franchise

In two days the animated spin-off of the platform’s only powerful franchise premieres on Netflix: ‘Stranger Things’

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On December 31, 2025, Netflix aired the final episode of ‘Stranger Things‘. With it, the platform recorded its most viewed New Year’s broadcast in history and put the finishing touch to the platform’s most viewed series, exceeding 1.2 billion accumulated views. And four months later Eleven, Mike, Dustin and the rest of the Hawkins gang are back, but this time in animated format With new voices and a new showrunnerthis ‘Stranger Things: Stories from 85′ this one arrives April 23 to Netflix. And how is it presented when the main story has already closed? Well, going back to when it wasn’t yet: the series takes place in the winter of 1985, between the second and third original seasons. That interval existed in the canon, although it did not come without a technical problem: at the end of T2, Eleven closes the door to the Other Side. T3 starts in July of that same year. How do you fit interdimensional monsters into a story that takes place during the months when the door is sealed? Easy: Particles from the Other Side that escaped before the door closed have begun to mutate into different plant species in Hawkins, generating hybrid creatures like a “snow shark.” All of this comes from the original visual style of the illustrator Meybis Ruiz Cruz and which, through animation, Netflix has wanted to bring closer to series from the eighties such as ‘He-Man’ or ‘The Real Ghostbusters’, but without losing sight of more recent proposals such as the animated films of the Spider-verse or ‘Arcane’. ‘Stories of 85’ obeys the tactic of keeping a franchise alive once it is impossible to do so with the original actors, through formats that alleviate technical and distribution demands. If this experiment works, we will undoubtedly see similar attempts with series like ‘Wednesday’ or ‘The Bridgertons’, and that without leaving Netflix. And, of course, if it works it will also continue on this side: according to the new showrunnerEric Robles, there are ideas to cover many other intervals in the official series. You have to milk it from somewhere. In Xataka | 16 premieres on Netflix: this week, the new ‘Stranger Things’, a rare British series and the return of Charlize Theron

Harry Potter has slipped through its fingers, but Netflix’s need for a hit franchise is still there

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In February 2026, Netflix renounced what would have been one of the biggest economic bets in its entire history (72 billion for the studios and the Warner Bros. catalog), in the face of a counteroffer from Paramount that it did not want to match. The episode precisely exposes one of the weaknesses of what remains the main service of streaming in the world: twelve years of own and exclusive content cannot compete against a century of third-party franchises. The businesses. In December 2025, Netflix announced a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery valued at $72 billion to take over its studios and HBO Max. Two months later Paramount Skydance raised its offer at $31 per sharecompared to the 27.75 that Netflix had agreed upon, and Warner leaned towards this new proposal. Netflix refused to match it. “The transaction we negotiated would have created value for shareholders, but we have always been disciplined, and at the price that required matching the last offer, the deal was no longer financially attractive,” the company said in a statement. Catalog wanted. Beyond finances, the failed business reveals that Netflix was looking for something that can only be achieved with time (or a lot of money): catalog. Warner, Disney or Universal have accumulated decades of iconic franchises and characters, but Netflix only has a history of twelve years. It is the best explanation for why the platform was willing to make a very high economic proposal. It seems obvious to think that Netflix, now that it has concluded’Stranger Things‘, seeks comparable success: after all, the Duffer series has provided you more than $1 billion in revenue since 2020. and can be credited with signing more than two million subscribers. Proof: Willy Wonka. A good test that to achieve overwhelming successes it is not enough to walk the checkbook is in the purchase of the Roald Dahl catalog. Netflix paid about 700 million dollars, according to specialized media calculations, for the rights to works such as ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ or ‘Matilda’, but five years later it has not generated any relevant success. In 2026 they will make a new attempt with a reality called ‘Golden Ticket’, in which the participants face tests in a scenario with a chocolate river inspired by Willy Wonka, but we are very far from a launch that equals ‘The Bridgertons’ or a ‘Wednesdays’. The ‘K-pop Warriors’ accident. Netflix’s latest big hit is perfect proof that, no matter how hard you try, there are things that can’t be bought with money, much less can be thoroughly planned. ‘The K-pop Warriors’ became such an unexpected phenomenon that the platform did not have products merchandising available during the Christmas season. Apparently Netflix approached toy manufacturers more than a year before the premiere, but no one wanted to take the risk of an untested franchise. But now Netflix is ​​treating ‘K-pop Warriors’ as its next big property: deals with Mattel and Hasbro, themed menus at McDonald’s, a possible concert tour and an animated sequel in development. It’s a real irony: Netflix has been saying for years that franchises are its goal and when one appears, the infrastructure to exploit it was not ready. The 2026 roadmap. What awaits the platform in the coming months? ‘The Bridgertons’ enters its fourth season, ‘One Piece’ in the second, and series are being prepared such as a new approach to ‘Assassin’s Creed’ with the approval of UbiSofy and a reboot from ‘Little House on the Prairie’. The company has also closed agreements with Sony Pictures to exclusively distribute streaming its next releases (including Spiderverse films, the adaptation of ‘Zelda’ or the Beatles biopics directed by Sam Mendes) and maintains with Universal the exclusive premiere in streaming from franchises like ‘Jurassic World’. They are alliances that partially compensate for the absence of a more powerful catalog of our own. The need for franchises. Why series like the true gem of Warner (almost above the DC heroes), ‘harry potter‘, are so necessary for Netflix. According to data from the consulting firm Owl & Co, the engagement Netflix grew just 2% in the second half of 2025. Revenue is expected to increase 13% in 2026, up from 16% a year earlier. And advertising represents only 3% of the total, very residual. Franchises are, in this context, an impetus for growth: they build loyalty and allow exploitation with merchandising and live events. A replica of Hogwarts on the scale of Netflix would, of course, guarantee a turnaround in these figures. In Xataka | The ranking of Spanish television by including Netflix and YouTube changes everything: traditional TV is on its heels

