When music executive Anjula Acharia began launching superstar actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas into Hollywood in the early 2000s, her label partner Jimmy Iovine — the name behind pop sensations such as Eminem and Lady Gaga — told her she was 20 years too early to bring South Asian talent to the U.S.

Now, Acharia is the founder and CEO of 5 Junction, a joint label with Warner Music Group focused specifically on investing in South Asian artists in the U.S.

“That sounded crazy, to think we were 20 years too early, but now, 20 years later, with the explosion of people like Diljit Dosanjh and Karan Aujla … there’s all these South Asian acts that are coming here and really selling out, particularly in the live arena,” Acharia told CNBC.

The South Asian music market in the U.S. has remained largely untapped, but as music becomes more globalized, as with the success of K-pop and Latin acts, South Asian talent is making a case to investors as the next big business opportunity, Acharia said.

Global music revenues are reaching all-time highs, surpassing $30 billion in 2025, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Spotify said last year that streams of Indian artists in international markets grew more than 2,000% between 2019 and 2023, and nearly 50% of royalties from Indian artists on the platform in 2024 were from listeners outside India.

With South Asia’s growing population and diaspora, it’s set to be one of the fastest-growing segments within global music, according to Acharia.

“We’re in a different time, and I think digitally things travel just so much faster,” she said. “A lot of big hits were made with samples from Indian music, so it’s been in the zeitgeist for a long time — it’s just not been given a face.”

As more labels look to the subcontinent, Acharia said the business is currently in a stage of experimentation, figuring out what works and how the fan bases will evolve. Warner Music Group is the third-largest music label in the U.S., holding roughly 17% market share by distribution ownership as of the first quarter of 2026, according to Billboard.

“I think the business proposition is this global Indian fandom,” she said. “How do we galvanize this audience and this fandom, and how do we serve it?”

5 Junction represents top artists such as singer and songwriter Rhea Raj, who told CNBC she’s seeing South Asian music become more mainstream in the U.S.

“We’re seeing more artists at bigger festivals and at award shows, and I think the best of it’s yet to come,” Raj said.

Raj and her sister, Lara Raj, of the girl group Katseye, are two of many South Asian artists in the U.S. building out fan bases that span backgrounds and ethnicities.

Rhea Raj, who got her start on “American Idol” nearly a decade ago, said she believes now is the time that South Asian music is going to “explode” in the U.S., especially as 5 Junction continues to bring more artists to the main stages.

“South Asian music, it is so diverse, and within that, there are so many countries and regions and styles and things to break down and explore, and I just hope that as time goes on and we have more artists in the mainstream pop world, we’ll get to see more and more pieces of that,” she said.

At a time when Hollywood is torn between fear of artificial intelligence stealing jobs and the pressure to cut costs, a new kind of hybrid production studio is launching with the latest AI tools.

Innovative Dreams is a new production services company, backed by Amazon Web Services and Luma, a generative AI startup, that combines cameras and a giant LED wall on a soundstage with tools to apply AI from pre-production, to shooting, into post-production. By combining virtual production, motion capture, and a variety of AI tools including Luma, Google’s Nano Banana, and Bytedance’s SeeDream, Innovative Dreams says it can significantly cut down both on costs and time.

“We visually design and explore the world, then we take the footage that we filmed and start mapping that performance capture to these digital assets,” CEO Jon Erwin explained. “You’re fusing a performance with a piece of [digital] wardrobe that you like. The cool thing is the actor’s performance, the camera, the lens choice– that’s all getting through.” Erwin says this approach merges a traditional filmmaking process into a digital world, rather than replacing cameras and actors with prompts.

Innovative Dreams was born of Erwin’s production studio, Wonder Project, after he used AI to produce historical scenes in far-flung locales for its biggest show, “House of David.” (The show is available via Amazon Prime Video.) With Innovative Dreams, Erwin is going all-in on the potential for AI and virtual production to create films and shows with massive scale, without ever leaving a sound stage — and he aims to keep production in Southern California.

“It was a game-changer in House of David, so we came back from that experience thinking that other people must have been doing the same thing,” Erwin said. “We quickly realized that people weren’t.” 

The first project using this new workflow is an upcoming three-part series called “The Old Stories: Moses,” starring Ben Kingsley, set to debut this spring. The three-episode series, shot in a single week on the virtual soundstage, shows the actors in 40 locations, by putting footage from around the world into the screens in the production facility. Erwin says it would have taken a traditional production five or six weeks to shoot –and there wouldn’t have been the budget to go to so many locations.

AI video generation requires such massive amounts of computing capacity, Innovative Dreams brought on AWS as an investor and partner; AWS provides cloud and AI infrastructure to power the real-time hybrid production tools used on set, part of its broader effort to work with the entertainment industry.

