Hiddleston left the sell out crowd at a panel discussion hosted by the Royal Television Society Wednesday evening (March 2) hungry for more details but the star of the Marvel show about the god of mischief and chaos, couldn't and wouldn't be drawn. "There is going to be a series two," Hiddleston smiled mischievously. "That's a complete sentence I think. I'll get into real trouble if I say more."
At the beginning of August, Reese Witherspoon sold her company, Hello Sunshine. Even in a world where film-stars-turned-brands have become 10 a penny, the Oscar winner made international headlines thanks to the jaw-dropping sale price – reportedly $900m. Witherspoon said she was “thrilled to be working with Blackstone, Kevin, and Tom to grow a next-generation media company”.
At first glance, the outlook looks less than sunny for traditional broadcasters faced with competition from Netflix and the other streamers. Dig a little deeper and the situation looks a lot more nuanced.
That was the main takeaway from the second of two Steve Hewlett Scholarship debates, “British broadcasting in crisis?”, organised jointly by the RTS and Media Society.
All my days have been starting the same way this year – like much of the country, I have spent most of them at home. I usually get up early, as I like the quiet tranquillity of the early morning.
After breakfast, the peace dissipates into the usual busyness of the day, when the phone starts ringing and emails start pinging. A cue for me to head to my home office.
One of my current projects is the animation Master Moley, for which I voice the title character and am an executive producer.
Over the past year, SVoD services such as Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock (NBCUniversal) and AppleTV+ have come on stream, joining the likes of Netflix and Amazon.
Alan Wolk, co-founder of media consultancy TV[R]EV, speaking from New Jersey, dubbed the streaming boom a “flixcopalypse”. He said two more – Paramount+ and Discovery+ – were due to launch soon.
Success is not guaranteed. The short-form streamer Quibi, launched by former Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg, collapsed this month after only half a year in business.
Set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, WandaVision will follow on from Avengers: Endgame with Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprising their titular roles, living in the suburbs having just gotten married.
The time-bending trailer sees Wanda and Vision reunited in a black and white 50s-esque domestic dinner party, unable to remember how they met, before reality warps into more seemingly the modern day.
The series has been created by Jac Shaeffer, the mind behind the upcoming Black Widow film.
When Disney announced that its eagerly awaited streaming service, Disney+, would launch in the UK and Western Europe in March no one knew that the service’s debut would coincide with a global pandemic keeping millions of people at home.
“With much of the UK looking for entertainment while they are stuck at home, Disney+ is likely to be a big hit,” said Shiv Pabari, director of media and entertainment at Simon-Kucher & Partners. “Families, in particular, will be excited by the content offered.”
