☀️Salke Out; DISNEYFOX A-List Director Push Grows
UNI sets rom-com / NETFLIX goes live again / Whitesell makes first move
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect here on LINKEDIN if ya like or email me seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com) and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on FRIDAY, March 28, 2025.
Where indie film folk, it looks like we’re goin’ to Boulder! See ya in 2027, Sundance, and better luck in 2037, Cincinnati (it’s a 10-year deal).
Uh well, I should say Richard will see you there in 2027 — I’ll remain in my usual late January earnings season bunker on the East Coast while Richard regales me with stories of snow bank conquering and wind-chapped hands that will most certainly continue in Colorado. #GoodTimes
AND: Just to note — it’s a weekend full of original movies in wide release at the multiplex! A wide variety too (I’ll leave it to the masses to debate the quality):
ACTION: A Working Man
HORROR: Woman in the Yard
A movie that is either “a stately and stylish BLUMHOUSE horror flick” if you believe THR . . .
Or a “farmhouse horror movie that just sits there” if you believe Variety.
MOVIES FOR ADULTS: The Penguin Lesson and Ballad of Wallis Island (I think in a more limited capacity — it’s only on 2 screens in NYC)
RELIGIOUS: The Chosen episodes 1 & 2
INDIE: Death of a Unicorn
ALSO: The new Hunger Games book Sunrise on the Reaping sold 1.5M copies in its first week. That’s just in 6 English-language countries (US/CAN, UK/IRE and AU/NZ), with most of them sold in the U.S. (1.2M).
The last Hunger Games/Songbirds pic did $350M globally in 2023 — and this book sold 2x the amount of copies in its first week than the Songbirds book.
THEN: Sorry chocolate, MrBeast has moved onto new challenges . . . apparently writing a thriller novel with James Patterson. Although given the logline is “Players fight to survive deadly tests held in dangerous locations around the world, as they battle to become ‘The One’” — this could also just be the pitch deck for Beast Games season 2.
HMM: I usually don’t give much mind to online trailer view news (oh, was the new MARVEL movie trailer popular?) — but when Final Destination Bloodlines gets the 2nd-highest view count ever for a horror movie in its first 24 hours . . . maybe there’s more hope for the mid-May box office than we thought.
AH: Always nice to see Zuck go back to his roots — FB is introducing a “Friends & Family” feed in the FB app (although it takes a little bit of knowing how to create it — there’s a video in the link, and don’t worry . . . ads will still join you and your friends & family).
SO: Basically . . . FACEBOOK 2010. Personally I think I’ll stick with the “A lot of shit we know you don’t want to see” feed. Habits are tough to change.
OH: Gotta love the MINNESOTA TWINS’ brand new TV feed for the new season streaming the . . . CLEVELAND INDIANS game on opening day for the first few minutes. You can almost hear the “Oh crap!” coming from the tech control center in the feed.
THEN: Even the bougie side of the economy is doing this 😳 about the economic outlook for this year — LULULEMON lowered its sales guidance for the year, causing a -10% stock dive last night.
BUT: Good news — FERRARI is going to “protect” its customers from car tariff hikes on some of its models and eat the costs . . . but I’m guessing those wanting the, ya know, fancy FERRARIs will still have to pay up. You can find out if your model is affected here (this newsletter is nothing if not a resource for its readers).
ALTHOUGH: As most FERRARI buyers in the U.S. apparently already own a FERRARI . . . they should be okay.
PLUS: This read on the 💰 incentives that South Korea is giving to its citizens to encourage marriage and increase the country’s 0.75 children per woman birthrate (about 1/3 of the rate needed to keep the population stable) is quite something.
NEW ANKLER PODCAST EPISODE
SPOTIFY here, and APPLE 👇
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Seems like most folks think A Working Man won’t be working too hard this weekend, now the final full movie campaign to come out in the Salke era. I’ll leave the “working” jokes there to y’all and go with the $10M to $12M crowd.
💼 IN THE EXECUTIVE SUITE
