production, “SNL U.K.” has hired the largest studio in central London’s Television Centre on a standing (exclusive) basis for the entirety of its eight-week run, meaning the cast and crew aren’t sharing the space with any other production. Nor will they need to disassemble sets and clear out of the offices, galleries, edit suites and storage spaces in between episodes. It’s a luxury few productions can afford these days as budgets are tightened.

    The studio, the 10,800-square foot TC1, is usually home to “The Graham Norton Show”—as Norton himself pointed out during “SNL U.K.’s” inaugural episode, when he popped up during Fey’s opening monologue. His show is not set to return until the autumn.

    It’s yet another sign of Sky’s faith in “SNL U.K.,” which was originally earmarked for only 6 episodes before a last-minute vote of confidence that saw it bumped up to 8 before the first episode had even been broadcast. At the Sky showcase five days before the inaugural episode aired, Strong described the show as “a point of pride for me” and “perhaps our most ambitious undertaking yet.”

    While the show’s weekly budget still falls far short of its Stateside counterpart’s rumoured $4 million (£3 million) per episode, it’s a figure that is almost unheard of for a topical sketch show in the U.K., even one running to 75-minutes.

    Insiders tell Variety that a typical British sketch show usually costs around £300-500,000 per episode, less than a quarter of “SNL U.K.’s” budget.

    They pointed out it’s one of the reasons the sketch show format has become something of a dying art in the U.K. “They’re expensive, which is why no one does them anymore,” says one entertainment veteran. “Topical shows also have no repeatability, unlike dramas.”

    As well as the exclusive studio hire for two months, a chunk of “SNL U.K.’s” budget will no doubt have gone on the 11-strong cast and team of 20 writers, not to mention the producing team, which includes “The Late Late Show With James Corden” vet James Longman as producer and “SNL” creator Lorne Michaels as exec producer, plus its numerous sets and costumes, many of which need to be produced with a tight turnaround as the writing team responds to current events.

    The ratings for the inaugural episode, hosted by Tina Fey, drew a respectable 226,000 viewers and a mixed bag of reviews. Scott Bryan, reviewing the first episode for Variety, said it risks being “too American” for a British audience but even where a sketch doesn’t always work “there’s enough one-liners to keep you going.”

    Online, and particularly YouTube, where “SNL” skits tend to have their most successful half-life, Fey’s opening monologue attracted over 1.6 million views in less than 48 hours, followed by the Keir Starmer cold open with 1 million views.

    Sky will no doubt now be waiting to see what the viewing figures look like next weekend, when “Fifty Shades” star Jamie Dornan takes over hosting duties from Fey, to see if their £16 million investment has been worth it.

    Comcast-owned network Sky, which is producing and broadcasting the series in the U.K., declined to comment.

  • Ex-Jockey Jo Lodder’s 59-Racecourse Run Gets Documentary Treatment From U.K.-China Film Collab (EXCLUSIVE)

    Ex-Jockey Jo Lodder’s 59-Racecourse Run Gets Documentary Treatment From U.K.-China Film Collab (EXCLUSIVE)

    A documentary is in development following former British professional jockey Jo Lodder‘s plan to run an unbroken course taking in every one of the U.K.’s 59 licensed racecourses this fall, raising money and awareness for charities focused on the racing community and mental health.

    Lodder, who now lives in Hong Kong, was a multi-winning professional jockey who competed for a decade across the U.K. and Europe before his career ended abruptly in his late 20s after he broke his back. He has since found a new sporting life in ultra-distance running, completing a number of major long-distance events.

    The documentary will be produced by Hiu Man Chan through NGO U.K.-China Film Collab, weaving together footage shot on the route with archive racing material and interviews with Lodder and figures from across the sport. U.K.-China Film Collab, whose previous credits include the Hong Kong documentary “Four Trails,” plans to pursue a tailored release strategy across festival and cross-border markets, with a focus on U.K., Hong Kong and international audiences.

    “Injury took racing away from me and I hid away. Now I’ve risen my head and seen how amazing the racing community is. I want to give back by running all 59 racecourses, telling their stories, and helping the less-seen people critical to our sport,” Lodder said.

    Chan said: “When I hear about Jo’s stories, I can already see a film. Oftentimes, the greater impacts are driven by an individual’s intense and unexplainable passion. It’s the extraordinary imagination and sometimes madness that will continue to inspire the next generation to question and reflect on life. With a similar determination, I hope to translate Jo’s journey into a cinematic endeavour.”

    The project is not Lodder’s first time as a documentary subject. In 2025 he featured in “Run China Run,” which chronicled his team’s 3,140km journey on foot from the Great Wall of China to Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong, completed over 60 days.

    The project was developed over conversations at the U.K. Film Pavilion during FilMart 2026 in Hong Kong.

  • A Former Anthropology Student From Los Angeles Might Be the George Lucas of AI

    This story comes from The Hollywood Reporter’s upcoming AI Issue, which publishes March 31. Check out further stories throughout the week, and the complete issue next week.

