☀️AMAZON Enters Viking Era; TIKTOK Deal Extension Likely
LGF enlists Erivo for action pic / HBO + Marc Maron / MEDIAWAN buys again
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect here on LINKEDIN if ya like or email me seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com) and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on FRIDAY, March 7, 2025.
Where it’s about time I start one of these newsletters with good news for Richard (or at least that’s what he keeps reminding me about every Monday on our weekly call) — marketers are increasingly looking for more Gen X influencers!
Yes, it seems efforts to say, uh, “make soup happen” among the Gen Z contingent just isn’t working out for folks like PROGRESSIVE SOUP, so more brands are now increasingly looking to enlist Gen X social media influencers in their efforts.
Funny how the age of platform user bases works over time — it’s fun getting old isn’t it, social media? Sincerely, Network TV.
AND: PARAMOUNT has put a motion in to dismiss Trump’s 60 Minutes lawsuit, and if its not dismissed, to have the case moved to New York from Texas, where it is in the oversight of a District Judge that Trump nominated in 2017.
YEAH: SPOTIFY CEO Daniel Ek sold another $29M of SPOTIFY stock this week, making for a cool $695M sold since July 2023. Just another $5M and he gets a free 3 months of SPOTIFY!
AH: While Adrien Brody has some early convos about a role in an Evel Knievel biopic at PAR — Brutalist director Brady Corbet’s latest gig is directing BLOOMBERG MEDIA ads.
Obviously not a new trend here by any means, but just a reminder of how directors, especially on the indie stage, make their lifestyle work financially given the state of the theatrical indie business (4x Oscar-winner Sean Baker has also directed ads for TACO BELL and fashion brand KENZO).
ALSO: As the whole “TIKTOK needs to sell the U.S. business” arbitrary deadline extension has less than one month left — and very little has been done to soon have TIKTOK in accordance with U.S. law at that point — Trump just indicated that he would “probably” extend that entirely arbitrary deadline that he set in January if a deal, where there has been little to no reported movement, is not reached by April 5.
An extension whose Constitutional legality was something that many legal experts pointed out was uh . . . let’s just say questionable.
Don’t worry everyone, democracy’s going great. 🫡 Unless you’re a foreign national with a U.S. visa who has posted support of Hamas online — Marco Rubio is now looking to cancel your visa.
THEN: The NWSL ⚽️ signed a sponsorship deal with Alex Cooper’s UNWELL HYDRATION (What? This is CPG move is actually organic! Gotta keep hydrated when talking on a pod 🙄), which the WSJ puts at $3M for the season. Cooper will also appear at games in addition to overall league promotion.
PLUS: Add OREGON coach Dan Lanning to the list of head coaches making over 8-figures a year ($11M), and thus the big #lifelesson for college football players continues — for most of them, the real big money 💵 in their future . . . is in coaching.
KUDOS: To driver Katherine Legge, who will be the first female driver to compete in NASCAR’s top Cup level series this weekend since Danica Patrick in 2018.
OH: GOLDMAN SACHS is giving some employees in NYC and London an interesting decision — move to places like Salt Lake City or Dallas, or kiss your job goodbye. Well, kinda -- Bloomberg puts it more like “part request, part ultimatum.” 😉
BUT HEY: Things could be worse — a China chemical manufacturer sent this message to its unmarried employees this year, as the country faces a growing birthrate issue:
“If you cannot get married and start a family within three quarters, the company will terminate your labor contract.”
China’s population has fallen for 3 straight years, and the marriage number was -20% YoY in 2024, hitting a new low.
THEN: The “Ya Huh” Award of the week goes to U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for pushing this idea into the public lexicon 👇 . . . which is definitely the lesson to take away from public sentiment on what happened to previously “cheap goods” in 2023, which then manifested in the 2024 election. Gonna be a fun year.
OH: The percentage of subprime auto borrowers (credit rating below 640) that are 60+ days overdue on their car payments hit a 31-year high of 6.56% in January — or basically going back as far as FITCH started collecting the data in 1994.
The Federal Reserve of NY also recently reported that the % of all auto borrowers in serious delinquency (90+ days) hit 3% in Q4 — the highest it’s been since 2010.
4.8% of folks with retirement plans administered by VANGUARD (about 5M folks) took early withdrawals from their 401(k)s and other accounts in 2024 for things like avoiding foreclosure, home purchase or repair and paying medical bills.
That’s a new record, topping 3.6% in 2023, and nearly double the average pre-Covid.
WELL DONE: Ya gotta love SPACEX’s description of its rocket explosion last night: “The vehicle experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.” Any chance we can start using “rapid unscheduled disassembly” for the changes happening to the Hollywood studio business model too?
FINALLY: I found this NYT read about body awareness tests you can do yourself to see how well your muscle neurons are dialed into your brain pretty fascinating, and the things you can do to improve upon it.
Especially good to consider if you’re someone whose day is significantly sedentary and you’re always looking for inspiration to improve upon that! 🙋♂️
WAKEUP POLL
My gut says go with the 33%, but my movie business-loving heart says go with the 37%, so I’ll toss my lot in with those folks.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
