☀️'Ballerina' Falls Short, Box Office Hits 2nd Wknd of Malaise
NBA Finals starts with a dud / NETFLIX gets STARZ show / AMAZON, FOX TV Cancellations
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, June 8, 2025.
Where how about that French Open, amirite?!
Granted — I only know this from Elaine sending me taunts on Slack, but it sounds like it was a great couple of finals matches this weekend. Congrats to Coco Gauff and Carlos Alcaraz on the big wins!
ALSO: You’d think the guy who owns a thing would know how it works but . . . yeah, nice try deleting some Trump posts on X, Elon. Not sure that’s gonna do it, but uh, strong move tho. 🥴
AND: This NYT piece detailing a FOX NATION Trump election campaign docuseries, The Art of the Deal, got some notice for featuring a Trump-voting Brian Grazer, who made the decision after seeing “Biden’s deterioration and the lack of direction in the Democratic Party.” The series also sounds like it gives quite the front-row seat to just the general extreme ass-kissery universe that accompanies a president-elect after an election win.
ALTHOUGH: No Grazer at UFC 316 last night in Jersey . . . but certainly a lotta Trump-world in attendance next to Donald, who walked in escorted by Dana White, with Ivanka & Jared and Eric there along with Marco Rubio . . . but uh, no Elon sighting.
PLUS: Starting July 1, colleges will be allowed to directly pay their athletes, with a pool of up to $20.5M a year (that will increase each year over time). Money must be offered to all sports . . . but not in equal amounts, in case you thought that your daughter on the lacrosse team was due for a payday.
There are also no limits on scholarship money, and NIL money will get a bit more scrutiny as it’ll have to go through a clearinghouse to vet whether deals are at “fair-market value” . . . but we’ll see how that plays out.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
The Ballerina bears take the title this weekend . . . sorry fellow 53%’ers.
THANKS!: To the folks at A24 for the invite to check out Materialists last night in NYC, which cements Celine Song among our best new filmmakers — I really enjoyed it and a definite recommend for anyone clamoring they don’t make “movies for adults” anymore, much less in the summer movie season.
Though I gotta say the apparent emphasis on height in NYC matchmaking really made me question how I’m well over 6-feet tall and single. Eh, I’ll chalk it up to the full head of hair thing.
🎥 THE BOX OFFICE
So, early June isn’t exactly carrying the killer momentum from April and May at the box office, as a sense of “Eh . . . ” takes hold for the 2nd weekend in a row.
Nothing disastrous like last May, thankfully, but the box office and the audience are certainly in a cooling off period, as America kinda 🤷♂️ at Hollywood’s latest attempt at breathing life into franchises this month.
So, here’s what the numbers tell us . . . and just a note for tomorrow — Richard and I will be doing our Monday Morning Quarterbacking on the box office a little earlier tomorrow at 9 a.m. PT / 12 noon ET. If you follow either Richard or myself on Substack (which you can do in either those links), you should get an alert when we’re live — or here is the link to for the livechat itself in the Substack app. Come join!