☀️ 10 Things Hollywood Actually Got Right in 2025
TITKOK adds microdramas / CFP 🏈 sees 1st round dip / ‘25 TV audience rankings
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 Wednesday, December 31, 2025.
Where let’s round out the year with some good news that, yes, is rather on brand for the good news we’ve had throughout 2025 — the 500 wealthiest people in the world got $2.2T richer!
About $520B of that was just from 8 people, including one trying to buy a movie studio (and you wonder why WBD keeps alluding to asking for more money?), and another guy who bought one about 4 years ago. See, Hollywood? You’re still wanted!
I mean, you don’t see these kind of offers for SNAP out there (market cap $14B, about the same as PSKY).
But ya know, it’s asking CA billionaires to pay a one-time 5% tax that’s really the problem in this country (can’t you see by those 2025 revenue gains that things are tight!?).
Although, hey, let’s round out on a positive note — half of that $2.2T was in the U.S. (Canada was also lumped in, but, ya know), so . . . #USA!USA!
SPEAKING OF WBD: It’s still acting “as if,” renewing its deal with CANAL+ and adding HBO MAX distro in Austria and Belgium as well.
THEN: TIKTOK is adding a “TIKTOK Minis” section to watch microdramas (and play ‘mini games’), according to BI. It’ll feature several microdrama apps where you can watch episodes for free before having to pay to unlock more (with TT presumably taking a cut 🫰) . . . but you have to search for “minis” to find them — it’s not a main app UI addition.
China’s BYTEDANCE app has long featured the ability to watch such programming, where it is far more popular.
AH: The stage at the Kennedy Center is now open tonight if you’re waiting for your big chance! Add a NYE veteran jazz ensemble performance to the growing list of acts canceling their appearances. FWIW, Lee Greenwood appears to be open — his next gig is at the Greater Hillsborough County Fair on Jan. 16.
YUP: The Trump-hosted Kennedy Center Honors still delivered the smallest audience ever for the event, coming in at just 3M on CBS in the official NIELSEN numbers (fast-nationals had it at 2.65M, and I broke down the context on Sunday). Reruns of High Potential won the timeslot on ABC.
HUH: FOOD52 had a wild month involving a major lender suddenly removing funds, a bankruptcy this week and now a fire sale to the TV show America’s Test Kitchen in a $6.5M deal. THE CHERNIN GROUP bought a majority stake in FOOD52 back in 2019.
The ATK offer is a stalking-horse bid, which means that higher bids may still emerge in the coming weeks.
CEO Erika Ayers Badan indicated the company was exploring a sale about a month ago.
UH: WBD employees — too bad you don’t work for FIBREBOND. The Louisiana data center equipment maker is giving 15% of the proceeds from its $1.7B sale to David Zaslav its employees.
OH: Time to make an addition to the “Welcome to Miami” sign in Florida — Miami now has more influencers per capita than NYC or L.A. The bar for determining said influence was not clarified . . . although the data came from an influencer marketing firm, so you know it’s 💯.
L.A. still has the most in pure volume (2x Miami’s count), and NYC has 2/3 more in 2nd place for total influencers.
HA: This NYT read from their most popular stories of the year list was fun — your astrological sign is likely not correct.
ALSO: Just because we don’t talk about EWR airport much anymore . . . doesn’t mean this country still doesn’t have a huge shortfall of air traffic controllers (roughly 3,800 🤯). Anyone up for a 10-hour-a-day, 6-day-a-week gig?
Granted, the controller pay is better than the $21-ish an hour most agency assistants get in Hollywood for similar hours . . . but according to the WSJ, some American controllers have begun moving to Australia for a better life — and a 36-hour workweek.
SO: ANGEL says it now has 2M paying subs for its ANGEL GUILD program/SVOD service, up from 1M in March 2025.
Ad tier: $12/month
Ad-free: $18/month
If subs were split 50/50 between tiers (no official data is reported), that would be $360M of annual revenue on a TTM basis.
AND: It definitely pays to be funny. Here’s the revenue from November alone for the top 5 highest-grossing comedians according to Billboard (keep in mind this is ticket revenue, not what each took home . . . but still, some nice coin here):
Nate Bargatze: $13.2M from 13 shows
Matt Rife: $4.4M from 4 shows
Jo Koy: $3.4M from 10 shows
Gabriel Iglesias: $2M from 7 shows
Ricky Gervais: $1.5M from 2 shows
REST IN PEACE: Goes out to Isiah Whitlock, Jr., a frequent face in Spike Lee movies, and an actor well known to fans of Veep and The Wire. He died at the age of 71 after a brief illness.
2025 In Hollywood: Not All Terrible!
Ok, fine, Rushfield . . . yes, 2025 won’t go down in history as one of the years when Hollywood got it right in many regards, and definitely not in the broader milieus of American history and culture.
Although, I’m sure all of your 401ks (including my own) are looking a lot better today than on Jan. 1, 2025 . . . so call it as ya like #ThanksAI. Place your bets on 2026, of course.
But frankly — I challenge you to find a year where almost all aspects of our country “got it right for the most part,” and I’ll find you 5 people to tell you that you couldn’t be more wrong.
So in that spirit, I choose to end 2025 by shining a light on some positive developments this year in the business:
Let’s really look at what’s happened to Jimmy Kimmel Live’s reach since September . . . since most have forgotten to look.
Definitely some good news for writers in town this year.
As far as I could see, there were a lot of big seeds planted in U.S. production in 2025. Mind you — not cures, but I have a hard time looking at these developments and feeling the same dark nihilism that pervaded the industry over the previous 2-3 years.
The movie business seemed to finally be remembering the core audiences on which it had been built for decades.
Plus some developments at HBO, NETFLIX, APPLE and AMAZON that give me optimism, and more.
Of course, here’s hoping these all continue to grow and strengthen in 2026, and others sprout up around these developments — so, let’s dive in.