☀️ CBS ‘Yellowstone’ Spinoff Raises NBCU Hackles
CA proposes tax incentive boost / OPENAI's revenue boom / NETFLIX brings Scooby to life
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on THURSDAY, March 27, 2025.
Where the Scranton area now has an actual CHILI’S outpost!
And naturally, it’s totally leaning into The Office nostalgia with full mid-2000s CHILI’S decor and menu items from, uh, 20 years ago (yes, that Dundies episode aired in 2005 👴).
AH: OPENAI’s motion to dismiss the NYT copyright lawsuit was denied by a federal judge.
BUT: Maybe the $40B of new money in a new OPENAI investment round led by SOFTBANK will help matters? It would raise the valuation on the company to $300B, nearly 2x its October fundraising round.
OPENAI had $3.7B of revenue in 2024 (about the size of LIONSGATE)
It’s projecting a 4x increase this year to $12.7B (a bit bigger than SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT).
And $29.4B in 2026 (about the size of PARAMOUNT).
AND: Here are your BAFTA TV Award nominations.
THEN: Hope you’re all enjoying recreating Pulp Fiction in STUDIO GHIBLI’s visual format using the new CHATGPT bot.
BUT: Pretty sure GHIBLI cofounder Hayao Miyazaki won’t be liking any of your posts — this is what he had to say about a primitive AI demo back in the 2010s: “I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself.”
OH: Tri-state area cable TV subscriber YANKEE fans — just a heads up, COMCAST and YES don’t sound too close on a new carriage deal that is up . . . tonight. Then again, you can just pay the $25 to stream YES all ya like.
COMCAST of course hasn’t carried the MSG Network in the NYC area for about 4 years now.
WELL: 25% car tariffs certainly won’t hurt everyone in the car market — now, about the demand for those cars . . .
AND: Here are the Avengers that are assembling for the next movie, Avengers: Doomsday — including quite a few X-Men folk (frankly, this list was so long I had to double check to make sure Richard hadn’t snuck in there). See you at the multiplex in about a year on May 1, 2026 — or at least DISNEY really hopes so.
PLUS: YOUTUBE set its upfront for Wednesday, May 14 at 5:30 p.m. at Lincoln Center. Lady Gaga will be there performing and MrBeast will be featured doing . . . what it is that he does (making chocolate?).
FINALLY: This was just a really interesting NYT read on how more major U.S. corporations are hiring more folks in white collar roles in India (at far lower wages, despite their university-level training) — jobs that no tariffs are gonna bring back.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Well, Jason Statham — any chance you can enliven the box office again? The lack of March Madness 🏀 ad buys last weekend for his movie with a core male 35-55 demo, and subsequent $10M to $12M tracking for A Working Man would point to . . . no. AMAZON MGM only has North American rights on this one, so maybe that plays a role too.
The Beekeeper opened to $16M last January (with NFL game ad buys) and had rather low weekend drops after that to hit about a 4.5x multiple — so maybe the word of mouth angle is being played here as well.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
