Netflix

Video podcasts from the Jonas Brothers and the cast of “Boy Meets World” are heading to Disney+ as part of a new licensing partnership with iHeartMedia designed to capture viewers on mobile and beyond.

The agreement will bring six iHeartMedia podcasts to Disney+ and Hulu, starting with “Hey Jonas!” hosted by Kevin, Nick and Joe Jonas on both streaming services. “Pod Meets World,” hosted by the stars of the ’90s sitcom “Boy Meets World,” will also appear on Disney+ later this month.

Other podcasts coming this fall to Hulu include “Fake Doctors, Real Friends with Zach and Donald” hosted by the stars of medical comedy “Scrubs,” “Desperately Devoted” that will discuss drama “Desperate Housewives,” “StraightioLab,” that delves into straight culture and “Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim.”

“Fans can’t get enough of the stories and talent they love, and podcasts have become one of the fastest growing ways for audiences to connect with them,” said Lauren Tempest, Head of Content Planning & Partnerships, DTC at The Walt Disney Company in a statement.

The additional iHeartMedia content adds to Disney+ and Hulu’s existing collection of 30 podcasts available to stream in the U.S.

Disney and iHeartMedia declined to comment on the financial terms of the deal.

“From iconic rewatch series and fan-favorite conversations to original storytelling, this deal gives both existing listeners and new viewers an easy way to discover and connect with some of podcasting’s most engaging voices through video,” Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO for iHeartMedia, said in a statement.

Podcasts initially started as audio only, but over the years, have delved into showing video too. Other streamers, including Netflix and HBO Max, have video podcasts available on their platforms.

Netflix made deals with Spotify and iHeartMedia to bring popular video podcasts, including “The Bill Simmons Podcast,” “The Breakfast Club” and “My Favorite Murder” to its streaming service.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in an April 16 earnings presentation that people consume podcasts on Netflix during the day, at a time when the streamer historically has less engagement and they’re watching the podcasts more on mobile devices, where professional TV and film historically makes up a small percentage of mobile viewing, he said.

“It’s great that we get to meet members where they are, even when they’re enjoying other forms of entertainment,” Sarandos said.

Documentary fans are in for a treat watching any of these hidden gems

There’s nothing more satisfying than discovering a documentary that packs in the twists, turns and mic-drop moments.

While streaming giant Netflix has become synonymous with shock factor documentary films and series, there are plenty that exist beyond its library.

One Redditor recently asked people for their suggestions on little-known documentaries that “blew your socks off” which brought in over 2,000 responses. The resulting recommendations spanned nature, crime and the weird and wonderful, exposing a multitude of stories that may have otherwise flown under the radar.

My Octopus Teacher

One of the most-suggested titles was My Octopus Teacher. Released back in 2020, the feature-length documentary film follows diver Craig Foster and the surprising bond he formed with an octopus over the course of a year.

Fans of the film described it as “not your typical nature doc”, while another said they “don’t eat octopus because of this movie.” As per its official synopsis: “A filmmaker forges an unusual friendship with an octopus living in a South African kelp forest, learning as the animal shares the mysteries of her world.”

The title actually won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature back in 2021, so you know it’s going to be good. You can currently stream it on Netflix.

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

Jackass star Johnny Knoxville is among the producers credited on this 2009 documentary about an infamous outlaw family living in West Virginia. The film’s director Julien Nitzberg spent an entire year with five generations of the White family in rural Appalachia.

The New York Times called it “compelling and complicated”, while one viewer dubbed it “one of the craziest docs to ever exist.” Another claimed: “Had a friend who grew up near that family. She said it is 100% accurate.”

While it isn’t readily available for streaming, the 10th Anniversary Edition can be rented or purchased via Prime Video. Alternatively, eager documentary fans can buy a physical copy.

Three Identical Strangers

A stranger-than-fiction tale, Three Identical Strangers, released in 2018, tells the incredible true story of how a set of triplets separated at birth somehow found each other again.

Bobby Shafran, Eddy Galland and David Kellman’s unique story sees them catapulted to celebrity status on a global scale, but a horrifying discovery about their beginnings casts a dark shadow over their lives.

The BAFTA-nominated film has a run time of just over an hour and a half and is currently available to purchase via YouTube, Apple TV and Prime Video. Sadly it is not included in any streaming service subscriptions at the moment.

Class Action Park

Another 2020 release is Class Action Park, which chronicles an amusement park in New Jersey and the high number of injuries that occurred there. In total there were six recorded deaths at the attraction before it closed down in 1996.

Available to watch on HBO Max, the documentary features newly-unearthed recordings and documents, as well as interviews with people who visited it for themselves and lived to tell the tale.

Its synopsis reads: “To some, New Jersey’s infamous Action Park was the most spectacularly fun amusement park on Earth: A place where unruly 1980s teenagers were given free rein to go gonzo on strange contraptions that seemed to violate the laws of common sense (and perhaps physics). To others, it was an ill-conceived death trap. One thing is sure: It’s the type of place that will never exist again.”

Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Currently available for free streaming via Plex, 2011 film Jiro Dreams of Sushi centres on 85-year-old Jiro Ono as he attempts to realise his life-long quest of making the most perfect piece of sushi.

He was the first sushi chef to earn three Michelin stars and considered the world’s best at what he does, but he is still not content that he has achieved perfection. Filmed at his world-famous Tokyo restaurant, Sukiyabashi Jiro, the documentary also follows his son, Yoshikazu, as he struggles with the pressure of trying to follow in his father’s footsteps.

The documentary has an impressive Rotten Tomatoes rating of 99 per cent from critics and an equally solid 91 per cent from audiences. One viewer shared: “It’s about a sushi restaurant, but is really about one man’s absolute, laser focus on absolute 100.0000% perfection. Odd title, odd theme, but an incredible documentary.”

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” opened to $360 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, pushing out 2019’s “Avengers: Endgame” to claim the biggest domestic debut in history.

“Records are made to be broken,” Sony Motion Picture Group Chairman Tom Rothman said in a statement Monday. “But we will take great pride in this one, for as long as we hold it.”

Internationally, the web-slinger picked up an additional $572 million for a worldwide total of $932 million. The film, which stars Tom Holland and Zendaya, was produced by Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, Marvel Studios and Pascal Pictures on a production budget of about $225 million.

By Monday morning, nearly everyone in the exhibition business was cheering.

The chief executives of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Regal and Cinemark Holdings all put out statements about record revenue at their chains, plus deep demand for merchandise, food and drinks. Cinema United trade group chief executive Michael O’Leary applauded the “great slate of films” that have populated theaters this year.

There’s a lot to be excited about here. Expectations for the film were high, but breaking a pre-pandemic record — previously held by an “Avengers” movie, no less — is a big deal.

“The buildup to what ‘Endgame’ was at $357 million just seemed out of reach,” Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst at entertainment data firm Exhibitor Relations, told me on Monday, referring to the previous domestic debut record. “It’s pretty gratifying to see that characters and emotions still matter in filmmaking. This movie was just really about relationships.”

That emotional core was a major focus for the filmmakers. When I spoke with producer Amy Pascal in the lead-up to the opening, she said there was no topping the multiverse storyline of 2021‘s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which featured the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Instead, the filmmakers chose to go smaller, focusing on the internal conflict and loneliness of Holland’s Peter Parker after a spell forces his friends to forget him.

Spider-Man has always been one of the most popular superheroes. But not every Spidey film has had this level of box office success. What “Brand New Day” shows is that a strong story matters more to audiences than the name of the superhero alone — an important distinction as the genre has weathered an uneven track record in recent years. Just this summer, we saw stumbles from Amazon MGM Studios’ “Masters of the Universe” and Warner Bros. Pictures and DC Studios’ “Supergirl.”

The next test arrives in December with Walt Disney Co. and Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Doomsday,” which “Brand New Day” teases in a post-credits scene, as well as throughout the film. “As audiences saw, it sets up exciting things to come,” Marvel Studios President and “Spider-Man” producer Kevin Feige said in a Sunday statement.

The recovery, by the numbers

Domestic box office revenue for the weekend totaled $436.5 million, according to data from Rentrak. Spider-Man accounted for 82% of it, but Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” also hauled in $51 million in its third weekend, on its way to worldwide revenue of more than $912 million.

Together, the pair have combined for a unique, and telling, one-two punch. It’s the same phenomenon that drove moviegoers to A24’s “Backrooms” and Focus Features’ “Obsession.” Originality in storytelling really does matter, despite the plethora of reboots and sequels. And when moviegoers have more choices, they’re coming back, again and again, analysts say.

“These two films in particular have really turned moviegoing itself into the event,” Bock said. “The audience isn’t rejecting theatrical movies. They’re rejecting films that don’t feel essential.”

Domestic summer box office revenue to date now stands at nearly $3.6 billion, up 16.7% compared to 2025 and — importantly — only 0.7% behind the same period in 2019. Year-to-date revenue is about $6.2 billion, a 15.4% improvement from last year, though it still lags 2019 by 11.6%.

And with another blockbuster to come in December — Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment’s “Dune: Part Three” — analysts now predict 2026 domestic revenue is on track to reach $10 billion, a milestone that hasn’t happened since before the pandemic.

What could undo it

Here’s the catch. A major part of that recovery rests on volume: more titles, more genres, more reasons to leave the house on a given weekend. Which is exactly what a federal judge in Oakland is weighing right now.

