Netflix’s acquisition of Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking startup InterPositive could reach $600 million, according to new reporting from Bloomberg, a price that reframes what initially appeared to be a small technology tuck-in.
The startup developed AI systems trained on a project’s own footage to assist with post-production tasks like relighting shots, reframing footage, and fixing technical artifacts. Rather than generating content, the tools are designed to streamline existing filmmaking workflows.
Netflix plans to integrate the technology into its Eyeline Studios division as it continues investing heavily in production infrastructure.
Universal To Extend Exclusive Theatrical Window For Pics To 45 Days In 2027
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Addressing Key Challenges and Opportunities in CTV Advertising - In Person & Virtual - March 27
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Disney+ Teases Creator-Driven Content as It Launches Vertical Video Feature
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OTT.X BUZZ - Women Shaping the Future of Digital Media & Entertainment March 31st - Virtual Webinar
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Roku Debuts Dedicated NCAA March Madness Zone
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Live Sports Streaming Data: Powering the Next Competitive Edge
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Frustrated Sports Fans Favor Aggregator Tools
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How Netflix’s $600 Million InterPositive Bet Signals AI Is Becoming Production Infrastructure
Netflix’s acquisition of Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking startup InterPositive could reach $600 million, according to new reporting from Bloomberg, a price that reframes what initially appeared to be a small technology tuck-in.
The startup developed AI systems trained on a project’s own footage to assist with post-production tasks like relighting shots, reframing footage, and fixing technical artifacts. Rather than generating content, the tools are designed to streamline existing filmmaking workflows.
Netflix plans to integrate the technology into its Eyeline Studios division as it continues investing heavily in production infrastructure.
The Take
Netflix isn’t just experimenting with AI tools. It’s investing in production infrastructure.
If AI becomes embedded across post-production and VFX pipelines, the companies that control those tools will gain a structural advantage in how efficiently content gets made.
Netflix is positioning itself to own that layer of the stack.
Read the Full Analysis: The Streaming Wars
Universal To Extend Exclusive Theatrical Window For Pics To 45 Days In 2027
Universal will be extending the exclusive theatrical window for its 2027 movie releases to 45 days (seven weekends). This theatrical window will not extend to Uni’s Focus Features titles, which will remain around 17 days.
Note, Uni playing movies at five weekends exclusively is not new news; the studio already been doing this for some time on its big studio fare.
During Covid, the studio laid out a very specific play of 17 days in theaters for those titles opening to less than $50 million before going to Premium VOD, and 30 days for movies opening north of $50M before heading to PVOD. It was all part of a financial waterfall strategy of downstream revenues, with Peacock serving as a pay-1 window followed by Amazon in the subsequent window for some titles.
Donna Langley, chair of NBCUniversal Entertainment, made the window plans official to the New York Times.
“Our windowing strategy has always been designed to evolve with the marketplace, but we firmly believe in the primacy of theatrical exclusivity and working closely with our exhibition partners to support a healthy, sustainable theatrical ecosystem,” she said.
AMC circuit boss Adam Aron, who often tussled with Langley in the headlines over window-crunching during Covid, beamed on X today, “Big news. The highest praise for NBCUniversal Chairman Donna Langley and her team Pete Levinsohn and Jim Orr. I cannot say enough good things about Donna Langley’s leadership of Universal. First and foremost, she is a superb film maker. Add to that her grace, business acumen and courage in making important decisions that have real ramifications supporting the entire movie ecosystem.” Aron, coming out of last year’s CinemaCon, has been championing studios to go to 45 days on windows.
Read the Story: Deadline
Addressing Key Challenges and Opportunities in CTV Advertising - In Person & Virtual - March 27
Registration is now open for the OTT.X Advertising Roundtables, an executive-level working session convening leaders from across the Connected TV and streaming advertising ecosystem.
Designed as an off-the-record, collaborative forum, the roundtables bring together platforms, publishers, agencies, brands, and technology partners to move beyond surface-level discussion and focus on practical alignment and solutions.
This session is structured for active participation, candid dialogue, and defined next steps. The goal is not simply to highlight industry pain points, but to organize around them — establishing a working group that will continue collaboration beyond the event and drive measurable progress.
Attendance is intentionally limited to maintain a productive, executive-level environment. Early registration is encouraged.