    On Instagram, the filmmaker known as Gossip Goblin posts bleak sci-fi epics set in strange worlds populated by mutated creatures and bunker societies. The images are accompanied by philosophical narrators contemplating reality. The short films look uncannily like fragments of big-budget genre cinema. But they weren’t shot on soundstages or rendered by a VFX studio: They were generated and assembled using artificial intelligence.

    At a moment when Hollywood and Silicon Valley are still arguing over what AI actually is — a cost-cutting tool, a visual gimmick or the foundation of an entirely new cinematic language — Gossip Goblin offers a more provocative possibility: that AI already has an emerging aesthetic, and that it belongs not to studios but to individuals willing to wrestle it into something personal. His films don’t reject the medium’s telltale strangeness — the dream logic, the synthetic textures, the sense of images half-remembered rather than fully observed — but lean into it, suggesting a form of storytelling that feels less like traditional filmmaking than like visualized thought.

    The man behind the account is Zack London, 35, a Los Angeles native who has so far kept a relatively low public profile even as his work has spread widely online. The name “Gossip Goblin, ” he suggests, began as a deliberately unserious alias — a kind of Internet pseudonym — but has since become a banner for a growing body of work that is anything but disposable. London studied sculpture and anthropology at Pitzer College before drifting into product design and virtual-reality work at tech companies like Oculus. Four years ago, he relocated to Stockholm after meeting his Swedish partner. While experimenting with early image-generation software after work, he stumbled onto a new way of visualizing the stories he’d long been writing.

    Since then, Gossip Goblin has quietly amassed more than 1 million followers on Instagram and millions more views across platforms. London recently quit his tech job, raised a small round of funding and launched a studio to produce longer AI-driven films with a small international team. His first major effort, a 20-minute short titled The Patchwright — set in a grungy, Blade Runner-esque world populated by flesh-and-metal hybrid characters and featuring a full cast of voice actors, a foley artist and an original score — is set to be released in the coming weeks after roughly five months of production.

    The approach puts him in a curious position within the fast-moving AI landscape. While social media is flooded with one-click AI videos (often dismissed as “slop”) London insists his projects still involve many of the same steps as traditional filmmaking: scripts, shot lists, voice actors, foley artists and extensive editing.

    Whether that process represents the future of independent filmmaking or simply a transitional curiosity remains an open question. But Hollywood is already paying attention. London says he has fielded calls from studios, actors and directors curious about what AI storytelling might become.

    The Hollywood Reporter spoke with London about how his films are made, why most AI content fails to stand out and whether a legitimate blockbuster could someday emerge from this new medium.

    You’re from Los Angeles originally. How did you end up doing this from Stockholm?

    I grew up in the Valley and studied sculpture and anthropology at Pitzer College — two very lucrative disciplines. I thought maybe I’d go to law school after, but I ended up doing a Fulbright in Malaysia and spent almost two years traveling around Southeast Asia. After that I moved to the Bay Area and started working in tech as a product designer at startups and eventually at Facebook on Oculus doing virtual reality work. I moved to Sweden about four years ago after meeting a Swedish girl — it was either she moved to the States or I moved here, so here I am. Filmmaking was never really part of the plan. I’ve always illustrated and written stories, even self-publishing some small books of travel writing and short fiction, but it never occurred to me that making films was something available to me. AI kind of changed that.

    How did you first start experimenting with AI tools?

    About three and a half years ago I was messing around with early image-generation tools with a coworker after work. We were trying to use them for a design project and the results were terrible — totally unusable for corporate work — but the technology itself was fascinating. Before video generation existed I started doing a tongue-in-cheek travel writing series about a fictional country called Urumquan, written in the style of 1980s National Geographic. I created an entire fake ethnography of this imaginary Soviet satellite state and used Midjourney to generate images that looked semi-documentary but surreal. It unexpectedly took off online and got me excited about storytelling again. When the video tools started appearing, I realized moving pictures meant you could actually build narrative worlds — even though early on the technology was so limited that the storytelling had to adapt to what the AI could realistically produce.

    Your work looks far more polished than most AI videos online. How are these films actually made?

    The biggest misconception is that someone types “sci-fi film” into a prompt and a movie pops out the other side. Maybe we’ll get there eventually, but that’s not where the technology is today. Our process starts with a script, and then we break that script into something like a traditional shot list — every scene, every angle, every environment. After that we start exploring the visual world: what the characters look like, what the creatures look like, what kind of lighting and architecture this world has. Once we define that aesthetic, we generate and refine hundreds or thousands of images and video clips that fit the story, and then everything gets assembled and edited in DaVinci Resolve like a normal film. We also work with voice actors and even a foley artist to create sound effects, so there’s still a lot of traditional filmmaking craft involved.

    What AI tools are you using to generate the imagery?

