☀️ PAR’s WBD-NETFLIX Rage Mail, New Breakup 💰 Play
BLUM revives ‘Paranormal’ / WME adds UTA agent / NFL’s 💪 T’giving / A24 swaps Durkin pic leads
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, December 4, 2025.
Where good news — we have another gambling predictions market platform!
The folks at FANATICS looked at how well ESPN BET and WYNNBET did by taking on 2 big incumbents in sports app gambling (FANDUEL and DRAFTKINGS) and said, How do we get in on that with predictions markets?
Meet FANATICS Markets, launching in 24 markets this week in partnership with Crypto.com — where you can make bets predictions 🤑 across genres like sports, finance and culture . . . just as you can on KALSHI and POLYMARKET.
This is on top of those 2 big sports gambling app giants, FANDUEL and DRAFTKINGS, being in the process of launching their own “predictions markets” products as well.
Note that FANATICS, KALSHI and POLYMARKET operate in TX and CA — our 2 biggest states, and ones that FANDUEL and DRAFTKINGS can’t currently operate in.
Always great to see American innovation at its finest.
OH: CBS is broadcasting a Town Hall with Erika Kirk moderated by a veteran TV journalist Bari Weiss on Saturday, Dec. 13 at 8 p.m. It’ll be a pre-taped/edited special.
Note that the previously scheduled 28th annual Family Film and TV Awards will now air the following Saturday on CBS.
YAH: Who says podcasts get all the tech bro interviews? Sam Altman will be on Fallon/The Tonight Show Monday night.
GET WELL SOON: AMC THEATRES CEO Adam Aron suffered a minor stroke last month in London, but received emergency clot-busting treatment and is expected to have a full recovery.
YAH: DISNEY is going to stream a MNF NFL game on DIS+ on Dec. 22 (NINERS vs. COLTS) in addition to being on ABC/ESPN and streaming on ESPN D2C — the first time it’s doing that on DIS+.
AND: Here are your National Board of Review winners, including:
WB’s One Battle for Best Picture (PTA also won his 2nd NBR directing award)
NEON’s It Was Just an Accident for Int’l Film
NEON’s Arco for Animated Film
NETFLIX’s Cover-Up for Best Doc
ALSO: NETFLIX keeps showing network TV how synergy is done this month — first we had a Knives Out / Sesame Street collab and now WWE’s CM Punk has been added to the cast of the upcoming Leighton Meester / Jared Padalecki rom-com The Bodyguard.
NOTED: VERSANT is doing a dog-and-pony show today for Wall Street analysts / investors, as it becomes its own publicly traded VSNT company after trading closes on Friday, Jan. 2, on the NASDAQ.
VERSANT sports partners PGA head Brian Rolapp and NASCAR head Steve Phelps will be there doing chats, per VERSANT network CNBC.
SO: It’s GOOGLE’s turn to end 2025 in the first week of December, releasing its 2025 Year In Search results. Some #funfacts — note this is global data:
MOVIES: The Top 10 were all American movies.
5 of them were from a studio about to be sold, and potentially erased at a global streamer.
1 of them was from NETFLIX — it was a sequel to a studio movie.
KPop Demon Hunters was #1 in the U.S., but did not make the global chart.
A film that made $21M at the U.S. box office was #1. It also won the Best Picture award at the Oscars — then again, GOOGLE is often used to look for things you’re not previously aware of.
NOTE: Regretting You was the most searched-for novel. The Housemaid was #5.
TV: The Top 10 were all from U.S.-based streamers.
NETFLIX had 3 of the Top 5, and 5 of the Top 10.
1 was South Korean, 1 was British. They were the #2 and #3 series searched for globally.
APPLE TV had 2 (Severance and Pluribus — 2 series with very mysterious elements, helpful for Googling).
HBO MAX, PAR+, HULU and AMAZON each had 1.
The #1 most-searched-for series was a true-crime series (yes, on NETFLIX).
#1 in the U.S. was The Hunting Wives, a series initially produced by STARZ before moving to NETFLIX in the U.S.
#FUNFACTS: Hot Honey and Marry Me Chicken were the 2 most searched for food items, and the Top 10 list is pretty varied with foods from different cultures.
Nose around here as ya like — you can geolocate by country, and for some data in major cities, too.
THEN: AI video editing plugin tool QUICKTURE raised $1.7M in funding — it plugs right into AVID and ADOBE and can quickly log/categorize footage and help editors find things they’re looking for infinitely faster.
Interesting product . . . and yet another example where AI will help productions (especially in unscripted) cut costs / do more with less.
HMM: Yeah, I have no idea why folks aren’t feeling great about the Trump 2.0 economy. 🤷♂️
BTW: Small businesses accounted for all of the job loss in November, a total of 120k lost jobs — the largest monthly number ADP has seen since the onset of Covid.
YEAH: I’m sure the Obamacare subsidy expiration that the Trump administration will definitely very likely let happen that sizably raises monthly health insurance payments for many folks in just a few weeks on Jan. 1 won’t trigger an influx of very public posts and town hall sentiments from those Americans about the state of personal finances.
PLUS: In The Big Short 2 news — perhaps get to know the term “significant risk transfer”? MORGAN STANLEY has begun looking at offloading some of its multi-billion 💰 AI data-center debt exposure through an “SRT” process to . . . uh, well, if you’re interested — give ’em a call! Always a sign of confidence in a marketplace.
HOWEVER: Don’t worry, here’s how all of the major Wall Street eggheads see things going in 2026 . . . so, all good! (just, uh, don’t revisit how MORGAN and DEUTSCHE fared in The Big Short)
OH: META hired away a top APPLE design and UX exec, Alan Dye — lest you think all of those META AI glasses ads are just a hobby at the company.
BUT: We’ll see how privacy-centric brand APPLE feels about India’s new decree to install a government-run tracking app on every mobile phone in the country.
BUT: Good news for accountants! The I.R.S. now has to decide what “pornographic activity” is after the new Trump tax policies exclude the work category from the exemption on tip income.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Time for UNI/BLUM’s Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 . . . which has some industry estimates in the $35M / $40M range, but some others more in the $45M / $50M range.
🧐 WBD Bake-Off
