- Soul and Wolfwalkers are going head to head in Annie Award nominations this year (Deadline)
- Everyone is racing to set the tone and become the first big Clubhouse influencer (Recode)
- HBO Max is lining up its European launch plans (Variety)
- How is Hollywood dealing with its problematic content? (The Hollywood Reporter)
- Black women are more likely than white women to be portrayed as “smart” in TV and movies, but colorism issues are still rampant (Deadline)
- How did YouTube, as a platform, swallow everything else around it? (Recode)
- …And how did “drama” accounts define the AVOD before their self-destruction? (Vulture)
- Toys are ditching gender, but it’s really just a way to sell more toys (The Washington Post)
- Dr. Seuss Enterprises has stopped publishing six books due to racist imagery (Associated Press)
- Disney’s Bob Chapek thinks movie release strategy will change permanently, but sees a return to theme parks in the future (Variety)
- BBC Three, the channel behind Fleabag and Normal People, is coming back to linear—six years after going digital (BBC News)
- Roku is making another interesting buy, picking up part of Nielsen’s TV ad business (The Verge)
- The problem with AI content moderation is that sometimes it flags chess as hate speech (WIRED)
- Pixar’s Soul took home two Golden Globe awards last night, including Best Animated Feature (SF Gate)
- The streamers dominated nominations for the Producer’s Guild Outstanding Children’s Program award (Variety)
- Why kids are hitting a pandemic wall right now (CNN)
- New AI software animates old photos and brings the subjects to life…and it’s very trippy (The Verge)
- Netflix earmarks US$100-million to build a talent pipeline of underrepresented creators (Deadline)
- Disney and Bill Nye are in a legal battle that could determine the future of streaming deals (Variety)
- Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away is headed to the stage (The Hollywood Reporter)
- Pokémon keeps getting stronger, and it’s not just because of Pikachu (Engadget)
- Paramount Pictures is entering the streaming world in a big way, overhauling its entire release strategy (Variety)
- Netflix plans to spend US$500 million on Korean content this year (The Hollywood Reporter)
- The new Punky Brewster isn’t great, making critics wonder if kids deserve better than ’80s and ’90s reboots (TIME)
- Tech firms are finally taking the time to teach voice assistants atypical speech (Wall Street Journal)
- Black and female TV directors are making gains, but Latinx and Asian American women are being left behind (Variety)
- Why is Barbie selling so well in the pandemic? Her success was years in the making (Bloomberg)
- Adults are obsessed with the idea of happiness, and it’s making children miserable (Washington Post)
- YouTube has a new “supervised experience” to help parents ease older kids from the walled garden to the wild west online (The Verge)
- Nickelodeon wants kids to tune into its upfront this year (Variety)
- Pandemic screen time isn’t all bad for kids…it might actually be boosting their emotional IQ (National Geographic)
- Disney+ could change the toy licensing business forever (Toy News)
- How do you give a 25-year-old property new life? Maybe by adding a bit of sci-fi (The Hollywood Reporter)
- The US box office continues to be non-existent—a kids movie released in November was number one this weekend (Variety)
- The streaming audience keeps growing—Discovery already has 11 million subscribers (Deadline)
- Typically it’s monsters and superheroes that make up a franchise, but for Netflix it’s all about YA emotions (The Hollywood Reporter)
- …And the SVOD has rolled out a new feature to automatically download content you might like (Tech Crunch)
- Fresh off a Golden Globe nomination, the directors of Wolfwalkers break down the themes driving their movie (Vulture)
- Still struggling with moderation, YouTube pulled a PewDiePie video for cyberbullying Cocomelon—its biggest kids channel (The Verge)
- SAG-AFTRA has created a new union contract for influencers (Deadline)
- The LEGO and IKEA collab is so sought-after that resellers and scalpers are trying to cash in (Brick Fanatics)
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