Paramount Skydance’s nearly $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has cleared the Justice Department, the European Commission and regulators in more than a dozen other countries. What it has not cleared is a coalition of 12 state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, who sued July 13 to block the deal under the Clayton Antitrust Act.

On Friday, the parties each proposed their preferred dates for an antitrust trial over which U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín will preside as Paramount argues for its merger to proceed and the state attorneys general argue against it. The judge has said the states had presented compelling evidence the combined company would hold a substantial share of the wide-release theatrical distribution market — enough, she said, to presume the deal likely violates antitrust law. The Writers Guild of America has joined the states’ lawsuit.

Paramount has said the merger will benefit consumers, workers and the entertainment industry, and that the states’ claims of anticompetitive effects “are without any basis in modern market realities.”

Hollywood has seen this movie before. The last unaccounted-for variable from the pre-pandemic era is Disney’s 2019 acquisition of the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox, which combined two studios and led to fewer theatrical releases.

Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison has promised the combined company will release a minimum of 30 films a year. Many in Hollywood have their doubts.

“If they’re able to execute on that promise of 30 titles a year, I think we’re going to accelerate even further,” said Daniel Loria, a senior vice president at The Box Office Co. “We’re on a great trajectory. But there are serious questions that remain on their capacity to do so, and what the impact of another slowdown in releases from a major studio would bring.”

Paramount has said it won’t close the deal before June 2027 unless the litigation resolves sooner, and is pushing for a November trial; the states want April 2027. Either way, the industry just posted its biggest opening weekend ever while the question of how many movies get made is sitting in a courtroom in Northern California.

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

The Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. has sued Jay Penske, Penske Media Corp., the Golden Globe Foundation and others over the 2023 acquisition of the Golden Globe Awards, alleging antitrust violations.

As my colleague Stacy Perman reported, the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. is seeking at least $150 million in damages.

The group, which founded the Golden Globes, said in its lawsuit that Penske and the other named defendants “orchestrated and participated in a clandestine scheme to fraudulently acquire the Golden Globe Awards, dismantle the HFPA [Hollywood Foreign Press Assn.], and exert monopolistic control over Hollywood trades and the awards circuit thereby violating California’s antitrust and consumer protection statutes.”

A spokesperson for Penske and the Golden Globes denied the allegations, saying the suit “continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA.”

What I’m watching

I had a pretty hectic week, which didn’t leave a lot of time to catch up on TV. But I did go see the L.A. Sparks game against the New York Liberty, which unfortunately ended in a loss. We’ll see what happens now that star Kelsey Plum has been traded.

A producer sued Netflix on Wednesday, alleging the streamer lost an unreleased copy of a new Nicolas Cage movie and seeking damages of at least $105 million.

Producer Simon Afram invested more than $45 million of his own money making “Fortitude,” a film that takes place during World War II and features actors including Cage, Sir Ben Kingsley and Ron Perlman, according to the lawsuit. The movie, described as “Ocean’s Eleven” meets “Inglourious Basterds,” is based on Operation Fortitude, an effort during World War II in which double agents set a trap for Adolf Hitler and his armies. The movie has not yet been released and is seeking buyers.

“Fortitude” had its own mystery last month when the drive that once held the movie went missing.

On June 15, Daniel Haido, an associate producer of “Fortitude,” dropped off an unencrypted copy of the movie for Netflix to view and instructed the staff to delete the files after the screening. Haido also told Netflix to notify him when the drive was ready for pick up, but Netflix was unresponsive to several efforts to pick up the drive, the lawsuit said. On June 25, Netflix notified Haido that the drive had been stolen.

“Unfortunately, someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week,” Sean Berney, a director for original film at Netflix, wrote in a June 25 email, according to the lawsuit. “We’ve been working through this with our security teams to no luck.”

Berney in his email offered to reimburse Afram’s company for the missing drive or create a new digital cinema package, according to the lawsuit.

But Afram in his lawsuit said the damage was much greater than that. He is seeking economic damages of at least $105 million, along with other costs.

“By losing control of the Film, Netflix destroyed that exclusivity and materially, if not completely, impaired the Film’s marketability,” his lawsuit said. “It is not fathomable that a sophisticated buyer would invest tens of millions of dollars to acquire the Film — and tens of millions more to market it — while facing the constant risk that it could appear online to be viewed widely for free at any time.”

Netflix in a statement said it is conducting an investigation and is offering to monitor piracy sites for any unauthorized distribution or sale of the film. The streamer accused Afram’s law firm of “hostile attempts to extort money from Netflix over this situation — including immediately demanding $165 million for the film rather than work with us in good faith.”

“Netflix disputes any claim that it bears the risk of loss for a film delivered without the proper industry-standard safeguards,” the company said in a statement. “While we do not own the rights to ‘Fortitude,’ we take content security seriously and have taken extra measures to support the filmmaker and his team.”

Akerman LLP, one of the firms representing Afram in his lawsuit, declined to comment, citing pending litigation. Johnson & Johnson LLP did not immediately return a request for comment.

Regarding Netflix’s statement, a spokesman for Afram said, “Our lawsuit speaks for itself.”

CHERYL TWEEDY is set to make a huge comeback with her own documentary.

The Girls Aloud singer has kept a low profile in recent years, but remains one of the UK’s most successful female solo artists and telly stars.

I’m told she is in early talks to create a film about her life and look back at her past successes.

The plan is to document her rise to fame auditioning on Popstars: The Rivals and being a judge on The X Factor as well as touching on her love life.

She is currently single after high-profile marriages to footballer Ashley Cole and restaur­a­teur Jean-Bernard Fernanzed-Versini plus relationships with US dancer Derek Hough and the late One Direction singer Liam Payne, who is the father of her son Bear.

A source said: “Cheryl is incredibly picky about what she chooses to do these days and spends a lot of time on motherhood, but she feels like she has a story to tell.

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“The doc could create a bidding war between all of the big streamers — Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple.

“She would also have creative control over the project.”

Cheryl’s TV project comes after successful documentary series from David and Victoria Beckham, Robbie Williams and Katie Price.

Her PR man did not respond when I reached out for comment.

Last year it was reported that Cheryl was in talks to make a telly comeback by appearing on The Voice, and she was spotted having a low-key dinner in Italy with pal Will.i.am, who is a mentor on the ITV talent show.

Over the years Cheryl has featured in several high-profile documentaries including Access All Areas, which followed her first solo arena tour.

Speaking about the 2012 doc, she said: “I literally had a friend of mine filming so that I would not feel like I had a camera crew in my way and at times forgot myself.

“I have since regretted this decision. The number of times I cringed watching it.”

I’m sure fans would love to go behind the scenes with Cheryl.

SLIPKNOT ‘CUT TIES’ WITH SID

SID WILSON has been “kicked out” of heavy metal band Slipknot after 28 years, according to sources.

The American DJ and keyboardist, who joined the group in 1998, is understood to have been sent packing on Friday.

It comes just five months after Sid – known in the band as #0 – split from his fiancée Kelly Osbourne.

I can reveal Slipknot have also parted ways with the PR company that has represented them since 1995.

A source close to the band told TMZ, “Sid was notified late Friday afternoon that he has been permanently kicked out”.

The musician proposed to Kelly backstage at her dad Ozzy Osbourne‘s final Black Sabbath gig at Villa Park in Birmingham last July.

Just weeks later, Kelly suffered heartbreak when Ozzy passed away.

She and Sid had started dating in 2022 and had son Sidney at the end of the same year.

However, she has since sparked fresh romance rumours with her supposed new hairdresser partner Kiinicki – a Los Angeles-based barber and creative behind the brand Hella Good Hair.

Kelly shared snaps of herself with Kiinicki, who uses they/them pronouns, in April.

And the pair were spotted at an after-party following Lily Allen‘s gig at the London Palladium in March.

Sounds like Kelly has got Sid out of her hair.

JESSICA’S NETFLIX DOCU

AMERICAN singer Jessica Simpson is set to have her life made into a Netflix documentary.

It will be developed by director Joe Pearlman, who created Robbie Williams’ docu-series and Lewis Capaldi How I’m Feeling Now film.

A source said: “It will be a four-parter similar to Robbie Williams’ one. Like him, Jessica has faced her demons and been through trauma having started in the music industry aged 17.

“Filming is expected to start this year and will show Jessica talking about everything she’s been through.”

SAM THOMPSON and Pete Wicks seem to be building an empire – having joined forces on a new financial venture.

I can reveal that former Made In Chelsea star Sam and ex-Towie hunk Pete, who own Staying Relevant Productions and co-host a podcast, have set up PWST Investments Ltd.

Details lodged with Companies House show the nature of the business is “security dealing on own account”, which relates to investing in stocks and shares, futures, securities and commodities.

A source said: “Sam and Pete have become comedy gold on their podcast, but they are serious when it comes to business.”

Move over power couples, bromances are big business.

The crime series, which dropped on Netflix today, is perfect for fans of gripping police dramas like Line of Duty and The Wire.

Netflix fans are urged to tune into ‘the best cop drama’ ever which is leaving viewers ‘glued until the end’.

The ‘excellent’ series, which comes from legendary Law & Order creator Dick Wolf, quietly arrived on Netflix today.

