☀️ Taylor Smashes Rock, Leo Holds
UNI + Bateman + Grisham / AMAZON sets Hathaway, Driver pic / WME opts out of SORA
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, October 5, 2025.
Where do you know how much 💰 you people are costing Sam Altman with all of your stupid Peter Griffin / Ronald McDonald SORA mashup videos that you’re sending to your college friend text chains!?
OPENAI’s CEO Sam Altman put that in a slightly different way when he issued “SORA Update #1” late on Friday, saying:
“We are going to have to somehow make money for video generation. People are generating much more than we expected per user, and a lot of videos are being generated for very small audiences.”
So, uh, get ready to potentially start having to pay to make them — and it sounds like Sam may have heard from some Hollywood folk last week, also saying OPENAI would “try sharing some of this revenue with rights holders.” Ah, what a swell guy.
He also said OPEN AI would give rights holders more “granular control over generation of characters, similar to the opt-in model for likeness but with additional controls.” So yeah, there were definitely a lot of incoming calls from Burbank and Culver City area codes last week.
We’ll see how these “additional controls” actually manifest.
CUE: WME alerted OPENAI that it was 🖕 opting out all of its clients for inclusion in SORA 2 the day after its release too, “regardless of whether IP rights holders have opted out IP our clients are associated with,” according to the internal memo from WME Digital Strategy Head Chris Jacquemin.
AH: Take that NSYNC! Taylor Swift sold the equivalent of 2.7M copies on its first day of release, including 1.2M vinyl copies.
YAH: Trump called for “the very amazing” YOUTUBE TV to restore UNIVISION . . . not because of any business or carriage fairness reason — but rather to help the Republicans on Election Day, saying they were “good to” him with airing a special about him previously.
AND: The Saudis lost $461M on LIV GOLF’s overseas business alone last year — revenue was $65M with expenses at $526.7M. Note that only covers half of LIV’s events last season (7 were overseas, 7 were in America).
ALSO: If you’re thinking the U.S. LIV business saved the books, then you must be among the 10 people who watch this league in America.
NOTE: That $461M loss is an increase from 2023’s $359M loss.
But sure yeah, let’s keep running 2 different pro golf leagues — one of which anyone actually watches.
OH: Add the PGA’s prez to the list of folks publicly apologizing for the sport’s fans at the lauded Ryder Cup last weekend on Long Island.
ALSO: Gotta love Zuck getting the better seat over the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, at UFC 320 in Vegas last night.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Swifties showed up more to the tune of the 15%, as those $12 ticket prices kept revenues out of reach for my fellow 29%’ers.
Alas, kudos to the 15% on The Smashing Machine.
🎥 THE BOX OFFICE
It was an interesting thematic weekend at movie theaters, demonstrating quite varying displays of the power of fandoms to spur box office success . . . or not:
The world’s most popular music artist scored rather well in throwing what’s essentially an enhanced album listening party in theaters.
Fans of two sports with global appeal failed to show up in a meaningful way for a movie set in the world of one of the sports (UFC) and starring arguably the biggest star ever from the other (WWE).
A movie based on the most popular kids show on NETFLIX globally in the first half of this year is going to struggle to reach break-even at the box office.
So — let’s dive into what’s afoot in the numbers.