smooth wombat writes: The advent of streaming services heralded a new era of movie watching. No longer tied to an inconvenient time at a theater, movies could now be watched at your convenience any time of the day or night in your own home. However, with that convenience comes a sinister side: those same movies disappearing from streaming services. Once the movie is removed from the streaming service you can't watch it again. As a result, more people, particularly younger people, are buying DVDs, and even records, to preserve their ability to watch and listen to what they want when they want. Before his release of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan encouraged fans to embrace "a version you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so no evil streaming service can come steal it from you". From the BBC article:

Other directors have chimed in to sing the praises of physical media. James Cameron told Variety:"The streamers are denying us any access whatsoever to certain films. And I think people are responding with their natural reaction, which is 'I'm going to buy it, and I'm going to watch it any time I want.'" Guillermo del Toro posted on X that "If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film or films you love... you are the custodian of those films for generations to come." His tweet prompted people to reply, sharing evidence of their vast DVD collections. [...]

LG touts AI for its 2024 OLED TVs, but don't expect AI assistants onscreen. The Alpha 11 processor in LG's new G4 and M4 series aims to sharpen clarity, color and image quality. The G4 features LG's Micro Lens Array technology for enhanced brightness. The M4 adopts 2023's wireless connectivity to eliminate unsightly cables. The Verge adds: So the AI supposedly now understands creative intent, according to LG, and can adjust your TV's image settings accordingly. Picture purists can always ignore and disable these AI modes, but many people inevitably leave them on -- so if the upgrades are noticeable, they'll be a difference maker for those customers.

Roku, the maker of TV streaming boxes and software, is debuting its first high-end televisions in a bid to continue sales momentum for the company's devices. From a report: In the spring, Roku will roll out 55-inch, 65-inch and 75-inch Pro Series TVs that will cost consumers as much as $1,500. The new televisions put Roku in competition with Samsung and LG, which offer several models in that price range. It's a step up from the company's current TVs -- the Select and Plus -- which top out at $999. [...] The new TVs include a thinner design with a flat back for mounting on walls, improved picture quality and better audio for cinematic sound, the San Jose, California-based company said in a statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Modern fighting games have come quite a long way from their origins in providing accessibility options. Street Fighter 6 has audio cues that can convey distance, height, health, and other crucial data to visually impaired players. King of Fighters 15 allows for setting the contrast levels between player characters and background. Competitors like BrolyLegs and numerous hardware hackers have taken the seemingly inhospitable genre even further. Tekken 8, due later this month, seems to aim even higher, offering a number of color vision options in its settings. This includes an unofficially monikered "colorblind mode," with black-and-white and detail-diminished backgrounds and characters' flattened shapes filled in with either horizontal or vertical striped lines. But what started out as excitement in the fighting game and accessibility communities about this offering has shifted into warnings about the potential for migraines, vertigo, or even seizures.

You can see the mode in action in the Windows demo or in a YouTube video shared by Gatterall -- which, of course, you should not view if you believe yourself susceptible to issues with strobing images. Gatterall's enthusiasm for Tekken 8's take on colorblind accessibility ("Literally no game has done this") drew comment from Katsuhiro Harada, head of the Tekken games for developer and publisher Bandai Namco, on X (formerly Twitter). Harada stated that he had developed and tested "an accessibility version" of Tekken 7, which was never shipped or sold. Harada states that those "studies" made it into Tekken 8.

Not everybody in game accessibility circles was excited to see the new offerings, especially when it was shared directly with them by excited followers. Morgan Baker, game-accessibility lead at Electronic Arts, asked followers to "Please stop tagging me in the Tekken 8 'colorblind' stripe filters." The scenes had "already induced an aura migraine," Baker wrote, and she could not "afford to get another one right now." Accessibility consultant Ian Hamilton reposted a number of people citing migraines, nausea, or seizure concerns while also decrying the general nature of colorblind "filters" as an engineering-based approach to a broader design challenge. He added in the thread that shipping a game that contained a potentially seizure-inducing mode could result in people inadvertently discovering their susceptibility, similar to an infamous 1997 episode of the Pokemon TV series. Baker and Hamilton also noted problems with such videos automatically playing on sites like X/Twitter. "Patterns of lines moving on a screen creates a contiguous area of high-frequency flashing, like an invisible strobe," explained James Berg, accessibility project manager at Xbox Game Studios. "Human meat-motors aren't big fans of that." People typically start to notice "flicker fusion frequency" at around 40 frames per second, notes Ars.

