☀️NEON, A24 Keep Buying; DIS Shakes Up ‘26 Summer
DISNEY ⚔️ YOUTUBE / NETFLIX gets 'Da Vinci' Dan Brown / SKYDANCE PICS buys 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 Friday, May 23, 2025.
Where yes — it’s gonna be a banger of a weekend at the box office . . . but what I’m really looking forward to is texting with Janice and Richard all weekend about one of the better, diverse sports weekends of the year!
TONIGHT:
PACERS vs. KNICKS game 2, 8 p.m. on MAX
DODGERS vs. METS all weekend (APPLE today, FOX tomorrow, ESPN Sunday)
Plus some NHL playoffs all weekend featuring 3 teams (of 4 total) from places where water really doesn’t freeze naturally during the year.
TOMORROW:
LIBERTY vs. FEVER, 1 p.m. on CBS
Women’s hockey final, which, unlike the NHL . . . has teams from areas where water actually freezes quite often, in Ottawa & Minnesota — game 3 is at 5 p.m. free on YT.
THUNDER vs. T’WOLVES game 3 on ABC, 8:30 p.m.
SUNDAY:
PREMIER LEAGUE final match day, with a few standings matters on the line at 11 a.m. on NBC/USA/PEACOCK.
Car racing:
F1 Monaco Grand Prix at 9 a.m. on ABC
INDY 500 at 12:45 p.m. on FOX
COCA-COLA 600 at 6 p.m. on AMAZON PV
Kyle Larsen is going attempt to race in both of those last 2, which would mean driving 1100 miles in a day. Only one other driver has ever fully accomplished the feat (Tony Stewart).
Kyle attempted it last year, but was thwarted by rain delays . . . which could still be a factor this year.
It involves taking a helicopter to a plane in Indy to get to Charlotte in time for the COCA-COLA race, and a protein bowl along with a re-hydration IV on the flight apparently.
KNICKS vs. PACERS at 8 p.m. on ABC
Oh and Elaine tells me that there’s something called “tennis” 🤷♂️ now on MAX, as the French Open begins on Sunday!
AND: Anyone wanna buy a video streaming company that had over $6B of streaming revenue in FY23 (more than PEACOCK, and probably ballpark the same as PAR+) giving its owner over $470M in profits alone?
Ok yes, fine — ONLY FANS is for sale, and the FOREST ROAD COMPANY is reportedly leading the way on a deal with a group of investors, valuing it at $8B, according to Reuters.
PLUS: Anyone wanna have a beer at the Flight Deck bar from Top Gun? PAR has licensed the IP to create a Top Gun “experience” in, wait for it . . . ok yes, it’s Vegas.
THEN: Here is your latest warning shot video from the AI community — GOOGLE’s new VEO 3 video generator also does music, dialogue and sound effects (sorry, SORA).
As I’ve previously said — the ad business and social media are going to be on the frontlines of this very soon. VEO can still only do short clips, but map this out in 18-24 months . . . and yeah, it’s not hard to see 30-second ads and YT Shorts a plenty being created with these generators.
See you at the next round of commercial guild negotiations, everybody.
BTW: The cost to use VEO 3? $249 / month for GOOGLE AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S., or $125 / month for the first 3 months.
It’s ‘unclear’ what GOOGLE is using to train VEO — but have fun putting in some Hollywood movie-related prompts! If you get some “interesting” results — drop me a note seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com
WAKEUP POLL RESULTS
Ok, bets are placed! The total Memorial Day weekend box office record was in 2013 at $306M — ya know, back when we used to make original movies in Hollywood, like Fast 6, Hangover 3 and the 12th Star Trek movie.
Looks like we really have no idea on MI:8 (I’m going a bit optimistic with the 23%)
But the Lilo crowd is full of bulls, including myself (although not the near $200M bulls).
NEW ANKLER PODCAST EPISODE
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
DISNEY dumps MARVEL out of summer kickoff 2026
So, maybe now it’s every other year for MARVEL taking the summer kickoff weekend slot?