Admissions for Korean and international films have fallen 45% since 2019, from about 226 million to 123 million, while box office revenue has dropped from $1.3bn to $812m. With investment slowing sharply, Korean distributors that once released more than 40 locally produced films a year are expected to put out about only 20 in 2025, and warn that 2026 could be even more serious as the pandemic-era backlog runs out and new productions are not coming fast enough.
Streaming platforms reigned supreme, with Netflix and Apple TV dominating our list with seven and five selections each. Genre-wise, we've got a bit of everything: period dramas ( The Gilded Age, Outrageous), superheroes ( Daredevil: Born Again), mysteries ( Ludwig, Poker Face, Dept. Q), political thrillers ( The Diplomats, Slow Horses), science fiction ( Andor, Severance, Alien: Earth), broody fantasy ( The Sandman), and even an unconventional nature documentary ( Underdogs).
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.
How do we discover new music? It used to be mostly through friends, record stores, and radio. Now, friends, some radio stations, and music platforms still play a role. Spotify's annual wrap-up is an ideal time to see what new music has reached our ears. The European Union is funding a project to audit algorithmic music discovery because it believes there may be bias and a lack of transparency in this process.
Joe Aboud, a former major label executive and founder of 444 Sounds, says streaming platforms now see 100,000 to 120,000 new tracks uploaded every day - roughly 1.5 million a week. AI-generated tracks already make up nearly one in five uploads on some platforms, said Jeremy Morris, a media and cultural studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, raising concerns about royalty dilution and algorithmic bias.
Streaming platforms are the first stop for many people once work ends. Netflix, Disney+, and BBC iPlayer have made the "what shall we watch?" debate a nightly tradition in countless homes. Alongside this, online gaming has carved out its own space in the mix. Casual mobile games and multiplayer titles are now just as much a part of winding down as flipping through a series.
"Together we are building something unique with ambition, to deliver the most engaging football, the most innovative and the most accessible to expand our core revenue streams. [We want] to inspire new fans to follow our competitions, to drive engagement with new audiences especially in an ever-changing media and streaming right landscape and to make the most of digital platforms and bring the game closer together for ever. "This is how we will keep European
Lorde is among the latest wave of artists joining the No Music for Genocide campaign, which urges musicians to geo-block their music in Israel in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Caribou, Hayley Williams, Dry Cleaning, Marina, Caroline, Diiv, Duval Timothy, Idles, Muna, Paloma Faith, Obongjayar, Marc Rebillet, Tokimonsta, 454, Pinegrove, and Skee Mask have also removed or pledged to remove their music from streaming services in the country.
There is no need to have a kissing scene, especially a lesbian kissing scene, in a children's show. This is pushing an agenda. There are other options. There are other streaming networks.
The staff of Pitchfork listens to a lot of new music. A lot of it. On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we're sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff's favorite new music.
Television has come a long way since the days when your grandparents spent their evenings arguing over who had the remote. From the introduction of smart TVs to the advent of streaming services, modern home viewing experiences - and the remotes that direct them - are almost unrecognizable from their origins. First introduced in the 1950s, TV remote controls have defined the public's viewing habits since the channel surfing era, growing into a cultural touchstone now used by sociologists to study family and social dynamics.
When the annals of 2025 at the movies are written, no one will remember The Electric State. The film, a sci-fi comic-book adaptation, is set in a world in which sentient robots have lost a war with humans. Netflix blew a reported $320m on it, making it the 14th most expensive film ever made. But it tanked: though The Electric State initially claimed the No 1 spot on the streamer, viewers quickly lost interest.
PBS does not operate like a traditional network such as CBS or NBC; rather, it is a collection of over 300 local member stations that independently control their programming.
