☀️ 'Sonic 3' Crushes 'Mufasa' to Kick Off Christmas Box Office
A24 makes horror pickup / Lively-Baldoni scandal rocks weekend / PAR makes 2024 slate adjustments
Evenin! 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 SUNDAY, December 22, 2024.
Where never let it be said that META’s goal isn’t creating ways for you to better express your manufactured true self to mostly people you haven’t seen IRL in years your friends!
INSTA is looking to introduce a new text-to-video AI prompt where you can totally lie about enhance where you are in seconds! So, have fun being frauds cool in 2025 everyone — although maybe it’ll let me make it at least look like I’m finally at a game that the GIANTS are winning. 🤔
Otherwise, if you need me — I’ll be over here enjoying some broadcast television . . . where the frauds are much more obvious.
WOW: This Blake Lively lawsuit against It Ends With Us co-star, producer and director Justin Baldoni (and other parties like his production outfit WAYFARER) is, uh, something.
First, there are the details for the agreement that had to be put in place when the production came back after the strikes, including the hiring of a full-time intimacy coordinator, and agreement for Baldoni to no longer mention things like his:
“Speaking to” Blake’s dead father
Previous porn addiction
Showing nude images or videos to Blake, and more
Also worth noting that it was Blake’s cut of the movie that SONY chose to release (and went on to make $350M).
THEN: There’s this NYT #mustread on the alleged smear campaign undertaken to undercut Blake and head off bad stories about Baldoni at the pass.
Not a great look for the crisis PR experts brought in by Baldoni, including former HILTZIK STRATEGIES exec Melissa Nathan (she since formed her own company backed by Scooter Braun’s company) and Jed Wallace, as well as Baldoni’s personal PR rep Jennifer Abel, who are also part of Lively’s lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and retaliation.
WME has subsequently dropped Baldoni (Lively and Ryan Reynolds are both repped there), and Colleen Hoover has voiced support for Lively on her INSTA.
KUDOS: To Juju Watkins/USC and Paige Bueckers/UCONN for putting on a helluva women’s college hoops game on Saturday night on FOX that was far better than any NBA game I’ve watched this year (and certainly more interesting than the 3 CFP 🏈 games on Saturday).
It was fun to watch actual fundamental basketball being played . . . by players clearly fighting tooth and nail against each other — novel concept! March Madness is gonna be fun this year.
ALSO: Gotta love AMAZON’s Beast Games choice of a fintech payday loan company called MONEYLION as the sponsor of the big $4.2M sweepstakes taking place throughout the show.
Payday loans are cash advances against your paycheck that often come with fees attached and/or very high interest rates for missed payments.
Perfect for MrBeast’s young viewership who likely don’t have great financial literacy in life
AND: Half of U.K. PREMIER LEAGUE teams now have partial or full U.S. ownership (can you imagine if that was the case in the NFL 🤯), as Dan Friedkin’s THE FRIEDKIN GROUP took over EVERTON (it also owns the ROMA team in Italy’s SERIE A league).
Only 3 of the PREMIER LEAGUE’s 20 teams turned a pre-tax profit last year.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL RESULTS
The 53% bulls take the weekend!
🎥 THE BOX OFFICE
