Flanders government looks to force TikTok and YouTube to share revenue

Belgium already takes a cut from Netflix and Disney and new income will support local TV production

Cute cat videos, fried chicken clips and viral dances could soon help to finance Belgian TV, with the Flanders government on the verge of passing laws to force TikTok and YouTube to share revenues with local television producers.

“Politically speaking, it is important in audiovisual and media services that there are obligations on companies to invest in local TV content,” the media minister for the Flemish government, Benjamin Dalle, told the Guardian.

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Australia joins international call for local content quotas on streaming TV platforms

Statement from peak bodies argues independence and viability of global screen industry under threat unless mandatory quotas for non-US content introduced

Australia has joined an international campaign calling on governments to provide better protection for local screen industries in a market dominated by global streaming platforms such as Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime.

Screen Producers Australia (SPA) issued a joint statement with counterparts in Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada, demanding regulation to force streaming services to make content that is relevant to local markets where they operate.

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Netflix pulls Indian film after backlash from rightwing Hindu groups

Annapoorani: the Goddess of Food criticised for depiction of deity and member of vegetarian caste cooking and eating meat

Netflix is embroiled in a backlash in India from rightwing Hindu groups over a film accused of offending religious sentiments for its depiction of a deity and a member of a traditionally vegetarian caste cooking and eating meat.

Annapoorani: the Goddess of Food, a film made in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, tells the story of a young woman of the privileged Brahmin caste, whose father cooks food in a Hindu temple, and her aspirations to become one of India’s best chefs.

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Ex-Malaysian PM’s lawyer pressures Netflix to take down documentary

Defence counsel for Najib Razak, jailed over fraud scandal, says Man on the Run is ‘sub judice and contemptuous’

A lawyer acting for the disgraced former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak has called for the takedown of a Netflix documentary about a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal that occurred under his administration.

Muhammad Shafee Abdullah, the lead defence counsel for Najib, who is serving a 12-year sentence on corruption charges, said Man on the Run was “sub judice and contemptuous”, according to local media reports.

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Denzel Washington’s casting as Hannibal in Netflix film sparks race controversy in Tunisia

Newspapers and politicians discuss general’s skin tone, saying actor’s casting in the role created ‘a historical error’

A decision to cast black actor Denzel Washington as the ancient Carthaginian general Hannibal in an upcoming Netflix film has sparked a small but heated debate in Tunisia, the military general’s birthplace.

After a similar controversy on race and representation in nearby Egypt over a Netflix docudrama about Cleopatra, Tunisian newspapers, social media and even the halls of parliament have seen discussion on the skin tone of the long-dead leader.

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The Crown actor says events leading to Diana’s death must have been ‘unbearable’

Elizabeth Debicki has spoken about filming car chase through Paris that led to Diana’s death for final season of royal drama

The actor who played Diana in The Crown said the moments leading up to her death must have been “completely unbearable” after the cast reenacted the car chase through Paris that led to her death for the final season of the divisive royal drama.

The sixth season of The Crown deals with the weeks preceding Diana’s death, as well as the fallout, after a car crash in Paris in August 1997. The first instalment of the season is released on 16 November.

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Netflix’s movie Hurricane Season stirs debate over violent depiction of Mexico

Based on the prize-winning book by Fernanda Melchor, film depicts brutality stemming from ‘war on drugs’ that began in 2006

A group of children find a body in the river: the village witch, her throat slit, writhing with snakes.

The opening scene of Hurricane Season, a new Netflix movie based on Mexican novelist Fernanda Melchor’s book, plunges the viewer straight into a tropical, lawless, superstitious version of rural Veracruz, Melchor’s home state.

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Contract for Hollywood actors includes $40m yearly in streaming bonuses

Union leaders on Friday shared details of three-year contract, on AI, wage increases and end to racist hair and makeup practices

Streaming services like Netflix will pay actors bonuses amounting to roughly $40m per year as part of the tentative labor agreement reached between the SAG-AFTRA actors union and major Hollywood studios, union leaders said on Friday after their board backed the deal.

The proposed three-year contract, which the union said was valued at more than $1bn over three years, was endorsed by 86% of SAG-AFTRA’s national board.

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‘I’m not a psycho’: Hasan Minhaj responds to New Yorker claims he told false stories

In a 20-minute video, the comedian disputes the magazine’s suggestion that he went too far in exaggerating his experiences

A month after the comedian Hasan Minhaj was accused of misleading audiences with his personal stories, the Daily Show alum has responded with an in-depth video. His argument: there’s a difference between his political TV comedy and the personal stories he tells in his standup.

A New Yorker article suggested that Minhaj, who is Muslim, had gone too far in exaggerating his own experiences with racism, Islamophobia and political backlash, including claims about an FBI informant at his childhood mosque and the hospitalization of his daughter in an anthrax scare. The story may have undermined his chance to be the next Daily Show host.

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Netflix says password crackdown working as it adds 8.8 million new users

Streaming company announces plans to increase prices as profits rise, even as Hollywood strikes threaten to affect programming

Netflix announced its global crackdown on password sharing was working and unveiled plans to increase prices as it announced its latest quarterly results on Wednesday.

