
Welcome back to the International Insider news roundup. Jesse Whittock here to the run down the biggest film and TV news from around the globe. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Netflix In Numbers
Netflix
Mapping out success: Netflix dropped its latest viewing data dump last week, with Adolescence and Squid Game unsurprisingly dominant in the streamer’s self-edited chart. While it has to be noted that Netflix marks its own homework and we can’t 100% on the veracity of the numbers, they paint a clearer picture than anything its rivals provide. And with this being the fourth What We Watched report, Jake decided to crunch the numbers, with a helping hand from ChatGPT, and was rewarded with this fascinating insight into how the global streamer is consumed. Top-line facts: Netflix came close to generating 100 billion views in the past two years, Korean survival drama Squid Game was in that time frame 59 million views ahead of the second most-watched show (Adolescence) and British titles made up five of the top ten most-viewed series. When it came to films, there was a surprising winner: Alec Baldwin starrer The Boss Baby clocked up 221.3 million views, placing it ahead of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Leo and Leave the World Behind. Kids and family animation has dominated, whereas Oscar winners such as Roma were nowhere to be seen. It’s a fun exploration of viewing habits, which remain poorly understood despite global streaming now being well over a decade old. That story wasn’t our only deep dive on Netflix this week, however, with Peter White heading to Santa Monica Pier, where the streamer had gathered together more than 100 stars from its burgeoning reality TV universe, including faces from Selling Sunset, Building the Band, Perfect Match, Love Is Blind, Squid Game: The Challenge, Love on the Spectrum and Temptation Island. Jeff Gaspin, who oversees unscripted at Netflix, told Deadline the event was to highlight how the streamer could see stars from one reality show appear in another to supercharge the fandoms around them. Speaking of unscripted stars on Netflix, Max interviewed Victor Bengtsson, the boss of the Sidemen’s entertainment business, about whether the UK content creator group’s decision to move reality show Inside from YouTube to Netflix had paid off. “This was our ‘Big Brother for Gen-Z’ moment,” he said.
RIP Ozzy
Getty
“Shaaron!”: It’s been a sad week for heavy metal fans and reality TV lovers with the news of rock legend Ozzy Osbourne‘s death aged 76. Just two weeks after the Black Sabbath frontman played a sold-out farewell concert to 40,000 fans in his home city of Birmingham in the UK, he passed away on Tuesday. While the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is remembered by his legions of fans for his music and influence on the metal genre, in particular, he was similarly a pioneer in reality TV. In 2002, MTV debuted The Osbournesa verité-style reality series focusing on the home life of Ozzy, his wife Sharon, daughter Kelly and son Jack. Introducing viewers to Ozzy’s chaotic life in LA, complete with constant dog poops all over his Californian mansion and his hilarious shouts of, “SHAAARON!,” the series was a ratings mega-hit and ushered in an era of reality shows about celebrity families. Without it, there would be no Keeping Up with the Kardashians or Hogan Knows Best – whose patriarch, Terry Bollea, aka. wrestling icon and actor Hulk Hogan, also passed away this week, aged 71. Ozzy’s passing, mourned by many in the music and entertainment world, led to questions about the future of docu-series Home to Roostbilled as a spiritual successor to The Osbournes. It filmed the family as they moved from LA back to their native UK, but has been sitting in limbo for three years now. Just as sources told us back in 2023 when Ozzy retired from touring suffering from a range of health issues, we hear there are still plans to broadcast the footage, only it might not be the 10-part series originally envisaged and will be subject to the family’s wishes.
Venice Unveiled
That’s amore: As Andreas noted Tuesday, the 2025 Venice Film Festival line-up is even more tantalizing than usual. If it’s big-name movies you’re after, the influential fest has secured Luca Guadagnino’s After the HuntNoah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Kathryn Bigelow’s return to feature filmmaking, A House of Dynamiteand Jim Jarmusch’s first Venice Competition title in decades with Father Mother Sister Brother. If it’s star power you’re after, how about George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Idris Elba, Jacob Elordi, Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt, Tony Leung, and Dwayne Johnson? In short, it’s gearing up. Then, for those who love chaos and carnage, Venice has secured Mike Figgis’ behind-the-scene doc from the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s troubled Megalopolis shoot. What more could we want? “Big films, big names and great filmmakers, but also a lot of discoveries,” was how Venice chief Alberto Barbera described it in an interview with Deadline. The full line-up can be found here and there’s plenty more to read about the Italian film fest, including news on sidebars, sales agents and trailers.