    Quite a lot of them — somewhere between 15 and 25 tools across the entire pipeline. There isn’t one magic generator that does everything. Some tools are better for creating initial images, others are better at replicating characters consistently across different scenes, and others are better for motion or animation. Midjourney is still a favorite for generating images, but we also use other models that are better at reproducing a specific character from multiple angles or lighting conditions. Consistency is one of the hardest problems in AI filmmaking — if a character changes appearance from shot to shot, the illusion falls apart — so a lot of the work is figuring out how to control the outputs across different tools.

    One thing I noticed watching your short film is that it relies heavily on narration rather than dialogue. Was that intentional?

    Mostly that was a technical limitation. When we made that film, the tools simply weren’t good enough to produce convincing dialogue scenes with synchronized speech and performances. If we tried to do it, it would have felt awkward or artificial, so we leaned into narration and atmosphere instead. The next project we’re working on is around 25 minutes long and much more dialogue-driven because the technology has improved significantly since then. The tools are evolving so quickly that what felt impossible a year ago now feels achievable.

    Are the voices in your films AI-generated?

    No, they’re all human voice actors. We work with a couple of performers — one used to be an opera singer who’s now a DJ in San Francisco, and another is a jazz singer in the UK. Synthetic voices have become incredibly convincing, but real performers still bring something that’s hard to replicate. Eventually motion-capture performance will probably become a bigger part of this workflow too, where you record an actor’s performance and translate it onto an AI-generated character, but that part of the technology is still pretty early.

    You’ve built a following of more than a million people online. Why do you think your work stands out from other AI content?

    Honestly, because most AI content is what people call “slop.” The technology has a kind of default visual style, and if you just press the button and accept whatever it generates you end up with generic sci-fi imagery that looks like everything else. It actually takes a lot of work to push the AI away from that baseline and impose a specific creative vision. The other difference is storytelling. A lot of creators focus purely on visuals — impressive images with no narrative behind them. I’m much more interested in building a mythology, with recurring characters and stories that exist within a larger world.

    You recently quit your job and started a studio around this work. What’s the goal?

    The goal is to build out a larger universe of stories — not mass-manufactured content, but thoughtful science fiction created with a small team. What’s exciting about AI is that it might allow people to create ambitious genre storytelling without needing hundreds of millions of dollars. Historically, if you wanted to make large-scale science fiction you needed a massive studio production. Now a handful of people might be able to create something visually comparable with far fewer resources.

    Have Hollywood studios started reaching out to you?

    Yes, I’ve spoken with most of the studios and streamers at this point, as well as some actors and directors whose work I really admire. A lot of those conversations are simply curiosity — people trying to understand what the future of filmmaking might look like. Some actors ask questions about whether they should license their voices or likenesses for AI use. I don’t think anyone really knows the answers yet, but there’s definitely a lot of interest.

    Do you ultimately want to partner with Hollywood or build this independently?

    Our goal is to retain as much ownership of the intellectual property as possible. In a future where AI allows anyone to generate huge amounts of content, there will be an overwhelming amount of noise online. The things that will actually hold value are recognizable characters and worlds that audiences connect with. If we can build a small set of stories and IP that people genuinely care about, that’s where the long-term value lies.

    Do you think a true AI-generated blockbuster is coming?

    Probably. The technology is improving so quickly that it feels inevitable. But I’m less interested in being the first person to prove it can happen. There are already well-funded companies trying to win that race. What matters to me is doing it well and focusing on storytelling rather than simply demonstrating the technology. At the end of the day, audiences don’t care about the tool — they care about whether the story is compelling.

    I do feel like someone is going to be the George Lucas of this, and wouldn’t that be interesting if it was you?

    That’s what we’re telling investors, but I don’t want to jinx it. That is essentially the elevator pitch: “We can tell a totally vast and unfiltered sci-fi epic spanning all of these different worlds and ideas and storylines, and we can do it fairly reliably with a fairly small team.” Plus it’s not a huge risk to take this on. It’s not like we’re asking for the world to do this.

  • “IMDb for Creators” Platform in the Works for Stars, Crew of Digital Projects (Exclusive)

    “IMDb for Creators” Platform in the Works for Stars, Crew of Digital Projects (Exclusive)

    When a digital creator wants to showcase their body of work to potential collaborators or clients, they can post some previous work to their Instagram or LinkedIn, maybe dig out a few old contracts from a drawer. But with the scale and diversity of output that successful creators produce, from quick sketches to full-scale brand campaigns, it’s an unwieldy and imperfect approach.

    A new initiative from the Creators Guild of America is aiming to solve that issue. On Tuesday, the industry nonprofit (led by former Producers Guild of America arbitrations administrator Daniel Abas) launched an open beta version of Mosaic, a “first of its kind” credentialing platform tailored to the vast workflows endemic to creators and their behind-the-scenes creatives.