Why although it seemed to belong to a genre and a condemned franchise, ‘Warren file’ has been a box office bombing

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Absolutely overwhelming has been the box office of the fourth and, apparently, the last installment of ‘Warren file’, subtitled ‘the last rite’, in its first weekend. Can boast of being the second best premiere of a horror movie in history (Only behind ‘IT’ in 2017, although these data always have to take them with tweezers, for that of inflation and other issues that relativize the records). Absolute or only relative triumph, the figures in any case are impressive. When I didn’t have them all the movie to be. The best file. 187 million dollars worldwide (104 of them at the international box office, 83 million in the American, 4.1 in La Española) endorse the premiere as the best in the franchise. It has also been a good support for IMAX screens, where it has generated 14.3 million dollars, the best premiere of the giant format in the horror genre. With these figures, the ‘Warren’ file (which also includes the spin-offs ‘the nun’ and ‘Annabelle’) becomes the highest grossing of horror cinema, with 2.3 billion accumulated dollars. A key moment. This film arrives at a key moment for the franchise. Although the main deliveries of the series have always enjoyed a great box office, Criticism has not always treated them well: this, without going any further, has a 56% in Rotten Tomatoes. Only the first two deliveries rise from 80%, while films such as ‘The Nun’, ‘Annabelle’ or the third ‘Warren’ file are between 25 and 55%. Although Criticism and box office do not always go hand in handit is a reflection of a certain boredom and exhaustion signs that can then have an impact on the box office. It has not been the case, among other things because they are cheap films (between 20 and 50 million budget) and very profitable, however scarce the collection is. Terror is fashionable. To calibrate the proportion of this success, it may be good to compare it with a couple of recent successes of the genre, As Jorge Loser did in Bluesky: Only in his first weekend, ‘The last rite’ has entered 67 million dollars more than ‘the substance’ and ‘return it’ together and in all its careers. And these yes, films venerated by critics. A few weeks ago we talked about How gender is In good streakchaining a success after another (this summer, for example, ‘Weapons’ and the aforementioned’ return to me have dominated the box office): the resurgence of terror in the tastes of the people thanks to the streaming And his low cost in front of the blockbusters are making the genre live an extraordinary moment. The exhausted formula. However, and despite the roller that has made the film with this week’s box office, the bad reception of criticism is natural: the formula has become a copy of itself, and in recent years the clones have emerged everywhere, even outside the franchise itself: ‘Liver us from evil’, ‘ouija’, ‘corpse’, ‘Winchester’ … even in Spain we have had ‘Verónica’ Patron: Demonic houses, possession of innocent creatures and scares very often shot with an identical visual pattern. There is a whole arc of approaches to this style, from The most artie of A24 (which has already configured the aesthetics of the genre with ‘Heredityary’) to that of the most verbenera Blumhouse, which prepares a new sequel to ‘Insidious’, whose first deliveries have also been key to shape this subgenre of horror movies. The box office is no longer infallible but in most cases the public continues to respond very positively. Why horror cinema works despite everything. Apart from the reasons listed above, there is an extra. In times when the industry is buried of clonic formulas, as with absolutely all the large -budget blockbusters and where the authorship of a film has ceased to be a value (the directors of Marvel movies, for example, are completely exchange), horror movies bet on constant surprise and forced differentiation to get attention. Of course, terror is not safe from franchises or farms, but it is taken in another way: with more humor and more carefree. As in ‘Warren File’, belonging to a saga is not a chain that prevents flying free, but an excuse to increase volume and nonsense. The horror cinema has ended up being one of the scarce redoubts of creativity within commercial cinema and the public understands it intuitively. There is no bad criticism that can with that. Header | Warner In Xataka | The great triumph of “high terror”: how fantastic cinema has invaded the main nominations of the 2025 Oscar

