Streaming service to gain control of studio behind Harry Potter and Batman, as well as HBO, home to The White Lotus and Game of Thrones

• Business live – latest updates

Netflix has agreed to buy Warner Bros Discovery in an $82.7bn (£62bn) deal that will dramatically reshape the established Hollywood film and TV industry.

The streaming company will take control of WBD’s prize assets such as Warner Bros, the studio behind franchises including Harry Potter, Superman and Batman, as well as HBO, home to shows including Game of Thrones, The White Lotus and Succession.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Home Box Office/PA

© Photograph: Home Box Office/PA

© Photograph: Home Box Office/PA

The deal to acquire the Hollywood behemoth’s television and film studios as well as HBO Max will bulk up the world’s biggest paid streaming service.

© Mario Tama/Getty Images

The host said he wouldn’t have been the third-most-trending person in Google searches this year “without the support of loyal viewers” like the president.

Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands pull out after decision not to hold vote on Israel’s participation

Ireland, Spain, Slovenia and the Netherlands will boycott next year’s Eurovision after Israel was given the all-clear to compete in the 2026 song contest despite calls by several participating broadcasters for its exclusion over the war in Gaza.

No vote on Israel’s participation was held on Thursday at the general assembly of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), the body that organises the competition.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

© Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

© Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

Late-night hosts discussed outrage over Hegseth’s authorization of extrajudicial killings near Venezuela and Trump’s cabinet meeting naps

Late-night hosts tore into Pete Hegseth’s Venezuelan boat blame game, Donald Trump’s cabinet meeting naps and the annual Spotify Wrapped lists.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Youtube

© Photograph: Youtube

© Photograph: Youtube

From Ewan Roy in Succession to Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons, here are 15 truly unforgettable characters who elevated their shows – when they eventually turned up

Mike Hannigan was the only character to truly feel like a seventh Friend. He was the perfect match for Phoebe, a lightning rod for her kookiness and providing the solid family she’d never had. It wasn’t just the fact that he was played by Paul Rudd that managed to win over the viewers. His profile was nowhere near what it would later become, so the audience weren’t responding to star power in the same way they had, say, to Bruce Willis, Tom Selleck or Reese Witherspoon. Mike had to play the long game, put in the graft and win Phoebe’s trust, and won ours in the process. AJ, London

Continue reading...

© Photograph: HBO

© Photograph: HBO

© Photograph: HBO

The president who says he’s killing traffickers “pardoned a man who smuggled in enough cocaine to give every American resting Kash Patel face,” Josh Johnson said.

Many of the year’s best series seemed to be in conversation with one another, including “Severance,” “The Pitt,” “Andor,” “Pluribus,” “The Lowdown” and others.

Icy mining magnate Gillian Anderson goes head to head with rebellious rancher Lena Headey in a drama that takes itself so very, very seriously

Angel’s Ridge, Washington Territory, 1854. It’s dusty, there’s a saloon bar, there are horses, an ineffable sense of – I don’t know, let’s call it manifest destiny – about the place, and the only colour settlers have brought with them is sepia. But wait! What’s this? The owner of the local silver mine riding into town? And it’s a woman! In a western?

Yessir, it is. Not only that but she is played by Gillian Anderson (in full ice mode, despite the dust) and is clearly trouble. Not only that, but there is a second woman about to go toe-to-toe with her and do battle for the town’s soul over the eight episodes that comprise The Abandons, the latest venture from Sons of Anarchy’s Kurt Sutter. Its joint lead is Lena Headey as Fiona Nolan, a devout Irish Catholic woman who has gathered a misfit ragtag bunch of motley orphan crew outcasts about her and lives with this patchwork family in Jasper Hollow. Jasper Hollow, alas, is full of silver that Constance Van Ness (the local mine owner, played by Anderson) wishes to bring under her control to placate one of her investors.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Courtesy Of Netflix/COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

© Photograph: Courtesy Of Netflix/COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

© Photograph: Courtesy Of Netflix/COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

Twenty years on, the social media-savvy contestants will have greater power. His brutal approach to judging them will have to change, too

There is a moment in the trailer for Simon Cowell’s new Netflix show, The Next Act, that is almost touching in its adherence to the way things once were. Cowell, who we see on a variety of beige sofas primly clutching his knees, talks about how to curate a new boyband, 20 years after the launch of his first TV talent show. “There is a huge risk here,” he says, heavy with drama. “If this goes wrong, it will be: ‘Simon Cowell has lost it.’” In fact, as anyone who has an eye on dwindling audience figures for his existing shows knows, for the vast majority of 18- to 24-year-olds – or even for younger millennials – the more likely response will be, “Simon who?”

Which doesn’t mean that a new generation of viewers can’t be lured in by Cowell’s expertise. The question of whether 66-year-old Cowell can tweak a dusty and decades-old model has less to do with current music trends – just as well, since pop music has moved from TV to TikTok, which Cowell says he hates – than the music executive’s extremely well-tested ability to make good TV and bend his persona to align with the times. In the rollout of publicity for the new show, Cowell has made a good fist of expressing regret at how rude he used to be to contestants, apologising in the New York Times, after some cajoling, for “being a dick”, and putting his eye-rolling, grimacing performance as a judge down to the tedium of audition days rather than what most of us understood it to be: the extraction of lolz out of confused individuals who had the misfortune to appear on his shows.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Joe Pepler/PinPep

© Photograph: Joe Pepler/PinPep

© Photograph: Joe Pepler/PinPep

New film is based on TV series inspired by The Office, whose lead character is said to resemble the chancellor

He’s the middle-manager who talks as if he’s the CEO, a beacon of workplace inclusivity in his own head but a bigoted chauvinist as soon as he opens his mouth. And listening to him creates a mix of familiarity and embarrassment-by-proxy that turns out to be surprisingly pleasurable.

