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Warner Bros. in talks about a Harry Potter TV series for HBO Max

Warner Bros. is in talks about a Harry Potter Max Original series on HBO Max, a source with knowledge of the matter confirmed to TechCrunch. The company is nowhere near striking a deal yet, the source tells us.
Bloomberg was the first to report about the potential deal. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav and HBO chief Casey Bloys have apparently been trying to convince author J.K. Rowling to approve the series.
Potterheads everywhere will likely be excited about a future series, being that Harry Potter is overall the best-selling book series, with over 600 million copies sold. In total, the eight films based on the series generated $7.7 billion in worldwide ticket sales.
The Harry Potter brand has turned into many products and spinoffs, with the most recent being the video game Hogwarts Legacy, which Warner Bros. published in February and has sold more than 12 million copies so far. There’s also a stage production called “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” that had its official opening night on June 19, 2022.
Warner Bros. has wanted to do more with the popular book series for a long time. The company previously said it would take “full advantage” of its IP, including Harry Potter, noted Zaslav during the Q4 2022 earnings call.
“I believe that we have an overwhelming advantage in the marketplace with the IP that we own,” Zaslav said. “We have the strongest hand in the industry, with the most complete portfolio of assets and globally renowned franchises, personalities and storytelling IP across sports, news, nonfiction and entertainment, in virtually every region of the globe and in every language.”
Other plans include new films based on The Lord of the Rings franchise, a prequel series for Stephen King’s “It,” and more “Game of Thrones” projects. WBD has also brought on filmmaker James Gunn and producer Peter Safran to reboot the DC Universe.
Next week, the company will hold a press conference to announce its new streaming strategy, which will see a new streaming service that combines HBO Max and Discovery+ content.

Warner Bros. Discovery plans to keep Discovery+ as a standalone streaming service in the US

Warner Bros. in talks about a Harry Potter TV series for HBO Max by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch
Warner Bros. in talks about a Harry Potter TV series for HBO Max

Netflix restructures its film units, aiming to make fewer (but better) original movies

Netflix is restructuring its film units and vowing to make fewer but better movies, according to a new report from Bloomberg, which Netflix partially confirmed. The report said the streaming giant is combining film units that produce small and midsize films, resulting in a handful of layoffs, including two longtime executives. Netflix told TechCrunch that these changes were made to simplify its structure and set it up for the next phase of its growth, but declined to comment on how many people were being let go.
Scott Stuber, chairman of Netflix Film, has been looking to scale back the company’s output of films to ensure that more of them are high quality, according to the report.
It appears that this change has already been implemented, as the report comes as Netflix recently revealed its 2023 original films lineup, which consists of 49 titles. In comparison, the company had 85 original films in its lineup last year. For context, a Netflix original refers to both the content that has been produced in-house and the content to which it owns the distribution rights. It’s unclear for now if Netflix would also be scaling back the addition of originals that it didn’t produce, but obtained the rights to — a move that would impact the output of new originals on the service.
One of the executives leaving the company is Lisa Nishimura, who was behind the company’s foray into standup comedy and original documentaries, Netflix confirmed. Nishimura had worked on some of Netflix’s most popular titles, including “Making a Murderer,” “Power of the Dog” and “Tiger King.”
Ian Bricke, who served as the vice president of Independent Original Film at Netflix, will also be leaving. Bricke played a big part of Netflix’s dominance in the rom-com space, as he spearheaded notable titles like “The Kissing Booth,” “Set It Up” and “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.”
“Lisa Nishimura joined Netflix in the DVD days, and as the company moved into streaming, she built our original documentary and stand-up comedy divisions from the ground up, and established Netflix as a powerhouse in both spaces,” Stuber said in an emailed statement. “Ian Bricke has been at the company for more than a decade, building and leading our independent film team, attracting filmmakers like Tamara Jenkins, Nicole Holofcener, and Mark and Jay Duplass. We thank them both for their contributions to making us a world-class film studio and wish them the best for the future.”
The handful of layoffs come after Netflix conducted a series of job cuts last year. In May 2022, the company laid off approximately 150 staffers. A month after that, the company laid off 300 more people, which represented 3% of its workforce at the time. Netflix then laid off another 30 employees in September who were part of its animation department.
On the editorial side, Netflix laid off 25 people on its editorial staff just five months after launching its in-house Tudum publication.
Earlier this year, Netflix boasted to shareholders it has successfully scaled its decade-long original programming initiative.
“Now that we are a decade into our original programming initiative and have successfully scaled it, we are past the most cash-intensive phase of this buildout,” the company wrote to shareholders. “As a result, we believe we will now be generating sustained, positive annual free cash flow going forward.”
Netflix is scheduled to report Q1 2023 results on April 18.

