US streaming service Netflix has agreed to settle a tax dispute with Italy, the company and legal sources said on Friday.

Milan prosecutors issued a statement saying they had settled with a multinational video on-demand streaming company for a period covering Oct. 2015 to 2019 and asked it to pay EUR 55.8 million (roughly Rs. 460 crore).

They gave the settlement figure without specifically naming the company involved but three sources with knowledge of the matter confirmed it was Netflix.

A Netflix spokesperson said the company was pleased to have the matter finalised.

“We have maintained constant dialogue and cooperation with the Italian authorities and continue to believe that we have acted in full compliance with Italian and international rules,” the spokesperson said.

Prosecutors had opened an investigation into potential tax evasion three years ago.

They claimed Netflix should have paid taxes in Italy because it relied on digital infrastructure to stream content to 2 million users in the country.

As a backdrop to the payment agreement, Netflix has now opened an office in Italy, setting up a base in Rome and hiring more than 40 employees.

The investigation by Milan prosecutors who argued that cables and computer servers used by Netflix amounted to a physical presence in Italy, had been triggered by checks conducted by Italy’s tax police.

Milan prosecutors in the past have probed other US tech giants such as Apple, Amazon, and Facebook for dodging taxes, allowing Italy to net several billion euros in fines and tax payments.

© Thomson Reuters 2022

Stranger Things season 4 is in the limelight for an unexpected reason as leaked images of cards from a tie-in Monopoly board game have spoiled key plot elements ahead of its May 27 debut on Netflix, as per a report. The Monopoly Stranger Things game can be “purchased fair and square” at a “national retailer”, according to a Reddit thread dedicated to the leak. While this is not confirmed, the fact remains that several retailers are advertising merchandise based on previous Stranger Things seasons to capitalise on the brand’s popularity.

According to The Hollywood Reporter report — which quotes a source close to the series — the Monopoly Stranger Things 4 board game was accidentally given the go-ahead mainly because of the “sheer scale and breadth of the Stranger Things franchising world.”

Stranger Things creators the Duffer brothers and Netflix are, not surprisingly, unhappy about the leak. In fact, the Duffer brothers are said to have had a “total meltdown” after the debacle, as they wanted to keep Stranger Things 4 plot details under wraps till the show’s premiere. They were, reportedly, also not consulted while developing the game.

Interestingly, Stranger Things season 4 is not the first title to be spoiled by tie-in merchandise. The Star Wars franchise faced a similar situation when the release of a Rey action figure with a lightsaber revealed a key plot detail from the 2015 space epic Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Such events are the reason that The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau didn’t allow manufacturers to design a toy for the character of Baby Yoda — or Grogu, as you prefer — till after the series’ premiere.

Netflix could have adopted a similar approach for Stranger Things — and it might still do so for the fifth and final season — but admittedly, it does hurt sales and allows third-parties to profit, as was the case with The Mandalorian for several months.

Stranger Things season 4 is touted to be “bigger and better” than previous instalments. In fact, director Shawn Levy recently revealed that it features some episodes that are longer than his two Ryan Reynolds movies, the comedy Free Guy and the sci-fi adventure The Adam Project. The Duffer Brothers had hinted at as much earlier, noting the Stranger Things 4 episodes are “very, very long.”

The first five episodes of Stranger Things season 4 will out on May 27 on Netflix, three years after the last season aired, with the remaining four arriving on July 1.

The Umbrella Academy season 3 trailer is out. On Thursday, Netflix unveiled a nearly two-and-a-half-minute-long trailer for the third season of the superhero series to pique the curiosity of fans. In The Umbrella Academy season 3 trailer, we see the Hargreeves siblings in an alternate timeline where their adoptive father never founded The Umbrella Academy, which is an important part of their identities. This reality, instead, is home to an organisation named The Sparrow Academy where they are simply unwelcome. This sets the stage for a brutal confrontation between the two groups. The Umbrella Academy season 3 trailer, not surprisingly, features plenty of action sequences and a few scenes depicting the dynamics between the siblings.

As expected, The Umbrella Academy season 3 trailer does not reveal much about how the siblings find themselves in an alternate timeline. It, in fact, raises more questions than it answers. We can, either way, expect The Umbrella Academy season 3 to feature quite a few twists and Easter eggs.

The Umbrella Academy showrunner Steve Blackman told Digital Spy: “Not only are these people saying they’re the Sparrow Academy, but (Reginald) Hargreeves is still alive — and he shouldn’t be, either. We love putting Easter eggs in for our fans, and there are more Easter eggs than ever this year.”

While the likes of Tom Hopper, David Castañeda, Elliot Page, and Justin H. Min reprise their roles from the previous instalments, Justin Cornwell, Britney Oldford, and Jake Epstein are the new additions to The Umbrella Academy season 3 cast. The series premiered in 2019, receiving favourable reviews from critics, though we took a much dimmer view of it. The Umbrella Academy season 2, released in 2020, was received slightly better.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Umbrella Academy season 3 from Netflix:

After putting a stop to 1963’s doomsday, the Umbrella Academy return home to the present, convinced they prevented the initial apocalypse and fixed this godforsaken timeline once and for all. But after a brief moment of celebration, they realize things aren’t exactly (okay, not at all) how they left them. Enter the Sparrow Academy. Smart, stylish, and about as warm as a sea of icebergs, the Sparrows immediately clash with the Umbrellas in a violent face-off that turns out to be the least of everyone’s concerns.

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Navigating challenges, losses, and surprises of their own – and dealing with an unidentified destructive entity wreaking havoc in the Universe (something they may have caused) — now all they need to do is convince Dad’s new and possibly better family to help them put right what their arrival made wrong. Will they find a way back to their pre-apocalyptic lives? Or is this new world about to reveal more than just a hiccup in the timeline?

All 10 episodes of The Umbrella Academy season 3 are slated to release June 22 on Netflix. Gerard Way, Gabriel Bá, Mike Richardson, Keith Goldberg, Jeff F. King, Blackman, and Jermey Webb serve as executive producers for this season.