ICYMI: Shawn Levy Tells All; Why Did WBD Mention AI 8 Times?; NBA Nonsense
Catch up on our recent best
Hello and happy August! I’m excited to share the tremendous news that awards editor Katey Rich’s excellent podcast, Prestige Junkie, is hitting the road — and starting with a bang. Her first ever live Prestige Junkie podcast taping happens this week, in front of an IRL audience, and will feature Fargo creator, executive producer and writer/director Noah Hawley and two beloved stars of season five: Juno Temple and Lamorne Morris. This is coming up fast, in L.A., so grab your seat (and stay for the delicious eats) while you can.
Meanwhile, this week we published some of the most ambitious stories we’ve done since I joined in February, including a fascinating read about Universal’s company basketball team that competed in Hitler’s Olympics (seriously!), on top of a scorcher of a news break around Britney Spears’ movie at Universal. So in case you missed it (hey, it’s summer, we get it), let’s go!
Shawn Levy Spills it All
The hottest man in Hollywood, thanks to Deadpool & Wolverine, opened up to Richard Rushfield for an in-depth conversation, with brutal honesty about his odds-defying career path, the power of friendship, the agony of rejection and failure — and how he sees the industry’s (optimistic) path forward:
A Big Britney Scoop
Outlets around the world picked up Matthew Frank’s huge scoop about the eight-figure rights deal that brought Britney Spears’ memoir to Universal for a Jon M. Chu and Marc Platt biopic:
What Studio CEOs Are Telling Investors About AI
Remember the old days when CEOs talked about their streaming future on earnings calls to help goose stock prices? It worked until it didn’t, and now we might be seeing a repeat with AI. As $1 trillion worth of AI stocks get sold off , entertainment CEOs keep dropping the buzzword, with the promise of savings. But what if AI can actually help make money? Erik Barmack lays out the ways in this week’s Reel AI (for paid subscribers-only):
NBA Rights: Bad Hangover After the Hype
We finally know which media companies have pro basketball from 2025-2036, and Entertainment Strategy Guy surveys the charred landscape: Why Peacock won, Disney didn’t, Prime Video’s bargain, the truth about David Zaslav and why the NFL has to be steaming at the NBA’s package:
SERIES BUSINESS
In this edition of Series Business (for paid subscribers-only), Elaine Low shares an exclusive excerpt from longtime business affairs executive Ken Basin’s newly updated TV industry bible, arguing for a return to old methods that could save the industry:
With 52 percent of the U.K. film and TV workforce jobless, Manori Ravindran weighs in on five buzzed-about questions that could bring upheaval to the industry yet again in the coming months:
What?! When Universal’s Company Team Went to the Olympics 🏀
As the Olympics reach full throttle, Andy Lewis tells the remarkable tale of a forgotten but memorable piece of Hollywood lore in which Universal’s head of production Carl Laemmle Jr. put together the first-ever gold medal-winning basketball team — while at the same time tragically losing the studio:
PRESTIGE JUNKIE
Before you see Katey at our Fargo event, catch up with her latest, including a wonderfully surprising story of a surfing doc that faced as many setbacks as its subject, and, on her Prestige Junkie podcast, a conversation with the men who formed a writers room for the songs on Only Murders in the Building:
THE WAKEUP
Sean McNulty had another banner week of insight and analysis on our industry, dissecting Deadpool & Wolverine’s box office success, Disney’s disheartening cuts and what SiriusXM and Roku’s earnings can teach Hollywood:
🎧 PODCASTS
THE ANKLER
Linear TV's Summer of Pain (If You're Not the Olympics) More layoffs, less scripted, fewer ads: Where is the bottom?:
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts [Apple Podcast fans — we couldn’t embed the pod from there again due to “technical difficulties,” so here’s that link.]
MARTINI SHOT
How the Sweaty Guy Wins Rob Long on the art of becoming 'maximized':
👓 THE OPTIONIST
FINAL HOUSEKEEPING!
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