Disney+ Teases Creator-Driven Content as It Launches Vertical Video Feature
Disney+ is launching its short-form vertical video product this week, in what the company teases as “the first scene of the first episode in a multi-season series.”
The product, which will adopt the “Verts” moniker already used by ESPN in its own app, will initially launch with vertical video cut from the company’s 100-year entertainment library. But it is teasing potential future additions, including “content from creators that reflects our fandoms, plus other storytelling formats, content types, and personalized experiences.”
In other words, creators who celebrate or highlight the films, series, theme parks or other Disney properties may play a role in that future, as could, perhaps, formats like microdramas or other short-form entertainment fare.
Verts will launch in the navigation bar on mobile devices, letting users easily swipe through scenes or moments from Disney films and shows, just like they would on TikTok or Instagram. Disney says that it has developed an “advanced recommendation algorithm” that will feed users content that it thinks they will find interesting.
The company announced its planned push into vertical video in January at CES, as part of a number of other announcements on features coming to the streaming platform. Disney has already said that it plans to bring some content created by OpenAI’s Sora to Disney+ in a “curated” way, though that deal has not quite kicked off yet, with the companies still working out the execution of it.
Read the Full Story: The Hollywood Reporter
OTT.X BUZZ - Women Shaping the Future of Digital Media & Entertainment March 31st - Virtual Webinar
In honor of Women’s History Month, OTT.X is proud to present a special edition of OTT.X BUZZ, a webinar and podcast series designed to bring together leaders across the streaming ecosystem for candid conversations on the issues shaping the future of the industry.
This session brings together a diverse group of women leaders from across the streaming landscape, each bringing unique perspectives from platforms, media companies, and technology partners.
Together, they will explore the opportunities and challenges facing the industry today and share insights shaped by their varied professional experiences and viewpoints.
Featured Speakers
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Moderator - Cathy Rasenberger, Founder & President, Rasenberger Media
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Christina Aguilera, Co-Founder & CEO, Synthis
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Michele Edelman, EVP, Technology & GM, Matchpoint
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Preeya Naul, SVP Streaming Partnerships & Supply, VideoElephant
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DeShuna Spencer, Founder & CEO, kweliTV
From evolving advertising models and platform strategy to partnerships, distribution, and operational innovation, the conversation will highlight how diverse leadership and perspectives strengthen decision-making and help drive meaningful progress across the streaming ecosystem.
Join this conversation highlighting exceptional women shaping the future of digital media & entertainment.
Roku Debuts Dedicated NCAA March Madness Zone
Ahead of the NCAA March Madness tournament kick off with selections next Sunday, Roku has built a dedicated CTV home screen destination for fans to more easily find and track all live games, alongside access to key highlights and replays.
Built in partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports and CBS Sports, Roku’s NCAA March Madness Zone will be available exclusively in the U.S. throughout all four weeks of the college basketball event and offers access to coverage of both the men’s and women’s tournaments.
The dedicated hub follows earlier efforts by Roku with its Sports Zone, which is meant to help streamline and simplify the streaming sports experience for fans dealing with a fragmented distribution and viewing landscape.
And with prominent placement on the Roku Home screen, alongside multiple additional entry points on the platform, the centralized location is also a way to help drive tune-in and engagement of the tournament for premium subscription partners like WBD’s HBO Max and Paramount’s Paramount+.
Some features for fans include the ability to see the viewing options for each match-up based on Roku users’ existing subscriptions. On Roku that includes access to live men’s games available to stream on the NCAA March Madness Live app and through the platform’s Premium Subscription partners, including HBO Max and Paramount+. Men’s games are also available via broadcast on TBS, CBS, TNT, truTV and other providers.
Roku integrated a signup method directly within the centralized tournament zone for users that aren’t yet subscribed to services. Paramount+ is also offering a discount to those who sign up as subscribers from March 19 to March 31, with a $2.99 per month promotional price for the first two months – both via The Roku Channel or the standalone app.
Read the Full Story: StreamTV Insider
Live Sports Streaming Data: Powering the Next Competitive Edge
Live sports continues to pressure streaming infrastructure in ways no other content category can, exposing gaps in latency, metadata synchronization, ad signaling, and personalization.
