Sony

Spider-Man Breaks Box Office While Skipping TV

Spider-Man: Brand New Day achieved record box office openings while relying heavily on social marketing rather than a traditional TV campaign. The film, from Disney and Sony with Marvel involvement, posted a $360 million U.S. opening weekend and $932 million global to date, surpassing Avengers: Endgame for the biggest domestic opening. Together with The Odyssey, it produced a combined domestic weekend of $430 million. The article highlights the film's marketing mix shift toward social platforms as a driver of its theatrical success.

Sony scales up PlayStation advertising push

Sony appears to be building a larger advertising business around PlayStation after posting multiple ad-specific roles on its Sony Interactive Entertainment Media Solutions team in mid-2026. Openings include a global director for client partnerships (posted mid-July 2026), a director-level ad operations and technology role in San Mateo, and regional sales and operations roles in Tokyo and London. The hires signal a global ad infrastructure and monetization push covering programmatic, FAST, CTV and privacy-first data activation. Sony previously experimented with in-game and virtual-world advertising (2008) and reportedly worked on game ad insertion in 2022. Analysts note gaming captures substantial attention but currently earns a small share of digital ad spend, creating opportunity for monetization.

Disney+ Grants German Premium Users Cancellation Right

Disney+ is offering German Premium subscribers a special right to cancel their subscriptions after the streaming service restricted 4K and HDR features following a patent dispute with InterDigital. Affected customers are being notified by email and have 30 days from receipt to exercise the cancellation right; prepaid unused portions will be refunded pro rata. The measure applies only to Premium plans, which the article notes cost €160 per year. Disney has partially restored 4K on some devices (Android TV, certain Google, Philips and Sony models, Amazon Fire TV, LG TVs from 2020 onward, and Sky Glass/Sky Stream), but HDR remains unavailable. Tests suggest Disney is streaming 4K using VP9 instead of the disputed HEVC codec to work around the patent issue.