Ricky Gervais’s cringe-making general manager of a soul-destroyingly dull Slough-based paper merchant stopped being a regular presence on British TV over two decades ago, but the many comedic characters that he spawned across the globe have outlived him.

Continue reading...

© Composite: Brainpool TV, AP

© Composite: Brainpool TV, AP

© Composite: Brainpool TV, AP

Le médecin qui a nourri l’addiction à la kétamine de Matthew Perry, acteur de la célèbre série « Friends » décédé d’une overdose en octobre 2023, a été condamné, ce mercredi, à 30 mois de prison.

After a decade, millennials’ favourite comfort watch is dropping off the streamer, prompting threats of cancelled subscriptions. But will it really vanish?

If you have noticed a heightened sense of millennial angst in the air recently, it is likely to be because Friends is leaving Netflix this month. And, reader, the fans have not taken it well.

“Absolutely raging,” one viewer tweeted upon hearing the news. “I’m cancelling my Netflix subscription,” raged another. A third, simultaneously managing to capture the mood of the nation while retaining a healthy sense of perspective, wrote: “FUCK OFF FRIENDS IS LEAVING NETFLIX IN THE UK WHAT THE FUCK WILL I DO TO RELAX WTF THIS HAS BEEN THE SHOW TO GET ME TO SLEEP SINCE I WAS A BABY WHAT DO U MEAN ITS COMING OFF NEFLIX IM SORRY BUT NO.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Netflix

© Photograph: Netflix

© Photograph: Netflix

Salvador Plasencia pleaded guilty to giving actor ketamine in month before overdose death in Los Angeles in 2023

A Los Angeles doctor who sold ketamine to Matthew Perry before his overdose death has been sentenced to two and a half years in prison.

Dr Salvador Plasencia, 44, had pleaded guilty on Wednesday to giving Perry ketamine in the month leading up to the Friends star’s overdose death in 2023. Perry died at 54 after struggling with addiction for years, dating back to his time as one of the biggest stars of his generation for his role as Chandler Bing.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

© Photograph: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

© Photograph: Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP

Netflix’s series feels like the point of no return for the rapper and mogul. It’s so thorough in its harrowing detail that it will surely block any chance he ever had of a return to stardom

If its subject gets his way, the new documentary series Sean Combs: The Reckoning might not be available on Netflix for long. On Monday, lawyers on behalf of Combs sent a cease and desist letter to the streamer, demanding that the series be withdrawn based on the inclusion of footage that they claim violates copyright, and involves discussions of “legal strategy that were not intended for public viewing”.

After watching the series, you can see why Combs might be rattled. This is a man whose fall from grace last year was sudden and comprehensive, and yet Sean Combs: The Reckoning feels like the moment of no return for him. It does such a thorough job of laying out and backing up so many horrific allegations that his way back to stardom is surely blocked for ever.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Sean "Diddy" Combs

© Photograph: Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Sean "Diddy" Combs

© Photograph: Shareif Ziyadat/Getty Images for Sean "Diddy" Combs

The musician, who wrote My Way and Puppy Love among others, talks career longevity, shrewd business and which star bullied him in his youth

In 1956, when Paul Anka was 15 years old, he idolized Chuck Berry. So, when the star came to play his home town of Ottawa, Canada, the ambitious kid made sure to sneak backstage with his guitar to play him a song he’d just written. “I started singing Diana to Chuck Berry when, suddenly, he stops me and says, ‘That’s the worst song I’ve ever heard in my life, go back to school.’”

Rather than slink away from such a pronouncement, however, Anka used it as a spur. “Revenge is a motivator like you won’t believe,” the 84-year-old star said with an eruptive laugh the other day. “I said to myself, ‘I’m going to show him.’ That attitude has prevailed for me through my entire life.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Justin Zweifach/HBO

© Photograph: Justin Zweifach/HBO

© Photograph: Justin Zweifach/HBO

Late-night hosts discussed a bizarre televised cabinet meeting, dismal approval ratings and yet another Trump posting spree on Truth Social

Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s five-hour Truth Social posting spree and his inability to stay awake during cabinet meetings.

Continue reading...

© Composite: YouTube

© Composite: YouTube

© Composite: YouTube

She literally skips through a Christmas tree farm, serves food that looks like animal droppings and cooks a meal that Prince Harry hates. Assume the crash position before watching

In the top corner of the screen as With Love, Meghan: Holiday Celebration opens is its age rating: “U – no material likely to offend or harm.” This may be true in the traditional sense. But I would advise any viewers who are British, not in the acting profession and/or not married to the Duchess of Sussex to take as many anti-emetics as medically advisable, then assume the crash position.

We open with Meghan literally skipping through a Christmas tree farm. “Once a year you get to do the tree thing!” She then decorates it, which she loves because it allows you to “encapsulate your family’s story!”. She likes to position the baubles “so they find their light”. Once she has done that, it’s time to fill a 24-pocketed Advent calendar with – no, not chocolates, you fat English pleb, but “small gestures” and “little findings” for your children. “I’m writing notes that say ‘I love you because you are so kind!’ and ‘I love you because you are so brave!’” Do the children leave notes in return, I wonder? “Should we give up hope of the occasional Freddo here?” “Morning trans fats are the tradition to start, Mother.”

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jake Rosenberg/Netflix/PA

© Photograph: Jake Rosenberg/Netflix/PA

© Photograph: Jake Rosenberg/Netflix/PA