Welcome to the second Insider of 2026, sports fans. Jesse Whittock here with the big headlines from the international film and TV worlds. Sign up to the newsletter here and let’s begin.
Banijay & All3 Cozy Up
Banijay/All3Media
Bani3 Media: Already, there have been plenty of signs that consolidation will be the buzzword of 2026 in international entertainment. We’ve started with a big one in the indie TV production space after news broke Tuesday that Banijay and All3Media parent RedBird IMI were deep in discussions over a production assets merger. The talks were confirmed hours later. Banijay, which has over the years taken over indie rivals Zodiak Media and Endemol Shine Group, is now after teaming with the other big kid on the international TV block, while All3 has been drifting somewhat since RedBird purchased the business for £1.15BN ($1.54BN) in 2023. Its management could see a deal as new purpose. A combined group would house unscripted formats Survivor, Big Brother, The Traitors, MasterChef, Hunted, Squid Game: The Challenge and Gogglebox in one place, along with scripted shows Peaky Blinders, All Creatures Great and Small, Trigger Point, SAS: Rogue Heroes and Ripley. It would be a mega-player in the indie production space – the sort of merged entity that would not have been allowed a few years before the tech giants exploded and the streaming services went global. We hear there’s trepidation within both companies about jobs – there would be huge crossover in staff, especially if the catalogs are merged along with production assets. “Could be another bloodbath,” was the read from one well-informed market watcher. With Sky buying ITV’s television channels and streaming service, and the ramifications of the Warner sale still to be learned, 2026 is indeed emerging as a big year for M&A.
Indian Box Office Record
Jio Studios
Records are there to be broken: There’s still plenty of global concern about the state of the box office, but that fear is not seemingly shared in India, where cinemas scooped a record ₹133.95B ($1.48B) in 2025, surpassing the record achieved in 2023 of $1.35B, according to figures from Ormax Media released yesterday. Hindi films delivered their best ever year, with a combined $609.78M grossed. The Ranveer Singh-starrer Dhurandar was the biggest film of the year at the box office, bringing in $105.3M – making it easily the biggest Hindi-language film of all time by gross. South Indian films dubbed into other languages dropped from 31% in 2024 to just 7%. Kannada-language prequel Kantara A Legend: Chapter 1 and Hindi pic Chhaava rounded out the top three biggest films of the year, and even international film takings were up 49%, with Disney’s Avatar: Fire and Ash the top-ranking pic. However, as Liz Shackleton’s analysis highlighted, admissions were actually down – maybe those fears elsewhere are valid in India too. So how can box office takings be up when ticket sales are down? Simple: ticket prices, which were up by 20% year-on-year. Right now, that dependence seems okay, but when will India’s film-going public say enough is enough and vote with their feet?
Unifrance-Rendezvous Review
The Legendaries
Pan Européenne, Maybe Movies, Belvision
Paris, je t’aime: French film sales agents have been busy this week at Unifrance’s 28th Rendez-vous In Paris. Forty-three film sales companies participated in the event, the biggest market devoted to French cinema outside of the Cannes Film Festival, presenting their lineups to 400 buyers from 40 territories. They were joined by another 50 audiovisual sales companies and 100 TV buyers. Highlights among the 71 features screening, included theater-themed opening comedy drama La Comedie-Française, sold by Charades, as well as market premieres for widely-sold animated feature The Legendaries (Goodfellas Animation) and Gilles de Maistre’s The Desert Child (Studiocanal). While the atmosphere was buzzy as the market unfolded for a second year running at the Pullman Paris Montparnasse hotel, it’s no doubt a complex year for French cinema. International box office figures released by Unifrance on the eve of the market revealed that while receipts for minority and majority French productions rose 6% to $317M in 2025, admissions for French-language features fell to 17.1 million in 2025, against 25.8 million in 2024. Stewart also had a report from the Paris TV Screenings, where buyers and sellers packed into the Pullman to view the likes of Gaumont’s Series Mania 2025 winner The Deal.
The Essentials
Netflix
🌶️ Hot One: Squid Game creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has pushed in his chips on The Dealer, a Netflix crime series set in the dangerous world of gambling.
🌶️ Another One: The Saudi-backed 3Six9 Studios unveiled a slate including Woody Allen, John Boyega and Arnaud Desplechin films.
🔥 A fiery third: The ink is drying on a deal for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a TV remake of Stieg Larsson’s novel for Sky. However, Banijay is disputing Sony has the rights to distribute the books for screen, leading to a legal spat.
🗣️ The Interview: Chris Chibnall and Mia McKenna-Bruce told Max about the latest Agatha Christie TV series on the block, the intriguing Netflix drama Seven Dials.
🇮🇷 Iran: We had plenty of coverage on how protests against the Middle Eastern country’s brutal regime were impacting the entertainment world.
🤝 Parting ways: House Productions co-founders Juliette Howell and Tessa Ross, with the former exiting to become CEO of another BBC Studios-backed producer, Lookout Point.
🛑 Stopped: Grok’s image creator tool after several governments threatened Elon Musk’s X over the creation of non-consensual sexualized pictures of women and children.
💰 Sold: Lionsgate sold its Asian streaming service, Lionsgate Plus, to the platform’s boss, Rohit Jain.
🤴 History: A moment to remember as – despite some caveats – YouTube’s reach surpassed that of the BBC’s channel suite in the UK.
🍿 Box Office: Joachim Trier’s awards contender Sentimental Value went past $20M at the international B.O., putting it on track to replace Kon-Tiki as the highest-grossing Norwegian-language film ever.
International Insider was written by Jesse Whittock and edited by Max Goldbart. Melanie Goodfellow contributed.