Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Thursday, June 4, 2026.
Where Hollywood movies definitely came to play alongside the KNICKS and SPURS on ABC last night in Game 1 of the NBA Finals (details on who was buying ads down below).
But mainly it was nice to see DISNEY still give Bob Iger the corporate seats . . . and nice of X to remind us DISNEY could have afforded the seats anyway (although, I’m not exactly sure where “DJACK” is getting his data).
THEN: The Odyssey will get a 3-week run in 70mm at the Westwood Theater in L.A. before the theater fully closes up for planned renovations.
AND: PSKY has kindly asked the EU to formally approve the WARNAMOUNT deal ahead of the EU’s July 7 provisional deadline.
OH: PSKY has also added a new litigator, Jeffrey Kessler of WINSTON TAYLOR, to its deal team. He was part of the group assisting the 33 states suing LIVE NATION and now thinks WARNAMOUNT is being unfairly attacked as a potential antitrust case, according to the NYT.
ALSO: Bill Ackman’s PERSHING SQUARE has exited its stake in the world’s largest music label, UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP, after the company rejected his takeover bid.
WAIT: I thought the new AI data centers were coming with their own electricity-generating sources and that American consumers wouldn’t really be affected? #FullOfShit
- And yes, Jersey — you’re in the coverage area for this grid.
KUDOS: To the NHL, whose league revenue will come close to $8B this season, up from $6.5B last season — credit Heated Rivalry and the Winter Olympics for the boost in interest (merch, a new record for regular season game attendance, etc).
PLUS: AMAZON is now releasing a weekly Top 10 list across films and TV . . . but without any actual specific viewership data.
YAH: Canada signaled it’s going to back off a new law requiring American streamers to pay more of their revenue to local Canadian production efforts.
AH: META is testing the ability for INSTA/FB users to create ‘series’ for your reels. So, if you’re watching a reel, you can click a notification to see other related episodes/videos to watch.
- And yes, this is being discussed in the context of growing a microdrama business.
YEAH: CHATGPT and CLAUDE were only about 44% to 50% accurate in finding where a set of 100 popular TV shows and movies are streaming, according to a study by REELGOOD (whose accuracy was 97%).
- Granted, it’s their study . . . but I find the site helpful and accurate when I’m looking for something (btw, All That Jazz is now streaming on TUBI!), so I’ll take it at face value.
Bigger Picture on AI
Now, this is simply an entirely observational interlude from someone who reads a ton of business press each day . . . but as we’re now almost halfway through 2026, it struck me as a good time to pull back and note some emerging trends in the big picture AI behemoth narrative that could drive the 2nd half of 2026 or early 2027.
Never forget that every rocket-launch business sector eventually hits a rocky re-entry into reality. No one knows when that is, but it always comes.
So, here are some broader AI story arc observations, FYC (AMAZON MGM, update your forthcoming Sam Altman movie as ya like):
December 2025: ANTHROPIC’s new CLAUDE release freaks out every coder in the world with its ability. Life and career decisions are questioned, and ANTHROPIC’s business growth narrative and challenge to the OPENAI business truly begins.
Q1 2026: OPENAI looks in disarray with too many business extensions burning cash (RIP SORA and DISNEY deal), as ANTHROPIC’s revenue forecasts keep booming . . . mainly due to a focus on corporate client growth from CLAUDE.
- Enjoy all of your Super Bowl ads.
Late Q1: Increasingly heard in Corporate America: “Look at how many people we can lay off thanks to our AI projections!”
Q2: ANTHROPIC overtakes OPENAI in valuation and revenue targets thanks to #CorporateTokenmaxxing and a Q1 mentality among companies in some large business sectors, where all employees must be using AI as much as humanly possible in everything they do.
Lately in Q2 👀: Stories are starting to emerge about corporate America coming to grips with 2 new facts about their AI spending in 2026 so far:
- This shit’s expensive, and adding up.
- Reports of companies blowing through their annual AI token budget before the middle of the year are hitting the press #UBER — as are reports about big companies starting to restrict AI use among employees accordingly #JPMORGAN . . . or cutting CLAUDE access because the expense is not saving any costs / too expensive with its engineer crew #MICROSOFT.
- It’s not yielding the cost-saving results they were forecasting.
- Remember the chart I linked to yesterday from a BAIN survey indicating that companies are not seeing their forecast AI cost-saving expectations met.
Q3/Q4: A few potential scenarios.
- When companies go all in on a big new “revolutionary” technology integration . . . and soon discover that it’s not yielding the 💰 results they were promised/expected off the bat — they tend to dial back their spending on such technology.
- Now, they don’t eliminate it — AI’s not going anywhere, bigger picture — but when the tech’s not as ready for primetime as hoped, spending shifts once again. Ask the internet in 2002.
- Concurrently, you see the tech companies race to go public before a spending/revenue growth dialback occurs. Ask the stock market in 2000/2001.
- See you for the ANTHROPIC, SPACEX and OPENAI IPOs later this year — not to mention a certain Hollywood merger underpinned by an ORACLE fortune that’s racing to get done this summer.
- Now, it’s certainly possible AI companies will simply find more corporate clients to sell to, in order to make up for any token buying pullback from existing clients . . . but it’s tricky navigation.
- There are also levers like pricing to work with ($200 META AI bot, anyone?), as well as potential increased general consumer paid usage — come on, America! You folks are still flush with cash to spend $20 a month on AI usage in addition to filling up your gas tanks, right?
- Count the introduction of advertising as a viable new revenue source as ya like.
- AI technology could also become much better/far more effective for clients in a very short window, keeping that corporate spending spigot fully open. Maybe.
- BUT: Budgets are budgets — and the state of the U.S. economic forecast for the rest of 2026 is what it is #Hormuz.
- AND: Are newer AI clients likely to spend as much if the buzz from a large tranche of initial clients was “Eh, we didn’t exactly get what we hoped for”?
Again, timing is everything, and all of that is purely observational from reading reporting on the industry daily — so it was mainly a thought exercise I had this morning that I figured I’d share.
But no business in the history of America has skyrocket growth forever — just ask the SVOD “content” or production soundstage business of 2022. So, place your bets.
Speaking of . . . time to shift to one of our oldest industries!
Wakeup Box Office Prediction
- PAR’s Scary Movie (VI) is looking at a $40M+ weekend, although I’ll venture that the Gen Z momentum continues here . . . even with some pretty bad trade reviews this morning (including Deadline), so I’ll go $43M to $48M for my vote.
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