    Branded as the “IMDb for creators,” Mosaic offers creator economy workers a digital resumé to help them showcase their work history to collaborators, brands and audiences. A few thousand beta testers have already signed on to Mosaic prior to Tuesday’s launch.

    “Without a infrastructure for credit, it’s difficult to know and provide recognition for what creators are doing. Mosaic is exactly that. It is infrastructure to demonstrate and provide recognition for work,” Abas told The Hollywood Reporter. “Creative work is very granular. It’s project by project, hence the name of Mosaic. When you put this work together, you can see someone’s complete creative arc.”

    All credits that are submitted to Mosaic will be verified by third parties with knowledge of the jobs, according to the CGA. They will also be judged according to the CGA’s “professional eligibility standards” (for instance, for an individual influencer to receive a CGA credit, they need to have been paid by a brand, agency, platform or have a paid subscriber base of 10 or more people).

    An image showcasing the credits feature of Mosaic.

    Courtesy of the Creators Guild of America

    Mosaic will also give each participant a unique Creator ID that they can use across different social media platforms. Comparing it to a driver’s license number, Abas says the number will help give creators more independence from particular handle names, will help differentiate creators with the same names and will offer safeguards against fraudulent promotions or fake videos.

    In a statement, lifestyle creator Yanina Oyarzo emphasized that the Creator ID component of the platform could protect influencers like herself from being associated with fake promotions. Oyarzo discovered last year that her likeness was being used to promote products without her knowledge or consent. “I’m excited for Mosaic, because we need the protection it will bring to today’s creators,” she said. “We have it for writers, actors, and other forms of creatives in the entertainment industry. It’s about time we are able to be protected and work alongside AI with the right contracts and safeguards.”

    While the idea for the platform pre-dated recent developments in the world of generative AI, the rise of synthetic creators and deepfake videos has accelerated the CGA’s work on Mosaic, said Abas: ”The truth is important in the world that we are entering. What is real? What is not real?”

    The platform is free and open to any creator and creative that works in the creator economy, not just members of the CGA, though only members of the organization can be verified on the platform as human creators.

    “I’m excited about Mosaic because when we watch creators, we usually only see the person in front of the camera,” said content creator and CGA board member Justine Ezarik (whose handle is @iJustine) in a statement. “We don’t always see the writers, producers, editors, and videographers behind the scenes who help bring that content to life. So having this new platform that properly credits the entire team feels like a missing piece of the creator puzzle.”

    An image showcasing the Creator ID feature of the Creators Guild of America’s Mosaic platform.

    Courtesy of the Creators Guild of America

  • Chappell Roan Says Miley Cyrus “Walked So I Could Run” During ‘Hannah Montana’ Anniversary Special: “The World Really Took It Out on You”

    Chappell Roan Says Miley Cyrus “Walked So I Could Run” During ‘Hannah Montana’ Anniversary Special: “The World Really Took It Out on You”

    Hannah Montana is turning 20, and Miley Cyrus is celebrating with an hour-long special — with the help of some of her fellow pop stars.

    The Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special sees Cyrus return to the set of the Disney Channel show that launched her career, reflecting on her wigs, her closet and her early days in Hollywood alongside her mom Tish and dad Billy Ray.

    Selena Gomez, who played Hannah Montana’s enemy Mikayla in the series, also stopped by in the special to reminisce. “When I watch it back, I’m like ‘we were vicious,’” Cyrus said, with the two characters throwing insults at each other constantly.

    “It’s pretty mean! I don’t think they’d get away with saying half of that now,” Gomez said. “I was so mean, I’m sorry!” Cyrus teased back that “we can make amends now.”

    Adding to the star power, Chappell Roan, who grew up watching Hanna Montana, makes a surprise appearance as well, telling Cyrus that “you literally walked so I could run.” Chappell pointed to her own moments confronting photographers on the carpet and how Cyrus paved the way for her.

    “I was gagged for that,” Cyrus said, to which Roan replied, “But that’s because you took a lot of the heat for that in 2012, 2013.”

    “I don’t have to deal with that as much because the world really took it out on you,” Roan said, harkening back to the response to Cyrus’ album Bangerz and her infamous VMAs performance with Robin Thicke.

    “To see you be the artist you are, to be able to do this, just shows like your heart and your appreciation for your younger self and what got you here,” Roan continued.

    As Cyrus said: “That’s really what this whole moment, this whole celebration, is about — loving on our younger selves, knowing that my younger me worked so hard so I could have the life that I have now.”

    In another moment in the special, Cyrus — who at points throughout is interviewed by Call Her Daddy‘s Alex Cooper — touches on Taylor Swift’s appearance in 2009’s Hannah Montana: The Movie.

    Teasing “get the tea kettle,” Cyrus reflected how “this was kind of the beginning of her career and they were looking for someone who would authentically, no shade, I guess, be performing in a barn. We both performed in the barn and so she came and did the performance.” Swift also wrote the movie’s finale song “You’ll Always Find Your Way Back Home,” to which Cyrus declared: “She ate with that one.”

