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I dug into what’s taking Peter Friedlander so long to set TV strategy at Amazon, wrote about Byron Allen’s deal to rent CBS’ late-night block, The Pitt casting controversy, and interviewed legendary TV creator David E. Kelley. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

Not long ago, while in production on Apple TV’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, David E. Kelley mentioned a book that he was interested in adapting to an executive at A24. That was on a Friday. By Monday, the indie studio’s TV team had read Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End and told the showrunner they were working to obtain the rights. By the end of that same week, I can exclusively reveal that A24 had won a bidding war for the title and attached Kelley to co-write the script.

In an industry where projects can take months — even years — to move from conversation to contract, that kind of speed isn’t just unusual. It’s increasingly the way to win.

Though its reputation was built on its film darling bona fides, A24 has quietly become one of the most aggressive — and disruptive — players in the television business, pairing lightning-fast dealmaking with a willingness to spend when it matters. The result: a studio that agents love, creators prioritize and competitors are struggling to keep up with.

Their library now includes Emmy-winning shows Euphoria, Beef and Ramy (a full chart of all their shows in development and on air is below).

“It’s difficult to break through when it’s them. They end up being fiercest competition,” one buyer tells me. “When they’re in the mix, there’s a good likelihood they’ll win it.”

This shift comes roughly two years after the company took on a major cash infusion from Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, a deal that valued A24 at $3.5 billion and raised questions about whether the famously curated indie could and would scale up like a traditional studio. So far, the answer has been something else entirely: an ability to push harder, throwing cash at projects they believe in that have that ineffable imprimatur of A24 “taste.”

Which is great news if you’re selling. For everyone else, it’s creating a new reality — a headache where competing with A24 doesn’t just require a strong pitch, but a very different appetite for risk.

Today I break down how A24’s strategy is playing out — and what it means for everyone else in TV, including:

• Who’s running A24’s TV team and how to pitch them

• How A24’s deal speed is collapsing timelines that used to stretch a year or more

• Why agents increasingly steer top projects toward the studio — and how that shifts leverage

• The real cost of competing with A24 in today’s bidding wars

• How creator-friendly terms are driving up expectations across the market

• What the Kushner-backed cash infusion changed — and what it didn’t

• And why A24’s approach is forcing rivals to rethink how they buy, spend and greenlight

• The Amazon show that was “dead” until A24 fought for its return

This column is for paid subscribers only. Interested in a group sub for your team or company? Click here.

For full access and to continue reading all Ankler content, paid subscribers can click here.

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I dug into what’s taking Peter Friedlander so long to set TV strategy at Amazon, wrote about Byron Allen’s deal to rent CBS’ late-night block, The Pitt casting controversy, and interviewed legendary TV creator David E. Kelley. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

Not long ago, while in production on Apple TV’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles, David E. Kelley mentioned a book that he was interested in adapting to an executive at A24. That was on a Friday. By Monday, the indie studio’s TV team had read Chris Whitaker’s We Begin at the End and told the showrunner they were working to obtain the rights. By the end of that same week, I can exclusively reveal that A24 had won a bidding war for the title and attached Kelley to co-write the script.

In an industry where projects can take months — even years — to move from conversation to contract, that kind of speed isn’t just unusual. It’s increasingly the way to win.

Though its reputation was built on its film darling bona fides, A24 has quietly become one of the most aggressive — and disruptive — players in the television business, pairing lightning-fast dealmaking with a willingness to spend when it matters. The result: a studio that agents love, creators prioritize and competitors are struggling to keep up with.

Their library now includes Emmy-winning shows Euphoria, Beef and Ramy (a full chart of all their shows in development and on air is below).

“It’s difficult to break through when it’s them. They end up being fiercest competition,” one buyer tells me. “When they’re in the mix, there’s a good likelihood they’ll win it.”

This shift comes roughly two years after the company took on a major cash infusion from Josh Kushner’s Thrive Capital, a deal that valued A24 at $3.5 billion and raised questions about whether the famously curated indie could and would scale up like a traditional studio. So far, the answer has been something else entirely: an ability to push harder, throwing cash at projects they believe in that have that ineffable imprimatur of A24 “taste.”

Which is great news if you’re selling. For everyone else, it’s creating a new reality — a headache where competing with A24 doesn’t just require a strong pitch, but a very different appetite for risk.

Today I break down how A24’s strategy is playing out — and what it means for everyone else in TV, including:

• Who’s running A24’s TV team and how to pitch them

• How A24’s deal speed is collapsing timelines that used to stretch a year or more

• Why agents increasingly steer top projects toward the studio — and how that shifts leverage

• The real cost of competing with A24 in today’s bidding wars

• How creator-friendly terms are driving up expectations across the market

• What the Kushner-backed cash infusion changed — and what it didn’t

• And why A24’s approach is forcing rivals to rethink how they buy, spend and greenlight

• The Amazon show that was “dead” until A24 fought for its return

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Where did you guys know Jersey rules? 💪

New Jersey is the only state where TV & movie production filming was up considerably in both filming count (+45% YoY) and production spend (+37%) in Q1, according to PRODPRO.

But, CA still leads the way in spend — NJ is only #5 in total spend size — so, as always, don’t get too high on yourself there, Jersey.

The Q1 numbers:

• CA: $1.48B (+2% YoY, -14% in filming count)

• NY: $871M (flat, -14% in filming count)

• GA: $370M (-5%, -11% in filming count)

• IL: $253M (flat, +2% in filming count #ThanksDickWolf)

• NJ: $211M (+45%, +37% in filming count)

Ashley Cullins also took a good look at the state of tax incentives #punintended in her Dealmakers column this week (also, uh, remember to get your taxes in today).

AND: The Tribeca Fest is opening with Questlove’s HBO doc Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial VS That’s the Weight of the World) on June 3.

OH: NJ TRANSIT will charge you $100 to take the train from Penn Station to MET LIFE Stadium and back for the World Cup games this summer. The usual price for other events? About $13.

• And you say U.S. hotels are slashing rates as demand is coming up short, eh?

ALSO: Sen. Cory Booker will hold a “Spotlight” hearing on the WARNAMOUNT deal today. David Ellison was invited but won’t be able to attend due to a family funeral.

BTW: The open letter opposing the WARNAMOUNT deal now has well over 2,000 signatures.

AH: Ted Sarandos did come out for CINEMACON . . . ish — he met with the heads of the major movie theater chains on Sunday night, according to The Wrap.

YES: DISNEY is definitely laying off about 1,000 people starting this week, centered in the marketing & brand divisions, but also hitting studios, TV, ESPN, product & technology and certain corporate groups.

• MARVEL alone is cutting about 8% of its staff.

SPEAKING OF: The Q2 layoff train just keeps growing . . . SNAP is cutting 16% of staff, or about 1,000 folks, due to AI, and the BBC is cutting up to 2,000 jobs.

YAH: AMAZON is spending $11B on a satellite operator called GLOBALSTAR to help its reportedly behind-schedule STARLINK rival, LEO. Good thing that NFL deal is the one not up for re-negotiation!

• GLOBALSTAR is the service that also powers the satellite coverage backup features on iPhones, putting AMAZON and APPLE in business here.

UH HUH: OPENAI is now planning the advanced business model of “pay-per-click” to its advertising business pricing approach, according to The Information.

PLUS: Sydney Sweeney and AMERICAN EAGLE are launching a new ad campaign that . . . well, let’s just say they’re taking a new approach.

THEN: Here’s Lin-Manuel Miranda’s casting sheet for his next musical adaptation, Octet.

🎞️ CINEMACON 2026

WARNER BROS: Movie Tonnage, Aged Cruise, Epic ‘Dune’ . . . and don’t forget our 2025! 🙏

So, who knew Patton Oswalt joined WB PICTURES? Hope he survives the WARNAMOUNT consolidation. 😬 Not too surprising that there was no mention of, uh, ya know, on stage.

