Hollywood Buzz: July 2023

By Natalie Lifson, Agent Trainee at Buchwald and your co-Editor-in-Chief at THA

• The 75th Emmy Awards are postponed to September 2023 (Deadline, 7/27)
  

• Peacock lost $651 from April to June (IndieWire, 7/27)

• Disney CEO Bob Iger indicates that Disney might scale back on linear TV (Variety, 7/21)

• Seven AI companies met with Biden, pledging to put safeguards in place (NYT, 7/21)

• YouTube Premium now costs an extra $2/month (The Verge, 7/20); Peacock’s prices are also rising in August (TechCrunch, 7/17)

• Real Housewives star calls for reality stars to form a union to go on strike (Variety, 7/20)

• “The Simulation” has introduced "Showrunner," a new AI application that can create 22-minute generative AI TV fan and parody episodes of popular shows (Forbes, 7/18)

• Actors (SAG) join writers on strike (NYT, 7/13)

• The Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI for “risk of harm to consumers, including reputational harm” from ChatGPT (Washington Post, 7/13)

• In the UK/Ireland, production companies formed the Association of True Crime Producers to “establish best production practices in the genre” (Deadline, 7/13)

• According to a DirectTV survey, 22% of U.S. adults canceled a streaming service in the past 3 months (NextTV, July 11)

• Hulu launches Animeyhem for adult animation and anime (Variety, 7/10)

• Amazon CEO asks his Hollywood studio to explain its big spending (Bloomberg, 7/5)

• Barbie breaks box-office records including biggest female director opening (The Direct)