☀️ NETFLIX Gen X ❤️ Deepens With Paltrow, Sandler Pics
WBD sets PSKY vote / Studios date more '27 movies / March Madness audience gains continue
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 Thursday, March 26, 2026.
Where NETFLIX entered its MLB era last night and definitely brought the bells and whistles, which may have rankled some more traditional / hard core media folks and fans who “just want to watch the game” to so speak, which I get.
But in a 7-0 wipeout of the GIANTS by the YANKEES that was never really close — having some elements to keep things entertaining wasn’t the worst approach I’ve seen to sports broadcasting.
Although I gotta say — I didn’t have “NY GIANTS backup QB Jameis Winston serving hot dogs” on my predictions list. I think he did more work for NETFLIX last night than he did on the football field all last season.
AND: HBO MAX launches in UK/IRE today (and several islands in the Pacific Ocean), giving the streamer a pretty extensive global reach to kick off Q2. New Zealand is still to come in the middle of the year.
YUP: WBD set a Thursday, April 23, shareholder vote day for the WARNAMOUNT deal.
SPEAKING OF: Wall Street bonuses hit a new all time high of $49.2B in 2025, so everyone can finally breathe that sigh of relief. The average was $247k, or as it’s known in the WBD C-suite, a day’s work.
YAH: These two headlines 👇 kinda say it all, with the jury near unanimous in their decisions. META and GOOGLE will appeal . . . so this is also far from over — as COX showed us yesterday, verdicts can change.
SWEET: The Iran war has pushed the avg. 30-year mortgage interest rate back up to 6.43%. It had fallen close to 6% just 3 weeks ago.
AH: SONY TV is launching a Jeopardy! YT channel with a special edition featuring on March 31, featuring, well, 3 YouTubers — Monét X Change (Monet Talks YT show), Rebecca Black and Brennan Lee Mulligan (Dimension 20 channel).
Mark Wahlberg is also joining the YOUTUBE creator crowd with a new 10-episode workout show called The 4AM Club Challenge where I think he scares the crap outta Gen Z creators by showing up at their house at 3:45 a.m. and temporarily kidnaps them come work out at his gym . . . but here’s the trailer — and yes ok, no kidnapping but definitely some 🤮.
YEAH: Something just seems fitting about a Melania producer being enlisted in “collaboration and support” by FIFA to make a ‘doc’ about the 2026 World Cup. Coming to DISNEY+ at some point.
THEN: PARAMOUNT is putting all of its WNBA game inventory on CBS/PAR+ this season (20 regular-season games) — the most of any broadcast network — as part of an extension of its current deal with the league (previously, some games aired on the CBS SPORTS NETWORK).
ALSO: The NFL will kick off the season on a Wednesday night this year, September 9, on NBC/PEACOCK. The Super Bowl-winning SEAHAWKS will play at home, as per league tradition, with the opponent TBA.
The Thursday, Sept. 10 game will be from Australia (NINERS vs. RAMS), as the NFL can’t have a Friday game this year due to legally mandated college football conflicts given how the calendar falls this year.
Still no network/streamer attached to that one, nor a kickoff time. If it’s a night game there, it would start before the crack of dawn on the East Coast.
HUH: Channing Tatum is co-writing a romance novel with Roxanne Gay about two people who make a pact to get married after 40.
THEN: The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to launch a Department of Economic Opportunity study of the WARNAMOUNT deal regarding things like job training and placement programs, and will report findings to the DOJ. The process will take 4 months.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
WB/NLC’s They Will Kill You is the main new entry . . . and it seems like $10M is the more optimistic side, while perhaps closer to $5M or $6M on the other side.
Then let’s add in a bonus poll — the Project Hail Mary weekend 2 hold. The 3-day weekend last week was about $77M, or $80.5M if you want to count the early IMAX screenings — so where does the ship land on Sunday?
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
