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, July 9, 2026.

Where things are looking up for travel to the Jersey Shore this weekend! No, The Situation isn’t guest DJing at a pop-up revival of Joey Harrison’s Surf Club (#JerseyDeepCut). Instead, it’s Freedom Fuel to save the day!

Yes, the Trump administration’s latest scheme gambit to turn that #NoPlanInIran sentiment around is to launch 25 Freedom Fuel gas stations — 20 in Pennsylvania and 5 in New Jersey — which somehow have gas about 30 cents cheaper than the average in those states. No word on whether Freedom Fries are available as an add-on.

Unfortunately, that price is still $3.47 a gallon, roughly 18% higher than what it was in those regions before Trump decided to attack Iran.

The Freedom Fuel stations are run by a private company but . . . not a lotta details here (I’m pretty sure the website was put together last night), and I assume any neighboring gas station proprietors are thrilled.

Then again, cheap gas never really prompts many questions from consumers.

AND: As for The Emmys, alas it wasn’t meant to be for beloved Industry this year. . . but great to see all the recognition. As for reading the subsequent tea leaves, I always just send my queries to Katey Rich on Slack for such matters — but thankfully, she shared her Emmy wisdom here in this column for all to read.

YAH: Oregon’s AG is asking the courts to put a 60-day delay on the WARNAMOUNT deal closing over alleged withheld documents around PSKY’s lobbying. A judge will consider the request on Monday.

• MEANWHILE: The rumored multi-state anti-trust case against the deal will likely be filed next week, according to CNN (although that timing is not 💯). No other details at this point.
• BTW: Joe Flint has a fresh look in the WSJ at the impending debt situation at WARNAMOUNT.

THEN: Margaret Qualley and Jack Antonoff are separating after 3 years of marriage.

KUDOS: To Luke Wilson and his girlfriend, Kendall Yates, on their new baby girl, who will have both a Gen X and a Gen Z parent — we’ll see whose musical tastes win out.

OH: If you have a public profile on INSTA, know that Zuck is once again giving you the finger putting users’ interests first. Yes, META automatically opts you in to the ability for anyone to use META AI with your photos to create an AI-generated image using your likeness if they tag your account. That link has the steps you can take to turn it off (although my account hasn’t been fully updated to enable it yet).

• BTW: CAA is . . . not a fan of META’s new “Muse Image” AI image generator that’s driving this.
• KEEP IN MIND: Zuck told employees at the end of June that META’s AI agents have not been progressing as quickly as they anticipated. I’m sure all of the moves are unrelated.
• OH: France is also telling META it needs to start negotiations with French media groups about paying to feature their content, after a year of kicking the ball down the road.
• BTW: Add the city of Boston to the list of folks suing “the big 4” (META, TT, YT and SNAP) over deliberately designing addictive features and worsening youth mental health.

AH: OPENAI is expanding its ads pilot program to France, Germany and Ireland.

WOW: The Chuck Dolan MSG surveillance state just went up a notch. Quite a new read here from Wired. Who knew Anna Wintour was “medium risk” 🤷‍♂️?

SO: NETFLIX signed another TV show video podcast deal with a digital creator — chef influencer Meredith Hayden will host a Wishbone Kitchen weekly series that will launch sometime next month.

• VOX MEDIA also made its first deal of the Murdoch era with NETFLIX, striking an exclusive video podcast agreement for its Switched on Pop and Unexplainable pods. The deal kicks off next week.

ALSO: Television City is the latest L.A. soundstage owned by HACKMAN CAPITAL that’s entering a fire sale due to unpaid debt, led by the owner of that debt, DEUTSCHE BANK. It has also gotten a sale proposal on another L.A. soundstage property it’s looking to part ways with, Manhattan Beach Studios.

• NETFLIX already picked up Radford Studios on the cheap as part of HACKMAN’s liquidity issues, and Kaufman Astoria Studios in NYC was affected as well.

WAKEUP Box Office Prediction

Moana is on deck, uh . . . again, sorta, at the box office starting today. Expectations seem to be falling in the low $60M range — although some see that as optimistic.

I’ll put my $5M range at $54M to $59M on this one.

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💼 The Executive Suite