Yes — while Mike & Pam, Jeffrey “Oscar” Goldstein (gotta love a man walking out on stage in a gold suit) and Peter Safran made on-stage speeches, Patton was enlisted to serve as emcee for the night, and he brought a good, loose vibe to the presentation.

A presentation that, I think, is still going on — its length was certainly one of the biggest remarked upon reactions I got from all folks afterward.

Part of that was time spent once again diving into the 2025 that was . . . now nearly 4 months into 2026, although given that when Mike & Pam took the stage a year ago — everyone in the press section was writing them out of their jobs . . . they certainly get the pass.

But I think we put the Han Solo carbonite seal on WB 2025 talk from here on out.

So, let’s take a look at:

• What 2026 / 2027 (and 2028) has in store — a pretty diversified slate, even if a couple of genres are still missing, as the studio is full steam ahead.

  • Clearly, the newly added 2nd Prez of Production, Michael Ireland, is being put to work quickly alongside the other Prez, Jesse Ehrman.

• The key messages from Mike & Pam for what’s ahead in the next 2-3 years.

• A bunch of new dates for movies on a growing slate.

• Some more awards, of course:

  • Biggest Question Mark

  • A look at the Cruise non-IP numbers 💰

  • Best Thing I Saw

  • Biggest Mic Drop Moment

FIRST UP:

An announcement!

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This is a preview of Like & Subscribe, my standalone Ankler Media newsletter on the creator economy. I wrote about the hot podcast market, spoke to two Chernin Group partners about the firm’s bet on creator-led empires, interviewed the co-hosts of TBPN, wrote about YouTube’s new studio era and covered how video podcasts are taking over TV. Email me at natalie@theankler.com

The days of needing millions of followers to make a living as a creator are over.

A new tier of talent — not quite influencers, not quite amateurs — is quietly turning their own content creation into a viable career path. These are professionals, founders and side-hustlers with real expertise and modest audiences, building businesses that don’t rely on being MrBeast.

As layoffs, hiring freezes and stalled development pipelines force many in media and entertainment to rethink their next move, social media is starting to look like a pretty good sudden hustle — if not the entire Plan B.

Take Cherie Brooke Luo.

The Stanford MBA co-owns two small businesses with her sister and attracts millions of views from her 450,000 followers across social media platforms. Luo, 30, might not be whom many people envision when they think of an influencer (example: She’ll likely never feud with Alix Earle or Alex Cooper), but the days of hugely popular creators holding all the power are gone. Niche content is in — as the TBPN sale to OpenAI recently highlighted. That’s created perfect conditions for more people to ditch their corporate jobs and turn to content creation, where they can use the tools of the internet to become their own small business.

Avi Gandhi, who advises creators on their businesses, calls this group “grownups” and forecasts that they’re the fastest-growing segment of the creator economy. I’m calling them the new creator middle class, aka people with a respectable audience (think follower counts between 100k and 1 million) who are supporting themselves with the help of content creation.

Collectively they’re growing in power.

The digital economy hit $4.9 trillion in 2025, accounting for 18 percent of the GDP in the U.S., according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Estimates peg the total number of creators in the country at 27 million total people who make money on social-first content — and, more conservatively, 1.5 million working full-time as creators.

That 1.5 million includes people like Luo, who has been making vertical video since 2020, when she was a product manager at LinkedIn. She decided to pursue full-time work as a creator after graduating from business school and with her sister, Jean Luo, now co-hosts the business podcast Tiger Sisters while also bootstrapping an organic small-batch matcha business, Sisters Matcha.

“We’ve done everything ourselves up until this point,” says Luo. That means packing every box, sending handwritten notes to customers and making regular trips to the post office. “The marketing and distribution is really challenging, and I feel very fortunate that Jean and I have a platform, both from my personal socials and from Tiger Sisters, to talk about the story behind Sisters Matcha and why it’s so important to us.”

I’ve already taken you deep inside the job opportunities available in the creator economy:

Today, I’m zooming in on the segment of creators who might not command the most headlines, but who are shaping up to be as big a threat to traditional media as the TikTokers and podcasters striking Netflix deals.

As the real shift is happening further down the ladder, I have career intel over at Like & Subscribe on:

• Why the most overlooked creators are suddenly the most valuable

• What “working creators” actually make — and how it stacks up to traditional jobs

• Why professionals across industries are turning to content

• The booming ecosystem built to serve this new class of creators

• The tools helping them scale — and keep more of their income

The rest of this column is for paid subscribers to Like & Subscribe, a standalone newsletter dedicated to the creator economy from Ankler Media.

Interested in a group sub for your team or company? Click here.

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I cover top dealmakers for paid subscribers. I wrote about the new indie film market rules and scooped the eye-popping price Casey Wasserman wants for his company and who might be buying.

For every victory when a hit show like The Pitt chooses to film in Los Angeles, there are multiple local production disappointments — ranging from failure to launch (the Buffy reboot) to cancellation (Palm Royale) to red tape (Baywatch). And while there’s bipartisan momentum toward a federal incentive of some kind that would benefit #StayinLA efforts, no one is holding their breath. In the 18-ish months since I last wrote about runaway production and the landscape of available tax incentives, there’s been a noticeable shift in where projects are headed.

Hollywood’s future is being decided by a domestic bidding war — and it’s only getting fiercer.

Several states have been fine-tuning their programs to stem the overseas exodus; new players are popping up as New York and Georgia lose some of their shine. (We’ll get to why in a minute.)

California, for its part, finally this year doubled its annual film and TV tax incentive spend to $750 million per year up from $330 million. But many dealmakers say the changes still ignore two of the biggest complaints: restrictive application windows and the exclusion of above-the-line pay.

“People look at this industry and don’t realize how labor-intensive it is,” explains Entertainment Partners’ production incentives lead Joseph Chianese, who says the general public hears “Hollywood” and thinks “flash” when in reality making a movie is essentially manufacturing. “There is this perception that this is an industry that does not need financial support, but that’s not true.”

There are three basic needs for a production in search of a budget-conscious place to shoot: a financial incentive, infrastructure and local crew.

I spoke with incentive experts, producers and lawyers to map how the key states stack up — and where the next production hubs are emerging. Today, I break down where to film now — and where the biggest opportunities (and risks) are, including:

• Where California has made gains — and where it still falls short of other states’ offerings

• How a new post-production credit could generate more jobs

• Why New York projects sometimes wait years to be repaid

• How New Jersey is capitalizing on New York’s stumbles — thanks to Netflix’s billions

• What’s going on in Georgia — and is once-bustling Atlanta becoming a ghost town

• How Taylor Sheridan and Dick Wolf universes create their own ecosystems

• The under-the-radar states poised to become production hotspots

• Plus: a list of tools and resources to help you to navigate the system

This column is for paid subscribers only. Interested in a group sub for your team or company? Click here.

For full access and to continue reading all Ankler content, paid subscribers can click here.

Click here to keep reading

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I cover top dealmakers for paid subscribers. I wrote about the new indie film market rules and scooped the eye-popping price Casey Wasserman wants for his company and who might be buying.

For every victory when a hit show like The Pitt chooses to film in Los Angeles, there are multiple local production disappointments — ranging from failure to launch (the Buffy reboot) to cancellation (Palm Royale) to red tape (Baywatch). And while there’s bipartisan momentum toward a federal incentive of some kind that would benefit #StayinLA efforts, no one is holding their breath. In the 18-ish months since I last wrote about runaway production and the landscape of available tax incentives, there’s been a noticeable shift in where projects are headed.

Hollywood’s future is being decided by a domestic bidding war — and it’s only getting fiercer.

Several states have been fine-tuning their programs to stem the overseas exodus; new players are popping up as New York and Georgia lose some of their shine. (We’ll get to why in a minute.)

California, for its part, finally this year doubled its annual film and TV tax incentive spend to $750 million per year up from $330 million. But many dealmakers say the changes still ignore two of the biggest complaints: restrictive application windows and the exclusion of above-the-line pay.

