☀️NETFLIX Theatrical Blitz: Big 💰 SONY, UNI Deals
LEGENDARY’s big new valuation / AMAZON gets more Powell / LUCASFILM regime change
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, January 16, 2026.
Where, as a Gen X’er, it’s always fun to watch millennials discover something called “nostalgia” (aka getting old!), in case your INSTA feed is full of 2016 things this week.
Also funny to see how people look back at 2016 as “simpler times” and forget the chaos of the presidential election.
Either way, millennials — some advice from the future: Wear your sunblock, drink plenty of water, and yes, as Gwyneth and Poehler told you on Good Hang this month, alcohol is ruined after 50.
PLUS: Oh, look, another 🏀 game fixing gambling scandal. What were the odds? 🥁
AH: In other #duh news — GROK still can’t stop taking people’s clothes off. Don’t worry, Elon’s totally on it.
THEN: Nothing like some more AI fresh hell on a Friday morning. Stranger Things version (can’t wait til folks start using this for Trump impersonations in 3, 2 . . .)
OR: DISNEY IP version.
BUT: Let’s move on to something a little more hopeful for humanity — in the spirit of getting ready for LA28 with tickets going on sale this week . . . this is just 🤯 — Ledecky literally just had to hang out there in the water while all of the other competitors did another lap to finish!
ALSO: Variety’s Tatiana Siegel is leaving to be a writer-at-large for the new California Post, according to Breaker, joining fellow PENSKE stablemate Peter Kiefer from THR and formerly of The Ankler, as well as previously announced Tim Baysinger, formerly of Axios.
AND: The FTC finalized its judgment against GENERAL MOTORS for selling your driving data to outside brokers without your explicit consent — data around things like your hard braking, etc, which was then used to jack up insurance rates of said drivers in some cases. Way to totally narc on your customers for 💵, GM! #CorporateGonnaCorporate
5-year ban on GM disclosing consumers’ geolocation and driver behavior data to consumer reporting agencies.
For the next 20 years, GM has to:
Get affirmative express consent to give your data elsewhere.
Create a way for customers to request a copy of their data and seek deletion.
Give folks the ability to disable data collection
Provide a way for customers to opt out of collection.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
I’m going with the hoi polloi on SONY’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple — I liked the first one a lot, and the reviews on this one seem quite positive . . . so, let’s go 36%!
NEW POD
NETFLIX sets SONY global Pay1 🎥 deal, launches UNI ’26 surprise . . . adding to old HBO playbook
For a company that has continually laughed at and dumped on the theatrical movie business model . . . NETFLIX sure isn’t acting like one.
But at least I can stop mentioning in my weekly NETFLIX Film Chart analysis just how big an opportunity for large view counts there is if NETFLIX picked up SONY’s movies globally in the Pay1 window.
For the past 4 years, SONY pics have only been avail in Pay1 on NETFLIX in the U.S., Germany and a few SE Asia countries(roughly beginning 3 to 5 months post-theatrical release date) . . . so there was no way to make any kind of accurate view count/popularity comps to NETFLIX Original Films, which obviously stream globally.
Now, by around, say, mid-2028 — we’ll have real data about how big Pay1 theatrical film view counts can get vs. NETFLIX Original Films, as both of them will essentially be available wherever NETFLIX is available globally.
And given the data we have for SONY films, even with just the very limited, primarily U.S. NETFLIX footprint — there could be a very big future ahead here. A handful of data as an example:
The Equalizer 3: 70M views in 2024, and another 20M views in H1 ’25.
Bad Boys For Life: 55.9M views in its first 9 months through mid 2025.
Anyone But You: 49.7M views in 2024 alone.
Again, this is all just from the U.S., Germany and a 🤏 of SE Asia viewing.
AND: These SONY films aren’t even available on the ad tiers in the U.S. and Germany!
So, let’s take a look at:
The windows and big 💰 details in this SONY deal renewal (this is quite an increase), and comps to some other NETFLIX spend numbers.
A surprisingly accelerated UNI Pay1B deal timeline.
Ted’s new commitment to theatrical window duration at WB.
NETFLIX’s big studio theatrical film spending come 2027.
The curious position this leaves AMAZON PV in, how that could benefit PARAMOUNT and more.
This is a big deal.