☀️Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro's To-Do List, Mandates & Messes to Fix
WB lands Nancy Meyers pic / FUBO stock sinks on Q4 #s / Nolan kiboshes 5-year DGA deal idea
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 Tuesday, February 3, 2026.
Where if you’re in D.C. today, be sure to say hi to Ted Sarandos if you see him walking around town after his appearance at the NETFLIX BROS. Senate subcommittee hearing.
Gonna guess that a grilling about the bonus Stranger Things episode won’t be on the docket, but you know how D.C. is.
OH: For all of the industry journalists lauding the “not a flop” performance of Melania without a thought to the, uh, financials of the movie investment — add $50k in grosses from the U.K. this weekend and $7,700 in Italy (an $81 per screen average) to your considerations. $15M of reported AMAZON global marketing money is seeing great early returns!
ALSO: NETFLIX set a live BTS return concert for Saturday, March 21, from South Korea. It’ll stream on the U.S. East Coast at 7 a.m. and 4 a.m. on the West Coast. NETFLIX will also debut a doc about the band’s return on March 27.
D’OH: Lindsay Vonn has a torn ACL — she is still going to attempt to participate in the Winter Olympics but hasn’t done any full-speed skiing tests yet.
THEN: Get ready for more 6 a.m. NFL games, West Coast! 🥳 The NFL has set deals for 8 overseas games next season, up from 7 this year. Paris and Madrid will be added to the mix of 3 London games, Rio, Munich and Melbourne.
With the ESPN deal now complete, we’ll see how long it takes the NFL to carve out a streamer package for these games . . . so they hopefully get more than the 5M to 7M viewers they got on the NFL NETWORK last year (excluding the Brazil kickoff game in a friendly time zone).
Many of the games will also stream on ESPN D2C this season, assuming the NFL doesn’t make a major change before the 2026 season.
LO AND BEHOLD: FANDUEL and DRAFTKINGS have started to get pretty active about donating millions 💰 to PACs and other political fundraising organizations ahead of the mid-term elections later this year, according to research from Popular Information, which scans public filings.
This, as the industry faces new regulatory and tax legislation, and seeks to further enter the prediction markets.
AND: Somehow Kid Rock was available, uh, this Sunday to suddenly headline the MAGA/non-Bad Bunny halftime show from TURNING POINT during the Super Bowl. It’ll stream via various right-wing social outlets, including TPUSA’s.
WELL: VERSANT certainly isn’t doing the PSKY folks any favors — setting its Q4 earnings call on the curiously quite-belated date of March 3.
CNBC’s David Faber indicated yesterday that, based on preliminary paperwork filed Monday morning for the NETFLIX BROS. deal vote — the shareholder vote on the deal could happen as soon as around the 2nd week of March (earlier than the previously anticipated April timing).
VERSANT stock has settled into a $32/$33 a share zone, with a market valuation just under $5B.
Side note — PSKY and WBD still have not set Q4 earnings call dates. Clock’s tickin’, fellas.
BUT: Larry’s already significantly leveraged ORACLE is looking to add more debt to its books, with a new $50B fundraise that it’s looking to complete through a mix of equity and debt sales.
YAH: Between multi-billionaires merging their rocket companies with their struggling AI companies and lookng to put 1M satellites into space for AI data center purposes because — hey the sun is overrated anyway . . . to NVIDIA essentially saying “look at the fine print, bro” on the $100B it “intended” to invest in OPENAI in a splashy announcement last September that’s now described as “on ice” — yeah, we’re getting further into “the dumb times” in the financial world again. Which, if history has shown us anything, always works out great.
Oddly bitcoin is still sitting in the dumps since its inflated October highs and near the Trump #LiberationDay disaster from April, right next to our formerly giddy silver & gold miners from . . . about a week ago.
SPEAKING OF: ONLYFANS is in talks to sell a majority stake to ARCHITECT CAPITAL at a $5.5B enterprise value, according to Axios. Or about the same size as VERSANT, only with better core business prospects.
ONLYFANS owner Leonid Radvinsky has been looking for a deal for some time, but seemingly had been having trouble finding takers at his desired $8B valuation, a similar situation to this newsletter but for very different reasons.
Note that the WSJ put the valuation at $3.5B a few days ago.
CORRECTION FROM YESTERDAY: DISNEY bought FREEFORM (fka ABC FAMILY) from 20TH CENTURY FOX years prior to the big 2019 deal (its FOX FAMILY CHANNEL iteration was apparently stuck in my head!). Thank you to the readers who sent notes to remind me.
FINALLY: It’s New Job Tuesday! Busy week for open roles down below across studio comms, marketing partnerships, microdramas, AI / games / TV production, some solid entry-level assistant gigs and more.
👑 The new DISNEY king is crowned
It’s the theme parks guy! Again!
Yes, Josh D’Amaro will become the new CEO of DISNEY on March 18 at DISNEY’s next annual meeting. D’Amaro will also join the DISNEY board.
Iger will stay on through his current contract until the end of the year as a Senior Advisor to the company (no word on what his pay will be adjusted to).
THE DANA BUMP: As presaged by some, Dana Walden also gets a larger remit as President and Chief Creative Officer of DISNEY, i.e., now also overseeing movies in addition to TV.
She’ll report into Josh and “be responsible for Disney Entertainment, Hulu, Disney + and TWDC Marketing” according to a new SEC filing.
What’s not on that list — movies or sports. So perhaps ESPN’s Jimmy Pitaro and movie chief Alan Bergman will report into CEO Josh as well. Not a lot of details out there on this.
BIGGER PICTURE:
What likely put Josh in the pole position
What are the big challenges he’ll be facing almost immediately this year
What’s ahead for Iger?
And most importantly, how much are people getting paid! Let’s dive in.