There’s another Oscar shakeup ahead, as they announce a slew of rule changes across many of their categories. Entertainment attorney at Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake, shares what you need to know.

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Best International Picture Changes

The next Oscar ceremony will be the 99th edition, and with almost a century under its belt, some of the announced changes are most definitely needed. The changes in the Best International category, however, are the most notable so far, as it takes away the requirement for the country itself to submit the film. Countries will still be able to nominate, but non-English language titles can now also make their way by winning a (qualified) award at an international film festival. Currently, the list includes categories at Berlin, the Busan International Film Festival, Toronto’s TIFF, Venice, Sundance, and, of course, Cannes. 

For many, this is a very welcome change, as frustration has been strong in recent years, as high-performing titles have remained ineligible due to the country restriction despite amazing runs. The film will now be credited as the nominee, with the winning director accepting the award. They will also be listed on the plaque. 

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Tackling AI

Unsurprisingly, AI also triggered some changes. Acting categories will now be open only to, well, real people. For writing, screenplays must also be human-authored to count. The Academy also now has the right to ask about the use of GenAI within entrants.

Actors may also now be nominated more than once in the same category in the same year.  There’s also clarity of post-credit songs eying a Best Original Song entry, Best Casting gets more statuettes, and the Best Cinematography shortlist has been expanded. 

This was far from all of the changes, which span from how many moderators must be on panels, right through to how those looking to drum up support for their films can approach Academy members, so there’s plenty more to explore.  

Cinemark, for all it is still a giant among movie theater chains, has been struggling to make up for its heavy losses during the pandemic-related closures. However, we have finally seen a very promising turnaround for the chain. With the full story, we have entertainment attorney at Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake.

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Quarterly Results

Let’s lead with the good news: this quarter saw their revenue losses lower considerably. Revenue saw a 19% improvement, hitting $643.1M. Admissions revenue for the quarter accounted for $311.4M of that, with concessions adding a further $255.2M to the kitty, both improvements on the prior year’s benchmarks. 

They saw 24M patrons come through their doors in the US, a 17% increase. Overall, while they still had a net loss of $6.4M, that’s an incredible drop. Especially when compared with last year’s $38.9M.

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Strongest Q1 Post-Pandemic

This is Cinemark’s best results since 2020. Interestingly, 17% of Cinemark’s global box office for the period came from so-called “alternative content,” while 13% of worldwide admissions favored premium large formats like IMAX.

This aligns strongly with the current swing towards “event cinema,” which all but demands premium screens to justify higher revenue streams. This is a notable development post-pandemic, where theatrical exhibition needs to offer something more than the experience viewers can have from their couches via streaming. 

CEO Seth Gamble also touched on the expansion of theatrical windows, which are now solidly favoring a 45-day window over the 31 (or even 17) day runs we saw immediately post-pandemic, and called for staggered tentpole releases as a better model for studios and exhibitors alike. 

It’s good to see this kind of accelerated recovery for one of the largest theater chains still in existence, and it’s a trend we hope to see continue right back into fully black balance sheets in the near future. 

The swing from chasing subscriber numbers to Wall Street demanding clear profit signals has been a key characteristic of the streaming landscape in recent years. While some of the bigger names have finally managed to move their balance sheets into the black, smaller streamers have had slower success. But it looks like Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming platform, may be on track for profit by the next quarter, as entertainment attorney at Blake & Wang P.A., Brandon Blake, reports. 

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Profit from Loss

It’s an unusual quarter to see this milestone passed, as their prior quarter (January to March 2026) not only failed to profit, but saw a considerable $432M loss. 

Peacock itself has been plagued by poor timing from the start, when its Tokyo Summer Olympics coverage was stunted by the then-evolving COVID-19 threat. Q1 of 2026 saw similar throttling when its NBA season costs were consolidated into a single quarter due to scheduling and timing. 

However, by the first quarter of 2026, Peacock could claim 46M subscribers, which is still impressive for a smaller streaming platform.  