    Cyrus takes the stage for several songs during the special as well, doing modern renditions of “Best of Both Worlds,” “This is the Life” and “The Climb.” She closes with a new song dedicated to her time on the show, telling the audience directly to camera that “it’s been an honor to celebrate 20 years with Hannah Montana, and I’ve looked back at every memory with a heart full of love. Hannah, she gave me my start, but my fans gave me this life.”

    The Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special is now streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.

  • ‘Dhurandhar’ Headlines Record $2.18 Billion 2025 for Indian Film as Overall Media and Entertainment Sector Reaches $29.6 Billion

    ‘Dhurandhar’ Headlines Record $2.18 Billion 2025 for Indian Film as Overall Media and Entertainment Sector Reaches $29.6 Billion

    With “Dhurandhar” shattering records and 37 films crossing the INR1 billion ($10.7 million) box office threshold, India’s filmed entertainment segment posted its best-ever year in 2025, reaching INR205 billion ($2.18 billion) – part of a broader surge that lifted the country’s total media and entertainment sector 9% year-on-year to INR2.78 trillion ($29.63 billion), according to the FICCI-EY report “Stories, Scale and Impact: Unlocking India’s Media and Entertainment Economy,” released Tuesday in Mumbai at the FICCI Frames conference.

    The sector’s growth outpaced India’s per-capita GDP expansion of 7.7%, with digital media, advertising and live experiences the primary engines, even as select segments faced regulatory and cost pressures.

    Digital media emerged as the single largest segment of the industry, crossing $10.66 billion for the first time. India’s streaming market crossed $2.9 billion in 2025, with regional languages’ share of consumption rising from 27% in 2020 to 56% in 2025. Regional cinema now contributes over 65% of all films produced in the country. Total advertising revenues grew 13.5% to $15.98 billion, equivalent to 0.41% of India’s GDP. The sector is projected to reach $35.17 billion by 2028, growing at a compound annual rate of over 7%, with new media expected to constitute 53% of total revenues by that point.

    The M&E sector contributes around 0.8% of India’s GDP and provides direct employment to approximately 2.75 million people, with indirect employment extending to over 10 million. India produced almost 200,000 hours of content in 2025, a majority of it in regional languages other than Hindi, with 96% produced for television excluding news bulletins, 2% for films, 1% for streaming and 1% for short video and microdramas.

    Digital advertising rose 26% to $10.09 billion, accounting for 63% of total advertising revenues as brands continued to shift spending toward performance-led, measurable and commerce-linked formats. E-commerce and point-of-sale advertising surged 50% to $2.34 billion, a figure equivalent to 85% of linear television advertising revenues. Digital advertising also encompasses $3.87 billion from more than one million small and medium enterprises and long-tail advertisers. Advertising on Connected TVs rose from $735.3 million in 2024 to $1.06 billion in 2025 as Connected TV subscriptions grew 35% and delivered affluent audiences to marketers.

    Digital subscription revenues climbed 60% to $1.74 billion. Paid video subscriptions reached 216 million, spanning 143 million households, driven by premium sports and films placed behind paywalls. Paid music subscriptions grew 37% to 14.4 million. News subscriptions remain limited to 4 million, primarily owing to the abundance of free alternatives.

    Kevin Vaz, chair of the FICCI Media and Entertainment Committee, said the digital milestone was “a highly encouraging signal, underscoring the sector’s strong growth momentum,” and described Connected TV as complementing linear television by enhancing large-screen experiences. He added that “measured regulatory forbearance, coupled with innovation, will be critical in sustaining long-term growth.”

    The organized live events segment surged 44% to $1.55 billion, fuelled by ticketed concerts, personal functions such as weddings, government events and religious gatherings including the Maha Kumbh Mela.

    The film segment reached a record $2.18 billion. More than 1,900 films were released in 2025, with theatrical revenues rising 14%, mainly from higher ticket prices. Thirty-seven films earned $10.7 million or more at the box office, with “Dhurandhar” cited in the report as a record-setter for the year. Digital and satellite rights values declined 8% and 10% respectively, as buyers rationalized slates and adjusted values based on theatrical performance.

    Television continues to be the predominant medium in India, reaching approximately 745 million individuals weekly. Linear TV advertising revenue declined 10.3%, reflecting reduced advertising volumes as sectors shifted spend to digital and a 3% reduction in the number of advertisers using the platform. Subscription revenues decreased 8%, attributed to a loss of 11 million Pay TV households, though Free TV and Connected TV subscribers grew. Connected TV reach increased to approximately 40 million weekly active homes from 30 million in 2024. Combined linear and Connected TV advertising revenues were stable at $3.86 billion.

