People Ventures

Roku Reunites Laguna Beach Cast for 20th Special

Roku is producing a two-hour reunion special of MTV's Laguna Beach on The Roku Channel to mark the show's 20th anniversary. Original cast members Lauren Conrad, Kristin Cavallari and Stephen Colletti are returning for the 2026 special and will also serve as executive producers; other alumni include Lo Bosworth, Talan Torriero and Dieter Schmitz. Series creator Liz Gateley returns as an executive producer and the project is the first commission for her company Damsel Productions. Roku frames the special as a nostalgia-driven programming play to drive viewership on its free, ad-supported streaming platform.

Netflix to Release Stranger Things 5 Making-Of Documentary

Netflix announced One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5, a feature-length documentary set to launch globally on January 12, 2026. The film offers behind-the-scenes access to the final season, highlighting emotional table reads and the Duffer brothers' creative process. The Duffers cited long-form making-of features like The Lord of the Rings as inspiration and emphasized the emotional difficulty of writing the series' final lines. Coverage of the documentary also included a note that the Duffer brothers hinted at a potential spinoff.

Publishers Bring On-Site Vertical Video to Boost Engagement

Publishers are turning to on-site vertical video to deepen audience relationships, using Media.net's new Bytes product as a back-end. Bytes provides an infrastructure for embedding scrollable vertical video feeds on open-web properties, plus content-creation and monetization tools. It can convert horizontal assets to vertical and can generate AI-created video summaries of articles, with editorial review before publishing. Publishers can place Bytes widgets at page edges, in navigation bars, or at article end, and can create their own playlists. Monetization remains a challenge since vertical video traffic is currently driven by walled gardens, but Bytes supports display, horizontal video, and native formats through existing SSPs. The company notes early signals that eCPMs for display ads are three to five times higher in this format due to deeper engagement. The BBC, New York Times, Bild, USA Today, Hearst, TIME, People, and Trusted Media Brands have begun pilots or live deployments.