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Signaling Success

The costs of their NBA contract aside, however, Peacock saw revenue of $2B in Q1, a $0.8B increase from the same period in 2024, and a $0.4B rise above Q4 of 2025. This was due mostly to more paid subscribers and higher rates overall. It also had a particularly successful February, again built mostly from its live sports offerings. 

With the separation of Versant, the company that took over most of Peacock’s legacy assets, now finally complete, Peacock has the room to express that profit more freely and without associated costs. With the revenue and income levels it had in Q1, this should position the streamer for profit and success by Q2 of this year, and we can finally welcome it to the list of streamers that have achieved this lofty Wall Street target. 

While the Trump administration has moved on from when it was first talking about offering federal-level incentives to rehome US production, the industry, it seems, has not. At a time when the US as a whole is now forced to compete with lower-cost foreign destinations to attract productions, it could be an interesting sweetener, as our Blake & Wang P.A. best entertainment lawyers in los angeles, Brandon Blake, shares.

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The US Production Flight

For those tracing the flight of productions from US shores, there has long been one piece of the puzzle missing: a federal film office, or even a tax incentive that could put the government to work to rebuild the domestic location industry. 

While the initially proposed “100% tariff” on film production outside the US was dead in the water to start with, we are finally seeing some more grounded proposals reach lawmakers, as well as several high-profile celebrities trying to rally attention for the cause. 

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Growing Momentum

The same talk reached this year’s CinemaCon, where the MPA Chairman and CEO noted that the campaign is making progress, as well as highlighting recent changes in New Jersey and California. 

If, as he said, they are indeed engaging at the Congressional level to try and implement a federal film tax incentive and making meaningful progress, this could be the missing piece of the puzzle needed to support the domestic film industry at a national level, instead of relying on states alone. 

It’s not much to go on (for now), but it’s the most concrete sign that something is underway that we have seen so far. Should such an incentive finally see daylight, there would be a lot of refinement needed, from whether it will be capped to who will be eligible, and there would doubtless be an interval for the states themselves to weigh in. However, it’s good to know a helping governmental hand could still be in the works- and one a lot more realistic and workable than another tariff, too.

As Nielsen releases another edition of its streaming Gauge report, it’s time to check in with what’s happening across streaming networks and what properties are seeing the most traction with their audiences. Entertainment Attorney Los Angeles Brandon Blake, at Blake & Wang P.A., fills us in on the latest.

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Zootopia Wins Again

In what will be a surprise to no one, the streaming charts for March 9 to March 15 were dominated by the streaming debut of Zootopia 2. The sequel had immense success at the box office and as a premium SVOD release, and it continued with its broader debut, drawing 1.72B minutes of viewing time from its March 11 release. Zootopia also saw a resurgence of interest, at 381M, more than double compared with the week before.

Other Strong Releases

This week, however, Zootopia 2 was not alone. One Piece, a Netflix offering that hasn’t seen screen time for just over 2 years, came back to its best weekly streaming total to date, closing in on Zootopia with 1.62B viewing minutes. Its best prior total was 1.39B. Virgin River, which ironically came in at the same 1.39B, also continued to do well, despite being in its seventh season.

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The other premier of the week, Scarpetta, based on the Patricia Cornwell books featuring the title character, brought in 952M, enough to take 6th place among all titles, and 4th for original series. It was beaten out by the ever-popular The Pitt, at 1.02B.

Given that Nielsen’s streaming ratings only cover US watchers using a TV set, and don’t include viewers accessing from other sources, such as computers and mobile devices, that’s quite an achievement for a mid-March week. It will be interesting to see if Zootopia 2 continues to pull in audiences in its second week of release, or if it is simply the lure of a new Disney film for families with little ones to keep entertained while waiting for spring to arrive.

Given the major push towards ad-supported tiers we’ve seen from the largest streaming platforms over the last few years, you may have walked away with the distinct impression that they’d really love you to take on an ad-supported package. But, as streaming matures, that may not be the case, as Brandon Blake, our entertainment lawyer at Blake & Wang P.A., is here to break down.

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A Return to Prime Time?

