☀️ New NETFLIX Sports, Animated Film Audiences Scant
Zaz offered PSKY Co-CEO role / HBO, Chase reunite / UNI, APPLE line up new pics
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, October 23, 2025.
Where a kudos goes to JP MORGAN CHASE on $3B nearly $4B well spent on the new NYC headquarters! Where else can you order coffee delivered right to your desk? Uh, assuming they can find it.
Ah, the glamour of Wall Street — nothing like spending 5 days a week here instead of the home office! Hmm, I wonder which one is Jamie Dimon’s?
Also, that image reminds me, HBO — can we get an Industry S4 premiere date soon for Q1?
OH: There’s a seemingly large NBA gambling bust going on this morning — The Athletic is live updating here, so far involving a pro coach and MIAMI HEAT player.
AND: SPOTIFY is likely raising prices again in Q1, according to several analysts who cover the company. #PayUpAmerica
THEN: DISNEY set its Upfront for Tuesday, May 12, next year at the Javits Center, as usual.
UH HUH: Only 1 in 8 social media platforms marked an AI-generated video as, in fact, AI-generated in a test done by WaPo. The 1 outlet was YOUTUBE, albeit it only noted it somewhere in the description that came with the clip.
ALSO: The Stranger Things season 5 finale will play in 350+ US/CAN theaters on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day (those are Wed. and Thu. days of the week). It’ll also debut on NETFLIX on New Year’s Eve. It’s over 2 hours long. No word on the chains participating at this time.
WELL: UBER may see a bump in NYC marketshare — it seems NYC taxicab screens are now showing NEWSMAX reports.
YAH: Proving there’s always money in layoffs, MICROSOFT CEO Satya Nadella got a $96M pay package in FY25 ($84M in stock), up from $79M last year and $48M in 2023. The company laid off 1% of its staff in January, and 15k folks after that during 2025. MSFT stock is +25% this year.
HUH: Sports betting is driving about 90% of betting predictions volume on KALSHI, in case there was any doubt what people are mostly doing there (and what industry it’s actually challenging), according to a new Wall Street analyst note. But hey, just wait ’til Oscars season!
UH: I’m a day late on this one, but this NY Times piece on AMAZON replacing 500k workers with robots is . . . yeah, I give myself 2 years before I just move to the woods somewhere.
YAH: Maybe YOUTUBE getting its logo on the new Trump White House ballroom floor for basketball games in between galas isn’t too far off — turns out ALPHABET contributed $22M to the cause of building the WH ballroom as part of its payoff settlement with Trump after banning his account after his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capital by his supporters.
ALTHOUGH: Trump may be coming back to ask for a few more bucks . . . as the $200M budget for the project has already ballooned to $300M.
SPEAKING OF: If you have a few bucks lying around, both ANDREESEN HOROWITZ and Josh Kushner’s THRIVE CAPITAL are looking to raise billions for new investment funds — AH to the tune of $10B, and THRIVE is looking for $6B to $8B. It raised $5B just over a year ago for a separate fund.
SO: REDDIT filed a lawsuit claiming that 4 companies have illegally scraped its data by scanning GOOGLE results and then sold them to AI companies to train their bots — although one of the companies is an AI company, in PERPLEXITY.
PLUS: The NFL’s latest attempt to make the Pro Bowl a thing now has a date — Tue. Feb. 3, indoors at the MOSCONE CENTER in SF (the Super Bowl is the following Sunday at LEVI’S STADIUM). A flag football game will again be the main uh, attraction (🤷♂️), and the “Pro Bowl Games” event will air on ESPN.
THEN: The TCM Festival will be April 30 thru May 3 next year in L.A. — whoever is running WBD by that point.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
How big are we going on The Boss? DISNEYFOX’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere forecasts seemed to have cooled a bit from earlier numbers out there.
I’ve seen optimists at $16M, but most seem to think $10M to $12M, which is pretty close to the other 2 entrants this weekend — Regretting You and Chainsaw Man.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