It is also the return of our most popular franchise

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Today arrives at bookstores The new installment of the ‘Captain Alatriste’ series by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Although 14 years have passed since their last novel, its success is indisputable and palpates not only in the derivatives that the character has lived (most during this parenthesis in the time of the original book series), but also in the impact that the series has had outside the entertainment industry. So much, that perhaps we can consider ‘Alatriste’ as the main franchise that Spanish culture has given in recent years. Success franchise. Of course, Alatriste is not the only fictional character who has lived an existence of success beyond his original incarnation. It is inevitable to think about Mortadelo and Filemónhis successful adaptations to cinema and animation and his remembered video games for PC. And there is also the significant case of a torrent, for two reasons: first, its politicized resignification, sometimes against the desire of the original author; And second, its Current recoverywhen nostalgia seems to be the only safe commercial maneuver. Torrente had comic and video game (and slot machine), but of merely anecdotal reach. What attracts Alatriste’s attention is that, although the novels have been a very considerable editorial success, its successive adaptations and reincarnations have also had the support of the public and the sympathies of Pérez Reverte. The original books. The original book saga tells the adventures of Diego Alatriste and Tenorio, a veteran soldier of the Thirds of Flanders who is spoiled in the Madrid of the seventeenth century as a swordsman for salary and in full decline of the Spanish empire. To the original series, composed of seven books published between 1996 and 2011, two more are added. Much of its success is due, apart from the sometimes folletinesco tone and carefree adventure of swordsman, to the appearance of famous characters of the Golden Age and their careful historical atmosphere. In audiovisual. The movie ‘Alatriste‘, by Agustín García-Yanes is not a precisely secondary product: due to the participation of an international star, Viggo Mortensen (at that time very in vogue thanks to the movies of’The Lord of the Rings‘), his budget catapulted until he became the most expensive film until the moment of Spanish cinema. With a completely exportable invoice, he did not get an excessive box office success. That did not prevent in 2015, Telecinco to premiere a series by adapting the novels. Salvador Calvo and Enrique Urbizu directed it and gave life to the protagonist Aitor Luna. The series fulfilled in audiences, but it was strongly criticized by his overwhelmingly television aesthetics. Other media. But Alatriste’s career does not end there: although we have not come to see an Alatriste video game, we have tasted a role -playing game (‘Captain Alatriste role’, by the legendary Ricard Ibáñez – at which we all remember for the mythical ‘Aquelarre’- and that he even enjoyed two expansions). There have also been two comics. ‘Captain Alatriste’ (2005) and ‘Blood cleaning’ (2008), both with a script of no less than Carlos Giménez and based on the first two books of the series. Beyond adaptations. However, the most interesting of the success of ‘Alatriste’, and what enshrines the series as an unquestionable triumphal franchise of our pop culture is the impact it has had beyond adaptations. For example, the saga renewed interest in the Golden Age, something that was noted not only in exhibitions, book releases and others, but even in educational terms: books were used as educational material in schoolswith even reissue with reading guides. Hand in hand, Alatriste led us to rethink the “Spanish character”with its lights and shadows, something that Pérez-Reverte has not stopped reflecting so far and that permeated at the time in innumerable essays and articles. Alatriste still stands, and not only for commercial interests: its presence as a Spanish cultural icon is indisputable. Header | Telecinco Cinema In Xataka | Before he died, this man left a list of everything he had read in his life: 3,599 books of all kinds that you can now consult

