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When HBO Max launched last year, it was only available on a select few devices — and made headlines every time the corporate powers that be struck deals with some of the most popular streaming platforms throughout the rest of the year, until it finally arrived on Roku that December. Corporate dealmaking doesn’t usually make such an immediate difference in most people’s everyday lives, but the ability to stream “Friends” as you fall asleep was important enough that there were even single-serve websites dedicated to the availability of HBO Max on Roku....

Children’s books and “Succession” don’t typically go hand-in-hand — unless you’re a parent who likes to imagine Logan Roy’s voice whenever you’re reading “Go the Fuck to Sleep” — but Episode 4 makes an uncharacteristically direct reference to Margaret Mahy’s 1969 illustrated story, “A Lion in the Meadow.” In the fanciful tale, a young boy looks out his back window and tells his mother there’s a big, yellow lion roaming around outside....

WarnerMedia is readying to launch CNN+ in the spring, adding another true-life player to a corporate roster that includes HBO Max, familiar doc player CNN Films, and soon, Discovery. And a film released by one of Disney’s divisions could end up in theaters, and/or Disney+ or Hulu, under the banner of National Geographic Documentary Films, a Hulu Original, or ABC News. Confused? So are many in the business who work outside the halls of these big players....

As IndieWire previously reported, in January a group of Muslim American filmmakers submitted a letter to Sundance voicing their concerns about the movie, which was part of the U.S. Documentary Competition. Coughlin and Ahmad were among the Sundance staffers copied on the email, along with festival director Tabitha Jackson and director of programming Kim Yutani, but neither Coughlin nor Ahmad participated in a follow-up meeting with the letter’s authors over Zoom....

Amidst the blend of interviews and archival footage, each episode takes a few well-timed journeys into a dreamlike abstract void. Dubbed in onscreen text as “Elements of a Supervillain,” each of these interstitials takes a part of the Tekashi lore and brings it to an artistic operating table of sorts. With a synthetic Tekashi figure in the center of the frame, disembodied white-gloved hands manipulate and style him as part of a hypnotic, sometimes nightmareish makeover....

Ongoing interest in Christopher Nolan’s film may seem ironic as it was the last major Warners release to see a traditional rollout. The studio reportedly recoups 70 percent of VOD rental; if there were 1 million rentals in a week, at the current price of $5.99, it would generate nearly $4.2 million. That would justify delaying a move to HBO Max. As a PVOD, Universal sees a more generous revenue share of 80 percent on “News of the World” rentals....

The best survival films immerse viewers in life-or-death scenarios, balancing realism and believability with slow-burn suspense. Even in lighter survival fare, such as “Swiss Family Robinson,” filmmakers have to keep up the pace and pressure to deliver the subgenre’s characteristic urgency. Sure, “Cast Away,” “The Revenant,” and epic sagas like them are sweeping in scope with the lengthy running times to match. But survival stories work best when every frame feels like a passive threat to the protagonist’s existence....