| | | | | | What's news: Electronic Arts has inked a $55b deal to be taken private. Chris Rice is exiting Fifth Season. Bad Bunny will headline the 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show. Sinclair and Nexstar will end preemption of Jimmy Kimmel Live! And the creator of AI actress Tilly Norwood has responded to the furious backlash. — Abid Rahman
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Trump Announces 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Movies ►Here we go again. Days before a government shutdown deadline, Donald Trump is raising the vague, if consequential, specter of a “100%” tariff aimed at Hollywood’s feature film development pipeline. “Our movie making business has been stolen from the United States of America, by other Countries,” the president wrote on his Truth Social platform, adding a few digs at California Gov. Gavin Newsom before getting to the point: “I will be imposing a 100% Tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States.” If this sounds like a familiar refrain, it was just a few months ago in May that Trump issued what sounded like a bombshell at the time: All movies that would be “made” outside the U.S. would be subject to a tariff. At the time, viewed in the context of Trump's roll out of his tariffs on dozens of countries, it felt like an ominous move that would throw co-financing, co-production and development in to disarray. The story. |
'One Battle After Another' Lands $48.5M Global Opening ►Film. Of. The. Year. Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest feature, One Battle After Another, easily took the No. 1 spot at the weekend box office with an estimated $22.4m plus opening in North America in over 3,600 locations. Internationally, it has earned $26.1m for an expected global cume of $48.5m.
THR's Mia Galuppo writes that OBAA cost a reported $130m before marketing costs, meaning an opening in the low-$20m range can easily be seen as disappointing. However, it can also be read as a solid start for an original movie from an auteur director, with an R-rating and an almost three-hour runtime. OBAA is also seen as a major awards contender and is likely to generate press and word-of-mouth for many months. The film’s second weekend performance will be a better indicator in terms of its staying power. The film has opened to universal praise, with OBAA boasting a 96 Rotten Tomatoes score, a 95 Metacritic score and, significantly, an A CinemaScore.
One thing is certain: The OBAA box office was buoyed by audiences seeking out premium formats. The film was offered in 70mm, IMAX 70mm, IMAX Digital and VistaVision (albeit on four screens). The movie earned $4.6m in North America from 412 IMAX screens, or roughly 20 percent of the film’s total domestic ticket sales. The box office report. |
Mike Cavanagh Named Co-CEO of Comcast ►One becomes two. In a major move atop one of the world’s largest entertainment companies, Comcast has named Mike Cavanagh co-CEO, joining Brian Roberts atop his family’s communications conglomerate. Cavanagh was most recently president of the company, and also effectively ran NBCUniversal, with all the media company’s executives reporting to him. He joined Comcast as CFO in 2015. Cavanagh’s elevation will be effective Jan. 1, at which time he will also join the Comcast board of directors. Roberts will remain as chairman and co-CEO. The story.
—Two becomes one. No more co-CEOs for production company Fifth Season: Chris Rice is exiting, leaving Graham Taylor to steer the ship solo. Rice informed his staff via email on Friday. Rice, whose contract is up at the end of the year, founded Endeavor Content, now known as Fifth Season, with Taylor in 2017. Fifth Season is the producer of the Apple TV+ series Severance, hence this line from Rice’s memo: “Even though a handshake is available upon request, I hope for years ahead of collaborations — albeit in a different form.” The story.
—Another exit. Pam Kaufman, president and CEO of international markets, global consumer products and experiences at Paramount, is leaving the company, but will serve as a consultant through the end of the year, according to sources familiar with the situation. The move comes after Skydance closed its $8b deal for Paramount last month. Kaufman first joined Paramount in 1997 as vp, promotions marketing at Nickelodeon, following several years as vp, promotions at Turner Broadcasting. She then rose through the ranks at the company. The story. |
Creator of AI Actress Tilly Norwood Responds to Backlash ►"She is not a replacement for a human being." The creator of AI actress Tilly Norwood has responded to critics following fierce backlash. Eline Van der Velden, Dutch founder of AI outfit Particle 6 Productions, announced at Zurich Film Festival the launch of Xicoia, “the world’s first artificial intelligence talent studio.” She has now responded via Instagram in a statement also shared to Norwood’s account, after movie fans and celebrities reacted with outrage to the news that the studio was looking to get the computer-generated actress representation. "To those who have expressed anger over the creation of my AI character, Tilly Norwood, she is not a replacement for a human being, but a creative work — a piece of art," said Van der Velden on Sunday. "Like many forms of art before her, she sparks conversation, and that in itself shows the power of creativity." The story.
