Evenin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on SUNDAY, April 7, 2024.

Where kudos to SOUTH CAROLINA on an impressive win over IOWA to go undefeated for the entire season, and win its 3rd NCAA women’s hoops Championship! Close to as good of a game as we could have hoped for.

Kamilla Cardoso joins Caitlin Clark in the draft alongside Amber Reese. Quite a class. The WNBA draft is on . . . uh, Friday.

AND: It’s executive payday season! Gotta love the $25.4 Million that AMC THEATERS CEO Adam Aron took home in 2023, up from $23.7 Million in 2022.

That includes a $6M cash bonus and about $18M in stock option compensation.
AMC THEATERS stock was -85% in 2023. Aron noted on X that due to that extreme stock drop . . . uh hey, that stock compensation is actually worth significantly less than $18M in actuality 🥴. Gotta love that spin 🤌

THEN: Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher are splitting up after 13 years of marriage.

PLUS: Another IATSE guild has a tentative agreement with the AMPTP, as Local 871 (script supervisors & coordinators, teleprompter operators, production coordinators and writers room assistants) joined the list of tentative deals alongside 6 other Local L.A. guilds.

More guilds are slated for talks this week.
Negotiations for the larger Basic Agreement (things which affect all guilds here) begin April 29.

WAKEUP BOX-OFFICE POLL

Monkey Man-stans definitely came out on top of First Omen folks, although both came up short of tracking (especially Omen).

Women’s March Madness final edition:

WHO’S WATCHING:

The Women’s Friday night games, from Sports Media Watch:

SOUTH CAROLINA vs. NC STATE: 7.1 Million
- Third-biggest women’s Final Four game ever
- Note: This was the lead-in game to IOWA, not the lead-out . . . so no real “NIELSEN spillover” effect.
IOWA vs. UCONN: 14.2 Million
- Up about 2 Million from the IOWA vs. LSU game last Monday
- The biggest basketball game ever on ESPN (note — the NBA Finals air on ABC)
- 3rd-largest hoops audience on TV in the past 2 years, pro or collegiate
- Beat every NBA game since Game 6 of the 2019 NBA Finals (as always, out-of-home viewing wasn’t tracked before 2020)

GRANTED: Yes, the numbers for the men on TBS Saturday are not in yet, and should top these 👆 numbers (certainly the SOUTH CAROLINA game), but this is still a tremendous achievement.

I mean, when even SNL uses its cold open this week to point out that the women are getting all of the chatter this year . . . yeah, ‘nuff said.

WHO’S BUYING 💰 📺:

Women’s FINAL FOUR — Friday (watching on ESPN+ streaming)

Granted, I was streaming the Final Four on ESPN+ Friday night and not watching linear TV . . . but I saw zero movie ad buys for those big Friday TV audiences 👆.

As far as I saw, DISNEYFOX also didn’t bother to advertise The First Omen in the Final Four TV spectacle . . . on its own network . . . on the film’s opening day. And you say it underperformed this weekend? 🤔

Women’s CHAMPIONSHIP — Today (watching on ABC linear)

DISNEY gave one spot to Inside Out 2, a movie whose key demo probably couldn’t be better aligned with this tournament.

So yes, that was one movie ad all weekend for DISNEY’s biggest TV audiences until September when Monday Night Football returns, save perhaps for some June NBA Finals games 🤞.

Otherwise:

HULU / DIS+ had a 15-second spot.
UNI had a spot for The Fall Guy.
WB also had a 15-second spot for Furiosa.
ABC ran 20/20 and American Idol day of tune-in promos, and Will Trent got a spot too (outside of local affiliate-based network spots).

Missing:

AMAZON — Zero ad spend for the Zendaya-led Challengers tennis movie opening in 3 weeks. Waiting for the uh, key Masters demo on CBS next weekend? This baffles me.
A24 — continues to sit out both tournaments with Civil War opening this Friday. Then again, big TV buys are never really A24’s thing — so that’s at least on brand.
UNI horror pic Abigail and LGF’s League of Ungentlemanly Warfare also sat things out — we’ll see if they spend on the men’s Championship tomorrow night.

OH THIS WAS NEW TO ME 🤯: According to FOS, the NCAA has a deal in place whereby a brand can’t buy a women’s 🏀 tournament sponsorship package . . . unless the brand also buys a (far more expensive) men’s 🏀 tournament sponsorship first 🤯.

Look, I get it’s a free market — but any NCAA exec should be asked about this “policy” the next time they extol their “great support” for seeing women’s collegiate sports grow and thrive.

Words are great, but we all know money talks here 🤑, and the growth of women’s March Madness is severely hampered by this policy.

The men don’t even benefit from this (they’ll be just fine with sponsorship 💰 on their own), and a policy/contract change would tremendously help attract new $$/brands to grow the women’s game which don’t want to pay the huge men’s price tag just to reach the actual audience they want.

This is a joke.

BIGGER PICTURE: Really want to “support women’s sports” folks? Buy ads, and show up!!!

Hollywood, perhaps put those corporate and celebrity private jets to better use and maybe fly in for the games? Becoming “a thing” doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

All due respect, but a celeb showing of Jason Sudeikis, Machine Gun Kelly and Darius Rucker for women’s Final Four/Championship weekend is pretty weak.

Revised — this is a joke, wrapped in an embarrassment.

WELL: At least Dawn’s doing you a solid on the hard sell, DISNEY.

WHAT’S AHEAD: ABC & ESPN/+ will air a docuseries called Full Court Press in May from OMAHA Productions that followed Caitlin Clark (IOWA), Kamilla Cardoso (SOUTH CAROLINA) and Kiki Rice (UCLA) this season, on Sat./Sun. May 11 & 12.

OH RIGHT: The guys play tomorrow night at 9 p.m. on TBS, UCONN vs. PURDUE. But, hopefully 5’2” Tracy Wolfson remembers her post-game interview ladder 🪜 again tomorrow night.

And in “Sports Entertainment” this weekend . . .

SPEAKING OF LADDERS:

A thanks to the folks at WWE/TKO for the invite to come check out my first pro wrestling event this weekend, including, yes, a 6-guy “Ladder Match,” which is pretty much what it sounds like.

Gotta say, this kinda thing 👇 is pretty f’ing cool to watch 20 feet away. Yes, this is all scripted . . . but the skill of these folks really is impressive to behold — as is a good “thud!” from two 200+ lbs guys leaping on top of each other from a 12-foot ladder:

Wrestlemania XL (40, not extra large) packed 72.5k fans on Saturday night into Philly’s LINCOLN FINANCIAL stadium, +5K on top of its usual capacity (lotta room to add floor seating on the football field area).

I’m sure The Rock being in the house helped of course, and he seemed right at home:

PLUS: Hey it’s Philly, so of course that means a Jason Kelce appearance, and of course, sans shirt (although that’s actually the dress code for once here):

OVERALL: An impressive and uh, very colorful show. Really hope we get some actual PEACOCK streaming numbers for this! Ya did it for the NFL y’all . . .