Friday, December 1, 2017
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 11:18AMFriday, November 10, 2017
Live, 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 04:48PMTuesday, October 31, 2017
Kevin 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 02:02PMFriday, October 13, 2017
Fandango 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 01:30PMThursday, September 28, 2017
Disney’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 02:00PMWednesday, September 27, 2017
Playbuzz, 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 08:00AMFriday, September 8, 2017
Disney’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 09:00AMWednesday, August 23, 2017
Musical.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 07:00AMWednesday, July 26, 2017
You’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 02:22PMTuesday, July 11, 2017
The 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 12:00PMThursday, June 15, 2017
Musical.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 08:00AMThursday, May 25, 2017
Disney 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 04:57PMFriday, May 19, 2017
Musical.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 01:09PMWednesday, May 17, 2017
Cheddar, 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 02:48PMTuesday, May 2, 2017
Maker 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 09:01AMMonday, May 1, 2017
Live.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 02:52PMTuesday, April 18, 2017
Verizon, 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 04:15PMThursday, April 13, 2017
Apple 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 10:00AMTuesday, April 4, 2017
YouTube 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 03:32PMThursday, March 30, 2017
Disney’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 09:00AMThursday, March 9, 2017
AT&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 10:39AMThursday, February 23, 2017
Maker 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 03:30PMWednesday, February 15, 2017
Maker 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 05:08PMWednesday, February 1, 2017
Laurene 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 11:24AMTuesday, January 31, 2017
Disney 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 10:25AMWednesday, December 21, 2016
Snapchat 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 12:00PMFriday, December 16, 2016
BAMTech, 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 01:12PMWednesday, December 7, 2016
Spanish-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 08:00AMThursday, December 1, 2016
Naturally, 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 09:00AMMonday, October 31, 2016
Twitter 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 03:52PMWednesday, October 26, 2016
Maker 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 
