Evenin! 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 SUNDAY, July 26, 2026.
Where hopefully everyone enjoyed traveling to D.C. to get insulted by the President of the United States for a full hour this weekend. Gonna guess Nikki Glaser’s career is still quite safe.
Then again, maybe it was his delivery? He followed up one of . . . what sounds like pretty much all of his jokes falling on deaf ears by saying, “Does anybody get that? I thought that was actually great. That was actually the only thing I thought was good in this whole frickin’ stupid speech.”
Can’t wait to see what 2027’s #nerdprom festivities look like.
KUDOS: To Nicole Sperling for this great NYT read looking at the creative and economic aspects behind the movie theater popcorn bucket ecosystem.
- AMC THEATRES expects the buckets (and accompanying popcorn) to add $100M to its 2026 bottom line, or 2x what it was in 2023, and CINEMARK said the buckets boosted its merch revenue line by 40% in 2025.
THEN: Sports is really leading the Upfronts as negotiations begin to wrap up — streaming-less cable TV networks are going last — although it sounds like sports rights holders had to temper their red-hot price increase expectations with media buyers, according to Digiday.
- Total upfront dollar commitments were slightly down YoY, although that could partly be due to the state of economic uncertainty.
AND: PARAMOUNT+ is launching a free tier (of sorts) in Q3 on the mobile app, allowing folks to watch select movies and shows for free if they set up a registered account. So, kinda similar to the PAR+/SHO series sampling that PAR has employed on PLUTO for a few years . . . but just in the PAR+ ecosystem.
OH: METS fans — here’s how the team’s finances are looking YoY across things like parking, concessions, ticket revenue and more at CITI FIELD.
REST IN PEACE: Goes out to director Chuck Russell, who died at the age of 74 last week, and helmed a couple of the mid-’90s big hits in The Mask and Eraser and was also a producer on one of my personal favorites, the 1986 classic Back to School.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE PREDICTION
The Odyssey did really well again! I’m a genius.
🎥 The Box Office
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