The streaming media company added 8.8 million new subscribers over the last three months, far better than expected and up from 2.4 million in the same quarter last year. The increase came even as a strike by Hollywood actors and writers threatened to affect the rollout of new shows.

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First part of The Crown’s final season to be released on 16 November

Part two of the Netflix historical drama will follow in December

The final season of The Crown will be released in two parts later this year, Netflix has announced.

The first instalment of the historical TV drama’s sixth season will be released on 16 November with part two to follow on 14 December. The series, broadly based on historical events, depicts a fictionalised version of the British royal family.

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‘I deplore it’: Bernard Tapie’s family oppose Netflix series about tycoon

Relatives of French businessman, politician, singer and actor attack miniseries described as half-biopic, half-fiction

The family of the French businessman, actor, singer and former politician Bernard Tapie have attacked a Netflix miniseries based on his colourful life.

The series, described as half-biopic, half-fiction, will relate the story of “an ordinary man with an extraordinary ambition”.

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Netflix lists AI job worth $900,000 amid twin Hollywood strikes

Company lists highly paid machine-learning project manager role while actors and executives at odds over future of AI in Hollywood

As actors and writers strike over fair compensation and protections from the encroachment of artificial intelligence, Netflix has listed a position for a machine learning product manager that will compensate somewhere between $300,000 and $900,000 a year. According to the Screen Actors Guild (Sag-Aftra), 87% of the guild’s actors make less than $26,000 per year.

The use of AI in the production of film and television – either to write scripts, generate actors’ likenesses, or cut corners in paying creative work, has been a major point of contention in negotiations between the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and Sag and the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Writers have been striking since May; the actors joined earlier this month. The first joint strike since 1960 threatens to bring Hollywood to a complete standstill.

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Daniel Kaluuya’s Barney the Dinosaur film to be ‘adult’ and ‘lean into millennial angst’

Mattel says the Barney movie will be inspired by Charlie Kaufman, while Barbie director Greta Gerwig is planning two Narnia movies for Netflix

The Daniel Kaluuya-produced movie featuring Barney the Dinosaur will be an “adult”, “surrealistic” and “A24-type” film inspired by Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze, it has been revealed.

In a wide-ranging report on the film-making plans of toymaker Mattel in the New Yorker, Mattel Films executive Kevin McKeon said of the project: “We’re leaning into the millennial angst of the property rather than fine-tuning this for kids. It’s really a play for adults. Not that it’s R-rated, but it’ll focus on some of the trials and tribulations of being thirtysomething, growing up with Barney – just the level of disenchantment within the generation.”

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Netflix crackdown on password sharing reaches the UK

Streaming company tells millions of British subscribers that the service can no longer be used free by other households

Netflix has begun its crackdown on the millions of UK subscribers who share their passwords with friends and family who live outside of their household.

The streaming company has sent a letter to almost four million British subscribers that it has identified as giving friends and family members outside their home free access.

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Hollywood writers and studios hold talks as strike deadline looms

Writers Guild of America could call stoppage as early as Tuesday if pay agreement is not reached

Negotiators for Hollywood writers and film and television studios are engaged in 11th-hour talks in an effort to avert a strike that would disrupt TV production across an industry grappling with seismic changes.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) could call a work stoppage as early as Tuesday if it cannot reach a deal with companies such as Walt Disney and Netflix. A strike would be the first by the WGA in 15 years.

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Cleopatra was light-skinned, Egypt tells Netflix in row over drama

Casting of Black actor in upcoming docudrama produced by Jada Pinkett Smith has angered groups in Egypt who say it is ‘a falsification of Egyptian history’

Egypt’s antiquities ministry insisted on Thursday that Cleopatra had “white skin and Hellenistic characteristics” in an ongoing row over a Netflix drama-documentary depicting the famed beauty of antiquity as black.

Queen Cleopatra, produced by Jada Pinkett Smith and starring Adele James, is due for release on the streaming platform on 10 May.

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African film-makers reimagine folktales as dark fantasy dramas for Netflix

The six films include the tale of an ogre who preys on women, a sci-fi Nigeria taken over by AI, and a girl on a mission to end drought

Traditional African tales of monsters, genies and malevolent spirits have been reworked for a contemporary audience in a new Netflix series.

Film-makers from Tanzania, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Mauritania and Uganda have turned six traditional stories into dark fantasy dramas that cover topics including domestic violence, suicide and child marriage.

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Netflix crackdown on password sharing to begin in coming months

Sharing accounts across multiple households likely to attract additional fee as streaming giant looks to recoup subscriber losses

Streaming giant Netflix will begin its crackdown on password sharing in the first quarter of this year, after the release of its company earnings report to shareholders last week.

The practice of sharing passwords with people outside the subscriber’s household will become more complex and is likely to involve an additional fee to share a single subscription across multiple locations.

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Netflix to lose 700,000 UK customers in two years, analysts predict

Slow uptake of ad-supported offering has meant lower than expected viewing figures, made worse by UK cost of living crisis

Netflix is expected to suffer a second year of subscriber declines in the UK in 2023 as the cost of living crisis takes its toll and the streaming giant’s new cheaper, ad-supported service takes time to win over users.

The world’s biggest streaming service is expected to have lost around 500,000 UK subscribers in 2022 and to lose another 200,000 this year, as increasingly budget conscious consumers cut back on spending.

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