Film and TV Briefing: Friday 12 September 2025
Welcome to this week’s round-up of news, commentary and industry announcements that you may have missed from the past week.
If you are looking for advice in relation to any of the issues mentioned, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
In the news
Streaming platforms set to overtake pay-TV as largest source of content investment in Asia-Pacific (Variety)
Disney teams up with Atresmedia in latest European content-sharing pact (Deadline)
New Channel 4 Chair revealed (Deadline)
Paramount hires Meta exec as Chief Product Officer as part of tech rebrand (The Hollywood Reporter)
Netflix’s Chief Product Officer set to depart after five years (The Hollywood Reporter)
AI firm to reconstruct missing footage from Orson Welles’ ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ (The Guardian)
‘The Conjuring: Last Rites’ records biggest ever global Box Office debut for a horror film (Variety)
2025 Box Office aided by various under-the-radar releases (IndieWire)
Features and commentary
AI movie-making assembly line is ramping up, but many directors are pushing back (The Hollywood Reporter)
Industry announcements
2025 Pact census published, showing sluggish growth in TV revenues (Pact)
Equity seeks to appeal Spotlight judgment, finding against regulation of casting platform (Equity)
Bectu and the Fabian Society call for government to introduce sick pay for self-employed (Bectu)
TUC backs Equity’s call for better protections for performers from AI exploitation (Equity)
Resources
Legal updates
Anthropic to pay $1.5bn to authors plus $3,000 per book used to train its AI systems (The Hollywood Reporter)
Warner Bros. Discovery files lawsuit against Midjourney for copyright infringement (The Hollywood Reporter)
Blake Lively files motion over alleged frivolous defamation lawsuit filed by Justin Baldoni (Variety)