Tekken's Harada responded by saying a "very few" number of people misunderstood what his team was trying to do with this mode. There are multiple options, not just one colorblind mode, Harada wrote, along with brightness adjustments for effects and other elements.

"These color vision options are a rare part of the fighting game genre, but they are still being researched and we intend to expand on them in the future," Harada wrote. Developers "have been working with several research institutes and communities to develop this option," even before the unsold "accessibility version of Tekken 7," added Harada.

Vizio has agreed to $3 million settlement over allegations it misled consumers on TV refresh rates. The TV maker denies wrongdoing but will cease advertising on "effective" refresh rates. Eligible buyers have until March 2024 to file claims and submit proof of purchase. Settlement includes enhanced one-year warranties. The Verge adds: TV makers often use marketing terms like "effective refresh rate" to refer to motion smoothing features, often called the "soap opera effect," that are intended to reduce motion blur on modern TVs. Motion smoothing is already controversial enough on its own, but companies like Vizio can be frustratingly casual with refresh rate terminology in their marketing.

Forbes writes: "I am not sure there could have been a more ignominious end to the DCEU." Aquaman 2 opened with $27.7 million domestically, well under half the $67.8 million opening for the original Aquaman. But it's the overall box office totals that are especially dire, as the film has made just over $138.5 million worldwide. That is about 12% of Aquaman 1's final total of $1.1 billion in 2018, where it is the DCEU's highest grossing entry.

The counter to this is that it perhaps is too soon to run these numbers, as it just came out right? Well, a few extra factors to consider. It is already out in a ton of major markets, so there are relatively few potential surges that can still happen outside places like Korea and New Zealand, which can only add so much. Most importantly Aquaman 2 has already launched in China, where it made $30 million in its opening, again, far below the original's opening at $93 million there, doing even worse there than domestically, in context. Aquaman 1 went on to make $292 million in China, a figure Aquaman 2 will not come within a mile of. Next, what DC, and many blockbusters, have been doing lately are these incredibly short theatrical windows, so the clock is ticking quickly...

Of course this is not exclusive to DC, as we have an extremely direct comparison over at Marvel with The Marvels, which at a $205.6 million global gross, the final figure, that is 18% of Captain Marvel's $1.13 billion total. Aquaman 2 has the advantage of being a true sequel, not a team-up piece from other TV shows you theoretically needed to watch beforehand, but it also has the disadvantage of being the last dying gasp of the DCEU coming after a string of other high profile box office failures from Shazam 2 to Blue Beetle.

There was really no way it was going to avoid its fate, even if it did review well (which it didn't, as at 35% on Rotten Tomatoes, it's one of the DCEU's lowest rated films).

"Predating even Toy Story, ReBoot was the first 3D animated television show," writes longtime Slashdot reader sandbagger, sharing a new report from Global News. "The master tapes have been located in storage but the hardware needed to play the 1990s-era media has yet to be located." From the report: Produced in Vancouver by Mainframe Entertainment, it aired on YTV between 1994 and 2001, and decades later still has a committed fan base. Among those super fans are Jacob Weldon and Raquel Lin, a B.C. duo now crafting a documentary about the creation of the show and its impact in the film and TV world. Weldon said he wants to see ReBoot recognized for its place in the evolution of computer animation -- recognition he said it rarely gets.

When ReBoot was finally cancelled -- cut short in its fourth and final season -- its protagonists were left in peril and the show ended on a cliffhanger. It's another factor that Lin and Weldon say has helped immortalize the show and has helped fans hoping for a revival that might finally explain the characters' fate. Earlier this month, the documentary also got a potential major boost. Mainframe allowed Lin and Weldon to come to the studio to look for the show's original master tapes, recordings some believed might have been permanently lost. They struck gold. "They had boxes upon boxes upon boxes, hundreds of tapes," Lin said. "It's original resolution, original frame rate, uncompressed. If we could get a deck to play these, they would look beautiful," Weldon said.

