☀️'Thunderbolts*' Gives Summer 🎥 A Solid Launch
CINEMARK sees Q1 losses / Jolie pic hitting Cannes market / NETFLIX, Julia Garner re-team
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, May 4, 2025.
Where as you probably saw, Warren Buffett announced he’s going to be stepping away as CEO of BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY by end of year, capping a run and cultural persona that will be hard ever to replicate.
While not known as a Hollywood figure — Ankler Executive Editor David Lidsky pulled together some pretty interesting interactions over the decades that I was not aware of (granted, they were a little before my time):
He bought a 5% stake in DISNEY in 1966 for a cool $4M after coming away very impressed from a meeting with Walt:
“Mary Poppins had just come out. Mary Poppins made about $30 million that year, and seven years later, you’re going to show it to kids the same age. It’s like having an oil well where all the oil seeps back in.”
Warren sold his stake the next year for $6M at a 50% profit . . . but many years later called the move “a huge mistake. I should have been buying.”
He also played a large role in CAP CITIES buying ABC, taking a 15% stake in the company (for $517M) in the 1980s and serving as a “gorilla investor” to fend off corporate raiders during the deal.
He subsequently played a large role in the DISNEY / CAP CITIES deal in the 1990s, and subsequently sold his DISNEY shares in 2001, netting $1.5B (a 400% ROI).
ALTHOUGH: His last dalliance with Hollywood didn’t go so well — he took significant stakes in PARAMOUNT in 2022, which were subsequently sold and resulted in a loss of “quite a bit of money,” according to Buffett.
PLUS: For any parents with kids getting their college acceptances this spring . . . and waiting to year uh, ya know, how much it’s gonna cost — the NYT did a pretty good look at the cottage industry behind that process.
THEN: NETFLIX said its production in India has generated $2B of “economic impact” in the country from 2021 to 2024. Impact, of course, is a broad term (this is not revenue or spending), but often used to describe the rationale behind things like production tax incentives in states and countries.
AND: For my West Coast folks, another stellar 60 Minutes tonight on egg freezing and the, uh, collapse of our legal system. Tune in.
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Kudos to my fellow 33%-ers! 🤝
OH: Some good Pope Trump jokes this weekend.
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