Company
Global entertainment conglomerate operating film studios (Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm), theme parks, the ABC network, and Disney+ streaming.
Character.AI said on September 30, 2025 that it had removed Disney characters after a cease-and-desist letter dated September 18, 2025. It likens the user-made bots to fan fiction, so the takedown meets Disney's demand without settling the dispute.
Reality
Disney expects to spend $180 million over three years on pay and retention for 66 Character.AI staff, Business Insider reported from a Chapter 11 filing. That is nine times the $20 million Disney agreed to pay for the startup's assets.
Reality
Netflix is cutting about 1,000 jobs, 6% of its workforce, in its largest layoff to date, according to a memo from co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. The shares are down more than 40% in 12 months, the Wall Street Journal reported, and earnings land on Oct. 20.
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34 publishersReality
Epic Games told developers on its delayed Disney shooter to build with AI first, Bloomberg reported, a game tied to Disney's $1.5 billion stake in Epic. Epic has not set a new release date.
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15 publishersReality
Character.AI filed for Chapter 11 on October 12 with a $20 million stalking-horse bid from Disney for a non-exclusive license to its AI technology. Google paid about $2.7 billion for a non-exclusive license to its model technology in 2024, 135 times that figure.
Reality
Disney will open bidding at $20 million for a license to Character.AI's IP after the chatbot startup filed for Chapter 11 in Delaware. Character.AI says it will wind down the service if the sale produces no bid sufficient to keep the platform running.
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28 publishersReality
Character.ai's parent filed Chapter 11 on Oct. 12 and expects a court-supervised sale to close in late November or early December. Exports take three to four weeks, so a user who files a request now has little slack before the sale closes.
Reality
Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro hired Karandeep Anand, who previously ran Character.AI, as the company's first companywide CTO. His first memo to staff sets focus and a willingness to say no as the terms of the job, so the first test is which technology projects lose.
Reality
Disney's ABC asked a federal judge on Tuesday to halt an FCC early review of its eight station licenses, calling it retaliation for its journalism. Judge Loren AliKhan sounded doubtful that the review is about Disney's hiring, so her ruling will test how far a regulator can use license timing against a newsroom.
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Skydance has made former Mattel chief Ynon Kreiz co-CEO, expected to find $6 billion in savings over three years, Business Insider reports. David Ellison keeps the studio and talent deals, leaving Kreiz the cuts and the layoffs expected with them.
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Disney's "Endgame Encore" rerelease grossed about $126 million worldwide and put the film $1.8 million ahead of "Avatar" for the all-time record. The money came from a seven-year-old film that has streamed for years, and it still earned more than 12 times the usual rerelease ceiling.
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3 publishersReality
Netflix is ending its six-year production deal with David Fincher, the arrangement behind Mank and The Killer. Shawn Levy and the Duffer brothers have also gone, though the director deals Netflix keeps suggest it is choosing fewer, bigger bets.
Reality
Disney, ABC and eight owned stations sued the FCC and Brendan Carr in Washington, asking a judge to stop an early license review before it becomes a hearing.
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4 publishersReality
Guidance issued in January told broadcasters that late-night and daytime talk shows are not necessarily exempt from equal time, and since then two networks have kept the same Senate candidate off air.
Reality
Amazon's new Shop tab opens from the Fire TV remote, and Shop the Show now covers more than 8,000 US titles instead of 1,300. Lens scene matching runs on more than 600, and every purchase still finishes in the phone app.
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3 publishersReality
Paramount Skydance is readying new Paramount+ features to lift engagement and revenue as it finalizes its $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery deal. Internal documents describe the free tier as a registration funnel meant to turn samplers into paying subscribers at a service struggling with churn.
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The glasses Meta ships in Spring 2027 weigh about 100 grams because compute and battery moved to a tethered puck rated for up to three hours of high-resolution playback. Every launch partner Meta named sells video or live sport.
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Meta's new VR Glasses leave the display and sensors on the face and move the processor, the memory and the battery onto a wired puck in the pocket. The Verge tried them at Meta's campus this week.
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OpenAI's own deprecations page lists four cutoffs between 24 September and 23 October 2026. Finding out whether they touch your code takes one look at the Usage dashboard, in an account plenty of buyers cannot sign into.
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The 32-page report sets 41 percent unrenewed against 11 percent cancelled outright. It also lists Wonder Man at 52 percent retention, two points above the threshold the industry treats as a renewal, among the shows that ended.
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Build · September 18, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers
Leadership · September 18, 2026 · One report1 publisher
Product · August 17, 2026 · Confirmed2 publishers
Product · August 15, 2026 · Confirmed3 publishers