Netflix appears to be working to bring games to TV with the iPhone as a controller

Netflix restructures its film units, aiming to make fewer (but better) original movies by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch
Netflix restructures its film units, aiming to make fewer (but better) original movies

Spotify is testing new card-style user profiles focused on discovery

At Spotify’s Stream On event this month, the company introduced a redesigned app with TikTok-like discovery feeds, an AI DJ and other tools for artists and podcasters. But the app’s changes may not be stopping there. The company confirmed it’s now testing a revamp of its user profiles, which includes a card-style layout that lets users establish more of a social identity on the platform in addition to providing easy access to Spotify’s unique features — like its personalized recommendations, Blend playlists, co-listening experiences and more.
The changes were first spotted by Chris Messina, who shared screenshots of the tests on Twitter. He noted the additional cards on profiles and how the new layout was directing users to tap a button to “discover more features.”
Some Spotify users, however, said they’ve had the updated profiles for some time. But that’s only because the feature has been in live testing in multiple markets. These profiles are not fully rolled out to all users.

This is big! Spotify is previewing a new profile design!
It appears that more profile cards will be coming soon.
It recommends discovering «more features» to «get the most of your listening experience».#NewSpotify pic.twitter.com/Qcctw3PJU7
— Chris Messina (chrismessina@mastodon.xyz) (@chrismessina) March 28, 2023

Spotify did not commit it would make the feature available for everyone at any particular time. Often, the company’s new ideas are tested in public, then modified based on user engagement and feedback before a global rollout. Or, in some cases, they’re scrapped entirely. That said, it’s not as likely that this one would be dropped, given how well it fits with the new Spotify redesign which puts greater emphasis on discovery.
“We routinely conduct a number of tests,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch when asked about the new profiles. “Some of those tests end up informing our user experience and others serve only as an important learning. We don’t have anything further to share at this time,” they added.
Image Credits: Chris Messina via Twitter (opens in a new window)
Among the notable changes in this version of the user profiles is the new heading at the top of the screen that looks more like something you’d see on a social network. Currently, Spotify user profiles are fairly bare-bones. The person’s name as well as their follower and following counts are displayed above lists of their playlists and recently played artists. The new profiles, by comparison, include other details about the person like which Spotify plan they’re subscribed to, how long they’ve been a Spotify member, their general location (like the U.S.), in addition to their follower and following counts, a button that lets you follow them and another for profile edits.
There’s also a fun feature that apparently lets you set a “vibe” above your name, to give your profile a little pizazz.
Image Credits: Chris Messina via Twitter (opens in a new window)
The new profiles still feature sections for your playlists and artists, but these now appear as cards and there are more interactive features available next to these options. For instance, you can now click a button to create a new playlist right from your profile, or use buttons beside each playlist to share them with others. Next to each artist’s name, there also are buttons that let you follow the artist on Spotify — before, you’d have to click into the artist profile to do so. This could be particularly useful if you had visited someone else’s profile and were discovering new artists through their activity.
Under the “Discover more features” section on the new profiles, users are pointed to other things they can do on Spotify — like find live events, “like” more songs to improve their recommendations, create Blends with friends, check out Spotify’s new audiobooks and more.
The profiles also include a message at the bottom that reads “View more cards,” which indicates there will be future additions coming to this space beyond the playlists and recently played artists. But this feature isn’t fully built out yet — Messina told us that, when clicked, the in-app message reads “there’s nothing to see here yet” and informs users that Spotify is “busy building more content for you — coming soon.”
(May we suggest incorporating podcast recommendations into this experience, please?)
These changes would make sense as part of Spotify’s broader focus on discovery that’s driving its most recent app updates. That is, instead of just showcasing a user’s basic information and activity, these redesigned profiles would allow people to explore more of what Spotify has to offer while also making it easier to find and enjoy new artists and music directly from someone else’s profile with fewer clicks.
Spotify is testing new card-style user profiles focused on discovery by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch
Spotify is testing new card-style user profiles focused on discovery

Google gets antitrust attention in Spain over news licensing

Google can add another antitrust investigation to its stack. This one has been opened by Spain’s competition authority, the CNMC, which said today it’s concerned about possible anti-competitive practices related to the licensing of news content by local publishers.
In a press release it said it is investigating “a series of practices that could involve an abuse of Google’s dominant position vis-à-vis the publishers of press publications and news agencies established in Spain” [NB: We’ve translated the text from Spanish with machine translation].
“In particular, these practices would consist the possible imposition of unfair commercial conditions on the publishers of press publications and news agencies established in Spain for the exploitation of their content protected by intellectual property rights,” it also wrote. “On the other hand, the investigated behaviors would also include practices that would constitute acts of unfair competition that could distort free competition and affect the public interest.”
The competition authority said it is acting following a complaint by the Spanish Center for Reprographic Rights (aka, Centro Español de Derechos Reprográficos or CEDRO).
We’ve reached out to all concerned.
News licensing is an area where Google has faced severe sanction in Europe already. Back in July 2021, France’s antitrust authority fined the tech giant over half a billion dollars for breaching an order to negotiate copyright fees with news publishers for reuse of their content. That followed the EU a copyright reform, agreed back in 2019, that extended IP to snippets of news content — requiring platforms like Google to negotiate with publishers.