    Out-of-home media grew 13%, with premium properties and locations leading the expansion. Digital OOH contributed 18% of total segment revenues, up from 7% in 2023. The music sector saw revenues increase 10%, with digital licensing expanding just 2% – attributed by the report to declining returns from YouTube – while revenues from other streaming platforms and social media channels demonstrated growth. Music labels’ other income rose 26%, supported by expansion into events, talent management and branded content.

    Animation and VFX grew only 2%, as international studios struggling with profitability focused on fewer films and series in the wake of the Hollywood writers’ strike’s impact on global supply chains, while domestic demand increased as more mid-budget films incorporated VFX. Print advertising revenues rose 2%, with subscription earnings dropping 1% due to reduced circulation among younger audiences. Radio segment revenues declined 7% to $245.1 million, primarily due to reduced ad rates, with the report noting that certain mobile devices and automobiles are no longer equipped with FM receivers. Non-advertising revenues now comprise 25% of segment revenues.

    The online and video games segment saw a 17% decrease following the ban on money gaming that took effect at the end of August 2025, with money gaming revenues dropping 26% compared to 2024. In-app purchases in video games rose 15% as the industry pivoted to that format. Esports revenues declined 8%, largely as a result of global sponsorship challenges and the segment’s reliance on money gaming brands for sponsorships.

    Deal activity in the sector remained robust, with 105 transactions recorded in 2025, an 8% increase in volume compared to 2024. Excluding the mega Jio-Star transaction, deal value reflected a 27% increase over the adjusted 2024 base. Some 73% of deals pertained to new media, with digital media and sports the most active segments.

    Looking ahead, the report projects the sector will grow 2.8% in 2026 to reach $30.48 billion; excluding online gaming, growth is expected at 8% before accelerating to a CAGR of over 7% through 2028. The sector is expected to reach $31.97 billion by 2027, adding $5.5 billion in absolute terms between 2025 and 2028.

    By segment, digital media is projected to be the fastest-growing, with a 14% CAGR to reach $17.48 billion by 2028. The report projects digital advertising to lead with $4.75 billion in incremental revenues, driven by SME advertising growing at 16% to reach $6 billion by 2028 and e-commerce and point-of-sale advertising growing at 22% to $4.31 billion. The share of programmatic advertising is expected to surpass 75% of all non-premium and impact inventory, representing $10.12 billion in digital ad spend managed through self-serve algorithms by 2028.

    Digital subscription revenues are projected to grow by $905.8 million, with video streaming subscriptions expanding from 143 million to approximately 191 million households. Transactional video-on-demand revenues are expected to rise from $53.3 million to $78.9 million, while audio streaming subscriptions are set to double, reaching between 28 million and 30 million paid subscribers.

    Live events are expected to expand beyond the current top eight metro cities to more than 20 cities with populations exceeding 2 million, with concert days hosting audiences of 10,000 or more projected to rise from 130 in 2025 to over 200 by 2028, driving the segment to $2.09 billion. Filmed entertainment is projected to grow to $2.7 billion on the back of increased screens, a greater number of high-concept films and a rebound in digital rights values. Animation and VFX is forecast to grow at a 10% CAGR to $1.47 billion, aided by stabilizing global content pipelines and increased offshoring by major studios to India.

    Television is projected to continue losing audiences to Connected TV, with total Linear Pay TV subscriptions declining at a rate of 3.1% to 83 million by 2028. However, total linear and Connected TV advertising revenues are expected to grow to $4.02 billion by 2028 as ad-targeting capabilities improve and SMEs increase Connected TV investment. Video games are projected to grow at 13% to reach $980.4 million by 2028, though the report notes the segment may not be able to fully recover the $2.02 billion gap caused by the ban on money gaming.

    Speaking at the report’s launch, Ashish Shelar, Minister of Information Technology and Cultural Affairs for the Government of Maharashtra, described the sector’s expansion as reflecting “not just scale, but the sector’s growing strategic importance to the nation’s economy.” He said Mumbai “continues to be the creative capital of India and the epicenter of our media and entertainment ecosystem,” adding that the government is “committed to building a future-ready ecosystem that seamlessly integrates creativity with cutting-edge technology, ensuring sustainable and globally competitive growth.”

    Shelar further described the global opportunity as unprecedented, noting that “the world is increasingly recognising India not just as a large market, but as a creative powerhouse and a trusted partner in content creation.”

    Anant Goenka, president of FICCI and vice chair of RPG Group, said the industry’s evolution is “increasingly defined by the interplay of stories, scale and impact,” and that “unlocking this potential will depend on how effectively the industry aligns storytelling, distribution and sustainable monetization across the ecosystem.”

    Ashish Pherwani, partner and leader of EY India’s Media and Entertainment sector, described 2025 as a year in which the sector “crossed a critical inflection point,” and said the next phase of growth would “be defined by sustainable monetization models, disciplined investment and the ability of stakeholders to adapt to shifting consumer behavior and regulatory realities.”

  • ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ Lead U.K., Ireland Box Office

    ‘Project Hail Mary,’ ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ Lead U.K., Ireland Box Office

    “Project Hail Mary,” distributed by Sony, debuted at No. 1 at the U.K. and Ireland box office, earning £7.4 million ($9.9 million) in its opening weekend, according to Comscore.

    Indian action title “Dhurandhar: The Revenge,” from Moviegoers Entertainment, opened in second place with $2.8 million, marking a strong start for the Ranveer Singh sequel.

    Disney’s “Hoppers” shifted to third in its third weekend, adding $1.6 million for a cumulative $12.7 million. Universal’s “Reminders of Him” followed in fourth place with $900,000, lifting its total to $3.3 million.

    Disney’s “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” debuted in fifth place with $820,000, while RFT Films Ltd’s Malayalam-language title “Aadu 3” opened sixth on $565,000.

    Further down the chart, Studiocanal’s “How to Make a Killing” placed seventh in its second weekend with $340,000 for a $2 million total. Entertainment Film Distributors’ “Mother’s Pride” followed in eighth with $314,000, reaching $3.7 million.

    Paramount’s “Scream 7” continued its run in ninth place, adding $265,000 for a cumulative $10.1 million. Rounding out the top 10, Signature Entertainment’s “The Good Boy” debuted with $255,000.

    Looking ahead, the final week of March is led by a strong mix of family fare and studio titles, with Entertainment Film Distributors’ “The Magic Faraway Tree” as the key wide release. Directed by Ben Gregor and featuring a high-profile cast including Andrew Garfield, Claire Foy and Nicola Coughlan, the adaptation rolls out across more than 300 locations.

    Warner Bros. counters with thriller “They Will Kill You,” also launching wide, while Universal adds comedy “Splitsville,” starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona. Trafalgar Releasing continues to lean into event cinema with “Bring Me the Horizon: L.I.V.E. in Sao Paulo,” while Dreamz Entertainment releases Indian title “Ustaad Bhagat Singh.”

    The specialty market is led by Raoul Peck’s documentary “Orwell 2+2=5,” distributed by Altitude, alongside Curzon’s “Two Prosecutors” and Dogwoof’s “Underland.” Sovereign Film Distribution releases “Redoubt,” starring Denis Lavant, Magus Films “Empire of Lies,” Conic “DJ Ahmet,” and Day for Night “All and Nothing.”

    Repertory and alternative content remain a steady component of the market. Park Circus marks the 30th anniversary of Baz Lurhmann’s “Romeo + Juliet,” while family audiences are also targeted with “Bluey at the Cinema: Playdates With Friends.” The week rounds out with Anime Ltd.’s “The Last Blossom,” Wildcard Distribution’s “No Ordinary Heist,” and the music documentary “McCartney: The Hunt for the Lost Bass.”

  • Jon Stewart Jokes the ‘Only Thing Giving Me Joy’ in Trump’s America Is ‘Looking Forward’ to Watching Taylor Frankie Paul on ‘The Bachelorette’: ‘Hold on, I’m Getting a Call’

    Jon Stewart Jokes the ‘Only Thing Giving Me Joy’ in Trump’s America Is ‘Looking Forward’ to Watching Taylor Frankie Paul on ‘The Bachelorette’: ‘Hold on, I’m Getting a Call’

    On this week’s episode of “The Daily Show,” Jon Stewart poked fun at ABC pulling the latest season of “The Bachelorette” from its schedule amid the explosive fallout between would-be star Taylor Frankie Paul and her ex, Dakota Mortensen.

    Stewart teed up the joke by outlining how “Trump’s America” has become a “dizzying, chaotic carnival ride.”

    “It’s fucking madness out there,” Stewart said. “TSA lines longer than your trip, escalating threats in the Middle East, planes driving into trucks. The only thing giving me joy is looking forward to this season of ‘The Bachelorette.’ I mean, they got a strong, Mormon woman; she seems lovely. Hope that she finds — hold on, I am getting a call…..no!”

    On March 19, a spokesperson for Disney Entertainment Television announced that the season would be shelved in a statement that read, “In light of the newly released video just surfaced today, we have made the decision to not move forward with the new season of ‘The Bachelorette’ at this time, and our focus is on supporting the family.”

    The decision, which came days before the Season 22 premiere on March 22, followed the leak of a video showing Paul throwing stools at Mortensen while her child is close by in the room. A spokesperson for Paul issued this response to the video’s leak: “It’s sad to see the latest installment of his never-ending, desperate, attention-seeking, destructive campaign to harm Taylor without any regard for the consequences for their child. Releasing an old video, which conveniently omits context, on their son’s birthday is a reprehensible attempt to distract from his own behavior. Thankfully, the public has seen this act before and knows who he is and sadly, many will recognize this pattern of manipulation, both in his actions on the show, and from their own experiences.”

    On March 16, Paul’s main reality show, “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” paused filming due to a domestic violence investigation between Paul and Mortensen by the Draper City Police Department in Utah.

