☀️'Elio' Stumbles; 'Dragon' Eats Surging Zombies
APPLE sets Chernin deal / Why PIXAR set a new 💰 low / APPLE TV+'s showrunner switch
Afternoon! 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 22, 2025.
Where someone please change the “We’ve had no new foreign wars in X days” sign out front when you have a sec.
But now that the FCC has at least 3 members again, it’ll start to “refresh the record” on the 39% of the U.S. population reach cap for local TV station owner conglomerates. Right after it settles its PARAMOUNT matter, I’m sure. The FCC’s next meeting is scheduled for later this week.
AND: I guess we knew this would come eventually — BOSE is pausing its paid search GOOGLE ad keyword spending in half of U.S. markets to see if it has any effect on its sales or marketing KPIs, according to Adweek.
A few other marketers have done these experiments in the past (outside of just TWITTER/X-specific pauses), but I think this takes on a different tone in the age of ascending AI usage.
ALSO: If you had any question as to whether our actual version of AI and 2001’s Hal were any different — new research from ANTHROPIC puts that to rest.
The company is just, ya know, running some “scenarios” with bots . . . including one where the AI was willing to cut off the oxygen supply in a server room where an employee was presented as an obstacle and the tech system was at risk of being shut down.
It also ran tests across all major AI offerings and found:
"Models that would normally refuse harmful requests sometimes chose to blackmail, assist with corporate espionage, and even take some more extreme actions . . . (which) suggests this is not a quirk of any particular company's approach but a sign of a more fundamental risk from agentic large language models."
#FUNFACT: YOUTUBE allows creators to choose to opt out of 3rd party AI companies using their videos to train their bots (OPENAI, ANTHROPIC etc) . . . but not GOOGLE’s AI training. And no, many creators are not aware of this, according to CNBC.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
My fellow 28 Years Later bulls were overtaken by the centrists . . . although a bit of a failure here IMO that the first 28 Days Later pic hasn’t been available on any streaming service this month (outside of for-purchase rentals).
DISNEY/SEARCHLIGHT controls 28 Weeks Later, and it’s available here on HULU.
The Elio bears came close, but my fellow 39%’ers took the prize.
FINALLY: This is coming to you a little earlier today than usual as I’m gonna try and salvage a Sunday beach day here despite the morning East Coast rain.
🎥 THE BOX OFFICE
