☀️NETFLIX Korean 🎥 Hit Trounces ‘Wake Up Dead Man’
PAR pulls ‘Airbender’ from theatrical / YT rules daytime TV / ‘SNL’ hits high
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 Wednesday, December 24, 2025.
Where here on Christmas Eve, hopefully you all are also not technically working!
While I doubt I have a notable readership with either contingent . . . I’ll start here with a sincere thanks to 2 groups who will have a very different Christmas than most of us.
First up — members of our military, who will have to settle for a Zoom chat with faraway family members for their holiday time this week, so our country’s defenses remain on alert.
The second big thanks goes out to the nurses, doctors and various emergency first responders we have who are spending the next 2 days away from family and friends to be there to take care of others, with an additional thought for those folks who are too ill to leave a hospital to be with loved ones.
A lot of our fellow Americans make professional sacrifices so that the rest of us can lead the lives we do and enjoy the protections and resources we have, so a heartfelt thanks goes out to them all.
Hopefully, Santa still manages to bring you a treat, even if it’s not WBD stock grants.
ALSO: Enjoy your NFL games all weekend that . . . mostly don’t mean that much. With 2 weekends of the regular season left — 14 NFL teams are already eliminated from the playoffs, and the NFC in particular only has 1 playoff slot still to be determined.
The RAIDERS vs. GIANTS game on CBS Sunday is arguably one of the more interesting, as the two . . . 2-12 teams battle it out for the top draft pick slot next year.
KUDOS: To Al Michaels, who will be calling his 779th NFL game tomorrow night on AMAZON in his 40-year career doing so. Pat Summerall is next at 734 games. Madden may get all of the laurels, and deservedly so — but I still love to hear Al when I stream on Thursday nights.
OH: Sinners hits AMAZON PRIME Saturday, as WB PICTURES Pay2-ish window on the streamer continues for its 2025 titles that I laid out earlier this week in the latter part of my Sunday column.
AND: A court shot down WBD’s bid to halt SLING from offering mini bundle subscriptions (1-day, 7-day, etc.). DISNEY also failed in its bid to get a temporary injunction against the move earlier this year.
PLUS: The U.S. Government will now start garnishing the wages of folks who owe student loans but haven’t made a payment in a year, beginning with 1,000 folks on the week of Jan. 7 and growing significantly from there each month.
Add that to your Venn diagram of people being hit by health care insurance subsidy loss and . . . yeah, welcome to 2026, lower-income America!
AH: I found this ‘day in the life’ column from Shark Tank mainstay (and Marty Supreme star) Kevin O’Leary to actually be pretty insightful if you’re into these kinds of reads.
FINALLY: Some encouraging things to leave you with for the week (I’ll be back on Sunday for the box office report):
The U.S. murder rate had its highest annual YoY decline ever at -20% for the 10 months from Jan. through Oct. this year, and is now below where it was in the late 2010s.
Other crimes also continued to decline since Covid-era highs, though they remain higher than in the late 2010s (you can nose around here with the stats as ya like).
Yes, U.S. GDP grew 4.3% in Q3, above last year’s 3.3% but below 2023’s 4.7%.
Of course, that ended in September . . . so we’ll see how things shake out in Q4 — a quarter when many U.S. data collection agencies were shut down for over a month due to the government standoff.
But — also a reminder that economic experts are . . . not always so expert, given their dire prediction in April/May around tariffs.
Not that they won’t be correct longer-term — and obviously a large part of that GDP is likely being supported by a smaller group of consumers — but always keep in mind a proclivity for decreeing doom and gloom among uh, certain sectors. Ahem. #WBPictures2025
Christmas is being celebrated in Bethlehem for the first time since 2022. Taiwan also officially declared Dec. 25 a holiday (granted, it’s Constitution Day, but the date was chosen in coordination with Christmas, and the holiday has its fans in the country).
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Marty Supreme is a movie that seems like the biggest wild card to me this weekend . . . so let’s see where the hoi polloi stands.
Tracking seems to figure around $12M to $14M for the 4-day (Christmas Eve night through Sunday), but some see this as lowballing . . . with perhaps more like $19M/$20M possible.
In terms of . . . not great comps — A Complete Unknown did $23.5M over 5 days last year (sans boffo limited debut the week prior like Marty). What say you for the 4-day total?
Wakeup Weekly NETFLIX Film Chart Analysis
Yeah, given its week 2 data — I definitely stand by my religion/Christianity-themed thesis for why Wake Up Dead Man is coming up short . . . and this week it was also met by a double whammy of a surprise new movie hit.
Plus, a look at how the Jake Paul audience numbers stack up, which millennial actress won NETFLIX Christmas, and much more.