Macrons Vs Owens
Getty Images
Defame and fortune: The summer months in UK news are often known as ‘silly season’ – where nothing much happens and stories get more ridiculous as journalists seek to fill column inches. There’s a touch of that about this summer’s weirdest beef, albeit with a much grimmer undertone: Alt-right motormouth Candace Owens versus French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte. Owens has repeatedly – and completely without evidence – claimed Brigette Macron is a man, and this week the French political couple had enough. They filed a defamation lawsuit against Owens, the first time a foreign politician has sued an American journalist, for what their legal team called “outlandish, defamatory and far-fetched fictions.” At the core of her attacks, they allege, is a desire to “promote her independent platform, gain notoriety and make money.” Soon after Dominic Patten posted a story outlining the suit, Owens’ people contacted him to say, “Candace Owens is not shutting up.” They also accused the Macrons of bullying tactics, a charge the Macrons in turn level at Owens, who is also leading the angry MAGA pack blaming President Donald Trump for blocking publication of the Epstein files. In fact, in a full scorched-earth play, she claimed the discovery stage of the suit would be “out of this world” and would lead to Trump himself being deposed by her team. Silly season stuff all round.
Tinker, Taylor
Stewart Cook/CBS via Getty
Swift call: Taylor fever is going nowhere. This week, Max revealed Channel 4 has ordered a doc about the pop mega-star. Taylor (working title) will dig deep across the musician’s 20-year career, a period that has seen Taylor Swift transcend the realm of pop star to become a cultural icon – and the first billionaire whose main income is music. The Channel 4 doc follows her two-year-long Eras tour and looks into her huge cultural impact. Max interviewed bosses at the British producer, Sandpaper Films, which is known for docs on controversial figures such as Andrew Tate and Karen Read, to understand their process, which they called, “New York Post on the outside, New York Times on the inside.” Sandpaper’s Susannah Price said the style was making films “famous people that are analytical, truly independent, not made with the celebrity, and not biopics” that “say something about how they fit into society in a bigger world, and with Taylor it was impossible to ignore how she had become this megastar at the beginning of the Eras Tour.” If that wasn’t enough Taylor content for you, our SEO guru Dessi Gomez wrote this fun item tabling all the Swiftie songs in Prime Video’s YA series The Summer I Turned Prettyas well as predictions on which others will be in Season 3 if it aligns with Jenny Han’s books.
The Essentials
The Christie Archive Trust
🌶️ Hot One: Another BBC and BritBox series featuring prolific crime author Agatha Christie – only this time she’ll be among the characters in the story of drama series The Detection Club.
🌶️ Another One: Wales’ Dragon Studios is facing the threat of closure as the UK tax authority chases an unpaid bill.
💼 New job #1: For former BBC Studios exec Matt Ford, who will take Sony Pictures Television further into the creator economy.
📂 New job #2: Long-serving ITV exec Sasha Breslau will become acquisitions chief for the upcoming HBO Max UK & Ireland service, with Prime Video’s Alessandro Volpato taking on a similar role in Italy.
🚪 Exiting: Mediawan Rights’ scripted sales chief, Randall Broman, after three years in post.
🪓 Breaking Baz: A double dose of Bamigboye specials for you this week, featuring articles on Elizabeth McGovern and Rosamund Pike
🚦 Going ahead: The broadcast of the next season of troubled UK cooking competition MasterChefdespite the sackings of judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace.
🏅 Feted: Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani will receive the Excellence Award Davide Campari.
🍿 Box office: The latest Demon Slayer movie is killing it in Japan, breaking several records.
International Insider was written by Jesse Whittock and edited by Jake Kanter.