“People look at this industry and don’t realize how labor-intensive it is,” explains Entertainment Partners’ production incentives lead Joseph Chianese, who says the general public hears “Hollywood” and thinks “flash” when in reality making a movie is essentially manufacturing. “There is this perception that this is an industry that does not need financial support, but that’s not true.”

There are three basic needs for a production in search of a budget-conscious place to shoot: a financial incentive, infrastructure and local crew.

I spoke with incentive experts, producers and lawyers to map how the key states stack up — and where the next production hubs are emerging. Today, I break down where to film now — and where the biggest opportunities (and risks) are, including:

• Where California has made gains — and where it still falls short of other states’ offerings

• How a new post-production credit could generate more jobs

• Why New York projects sometimes wait years to be repaid

• How New Jersey is capitalizing on New York’s stumbles — thanks to Netflix’s billions

• What’s going on in Georgia — and is once-bustling Atlanta becoming a ghost town

• How Taylor Sheridan and Dick Wolf universes create their own ecosystems

• The under-the-radar states poised to become production hotspots

• Plus: a list of tools and resources to help you to navigate the system

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With Jean Smart bidding farewell to a beloved comedy series after five seasons, there is a sense of history repeating itself. On her breakout series, Designing Women — where she played the ditzy but charming Charlene from 1986 to 1991 — Smart also said goodbye after five seasons, though the show went on for two more without her. It makes you wonder if Smart has some kind of sixth sense that five seasons is just the right amount of time to spend with a character. But as she explains, it’s a lot more nuanced than that — and leaving Hacks will likely prove a lot more complicated.

“With Designing Women, that felt very different when I left it because I had just become a mother,” Smart, 74, tells me on today’s episode of the Prestige Junkie podcast. “Being a fairly new wife and a new mom, that was everything I was thinking about at that time.”

Hacks has not only come at a very different time in her life — Smart lost her husband Richard Gilliland in 2021, months before Hacks premiered, and underwent triple bypass surgery in 2023, while filming the show’s third season — but has been made in a completely different way, which makes it even more difficult to leave behind. On Designing Women, Smart says she didn’t necessarily bond with the crew because she spent so little time with them. “When you do a multi-camera show in front of a live audience, like Designing Women, you’re only with the crew for about half a day a week,” she explains. On Hacks, however, which is a single-camera comedy, shot like a movie, “you’re with these people 12 to 16 hours every single day,” Smart says. “You become very, very close. Missing those people, that’s gonna be hard.”

With four Emmy wins thus far for best actress in a comedy, Hacks has given Smart one of her signature roles as Deborah Vance, a legendary comedian and Las Vegas stalwart whose career receives a jump-start when she hires a young writer, Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), to help with her material. Across five seasons, the relationship between Deborah and Ava has ebbed and flowed, and though the final season finds them more simpatico than ever, Smart tells me she was never sure how the friendship would turn out: “I couldn’t really picture exactly how it would end.”

In our podcast conversation, Smart and I get into Hacks’ farewell, and she also shares incredible stories from her earliest days in television. She arrived on the scene in the early 1980s as a theater veteran and booked her first on-screen role in the short-lived sitcom Teachers Only in 1983. Smart says she was shocked by many of the standard operating procedures of the time, like the warm-up comic or the tradition of the actors coming out to greet the audience before taping.

“Someone said, ‘Okay, line up for intros,’ and I said, ‘What’s that?’ And they said, ‘Well, you know, you’ll go out, and they’ll introduce you, and you just bow or smile and wave.’ And I said, ‘Before the show? Like a basketball team?’ I mean, it was nuts,” Smart says. “I called my agent the next day, and she said, ‘You poor baby. You really don’t know your ass from apple butter, do you?’”

Smart repeats her agent’s quote with a perfect Southern accent, by the way — one of many reasons you really have to hear the whole thing. Listen to that and much more on today’s episode, which also includes a conversation between Richard Lawson and me looking at the newly announced Cannes Film Festival lineup, the new season of Netflix’s Beef (premiering this week) and the entire limited series Emmy race (which Beef is poised to dominate again, like the first season of the anthology did in 2023).

And if you’re not already subscribed to Prestige Junkie After Party, now’s a great time since we’re midway through our 2006 Canon miniseries. This week, we’re tackling the movies in a nebulous category we’re calling “They Don’t Make ’Em Like This Anymore” — and trust me, you’ll know them when you see them.

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Where ya gotta love AMC THEATRES getting a nice stock bump as CINEMACON begins!

The stock was +7% yesterday as the Super Mario and Hail Mary combo seems to have given investors some hope for the company’s fortunes.

Granted, the stock is still in the danger zone at $1.45 a share, but that’s better than the under $1 status it had at the end of March. The stock is +32% since then.

So, yes — that means AMC is really counting on you to deliver your legendary and highly anticipated A-game in the WB presentation later today, Jeff Goldstein.

AND: Yet another Trump lawsuit has been dismissed by a judge. This time, it’s the WSJ lawsuit Trump filed over the Epstein birthday card story. It was dismissed with prejudice, allowing Trump to refile . . . which his legal team has indicated it will do.

OH: The Devil Wears Prada 2 premiere will be live-streamed on DIS+ and HULU on Monday, April 20, from Lincoln Center in NYC, and yes, I am available to do fashion commentary on the carpet.

YAH: NEXSTAR is replacing national news reports from ABC/NBC/CBS NEWS in its respective local affiliate news broadcasts with reports from its NEWSNATION network.

AHA: NETFLIX set another soccer deal — this time in Mexico for the Nations League finals and the CONCACAF Gold Cup tournaments in 2027 and 2029. Again, that new #pricehikes 💰 is increasingly going toward more sports.

YUP: The MLB’s ABS/’instant replay’ addition this year to challenge pitch calls is adding about 5 minutes onto the length of games so far. 54% of the 932 challenged pitches have been overturned.

THEN: SNL is changing homes in Canada, moving from airing live on GLOBAL TV to CTV. It’ll stream on the network’s streamer, CRAVE, which also recently picked up the next-day rights to the SNL U.K. version.

• SNL U.K. TV audiences have leveled out around 120k/130k on Saturday nights, as the show has a week off before coming back with its final 4 episodes for this season.

  • The series premiere had 226k viewers in overnight BARB ratings.

• ALSO: Nicola Coughlan and Aimee Lou Wood are your next SNL U.K. hosts

PLUS: The day in WARNAMOUNT developments:

• The list of Hollywood boldfaced names opposing the WARNAMOUNT deal now includes J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, David Fincher, Denis Villeneuve, Bryan Cranston, Jane Fonda, Jason Bateman, Ben Stiller, Tiffany Haddish, Joaquin Phoenix, Noah Wyle, Emma Thompson, Yorgos Lanthimos and more, as part of an open letter released yesterday signed by over 1,000 creatives.

• PAR responded yesterday, saying the WARNAMOUNT deal will allow the company to “greenlight more projects” and provide “creators” with “more avenues for their work, not fewer.”

• The U.K.’s antitrust authority, the CMA, has now begun seeking comments from interested parties as it reviews the WARNAMOUNT deal.

• Damon Lindelof stated his reasoning for signing onto the letter yesterday in a thoughtful IG post.

SEPARATE BUT NOT: UNITED AIRLINES then told WARNAMOUNT to hold its beer, as Bloomberg reported that UNITED’s CEO has been floating the idea of a merger or business tie-up of some sort with AMERICAN, thus bringing our Wall-E BUY N LARGE future potentially one step closer.

• He also pitched the notion to Trump in late February, according to Reuters.

• You’ll be shocked to hear that Trump’s DOT head said there’s room for airline mergers in late February, as JETBLUE has reportedly been looking for a deal.

AH: It seems Trump’s Obamacare subsidy cuts this year will hit Florida residents and its overall healthcare system the hardest. And you say Democrats flipped the state House district where Mar-a-Lago is, last month?

OUCH: Yeah, this chart isn’t promising for anyone in college right now. Bloomberg also has some good color from recent graduates about their job market experiences here.

