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 TUESDAY, December 17, 2024.

Where you can add Ted Sarandos to the parade of CEOs (or uh, co-CEOs) taking the direct JETBLUE flight to West Palm Beach for a Trump sitdown.

He’s following TIKTOK CEO Shou Zi Chew who had a sit down yesterday, and I’m guessing the Lohan Christmas movie did not come up in conversation like it will with Ted.

YUP: The Trump press lawsuit brigade got a new addition — this time the Des Moines Register (and parent company GANNETT), involving a polling story in Iowa.

AH: UNI is now calling the 2nd Wicked movie, uh, Wicked: For Good even though we’ll all still call it Wicked 2.

OH BOY: Better hope your kids age out of Bluey by 2027 — DISNEY and the BBC are doing a Bluey movie from series creator Joe Brumm.

WELL: One benefit of a NBA Emirates Cup final matchup featuring the . . . MILWAUKEE BUCKS and OKC THUNDER —tickets starting at just $36 are still available for the game tonight in Vegas. No mention of a free buffet.

That’s down about 40% from last year’s game which featured the LAKERS, so yeah — Vegas is totally a hoops town ready for its own NBA team.

ALSO: Now here’s an idea — a real estate/home-searching site that also shows you how the area voted (although it’s still kinda in beta and only focusing on certain areas to start).

INTRO: OPENAI’s SORA . . . meet GOOGLE’s VEO 2 🤝— that’s its new video-generating AI “tool” that definitely didn’t use copyrighted material (or all of your YOUTUBE videos) to “learn” from.

AND: The Khloé in Wonder Land Kardashian pod will launch Jan. 8, with episodes having an exclusive 24 hours on X before hitting other usual modes of distro.

HUH: Some college football coaches are now giving back some of their multi-million 💰 salaries in order to help their programs better compete in offering NIL money to recruits to improve their teams.

Thus hopefully they get to keep the rest of the millions they’re paid by having a better team. Always nice when tides shift in a labor market.

THEN: APPLE TV+ renewed Silo for 2 more seasons, and the 4th will be its last — always nice when the head of programming shows full support.

HUH: The Yellowstone finale got 11.4M views on Sunday night across PAR NETWORK and CMT (again, this is VIDEOAMP data, not NIELSEN).

Comps are tough because PAR airs the show across practically all of its networks for the season premieres . . . but the 11.4M does match the 4-day average viewership for the first 4 episodes from this season 5B.
No matter how you cut it — this is the top scripted series on linear TV by a margin.

OH: Kristen Bell will host the SAG Awards in February.