The police show is perfect for fans of Line of Duty and Blue Lights, while it has already been called ‘as good as’ US procedurals like The Shield and The Wire.

The popular drama is also a part of a larger franchise created by Wolf, which follows the fire fighters, police officers and medical staff working in the busy heart of Chicago, USA.

Named Chicago P.D., the 2014 show is the second installment of Wolf’s Chicago franchise after Chicago Fire (2012) and has since been followed up by Chicago Med (2015).

Chicago P.D. holds an impressive 8.1/10 score on IMDb and is set to return for a 14th season later this year.

The cast is led by the charismatic Jason Beghe, who plays fan favourite character sergeant Hank Voight.

The synopsis explains that the show “follows the lives of the personnel of the fictional 21st District, which houses both uniformed officers and the department’s elite Intelligence Unit as they fight every day to keep the city of Chicago, Illinois safe”.

Other cast members include Jon Seda as Senior Detective Antonio Dawson, Sophia Bush as Detective Erin Lindsay, Jesse Lee Soffer as Senior Detective Jay Halstead, Patrick John Flueger as Officer Adam Ruzek and Marina Squerciati as Detective Kim Burgess.

Taking to the reviews section of IMDb, fans shared their thoughts on Chicago P.D.

One person wrote: “Easily the best cop drama I’ve ever seen. I love this show because it’s so smartly written. There are none of those yelling at your TV moments when the cop goes in without backup or lets his guard down at the worst moment or tries to be a hero all by himself. In this show the characters act like a real cop should.”

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Another agreed: “Of all the police shows, Chicago PD is the best show I’ve ever seen. Chicago PD captures your attention from the start and keeps you glued to the show until the end.”

A third echoed: “Excellent!! Best ever crime drama. Writing and acting are exceptional. Thank you NBC. I am totally involved…”

Another fan compared the show to other highly-rated police procedurals, commenting: “I put PD in the same category as Streets of San Francisco, Hill Street Blues, The Shield and The Wire to name a few. That is the best TV available.”

However, not everyone is a fan, with one person calling it “cheap entertainment” and another complaining: “It started off brilliant, but last few years it’s gone down hill.”

Meanwhile, some viewers took the time to praise Beghe’s performance, with one enthusing: “The best show on television to me. Jason Beghe who plays Sgt. Hank Voight is like no other. He brings the whole show together.”

Another concurred: “Best show on TV! There are many good cop shows on tv but this one never fails. It has amazing actors and always entertaining plots. Beghe is my favorite!”

Chicago P.D. is available to stream on Netflix now.

Matt Tebbutt has shared his honest reaction to Ricky Gervais’ raunchy new Netflix comedy series, Alley Cats.

Saturday Kitchen star Matt Tebbutt didn’t mince his words as he called Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix show “filth”.

Matt was back for another instalment of his much-loved cooking show on Saturday (August 1) and was joined by chefs Sam Evans, Shauna Guinn and Justin Tsang, while Olly Smith shared his expertise on drinks. Actress and comedian Kerry Godliman was also in the studio kitchen, discussing her previous work and upcoming projects.

Kerry, who has worked alongside actor Ricky Gervais in shows such as Afterlife and Derek, will now be lending her voice for the brand new series of Alley Cats. Showcasing a clip of the show to those in the kitchen and fans at home, Matt was clearly impressed.

But he quickly added that, although the Netflix show is a cartoon, it is not suitable for younger audiences. Matt said bluntly: “And that is the only clip we can show, because it’s filth!”

Kerry agreed and replied: “Oh yeah, there is a lot of filth. But that is a sweet clip.”

Matt added: “Yeah, it’s not family viewing. Unless you have teenagers.”

According to The Guardian, Alley Cats centres on a group of stray cats who spend much of their time lounging on a sofa inside a run-down house, passing the time by watching television. Leading the gang is Gus, an overweight ginger tom voiced by Ricky Gervais, whose loud, cynical outbursts and dismissive views usually dominate every conversation.

Also among the feline cast is Ponce, played by Tom Basden, a well-groomed pedigree cat with a more sensible outlook. Despite often being the voice of reason, he’s frequently mocked for being neutered.

Completing the trio is Puke, voiced by David Earl, an unkempt and crude character known for his outrageous remarks and bizarre stories, including one particularly shocking anecdote involving a hedgehog.

According to reports, the show, which is set to land on Netflix, August 7th, is filled to the brim with sweary banter, which has lead creator Ricky to beg viewers to not be offended.

As reported by the Mirror, Ricky said: “It would take a very special kind of person to complain about what a fictional cartoon cat thought of something, but it will happen.

“Please don’t be offended by anything these characters say or do. They can’t help it. They’re cats. So sometimes, they’re ****s.”

Saturday Kitchen airs Saturdays from 10am on BBC One.

Need to know

Netflix’s The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare is a true crime documentary exploring the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students.

Everything you need to know about Bryan Kohberger and The Idaho Murders

1. Netflix viewers have branded the streaming giant’s latest true crime documentary ‘a hard watch’ as it explores the horrifying Idaho student murders.
2. The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare investigates the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students in November 2022. Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin were killed in an off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho.
3. Two roommates survived the attack by hiding in a bedroom after one heard screams and saw a man dressed in black. As one viewer commented on Reddit: ‘This show does a really good job of looking at the victims as people. It’s really heartbreaking.’
4. Bryan Christopher Kohberger, a PhD criminology student, was arrested and sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without parole in July 2025. However, he later filed a petition seeking to withdraw his guilty pleas and proceed to trial.
5. The motive behind the killings has never been disclosed and there appears to be no connection between the victims and Kohberger prior to the attack other than that he was studying at the nearby Washington State University.
6. Documentary director Skye Borgman said families wanted to show the victims as ‘alive, bright, happy, amazing people’ rather than just victims. The series focuses on remembering what was lost rather than glorifying the killer. Survivors continue to struggle with guilt, with a friend revealing: “They’re going to be dealing with this for the rest of their lives.”

READ THE FULL STORY: Idaho Murders victims, arrest and timeline as ‘heartbreaking’ Netflix doc lands

This adaptation fans are calling ‘absurd’ is incomparable to any other period drama, as a peculiar version of real life events in the medieval times – packed with dark humour and explicit content

Fans of period dramas are not quite prepared for this mini series take on the genre, turning it on its head completely.

What many viewers are unaware of, however, is that its entertaining storyline is drawn from a collection of 100 tales penned by an Italian author, dating back to that very same period.

Instead, Netflix subscribers can see back and watch pieces of the story play out on screen in this dark comedy series set in 14th-century Italy.

The Decameron is a show inspired by the classic work of the same name, unfolding against the backdrop of the devastating Black Death pandemic. It follows a wealthy family as they desperately attempt to survive the outbreak, all played out with an abundance of humour.

The Decameron pulls no punches when it comes to sexual content, strong language, violence, and grisly details within its darkly comedic narrative. It is precisely these elements that set it apart from the rest and see it racking up a string of five-star reviews.

One viewer wrote on Rotten Tomatoes: “I was entertained throughout the entire series. Definitely worth watching! I was cheering for all the characters as they were developing throughout the season.”

Another shared their feelings towards the show, writing: “It’s completely silly yet the characters inexplicably grow on you and become like a bunch of very stupid but very dear friends. Never seen something like this.”

Audiences are transported on an adventure, commencing in 1348 in a fictionalised retelling of events, as the Black Death grips Florence. In reaction, a collection of aristocrats and their servants take refuge in a rural villa in Tuscany, weathering further outbreaks surrounded by their riches and extravagant way of life.

Before long, the pestilence reaches the peaceful hillsides and they find themselves with little alternative but to battle for their very existence. While the setting is of course based on a real life health crisis, its events are entirely fictionalised.

Playing these characters are Tanya Reynolds from Sex Education, together with Zosia Mamet, recognised for her part in Girls. Also appearing alongside them on screen are Lou Gala, Leila Farzard, Jessica Plummer and Amar Chadha-Patel.

The cast have garnered considerable praise with one reviewing saying that they delivered “enjoyable performances”.

Others said it was “well acted”, while one viewer said the script and actors had them “laughing out loud” throughout.

One review reads: “While not really an adaptation of The Decameron (more like “inspired by”), this tv show manages to be horny, dumb, deep, nihilist and sweet at the same time.

“It has great moments, great lines, really dumb jokes, some smart ones, some good and profound takes and overall an awesome cast and soundtrack.”

The period drama packs a great deal into its compact eight episodes and was sadly never commissioned for a second series following its 2024 release, making it perfect for a binge-watch.

To experience a period drama like never before, The Decameron is available now to stream on Netflix.

Under a new licensing agreement, Netflix will be streaming “The Walking Dead” franchise globally.

Netflix and AMC Global Media, the network that originally aired the zombie series, inked a new five-year co-streaming deal, according to a press release on Thursday. Both companies will be able to show the original “The Walking Dead” series and its six spinoffs on Netflix and AMC+. The deal is valued at $500 million, AMC Global Media said in its second-quarter earnings report.

“This deal creates a global destination for this universe — all shows, all episodes — making the franchise more accessible than ever to fans around the world. In addition, the co-exclusive agreement allows us to bring the original series to AMC+ for the first time early next year,” Kristin Dolan, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “This agreement is a fantastic result for our companies, for the fans and for this timeless IP.”