—PIF Pong. The video game giant Electronic Arts has inked a major $55b deal to be taken private, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Egon Durban-led private equity giant Silver Lake, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. EA shareholders will receive $210 per share in cash, with the PIF also rolling over its nearly 10 percent stake. The deal is expected to close in the company’s fiscal first quarter of 2027. Electronic Arts is behind the game franchises FC, Madden NFL and Battlefield. The story. |
Bad Bunny to Headline 2026 Super Bowl Halftime Show ►"What Benito has done and continues to do for Puerto Rico is truly inspiring." Bad Bunny has been revealed as the headliner for the 2026 Apple Super Bowl LX Halftime Show. The announcement was made Sunday night during NBC Sports’ Sunday Night Football coverage of the Green Bay Packers at Dallas Cowboys on NBC and Peacock. Bad Bunny, a three-time Grammy winner, follows in the footsteps of rapper Kendrick Lamar, who took the Super Bowl LIX stage by storm earlier this year. Super Bowl LX will air on NBC and stream on Peacock. The game will take place on Sunday, Feb. 8, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, home of the San Francisco 49ers. The Halftime Show telecast will be produced by DPS with Roc Nation and Jesse Collins serving as executive producers, and Hamish Hamilton serving as director. The story.
—Dogg in the Dolomites. On a big night of NBC Sports announcements, the company revealed Sunday that Snoop Dogg will return to his gig helping cover the Olympics for NBC and Peacock. Following on the heels of the 2024 Summer Games in Paris, the rapper will head to Italy for the Milano Cortina Olympics. The Games kick off Feb. 6 with the Opening Ceremony. Throughout the Winter Games, Snoop also will speak with NBC Olympics host Mike Tirico and share his take on what’s going on in the Games as part of the “Snoop’s Greatest Hits” segment. As he did previously, Snoop will also explore the culture and landmarks in the region, attend Olympics competitions and cheer alongside the athletes, their friends and families. The story. |
Kieran Culkin, Jazz Charton Expecting Third Child ►🤝 A deal is a deal. 🤝 After making very public his desire to have another child, it seems that Kieran Culkin‘s wishes have been granted. The actor and his wife, Jazz Charton, attended the opening night of Waiting for Godot, the Broadway revival starring Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter, on Sunday night in New York, where they posed for photos with his hand on her pregnant belly. The couple also have a 6-year-old daughter, Kinsey Sioux, 6, and 4-year-old son, Wilder Wolf, 4. Culkin first publicly announced his hopes for a fourth child in January 2024, when he won the best actor Emmy Award for Succession . He reiterated his desire for another child while collecting another award this past March. During his acceptance speech for the best supporting actor Oscar, the A Real Pain star Culkin honored his wife, and also publicly reminded her of their discussions over another child. The story.
—Hitched! Selena Gomez will now love Benny Blanco “Like a Love Song” forever. On Saturday, the Only Murders in the Building star announced on Instagram that she and Blanco are now officially married. In a carousel of photos, the singer posted photos of herself and Blanco at their wedding, holding hands and Gomez wearing a halter wedding dress with her hair in old Hollywood-looking curls. Gomez wore Tiffany & Co. jewels for the ceremony, which included earrings in platinum with diamonds of more than 12 karats, according to the jewelry company. The story.
