☀️Indie Film 🚨 As ROW K Buckles
SONY, Reitman join spec 🔥 / LGF sets Dunst for Sweeney sequel / SPOTIFY trims pod staff again
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, March 24, 2026.
Where hopefully you’re enjoying a day without March Madness — kudos to the . . . one person who still has a perfect bracket in the women’s tournament (none are left in the men’s among the major sites).
Although, gotta say, the tournament now being in full NIL era may not be yielding much underdog fun anymore.
While the women’s tourney at least has one cinderella in #10 VIRGINIA making the Sweet 16 as the first First Four team to make it that far . . . the men’s tourney has just 2 teams in the Sweet 16 below a #6 seed, those being the small scrappy programs at, uh, #11 TEXAS and #9 IOWA.
BUT: Day 1 of men’s March Madness averaged 9.8M viewers across CBS and the T-NETS, its biggest number ever and +6% YoY.
ALTHOUGH: That growth can likely be attributed to the NIELSEN BIG DATA + PANEL measurement system (and its increased monitoring of out-of-home viewing).
Last year was also +6% when NIELSEN augmented its out-of-home viewership coverage from 2024.
KUDOS: To this year’s AMPAS Nicholl Fellowships screenwriter winners, and to the BAFTA TV Award nominees.
THEN: A group of Democratic senators is asking FCC boss Brendan Carr to do a “full and independent” review of the WARNAMOUNT deal, which I’m sure he’ll get right on top of.
The senators are pointing out that, um, yeah — about that potential $24B of equity ownership of WARNAMOUNT, including a U.S. broadcast network, coming from the Middle East . . . there’s a thing called the Communications Act, whereby foreign entities can’t own more than 25% of the equity or voting interest in a U.S. company that has a broadcast TV license, without the FCC’s approval.
Then again, we also have a 39% of the population TV station owner reach cap that didn’t seem problematic for Carr to override with approval last week, either.
PLUS: The TEGNA-NEXSTAR deal is getting another lawsuit, this time from cable “news” network NEWSMAX and a consortium of state cable and broadband associations, questioning Carr’s waiving of that reach rule.
YAH: Former CBS NEWS correspondent Scott MacFarlane announced that his new destination is in the digital space as chief Washington correspondent for MEIDASTOUCH, where he’ll anchor a daily show.
THEN: The WWE has enlisted Tony Hinchcliffe to do another post-event Kill Tony comedy show in Vegas after night 1 of WrestleMania next month.
PLUS: I caught up on some reading this weekend — and this WSJ dive into how KALSHI and POLYMARKET are targeting frats and college campuses for new users is a #goodread, especially if you have a son at that age.
We’ll see how far this new bill introduced in the U.S. Senate to uh, ban sports betting on KALSHI and POLYMARKET gets — 2 companies that Don Jr. is involved with.
BTW: OPENAI will roll out more ads to users on its lowest-paid tiers after a meh response from advertisers to its initial launch. The company also just hired a former META ad exec to lead its efforts.
OH: If uh, for some reason you’re an APPLE MAPS person — APPLE will now be feeding you ads in a bid to further grow its “Services” revenue line. Look, times are tight, people 👇.
IT’S THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Time for one of my periodic check-ins on some signs of how things are going for many Americans in today’s economy.
7.7M Americans have now defaulted on the federal loans they took out to get an education, while another 3M folks are 3+ months delinquent on their student loans — the largest combined total since such records have been kept.
25% of all federal loan recipients are now “significantly behind” on their payments.
7M more folks will have to start repaying their loans due to a federal appeals court ruling last week against Biden administration protections.
While the number of people in default is back to 2019 levels, the number of folks 1+ months behind or with a loan currently in forebearance has risen from 9M in 2019 to 16M today.
Granted, this is just a GALLUP poll of 1,000 people, but the new divergence in outlook among these groups is notable, as is the 27% figure from the college grad crowd being lower than during Covid and the lowest since 2013.
Via Axios This BI chart and story on many job seekers now taking paycuts also . . . isn’t great, citing data from employment tracking firm REVILIO LABS
Via Business Insider This NY Times piece on how plasma donation centers are increasingly popping up in more middle-income neighborhoods vs. lower-income is a #goodread on the state of how some Americans are making ends meet in 2026. #PlasmaIsTheNewUber
Folks from teachers to nurses and both blue and white collar workers are making plasma donations 2x a week a part of their routine to cover things like the increasing cost of child care, mortgage payments and health insurance.
A sentiment seemingly backed by this NYT poll from January, which one would think only has gotten worse since then among some demos.
Via NYT
While it’s great that BLACK ROCK billionaire Larry Fink thinks the problem with the economy is that more Americans need to become long-term investors, particularly in companies that will benefit from the AI transformation that will create an even greater economic chasm in America — and he’s probably right, in theory — I’m gonna guess “401(k) contribution” isn’t paramount on the list for folks who feel the need to go to the plasma donation center in Houston after work twice a week for a $70 payment to simply have health insurance in the first place.
See “Retirement” at just 4% above.
NOTE: All of the above polling, activity and sentiment is before gas prices have skyrocketed this month. CNN also took a look at some snapshots about how that affects prices and small businesses across a few different retailers here.
FINALLY — A SMALL SOAP BOX: I love ya, 60 Minutes . . . but taking a look at the dire state of rare earths mining in the U.S. on Sunday without even acknowledging that the show did a . . . very similar segment back in 2015 was kind of a head scratcher at minimum.
There’s nothing wrong with doing a follow-up report on a topic, of course, except that Sunday’s piece not only looked at the exact same rare earths mine in the Southwest, but it also didn’t even mention its own previous in-depth report on it (i.e., “BTW, we visited this place about a decade ago.”).
60 Minutes also ripped itself off by using some of the exact same copy in the voiceovers, and the 2 different correspondents in the pieces even opened with the exact same line with their interview subjects at the mine (“So, are we walking on rare earths right now?”).
While the report itself was fine (if not repetitive), this lack of acknowledgement of its own past reporting thus failed to point out the biggest 🚨 of this situation for its audience — namely that U.S. has done jack shit to address this very well known problem in a decade+, with the same exact issues that existed in 2015 . . . still existing today. Except our relationship with China is arguably now more fraught.
This time out, the country actually seems to be at least using new tactics — the company 60 Minutes profiled in 2015, which was running the mine, curiously went bankrupt soon after the report.
This includes the U.S. gov’t now taking an ownership stake in the mine and creating protectionist pricing measures for the next decade to guard against China flooding the market — but it is quite a baffling missed opportunity to provide additional context for the audience already in hand.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
