| Hello again and thanks for opening today's Inside Streaming! Both of our top two stories are sort of checking in with big ongoing narratives. Specifically, the Paramount acquisition talks and the NBA rights negotiations. I'm always sort of uncertain how to handle big meta-topics like this, that make headlines and go on for weeks or even months at a time. On the one hand, they're always sort of important, big-picture kind of stories that informed people should track. But on the other hand, I recognize that constant updates and check-ins when not that much has actually changed or been reported can be repetitive and unnecessary. So I try to strike a balance as best I can. But it's definitely a subjective thing! If you'd like to hear more or less about big ongoing stories, either in particular or overall, please don't hesitate to hit REPLY on any of these emails. I'd love to hear from you! Enjoy today's issue. Lon
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| 1 | | Paramount Global released its first quarter earnings report as acquisition negotiations with Skydance and RedBird Capital continue. Paramount+ hit 71 million global subscribers, an increase of 3.7 million from the close of 2023. More: - Streaming losses in Q1 shrunk down to $286 million; they were still at $511 million in Q1 of 2023.
- Ad revenues were also way up, thanks to growth on both the Paramount+ and Pluto TV platforms.
- The company's theatrical film division saw revenue climb by 3%, boosted by the success of the "Mean Girls" musical and the musical biopic "Bob Marley: One Love" at the box office.
- The company confirmed the exit of CEO Bob Bakish, and has created a new "office of the CEO" that will be filled by George Cheeks, Chris McCarthy, and Brian Robbins.
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| 2 | | According to The Wall Street Journal, NBCUniversal plans to bid $2.5 billion a year for the rights to broadcast and stream NBA games. If signed, this would mark NBCU's first agreement with the NBA in over two decades. More: - Amazon has a framework in place for a separate streaming NBA package, that would be similar to its deal with the NFL for "Thursday Night Football" games.
- NBCU hopes to take over the rights package currently held by Warner Bros. Discovery, specifically for the TBS and TNT cable networks.
- TNT has been WBD's flagship cable network for NBA coverage since 1989, and hosts the weekly "Inside the NBA" studio series.
- Any NBCU deal would likely involve both network and cable broadcasts along with streams on Peacock, which has had success in recent seasons with its NFL coverage.
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| 3 | | DAILY CALENDAR TUESDAY, APRIL 30 THE VEIL: Limited espionage thriller series, produced for the FX network, starring Elisabeth Moss and Yumna Marwan as two women playing a deadly game of cat and mouse as they travel from Istanbul to London via Paris. Josh Charles, Dali Benssalah, and James Purefoy co-star; Steven Knight ("Peaky Blinders") wrote and executive produced. [Hulu] THE HOLDOVERS: 2023 holiday comedy-drama, reuniting "Sideways" star Paul Giamatti and director Alexander Payne. In 1970, gruff boarding school professor Paul Hunham (Giamatti) gets stuck spending the Christmas break on campus, along with a few students and a cafeteria worker (Da'Vine Joy Randolph). Randolph won the Oscar this year for her supporting performance. [Prime Video] FIASCO: Debut French comedy series starring Pierre Niney as a film director struggling to shoot his first feature, in part because there's a saboteur on his set. François Civil, Géraldine Nakache, Igor Gotesman, and Vincent Cassel co-star. Niney and Gotesman co-created and co-wrote the series together. [Netflix] SIN CITY MURDERS: First year true-crime series, produced for the Oxygen Network, looking into homicide cases in and around Las Vegas, Nevada. The series debuted earlier this year on cable and hits Peacock today. [Peacock] | | | |
| 4 | | According to Amazon's internal figures, the dystopian sci-fi action-comedy "Fallout" scored 65 million viewers in its first 16 days on Prime Video. That makes it the streamer's second most-watched series debut of all time, behind only "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" in 2022. More: - The video game adaptation had the most-watched Prime Video series debut in history among adults ages 18-34.
- 60% of the show's audience came from outside the US; it was particularly popular in the UK, France, and Brazil.
- Amazon released few specifics about its numbers, and did not elaborate on how they were calculating "viewers."
- Ella Purnell stars in the series as a young woman, raised underground, who's trying to survive in a chaotic retrofuturistic world that was utterly decimated by a global nuclear war.
- "Fallout" has already been renewed for Season 2.
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| 5 | | The free-to-use streaming platform Freely launchced this week in the UK. Freely is a joint project between UK public broadcasters BBC, ITV, and Channel 4, along with Paramount's Channel 5. More: - The service offers access to the companies' live TV channels along with on-demand content.