—"Don’t worry about me quittin’ the business." Dolly Parton has postponed her upcoming Las Vegas concerts due to “health challenges.” The country music legend announced the news in a message posted Sunday on Instagram. “I want the fans and public to hear directly from me that, unfortunately, I will need to postpone my upcoming Las Vegas concerts,” she wrote. “As many of you know, I’ve been dealing with some health challenges, and my doctors tell me that I must have a few procedures. As I joked with them, it must be time for my 100,000 check-up, although it’s not the usual trip to see my plastic surgeon!” The story.
—"Significant breakthrough." Police named a dead man Friday as a new suspect in the 1991 unsolved killings of four teenage girls at an Austin yogurt shop, saying DNA evidence led to a “significant breakthrough” in the brutal crime that has haunted Texas’ capital and stumped investigators for decades. In a statement, Austin police said DNA tests led investigators to Robert Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999 during a standoff with law enforcement. He has since then been linked to several killings and rape in other states. The announcement came amid renewed attention on the case with the release last month of The Yogurt Shop Murders , an HBO documentary series. Police said the case remains open and scheduled a Monday news conference to detail their findings. The story. |
Nexstar, Sinclair Fold as Kimmel Returns ►It's all over, for now. The local TV station boycott of ABC‘s Jimmy Kimmel Live! appears to be ending. Sinclair and Nexstar each said that they would end preemption of the late night show Friday night. Sinclair said it made the decision after “thoughtful feedback from viewers, advertisers, and community leaders representing a wide range of perspectives.” That said, while Sinclair appears to have been seeking notable concessions (including an ombudsman at ABC), a source says that no editorial or content concessions were made by Disney. Nexstar said that it made the decision after having “had discussions with executives at The Walt Disney Company and appreciate their constructive approach to addressing our concerns.” It is not clear whether those talks will lead to anything more concrete. The story.
—🤝 Rights deal. 🤝 Paramount and TKO have signed a long-term media rights agreement that brings Zuffa Boxing events to Paramount+ in the U.S., Canada, and Latin America. Zuffa Boxing is TKO’s new professional boxing league. Beginning in January 2026, Paramount will exclusively distribute (in those regions) 12 Zuffa events, “with plans to grow that number in subsequent years,” Monday’s announcement reads. There is the “potential” for certain events to be simulcast on CBS and other Paramount platforms. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The story.
—🎭 Sibling rivalry. 🎭 Luke Wilson is joining Will Ferrell’s untitled upcoming Netflix golf comedy series. The show stars Ferrell, in his first TV comedy series, as a fictional golf legend, and Wilson will play a pro golfer who has beaten Ferrell’s character for the tour championship twice. Molly Shannon, Jimmy Tatro and Fortune Feimster have been previously announced as co-stars. Coincidentally, Wilson's older brother Owen currently stars as a former pro golfer in the Apple TV+ comedy series Stick. The story.
—Swede escape. George Kay, the British screenwriter and producer behind Netflix's Lupin and Criminal and Apple TV+'s Hijack, has unveiled his next TV project. Kay has created and written Swedish crime drama The Case for Netflix. Set in Stockholm, the series will follow the clean-cut lead investigator Thomas Berg (Jakob Oftebro), who has a serial killer on his hands. With the brutal murderer targeting his police colleagues, Thomas makes a desperate gamble, turning to a once well-regarded but now out of favor, misanthropic ex-detective for help: his estranged father Alfred (Peter Andersson). All five episodes of The Case , from B-Reel Films and Observatory Pictures production in association with New Pictures, are directed by Kristoffer Nyholm. The show will launch globally on the streaming giant in 2026. The story.
—Booking another stay. Netflix has ordered a second season of Haunted Hotel, the animated series from Rick and Morty alum Matt Roller. The renewal was a quick one: Haunted Hotel premiered just one week ago. The 10-episode season made Netflix’s top 10 English-language series worldwide for its opening weekend, gathering 1.8m views (7.5m hours of viewing divided by a run time of 4 hours, 14 minutes) in its first three days. The series has received mixed-to-positive reviews, with THR noting that “Despite a solid cast and some decent jokes, the series rarely rises above the level of pleasantly unobjectionable.” The story.