ALSO: Sebastian Maniscalco is the next comedic name to get his own SIRIUSXM channel and show on the audio streamer, replacing the Raw Comedy channel.

ELAINE LOW TENNIS NEWS: NETFLIX announced a couple of tennis docs as the prime summer tournament season comes upon us:

• Rafa 4-part docuseries on May 26 (teaser here)

• Chris & Martina: The Final Match doc on June 29

🎞️ CINEMACON 2026

SONY brings Zuck, Spidey and Jumanji to party in Vegas, and advice for theater owners

Well, last year’s director-heavy presentation was certainly not repeated this year . . . as SONY definitely had more actors than just Ralph Macchio and Ben Wang this time out.

SONY also needs some momentum with theater owners after a #notgreatbob 2025, although GOAT was a good start following the 28 Years Later sequel stumble.

Although I wouldn’t exactly say SONY was walking into a hot room after a rather glitch-laden presentation involving sponsor BARCA and a short film whose purpose I’m still entirely sure of.

SO: Wisely, SONY led with Nate Bargatze essentially doing a very effective crowd warmup, followed by an intro with Mandy Moore for a scene from their new pic The Breadwinner, which played . . . OK.

Tom Rothman then shared his ideas for the movie biz ills, namely:

• Shorter pre-shows — get rid of the “endless advertising” . . . or as Tom also put it in his unique way: “Get off the ad crack.”

• Make or keep tickets affordable (I’m honestly not entirely sure where things currently stand in his POV).

• Enforce longer theatrical windows

I can’t say the “Charge less, and take in less advertising revenue” pitch went over gangbusters with America’s theater owners, but presumably he’s saying the longer tail/release windows will help make up 💰 gaps — to which a theater owner response might be “Um yeah, how ‘bout some more movies, like we used to get?” . . . but I’ll leave that for them to sort out.

BUT: Given that UNIVERSAL has abandoned its 17-day window policy, and Ellison has committed to 45-day windows at a WARNAMOUNT . . . I think the windows thing was more pressing when he mentioned it last year. I also laid out the state of the matter here last month.

Now, onto the goods. No real banger announcements, a la The Beatles last year, but a few CINEMACON Presentation Awards:

• Biggest Mic Drop Moment(s)

• Biggest Question Mark

• Best Thing I Saw

• And the rest of the talent, starpower and new announcements.

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With the return of Euphoria to HBO last night, it’s a good time to lean into bad vibes on television. There may yet be some kind of happy ending in store for Rue and company, but for now it’s all about sex, drugs and mayhem — and despite the mixed reviews, a chance to bid a stressed-out farewell to the show that minted so many enormous stars.

But I’d like to propose a moment to celebrate something that feels way too rare on TV — straightforward laugh-a-minute comedy, with episodes that get in and out in 22 minutes. That’s one of the many reasons I’ve treasured NBC’s midseason comedy The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, which had a splashy launch after an NFL divisional playoff game in January and wraps up its 10-episode season tonight. It’s not only a gem, but the show also marks the long-awaited TV comedy return of ’90s icon Erika Alexander, who spent five seasons playing hard-charging attorney Maxine Shaw on Fox’s Living Single. On the influential Fox sitcom, Alexander’s silent reactions to her castmates’ most outlandish moments would often get as many laughs as the scripted jokes themselves.

That style of reaction shot, an opportunity to layer one laugh on top of another, evolved as the mockumentary-style sitcom emerged in the 2000s; you may now think of it as the Jim Halpert shot. And now, with The Fall and Rise and Reggie Dinkins wrapping up its first season on NBC, that knowing and comedic glance has come full circle to the woman who perfected it before Jim raised an eyebrow.

What makes it all the more astonishing is that Reggie Dinkins is Alexander’s first comedy as a series regular since Living Single, and before that, her breakout turn on The Cosby Show. She’s been plenty busy in the past few decades, from recurring roles on everything from Bosch and Insecure to her acclaimed supporting turn as Jeffrey Wright’s warm, wise love interest in American Fiction. But Reggie Dinkins does feel like a bit of a homecoming, she tells me.

“Here I am back on NBC — it’s big,” she says of the network that was home to The Cosby Show. “And then you get the satisfaction of people actually saying they like it and they think it’s funny.”

One of the many beautiful things about Reggie Dinkins is that Alexander’s character, Monica — the business manager and ex-wife of Tracy Morgan’s titular washed-out football player — gets to be as silly as everyone else. Created by 30 Rock veterans Robert Carlock and Sam Means, with Tina Fey as an executive producer, Reggie Dinkins has that familiar rat-a-tat pace and perfectly deployed cutaway jokes, and in its 10-episode first season has built an ensemble with just as much potential as the original 30 Rock crew.

Taking a somewhat convoluted premise — Daniel Radcliffe plays a disgraced documentarian trying to stage his own comeback by making a film about Reggie’s attempted return to the spotlight — Reggie Dinkins slowly emerges into a hybrid of a found family and workplace comedy, like Shrinking, but with a faster pace and a lot less talking about your feelings. And though Alexander’s Monica is often the voice of reason, she’s also likely to get roped into the chaos. Take the revival of her frenemy relationship with Heidi Gardner’s fellow WAG in the show’s fifth episode, and don’t miss her completely silent reaction to Gardner’s dig in that flashback red carpet interview.

“The show is about reinvention,” she says. “For me, that aligns very perfectly. I recognize myself inside of comedy very well, but it’s a different type of comedy. So I am trying to make something new, and yet I’m using all my old skillsets to do it.”

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‘I Don’t Want to Play a Role Model’

Alexander knows better than most people how much impact a single television character can have. She’s actually got the data to prove it. Her production company, Color Farm Media, founded in 2017, commissioned a study to prove what they called the “Maxine Shaw Effect” — the phenomenon in which people, particularly Black women, were inspired to pursue professional careers because of Alexander’s character on Living Single. The results were striking — not only do people like Stacey Abrams and Ayanna Pressley say that Maxine inspired them, but 79 percent of Black women respondents said Maxine had motivated them in some way.

“I did that character so long ago, and then over the years, people started to grow up and tell me not only ‘I really think that’s funny’ but ‘I felt I could because of that character,’” Alexander says. Maxine lives on through the educational curriculum Alexander developed with Color Farm Media and the rewatch podcast Reliving Single, which Alexander co-hosts with her former costar Kim Coles. (Alexander says the show will hopefully return to recap the second season.)

But despite all of that, Alexander says that Maxine and her inspirational status are “none of my business,” particularly as an actor eager to go to work and become all kinds of people. “I don’t want to play a role model,” she says, pointing out that she just played a villain on the Apple sci-fi series Invasion. “I want to play a person that ends up being a role model only because the person was authentic.”

That ability to create an authentic person, even if with just a few lines of dialogue, has made Alexander an indispensable screen presence for decades, even when she has just a single scene or a few lines to make an impact. Take her one scene in Jordan Peele’s Get Out, playing what could be an anonymous cop character and spending most of the scene just silently reacting to Lil Rel Howrey — then landing one of the movie’s best jokes before the scene’s end.

As an actor for hire on a wide range of projects, Alexander describes herself as “a tool in someone else’s toolbox.” But as a self-described control freak, she also admits, “I don’t just want to be a hammer sometimes — I want to be the architect.” That’s part of the origin story of Color Farm, which backed the documentary John Lewis: Good Trouble, the Reliving Single podcast, and the true-crime Audible Original Finding Tamika.

“We made a neo-noir ghost story,” Alexander says proudly of the award-winning project, about the disappearance of a 24-year-old Black woman in 2004. “Nobody believed that I could do that at the time. I’m glad I got a chance to work that muscle out.”

Her work at Color Farm continues, but she’s also happily back in someone else’s toolbox for Reggie Dinkins, challenging her comedy skills in ways she never could have imagined back on the Living Single set.