If you’ve been paying attention to the streaming environment of late, it might be starting to feel a lot like the heyday of broadcast. First, we saw the ads return. Then it was mid-programming advertising and lower-cost, ad-supported tiers. And now, live sports and simpler programming, like reality TV, is being increasingly used to both lure in subscribers and pad up slates that can no longer sustain the splashy big-budget productions that were once top of the streaming food chain.

However, the price tags associated with streaming look a lot different from the Pay TV era. And, currently, the price hikes keep coming. 

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The Advertising Irony

This also raises a rather ironic catch-22. Advertising has become increasingly important for streaming and is one of the major current revenue drivers for the streaming model. Not just through raw advertising dollars, but also through the lure of those cheaper ad-supported tiers.

However, advertising has never been a seminal part of a good user experience, and most platforms still want to offer a way for users to bypass ads. 

Yet, as price increases widen the value gap between the two categories of tiers, and more and more households carry multiple subscriptions, ad-supported is becoming the go-to. And with enhanced targeting and new ad offerings, many streamers are seeing their ad tiers become a whole lot more lucrative than their non-ad offerings. 

It looks like the Pay TV mechanism may have passed its heyday, but the same lure of ad-supported programming lives on after all.

With a splashy world-first drone show to drive home the message, it’s now official: HBO Max has arrived on the UK and Ireland’s shores, as an entertainment lawyer from Blake & Wang P.A, Brandon Blake, is here to share.

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A Launch Long Coming

The UK has had some access to HBO Max through licensing deals with NOW and Sky. However, direct subscription was itself held back due to those deals. With those agreements expiring this year, a local launch is now possible. 

This will bring even more popular HBO content, including the hit show The Pitt, which has been unavailable in the UK for a while now, to UK and Irish screens alongside older library titles and other current shows.

Those with existing subscriptions to Sky Cinema, or the NOW Entertainment HBO Max offering, will be partially grandfathered in as part of the new launch. Multiple tiers will be on offer, starting at £4.99 and culminating, of course, in the Premium tier with an ad-free subscription.

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Splashy Celebration

The launch was celebrated last week at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, with HBO’s lineup of actors and shows creating a star-studded lineup. And, of course, the attention-stealing flight of 500 drones, bringing to life some of HBO Max’s most iconic titles in a splashy light show that was itself a world-first.

While there are some questions hanging over the HBO Max platform, given that Paramount, the upcoming new owners of Warner Bros, has its own streaming platform, HBO Max has become such a globally recognized brand that it is likely to live on in some form or other, even post-merger. But for now, at Warner Bros at least, it seems like business as usual- and now the UK can enjoy its offerings as well.

Now in its post-Warner Bros phase, what lies ahead for Netflix? Whatever the future holds, it will include even more festival acquisitions, as Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment lawyer, Brandon Blake, shares with us. 

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Festival Activity Ahead

Netflix film chief, Dan Lin, who has greenlit 88 films in his 2-year tenure at Netflix, has shared that they should release seven movies a month going forward. Now including four different event films each year, with Greta Gerwig’s Narnia set to be this year’s Thanksgiving release.

That’s an awful lot of movies for a streamer without its own significant studio arm. It’s also clear that Netflix has noticed the value that the legacy studios have uncovered in their content libraries, and is now keen to build its own licensable library to sell on.

However, for many, the question is whether Netflix is still the major acquisitions player it once was, when its deeper pockets allowed it to be the pace-setter for the indie film markets across Cannes, TIFF, and Sundance. Perhaps it’s the record amounts those sales went for that’s really being missed. 

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Eying Cannes Already

While Lin was quick to note that they are still building their own movie releases and aren’t fully reliant on acquisitions, he reiterated that they intend to be aggressive in the acquisitions market as well, with Cannes their next target for prestige potential.

It’s worked for him before. Emilia Pérez, one of his first acquisitions, did magnificently for Netflix, and they also saw success off the back of Train Dreams more recently, even earning an Oscar Best Picture nomination. 

However, Netflix was noticeably quieter at Sundance this year, and we have also seen a swing to more commercially-targeted titles from them as well. Will they be putting their money where their mouth is, as the old saying goes? We’ll have to wait and see what happens on this year’s Croisette.