Google fined $592M in France for breaching antitrust order to negotiate copyright fees for news snippets

Spain transposed the EU reform into its national law in November 2021, paving the way for a return of Google News to the country.
Google’s news aggregation service had closed in Spain in 2014 after the country passed a law that aimed to force Google to pay a collective licensing fee for the news snippets. The EU copyright reform replaced the prior fee regime with a requirement to negotiate with individual publishers — and Google News duly reopened in Spain in June 2022.
At the same time, the company also announced it would launch its News Showcase product in the country. Google’s News Showcase product was spun up by the tech giant in fall 2020 as lawmakers in Europe and elsewhere were zeroing in on making it pay for news content reuse — creating a licensing vehicle it could use in the looming, inexorable negotiations with publishers.
It’s not immediately clear whether the Spanish probe will focus on Google’s News Showcase licensing arrangements or on copyright fees talks — or both.
While it remains to be seen what Spain’s investigation of Google’s news licensing practices will finally determine — the authority has up to 18 months to conduct the probe — it said its preliminary information-gathering phase found “indications of possible infringement”.
Germany’s antitrust authority, meanwhile, has already pushed back over Mountain View’s practices in this area after starting to scrutinize its news-related fine print in summer 2021. The regulatory attention on Google from the German FCO — which is currently armed with beefier powers to tackle Big Tech than other European countries (thanks to a 2021 update to competition law squarely targeted at digital giants) — has led to Google offering a series of concessions over how it operates News Showcase locally, including an offer not to include the showcasing of licensed content in general search results (which is one trigger for antitrust concerns).
The News Showcase product provides the prospect of raised visibility for participating publishers, since the offer is for Google to feature participants’ content to users across a number of touchpoints. However that could create a disadvantage for publishers who don’t pay Google (i.e. if it leads to their content being less visible in Google’s general Internet search, given its continued dominance of the Internet search and content discovery market).
Google has also sought to co-mingle negotiations with publishers over News Showcase with what are, under the pan-EU reform, legally required talks over copyright fees — something France’s watchdog slapped down in its hefty enforcement in mid 2021.

Google offers not to put News Showcase into search results in Germany as antitrust probe rolls on

Google users not given sufficient choice over its data processing, says German antitrust watchdog

Google gets antitrust attention in Spain over news licensing by Natasha Lomas originally published on TechCrunch
Google gets antitrust attention in Spain over news licensing

Disney cuts metaverse division as part of broader restructuring

Walt Disney Co. has eliminated its metaverse division as part of staff cuts that promise to reduce head count by around 7,000 across the company over the next two months, reports The Wall Street Journal.
CEO Bob Iger said Monday that those layoffs would begin this week. Disney’s next-generation storytelling and consumer experiences unit, the small division that was developing metaverse strategies, looks like it’s one of the first to go.
The metaverse division is headed by Mike White, who was promoted to the role from SVP of consumer experiences and platforms in February 2022 and charged with getting Disney deeper into the web3 space. The unit aimed to find ways to tell more interactive stories in immersive formats using Disney’s extensive library of intellectual property, according to WSJ. Aside from the Disney we all know and love, that extensive library includes Pixar, Marvel and all of the Star Wars movies and shows.
All 50 or so members of the team have lost their jobs, sources told WSJ. White will remain at the company, but it’s not clear in what capacity.
The company could not be reached for comment.
Disney’s former CEO, Bob Chapek, brought White on last year with the goal of creating “an entirely new paradigm for how audiences experience and engage with our stories,” according to an internal memo. Chapek also described the metaverse as “the next great storytelling frontier” and a “perfect place to pursue our strategic pillars of storytelling excellence, innovation and audience focus.”
The hiring of White and the creation of the new metaverse unit came a few months after Facebook rebranded to Meta in an attempt to identify with the futuristic technology into which CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been pouring billions of dollars.
Iger took over for Chapek in November and, despite recent developments, seems to be bullish on the metaverse. He invested in and joined the board of Genies Inc. last year, a startup that lets users create online avatars for use in metaverse applications.
The metaverse is still many years from going mainstream, which has frustrated many big tech companies that invested large sums on new entertainment formats. Despite Meta’s billions spent on the Oculus headset and building out the metaverse, there has been low user demand and general confusion among users about how to use the new technology for anything but gaming.

Last month, Disney said it would make $5.5 billion in cuts and cut 7,000 jobs as part of a broader restructuring. Like many other large conglomerates, Disney is feeling the pressure to bring costs down, and that often means cutting out expensive moonshot projects that aren’t bringing in any near-term revenue.
It’s not yet clear if Disney will continue to work on metaverse applications via other teams, since it’s a long-term bet. Zuckerberg has repeatedly asked investors to trust him, be patient and play the long game.

Disney cuts metaverse division as part of broader restructuring by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch
Disney cuts metaverse division as part of broader restructuring