Across the industry, platforms are solving the same dynamic data challenges independently, increasing cost, reinforcing vendor lock-in, and slowing innovation.
As consumer expectations expand to include real-time stats, overlays, and interactive features, competitive differentiation is increasingly tied not just to delivery, but to the strength and structure of the underlying data layer.
Join Dustin Sullivan, CEO of SportsDataIO, at the OTT.X Breakfast at NAB on April 19 for a discussion on how open, enterprise-managed data infrastructure can serve as connective tissue across the ecosystem and enable organizations to scale live sports more efficiently while unlocking new monetization upside.
With rosters evolving and events unfolding minute by minute, explore how a unified identification framework can accelerate metadata pipelines, improve ad precision, enable richer personalization, and lower barriers to experimentation across OTT and FAST environments.
Frustrated Sports Fans Favor Aggregator Tools
Platforms and streamers with live sports are working to adapt as the types and ways younger fans engage with sports content shifts. But with live events splintered across platforms and distributors the familiar frustration of where to find a game remains for many.
Still, there are some potential avenues to help alleviate the sports content discovery struggle, with most respondents of Hub Entertainment Research’s “Evolution of Sports: What’s the Score?” study signaling favor for sports content aggregation tools and all-in or platform-exclusive rights.
And based on a separate global sports study from Altman Solon, some platforms and rights holders might do well to expand their offerings around sports content into new formats, including short-form, to attract younger cohorts that have different ways they like to consume.
A whopping 87% of sports fans surveyed by Hub say that it’s at least somewhat frustrating to figure out where to watch the sports they follow today, with nearly a quarter feeling “very frustrated.”
The challenge of where to find a specific team or game for a given sport on a given day isn’t new or a secret to streaming platforms, some of which have taken steps to rollout features that aim to help ease the issue.
Hub’s survey zeroed on two of these: ESPN’s “Where to Watch” feature and the Roku’s “Sports Zone” landing page to see what fans thought in terms of how they can improve the viewing experience – where most felt positively.
Results show that 70% said ESPN’s feature, which tells viewers where to find a game even those not on ESPN, would make their sports viewing experience easier. And 60% felt the same about Roku’s Sports Zone, which is a dedicated hub in the Roku interface that aggregates information on specific sports in a central location to simplify finding sports content across platforms.
Read the Full Story: StreamTV Insider
Platform Movie + TV Demand vs. Monthly Cost
Presented By:
Charting the price of streamers against the demand for their catalogs gives a good sense of the value they offer consumers, and importantly which services have room to increase prices without triggering churn.
Key Findings
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The US streaming landscape is bifurcating into two distinct camps: smaller, niche specialists and massive "anchor platforms" (like Netflix and the Disney+/Hulu bundle) that offer enough scale to anchor a household's rotation and resist churn.
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Standalone services caught between these two extremes, like Peacock, are sitting in a strategic no-man’s land. Without the safety net of a mega-bundle, they will need to lean into differentiating strengths like live sports or find new partnerships to avoid being priced out.
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The combined catalog demand for HBO Max and Paramount+ would narrowly edge out Netflix, positioning it among the largest anchor platforms. While undercutting Netflix’s $17.99/mo price would be a bold acquisition strategy, the immediate financial pressure to service a massive merger debt makes a premium price tag around $18/mo more likely.
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In Case You Missed It
- Apple Music’s TikTok Integration Signals a New Model for Turning Discovery Into Consumption. The Streaming Wars
- Ask Skip: Why Netflix Is Planting Its Flag in Washington. The Streaming Wars
- The Metadata Debt: Why Streaming Networks Must Reclaim Their Content’s Context. The Streaming Wars
- OpenAI’s Advertising Playbook Mirrors Netflix: Launch With Partners, Then Build the Stack. The Streaming Wars
- YouTube Quietly Became the Largest Media Company in the World. Now What?. The Streaming Wars
- Fans Can Watch More Sports Than Ever. Finding the Games Is the Problem. The Streaming Wars
- Netflix Turns Atlético Madrid’s Metropolitano Stadium Into a Marketing Engine for Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man. The Streaming Wars
- Walmart Begins Folding Vizio Accounts Into Its Retail Identity System. The Streaming Wars
- Byron Allen Takes 10.7% Stake in Starz Through $25 Million Share Purchase. The Streaming Wars
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