In his second trailer, ‘Gta VI’ aims to exploit one of the great ideas so far absent in the franchise: love

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Although it sounds strange at this point, the Second trailer of ‘GTA VI‘points to something unexpected: Rockstar has matured. Or at least, he intends to continue with his purpose of making games more adults than those who gave him fame, an intention that started with ‘Red Dead Redemption 2‘. For the first time in the franchise, we see unthinkable maturity notes a few years ago. Hello to love. The plot core of ‘GTA VI’ will undoubtedly be the love story between Lucia and Jason, something unusual in a franchise full of promiscuity, prostitution, unsatisfactory marriages and lonely antiheroes and without time for love. This is what Rockstar tells us in the official synopsis: “Jason and Lucia always knew that the letters were against them, but when a blow that seemed easy to go wrong, they are trapped on the darkest side of the most sunny place in America, in the midst of a criminal conspiracy that extends throughout the state of Leonida, and forced to depend more than ever of each other if they want to go out alive.” Goodbye to the cartoon. If something puts on the table the new trailer of ‘GTA VI’ is A graphic realism never seen in the serieseven though we could be talking only about kinematics. And that realism has to bring hand in hand A change in the arguments that develop. Let us remember what the characters of ‘GTA III’, ‘Vice City’ or ‘Liberty City’ were: excessive, big heads, of schematic movements, almost cartoons. That has ended, and emotionally, the characters have to live up to it, in the same way, as we pointed out in their day, The demands of female representation have changed. A clear inspiration. Before we know more details about the argument (there are already rumors that Jason It could be an undercover policeman), the clearest reference of GTA VI are Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrowthe couple of robbers of banks who lived a bloody romance in the Chicago of the thirties. In this trailer we see Jason and wore a bank together, the first picking up the second when it comes out of jail, and sharing some beers, a sunset and some passionate scenes that perspire a certain unusual tenderness in the ‘GTA’ games. But a shadow looms on them. The thing may not end well: Rockstar games, especially the recent ones, usually deal with betrayal, one way or another. In ‘GTA v‘, where we were driving alternately to the three protagonists, in the end we were asked to choose between betraying our classmates or accepting a last mission with them. In ‘Red Dead Redemption’, betrayal when the protagonist seemed to have reached peace was inevitable. And in this ‘GTA VI’, if we alternately control the protagonists in the ‘GTA V’ style, the player could have to resort to a similar decision: loyalty to his partner or fulfill a mission. The model is ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’. It is the most sophisticated and deep game at the level of characters that has set rockstar to date. He left behind the grotesque composition of the protagonists of ‘GTA V’ and opted for emotion: in ‘RDR2’ we see Arthur Morgan learn with the player valuable lessons about betrayal, responsibility and – while he faces his own death, and as it is inevitable taking into account the title of the game – redemption. If Rockstar looks for a reference for maturity and adult characters, his own masterpiece is his model. A logical trajectory. From ‘Red Dead Redemption’, published fifteen years ago, the detour to more mature and adult arguments is indisputable. He was followed by the police key ‘La Noire’, the turn of ‘Max Payne’ in its third part towards personal hells and the second installment of ‘Red Dead Redemption’. Only ‘GTA V’ and, obviously, the verbenero ‘GTA online‘, to which you have to feed apart, they have left that line. But even recognizing that the fifth installment of the franchise is a look at more frivolous and caricaturescos times, posed unprecedented issues and approaches in the criminal saga. For now, noise and fury. For now, all this are conjectures, such as The brilliant idea that all we are seeing is the start of the game and Jason dies in the early hours of history. We cannot deduce from the second trailer what are going to be the key points of the argument, but the official information makes it clear that the relationship between Lucía and Jason (include or not deaths, betrayal or something else) will be openly romantic. And what is clear from the tone and visual style of the trailer is the potential of the game of giving an unprecedented impulse to the depth of the stories that are told in video games. And Rockstar is not known for letting this type of opportunities pass. Header | Rockstar In Xataka | The delay of ‘GTA VI’ goes far beyond a mere change in the calendar. It is an earthquake for industry

A few months after the arrival of ‘GTA VI’, Twitch crowned as the most watched of 2024 to an old acquaintance of the franchise