Finding that deck, however, is the pair's next major challenge. The recordings are on a rare digital tape format called D1, a technology that Weldon said was cutting edge and rare when Mainframe was using it. It's even harder to find today, and even Mainframe doesn't have the equipment to play the tapes back. Weldon and Lin have since put out a call on social media for a working Bosch BTS D1 deck that would allow them to play the tapes, and incorporate them into their documentary. "I can't tell you how many people have called us, DM'd us, emailed us -- people from all over the world," Lin said. While the pair still haven't secured the deck, they're aiming to release their documentary by next summer. They're hoping it will help renew interest in the show, introduce it to new generations and perhaps see it get new life on a streaming platform.

After losing more than $5 billion in the past year, the world's largest traditional entertainment companies -- Disney, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast and Paramount -- are contemplating cuts and possible mergers to ultimately help better compete with Netflix. The Financial Times reports (via Ars Technica): Shari Redstone, Paramount's billionaire controlling shareholder, has effectively put the company on the block in recent weeks. She has held talks about selling the Hollywood studio to Skydance, the production company behind Top Gun: Maverick, people familiar with the matter say. Paramount chief executive Bob Bakish also discussed a possible combination over lunch with Warner CEO David Zaslav in mid-December. In both cases the discussions were said to be at an early stage and people familiar with the talks cautioned that a deal might not materialize.

Beyond their streaming losses, the traditional media groups are facing a weak advertising market, declining television revenues and higher production costs following the Hollywood strikes. Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed Partners, said Paramount's deal discussions were a reflection of the "complete and utter panic" in the industry. "TV advertising is falling far short, cord-cutting is continuing to accelerate, sports costs are going up and the movie business is not performing," he said. "Everything is going wrong that can go wrong. The only thing [the companies] know how to do to survive is try to merge and cut costs." But as the traditional media owners struggle, Netflix, the tech group that pioneered the streaming model over a decade ago, has emerged as the winner of the battle to reshape video distribution. "For much of the past four years, the entertainment industry spent money like drunken sailors to fight the first salvos of the streaming wars," analyst Michael Nathanson wrote in November. "Now, we are finally starting to feel the hangover and the weight of the unpaid bar bill." For companies that have been trying to compete with Netflix, Nathanson added, "the shakeout has begun."

After a bumpy 2022, Netflix has set itself apart from rivals -- most notably by being profitable. Earnings for its most recent quarter soared past Wall Street's expectations as it added 9 million new subscribers -- the strongest rise since early 2020, when Covid-19 lockdowns led to a jump. "Netflix has pulled away," says John Martin, co-founder of Pugilist Capital and former chief executive of Turner Broadcasting. For its rivals, he said, the question is "how do you create a viable streaming service with a viable business model? Because they're not working." The leading streaming services aggressively raised prices in 2023. Now, analysts, investors and executives predict that consolidation could be ahead next year as some of the smaller services combine or bow out of the streaming wars.

A recent video poked fun at the newly announced Legend of Zelda movie by referencing the checkered history of video game adaptations. However, 2023 brought critical and commercial success for games-based projects like The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros Movie, while several comic book films such as The Flash and Ant-Man 3 underperformed.

This shift comes as Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted Marvel may have oversaturated the market. While caped crusaders aren't finished yet, their golden era may be ending. Meanwhile, Mario earned over $1 billion, topping all superhero films this year. Video game movies have struggled in the past, but their time may have finally come. Wired adds: Mario's success will lead to a "deluge" of video game adaptations, argues Joost van Druenen, a New York University business professor and author of One Up: Creativity, Competition, and the Global Business of Video Games. Van Dreunen reckons that superheroes are "going the way of the cowboy," referring to the shifts in Hollywood's dominant genres (think: the rise of zombies a few years back, all the Home Alone-esque family movies in the 1990s). Even a show like The Boys, he argues, with its anti-superheroes, looks like a kind of turning point, akin to the revisionist Westerns, exemplified by Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, that began to dominate the genre at the end of the '60s and into the '70s.