AMC Global Media is renting the franchise, not selling it. The five-year licenses run separately for each show, with start dates that vary based on territory and the expiration of existing streaming deals. The rights to “The Walking Dead” revert to AMC Global Media when the term ends.

The company also keeps global rights to run the “Walking Dead” universe on its own services throughout. Dolan told investors the agreement would supply what she called “a meaningful source of cash flow for years to come,” framing it as evidence that the company’s library still commands premium prices even as its cable business shrinks.

The agreement will extend the franchise’s reach on Netflix in places like the U.K., Italy, Australia and New Zealand — making episodes available beginning in 2027.

“The Walking Dead” premiered on the AMC network in 2010, introducing audiences to the high-stakes world of a zombie apocalypse. In 2011, the series began streaming exclusively on Netflix in the U.S. The show aired for 11 seasons and became one of AMC’s most influential shows. Other popular programs from the network include “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad.”

“Audiences have discovered and loved ‘The Walking Dead’ on Netflix for nearly 15 years and the show continues to attract new fans,” Lori Conkling, Netflix’s vice president of licensing, said in a statement.

The deal landed alongside a rough quarter. AMC Global Media reported second-quarter revenue of $547 million, down 9% from a year earlier, and a loss of 51 cents a share, compared with 91 cents in profit in the same period last year. Operating income fell to about $16 million from $64 million.

Netflix’s second-quarter earnings showed mixed results. The company‘s revenue rose 13% to $12.6 billion; its net income was $3.4 billion, up 9% from a year ago; and its advertising business is on track to reach $3 billion in revenue this year, double the amount in 2025.

The same filing offered some details on Netflix’s acquisition of InterPositive, the AI post-production startup founded by Ben Affleck, for $587 million in cash in March.

But Netflix’s stock price has continued to waver due in part to investor concerns about the streamer’s future growth.

If you are over the age of, say, 14, you might not be familiar with daughter-father duo Salish and Jordan Matter. But if you are a parent of a Gen Alpha kid, it can feel like you hear about nothing but Salish and Jordan Matter. Their YouTube videos — a high-octane mix of zany challenges, games and hijinks — are admittedly hard to resist, which may be why they rake in millions of views as soon as they blast into the social media universe.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

Sixteen-year-old Salish was in elementary school when she started appearing in her father’s YouTube videos and the channel is like a time capsule of her childhood — or, well, the most public, heavily produced version of it. There’s the day Salish turned her house into a waterpark (73 million views) or the night she had a secret sleepover in a mall (31 million views) or the time she survived 100 babysitters in 24 hours (61 million views). “A blessing and a curse for me is that we’ve documented it all,” says Jordan, whose background is in photography. “I have these beautiful videos of her when she was 10. I was just watching them 30 minutes ago and was like, oh wow, it feels like yesterday.”

Now their creator journey is taking a new turn. Salish and Jordan recently signed a deal with Netflix to develop, produce and star in original projects — it’s the largest such creator partnership for the streaming giant. Their show, “Salish & Jordan Matter,” reached Netflix’s Top 10 this month. Beyond the screen, the duo co-founded the popular teen skincare brand Sincerely Yours. (The launch of one glossy lip balm brought 2,000 fans to the Santa Monica Pier earlier this summer.)

It’s been a wild ride for the pair, but despite their snowballing fame, they swear they’re like any other dad and daughter who bicker, joke around and simply enjoy each other’s company.

“I think we’re pretty chill, right?” Jordan says.

“Yeah, we’re pretty chill,” Salish agrees.

Here they share what they’d do together on a Sunday Funday around their South Bay home, noting that a perfect day would involve the whole family, including mom Lauren Matter and Salish’s 20-year-old brother, Hudson Matter.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

10 a.m.: Wake up and debate the day’s options

Jordan: Salish, what time would you actually wake up?

Salish: Probably like 10.

Jordan: OK, so we’re sleeping in until 10. Then why don’t we go get breakfast? We’ll go to Ocean Diner in Hermosa Beach. We’ll both get huevos rancheros and fresh orange juice. And then I would love to go get coffee at Boy and the Bear in Redondo Beach.

Salish: Or Two Guns!

Jordan: No, I prefer Boy and the Bear.

Salish: Oh, I prefer Two Guns.

Jordan: Well, if we go to Two Guns, Salish would get the avocado toast.

Salish: No, the chai! It’s so good!

Jordan: OK, well, if Salish has an opinion, that’s what we’re doing. But later today, one thing I would love is a bike ride on the beach. Are you still down?

Salish: [High-pitched voice] Yeah.

Jordan: Did you hear that voice?! That tone is like, “Yeah, but not for much longer.”

Salish: [Laughs] No, I like doing bike rides with you! It’s just that I don’t know how much of a “biker” I am.

Jordan: You’re not one.

Salish: I’m not.

Jordan: But you have an electric bike! You just have to go like [makes e-bike revving motion] vvrrrrrruurr.

11:15 a.m.: Shopping and soup dumplings

Jordan: The next thing we’re going to do is …

Salish: Go to the mall! I like picking out new outfits for him because every day he just wears a black T-shirt.

Jordan: OK, and if we’re going to go to Del Amo mall, we’ll have lunch at …

Salish: Oh, Din Tai Fung.

Jordan: Which means we’ll have to put our name on the waiting list.

Salish: It’s like a two-hour wait.

Jordan: So we’ll put our name down right after breakfast. And then we’ll shop for clothes before our reservation.

Salish: I’ll go to Aritzia and probably Garage. And then you’ll go to Express and Levi’s. I go to PacSun a lot too but normally I don’t find anything there. I always wear sweats and hoodies — literally just sweats and hoodies.

Jordan: Also tank tops. Salish doesn’t like to repeat outfits on videos, so she does need at least one new outfit a week.

And I’ll just follow her around. I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that looks good.’ And she’ll be like, ‘No, it doesn’t.’ And I’ll be like, ‘No, it looks really good.’ And she’ll be like, ‘You’re just saying that.’ And then she’ll ask, ‘Which color?’ I’ll say the blue, and then she’ll get the pink. And I’m like, ‘I’m glad I could be helpful.’ So that’s how shopping with Salish goes. Then finally, there’s Din Tai Fung.

3 p.m.: An afternoon by the ocean

Jordan: Then we would leave the mall because I’m not gonna be there all day. We’re gonna go paddleboarding in Long Beach, in the Naples Canals area. We love anything with water, right? We love vacationing in Lake Tahoe, swimming and boating.

Then we would probably go for a bike ride along the Strand. I would vote for pulling over and having dinner. There’s a really good taco place right near the Hermosa Beach Pier called Palmilla Cocina Y Tequila.

Salish: [Winces slightly] I’m not gonna lie. I don’t really like tacos.

Jordan: Salish is an absolutely impossible eater. All she eats is Chipotle. She’s a vegetarian but she’s a picky vegetarian, so that combo makes it almost impossible for her to find food anywhere. But she’d get the black beans and rice and tortillas and cheese and mix it all together.

Salish: Yeah.

Jordan: See, I basically know everything about you.

Salish: And you would get the chicken!

Jordan: Yes.

Salish: I knew it. But you have to make sure it’s white meat.

Jordan: White meat chicken, mole, enchiladas — yum!

8 p.m.: Family hang time

Jordan: Now if there’s a good horror or suspense movie out, I might convince Salish to go. But that would be a tough sell. So maybe we’ll go back home. We just got a pool, so that’s exciting. And late nights in the pool has become a thing. We might play ping pong or a board game.

Salish: Then my brother and I would probably just chill and talk in one of our rooms. He doesn’t live here so we try to talk as much as we can while he’s home.

Jordan: Our family isn’t looking for big things to have fun — just time together. We just talk and hang out. With Salish, we talk about work but I’m also super interested in what her everyday life is like. You know, from the time she was young, I feel like I treated her like an adult in a way and we’ve always had real conversations. That’s made it easier as she’s grown up. It feels comfortable having these types of conversations.

Salish: Also, I’m a great kid, so like …

Jordan: Of course, of course. You are such a great kid. But you were a spitfire when you were little, I’ll say!

Salish: [Laughs]

Jordan: It’s a joy. It’s a joy to be with her every day.

The three-episode documentary includes bodycam footage, texts and interviews with the victims’ loved ones.

Netflix viewers have branded the streamer’s latest true crime documentary “a hard watch”. The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare is on Netflix and the harrowing factual series investigates the horrifying murders of four University of Idaho students.

The students were fatally stabbed in an off-campus house in the early hours of the morning, but the motive behind the killings has never been disclosed.

The tragic deaths were covered extensively in the press and the case has been revisited in a number of TV shows, including Prime Video’s One Night in Idaho: The College Murders.

Viewers have already shared their thoughts on the Netflix documentary, with one saying on Reddit: “This show does a really good job of looking at the victims as people. It’s really heartbreaking.”

Another commented on Instagram: “This is going to be a very hard watch,” while another shared: “This case still haunts me.” Here is all you need to know about what happened.

When did the Idaho Murders happen?

The murders took place in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, in an off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho.

Five roommates, plus a partner of one of the students, were in the house by 2am after spending the night at various locations.

Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen were two of the students who survived the attack, both hiding in the same bedroom.

In February 2023, a friend of the survivors spoke to PEOPLE about how the roommates were still impacted by the murders, saying: “They feel a lot of survivor’s guilt.