—🎭 Couple of regulars. 🎭 Netflix's The Diplomat has upped Allison Janney and Bradley Whitford to series regular status for its fourth season. The two Emmy winners are billed as guest stars in season three of The Diplomat , which is set to premiere Oct. 16. Season four is set to begin production in the fall, which can keep the show on track for a return sometime in 2026. Janney joined in the show’s second season, playing Vice President Grace Penn — who (spoiler alert) will be ascending to the presidency following the death of President William Rayburn (Michael McKean) in the final moments of the season. Whitford plays Grace’s husband, Todd Penn, with whom Ambassador Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) forms an “unnerving bond,” per the show’s logline for the coming season. The story. |
'Social Network 2' Set For Fall 2026 Release ►📅 Dated and titled! 📅 Writer-director Aaron Sorkin‘s companion piece to The Social Network has a new title and a slot on next year’s movie release calendar. Sony Pictures is set to release the feature now known as The Social Reckoning in theaters Oct. 9, 2026. The buzzy cast includes Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Bill Burr and Jeremy Strong. Sorkin directs The Social Reckoning from his own script after earning an Oscar for his screenplay for the original 2010 film. The new project centers on a young Facebook engineer named Frances Haugen (Madison) who teams up with Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (White) on a risky mission to bring attention to the social network’s biggest secrets. The story.
—🏆 Zorionak! 🏆 The San Sebastián Film Festival wrapped on Saturday with its gala awards night at the Kursaal Theater. Basque drama Sundays (Los domingos) that claimed the evening’s top prize, the coveted Golden Shell award. Elsewhere, Joachim Lafosse’s Six Days in Spring won the Belgian filmmaker the silver shell for best director and jury prize for best screenplay. Kaouther Ben Hania's The Voice of Hind Rajab, the Palestinian drama reconstructs the events surrounding the horrific killing of six-year-old Hind Rajab in January 2024, won the audience award. The winners.
—🎭 Filling out. 🎭 Director Michael Almereyda has found the leads for his long-gestating movie adaptation of Don DeLillo’s novel Zero K. The film will star Caleb Landry Jones, Peter Sarsgaard and Andrea Riseborough, with production cameras set to start rolling in early 2026 in São Paulo, Brazil. Almereyda, having penned the screenplay, will center the Zero K adaptation on a young man drawn into the designs of his tech billionaire father in a remote desert compound where the wealthy seek to outwit death using cryonics and radical science. The woman who binds these two estranged men submits to the project with mixed emotions, as they all face challenges linking love, life and death, according to a synopsis from the producers. The story.
—🏆 Jiayou! 🏆 China has selected Dead to Rights, a harrowing historical drama set amid the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, as its official contender for the 2026 Oscars best international feature film category. Directed by Shen Ao from a script he co-wrote with Xu Luyang and Zhang Ke, Dead to Rights centers on a humble postman, Ah Chang (played by Liu Haoran), who assumes the identity of a photo-developer within a Japanese-controlled studio. He covertly hides civilians and Chinese soldiers, while duplicating photographic evidence of atrocities. Released in July, Dead to Rights was an instant commercial hit in China, breaking a long blockbuster dry spell that extended through the spring. The film earned $57.2m in its first weekend, and it continued to perform powerfully throughout the summer. It’s total haul currently stands at $417.6m. The story.
—🎭 All set. 🎭 Indie production outfit Finite Films & TV has unveiled its next feature. The company is collaborating with Outlander and Heads of State actor Steven Cree on Ben & Lucy, who will write and star in the Glasgow-set drama. Cora Bissett will direct. The film follows middle-aged comedian and recovering alcoholic Ben and his estranged daughter Lucy, a troubled art student, who is falling into the same patterns of addiction. The cast also includes Robert Carlyle and Stuart Martin. The story.