Provided audiences are as tired of superheroes as pundits think, video game protagonists could profitably fill the gap. They come from well-known franchises and have large, engaged fan bases -- two things studios appreciate. Cast your eyes down the development list: God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Assassin's Creed, continued expansion on The Witcher, among others. Nintendo, which has traditionally resisted film spinoffs, is planning a movie a year; Arcane, widely considered the first title (before The Last of Us) to break the curse of such adaptations, is finally getting a second season. Amazon's forthcoming Fallout series is being helmed by the same team as Westworld. [...] Back to superheroes, artist fatigue is one under-explored factor. Inspiration is lacking. Some are undoubtedly tired of the whole enterprise, but many are just tired of poor films: And clearly, these two factors entwine.

Amazon earlier this year announced plans to start incorporating ads into movies and TV shows streamed from its Prime Video service, and now the company has revealed a specific date when you'll start seeing them: it's January 29th. From a report: "This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time," the company said in an email to customers about the pending shift to "limited advertisements."

"We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership," the company wrote. Customers have the option of paying an additional $2.99 per month to keep avoiding advertisements.

"The Portland International Airport in Oregon understands holiday travel is stressful. So this season, it invited a few specialists..." writes the Washington Post.

One TV station describes them as "therapy llamas... two 400-pound fluffballs serving as therapy animals" stationed at Portland International Airport (or PDX) earlier this week, for "travelers, in need of a calming moment."

From the Washington Post: Airports around the globe use a variety of methods to inject some Zen into one of the busiest travel periods of the year. They decorate their halls in holiday lights, host carolers and concerts, and bring in therapy dogs for group canine counseling.

Portland does all of the above. True to the city's quirky spirit, it also invites local camelids to the airport to canoodle with passengers. That's where Gregory, president and founder of Mountain Peaks Therapy Llamas & Alpacas, comes in. "PDX has an ongoing partnership with various therapy animal programs," said Allison Ferre, media relations manager with the Port of Portland, which operates the airport. "So this year, when we were bringing back holiday concessions programing, we just thought, "Who better to lead that parade than the llamas and alpacas?"

This year's theme was "reindeer." Gregory and her daughter, Shannon Joy, dressed the pair in antler headbands, glittery halters with tinkling bells and poinsettia-adorned wreathes. Red velvet banners worn like saddles were inscribed with their names and silvery snowflakes. "They looked pretty fancy," Gregory said...

Though the pair had to pass through security, they didn't have to submit to a pat down, which they might have enjoyed for the extra pets.

An anonymous Slashdot reader shared this report from CNET: Marking its 60th year on television, the British time-travel series will close out 2023 with one last anniversary special that arrives on Christmas Day. Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor helms the Tardis in The Church on Ruby Road, which centers on an abandoned baby who grows up looking for answers... Disney Plus will stream Doctor Who: The Church on Ruby Road on Monday, Dec. 25, at 12:55 p.m. ET (9:55 a.m. PT) in all regions except the UK and Ireland, where it will air on the BBC. In case you missed it, viewers can also watch David Tennant starring in the other three anniversary specials: The Star Beast, Wild Blue Yonder and The Giggle. All releases are available on Disney Plus.
But what's interesting is CNET goes on to explain "why a VPN could be a useful tool." Perhaps you're traveling abroad and want to stream Disney Plus while away from home. With a VPN, you're able to virtually change your location on your phone, tablet or laptop to get access to the series from anywhere in the world. There are other good reasons to use a VPN for streaming too. A VPN is the best way to encrypt your traffic and stop your ISP from throttling your speeds...

You can use a VPN to stream content legally as long as VPNs are allowed in your country and you have a valid subscription to the streaming service you're using. The U.S. and Canada are among the countries where VPNs are legal

"Millions of Star Wars fans get nostalgia pangs during the holiday season," reports the Washington Post, "when they are accustomed to seeing broadcasts of their beloved movies.... FX, now owned by Disney, has multiple Star Wars marathons on tap this month, including a marathon on December 23 and 24." The program-planning director at Disney's Freedom channel even calls Star Wars a "Christmas-adjacent" franchise.

And now, long-time Slashdot reader H_Fisher writes... Call it a Life Day miracle, even if nobody was asking for it. YouTube historian and retro-tech enthusiast Perifractic uploaded a restored, mostly-complete 4K upscale of the "infamous" Star Wars Holiday Special to his channel on Wednesday. From the video summary: "Using Topaz Labs [Video AI] with a few other techniques we've meticulously upscaled & restored the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special to 5120x3840, with stereo elements, to the best quality the technology currently allows."

