☀️Box Office Hits '25 Low; 'Anora' Takes the Oscars
NETFLIX gets Portman-Dunham pic / HBO sets Horgan series, deal / 'Crazy Rich Asians' gets life at WBD
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, March 2, 2025.
Where ya gotta love the movie business being pretty much an entire no-show during the ad breaks for the industry’s biggest night of the year.
Although the way DISNEY stuffed the ad breaks with promos for its own efforts — there wasn’t much room left over. But even DISNEY only had . . . one movie ad all night, and it was for a DISNEYFOX title.
No Snow White (a movie that opens in 3 weeks), no Thunderbolts, no Lilo & Stitch, no Elio. I guess we should at least be happy that HULU ran an ad promoting the movies?
Then again, when all other studios and streamers accounted for just . . . 30 seconds of ad buys on film’s biggest night in America (thanks LIONSGATE for not making it an entire shutout) — I really have nothing left to say here.
OH: PENSKE’s latest cost cutting move — the GOLDEN GLOBES will stop paying the 50-ish former HFPA members a $75k annual salary, despite having made a 5-year deal to do so in 2023.
I guess the question is do you still work somewhere . . . if they’re not paying you? These folks were invited to remain as voters for the 2026 event #freebuffets! alongside the other 250-ish folks who vote, but obviously more to come here.
WAKEUP OSCARS POLL
First, the real winner tonight is my Jersey bolognese 🍝 — thanks to the 67% of you who suggested I go in that direction. Pesto, I’ll see you for the Emmys.
But more importantly — where is the audience number for tonight’s show coming in? I’m going to assume we’re not getting a HULU number as DISNEY has never given out next-day (ish) info like that in the platform’s history — maybe we’ll get a 3-day viewership number at some point.
So, live Sunday night ABC audience only . . . what say ye? Last year was 19.5M (#Barbenheimer) and 2023 was 18.8M (Everything Everywhere).
HOUSEKEEPING
No Wakeup on Tuesday as I’ll be traveling, so I’ll see ya Wednesday.
THE RANDOS 🏆 — OSCARS EDITION
Well, the first award goes to actually starting the show at 7 p.m. instead of the, uh, 7:06 p.m. choice last year. Given the week time difference this year vs. 2024 on the calendar, at least the sun had set here in NYC before the show started.
But overall — kudos to Conan for a job very well done. 👏 And to NEON and A24 for taking Hollywood’s big awards tonight, with SEARCHLIGHT and NETFLIX on the Supporting awards.
Normally I’d give out some random awards for things during the show . . . but Adrien Brody’s Best Speech That Was Actually Two Whole Speeches award took up all of my award allotment.
ALTHOUGH: For my money — it really didn’t get any better than this 👇 👏 (even if it really coulda used a “pre-show” joke about the movie not starting until 25 minutes after you hit play).
BUT: We have this going for us, which is nice.
Now, here’s how many ads DISNEY aired during the show — and how much money you would have won betting on the top categories tonight. 💰
There was some real money to be had here . . . as more than $15M of action was put on the top 3 categories alone!
Plus of course a look at details for the box office lows that accompanied Hollywood’s biggest weekend.