“Their friends are gone and they’re still here. It’s been really rough on them. They’re going to be dealing with this for the rest of their lives.”

Who were the Idaho Murders victims?

Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin were the four victims and they had all been close friends. On the night they were killed, survivor Dylan, who was a junior at the time and living in a room off the side of the kitchen, heard someone scream in the house.

She recalled how she thought she overheard an unfamiliar male voice saying: “It’s okay. I’m going to help you”. Feeling nervous, she ran to her door and locked it, trying to call all of her roommates, but nobody was answering.

She went over to her door and opened it to see a man dressed in all black, but he did not approach her. She returned to her room, where she called Bethany Funke, later joining her in her bedroom, where the two locked themselves in.

The Netflix documentary’s director, Skye Borgman, said she was keen for the film to focus on the victims and not their killer.

She said: “When I was able to sit down and talk to the families, both before we started shooting and during the shooting, that’s one thing that they really wanted to get across: They weren’t just victims.

“They were alive, bright, happy, amazing people. And it was really important for them to tell this story and to put that message forward — what we lost.”

Who was charged for the killings?

On December 30, 2022, police arrested Bryan Christopher Kohberger on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary.

At the time of the murders, he was a PhD student completing his first semester at Washington State University in Pullman.

In July 2025, the doctoral student in criminology was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in prison without parole, as well as another ten years for burglary, after issuing guilty pleas.

In July 2026, Kohberger filed a handwritten petition seeking to withdraw his guilty pleas and proceed to trial. The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare is on Netflix

Other than “The Odyssey,” the biggest news in Los Angeles film circles last week was the return of the Cinerama Dome.

The iconic theater, which has been closed since March 2020, will be restored and reopened by Sony Pictures Entertainment and its Alamo Drafthouse theater chain. As my colleague Cerys Davies reported, renovations begin next month and will continue until early 2028.

For more than 60 years, the dome has been a landmark on Sunset Boulevard. With its 86-foot-wide curved screen, it has premiered such iconic Hollywood films as 1977’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and made a cameo of its own in 2019’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”

Ever since the dome closed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been questions about whether it would return. Filmmakers like “Anora” director Sean Baker and “Baby Driver” director Edgar Wright publicly called for its reopening, while a “Save Your Cinema” preservation campaign led by Benjamin Steinberg kept the geodesic icon in the public eye.

“It was definitely the capital of, like, the movie-going experience in L.A.,” Steinberg told my colleague, adding that he plans to visit the theater two to three times a week when it reopens. “I can’t wait to go back inside the Cinerama Dome and watch movies.”

The theater will be operated by Alamo Drafthouse, though Sony says it plans to keep the “Cinerama” name and exterior branding, as well as the dome’s “traditional concession experience” — meaning you won’t be able to order food and drinks to your seat. (Cinephiles recently have criticized the chain for changing its in-seat ordering system to require use of mobile phones in the theater.)

Alongside traditional theatrical showings, the dome also will include some Alamo Drafthouse specials, including repertory screenings, premieres, events and filmmaker series.

Adjacent to the dome, the 14-screen former ArcLight Cinemas will reopen as an Alamo Drafthouse, Sony said, offering dine-in food and beverages, as well as karaoke rooms and “fan celebrations.”

Sony was interested in the dome even before the Culver City-based studio acquired Alamo Drafthouse in 2024.

“It’s such a great location,” Ravi Ahuja, chief executive and chairman of Sony Pictures, told me. “It’s historic, people love it and the theater was successful before it closed. It’s one of a kind, which is the kind of experience we’re after.”

The move also highlights the opportunity Sony sees in the experiences business — an increasingly important strategy for Hollywood.

The Alamo Drafthouse acquisition was part of this, as was the studio’s recent $100-million investment and minority stake in Cosm, a virtual reality venue operator that has a location at Inglewood’s Hollywood Park.

The studio also has “Wheel of Fortune Live!,” a touring version of the popular game show, “Jeopardy! Bar League,” which was incubated at Alamo Drafthouse, and events for its streaming service Crunchyroll at anime conventions.

“It’s another leg of the franchise stool,” Ahuja said. “Fans want to engage in person with each other. It’s part of a human need when you have deep fandom around something.”

As the theatrical market waxes and wanes and the television business has become more unpredictable, it makes sense that studios like Sony increasingly look to diversify and attract fans in new ways.

After all, people have a lot of things they can do with their time and money. And after a period of slow returns since the pandemic, they’ve increasingly been coming back to in-person activities. To keep loyal fans in the fold, studios need to give them more ways to interact with the stories and entertainment they love, or they’ll move on.

Betting on the experiences business isn’t new. Walt Disney Co. makes the majority of its operating income not from its theatrical movies or streaming service, but from its theme parks and cruise line division. Last year, Universal opened Epic Universe, a major investment in its Orlando theme park resort that indicates the importance of this business for the company and owner Comcast.

But not every company wants or needs to start a theme park business. For one, it’s expensive. And for a studio like Sony, which doesn’t have a lot of kid-focused franchises, it doesn’t really make sense.

As a result, some are getting into the experiences space in more specific and limited ways, such as studio tours or branded attractions.

For Sony, that’s meant building a business around these in-person offerings that align more with its adult-leaning audiences. Lionsgate has a “John Wick Experience” in Las Vegas, while Warner Bros., among other things, recently debuted “Harry Potter: A Hogwarts Express Adventure” train event at the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris. (Universal licenses Harry Potter from Warner Bros. for inclusion in its parks.)

For most studios without a major theme park presence, this kind of location-based entertainment is still likely a relatively small part of their corporate revenue, potentially less than 1%, said Dennis Spiegel, founder and chief executive of the International Theme Park Services, Inc. consulting firm. But what these experiences do is help lengthen the life of a franchise by keeping licensing revenue flowing and keeping brands relevant between film releases, he said.

“Hollywood increasingly sees it as an essential part of maximizing the lifetime value of its intellectual property,” he wrote in an email. “In many ways, we have seen how these experiences have become as much of a marketing engine as they are a profit center.”

As for the Cinerama Dome, don’t take it as a sign that Sony is looking to build out an exhibition empire. The studio is looking for only special and selective deals like the dome, Ahuja said, and there are no plans to add more L.A. exhibition locations.

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” continued its dominance at the box office in its second outing with a three-day domestic haul of $90 million, down only 27% from its debut weekend.

Internationally, the Universal Pictures film raked in $137.6 million for a worldwide total of $652 million.

The big box office performance came as an unauthorized copy of the film leaked online over the weekend. The studio said it “immediately initiated takedown protocols” once it became aware of theillegal posting on X and “will pursue all appropriate remedies to protect our content and intellectual property rights.” The post was viewed more than 2.1 million times before a takedown notice replaced the copy of the film.

What I’m watching

I did not expect Amazon MGM Studios’ “The Sheep Detectives” to deliver a profound message on death and grieving when I sat down to watch it with a friend, but those talking ovine sleuths really got to me.

Need to know

Elize: Shadows of a Woman tells the true story of Elize Matsunaga, who murdered and dismembered her husband.

Everything you need to know about what happened to Elize Matsunaga and her daughter

1. Netflix’s new crime drama Elize: Shadows of a Woman is a chilling retelling of a real-life Brazilian murder case. The series explores the true story of Elize Matsunaga, who shocked Brazil in 2012 when she shot and dismembered her husband, Marcos Kitano Matsunaga, after discovering his infidelity.
2. Netflix describes the drama as showing how “a former escort discovers her wealthy husband’s infidelity and struggles to cope as betrayal poisons their marriage.” The series, which is a fictionalised retelling of the true story, follows on from the 2021 documentary Elize Matsunaga: Once Upon a Crime, which featured her first interview after the crime.
3. Matsunaga, a trained nurse, had hired a private investigator to gather evidence of her husband’s cheating before confronting him about the affair. The confrontation had fatal consequences, and after the tragic event, she initially reported her husband missing but confessed to the murder weeks later.
4. Convicted in 2016, she was sentenced to almost 20 years in prison, later reduced to 16 years in 2019. Having served 10 years, Matsunaga has been on parole since 2022. The Netflix documentary reveals the Matsunaga family wishes to disassociate themselves by “removing Elize’s surname.”
5. Matsunaga had a daughter, who was only one year old when the murder occurred, and she was keen to keep in contact with her only child. However, her daughter remains in the care of Marcos’ parents with full custody. Tragically, Elize has had no contact with her daughter since the crime and has not even seen photographs of her.

READ THE FULL STORY: Where is Elize Matsunaga now?

Aitch has released a brand new documentary and it can be streamed today

Manchester rapper Aitch has shared his heartwarming relationship with his family as he embarks on his toughest challenge yet.

Aitch: Don’t be afraid has today (Sunday, July 26) been released on Netflix as it chronicles the rapper’s journey up Africa’s highest peak with friends and family. Aitch has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise awareness for the Down’s Syndrome Association in honour of his sister Gracie.

An official synopsis reads: “Inspired by his sister, rapper Aitch scales Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for people with Down syndrome and to fight for greater inclusivity.”

Already, Netflix subscribers are tuning in as one person wrote on social media: “Defo be watching @OfficialAitch netflix documentary! Such a great guy.”

