☀️ Hollywood Spec Sale Summer 🤑
NETFLIX axes 'Waterfront' / VERSANT setting ⛳️ tourney / New Job Board Tuesday!
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, August 26, 2025.
Where a kudos goes out to PGA golf star Scottie Scheffler, who made just under $50M on the tour this year as the league’s top earner, including tournament paydays and bonuses (but not including endorsement money).
Ted, Greg and Zaz all send their congratulations on joining the $50M+ club.
AND: Devon Walker is leaving SNL after 3 seasons.
ALSO: The MTV VMA’s added Doja Cat, Jelly Roll, Post Malone, Tate McRae and Conan Gray to the performance lineup on Sept. 7.
OH: In case you need a . . . 7th place to send a DM to someone — SPOTIFY is launching in-app messaging in LATAM, with the U.S. and EU forthcoming “in the coming weeks.
AH: It seems YOUTUBE is using AI to alter make enhancements to visual elements of some Shorts . . . without the approval, or even awareness of the person/company posting the video. Eh, pretty soon we won’t even need people to shoot videos anyway, so what’s the harm? People are the worst 🙄.
TODAY IN BRANDING
PT. 1: I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that CRACKER BARREL gave a crappy statement of backing for their crappy new logo announcement.
“We could’ve done a better job sharing who we are and who we’ll always be,” but uh yeah — we’re not changing our logo that we clearly could have done better on. #GoodEnough!
Also, don’t worry, folks — Uncle Hershel will still be on the CB dining signs on roads & interstates because . . . well, yeah, we’re not paying to replace those — and we all know you may not recognize our new logo when driving anyway.
PT. 2: Here’s Caitlin Clark’s new NIKE logo for her shoe / apparel line (shoe coming next year), which folks are saying is GUCCI-esque, although naturally my mind kinda goes to the MPA logo (the movie biz trade organization).
PT. 3: Saved the best for last, of course, as branding genius and noted wordsmith
Harry BolzElon Musk is creating yet another company (yeah, 3rd political party . . . we’ll get to you in a minute) called MACROHARD, with the conceit of essentially being an ALDI for MICROSOFT.The gist is, since MICROSOFT is almost all software — AI can “simulate” their products entirely . . . I’d guess with basically in the form of cheaper knock-offs.
THEN: Just a little housing insurance snapshot for ya that happens to have a nice overlay into certain voting patterns.
While the national average premium is +9% since 2023 to about $2,500 a year according to BANKRATE . . . Nebraska, Louisiana and Florida are all about 3x that amount, around $6,000 a year — again, that’s just the average.
NOT RELATED BUT RELATED: REDFIN reported the highest percentage of housing sale contract cancellations for July since it started tracking the data in 2017, as over 15% of house sale agreements fell through.
The markets with the biggest numbers were in TX, FL and GA.
Folks who bought homes in the early 2020s frenzy and waived inspections who are now trying to re-sell those homes to folks who are uh . . . not waiving their inspections and finding problems was cited as one development, in addition to the overall 🤷♂️ state of the U.S. economy.
REST IN PEACE: Goes out to 1980s COLUMBIA PICTURES studio head Frank Price, who gave the 👍 to some of the studio’s biggest hits in the decade . . . from Tootsie to Karate Kid and Ghostbusters, and who also had a robust career in TV as well. Frank died at the age of 95 this week.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
Hollywood’s Summer of Movie Spec Sales
While originality (somewhat) peeked its way (somewhat) back into the multiplex this summer — relatively few movies with “part 3” or “VI” on the end of them this year, comparatively speaking — that was mostly due to a lot of new versions of existing franchises: Superman, Fantastic Four, Smurfs, Naked Gun, Lilo & Stitch, Karate Kid (count F1 and Thunderbolts* as ya like).
Of all of those attempts at revitalizing — I’d say Lilo and F1 are the only ones where the audience was definitively saying “Yeah, we’ll take another one of those!” based on box office results.
Thus, true originals like Weapons, Together or Materialists . . . were less common. In fact — those were the only 3 that made over $20M U.S. besides Elio.
But, rest assured — Hollywood has been on the case this summer!
I’ve been tracking the number of reported feature spec and pitch sales at studios/streamers since Q1, and these numbers are pretty extraordinary to consider . . . given that feature spec sales, while not dead, were essentially on life support for the past 3 years (at least in publicly reported deals).