Updated every Friday 12:00 PM
December 5 - December 11

APPLE TV
Apple TV unveiled the premiere date and a first look at the third season of "Tehran," and announced that the International Emmy Award-winning, acclaimed global espionage thriller has been renewed for a fourth season. Created by Dana Eden, Moshe Zonder and Maor Kohn, written by Tony Saint and Simon Allen, and directed by Daniel Syrkin, the eight-episode third season of "Tehran" welcomes multi-Emmy Award nominee Hugh Laurie to the cast, and will make its global debut on January 9 with one episode, followed by new episodes every Friday through February 27 on Apple TV...

Warner Bros. Discovery announced Friday it has agreed to sell its streaming and studios assets to Netflix in a deal valued at $82.7 billion, setting the stage for one of the most sweeping and consequential mergers in modern Hollywood history. If approved by federal regulators, the transaction promises to create a new entertainment and media behemoth, uniting the world's largest streaming destination with a storied 102-year-old film studio. Warner Bros.' portfolio includes HBO, the HBO Max streaming platform and the "Harry Potter" movie franchise. Netflix, home of "Stranger Things" and "Squid Game," reaches more than 300 million paid subscribers across over 190 countries. "Our mission has always been to entertain the world," Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said in a news release. "By combining Warner Bros.' incredible library of shows and movies — from timeless classics like 'Casablanca' and 'Citizen Kane' to modern favorites like 'Harry Potter' and 'Friends' — with our culture-defining titles like 'Stranger Things,' 'KPop Demon Hunters' and 'Squid Game,' we'll be able to do that even better. "Together, we can give audiences more of what they love and help define the next century of storytelling," Sarandos added. The deal would give Netflix access to popular and lucrative intellectual property, including DC Comics characters such as Batman and Superman; the "Game of Thrones" TV saga; and a vast trove of titles stretching from Hollywood's classical era to the age of CGI-powered fantasy epics.The tie-up would not include Warner-owned cable channels such as CNN, TNT and TBS...

IAcross Europe, hand-drawn animation continues to hold its ground, with French filmmakers in particular pushing against the standardized CG look. Arco, the debut feature from French illustrator Ugo Bienvenu (released in the U.S. by Neon), uses a clean, graphic 2D style inspired by Studio Ghibli, bande dessinée comics, and 1970s pulp animation. GKids' Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, from Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han, takes a more impressionistic approach, using hand-drawn compositions to evoke a child's-eye view of the natural world. "We love working without outlines, so characters blend into the backgrounds," says Han. "It really fits with the story of early childhood." Sylvain Chomet's A Magnificent Life, a Sony Pictures Classics contender about French writer-filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, offers another variation on artisanal European draftsmanship — intimate in scale, and pointedly unbothered by the horsepower of CG rendering. "The work I'm doing hasn't changed much from what Walt Disney was doing in the 1950s," Chomet tells THR. "I work with a computer screen. But everything is still drawn, still painted, with these digital tools." Commercially, the rise of non-U.S. animation has redrawn the field. Demon Slayer and Chinese blockbuster Ne Zha 2 (not Oscar-qualified) were, pre-Zootopia 2, the two most successful animated films of the year, reinforcing how global fan cultures and regional styles are reshaping what animated blockbusters can look like. And while 3D CGI remains the style to beat at the Oscars — two-thirds of all winners, 18 of 24, have been studio-style photorealistic CGI — the Academy's preferences are shifting. The past three winners, Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion Pinocchio, Hayao Miyazaki's hand-drawn The Boy and the Heron, and Gints Zilbalodis' Flow, a 3D feature created with open-source software, suggest an Academy increasingly open to innovation, and an awards race no longer defined by any one aesthetic...

First Lady Melania Trump has launched her own production company. Announced on Trump's official social media channels, the First Lady shared that she has launched Muse Films. The announcement comes ahead of the release of the Amazon MGM Studios feature documentary about her, Melania. "PRESENTING: MUSE FILMS My new production company," Trump wrote alongside a video that showcased the company's logo. "MELANIA, the film, exclusively in theaters worldwide on January 30th, 2026." Muse was reportedly the Secret Service code name for Trump during President Donald Trump's first term in office. The Melania doc from director Brett Ratner — his first film since he was accused of sexual misconduct and harassment — has been produced with Trump's participation. The film will later be accompanied by a three-part docuseries...

Lance Armstrong has signed on to narrate the feature documentary "No Hands: The Wild Ride of the Schwinn Bicycle Company," from the new doc studio Unfeatured Films. The studio, which launched earlier this year, utilizes what it calls "cost-effective AI-driven innovation" to take archival photos and footage and turn them into usable video clips. The film is eyeing a 2026 release date. "No Hands: The Wild Ride of the Schwinn Bicycle Company," currently in post-production, centers on the history of the Schwinn Bicycles. Per the logline: "From its founding as Arnold, Schwinn & Company in Chicago in 1895, to the introduction of the Paramount in 1938 to the Sting-Ray in the '60s, Schwinn provided people, especially kids, with a freewheeling freedom like they had never had before. Now 130 years since the company was established, and more than three decades after its bankruptcy in 1992, this is the full untold story of this legendary American brand – and the family who stewarded it to prominence before ultimately losing control of the company."...