Another replied: “Can’t wait to see this. Congratulations team!” As the brand new documentary airs, here’s all you need to know about Aitch’s sisters as well as the star’s incredible net worth.

Aitch’s relationship with his sisters

Aitch, whose real name is Harrison Armstrong, has an inspiring bond with his younger sisters Hattie and Gracie, often stating he makes music to support them. With a strong bond with both of his siblings, he has a publicly documented relationship with one sister, Gracie, who has Down syndrome.

In the brand new release, Aitch shares his special relationship with Gracie as he tells the cameras: “It’s just the best relationship ever. If there’s a blueprint of what a human should be, it probably is her.

“She couldn’t love the people around her more if she tried, she smothers you with love.”

Hattie and Gracie are non identical twins, but equally have a loving bond with their older brother, who worships everything they do.

Previously speaking at the Pride of Britain, the star said his sisters were his personal heroes, before paying special tribute to Gracie who he said was an “absolute soldier”.

Previously appearing on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here last year, he held pictures of his younger siblings near his camp bed as he said his sisters were his “whole heart”.

In one episode, speaking about Gracie he told his campmates: “She’s the GOAT honestly. There’s not one person that’s ever met her that’s said a bad word.”

In his 2022 song My G, featuring Ed Sheeran, there was a touching tribute to Gracie as all profits went to the DSA, which Aitch is also an ambassador for.

The star often takes to social media to share heart-warming videos, with fans loving his close bond with his siblings.

Just recently, teasing the new documentary, Aitch wrote on Instagram: “GRACIE, THIS IS FOR YOU AND THE OTHER 40,000 BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE JUST LIKE YOU DONT BE AFRAID! 26/07/26 @netflixuk.”

The support came pouring in as one person replied: “GRACIE WE LOVE YOU”, as another echoed: “You’re an inspiration . Your sisters are so lucky to have such an amazing big brother.”

Aitch’s net worth

Aitch’s net worth was estimated to be around £3.5million in 2025, which has been accumulated through his skyrocketing career as a rapper.

However, Heat’s 2025 Rich List, as reported by Bauer Media, Aitch found himself number 9 with an estimated £14.4m.

Aitch: Don’t be afraid can be streamed on Netflix now

Netflix has just released a trailer for a brand new period drama, but some are not impressed

Netflix trailer for a remake of a “brilliant” Sam Neill film has left some fans fearing the worst.

Sumptuous six-part period drama My Brilliant Career will be launching globally on Netflix next month and takes its cue from Australian author Miles Franklin’s 1901 classic novel of the same name, reports the Express.

The autobiographical book follows Sybylla (played by Philippa Northeast) as she rails against her family’s wishes to marry and instead pursues her dreams of becoming a published author.

My Brilliant Career also stars Pride and Prejudice icon Anna Chancellor, Genevieve O’Reilly from Andor, and Slow Horses actor Christopher Chung.

Netflix recently shared a trailer from the tongue-in-cheek show that sees Sybylla pushing back against society as she daydreams, writes and spends time with the swoon-worthy Harry (Chung).

The new adaptation comes after the beloved 1979 film version of My Brilliant Career starring Judy Davis as Sybylla and Sam Neill as Harry.

Many fans of the 1979 movie shared their thoughts about the forthcoming iteration of My Brilliant Career on YouTube.

One person said: “Nice try Netflix, but the original movie version with a young Judy Davis portrayed this brilliant novel written in 1901 Australia with way more authentic adolescent sass and much less millennial pop star angst.”

A second wrote: “I’m scared this new one will butcher a beloved story, like ’Anne with an E’ did for me.”

A third commented: “Nothing beats Julie Davis and Sam Neill. I wish that remakes would stop being made unless you’re going to adhere to the original story.”

However, others hit back at the detractors as one person noted: “The original will always have its place. This is just another take on it. Like all the other classic remakes. You don’t need to watch it if it’s not your cup of tea.”

Someone else said: “This series going adding more details that Miles Franklin wrote [sic].”

A third wrote: “I look forward to this. I so enjoyed the ’79 version with Judy Davis…this looks to be just as entertaining. ”

A fourth compared it to many other costume dramas: “This is like if they combined every single period piece into one movie it’s got little women, pride and prejudice, Bridgerton etc. I don’t know how they managed to fit every single trope into one.”

Yet another added: “Looks great. Loved the 1979 adaptation and not gonna miss this one.”

My Brilliant Career has been adapted numerous times, with the 1979 movie only being the first one.

The story was also adapted for the stage in a 2020 play and later turned into a musical in 2024.

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This lets members watch live and on-demand TV content without a satellite dish or aerial and includes hit shows like Stranger Things and The Last of Us.

Netflix’s TV series is just another retelling of the well-loved story of following one’s heart over the strict rules of society.

Treasured star Neill died aged 78 from pneumonia on July 16. His career spanned back to the 1970s and some of his biggest roles include Jurassic Park, Peaky Blinders, ITV’s Tutankhamun, and Event Horizon, among many others.

My Brilliant Career will be released on Netflix on August 13

As performers protest and studios sue in their war on artificial intelligence, the entertainment industry is deepening its dependence on it.

Although few places are better than Hollywood at crafting a narrative and concealing what happens off-frame, a Los Angeles Times survey of job postings sheds light on what is happening offstage.

Among hundreds of job postings in late June, more than one in 10 was likely connected to AI. The top studios’ public postings suggest they have been recruiting people to build AI tools. They are also recruiting teams to defend their intellectual property against unauthorized AI use.

“There are plenty of studios that are hiring [for AI] but never talk about it in public,” said Yoland Yan, a co-founder of ComfyUI, a company that helps studios juggle different AI tools.

Companies have been hesitant to detail how they use generative AI in film production — partly because they are concerned about consumer and union backlash.

The Walt Disney Studios complex on May 3 in Burbank.

(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)

Some in Hollywood described AI use as the new cosmetic surgery, where everyone knows it is happening, but few will admit to it.

Recent want ads show Amazon MGM Studios trying to find a principal AI executive and Walt Disney Studios advertising for a production innovation technologist job.

“What you’re seeing in those job postings is that adoption is already happening,” said Bryn Mooser, chief executive of Asteria, an AI film studio.

Netflix recently posted a job that didn’t exist a year ago.

The streamer was hiring for the role of “Manager, Generative Workflows,” a job to help integrate more AI into Netflix films. It promised hands-on experience with the cutting-edge technology.

“The industry is flooded with speculative GenAI roadmaps, but few are battle-tested in production,” the post said, referring to generative AI. The post said the role will work on introducing AI into Netflix’s slate of films being released in the U.S. and Canada.

Although some companies may be shy about sharing their AI plans, big stars who don’t have to answer to others have been more open about their embrace of the new technology for storytelling.

An exterior view of the Netflix sign at Netflix on Vine in Hollywood in 2025.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

Rejecting AI is like picking a horse and buggy over a car, said “Star Wars” creator George Lucas.

“Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies,” he told a trade magazine earlier this year. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress. It’s the future.”

Some in Hollywood have a softer stance on artificial intelligence, with studios cutting deals with AI companies, and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese backing AI companies.

Ben Affleck launched an AI film tech company then sold it to Netflix for half a billion dollars.

When launching InterPositive, Affleck said he wanted to keep “storytelling human” by building AI tools that could fix lighting, generate missing shots and other things while “keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists.”

The Times’ survey turned up two senior InterPositive roles to update the programming to apply AI to visual effects .

The Culver Studios on Feb. 12 in Culver City.

(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)

To gauge what is happening behind the scenes, The Times used Claude Code to build a scraper to identify job postings at Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony, Netflix and Amazon MGM. It found around 250 film studio job postings that were still public as of late June. Around 30 of those seemed to be connected to AI.

Disney, Netflix and Amazon had job postings that were about using AI on the creative side of the business. Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. and Sony had job ads suggesting they were also using AI but for marketing, distribution and audience analytics.

The postings suggest the Disney, Netflix and Amazon studios are building repeatable AI workflows for visual effects, animation, sound and dubbing. The companies also seem to be building in-house teams to develop custom generative-AI models, while also using third-party software.

None of the jobs advertised were to create AI that wrote scripts or created AI actors.

Disney’s ten or so AI jobs showed the century-old studio building out its AI research and production muscle, while protecting its vault of beloved characters.

Mouse House is hiring PhD-level talent to study “computer graphics and AI” for Pixar and Disney films, people to “bridge the gap between research and practical studio application.”

Industrial Light & Magic, the Disney-owned visual effects shop, was searching for supervisors to “explore emerging technologies (including AI/Machine Learning)” to develop new production workflows.

The company’s audio post-production unit, Skywalker Sound, seemed to be recruiting to build proprietary AI models for soundtracks, voice separation, and voice transfer, the process of taking a speaker’s tone and pitch, and applying it to new content.

Disney was also hiring to defend itself. Three of its jobs were for “content security” to assess AI tools and guard against piracy, watermarking and rights-protection work.

The company’s public posture has so far been pursuing lawsuits against AI companies for inappropriate use of copyrighted material, and it pulled out of its plans to invest $1 billion in an equity investment deal with OpenAI.

Netflix’s posts suggested it is bringing more AI to the creative side of its business.

Netflix’s senior director of creative innovation, Girish Balakrishnan, outlined at the Runway AI film festival how AI was used to create soccer fans in “Brazil ’70” and establish shots for fight scenes in “Glory.”

