Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
June 13 - June 19

APPLE TV
In Cook’s view, “F1” is the perfect vehicle to test Apple’s power to affect culture with the soft power of a broad-appeal movie rather than through the hardware of its computers and smartphones. Just like we leverage the best of Apple across iPhones and across our services, we try to leverage the best of Apple TV+.” ...

Crunchyroll, a global anime brand and streaming service that recently topped 17 million subscribers, is consolidating ever more as a major entertainment player.As its platform now boasts the largest of dedicated anime libraries, Crunchyroll teams dedicate their energy to reaching new audiences via an immersive world of events, exciting theatrical releases, unique games, must-have merchandise, timely news, and more. “Anime is niche no more,” said Crunchyroll EVP of global commerce and head of theatrical Michel Berger as he introduced an Annecy Crunchyroll Studio Focus 2025 – a presentation that highlighted anime’s meteoric growth and how Crunchyroll has fuelled that growth....

Steve Jobs, the legendary tech visionary who co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak, was famously attentive to image-making for his brand. And when it came to speaking to Hollywood, first and foremost, Apple took care to position itself as a wellspring of high-end filmmaking tools. Jobs, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011 at age 56, knew how valuable it was for Apple to be embraced as the gold standard for creative design, editing and visual effects. He also was masterful at cultivating the cool factor for his products. The forerunner of today’s sleek MacBook laptops was the PowerBook. This BBDO-designed campaign is aimed at entertainment industry insiders. The juxtaposition of prominent people in different fields underscored how handy the device could be. Among the pairings were Imago Records’ Terry Ellis with Black Flag belter and actor Henry Rollins and movie critic Gene Shalit with stunt performer Linda Fetters-Howard. By the fall of 1997, the ad campaign that would become synonymous with Apple marketing — “Think Different” — was in full swing. Director Alfred Hitchcock was among the iconic innovators featured in arresting print ads...

Disney and NBCUniversal are the first Hollywood players to take a shot across the bow of a generative AI company that they claim has stolen their copyrighted characters. Disney and NBCU filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Midjourney, a generative AI start-up, alleging copyright infringement. The companies alleged that Midjourney’s own website “displays hundreds, if not thousands, of images generated by its Image Service at the request of its subscribers that infringe Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works.” Other IP owners have sued AI companies alleging copyright infringement, but the Disney-NBCU lawsuit represents the first litigation brought by big entertainment studios in this domain. Others that have filed lawsuits against AI firms have included newspaper publishers (including the New York Times and Dow Jones ∓ Co.), record labels, authors and visual artists. Meanwhile, in a more targeted action, the producers of “Blade Runner 2049” filed a lawsuit accusing Elon Musk and Tesla of infringing its copyrights, alleging Musk blatantly copied an iconic scene from the movie with an AI-generated image intended to promote Tesla’s new self-driving taxi...

Future Frames – Generation Next of European Cinema, a program that puts a spotlight on young European filmmakers, has revealed its selection for this year’s edition, which takes place next month at Karlovy Vary Film Festival. The program is organized by European Film Promotion, and held in cooperation with Karlovy Vary and its partner Allwyn. It is supported by Creative Europe – the MEDIA Programme of the European Union. The lineup is comprised of recent European film school graduates whose short films will be screening at the festival. They are nominated by their respective national film promotion institutes, EFP’s member organizations, and selected by Karlovy Vary’s artistic director, Karel Och, and his team. ..