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We are in 2025 and, although the industry has an eye on the expected ‘GTA VI‘, what Twitch dominates remains its predecessor. ‘GTA v‘, which was launched in September 2013, has been placed again at the top of the podium of the most seen video games on the Amazon platform, Collect The Verge. In 2024 he accumulated more than 1.400 million hours seen, surpassing giants such as ‘League of Legends’ (1,190 million), ‘Valorant’ (804 million), ‘Fortnite’ (539 million) and ‘Call of Duty’ (451 million), according to official data shared by Twitch. In total, more than 15.6 billion hours of video games on Twitch were consumed globally. Why does it continue to work? The main engine behind this phenomenon is not the story mode or the original missions of the game. The key is in the ‘GTA Roleplay‘, a modality based on online servers where players assume fictitious identities and build improvised stories in real time. There is no imposed narrative: each session is different and created by the community itself. This mode, which is only available for the PC version, has made the game reinvent year after year. The role play dynamics, added to the freedom of the open world, makes it an ideal platform both to play and to generate live content. A veteran who keeps billing. In addition to the impact on audiences, the title remains an income machine for Rockstar Games. Since its launch, the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ franchise has generated more than 8,000 million dollars. Only ‘GTA V’ has sold more than 210 million copies, which places it as the third best -selling video game of all time, only behind ‘Minecraft’ and ‘Tetris’. A good part of that income comes from ‘GTA online’, the multiplayer mode that has grown in parallel to the base game and that maintains an active, competitive and creative community. With an eye on ‘GTA VI’. All this happens while the world of the video game expects the launch of ‘GTA VI’, planned for autumn of 2025. The current figures of their predecessor not only reflect nostalgia or fidelity of the community, but an active base that generates global content, money and interest more than a decade later. ‘GTA V’ is not just a long -lived game. It is one of the most durable cultural phenomena of digital entertainment. And if it serves as an indication, the way for ‘GTA VI’ seems to be more than paved. Images | Rockstar | Twitch In Xataka | If the question is “you will sell the Nintendo Switch 2 despite the price increase” the answer is: yes, a lot

EA is checking the weight of a franchise

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It makes no sense to discuss whether the name change of ‘FIFA’ was a good or bad idea, because EA had no other remedy: Since the year before ‘FIFA 23’that is, since 2023, EA had to leave the Federation brand and launch games under their own denomination. The name chosen was ‘EA Sports FC’ and as expected from the first moment, sales are not accompanying. Disagreements between great. Already in May 2023, ‘The New York Times’ reported That the agreement to prolong the use of the name of the Federation in the title of the EA Games was not on the right track, after a contract with a decade of seniority. That would be the only palpable change, because What is the interior of the game would continue the samesince clubs and players are licenses that are negotiated with the respective teams, leagues and glasses. The monies, always the monies. One of the possible causes of the disagreement could be the intention of the FIFA to bend the 150 million annually charged to EA. The company was also disagreeing with the requirement of the FIFA to allow it to associate its brand to other digital products, including other video games, something that It has also ended up doing. The financial disaster, in any case, was announced: when in 2021, EA set out to change the name of the franchisethe company’s shares chopped. “It’s not what we wanted or expected.” Thus he tried to soften his financial results of the third quarter of your fiscal yearin the mouth of his CEO Andrew Wilson, who has had less repairs to point to a culprit: the “low temporal profitability” of ‘EA Sports FC 25’. It was seen coming since he made a pre-ancient last month of the results, where they also pointed to the disappointing results of the ‘Dragon Age’ franchise as a cause of losses. Among these losses are a 3% drop in benefits. The fault is football. According to EA, its soccer franchise experienced “an interannual decrease of 5% in this third quarter”, which resulted in sales “lower than expected.” Significantly, EA detected that players remained in the holiday period playing previous franchise deliveries. According to the company, a patch of January 16 generated a retention of players superior to what is expected, which may translate with better results for the last quarter of the fiscal year, especially if these are pessimistic. The weight of a brand. Taking into account that the evolution of the games itself has been minimal, or at most, no more noticeable than in the change of other years, it is clear to what the FIFA brand, no matter how absurd it seems, it is relevant in the sales of the sales of the game. This sherwood picture It makes it very clear: the fall in Google searches of the titles of the games of the 2024 and 2025 is evident because in the end, ‘the FIFA’ is ‘the FIFA’, and when it is not ‘the FIFA’ … Well, it’s little. Header | EA In Xataka | I’ve been without touching a football video game for 20 years. I have tried the ‘EA Sports FC 25’ and this has been my experience

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