Amazon, an early adopter, was hiring a principal AI executive to drive AI-tool adoption across production, plus roles in operations automation and LLM content classification, the listings revealed.

The Seattle-based streamer has been the most aggressive AI adopter in studios, and commissioned three AI animation series through its GenAI creator fund in May. Amazon has also bankrolled a Manhattan Beach production services company, Innovative Dream.

Even as studios build bigger AI teams, many in the industry are resisting, and some film fans are concerned.

The actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA in June ratified a new four-year contract with special protections against synthetic performers, and the union has backed a national bill designed to protect individuals from unauthorized, AI-generated digital replicas.

Studios have met with the union twice a year since 2023 to provide a confidential report on their AI-related activities. The studios tell the union they aren’t yet using AI that would entirely replace humans, said a person familiar with the discussions.

The union says it has no evidence that generative AI is being used to create performances, and the studios are supposed to notify the union if that happens.

Actors, writers, production staff and movie fans are still resistant to the overuse of AI and defining when and where it is acceptable, so studios are treading lightly, said AI film studio CEO Mooser.

“It’s been really a challenging thing to adopt both socially, ethically and legally, but we are seeing more adoption of it than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.

It took an ancient Greek epic to ignite a fire at the box office last weekend, as Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” became one of the biggest movie events of the year.

The film, led by Matt Damon as Odysseus, hauled in $123.5 million in the U.S. and Canada on its way to a global total of nearly $264 million — the biggest-ever global opening for one of Nolan’s films.

In many ways, “The Odyssey” is a throwback to old-school Hollywood filmmaking, with Nolan’s use of practical effects and numerous on-location shoots. It’s also a sign that audiences will still pack theaters for the right kind of movie.

The Universal Pictures film also outperformed studio expectations of a $117-million domestic premiere and set a record for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a live-action or R-rated film this year.

“Audiences always want to be thoroughly immersed in the theatrical experience and engulfed by the story and the production, and Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’ is a perfect example of that,” Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic distribution, said Sunday. “When you have a very substantial opening, and you have those kinds of audience scores, it only points to what should be a remarkable run throughout the summer and into the fall.”

That’s good news for the summer box office, which lately has seen a bit of ebb and flow.

“The Odyssey” now ranks as the third-largest domestic opening of the year, trailing only kid-friendly films such as Walt Disney Co. and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” and Universal, Illumination and Nintendo’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.” Though family-friendly films have become power players for theaters, the two most recent flicks — Disney’s live-action “Moana” and Universal and Illumination’s “Minions & Monsters” saw softer openings.

After the big weekend for “The Odyssey,” the summer box office is up 7.3% compared with the lackluster 2025 season, according to entertainment data firm Rentrak. More encouraging, the year-to-date domestic box office is now 10.4% higher than for the same period last year.

That’s been helped not only by big blockbusters such as “The Odyssey,” which had a production budget of $200 million to $250 million, but also by the success of smaller-budget films such as A24’s “Backrooms” and Focus Features’ “Obsession.”

The common denominator is the draw of directors who have cultivated strong fan bases. “Obsession” director Curry Barker, 26, and 21-year-old Kane Parsons, who helmed “Backrooms,” have been building their reputation on YouTube among Gen Z audiences, and that loyalty is starting to count for something at the box office.

Nolan, of course, is one of the masters of building a faithful following over more than two decades. Fans started grabbing Imax 70 millimeter tickets for “The Odyssey” when they first went on sale a year ago, and the film ended up driving record presales for the Canadian entertainment tech company, which operates out of Playa Vista.

The film has notched a 95% on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and an A CinemaScore rating.

“His films have tapped into the cultural zeitgeist,” said Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and founder of the website Box Office Theory. “That’s what keeps bringing people back. They know they’re going to get a different experience; there’s always going to be a watercooler conversation around his movies, and they’re part of the cultural fabric.”

For “The Odyssey,” part of that conversation was Nolan’s old-school movie magic, including the puppetry, animatronics and robotics he used in scenes with the Cyclops, as well as the real Viking ship that the actors learned to sail.

The film also has driven interest in 70mm screenings from film buffs and casual moviegoers.

Ahead of the premiere of “The Odyssey,” Allen Michaan, owner of Oakland’s Grand Lake Theater, knew the weekend would be very busy for his four-screen movie palace. He is showing the film both in standard digital format and on 70mm film.

Michaan has made 70mm showings a priority since 1982, when the projector was installed for the release of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.” He said the theater played that movie for 45 weeks that year. Due to the demand at the time, he installed two more 70mm projectors, making three of his four screens capable of the old-fashioned format.

Demand for the 70mm showings of “The Odyssey” has significantly outperformed their digital screenings, he said.

“We’re thrilled to get any 70mm print because it’s a gift from the filmmaker and the studio,” Michaan said.

Enhanced format screenings for “The Odyssey” made up 53% of the domestic weekend box office, with Imax film and digital revenue accounting for nearly 24%.

Imax 70mm accounted for about 4% of that total, with Imax digital making up the rest. Non-Imax 70mm film screening revenue totaled 3%, while 35mm showings made up 0.3%.

The nearly three-hour epic also marked the first feature film shot entirely on Imax cameras, a feat that required extensive collaboration between Nolan and Imax.

Nolan first told Imax Corp. Chief Executive Rich Gelfond in early 2024 that he was considering making an entire film with Imax cameras and laid out what he’d need for that to happen, including a quieter and lighter camera, a way to make film reloads easier and getting enough trained projectionists.

“It took a fair amount of time and investment” to figure out those challenges, Gelfond said. But by August 2024, the Imax team put together a series of tests to show cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. Two months later, Nolan saw the tests and was impressed.

“As filmmakers and studios integrate Imax, we become an increasingly important part of the ecosystem,” Gelfond said. “When a film is released in Imax or shot in Imax, I think it’s a signal to audiences that it’s somewhat special, and the filmmaker is really leaning in in a unique way.”

Times staff writer Cerys Davies contributed to this report.

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

Streaming giant Netflix narrowed its 2026 revenue forecast to $51 billion to $51.4 billion from its previous, larger range of $50.7 billion to $51.7 billion in its last Thursday’s second-quarter earnings report, renewing concerns among investors and equity analysts about the Los Gatos-based company’s future growth.

On the Friday morning after the earnings call, Netflix stock slid 13% to $65.08 a share, marking a new 52-week low. Shares eventually closed that day at $68.95.

As my colleague Wendy Lee has reported, investors are growing nervous that in recent months, Netflix’s share of TV viewing time in the U.S. has been decreasing, while YouTube’s share has increased, according to Nielsen data. Investors are concerned that if consumers are watching Netflix less, they’ll cancel their subscriptions, and that will put pressure on the company’s ability to raise prices in the U.S.

Netflix has said its engagement rates are healthy.

What I’m watching

I love a good teen mystery show, especially when it has a bit of a “Veronica Mars” vibe, so I binged Paramount+’s “School Spirits” last weekend.

Where Veronica Mars was solving realistic crimes around her local beach city, “School Spirits” tries to dig into why so many teens have died at (and haunt) a Wisconsin high school. At times, they’re hitting at a lot of different themes and storylines, but I loved the colorful ensemble of ghost characters from different decades, and Jennifer Tilly makes for an incredible villain.

A mother who faked a pregnancy after suffering several miscarriages is the subject of a harrowing Netflix documentary.

Netflix’s latest docu-drama unravels an elaborate lie that saw a woman to cross an irreversible line.

Streaming giant Netflix has just unveiled an emotional trailer for a tragic docu-drama perfect for Maternal Instinct fans, that tells the story of a Mexican woman named Alejandra.

Based on real events that shook all of Mexico in 2009, the film, which features both dramatisations and real home footage, tells of how Alejandra had always wanted to be a mother. However, after suffering multiple miscarriage and noticing the distain from her family, she decided to fake a pregnancy.

The trailer features the voice of Alejandra, who says: “I felt so special. From the moment that the people close to you start treating you lovingly, expectantly, with that joy.

“The way they come up and touch your belly…Many times I wanted to say ‘This isn’t happening, I’m not pregnant’.”

Alejandra explained the tragic reasoning behind her actions, sharing: “When I got married, I felt pressured to please his family.”

Being only 25 at the time, she felt burdened by family and societal expectations and despite her efforts to conceive, she struggled numerous times.

Alejandra then recalled how she met a young woman named Mayra, who she claimed was pregnant but did not want to have the baby. Fixated on the knowledge she knew somebody who did not want to keep their baby, Alejandra began orchestrating her elaborate plan to abduct a child.

She is heard saying: “When I started gaining weight, everything started to change. I wanted someone to burst that balloon of lies.”

In June 2009, she went to the Hospital General de México, where she was employed, and left with a newborn girl, tucking the baby into a bag. Contributors offering their testimony in the film are heard saying: “This was very hard to believe. Yet, it happened.”

Reflecting on her actions, Alejandra said: “What did I do wrong? Breaking the law. Deceiving. Hurting. I think my desire to be a mum was to please others.”

Her story was told in a book by Randall Fuquay called A Child to Call My Own: A True Story of Desperate Love, a Stolen Child, and the Nine Months that Changed Everything. Now, the story has been adapted for the small screen by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Maite Alberdi.