“Living Single felt like I was on stage — this feels like I’m in a kitchen which just happens to have cameras in it,” she says of the single-camera comedy, which mostly takes place in Reggie’s New Jersey mansion. With the faux-documentary cameras capable of following them anywhere, she says, “There are no rules. I don’t know what Tracy’s going to do — I’m waiting with bated breath sometimes.”

Reporting to set every day with Saturday Night Live veterans like Morgan and Bobby Moynihan, each of whom is capable of seemingly anything, Alexander says she and Radcliffe sometimes catch each other’s eyes to marvel at what they’re witnessing.

“Daniel and I get along very well because I think sometimes we look at each other like, ‘Mate, you all right?’ We don’t know what’s coming next.”

Right now, that’s literal. Reggie Dinkins has strong ratings — its premiere episode was the most-watched television comedy broadcast of the 2025-26 season — but has yet to be renewed for a second season. In the meantime, the cast group chat is going strong, with everyone wearing the custom necklaces that were gifts from Morgan; Alexander does an exceptional impression of the actor greeting people on the set, “Your first time you visit the set, you’re a visitor. The next time, you’re family.”

I tell Alexander I’ll do my best to spread the word and make that second season a reality, and she responds by describing the Reggie Dinkins team with a phrase she’d earlier used to describe her own work: “They come in peace.” She continues, “They’ve put a lot of time and energy into their craft, and they are very intentional in trying to share something in the world, the only way they can.”

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I host the Ankler Agenda podcast and wrote about Taylor Frankie Paul and Disney’s Bachelorette mess, and millennials’ challenges and Gen Z’s entry pains in the current jobs landscape.

On Saturday, the Writers Guild of America held a Zoom for its 11,000 members about the tentative bargaining agreement it inked after three short weeks at the negotiating table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Led by WGA East president Tom Fontana, WGAE exec director Sam Wheeler, WGA West president Michele Mulroney and the entire negotiating committee (including WGAW exec director Ellen Stutzman and co-chairs John August and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel), the 30-minute presentation was followed by an hour of questions, largely about the new healthcare provisions provided by a $321 million infusion from the studios into the guild’s struggling health plan.

Unlike 2023, a strike was averted.

But as members dug into the details, a more complicated picture emerged — one that for many feels less like a victory than a recalibration of what it means to actually survive in the business (and survive in America). Writers will see higher premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, but more tellingly, eligibility just got harder in a climate where work is scarcer. “Sticker shock,” more than one member tells me.

Several members say they’re seriously weighing a “no” vote on the deal, which must still be ratified. (Voting begins Thursday and ends April 24.)

Still, “I think it’s about as good a deal as we could get in the current economy,” says showrunner Joe Henderson (Lucifer), summing up the sentiment many others shared with me.

Marc Guggenheim, creator of the Arrowverse, concurs: “The additional year and healthcare [out-of-pocket costs] are bitter pills to swallow. But there was no alternative or a better outcome. For 20 years, at least, the WGA had located all their leverage in the threat of a strike — and we obviously didn’t have that this year.”

Today I get into the good, bad and inconclusive of the deal — and who it benefits — including:

• Healthcare “sticker shock”: rising premiums, deductibles and how the plan now compares to a typical U.S. employer offering

• Why qualifying for healthcare just got harder — and how a writing dry spell will be more costly than ever

• Growing concerns that the deal protects “the 1 percent, the 2 percent” while squeezing out working- and middle-class writers

• If/come deal changes and what they mean for rank-and-file writers

• Why AI largely got a pass in this negotiation

• The view from SAG-AFTRA, which sits back down with the AMPTP soon, on whether a four-year deal adds up

• How the WGA West staff strike has rankled members and its impact on the deal (it’s not just optics)

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Image credits: Science Photo Library/Getty Images; Jay Radhakrishnan/Getty Images; Johner Images/Getty Images; Norman Posselt/Getty Images

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I host the Ankler Agenda podcast and wrote about Taylor Frankie Paul and Disney’s Bachelorette mess, and millennials’ challenges and Gen Z’s entry pains in the current jobs landscape.

On Saturday, the Writers Guild of America held a Zoom for its 11,000 members about the tentative bargaining agreement it inked after three short weeks at the negotiating table with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Led by WGA East president Tom Fontana, WGAE exec director Sam Wheeler, WGA West president Michele Mulroney and the entire negotiating committee (including WGAW exec director Ellen Stutzman and co-chairs John August and Danielle Sanchez-Witzel), the 30-minute presentation was followed by an hour of questions, largely about the new healthcare provisions provided by a $321 million infusion from the studios into the guild’s struggling health plan.

Unlike 2023, a strike was averted.

But as members dug into the details, a more complicated picture emerged — one that for many feels less like a victory than a recalibration of what it means to actually survive in the business (and survive in America). Writers will see higher premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, but more tellingly, eligibility just got harder in a climate where work is scarcer. “Sticker shock,” more than one member tells me.

Several members say they’re seriously weighing a “no” vote on the deal, which must still be ratified. (Voting begins Thursday and ends April 24.)

Still, “I think it’s about as good a deal as we could get in the current economy,” says showrunner Joe Henderson (Lucifer), summing up the sentiment many others shared with me.

Marc Guggenheim, creator of the Arrowverse, concurs: “The additional year and healthcare [out-of-pocket costs] are bitter pills to swallow. But there was no alternative or a better outcome. For 20 years, at least, the WGA had located all their leverage in the threat of a strike — and we obviously didn’t have that this year.”

Today I get into the good, bad and inconclusive of the deal — and who it benefits — including:

• Healthcare “sticker shock”: rising premiums, deductibles and how the plan now compares to a typical U.S. employer offering

• Why qualifying for healthcare just got harder — and how a writing dry spell will be more costly than ever

• Growing concerns that the deal protects “the 1 percent, the 2 percent” while squeezing out working- and middle-class writers

• If/come deal changes and what they mean for rank-and-file writers

• Why AI largely got a pass in this negotiation

• The view from SAG-AFTRA, which sits back down with the AMPTP soon, on whether a four-year deal adds up

• How the WGA West staff strike has rankled members and its impact on the deal (it’s not just optics)

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Where it was great to have another Masters to remember this weekend on CBS — and an even more impressive back-to-back win today.

An inspiration to always keep at it, and just do the work. Well done, Rory!

ALSO: The judge in the NEXSTAR / TEGNA case extended his TRO against the deal another week on Friday, as he decides whether to issue a preliminary injunction to halt the deal based on DIRECTV’s lawsuit.

GOOD NEWS: Well, for pawn shop owners — they’ve seen a spike in the number of folks coming in for loans over the past month.

• So, while Americans may have seen a bit of a bump in their tax returns this year due to Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill . . . it seems a lot of it is going right back into their gas tank due to Trump’s, uh, other ongoing actions.

AND: The Zac Brown Band will headline the UFC’s Freedom 250 Fan Fest at The Ellipse in D.C. on June 13 (the day before the White House fight). The event is free, but folks will need to register to get tickets/entry.

THEN: The WSJ has a look at the state of the MUBI business after a 2025 that saw revenue at $200M but a net loss of -$7.3M, as well as an SVOD subscriber dip to 1.2M despite a goal of hitting 2M — plus, the blowback effects from its $100M SEQUOIA investment at a $1B valuation.

OH: I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear FIFA found another way to both gouge and screw over soccer fans this summer on tickets.

WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL

Well, the 34% bears take it on UNI’s You Me & Tuscany this weekend, and given the total — we’ll give it to both 34% groups.

NOTE FOR THE WEEK AHEAD

I’ll be out at CINEMACON all week in Vegas — so this week’s editions will be very focused on the studio presentations, as I’ll be off my usual writing schedule (and usual writing time zone in the mornings).

FINALLY — A REASSURING NOTE

If you could use some faith restored in the world these days — I highly recommend this 60 Minutes piece below from last Sunday about a medical program called RAM (Remote Area Medical) that gives care to those in need at a variety of weekend clinics in mostly rural areas around the U.S.