    Watch the entire monologue below.

  • Ranveer Singh’s ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ Crosses $82 Million Worldwide in Record-Breaking Opening Weekend

    Ranveer Singh’s ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ Crosses $82 Million Worldwide in Record-Breaking Opening Weekend

    Jio Studios and B62 Studios’ “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” has delivered an unprecedented opening weekend, grossing INR761 crores ($82.4 million) worldwide and setting new benchmarks for Hindi-language cinema globally.

    The Aditya Dhar-directed spy-action sequel, which opened March 19, recorded the highest opening weekend ever for a Hindi-language film worldwide, driven by extraordinary advance bookings and sold-out shows across circuits. While Allu Arjun’s Telugu-language film “Pushpa 2: The Rule” holds the overall Indian film opening weekend record at $92.5 million, including a Hindi dubbed version, “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” has set the benchmark for Hindi-language cinema and achieved an overseas opening weekend of $22.8 million.

    The opening weekend gross breaks down to $59.5 million in India and $22.8 million overseas across the four-day extended opening that included Wednesday paid previews in North America.

    The film set multiple all-time records in India including highest advance sales ever, highest paid previews ever, fastest film to INR300 crores ($31.9 million) locally, and most tickets sold on first Saturday. BookMyShow reported a record 109,170 tickets sold per hour, the platform’s highest-ever rate.

    Internationally, the sequel achieved the highest opening day for an Indian film without Gulf territories, the highest single day ever for an Indian film on Saturday with $6.2 million, and ranked No. 2 on Comscore across major markets while topping secondary markets. The film mounted the widest overseas release for a Hindi film across approximately 2,200 cinemas and 3,000 screens without Gulf territories.

    In the U.K., “Dhurandhar: The Revenge” debuted at No. 2 in the overall box office with an estimated $2.8 million (£2.2 million) opening weekend, emerging as one of the top-performing Indian titles in the market in recent years.

    The sequel expanded into non-traditional territories for Bollywood including Uruguay, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Chile, Mexico and Cyprus.

    In North America, the film played across 185 screens in its re-release of the first installment, with the sequel offering Wednesday premiere shows March 18 across the U.S. and Canada. The advance shows predominantly utilized Premium Large Format auditoriums equipped with oversized screens, Dolby Atmos audio, enhanced projection and premium seating. Mid-week premieres sold out at numerous locations.

    The overseas weekend delivered $22.7 million across four days including U.S.-Canada Wednesday previews, with daily breakdowns of $5.5 million Thursday, $4.9 million Friday, $6.2 million Saturday and $6 million Sunday.

    Ranveer Singh returns in dual avatars, with R. Madhavan as Ajay Sanyal, Arjun Rampal as ISI Major Iqbal, Sanjay Dutt as SP Chaudhary Aslam, and Sara Arjun.

    Written, directed and produced by Aditya Dhar, with Jyoti Deshpande and Lokesh Dhar also producing, the film released in Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam, timed to Gudi Padwa and Ugadi celebrations ahead of Eid.

    The performance follows the original “Dhurandhar,” which emerged as the biggest Hindi film globally. Jio Studios brought the first installment back to theaters March 12-13 across 500 screens worldwide in a rare international re-release ahead of the sequel’s bow.

  • ‘Moana’: New Trailer Shows Dwayne Johnson as a Live-Action Version of His Character Maui

    ‘Moana’: New Trailer Shows Dwayne Johnson as a Live-Action Version of His Character Maui

    Disney on Monday released a new trailer for its upcoming live-action version of Moana.

    The film stars newcomer Catherine Lagaʻaia as the wayfinder Moana and Dwayne Johnson, who reprises his role as the trickster demigod Maui from the animated film. 

    Fans of the original movie will recognize the scenes shown in the trailer, from Moana’s interactions with Maui to the crab who’s obsessed with shiny objects to the lava and fire creature Te Kā, along with some familiar songs, including “I Am Moana (Song of the Ancestors).” Fans also noted online that Johnson has a full head of flowing locks, befitting his character.

    The cast also includes John Tui as Moana’s father, Chief Tui; Frankie Adams as Moana’s mother, Sina; and Rena Owen as Moana’s Gramma Tala.

    Catherine Laga’aia as Moana in Disney’s live-action Moana.

    courtesy of Disney

    Disney is calling the film a “reimagining” of the Oscar-nominated movie. The live-action version is directed by Thomas Kail (Hamilton), with Johnson, Dany Garcia, Beau Flynn, Hiram Garcia and Lin-Manuel Miranda as producers. Kail is also an executive producer along with Scott Sheldon, Charles Newirth and Auliʻi Cravalho, who voiced Moana in Moana and its sequel. 

    Moana features original songs by Miranda, Opetaia Foaʻi and Mark Mancina, and an original score composed by Mancina. 

    The movie hits theaters July 10.

    Watch the trailer below.