A Child of My Own comes to Netflix on August 13

Music sensation – and I’m A Celeb star – Aitch will feature in a huge new Netflix documentary later this month. The show follows the star as he undertakes a monumental challenge for charity.

Rap sensation Aitch will star in a new Netflix documentary, chronicling his gruelling quest to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. The 26-year-old rapper – real name Harrison James Armstrong – took on the challenge last year with the special doc streaming later this month.

Aitch rose to fame in 2018 with his hit track Straight Rhymez – and went on to unleash his number 2 album Close to Home in 2022. While reality TV fans will recognise the rapper from Manchester thanks to his star turn in the 2025 season of ITV’s I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! – where he finished in fourth place.

Fans will soon have a chance to see Aitch endure a trial more challenging than anything he faced in the jungle – by climbing the biggest mountain in Africa. The task was not just for fun, however; he also raised a substantial amount of money for charity in the process.

The musician took on Mount Kilimanjaro alongside his closest friends, family members, and team, and the climb was recorded on film as they undertook the monumental task. The resulting footage has been edited into a brand-new Netflix documentary titled Aitch: Don’t Be Afraid.

Directed by Aaron Fitzmaurice and Harry Tatem, the BRIT Award-winning star is shown taking on the unforgiving conditions as he makes his way up the huge mountain, which stands 19,341 feet above sea level. The Taste (Make It Shake) rapper raised over £160,000 following his challenge, with the funds going to the Down’s Syndrome Association, for which he is an ambassador.

The documentary promises emotional scenes as cameras captured every moment of the challenge. Fans will see “the physical and emotional realities of the journey”, a press release about the special stats.

“As the altitude rises and the conditions become increasingly unforgiving, viewers witness the determination, vulnerability and camaraderie that carry the group towards the summit,” it continues.

“Through candid moments on and off the mountain, the documentary explores the motivation behind the challenge, highlighting the strength of family, resilience, and the importance of raising greater awareness and creating opportunities for people with Down syndrome. More than a story of endurance, Aitch: Don’t Be Afraid, which was shot last year, shines a light on a cause deeply personal to Aitch, celebrating his younger sister Gracie’s impact on his life while encouraging audiences to support the Down’s Syndrome Association and the work it does for individuals with Down’s syndrome and their families across the UK.”

Aitch’s 16-year-old sister, Gracie, frequently features in his social media output – and his 2022 song, My G, featuring Ed Sheeran, is dedicated to her. The star has opened up about his special relationship with his younger sibling – and has previously stated he makes music to support both Gracie and her twin sister Hattie.

Opening up about their relationship at the Pride of Britain Awards last year, he said: “Gracie is my hero because she’s just an absolute soldier. Just what she’s been through and all that. She just lights up every room she walks in.”

And heaping praise on Hattie, whom he branded “the superstar in my family”, he added: “Them two are my heroes, even though they do my head in sometimes.”

Fans were touched to hear the singer open up about his sisters while in the I’m A Celeb camp last year. He gushed to fellow contestants – including Shona McGarty and Jack Osbourne: “My baby girls, my two sisters, everything I do is for them two… Bottom line, I’m on this show for them two. I make music for them two. I try to make a living for them two. Yeah, they’re my girls.”

And during a previous appearance on Made In Chelsea star Jamie Laing’s podcast, Aitch explained how Gracie had helped shape his life. He said: “I wouldn’t even be half the person I am if [Gracie] wasn’t here.

“She actually teaches you lessons that you don’t realise till after. It’s taught me, and this sounds bad, but it taught me more to treat everyone the same. And to understand that everyone is a human.”

Aitch: Don’t Be Afraid will be available to stream via Netflix from Sunday, 26 July.

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Netflix stock plunged 9% on Friday morning to $67.74 a share, after the streamer’s second quarter earnings report renewed concerns among investors and analysts about the streamer’s future growth.

The Los Gatos-based company on Thursday narrowed its 2026 forecast to $51 billion to $51.4 billion from $50.7 billion to $51.7 billion, causing equity analysts to cut their estimates. The stock reached a new 52-week low on Friday and is down 49% from a year ago.

“This outlook likely reinforces investor concerns,” wrote analysts from Guggenheim Securities in a research note on Friday, which has a “buy” rating on the stock.

Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its declining stock price.

Investors have been skittish about the amount of time people spend on the streaming platform. Netflix’s share of TV viewing time in the U.S. has steadily declined in recent months as YouTube has gained market share, according to Nielsen data.

Investors are concerned that if people spend less time watching Netflix, it could cause people to cancel their subscriptions and make it more challenging for Netflix to raise prices in markets like the U.S.

Netflix said engagement is healthy on its platform and its programs continue to draw large audiences with popular shows like crime drama series “I Will Find You.”

Netflix said subscribers watched more than 97 billion hours on the streaming service in the first half of the year, up 2% from a year ago.

“We are increasingly concerned that younger generations are less interested in long form content as their time migrates to ‘free’ social media platforms,” wrote Jeffrey Wlodarczak, CEO of Pivotal Research Group in a report on Friday, who has a hold recommendation on Netflix stock. “We believe this will result in slower subscriber growth and attempts by the company to offset this via more aggressive price increases and investment in content.”

Netflix executives in a Thursday earnings presentation emphasized that measuring engagement at the company goes beyond hours spent watching the streaming service.

“There is not a linear relationship between view hours and revenue and profit because all hours are not created equal,” said Greg Peters, Netflix co-CEO on an earnings presentation on Thursday. “All hours don’t provide the same kind of value to the business.”

The streamer said it plans to allocate just over 5% of its content spend on live programming this year. Live content has been a key driver for subscriptions, accounting for six of the top 10 new member sign-up days over the last five years, the company said, even though it makes up roughly 1% of overall watch time this year.

The company is also diversifying the content it offers on its platform, adding live sports games and video podcasts, in addition its large library of TV shows and movies.

Netflix revenue rose 13% to $12.6 billion in the second quarter. Net income was $3.4 billion, up 9% from a year ago.

The company said its advertising business is on track to reach $3 billion in revenue this year, double the amount in 2025.

Netflix on Thursday reported higher revenues and profit in the second quarter as it sought to assure investors about its growth prospects.

The streaming giant reported revenue of $12.6 billion in the second quarter, up 13% from a year ago. Net income during the period rose 9% to $3.4 billion.

Netflix said it expects revenue to grow 12% in the third quarter, but lowered its 2026 revenue forecast to $51 billion from $51.4 billion.

The results were roughly in line with what analysts had predicted and were driven by recent price increase and growth in advertising revenue. The latter is expected to reach $3 billion this year, the company said.

In a presentation with analysts, Netflix executives touted global expansion plans.

“We’re entertaining an audience approaching a billion people with still lots of room to grow into our addressable market on every measure,” said Spencer Neumann, Netflix’s chief financial officer, in the earnings presentation. “We believe we’ve got lots and lots of runway for solid growth ahead of us.”

Those comments appeared intended to assuage investors who’ve grown concerned that people could be spending less time on the streaming service as rivals like YouTube gain market share.

Netflix’s share of TV viewing time in the U.S. has steadily declined in recent months as rivals have gained market share, according to Nielsen data.

The streamer represented 7.8% of all TV viewing in the U.S. in April — the lowest percentage since May 2025. It was 7.5% in April 2025, Nielsen said.

By comparison, YouTube has seen its share of the streaming audience grow. YouTube’s TV viewing share in April rose to 13.4%, up from 12.4% a year earlier, Nielsen said.

Some investors fear that if viewership is down, subscribers could cancel the service, which would negatively affect the platform’s growing advertising business. It could also undercut Netflix’s ability to raise prices in the U.S. and other countries.

Those worries have caused Netflix’s stock price to plummet 41% in the last year. The stock closed on Thursday at $74.35 a share, up 1%. In after hours trading, the stock fell 8%.

“The engagement elephant continues to rear its head and investors are on edge that an earlier price hike in a seasonally tough period and lighter content slate could have driven more churn than usual,” wrote Morgan Stanley Research analysts in a research note.

On Thursday, Netflix said in a letter to shareholders it has a sophisticated understanding of its consumers and “we know not all hours are equal” and that engagement on its platform is “healthy.”

“The entertainment industry remains dynamic and competitive,” Netflix told shareholders. “We aim to stay ahead by executing against our three areas of focus: delivering more entertainment value, leveraging technology to improve every aspect of our service, and improving monetization.”

The Los Gatos-based company said it plans to allocate more than 5% of its content spend on live programming this year. Live content has been a key driver for subscriptions, accounting for six of the top 10 new member sign-up days over the last five years, the company said.

In the first half of 2026, Netflix said members watched more than 97 billion hours, up 2% from a year ago. Among the most popular shows: the crime thriller “I Will Find You,” which had 87 million views; and the romantic comedy film “Voicemails for Isabelle,” which garnered 71 million views.

Netflix has been adding new types of content to its platform, including video podcasts to help increase engagement with subscribers during the day.

As part of the diversification efforts, the platform has expanded its portfolio of live programming over the years, including adding NFL games and streaming Major League Baseball’s opening day game.

In 2022, Netflix had also faced investor pressure when it reported declining subscribers for the first time in more than a decade. That pushed the company to delve into other areas including advertising, gaming and cracking down on password sharing.