☀️ ‘Mummy’ Hits Forecast, ‘Hail Mary’ 🤯, Theo Von — Movie Star?
‘Rambo’ adds Harbour at LGF / The curiously missing CINEMACON comedies / HULU gets ‘Everflame’
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, April 19, 2026.
Where apparently Wall Street liked what it saw in Vegas last week, as AMC THEATRES stock was +41% for the week, up to $1.86 — a number it has not hit since mid-December.
Movie trailers, what can’t they do? Then again, IMAX was -5% on Friday, so . . . thanks a lot, Infinity Vision!
WELL: The NEXSTAR/TEGNA deal got a preliminary injunction order against the 2 companies combining from the judge in the DIRECTV case against it . . . pending further court proceedings. NEXSTAR is appealing.
ALSO: Given that 2004’s White Chicks was one of NETFLIX’s most popular non-kids/family licensed titles — 95M global views in 2024 & 2025 (it’s now off the service in 2026) — I’d think SONY and NETFLIX doing a sequel should be an active point of conversation given their strong relationship, regardless of how Scary Movie does.
SPEAKING OF: Here are your NETFLIX top exec total comp paydays for 2025, and just an additional note — NETFLIX confirmed on the Q1 earnings call that those executives are indeed in talks with the NFL for more games.
Ted Sarandos: $53.9M (down from $61.9M)
Greg Peters: $53.2M (down from $60.3M)
$41M of that was in direct stock awards (no options involved) for both.
Greg used the company PJs 🛩️ for personal use far more than Ted did: $1.3M vs. $533k.
Ted also has $1.8M in annual residential security costs, compared to $150k for Greg.
CFO Spence Neumann: $20.8M (down from $22.9M)
CLO David Hyman: $15.4M (down from $17.3M)
Chief Global Affairs Officer Clete Willems: $14.3M
Co-Founder Reed Hastings: $1.2M (down from $1.7M)
This is pretty much all in stock.
NETFLIX stock was essentially flat for 2025, thanks to the WARNAMOUNT deal drag-down effect over the last 6 weeks or so.
AND: The head of LIV GOLF said that the league would “probably” have to start raising money to fund operations, after news of the Saudis likely pulling their 💰 surfaced last week.
PLUS: The WNBA got 1.5M viewers for its draft last week on ESPN, up from 1.25M last year. The Caitlin Clark/Amber Reese year got 2.5M in 2024.
OH: INDIANA PACERS star Tyrese Haliburton is the next athlete to throw his jersey in the TV producer ring, setting a production deal with WHEELHOUSE.
AH: Good to see cooler heads have prevailed in the World Cup public transit situation in NYC/NJ this summer. NJ TRANSIT won’t actually be charging $100 for a round-trip ticket to the matches at METLIFE Stadium. They will be charging $150. So, if you thought the world hated us now . . . hold our $25 beer.
But don’t worry, there is also a shuttle bus — that’ll cost you the bargain price of $80 per round trip.
Unlike GIANTS games or concerts, there is no parking available at METLIFE for the games, so public transit or UBER is your only option to get to the North Jersey swampland home of METLIFE.
40k train tickets and 10k bus tickets will be sold per match — the stadium holds roughly 75k people. So yes, the FIFA shitshow continues.
SO: Both Sinners and One Battle returned to the weekly NIELSEN Top 10 Films chart the week after The Oscars.
FWIW: Melania was 1 week and done on the charts in March.
YUP: HULU is the latest streamer to also become a podcast company . . . as podcasts become TV shows, making licensing deals for:
Handsome, hosted by Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster and Mae Martin.
TV series re-watch pods for The New Girl, This Is Us and Prison Break, all 20TH TV series.
The shows will debut on Hulu and roll out elsewhere after an undisclosed period.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Looks like the 32% bears take this one on WB/NLC’s Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, as the slightly decreasing tracking over time seems to have been foreshadowing.
FINAL CINEMACON NOTES
A couple of thoughts on some themes outside of the larger ones that Richard and I both covered thoroughly in our columns last week.
1. Comedy dips a toe, but some originals still MIA
Was there actually more than 1 comedy hyped at CINEMACON for once? Yes.
Were they all from IP from 25 to 40 years ago? Essentially, yes.
Focker-In-Law, Spaceballs: The New One, Scary Movie 6 and Jackass: Best and Last — plus The Breadwinner, which, while original, certainly has heavy Mr. Mom overtones.
UNI’s One Night Only certainly seemed to lean more rom than com . . . or certainly not pure comedy like the above.
A Super Troopers 3 trailer was also not in the cards at DISNEY/SEARCHLIGHT, even though I’d think it would have gotten a nice response from that kinda crowd — although it did get a verbal mention on stage. But at least that Aug. 7 date is holding firm.
HOWEVER: The thing is — Hollywood actually has 3 big, original comedies already in the can! But we neither saw nor heard . . . anything about them.
PAR’s Kendrick Lamar / Matt & Trey comedy, which previously had release dates in July 2025 and March 2026, currently has no release date.
WB/LEGENDARY’s Animal Friends with Ryan Reynolds, which has had too many release dates for me to go back and find, and now has a January 2027 release date, but was not mentioned nor shown except on the final laundry list of WB titles shown for 2027/28 in the preso.
WB’s Cut Off with Jonah Hill and Kristen Wiig, with Hill also directing, which was previously slated for July 17 this summer, but has been pulled.
Given that it was only its first pulled release date and the film was shot in the fall (and that Hill’s APPLE pic Outcome just came out) — we’ll give it a bit more benefit of the doubt.
SO: Hopefully the 2026 comedy IP pics listed above do well, and give studios greater confidence to proceed with these and other original comedies as well — getting the 3 unmentioned comedies all on the calendar in the first 4 months of 2027 alongside UNI’s step back up to the plate with the Apatow/Powell pic The Comeback King would be a triumph! Just an idea.
2. Original swings are back
Sure, IP dominated the headlines — Spidey, Avengers, Dune, Call of Duty, etc. — but the Sinners and now Project Hail Mary lessons have certainly taken hold with more originals in the pipeline.
So, I’ll finish out here with the ones that really stood out to me besides the 2 big original attention getters, WB’s Digger and SONY’s The Social Reckoning (I’m not putting this in the IP bin), that I think could really pop.
DISNEY’s Whalefall (Oct. 16) — Granted, we only saw one scene from this . . . so the movie still has to uh, be good. But this was an incredibly riveting sequence.
A NEON twofer:
Chloe Domont’s A Place In Hell with Michelle Williams and Daisy Edgar-Jones could be a real year-end conversation starter.
Hope, its new Japanese monster pic acquisition also looked really promising (more to come at Cannes).
AMAZON MGM had 3 swings that I could see taking off:
Verity being the biggest.
I Play Rocky could take off in November with the right amount of luck.
And my biggest underdog of the week that I hope finds some light — the ORION pic A Colt Is My Passport.
PAR’s military dog-in-the-wilderness pic, Heart of the Beast, isn’t a slam dunk by any means . . . but it’s more just a really interesting choice for Brad Pitt that I’m curious to see the results of this fall.
Harrison Ford’s Call of the Wild did $62M U.S. in a Covid-cut run in early 2020.
Let us not forget that the biggest pics in the UNI presentation were originals in Disclosure Day and The Odyssey.
It’s other big auteur pic, Werwulf, had a brief tease, but end-of-year Robert Eggers magic could once again take hold (Nosferatu ended up at $182M global).
🎥 THE BOX OFFICE
