Hasbro Creates a New Business Model for AI Characters

Hasbro launches Sixth Wall studio to turn iconic franchises into interactive products and services | Streaming in Short – W23

Jun 05, 2026

⏱️ This week’s streaming news in MENA and around the world, in 5 min!

🤖 AI: Hasbro has launched a new AI studio that allows companies to license characters such as Optimus Prime, Mr. Potato Head or Cobra Commander for AI-powered experiences. It includes partnerships with original voice actors to create new interactive formats while maintaining brand control over iconic IP. More in The Lab’s Pick.

📱 MICRODRAMAS: FOX has reformatted Season 3 of Farmer Wants a Wife into 101 vertical episodes for Holywater’s My Drama app. The experiment tests how traditional TV content can be repackaged for mobile-first audiences. I take a closer look in my Analysis section.

🎬 CREATORS: A new generation of YouTube creators is finding success in Hollywood, with films such as Backrooms, Obsession and Iron Lung outperforming much bigger studio productions at the box office. I'll explain why this matters in my Analysis section.

Looks totally normal and not at all terrifying, right?

⚽ WORLD CUP: talabat and TOD by beIN have partnered ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026™, offering a complimentary one-year TOD subscription to users who sign up for or renew a talabat pro annual plan. The bundle combines live World Cup streaming with delivery across the MENA region.

🎵 MUSIC: MBC Group has launched MBC Mood, a new music channel dedicated to Arabic music, entertainment and live performances. Available across TV, digital platforms and social media, the channel will connect audiences with a modern, interactive viewing experience.

⚽ FOOTBALL: FIFA+ is now exclusively available on DAZN, bringing 8,500 live matches per year, FIFA archives and original content to the platform. The move strengthens DAZN’s ambition to become the global home of football.

⚽ WORLD CUP: FIFA has awarded ‘Z’ the rights to broadcast the FIFA World Cup 2026™ and other FIFA competitions in India through 2034. The tournaments will be available across UNITE8 Sports channel and Zee5.

👀 ADVERTISING: Ad-supported plans now account for 48% of all SVOD subscriptions in the U.S., according to Antenna. They also represented 59% of new streaming subscriptions in Q1 2026.

Hasbro Launches AI Studio to Bring Its Characters into Interactive Experiences

What happened?

👉 Hasbro has launched Sixth Wall, a new AI studio designed to bring its iconic characters into AI-powered experiences through a new licensing model called Behavioral Licensing.

Key details:

Sixth Wall allows partners to license not just a character’s image, but also how it thinks, speaks and behaves in interactive environments.
The system is powered by CharacterOS, Hasbro’s proprietary platform that preserves character personalities, voice traits and safety guardrails.
Hasbro has partnered with ElevenLabs to make select characters available through its AI voice marketplace.
Initial characters include Optimus Prime, Megatron, Cobra Commander, Mr. Potato Head and the cast of Clue, all supported by authorized voice performances.

Why it matters?

🎯 Rather than fighting unauthorized AI versions of its brands, Hasbro is creating an official framework that allows companies to integrate iconic characters into chatbots, games, customer experiences and interactive storytelling while maintaining brand control and compensating voice talent.

FOX Experiments with Microdramas Using Farmer Wants a Wife

👉 FOX has reformatted Season 3 of Farmer Wants a Wife into 101 vertical episodes of less than two minutes each for release on Holywater’s My Drama app.

📍 FOX, which invested in Holywater last year, describes the launch as an experiment to understand how audiences engage with short-form vertical storytelling.

💡 Media companies are beginning to test whether existing TV shows can be repackaged for mobile-native audiences, creating new distribution opportunities from existing content libraries.

YouTube Creators Are Becoming Hollywood’s Next Hitmakers

👉 A new wave of YouTube creators is finding success in Hollywood, with films such as Backrooms, Obsession and Iron Lung generating strong box office results despite relatively modest budgets.

📍 These filmmakers spent years building audiences on YouTube, refining their storytelling skills and developing loyal fan communities before making the jump to theatrical releases.

💡 YouTube is evolving into a talent pipeline for Hollywood, giving studios access to creators who already understand audience engagement and can bring millions of fans with them to the cinema.

🤖 SHAIKE Film Festival bridges traditional and AI-powered filmmaking

The inaugural SHAIKE Film Festival will take place on October 2–3, 2026 in La Ciotat, the birthplace of cinema and home to the world’s oldest movie theater.

The event will showcase both AI-assisted and traditional films, highlighting storytelling regardless of the tools used to create it. It has also launched a trailer competition offering a $3,000 prize and a VIP trip to the festival.

🐻 Hoppers, from Daniel Chong and Jesse Andrews (Disney+): Scientists have discovered how to ‘hop’ human consciousness into lifelike robotic animals, allowing people to communicate with animals as animals. Animal lover Mabel seizes an opportunity to use the technology, uncovering mysteries within the animal world beyond anything she could have imagined.

👽 In 2004, the live-action adaptation of the manga Gantz brought one of Japan’s most provocative sci-fi stories to television. Created by Hiroya Oku, the series follows Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato, two young men who die in a train accident only to find themselves trapped in a deadly game orchestrated by a mysterious black sphere known as Gantz. Combining science fiction, action, horror, and psychological drama, Gantz gained a cult following for its dark themes, moral dilemmas, and graphic storytelling, helping establish it as one of the most influential sci-fi franchises to emerge from Japan in the 2000s.