☀️WB Sale Puts Movie Windows in Further Jeopardy
PAR re-org gives many TV execs more jobs / CINEMARK's down, positive Q3 / UNI reviving 'Mummy'
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 Wednesday, November 5, 2025.
Where granted — it was just 2 governor’s races in 2 East Coast states (and an NYC mayoral race where the Republican candidate got 8% of the vote), but I’d say the intrigue in next year’s midterms went up a notch last night.
Just a Jersey snapshot:
Republican nominee Jack Ciattarelli got 43% of the vote. He got 48% when he ran against incumbent Phil Murphy in 2021.
My home county of Monmouth, and future East Coast home of NETFLIX, went with Ciattarelli both times — this time by about a 9-point margin.
Trump got 46% of the NJ vote in 2024.
With the data in so far, most of the shift “blue” seems to have come in South Jersey counties, broadly speaking.
BTW: Congrats, America! You now have your longest U.S. government shutdown in history (surpassing the Trump 1.0 shutdown in 2018).
OH: If you’re planning on flying next week — juuuust a heads up from the U.S. Transportation Secretary, who had this to say when asked about the likely state of things at that point:
“You will see mass flight delays. You’ll see mass cancellations, and you may see us close certain parts of the airspace, because we just cannot manage it because we don’t have the air traffic controllers.”
Naturally, he blamed the Democrats for the problem, just as voters in VA and NJ clearly surmised as well.
OH: Speaking of other standoffs — according to some back-of-the-napkin math at Awful Announcing, DISNEY is losing out on about $4M to $5M of revenue a day from being blacked out on YOUTUBE TV just from ESPN affiliate revenue alone (ad revenue is not factored into that).
THEN: Kevin Feige wrote a really big check to USC . . . so meet the Kevin Feige Division of Film & Television Production (inside the USC’s School of Cinematic Arts). #Protip — the Deadpool Water Fountain on the 2nd floor gives you NATTY LIGHT if you turn the handle counter-clockwise. 🤫
AND: APPLE is creating a new computer centered on the low-cost laptop market, and I can’t wait to see what APPLE defines as “low-cost” in 2026.
GOOD NEWS!: Sounds like this AI stuff is really gonna start paying out, so these companies can afford all of the multi-billion dollar deals they’ve uh, already committed to. Well. They will in 3 years — ANTHROPIC is projecting $70B of revenue in . . . 2028.
This year, it’s projecting $4.7B. Or about what LIONSGATE made last year (with STARZ), and 80% of that revenue is projected to come from business clients, not the general population like CHATGPT’s.
Also note that the 2028 number is “as much as $70B,” which is also The Wakeup’s projection for 2028. #thinkbig
THIS IS FUN: AMAZON is telling PERPLEXITY AI to stop letting its AI bots make purchases on AMAZON. Man, if only AMAZON had a connection to a significant PERPLEXITY investor like . . . Jeff Bezos. Again — HBO, please bring back Silicon Valley!
ALSO: Following PEOPLE INC’s lead — GANNETT will now be known as the USA TODAY CO. I still prefer to be known as a division of the SHEINHARDT WIG COMPANY and always will.
AH: Those folks at PEOPLE INC. gave us our latest handy snapshot of the effect of AI on GOOGLE traffic via IAC’s Q3 earnings report.
The company also just struck a deal with MICROSOFT to be part of its pay-per-usage AI content marketplace. It also has an overall usage deal with OPENAI.
YAH: Here’s how the (up to) $20.5M in student-athlete payments from the schools in the Top 10 FBS Conferences shook out in average payments per sport this year, according to an OPENDORSE report in FOS:
Football: $13.1M (63.8%)
Men’s basketball: $4.3M (20.9%)
Women’s basketball: $1.6M (8%)
All other sports: $1.5M (7.3%)
FINALLY: This is a fun read from The Optionist’s Andy Lewis with some highlights from producer Jon Landau’s new posthumous memoir, The Bigger Picture (now available here) — including details on why Solaris ended up being a . . . perhaps more muted affair from the version Landau & James Cameron had been developing (Jim didn’t have time to direct it).
One (likely) WBD Deal Reality — Movie Windows Will Take Another Hit 🥊
In breaking down the weekend’s box office with Rushfield in our weekly Monday Morning Quarterbacks chat, replete with the lack of a new major studio film release . . . Richard noted Dave Poland’s recent look at how much the “legs” of the box office have dwindled (i.e., revenue from weeks 4-7+ in a movie’s theatrical release).
It got me forward-thinking about that phenomenon through the lens of an impending WB PICTURES deal. First — hands down, the loss of WB PICS as a going concern (or being turned into a DISNEYFOX) is the most dire of outcomes. More on that in a moment.
HOWEVER: Looking closer at the situation that will likely result from a WBD/WB PICTURES deal with the current leading candidates led to a much more certain conclusion about its effect on the movie business: