☀️DISNEY Joins Q2 Layoff Chorus; Shell's Big Payout
The WGA's healthcare-centric deal / SONY adds to its growing 🎥 remake list / Zaz payday gets reprimand
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 Thursday, April 9, 2026.
Where it turns out the woman who wrote The Housemaid book is a real brain doctor!
No, seriously — “Freida McFadden” revealed herself to be Sara Cohen, a 45-year-old MD treating brain disorders who writes novels on the side, but didn’t want the fame to detract from her medical work.
A rationale to which Hollywood had the collective reaction of . . .
YUP: Here is your list of Cannes films this year, and yeah — just one American film in competition this year so far (Ira Sachs’ The Man I Love), and studio films are basically MIA overall, which I’m sure the French film community is very upset by.
ALSO: Here are your final SNL hosts for the season.
YEAH: Ya gotta love this line in shareholder advisory firm ISS’ statement on the WARNAMOUNT deal — which it is advising WBD shareholders to approve . . . but not the Zaz payout part, which I’m sure will totally cause everyone to rethink the matter:
“The value disclosed in the golden parachute table for CEO Zaslav at over $886 million represents one of the highest golden parachute estimates ever observed.”
It also issued the sternly worded opinion that “Support for the golden parachute proposal is not warranted.”
AND: PSKY also launched a PARAMOUNT GLOBAL PUBLISHING arm to adapt company IP into books and other formats, as well as look for original material.
Amy Jarashow will lead the imprint, reporting into Products & Experiences Prez Josh Silverman.
UH HUH: OPENAI is telling investors it’s expecting to generate $2.5B in ad revenue this year, according to Axios. In roughly its first 6 weeks, it generated . . . $100M. In “annualized revenue.” So, OPENAI is now basically telling people it is going to 25x ad revenue in essentially 9 months.
Granted, that initial advertising rollout was limited to under 20% of free and Go paid users — so, either prepare to get inundated with ads on CHATGPT this year, or OPENAI has some very creative advertising ambitions.
Not a perfect comp in a few ways (namely, there’s a lot more 💰 to be had in search than video ads), but it took NETFLIX 4 years to reach $3B in annual ad revenue (its projection for this year).
OPENAI is also telling investors it’ll then 4x ad revenue in 2027 to $11B, and eventually hit $100B in ad revenue by 2030.
So, TBPN — you have your work cut out for you. Oh, wait, right — you got rid of ads in your OPENAI sale deal. #goodcall
THEN: TUBI set a CHATGPT deal, whereby you can use the TUBI app inside CHATGPT app store, and simply “@Tubi” to ask it questions/recos about the kind of movie they’re in the mood to view. Just keep your queries PG-13, mmmkay?
HUH: META finally met an ad category it won’t stand for! What’s that? No, not illegal drugs . . . worse, lawyers! Yes, lawyers posting ads to enlist people to sue META about its social media practices (thanks to the recent CA case ruling, one would think) are getting the boot. Always nice to see social platforms taking a real stand against the real bad actors in advertising.
OH: AMC NETWORKS is dropping the TV association from the name and going with AMC GLOBAL MEDIA (or, uh, AMC GLOBAL, as I’ll be calling it).
The company made more money domestically from its Streaming businesses than its Linear TV business in Q4.
AH: Movie theater trade group CINEMA UNITED has set an advisory Filmmaker Leadership Council, with Jerry Bruckheimer and Emma Thomas as chair and vice chair, respectively, and Ryan Coogler, Brad Bird, Jason Reitman and Celine Song as members.
The goal is to give ongoing feedback and recos on exhibition issues - can’t wait to hear their thoughts on pre-show length!
THEN: Here is your Top 10 list of most-anticipated summer movies among 6k folks polled by FANDANGO back in February.
FINALLY: You’ll never believe this, but there was a highly unusual amount of oil trading going on less than 15 minutes before Trump made a social media post about the Iran war on Monday that significantly impacted markets. 😱 I mean — what luck, amirite?
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Ok, who’s ready for a good ol’ fashioned straightforward rom-com? UNI’s You, Me & Tuscany is broadly looking at $8M to perhaps $12M this weekend.
THANKS! To the folks at AMC GLOBAL (see? workin’ it in already) for the invite to check out The Audacity last night in NYC, looking forward to seeing the 2nd episode! (The first 2 episodes are dropping this weekend.)
DISNEY next on the Hollywood layoffs train