“We’re providing the … tools that are going to allow for filmmakers to be able to work in ways that they simply couldn’t have been able to before and produce content much faster, much cheaper, and collaborate in ways that would accelerate production cycles at scale,” says Samira Bakhtiar, general manager of media, entertainment, games and sports at AWS.

Innovative’s other big investor and partner is AI company Luma. Valued at over $4 billion, Luma has a new agent tool that brings together multiple AI generation services into a collaborative workspace. And Erwin says they’re giving feedback to the company.

“In allowing Luma to invest and getting directly in touch with a lot of these companies and having these collaborative conversations, we’re able to actually shape the tools that we use in a pretty profound way,” he said.

But the rise of new AI tools sparks even more concerns of job losses in an industry already struggling. The Covid pandemic brought production to a halt, and then the writers and actors guild strikes shut down production again for months in 2023. Los Angeles County has lost over 40,000 entertainment industry jobs since 2022, with production activity in the city sinking to the lowest level since 1995. The guilds’ standoff with the studios was in large part due to actor and writer concerns about AI compromising their intellectual property and stealing their jobs.

“This industry has been battered by one shock after another. Construction, consolidation, cost cutting, cuts in content spending,” said entertainment attorney Jonathan Handel. “Everything is down by 25% to 35% compared to pre-COVID.”

But now, the ability to digitally create sets, wardrobe, and makeup raises questions about the potential destruction of jobs for costumers, set designers and makeup artists. 

“The question of how much job displacement there’ll be versus how much job augmentation will exist, is one that just has not played out yet and is still making people very nervous,” said Handel.

But Erwin says he thinks that the hybrid production capabilities of Innovative Dreams won’t accelerate job losses.

“There’s just an alarming lack of green lights, especially in America,” Erwin said. “I think this is a method that allows us to film here again.” 

While Erwin suggests the best industry workers will adapt their skill set to this new AI-powered world, Handel notes that AI could impact entry-level jobs, shrinking on-ramps to an already tough industry. But Erwin is bullish about AI being a tool that enables the industry to survive.

“I think this is necessary to bring jobs back to LA,” Erwin said. “We’re inventing a new method to fix something that’s become unsustainable.”

Watch the video to learn more.

There’s a love affair on Wall Street between investors and streaming.

The romance started about a decade ago when consumers began cutting the cord with cable TV bundles en masse in favor of direct-to-consumer streaming apps. However, where investors were once enamored with subscriber growth, rewarding companies that were able to expand their consumer reach, their attentions have now shifted toward profitability.

To meet this new expectation, streaming companies have raised the prices of their services, cracked down on password sharing and delved into the ad-supported space. It’s also sparked the likes of Paramount Skydance to seek out the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery for its extensive library of content and top-tier streaming service, HBO Max, in order to compete.

While streaming continues to drive media stocks, especially around quarterly earnings, it’s not clear when — or if — it will start driving profits for the smaller players.

“Is streaming a good business?” Robert Fishman, senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson, posed in a March research note to investors. “We raised and debated this critical question over the years leading us to determine the answer is yes, albeit only for those services with sufficient scale.”

For legacy media companies, streaming has yet to fully supplant the profits and advertising revenue of linear TV. Of course, both of those metrics have been in decline for companies like WBD, Paramount and its peers.

In response, streamers have largely raised subscription prices for consumers, begging the question of where the ceiling is for streaming costs. Between higher fees and the sheer number of services needed in order to have access to all content, consumers are starting to balk.

Still, with these continuous linear TV declines, investors cling to streaming as a bright spot, especially for companies that have made it profitable. Disney has been among the steadiest of legacy media companies when it comes to a profitable streaming business, but Paramount and WBD have seen profitable quarters and Comcast’s Peacock is narrowing losses.

“With streaming no one’s reporting sub numbers anymore, because now it’s all about profitability,” Doug Creutz, senior research analyst at Cowen, told CNBC. “And that’s the metric by which these these businesses are being judged. It’s, you know, can you get to 10% operating profit? Can you get 15%? Can you get 20%? Can you get 25%? Can you get to where Netflix is?”

Netflix reported operating margin of 29.5% in 2025. Meanwhile, Disney, for example, guided investors to an operating margin for its direct-to-consumer business of 10% in fiscal 2026.

“This is the big question mark that all these companies face,” Creutz added. “You had a linear business that was really profitable and it’s gone away, and is the streaming business ever going to be that profitable?”

Chinese tech giant ByteDance has said it will strengthen safeguards on a new artificial intelligence video-making tool, following complaints of copyright theft from entertainment giants. 

The tool, Seedance 2.0, enables users to create realistic videos based on text prompts. However, viral videos shared online appear to show copyrighted characters and celebrity likenesses, raising intellectual property concerns in the U.S. 

