Jennifer Maas: Last News

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “Hogwarts Legacy” has wingardium leviosa-ed Warner Bros. Games’ sales, earning $850 million in global sales and moving more than 12 million units in just its first two weeks post-launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. That marks the biggest global launch ever for the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned video game company, with the “Harry Potter” action role-playing game also setting the Twitch record for single-player games with 1.28 million peak concurrent viewers at launch. As Variety previously reported, “Hogwarts Legacy” opened with stunning player engagement, topping 267 million hours played from launch on Feb. 10 through Feb. 21. On Thursday, Warner Bros. Games revealed the game had broken company records with 280 million hours played to date.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer After struggling to re-create the magic of the “Harry Potter” film franchise with the lackluster spinoff trilogy “Fantastic Beasts,” Warner Bros. has finally struck galleons anew with its latest piece of Wizarding World IP: video game “Hogwarts Legacy.” The action role-playing game, produced by Warner Bros. Games and Avalanche Software, has clicked with Potterheads since its Feb. 10 release. Sales figures are yet to come, but it’s clear from the buzz factor and other measures — including sales charts in Japan, the U.K. and Europe — that fans are engaged. For one, the arrival of the game spurred the highest traffic in the “Harry Potter” community on fan platform Fandom in more than seven years.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Food Network is adding more than a dash of Italian flare to its next big primetime cooking competition, shooting the eight-episode series on-location in a Tuscan villa where 10 competitors live together while striving to prove their mastery of Italian culinary techniques. Aptly titled “Ciao House,” the “Big Brother”-meets-“Under the Tuscan Sun” competition, hosted and judged by network vet Alex Guarnaschelli and Tuscan-born chef Gabriele Bertaccini, premieres Sunday, April 16 at 9 p.m. on the linear Food Network channel and streams the same day on Discovery+. Per Food Network’s description for “Ciao House”: “From real-life nonnas showcasing how they make pasta from scratch to a lesson with the head butcher of a three centuries-old family butcher business, each challenge is accompanied by a local experience steeped in tradition. The competitors must also navigate alliances and rivalries as they pick their own teams and each week, the losing team must vote off one of their own. In the end, only the last chef standing wins the life-changing grand prize: an immersive culinary education across Italy, training with renowned Italian master chefs.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer AMC Networks reported its fourth-quarter 2022 earnings Friday, two days after naming Kristin Dolan, wife of the company’s owner, James Dolan, its new CEO. The company says it ended 2022 with 11.8 million paid streaming subscribers across all of its targeted streamers: AMC+, Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now, ALLBLK and HIDIVE. Those digital offerings are in addition to the company’s linear channels AMC, BBC America (a joint venture with BBC Studios), IFC, SundanceTV, WE tv and IFC Films. That’s a slight increase of 700,000 customers from the end of Q3, when AMC Networks reported it had reached 11.1 million subs. Meanwhile, U.S. ad sales fell 12% in the quarter.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Warner Bros. Discovery programming execs are trying a new experiment: Airing some iconic modern-day HBO programming on basic cable, beginning with comedy “Silicon Valley” on TBS and drama “True Blood” on TNT this Saturday. As this is TV — not HBO — the shows will be edited both for content (receiving a TV-MA rating) and ad breaks. While this is not the first time HBO content has been refashioned for cable — think “Sex and the City” or “The Sopranos,” both of which were sold into syndication — it does mark a first for programming produced and aired on HBO in more recent years. (“True Blood” ended in 2014, “Silicon Valley” concluded in 2019.)

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Ryan Seacrest is exiting “Live With Kelly and Ryan” after six years acting as Kelly Ripa’s co-host on the ABC daytime talker. Upon Seacrest’s exit, Ripa will be joined by her husband, Mark Consuelos, as her new co-host and the show will be rebranded “Live with Kelly and Mark.” Seacrest announced his pending departure on Thursday’s episode of “Live!,” saying: “Working alongside Kelly over the past six years has been a dream job and one of the highlights of my career. She has been an amazing partner, friend, and confidant, and although we will always be a part of each other’s lives, I will miss our mornings together. I also want to thank Michael Gelman and the entire staff and crew – we’ve made memories to last a lifetime, met some of the most incredible people and had the warmest welcome into the homes of so many viewers across America. It’s been a memorable ride and now I’m excited to pass the baton to Kelly’s ‘real’ husband, Mark.” 

