Dawn C. Chmielewski

Streaming today is a free-for-all, with major companies jockeying for position as they try to catch up with Netflix. In the early days of the online video revolution, though, one pioneer was not a solo act but instead a collective: Hulu. In their new book, Binge Times, which will be published Tuesday, Deadline business…

UPDATE, 4:52 PM: After almost three years, Marvin Peart's multi-million dollar lawsuit over the acquisition of The Weinstein Company's assets now has a trial date. Originally looking for $110 million, the War with Grandpa producer and financier looks set to face off with Lantern Capitol Partners on December 1 in Los…

UPDATED, 5:25 PM: The byzantine bankruptcy of The Weinstein Company and its acquired assets had a least one element settled Friday with an appeals court ruling that looks to leave some of Hollywood's biggest stars a little light, to say the least. Affirming lower court rulings, a three-judge panel on the 3rd Circuit…

UPDATED, 7:22 PM: Showtime has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed against it, Billions creator Andrew Ross Sorkin and others by a Wall Street performance coach who claims to be the inspiration for a key character on the drama series. Read the document here. Denise Shull, who wrote the 2012 nonfiction book Mark…

UPDATED, 5:12: PM: The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today rejected Comcast and Charter’s motion to dismiss Byron Allen’s multibillion-dollar civil rights lawsuit against them. Read the filing here and details of the case below. Here is a statement Allen released after the ruling: Comcast and Charter are wrong by…

The venerable Sony Crackle streaming service is looking for a potential joint-venture partner or buyer for its U.S. operations, even as its Latin American service shuts down in April. Crackle said it would shutter its Latin American subscription video service this week after concluding the business wasn’t economically…

Snap forced out two senior executives following an internal investigation into an alleged inappropriate relationship involving an outside contractor, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company fired Francis Racioppi, its head of global security, after an investigation into his relationship with a contractor, the…

The Walt Disney Co. provided investors a more detailed look at its investment in building a direct-to-consumer business in financial documents filed today with the SEC. The company re-cast Disney’s results for the past three fiscal years to align with the new corporate structure created with last March’s…

Frosties or Sugar Puffs? That’s the first question Netflix viewers are asked to decide when they embark on their choose-your-own-adventure journey through the interactive Black Mirror: Bandersnatch movie. Players are asked to choose which cereal the 1980s video-game programmer, who is the central character in the…

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos say original programming is starting to overtake acquired fare and its platform has scaled to the point that linear rivals like HBO and Disney are not principal’s main rivals. Those were two of the key takeaways from Netflix’s fourth-quarter earnings…

Netflix broke with its longstanding practice of withholding viewer data and revealed that some 80 million households viewed Bird Box in its first four weeks of release. CEO Reed Hastings made that information public in the investor letter that accompanied the company’s fourth quarter earnings report, as he sought to…

Netflix’s fourth-quarter numbers were not without fault, but largely delivered the goods for Wall Street analysts who have been eagerly anticipating a dose of good news for the streaming giant. The company reported total revenue of $4.187 billion for the quarter, slightly below internal forecasts and consensus…