It succeeds thanks to medical professionals flying themselves to other areas of the country to give their time and expertise, particularly in vision and dental care, so that folks can see correctly again and get much needed oral care — typically things that even people “with insurance” don’t have coverage for.

It’s heartening to see folks helping others out of their own pocket and generosity, from the doctors to the donors — the majority of which are small donations from fellow Americans.

🎥 THE BOX OFFICE

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Headed to CinemaCon? Keep an eye out for Richard Rushfield, Sean McNulty and Matthew Frank, who’ll be in Vegas to take in all the exclusive screenings, star turns, theater news and — Richard’s specialty — snack innovations at the massive cinema confab. Matthew’s reporting last week on the power of fandoms should give all those studio execs prowling Caes…

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I wrote about the Pitt casting controversy, dug into what’s taking Peter Friedlander so long to set TV strategy at Amazon, and interviewed legendary TV creator David E. Kelley. I’m lesley.goldberg@theankler.com

TGIF, Series Business readers!

What a week of news! From the WGA’s surprise deal with the AMPTP (without so much as a strike-authorization vote by the guild) to Jeff Shell’s resignation at Paramount (which sources say has no plans to replace him) to the DOJ revealing its investigation into NFL media deals as a violation of antitrust laws — it’s been a lot. And I’m not even touching the U.S./Israel and Iran mess (though I will join the chorus complaining about gas prices and the fact that it cost me north of $100 to fill up my wife’s SUV).

Today, I dig into another entertainment headline making a splash: CBS’ deal to rent its late-night slots to Byron Allen. I’ve also got a scoop about two ex-Kennedy Center creatives plotting their next venture and a wrap on a brilliant season of my favorite show currently airing.

Let’s get to it.

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I’ve written about why Wall Street soured on Paramount-WBD, shrinking TV news salaries and the Paramount spin doctors who waged a shadow war for Warner Bros. Discovery. I also write The Media Mix newsletter.

Jack Schlossberg is mad about it. So is Daryl Hannah. But what does the former staff of George magazine think about the just-finished mega-hit FX series Love Story, following John Kennedy Jr.’s romance with Carolyn Bessette, the Calvin Klein PR executive who became his wife?

Everybody, it seems, has a take on the glamorous couple, but ask the George alums for their thoughts on the show and many will demur, explaining that they’d like to keep the memory of their former boss preserved in their own minds, or that they just don’t want to comment — or, in many cases, that they haven’t even watched the series, which aired its final, heartbreaking installment on March 26 (the most-watched episode of FX’s most-watched limited series ever).

There’s a kind of omerta about John and Carolyn.

Ryan Murphy’s series focuses on the couple’s life together in a nine-episode arc that has sparked a wild international frenzy of interest about them and all things ’90s — a time before smartphones, when the World Trade Center was still standing and glossies were gigantic.

George, Kennedy’s iconoclastic pop culture-meets-politics magazine, launched in September 1995, the heart of this golden age, when covers like Demi Moore’s bold turn on Vanity Fair, pregnant and nude, became news events, reported on by television networks and Entertainment Tonight. Magazine executives were icons of the decade: Anna Wintour at Vogue, Tina Brown and then Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair. On one end of the gender wars stood Gloria Steinem’s Ms.; on the other, Helen Gurley Brown’s Cosmopolitan. Magazines and newspapers set the cultural power agenda across New York and well beyond the reaches of the looming internet.

Kennedy, already a native of the circles that orbited around these publications, began pitching his own up and down Manhattan in the early ’90s. He had conceived of George in conversation with his mother, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who described it as Mad magazine for politics, according to the book Fairytale Interrupted, penned by RoseMarie Terenzio, Kennedy’s former executive assistant.

No one was willing to gamble on Kennedy’s vision until he connected with David Pecker, the mustachioed CEO of Hachette Filipacchi, who immediately saw how the magazine could open doors — for himself and the company. Pecker committed around $30 million to the title, even though it was initially viewed as an unserious venture with no obvious niche.

George’s first issue — famously fronted by Cindy Crawford costumed as George Washington — carried more than 100 pages of ads and an interview conducted by Kennedy, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, with former Alabama Governor George Wallace. At a launch event at Manhattan’s Federal Hall — where Washington took the oath of office in 1789 — Kennedy acknowledged that his name would help George break through, but told the press, “This magazine is going to stand or fall on whether or not it’s a good magazine.”

The magazine, with a cover price of $2.95, picked up nearly 500,000 readers after just a few issues — a remarkable clip. Newsstand sales outpaced single-copy sales of both Time and Newsweek. Not everyone was impressed. The Los Angeles Times called it a “magazine of politics lite.”

Love Story shows Kennedy and his co-founders pitching the title at Michael’s restaurant, the famed media industry hang-out (seated in the coveted power table in the front window, no less), and Kennedy wrestling (at one point, literally) with his partner, Michael Berman, both under stress from different directions to make the project a success. While it faced financial headwinds almost from the get-go, George also became a launching pad: intern Sasha Issenberg is now a managing editor of Politico. Ned Martel went on to work in Hollywood as a producer alongside Ryan Murphy, Josh Young later wrote five New York Times best-selling books. And Gary Ginsberg, senior editor and legal counsel at George, became a top consigliere to Rupert Murdoch and Time Warner’s Jeff Bewkes.

Kennedy’s death on July 16, 1999 — in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard that also killed Carolyn and her sister, Lauren Bessette — united the George staff forever in grief. For some, Love Story has reignited the trauma of the moment when their 38-year-old boss and friend was suddenly, tragically gone.

I reached out to as many former George staffers and executives as I could find, to speak with those who had watched at least some of the series, and to make sense of what was being said about Kennedy, the magazine and the scar they still carry.

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‘It’s Still Painful for All of Us’

Richard Bradley, the George executive editor who wrote American Son: A Portrait of John Kennedy Jr., has watched only the first episode of Love Story, which begins with a scene from the couple’s final day. We see Bessette in a nail salon changing her mind about her polish color, then a quick marital spat at Essex County Airport — before the action flashes back to the story of how she and Kennedy were introduced by Calvin Klein at a party.

Bradley’s office was next to Kennedy’s on the 41st floor of the Hachette building at 1633 Broadway — the former Regardie’s magazine editor got hired after he wrote Kennedy a letter about joining George. “It just threw me more than expected,” he says of the series, adding that he couldn’t watch more episodes by himself. He adds, “I need to watch with my wife to convey the trauma I’m going through. It’s still painful for all of us who worked at George.” Lisa Dallos, who worked as the magazine’s PR director, also hasn’t watched. “Someday I will, when I’m in the right mindset,” she tells me.

The team at the magazine was uniquely close, Bradley says, because of how Kennedy made everyone feel: “It wasn’t a typical business relationship. We all cared for him a lot, and we were very conscious of the fact he lived a life under enormous pressure and scrutiny. He often seemed to care much more about our well-being than his own, and you couldn’t help being moved by that.”

Ann Coulter, the conservative political commentator who was a regular George contributor, recalls Kennedy’s leadership similarly. “He put together a really good office, and anyone will tell you a lot are still friends and have gone on to have terrific careers and are really sorry it didn’t continue,” she recalls. “He made politics fun.” Terenzio wrote in Fairytale Interrupted that JFK Jr.’s sister, Caroline Kennedy, visited the George offices several times and likewise found it entertaining.

But unlike many of her former colleagues, Coulter actually watched Love Story — and came away surprised.

She found the series mostly accurate.

But others who were close to Kennedy — including one former top executive scheduled to meet him the day he died and would later attend the funeral— have a far more complicated reaction to what the show gets right… and what it gets very wrong.

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Where I wish a happy Masters weekend to all. Especially, of course, to those folks who spent tens of thousands of 💰 to fly the PJ 🛩️ to Georgia to watch golf.