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Paramount surpassed 77 million streaming subscribers in Q4, adding 10 million to Paramount+ alone to reach nearly 56 million customers for that platform. In comparison, the paid streamer added 4.6 million subscribers in the third quarter, reaching nearly 67 million global direct-to-consumer customers overall for Paramount by the end of September. During the fourth quarter, Paramount Global’s SVOD launched splashy Taylor Sheridan titles “1923,” yet another a prequel to his hit Paramount Network series “Yellowstone,” and the Sylvester Stallone-led “Tulsa King,” as well as the “Criminal Minds” revival “Criminal Minds: Evolution” and the streaming debut of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer AMC Networks has named Kristin Dolan CEO. Dolan, a longtime AMC Networks board member and wife of the company’s owner, James Dolan, will begin her new role Feb. 27. Her appointment to the position comes months after Christina Spade, formerly CFO of the company, stepped down in November after a very brief stint as chief, following the exit of interim CEO Matt Blank. Once Spade left, James Dolan was named interim executive chairman while a search began for another AMC Networks CEO, and announced that “large-scale layoffs” would be hitting the company amid a stall in growth at streaming AMC+ and its smaller platforms Acorn TV, Shudder, Sundance Now, ALLBLK and HIDIVE.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Fox and its Web3 media company Blockchain Creative Labs has launched “The Masked Singer Experience,” a new online, interactive community for fans, featuring live show voting polls, exclusive paid-member content, a points leaderboard and an online rewards store. The new experience went live at maskverse.com on Wednesday morning ahead of the “Masked Singer’s” primetime Season 9 premiere on Fox. Per Fox, “During episodes throughout the season, fans will be able to scan on-air QR codes to play along and vote on which character they believe will progress on to the next round.” This fan voting will not affect the series outcome, according to the network.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Showtime laid off approximately 120 staffers Monday amid a streaming-focused restructuring that saw the exits of several top execs as the pay TV channel’s team was merged into MTV Entertainment Studios, a spokesperson confirmed. No other details were available regarding which departments within Showtime were impacted, though a source close to the situation tells Variety those cuts could amount to roughly 25% of Showtime’s workforce. As reported earlier Monday, Showtime co-presidents Gary Levine and Jana Winograde are exiting their current posts amid a continuing shakeup at the pay TV channel, with Levine shifting to an advisory role and Winograde leaving Paramount Global entirely.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer That didn’t take long at all: Just after revealing that Showtime co-presidents Jana Winograde and Gary Levine are stepping down from their current roles, with Winograde exiting entirely and Levine moving into an advisory position, parent company Paramount Global has revealed that the remaining Showtime team will be merging with sister brand MTV Entertainment Studios. Within the combined entity — created as Showtime’s linear and streaming platforms are being integrated into Paramount+ and rebranded to Paramount+ With Showtime — a new leadership structure has been set by Paramount’s president and CEO of streaming Tom Ryan and president and CEO of Showtime and Paramount Media Networks Chris McCarthy.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Showtime co-presidents Gary Levine and Jana Winograde are exiting their current posts amid a continuing shakeup at the pay TV channel, with Levine shifting to an advisory role and Winograde leaving Paramount Global entirely. The move, announced by president and CEO of Showtime and Paramount Media Networks Chris McCarthy in a memo to staff Monday, comes following the Jan. 30 news that both Showtime’s linear and streaming platforms will be integrated into Paramount+ and rebranded as “Paramount+ With Showtime.” “With the integration of Showtime across the company, many of the current functions that Jana oversees including business affairs, production, operations and casting are being centralized and therefore, Jana will be leaving,” McCarthy wrote of Winograde, a six-year vet of the network.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Los Angeles-based real estate developer The Ratkovich Company, which brought the Hercules Campus in Playa Vista to life for Google and YouTube Studios, and a J.P. Morgan Global Alternatives investment group have acquired a three-acre property near Downtown Culver City with plans to develop it into a creative campus like others in the area occupied by Amazon, Apple, WarnerMedia, Sony, TikTok, Nike and Adobe, Variety has learned exclusively. Dubbed “The Bowcroft Collection,” the 73,035-square-foot group of connected buildings stretches from 5950-5978 Bowcroft Street, near the intersection of Jefferson and Obama Boulevards in Los Angeles.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Following a quarter that saw Netflix release several of its most popular titles of all time — per the streamer’s self-reported internal measurements — and subscriber growth after two straight quarters of losses, co-CEO and chief content officer Ted Sarandos is feeling “better and better” about the company’s $17 billion content spend budget. “Both the scope and scale, as well as the range and cadence of hits is improving,” Sarandos said during Netflix’s prerecorded Q3 earnings interview with his fellow execs, which was released Tuesday afternoon following the announcement of the third-quarter results. “So I feel better and better about that $17 billion of content spend because what we have to do is be better and better at getting more impact per billion dollar spent than anyone else. And that’s how we’re focusing on it. So I think we’re spending at about the right level. And as we re-accelerate revenue, we’ll revisit that number, of course. But we’re a pretty disciplined bunch about that.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SPOLER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched Monday’s episode of Fox’s “9-1-1,” titled “Home Invasion.” Following a very rough road as of late, “9-1-1” had Maddie Buckley (Jennifer Love Hewitt) firmly in control of her life again this week and making moves that Hewitt didn’t think her character would be capable of in the early days of the Fox first-responder drama. With Variety, Hewitt discusses Monday’s installment of the show, which saw Maddie deal with trust issues at home — where she and Chimney grapple with the reality of getting a nanny named Madga for Baby Jee-Yun — and in her home away from home, the 9-1-1 call center — where her new recruit makes the twist choice to feed personal info of people with medical emergencies to robbers, and risk Maddie’s career by using her login for the illegal activity.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer We’re almost a month into the broadcast TV fall 2022 season and we’ve already got a few winners and losers to discuss when it comes to new scripted series. There are multiple ways to categorize a victory in the this ever-evolving TV landscape, but for the purposes of this story looking at the debuts of NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox and The CW’s new shows, Variety has ranked the programs by the total viewers that each series premiere racked up, according to Nielsen’s Live + Same Day data.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “Cobra Kai” closed in on nearly 2 billion minutes viewed on Netflix in the first full week after its Season 5 launch on Sept. 9, as the streaming audience for Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” and HBO’s “House of the Dragon” dipped, according to Nielsen’s newly released streaming rankings for the month-ago period. From Sept. 12-18, the first four episodes of “The Rings of Power” hit 988 million minutes viewed on Prime Video, while the first five of “House of the Dragon” landed 960 million minutes viewed on HBO Max. Meanwhile, “Cobra Kai” — which currently has five seasons and 50 episodes available for streaming on Netflix — was watched for 1.9 million minutes when counting viewership across the entire series, per Nielsen.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Vought International has two new hires to boast about: Supes Firecracker and Sister Sage made their epic debut Monday in two first-look photos from “The Boys” Season 4 revealed by Amazon’s Prime Video. In the photos, which you can view at the bottom of this post, you’ll see Susan Heyward suit up as Sister Sage and Valorie Curry rocking her Firecracker costume. Both of the supersuits were designed by Laura Jean Shannon, “The Boys” costume designer who styled Jensen Ackles’ fan-favorite Soldier Boy look for Season 3. Fans will want to pick the details of these costumes apart as much as possible, because Amazon says that everything else about the Firecracker and Sister Sage characters “will be kept under wraps until the season airs.” While we don’t know when that will be just yet, we do know “The Boys” Season 4 is currently in production in Toronto — so stay tuned.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer After debuting eight new original holiday movies in 2021, BET+ is getting even more into the seasonal spirit this year with 10 more titles rolling out beginning Nov. 3, Variety has learned exclusively. The 2022 slate features films starring Ne-Yo, Sereyah, Romeo Miller, LeToya Luckett and LaLa Milan, as well as returning BET+ holiday movie staples like Jasmine Guy, Terrence Carson and Dorien Wilson. The titles come from directors and writers including Victoria Rowell (who also appears in “A Christmas Gift”), Robin Givens, Bree West and Patricia Cuffie Jones. “We’re committed to bringing quality Black stories to the screen and the holidays are no exception,” BET+ executive vice president and general manager Devin Griffin said. “Year after year, our members devour holiday programming; in fact, our original holiday films continue to out-perform, which is why we’re committed to growing our investment in this area of the service. But it’s not just about meeting demand, it’s also about authenticity. Our cast and crews are a powerhouse of Black excellence from creatives behind the camera like Victoria Rowell, Robin Givens and Patricia Cuffie Jones to the incredible performances of talent like Ne-Yo, Serayah, Romeo Miller, Dorien Wilson and Jasmine Guy, to name a few. With a weekly rollout of content come November, we’re excited to help our members celebrate and enjoy the holidays all season long.”

