☀️MARVEL's Good/Bad 'Captain 🇺🇸' Numbers as Moviegoing Rebounds
NETFLIX + Winslet pic / NHL, NBA see TV ratings life / MUBI buys again with Mescal pic
Evenin! 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, February 16, 2025.
Where in an era of increased sanitization of the edges from many sports — ya gotta love a hockey game where there was a fight . . . 2 seconds into the U.S. vs. CANADA game in the NHL 4 NATIONS tournament on ABC last night.
A fight that was followed by, uh, 2 other fights in the next . . . 6 seconds.
Eventually, somehow the hockey game got going, and you can argue about the fight results — but the U.S. won on the puck metric, 3-1, taking the lead in the tournament so far.
ALSO: Here are your BAFTA Film Award winners where Conclave took home best film, and your WGA Award winners, with Anora and Nickel Boys taking the top film awards, and the usual Shogun and Hacks power duo doing the same in TV.
THEN: YOUTUBE TV and PARAMOUNT signed a new carriage deal, showing that carriage stand-offs are just as boring and predictable in the digital bundle space as they are with traditional cable companies.
AND: Shaq is getting $15M a year for staying with Inside the NBA vs. the $21M for Barkley. In terms of football comps:
Tom Brady: $37.5M
Troy Aikman: $18M
Tony Romo: $17M-$18M
Pat McAfee: $17M
Joe Buck: $13M-$15M
OH: College football players are getting a raise to give permission for their likenesses to be used in video games. Players can get $1,500 each for signing on, with millions more being set aside as “ambassador payments” to certain (popular) players.
That puts the minimum payments up to about $17M total, but likely well over $20M when all is said and done with the bonus payments.
That’s a raise from the, uh, $600 they got last year.
EA’s College Football ’25 game made more than $500M in sales, meaning the players got about . . . 2% of the revenues from the game in which they’re featured. Don’t worry everybody, the system works great.
SO: Just to finish out on something a little more positive in sports media than money, gotta love the AUBURN baseball player who hit a home run on Friday night in the season opener for his mom, who passed away from cancer that morning.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Kudos to the 22% on Captain America! Your MARVEL loyalty paid off.
🎥 THE BOX OFFICE
The movie biz had a nice rebound from the nadir that was last weekend and a lackluster January, and finally had a good holiday weekend (sorry, MLK weekend).
Captain America overall was a nice injection to the 2025 box office tally, even though it’s definitely a mixed story that I’ll dive into.
But there were also some very strong holds by existing pics in the marketplace to note, showing a return to the multiplex for moviegoers on a 3-day weekend break.
Onto the numbers . . .