Jokingly labeling the resulting file "5K" (8K video height, but tagged "4K" by YouTube due to its original 4:3 aspect ratio), the upscaled version unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view) replaces some songs and omits some segments that were flagged by YouTube's copyright watchdog.

PlayStation will no longer be removing over 1,300 Discovery TV shows from its platform next month. From a report: Sony had previously announced that users will not be able to watch Discovery content on PlayStation from December 31, even if they had already purchased it. However, the firm now says that due to an 'updated licensing agreement' with Warner Bros -- which owns the Discovery brand -- consumers will now be able to access their previously purchased shows 'for at least the next 30 months.'

New submitter ekimminau writes: On the morning of December 20, 2023, thousands of users turned on their Samsung TV to find that the Samsung TV Plus application was missing. Available for free on 2016-2023 Samsung Smart TVs, Galaxy devices, Smart Monitors, Family Hub refrigerators, and the web, for many it is their primary method of TV viewing. The masses began flocking to the Samsung community forums asking ... what was going on.

From Cord Cutters: At this time, Samsung has not posted any updates about the outage. Customer service has been telling customers they are aware of the outage and are working on fixing it. This news comes as Samsung recently added seven local FOX news channels for community stories, sports updates, weather forecasts and more. The new markets are Austin, Detroit, Milwaukee, Orlando, Phoenix, Seattle and Tampa Bay. Right now, this outage seems to only be affecting the app on Smart TVs as the website is still working letting anyone stream Samsung TV Plus for free streaming online through the website.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It's no secret that TV makers are seriously invested in pushing ads. Using TVs for advertising goes back to 1941 when the first TV commercial aired. But as we trudge our way through the 21st century, TV vendors are becoming more involved in ensuring that their hardware is used to sell stuff and add to their own recurring revenue. This has taken various forms, but in some cases, we're seeing increasingly invasive strategies for turning TVs into a primary place for shopping. The latest approach catching attention comes from the startup Displace. Its upcoming TVs will use integrated webcams and NFC payment readers to make it easy for people to buy stuff they see on TV. [...]

The two new TVs Displace is adding to its 2024 release plans, the Displace Flex and Displace Mini, are all about making TV shopping better. According to Displace's announcement, the Displace Flex (a 55-inch 4K OLED TV) and Displace Mini (a 27-inch 4K OLED TV) will use proprietary gesture technology and each TV's integrated 4K camera to tell when a user is raising their hand. It's unclear how accurate that will be (could the shopping experience accidentally be activated if I raised my hand to tie my hair up, for example?), but at that point, the TV is supposed to pause the content being played. Then, it uses computer vision to "analyze the screen to find products available for sale. Once they see something they want to purchase, viewers drag and drop the product into the global Displace Shopping Cart," the announcement says. Displace Shopping will work at any moment the TV is on, and users can buy stuff they see in commercials by using the TVs.

Displace's December 14 announcement said: "As soon as the viewer is ready to checkout, Displace Payments makes paying as easy as bringing a user's smartphone or watch near the TV's built-in NFC payment reader, a fully secure process that requires no credit card info. Viewers can also pay from within the Displace app." If the TV can't find a specific product for sale, it will "search for similar items" without user intervention, according to Displace. The TV will show products from any available online retailers, allowing users to select where they want to make their purchase. Displace hasn't provided full details about how it will make money off these transactions, but when reached for comment, founder and CEO Balaji Krishnan told Ars Technica that Displace has "different business models, and one of them is to take a transaction fee," and that Displace will share more details "later." Displace also sees people using Displace Payments to pay for telehealth applications and equipped the Flex and Mini with thermal cameras. To ease privacy concerns, Krishnan says the integrated cameras can be folded into the TVs if a user needs privacy.

Eventually, Displace sees itself working with content publishers to lay its shopping UI over actively playing content. "Users would see a workable buy button right on top of the playing video," adds Ars.

According to Axios, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav, met with Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish to discuss a possible merger. "The combination would create a news and entertainment behemoth that would likely trigger further industry consolidation," reports Axios. From the report: Zaslav also has spoken to Shari Redstone, who owns Paramount's parent company, about a deal. WBD's market value was around $29 billion as of Wednesday, while Paramount's was just over $10 billion, so any merger would not be of equals. The meeting between Zaslav and Bakish, which sources say lasted several hours, took place at Paramount's headquarters in Times Square.