- The joint venture between these four broadcasters was previously known as "Everyone TV."
- At some point, Scottish and Welsh public broadcasters STV and S4C also plan to join the platform.
- Freely is only available in the UK, and only on select smart TVs from Hisense and TiVo; it's not streaming currently on any mobile devices or tablets.
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| 6 | | Netflix and producer Greg Berlanti are developing a live-action series based on the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon "Scooby Doo." Scripts are currently being written; if they're approved, the show is likely to get an order for a full first season. More: - The scripts come from Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg, veterans of Netflix's "Cowboy Bebop" live-action series as well as Hulu's "High Fidelity" series.
- Berlanti would produce through his company, Berlanti Productions, for Warner Bros. Television, where he has an overall deal.
- Berlanti recently developed the well-received supernatural mystery series "Dead Boy Detectives" for Netflix, and also produced the streamer's "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" series.
- He's also the producer behind the CW's long run of DC Comics-inspired series, which comes to a close with the final season of the network's "Superman & Lois."
- "Scooby Doo" previously inspired a series of live-action Warner Bros films in the 2000s; a raunchy animated spinoff for adults, "Velma," is currently in its second season on Max.
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| 7 | | A number of legal questions remain about the Netflix reality series "Unlocked: A Jail Experiment." The main issues concern whether or not Pulaski County, Arkansas Sheriff Eric Higgins had the sole authority to open up his prisons and grant access to the show's producers. More: - The series concerns a "social experiment" conducted by Sheriff Higgins in his prisons, to see how inmates would react to an honor-based system that gives them greater control over their own daily routines and schedules, including leaving their cells unlocked.
- Judge Barry Hyde has disputed Higgins' claims that he has sole authority to make decisions about allowing camera crews into the facility.
- On Hyde's order, Pulaski County returned a $60,000 check from production company Lucky 8, which was intended to reimburse the country for costs incurred during the production.
- Hyde argued that, as Pulaski County has no formal relationship to Lucky 8, he had no choice but to refuse this "offered donation."
- "Unlocked" is apparently performing well with Netflix viewers; it was the streamer's second most-watched English language series in its debut week, with around 3.9 million views.
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| 8 | | QUICK HITS - MGM+ released a teaser for Season 3 of the horror-thriller series "From"; the show, set in a cursed town that won't allow its residents to leave, returns with new episodes in the fall.
- Roku devices will soon begin displaying video ads on their homescreens; currently, static ads run in the space Roku identifies on the homescreen as "The Marquee."
- Peter Jackson's remastered cut of the classic 1970 Beatles documentary "Let It Be" hits Disney+ on May 8.
- A portion of Season 4 of Netflix's "Emily in Paris" is currently being shot in Italy, where the character is reportedly enjoying "a Roman holiday."
- The horror series "Apartment 7A," a prequel to the classic 1968 film "Rosemary's Baby," comes to Paramount+ this fall; Julia Garner stars as a dancer who moves into a mysterious New York apartment following a devastating injury.
- The latest animated "Jurassic World" spinoff, "Chaos Theory," hits Netflix later on this year; the streamer has confirmed that "Camp Cretaceous" voice actor Jenna Ortega does not return for the follow-up series.
- The family animated series "WondLa," based on the "Search for WondLa" books by Tony DiTerlizzi, premieres on Apple TV+ on June 28; Jeanine Mason stars as a human teen on a future Earth that's now populated entirely by aliens and magical creatures.
- Netflix greenlit a reality dating series from the UK -- "Cheaters: Unfinished Buisness" -- in which former couples who broke up due to infidelity reunite and attempt to rebuild trust; former "Britain's Got Talent" judge Amanda Holden hosts.
- On his podcast, "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend," the comedian discussed the aftermath of his recent viral appearance on YouTube's "Hot Ones," which he said left his eyes runny, his mouth in pain, and triggered a burning sensation across his skin.
- Yesterday's reports about an alleged "Game of Thrones" MMORPG video game in development were inaccurate; in fact, the story referred to a mobile game from Netmarble that's been in development since 2022.
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 | Writer | | Lon Harris is the writer and editor of Inside Streaming and was the very first person to ever write an Inside newsletter. He lives in Los Angeles, California, and also writes about TV and film for Fandom, Screen Junkies, Rotten Tomatoes, Gamma Ray and others. Plus he has a Game of Thrones podcast called "Casterly Talk" and competes on The Movie Trivia Schmoedown as "The Professor." | | This newsletter was edited by Lon Harris | |
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