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SPOLER ALERT: Do not read if you have not yet watched through the Season 1 finale of Netflix’s “The Midnight Club.” “The Haunting of Hill House” and “Midnight Mass” mastermind Mike Flanagan turned his attention to a younger audience for his new Netflix series, “The Midnight Club,” which launched Friday. The new drama concludes its 10-episode first season with just a few answers, and many more questions about the fate of Ilonka (Iman Benson) and her fellow terminally ill teens at Brightcliffe Hospice, the Paragon cult’s mysterious connection to Dr. Stanton (Heather Langenkamp), the teens’ head caregiver and owner of the hospice, what actually happened to Julia Jayne/Shasta (Samantha Sloyan) and why those elderly ghosts are haunting Ilonka and Kevin (Igby Rigney).

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Jamie Lee Curtis professed her love to a room filled with more than 5,000 “Halloween” franchise fans at New York Comic Con on Saturday, telling the crowd: “No matter what I do — whatever the fuck I do forever — Laurie Strode is because of you and I thank you. ” Curtis choked up at the start of panel when moderator Drew Barrymore first brought her out for the one-on-one sit down and began by asking how it feels to finally come to the conclusion of her “Halloween” story with the release of “Halloween Ends.” The slasher finale will debut in theaters and on the streaming service Peacock. “Endings are a bitch, but so is Laurie Strode,” Curtis said, before wiping tears away from her eyes as the crowd cheered for her.