But ya gotta love a tournament that draws 4,000+ PJs 🛩️ to a small Georgia town, then charges those folks just $6 for a beer. Although — even The Masters doesn’t seem to be immune from possible tariff inflation!

The price of a “Masters Gnome” went up $10 this year! One of these little guys will set you back a whole $60 — if you’re able to get your hands on one of course (they sell out early).

YEAH: If you needed another reason not to be in NYC July 4th weekend — according to Page Six, Taylor & Travis have set July 3 in NYC as their wedding plan choice (location TBA), which I’m sure will make the tourist situation even more enjoyable than usual.

• Add that on top of the World Cup madness, where NJ commuters won’t be able to get on NJ TRANSIT trains in Penn Station starting up to 4 hours before matches on game days.

OH: L.A. folks — you’re gonna have to pay to go to your FIFA World Cup Fan Fest event this summer during the tournament too, as the city joins NYC in charging tickets to the festivities.

• The events have typically been free hangs in other editions around the world that fans look forward to going to, so they can hang with other fans and meet folks from different parts of the world etc. — but as FIFA is providing little to no 💰 assistance to cities for things like security . . . yeah, welcome to America. Is it now possible to be less than excited about this event this summer due to FIFA’s ineptitude and blatant greed?

ALSO: As expected, Trump’s Iran war pushed inflation over 3% in March to 3.3%.

SPEAKING OF: YOUTUBE is going Hollywood, and joining the #pricehike train — YT Premium will now be $16 a month, and the Lite version will be $9 a month. YT Music Premium is also now $12 a month (SPOTIFY is up to $13 a month). The changes will hit the June billing cycle.

PLUS: Welcome to the NFL, NFL — the DOJ is now investigating the league over antitrust concerns around its media deals, as the league is conveniently in the midst of talks with CBS about a new deal, and with FOX thought to be on deck — 2 networks at parent companies with strong ties to the Trump administration.

• The NFL, of course, is the only sport that makes a point of putting every team’s games on free local TV in their respective home markets.

YES: OPENAI has lowered the minimum ad spend to participate in its burgeoning advertising business from about $200k/$250k to $50k, as it launches its own ads manager interface for pilot program participants, per Digiday. However, it’s still sticking with its high CPMs detailed in the piece.

AND: Pink will be your Tony Awards host this year.

GOOD NEWS: COMCAST is remaking the cable TV bundle in streaming! Those crafty Philly fellas. COMCAST broadband and TV bundle subs can now add on a bunch of streamer bundles — all ad-tier only (although APPLE TV has no ads).

• The biggest one is $35 a month: NETFLIX, PEACOCK, APPLE TV, DIS+, HULU, HBO MAX — which is a 39% discount, not bad!

• There are other, smaller, various streamer combos listed here for lower prices.

• NOTE: AMAZON PV and PAR+ are not in any of them, so throw on another $18 to any plan to get all the biggies . . . which makes it $53, or essentially what we all used to pay for cable TV about 20 years ago.

• Again, these packages are only available to COMCAST broadband and cable TV bundle subs.

WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL

Gonna join the mild optimists on UNI’s You, Me & Tuscany this weekend.

NEW POD

THANKS!: To the folks at FOCUS for the invite to check out the new Lorne doc at the NYC premiere last night. It’s a fun watch that also gives at least some insight into a subject who’ll always be an enigma — even if, like me, you saw all the PEACOCK SNL50 docs last year, too (this is also, thankfully, not primarily a clip-heavy retrospective of the show).

I recommend checking it out this month, and yes, Lorne himself was down there in the audience somewhere (along with David Letterman and Anna Wintour, uh, separately, and SNL mainstays like Robert Smigel and Jim Downey), as were many of the current SNL cast who had yet to see the doc either.

🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN

CINEMACON Predictions: What to Expect in Vegas Next Week

The movie business’ biggest annual gathering starts on Monday! If you see a 6’4 bald guy who looks like he writes a daily newsletter column doing a lot of stretching in the corridors and cocktail parties after the 2.5-hour panels — be sure to say hi!

So, let’s take a look at the theatrical movie business themes we’ll likely see and hear most at CINEMACON in Las Vegas next week from our Hollywood studios and CINEMA UNITED execs in their pitches to America’s movie theater owners.

Plus, a studio-by-studio wish list of trailer looks (and talent on stage) that I hope we get to see from the various presentations . . . as Hollywood looks to hype up their esteemed longtime business partners for the year ahead.

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The tentative deal between the Writers Guild and Hollywood’s major studios has quelled fears of another strike — all while shaking up the major guilds’ contract cycle. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey break down the key terms, including a $321 million infusion into the WGA health plan (alongside higher deductibles and premiums) and a shift to a four-year bargaining agreement rather than the usual three. The deal — and its limited movement on AI — will shape not just the upcoming SAG-AFTRA and DGA negotiations, but the industry’s broader trajectory. Plus, the trio looks at a rare bright spot: Box office ticket sales are up 23 percent year over year, fueled by hits like Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Project Hail Mary and other family-friendly fare.

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Whether you’re fully up to date on the name of every international auteur or, like me, constantly surprised by names as they emerge, the announcement of the Cannes Film Festival is a cause for celebration. Revealed this morning by festival head Thierry Frémaux, the lineup had the usual mix of long-rumored sure thing contenders and total surprises, leaning heavily on European and Asian filmmakers. For the first time since 2010, there’s just one American film in competition right now (Ira Sachs’ latest, which I’ll get into below; the hope from Frémaux himself is that James Gray’s Paper Tiger will also find its way to the competition slate shortly). Still, there are plenty of major names in the mix, from familiar stars working with acclaimed auteurs (Sebastian Stan and Cristian Mungiu, Rami Malek and Sachs) to directors whose breakthrough moments may finally have arrived.

Obviously, we don’t know yet if any of these movies will be any good! The festival itself doesn’t kick off until May 12, and every year it launches at least one film from a revered director that flops spectacularly. (Former Palme d’Or winner Julia Ducournau’s Alpha was last year’s version, if you need a reminder, and who could forget 2024’s Francis Ford Coppola boondoggle, Megalopolis.) But for now, these titles are nothing but potential, either as future arthouse favorites or, as is almost inevitable these days, Oscar contenders. Here are nine Cannes movies I’m particularly eager to hear all about.

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The Man I Love (dir. Ira Sachs)

Rami Malek won an Oscar for Bohemian Rhapsody, but this could be the musical that wins him true cinephile cred. Sachs, a revered New York-based indie filmmaker, returns to Cannes with what’s described as a “musical fantasy,” starring Malek alongside Tom Sturridge, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Rebecca Hall (she was terrific in Sachs’ last film, the little-seen Peter Hujar’s Day). Malek plays a downtown New York artist in the 1980s-set film, “in an extraordinary moment between great illness and death when, still, all beauty and love is possible.”

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Fjord (dir. Cristian Mungiu)

We’ve already got a first-look image at this film from the Romanian director, who won the Palme d’Or in 2007 with 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, and is working with major stars for the first time. Recent Oscar nominees Renate Reinsve and Sebastian Stan — unrecognizable with a shaved head! — star in the family drama set in Norway, about a family who moves there from Romania. (Stan, who moved to the United States from Romania as a child, will presumably have a lot of interviews ahead about returning to his roots.) Neon, which has distributed an absurd six consecutive Palme d’Or winners, snatched this one up last year.

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Sheep in the Box (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda)

There are no big-name stars in this sci-fi drama, but Kore-eda — who won the Palme d’Or for Shoplifters in 2018 — is the big draw here. The story has a lot of promise, too, sounding like a riff on Steven Spielberg’s A.I., in which a couple grieving the death of their son adopt a humanoid robot to replace him. Kore-eda has been critically adored for decades but has yet to have the kind of big awards season breakout that other international auteurs have enjoyed in recent years. It’s just a hunch for now, but it really feels like this could be Kore-eda’s moment. (If you can believe it, Neon has the North American rights for this one, too. Crazy, I know.)