—First project a go. Warner Bros. has kicked off production in Seoul on the Korean remake of The Intern, the hit 2015 workplace dramedy that paired Robert De Niro with Anne Hathaway. The project marks the first title to emerge from Warner Bros. Discovery’s recent first-look pact with longtime Asia executive Jack Nguyen and his company JOAT Films. The local retelling is directed by Kim Do-young, best known for the feminist hit Kim Ji-young: Born 1982, and toplines revered screen icon, and Old Boy star, Choi Min-sik in the De Niro role of the seasoned intern, opposite Han So-hee as the millennial CEO. The story.
—Hometown hero. Park Chan-wook’s hotly anticipated black comedy thriller No Other Choice opened at the top of Korea’s theatrical box office over the weekend, earning $4.6m from Friday to Sunday. The film launched in the country on Sept. 24 on a little over 2,000 screens and has earned a healthy $7.5m to date. The solid start — significantly better than the $2.4m Park’s previous feature Decision to Leave brought in during its first weekend in 2022 — marks the second-biggest opening by a Korean film in the home market this year, behind only Pil Gam-sung’s comedy-horror My Daughter Is a Zombie, which debuted in July with $8.3m. The story. |
Film Review: 'Anemone' ►"A riveting performance in an underpowered vehicle." THR's chief film critic David Rooney reviews Ronan Day-Lewis' Anemone. Daniel Day-Lewis returns to acting in this portrait of familial bonds shattered by violence that premiered at the New York Film Festival. Also starring Sean Bean, Samantha Morton, Samuel Bottomley and Safia Oakley-Green. Written by Daniel Day-Lewis and Ronan Day-Lewis. The review.
—"This Beckett spin nails the absurdist tragicomedy but underserves the angst." David Rooney reviews Jamie Lloyd's Waiting for Godot. The latest Broadway revival of Samuel Beckett's 1952 play marries bleak existentialism with broken-down vaudeville. Starring Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, Brandon J. Dirden, Michael Patrick Thornton, Zaynn Arora and Eric Williams. Written by Samuel Beckett. The review.
In other news...
—Jay Kelly trailer: George Clooney examines his life with help from Adam Sandler
—Sony Pictures TV’s Keith Le Goy to keynote MIPCOM
—Robert B. Barnett, powerhouse attorney for the Obamas and Clintons, dies at 79
What else we're reading...
—Eoin Higgins writes that the TikTok deal would turn Trump allies' dreams of political and cultural control into reality [MSNBC]
—In an era of AI slop and mid TV, Rachel Aroesti wonders whether is it time for cultural snobbery to make a comeback [Guardian]
—Zeke Faux and Muyao Shen profile Justin Sun, and chart the crypto billionaire's pretty gross rise from pariah to Trump moneyman [Bloomberg]
—Clare McHugh digs into the real-life family drama behind the new Netflix show House of Guinness [BBC]
—Brian Josephs looks at why P. T. Anderson's One Battle After Another is in VistaVision, and whether average the cinemagoer should care [NYT]
Today...
...in 1998, The WB premiered Felicity during the 9 p.m. hour. The J. J. Abrams and Matt Reeves created drama starred Keri Russell and Scott Speedman, and ran for four seasons. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Ian McShane (83), Nicholas Galitzine (31), Halsey (31), Nicolas Winding Refn (55), Erika Eleniak (56), Ben Miles (59), Chrissy Metz (45), Mackenzie Crook (54), Matt and Luke Goss (57), Dale Dickey (64), Jill Whelan (59), Roger Bart (63), Sasha Lane (30), Patricia Hodge (79), James Lance (50), Robert Webb (53), Andrew Dice Clay (68), Natasha Gregson Wagner (55), Nathan West (47), Martin Ferrero (78), Kelly McCreary (44), Zibby Allen (45), David Del Rio (38), Brooke Bloom (47), Isla Blair (81), Julie R. Ølgaard (44), Preeti Desai (44), Marco Ilsø (31), Anaïs Demoustier (38) |
| John Christopher Jones, who appeared 16 times on Broadway, with stints in Hurlyburly, The Iceman Cometh, Beauty and the Beast and more, has died. He was 77. The obituary. |
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