Mornin! This is Sean McNulty and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on WEDNESDAY December 22, 2021.

Where let the holiday cheer continue with a new BETWEEN TWO FERNS “Happy Holidays Edition” with “Toby” and “Samuel L. Jack’s son” 👏.

ALSO: Break out the shots of marked-up French vodka – DIDDY the fashion mogul is back! He bought the SEAN JOHN brand out of bankruptcy for $7.5 Million. That’s about double what it was expected to go for, but it includes all the unsold pairs of jeans.

AND: In today’s Omicron postponements…

FOX somehow is the first network to cancel their NEW YEARS EVE special. So no Joel McHale & Ken Jeong, well at least in Times Square on your TV.
“The Lion King”, “Six” join the BROADWAY shutdown through the weekend. /Deadline
Across the pond, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Cinderella” has cancelled all West End performances until Feb 9.
NY FILM CRITICS postpone their Jan 10 awards ceremony indefinitely. /Deadline
CES 2022 in Vegas is already getting big cancellations the first week of Jan – META, TWITTER, PINTEREST and IHEART are all no longer sending staff or doing their planned brand activations. /AdAge

OTHERWISE: Unsurprisingly another light news day… so this will be even quicker than yesterday.

📽 📺 THE SILVER TV

4 THINGS OF NOTE:

Colin Firth, Toby Jones join SEARCHLIGHT pic “Empire of Light” directed by Sam Mendes. Its a love story set in the South Coast of ENGLAND in the 80s, Olivia Colman starring. /Deadline
OSCAR Nomination shortlists for below-the-line categories plus Docs, Int’l feature, Shorts and Song released. OSCAR NOMS come out Feb 8 this year. /Variety
NETFLIX Co-CEO’s will be paid $74 Million next year:
- Reed Hastings is getting $34 Mil, pretty much all in stock options
- Ted Sarandos prefers to have a little walkin’ around money, taking his $40 Million in $20 Mil Stock + $20 Mil Cash… small bills only, to be given in a briefcase made of American-made leather, no questions asked 💼. /THR
Anyone wanna go watch the College Football Bowl games in a movie theater with a bunch of strangers eating and drinking? 🤔 The CINEMARK Movie Theater chain has you covered – a $10 concessions charge gets you in on New Years Eve. /Marketplace

💻 THE MEDIA BIZ

AT&T selling off XANDER, the stated rationale for the 2018 WARNER MEDIA deal to MICROSOFT

XANDER is their Ad-tech & programmatic Ad sales marketplace.

AT&T paid $1.6 Billion for XANDER’s tech when then WARNER MEDIA deal went thru… and was stated by Stankey & Bewkes to be the key rationale behind the whole WARNER MEDIA deal, as it would combine AT&T’s user data and WARNER MEDIA’s networks and brands to create a formidable ad-sales alternative to GOOGLE and FACEBOOK ad exchanges.

That never happened. The tech never lived up to the promise and it was known as pretty much a disaster from the start from a management POV (at AT&T, I know… 🤯). Now MICROSOFT is buying it for about $1 Billion according to BLOOMBERG. /Variety

This sale, plus the DIRECTV spin-off, and impending WARNER MEDIA sell-off, thus ends AT&T’s very expensive dive into the Media & Entertainment business which it never understood over the 7 year-ish run.

T stock is currently hovering about $2 above its 10 year low, at $24 a share. John Stankey is still getting paid $20 Million a year.

ALSO IN MEDIA

ONLY FANS CEO and Founder Tim Stokely is leaving the company. No destination or reason cited other than the to “pursue new endeavors” chestnut. Comms & Marketing lead Ami Gan will now step into the role. /Bloomberg

🏦 STOCK NOTES:

Most stocks had an up day, rebounding from Manchin Monday.

AMC NETWORKS makes up for yesterday’s losses, +4.5% ($35.07)

LIONSGATE +5% ($15.76)

👩‍💻 NEW TO WATCH:

UNI “Sing 2” – Only In Theaters

DISNEYFOX “The King’s Man” – Only In Theaters

WB / HBOMAX “The Matrix: Resurrections” – In theaters or Stream or Add to Your List here

NETFLIX “Emily In Paris” Season 2 – Stream or Add to Your List here

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🎥 TRAILER HOUSE

HBO “The Super Bob Einstein Movie” trailer – Docu on “Super Dave”, Premieres Tues Dec 28

DISNEYFOX “Death on the Nile” new trailer – A lot more Gadot & Branagh… a lot less Hammer. In theaters Fri Feb 11

HBOMAX “Search Party” Season 5 trailer – The final season drops on Fri Jan 7

HBO “Somebody, Somewhere” series trailer – Bridget Everett comedy series about a woman trying to move on in a small town after the death of her sister. Looks good! Premieres Sun Jan 16