Disney shares 200+ characters with OpenAI in $1 billion deal
The Walt Disney Company announced a deal with OpenAI on Thursday, bringing more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters to OpenAI’s text-to-video platform, Sora. The three-year licensing agreement will allow fans to create short-form videos starring movie characters — and a selection of the fan-inspired short videos will become streamable on Disney+, according to The Walt Disney Company’s announcement.
The agreement stipulates that Disney will invest $1 billion in OpenAI, utilize OpenAI’s API to develop new products and tools for Disney+, and integrate ChatGPT tools for its employees.
Pinterest Trends to inform WPP clients
Pinterest has partnered with agency WPP to integrate insights from Pinterest’s 600 million monthly users into WPP’s end-to-end planning and measurement platform, WPP Open. This marks the first agency to integrate Pinterest Trends via Pinterest’s application programming interface.
The creative social media platform hosts 80 billion monthly searches, “giving Pinterest a uniquely predictive view into what people are planning to do, make, buy and try,” according to Pinterest’s announcement on Wednesday. The deal was announced one day after Pinterest released its Pinterest Predicts report of consumer trend forecasts for 2026 based on Pinterest users’ searches and activity.
Hinge CMO takes on CEO role
Matchmaking platform Hinge has matched its existing CMO and SVP of global comms into new positions upon the leave of its founder, Justin McLeod. McLeod will depart Hinge to launch an AI dating app, Overtone, but will remain an adviser to Hinge until March to oversee Jackie Jantos’ transition into the CEO role. Jantos’ title as CEO is effective immediately, according to Hinge’s announcement on Tuesday.
Jantos joined Hinge in 2021 as CMO, and was promoted to president this March. She’s taken the lead on Hinge’s expansion into European and Latin American markets; Designed to be Deleted campaigns; addition of features including Match Note and Prompt Feedback; and the launch of Hinge’s One More Hour initiative for in-person connection. Before joining Hinge, Jantos has worked with Spotify and Coca-Cola.
Tamika Young, who served as Hinge’s SVP of global communications, will now act as the platform’s chief marketing and communications officer.
App updates
YouTube TV announced plans to introduce genre-specific subscriptions on Wednesday. The subscriptions, rolling out in early 2026, will offer “more than 10” TV genre bundles — including a sports bundle with ESPN and NBC Sports Network, along with news, family and entertainment bundles.
Over 2,300 additional U.S. cities and towns can now access Amazon’s same-day delivery service for perishable grocery items, the e-commerce giant announced on Wednesday. The expansion of the same-day delivery service was inspired by findings that bananas, avocados and blueberries have risen to customers’ most-purchased products for same-day delivery groceries, according to Amazon’s announcement.
This story first appeared on PRWeek US.