The duo discussed ways their companies could complement one another. For example, each company's main streaming service -- Paramount+ and Max -- could merge to better rival Netflix and Disney+. It's unclear whether WBD would buy Paramount Global or its parent company, National Amusements Inc. (NAI), but a source familiar with the situation says that both options are on the table. WBD is said to have hired bankers to explore the deal.

The deal could drive substantial synergies. WBD could use its international distribution footprint to boost Paramount's franchises, while Paramount's children's programing assets could be essential to WBD's long-term streaming ambitions. CBS News could be combined with CNN to create a global news powerhouse. CBS' crime dramas, such as "NCIS" and "Criminal Minds," could be combined with Investigation Discovery and TruTV. CBS Sports' footprint could be combined with WBD's. For example, CBS and WBD's Turner Sports currently share TV rights for March Madness.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: For the soundtracks to their 2023 holiday season ads, both Amazon and Apple turned to music by members of The Beatles. Amazon's Joy Ride, which stars three older women reliving their youthful joy at a sledding hill, is set to a cover of The Beatles' In My Life. Apple's Fuzzy Feelings, which tells the story of a young woman with a grumpy boss, is set to George Harrison's Isn't It a Pity.

Product placement is present in both ads — Amazon features padded seat cushions that protect the seniors' tushes and the Amazon app used to order them, while Apple showcases the iPhone 15 Pro Max used to capture the ad's stop-motion animation scenes and the MacBook Air used to edit them.

Amazon's 60-second ad has 542K views on YouTube, while Apple's 4-minute ad has 16+ million views.

Malak Saleh reports via Engadget: Twitch has quickly taken back its policy update that permitted users to post sexual content as long as it was labeled. In another update, the company said it is not going to allow any depictions of real or fictional nudity on its streaming platform. After giving users the green light to post "artistic nudity," Twitch says some streamers created content that violated policy.

The media streamed in response to the initial approval of sexually explicit content on Twitch was "met with community concern," according to the update. The company said, "We have decided that we went too far with this change." While a huge part of the initial decision was to allow for the "digital depiction" of artistic nudity, the company clarified that digital depictions of sexual content is a concern when artificial intelligence can be used to develop realistic images and that it can be difficult to discern between what's been digitally produced and real photography.

After years of withholding viewership data, Netflix earlier this week released statistics showing its top viewed titles from January-June 2023. The winner with over 800 million hours watched was The Night Agent. Though the steamy, soapy Sex/Life scored over 120 million hours, the warm coming-of-age series Sex Education had under 30 million.

Netflix claimed "success comes in all shapes and sizes," but co-CEO Ted Sarandos admitted the data guides business decisions. So while Netflix says stats aren't everything, pouring resources into sure bets like The Night Agent seems likely as competition grows post-Hot Strike Summer. The show is what some call "just OK TV" -- not offensive, not groundbreaking, but reliably watched. Wired adds: This era of Just OK also comes as Netflix captures the King of Reality TV throne. Shows like Love Is Blind and Selling Sunset are becoming cultural juggernauts, and the streamer shows no sign of slowing down, especially now that the Squid Game spinoff, Squid Game: The Challenge, is getting major traction.

True, Netflix is still putting out artful content. A show like Wednesday, for example, had more than 507 million hours viewed and is also currently up for 12 Emmys. Netflix, on the whole, is nominated for a whopping 103 Emmys. That's impressive, but also, it's down from the 160 nods it got at its peak in 2020 and fewer than the 127 nabbed by (HBO) Max, which crushed thanks to shows like The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and Succession. You see where this is going. Netflix likes to tout its prestige shows, but also has to keep its paying customers, who left in droves in 2022 before partly coming back as Netflix cracked down on password sharing. To that end, it behooves Netflix to make more Ginny & Georgia, more Night Agent, more You. One analysis of the data found that the most-watched film, according to Netflix's data dump, was the Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Mother, which accumulated about 250 million hours watched in six months. Variety puts that level of engagement up there with Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Not a bad showing.