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The Unknown (dir. Arthur Harari)

After winning the Oscar for co-writing Anatomy of a Fall with his partner, Justine Triet, Harari is stepping into the director’s chair (with Triet as a co-writer) for The Unknown. The film stars Léa Seydoux, and Harari has described it as a mixture of “realistic urban chronicle, fantasy film, investigation, melodrama and daydream.” There’s also apparently a body-swap angle! Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Neon has the North American rights.

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Fatherland (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski)

Speaking of Anatomy of a Fall: Riding high as the co-star of one of the most successful movies of the year, Sandra Hüller will return to Cannes with something completely different. Working with Pawlikowski, a best director Oscar nominee for Cold War and the director of international feature winner Ida, Hüller plays the daughter of the author Thomas Mann (played by Hanns Zischler) on a Cold War-era road trip from East to West Germany. Mubi has this one in North America (and also picked up Hüller’s Berlin winner Rose; busy year for her!).

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The Black Ball (dirs. Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo)

The director duo known as “Los Javis” has long been a big deal in Spain, so well-known that they serve as judges on the Spanish versions of The Masked Singer and Drag Race, and their Madrid home has been featured in Architectural Digest. They announced their breakup as romantic partners while The Black Ball was still in production, which made national headlines, but they still intend to work together and are likely to have a major international breakthrough. The Black Ball, set across different decades and described as “exploring the interconnected lives of three gay men,” stars the single-named Spanish musician Guitarricadelafuente, plus the Oscar-winning Penélope Cruz and the legendary Glenn Close. It’s impossible to know what we’re in for with this one — exactly the joy of a proper Cannes discovery.

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Coward (dir. Lukas Dhont)

The Belgian director of Cannes hits Girl and Close returns with a World War I drama that seems a little more focused on the emotions than the bloodshed; as the logline puts it, “Pierre, a young Belgian soldier, wants to prove himself on the battlefield during the First World War. Behind the frontlines, he meets Francis, who is asked to find a way to boost morale.” Following the Cannes announcement, the film released a first-look image featuring almost entirely men’s faces, with no gun, tank or trench in sight. Given that 1917 and All Quiet on the Western Front have covered that territory extremely well in recent years, a different angle on the horrors of war sounds like exactly the right approach.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (dir. Jane Schoenbrun)

All of the other titles mentioned here are in the festival’s main competition slate and in the running for the Palme d’Or, but the Un Certain Regard sidebar section has a handful of intriguing titles as well. Schoenbrun, whose I Saw the TV Glow was a thrilling breakthrough in 2024, is back with what the film’s trailer describes as “a new kind of horror remake,” whatever that means! Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson are on board, and I’m one of many people who were both spooked by I Saw the TV Glow and were ready to eagerly sit down for whatever Schoebrun made next. Their previous two films debuted at Sundance, and Cannes now feels like a well-deserved leveling up. (Camp Miasma, a Mubi release, will hit theaters this summer.)

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Club Kid (dir. Jordan Firstman)

I confess I had no idea that I Love L.A. star and internet shit-stirrer Firstman had even directed a film, much less one that was headed to Cannes. Starring alongside Cara Delevingne and Diego Calva, Firstman plays “a washed-up underground party promoter whose life takes an unexpected turn when he’s forced to look after a son that he never knew he had.” It’s always hard to know what to expect from a directorial debut, but the Cannes stamp of approval suggests this one might deserve the spotlight.

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Save the Dates

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Tuesday that next year’s Oscars will take place on March 14, you might have thought from the reactions that they’d canceled the thing entirely.

“What a shame,” tweeted my pal Sean Fennessey. “I’M GONNA SCREAM, THIS IS TOO LATE,” my friend Esther Zuckerman texted me.

March 14 is a day earlier than the Oscars happened this year, but there did seem to be a growing consensus in the final weeks of this season that the entire awards race had dragged on way too long. You hear this complaint every year — my colleague Richard Rushfield has been all over it, even literally today — but the complicated Jenga of precursor awards and events makes it almost impossible to tweak. You can’t start handing out awards until the movie year is over, and if you’re going to have time for the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, a slew of guild awards and fit the Super Bowl and Grammys in the TV calendar, you’re gonna wind up in late February at the earliest.

As if to prove that setting the date of the Oscars affects a whole lot of other groups, the Producers Guild followed up hours later by announcing the date for their own awards show — Saturday, Feb. 27, if you’re marking your calendar.

The Academy did us the favor of announcing the date for the 2028 Oscars, which was bumped up a bit earlier to March 5, for their last year airing on ABC. (The PGA Awards will be on Feb. 19 that year.) Among the many questions we now have about Oscar’s future on YouTube and at the Peacock Theater, we can wonder if the Oscars date might eventually move up as well.

They experimented with an earlier date in the relatively recent past, holding the 2020 Oscars on Feb. 9 — an incredibly lucky move given the global pandemic that would have disrupted the entire thing if it had happened in March. If it was an effort to boost ratings, though, it failed, with the numbers down 20 percent from the previous year. And with less time to host precursor awards shows, cocktail receptions, parties, screenings and all the other smaller satellite events around the great planet of the Oscars, the financial engine that is Oscar campaign season had no time to truly get off the ground.

Do regular people who tune in for the Oscars care at all about the economic impact of these FYC events? Of course not. But if moving the Oscars up to early February didn’t get more people to tune in back in 2020, why would we think it would make a difference now, with the viewing audience even more fractured? Awards season fatigue is real, but it may also just be inevitable. And if we could all get as excited as we did to see Michael B. Jordan win an Oscar for a movie that had been out for nearly a year, maybe the fatigue isn’t that big a problem anyway.

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Welcome to the Jamboree, my weekly takes on the industry’s passing parade.

Today, Jeff Shell’s second fall from the top, Zendaya’s total dominance, Netflix’s price revolt in Italy — and that baffling Oscars move.

But first.

Way back on Tuesday, I wrote about how Hollywood’s conversations around AI had broken down completely — devolving into a primal scream about the terrors of the age, and a moral panic desperately searching for witches to burn at the stake.

If you doubt the latter, check out the reaction on your favorite social network to Steven Soderbergh’s mention to Filmmaker that he had used some AI tools in his new film about John Lennon and Yoko Ono:

AI has been helpful in creating thematically surreal images that occupy a dream space rather than a literal space. And that’s been really fun because you need a Ph.D. in literature to tell it what to do. But like every other piece of technology, it desperately requires very close human supervision.

If there’s a director on earth who deserves the benefit of the doubt that he is genuinely interested in exploring the artistic possibilities of innovation and not just looking to turn a quick buck, it is Soderbergh.

But now he’ll be lucky if he can show his face at Café Gratitude again.

As I wrote, the shouting into the void is extremely understandable. It’s just not productive at a time when we need to hunker down and find actionable approaches to this fast — like now, before the AI tsunami just washes us all away.

The problem is, when all we’re doing is screaming, we’re neither stopping the bad, nor harnessing the good — and Hollywood badly needs to do both things.

Today’s leading example of how off the rails the dialogue has gone is the new WGA contract, whose details were released yesterday. Of all the guilds, the WGA should be right at the forefront of this discussion — even leading it.

But three years ago, when the last contract was hammered out, coming out of the strike, all they could manage to do was basically kick the AI can down the road.

Well, they’ve had three years to look more closely at what really matters and what we really need to stand up against in these developments. Yet when the WGA announced last weekend that it had reached a new contract, it didn’t provide any details about its provisions on AI.

On Tuesday, I wrote:

We’ll see in the details of the WGA deal whether they made any significant advances on these things rather than… agreeing to form a task force to create a report to submit to a committee to put to a debate.

I tend to think that if they had made any real breakthrough, we would have heard about it by now.

If there isn’t something concrete, chalk it up to moral panic — our inability to focus on problems that can actually be solved, and solved quickly. If we can’t get it together to throw down some basic markers, AI will run us right over just like the last dozen plagues that descended on this industry.

Well, lo and behold. They’ve done it again.

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