“ByteDance respects intellectual property rights and we have heard the concerns regarding Seedance 2.0.,” a company spokesperson said in a statement shared with CNBC. 

“We are taking steps to strengthen current safeguards as we work to prevent the unauthorized use of intellectual property and likeness by users,” the spokesperson added. 

ByteDance’s response comes after receiving backlash and stern warnings from Hollywood groups like the Motion Picture Association (MPA), a trade association representing major Hollywood studios including Netflix, Paramount Skydance, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. Discovery and Disney. 

The group issued a forceful public statement at the end of last week demanding that ByteDance immediately cease what it called “infringing activity.” 

“In a single day, the Chinese AI service Seedance 2.0 has engaged in unauthorized use of U.S. copyrighted works on a massive scale,” said MPA chairman and CEO Charles Rivkin in the statement.

“By launching a service that operates without meaningful safeguards against infringement, ByteDance is disregarding well-established copyright law that protects the rights of creators and underpins millions of American jobs.”

According to a report from Axios, Disney sent a cease-and-desist letter Friday to ByteDance, accusing the company of distributing and reproducing its intellectual property through the new AI tool without permission. 

The legal notice alleged that ByteDance had effectively pre-packaged Seedance with a pirated library of copyrighted characters, portraying them as if they were public-domain clip art,” the report added.

Disney has also sent cease-and-desist letters to AI companies in the past. In September, the company warned the AI startup Character.AI to stop the unauthorized use of its copyrighted characters.

While trying to protect its intellectual property, Disney has signed a licensing deal with and invested in OpenAI. The agreement allows the AI company to use Disney characters from the Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel franchises in its Sora video generator.

Paramount Skydance has also sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance, making similar accusations, Variety reported over the weekend.

Moviegoers will find a wealth of familiar franchises on the big screen this year. It may not be enough to save the box office.

New entrants from popular film series dominate the movie slate in the next 12 months. The 2026 schedule features releases from Star Wars, Marvel, DC Comics, Toy Story, Super Mario Bros., Hunger Games, Scream, Scary Movie, Minions, Dune and Jumanji.

Intellectual property like these established franchises has long been an important part of Hollywood, but they are increasingly vital in 2026 as the theatrical industry seeks to break the $10 billion mark at the domestic box office for the first time since the pandemic.

But some big-name installments aren’t drawing the crowds they used to, and industry insiders worry the $10 billion benchmark may be beyond reach this year for a post-pandemic industry that has been rocked by production shutdowns, the consolidation of major studios and a shift in consumer viewing toward streaming.

“The reliance on franchises has been a little trickier the last few years,” said Alicia Reese, senior vice president of equity research for Wedbush. “Yes, there’s a level of certainty … but it’s not a home run. It’s never going to be a home run from here on out, because people are pickier than they used to be. They know what’s coming. Word of mouth means more than ever.”

Since 2010, the top 10 highest-grossing films domestically have predominantly been franchise films, according to data from Comscore. During that time, between eight and 10 of the films released each year were a sequel, prequel or remake. The only outlier was 2020, when seven of the top 10 films were franchise based, due to the number of films that were delayed during Covid shutdowns.

And, of course, a number of the original titles that broke into the top 10 have become franchises themselves in the last two decades. Look at “Avatar,” “Frozen,” “Zootopia,” “Inside Out,” “Secret Life of Pets” and “Ted.”

“Studios clearly feel that audience comfortability — with going to see a movie where they already, in some sense, know what they’re getting before they walk into the auditorium — is a bet worth making,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.

As studios lean into the safety of a built-in audience, box-office sales become more reliant on the success of these franchise films.

Before the pandemic, during the span of 2010 to 2019, top 10 films represented an average of 30% of the total domestic box office annually. Outpacing the group was the 2019 calendar where these films accounted for nearly 40% of the annual haul. All 10 films that year were IP-driven, and nine of them generated more than $1 billion globally.

Post-pandemic, the average percentage that the top 10 films represent of the total annual domestic box office is 44%.

“I remember having this conversation the late ’90s,” said Eric Handler, managing director and senior research analyst at Roth Capital Partners. “The box office has for the last several decades been franchise-driven. That’s just the way it is. Why? It’s because when there’s familiarity with content, there’s a greater chance that people will show up because there’s an affinity towards a particular franchise and it’s already known.”

Now, Hollywood is facing the harsh reality of what happens when franchises fall flat.

And beloved and well-tended-to franchises have staying power: The Star Wars franchise hasn’t notched a new theatrical release since 2019, yet it’s remained one of the top film franchises in the cultural zeitgeist, according to Fandom, the world’s largest platform for entertainment fans.

Disclosure: CNBC and Rotten Tomatoes are divisions of Versant Media.