☀️ WTF Happened To January Movies
PSKY introduces ‘tickling fee’ to WBD / A24’s new big spec buy / AMAZON, Eddie Murphy re-team. Again
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 Tuesday, February 10, 2026.
Where it seems 1 of the 3 lost dog Super Bowl ads was the favorite among the 500 folks that ISPOT canvassed in its annual poll.
Oh, sorry — AMAZON’s RING dog ad in particular was the winner with its new “Search Party” feature linking various RING cameras to find lost dogs . . . although I preferred the methodology we had back in the ’90s.
BUT: PEACOCK came out on top in streaming latency for the big game. Here’s how far behind each was from what was happening in the stadium itself (i.e., why you heard your neighbor cheering 45 seconds before you saw the play).
OTA/TV ANTENNA: 19 seconds (still the only way to go!)
CABLE TV: 38 seconds
PEACOCK: 48 seconds
HULU/YT TV: 53 seconds
DIRECTV STREAM: 60 seconds
NFL+: 62 seconds
AND: As the Super Bowl told ya — enjoy your ads on CHATGPT starting today for free- and $8-a-month-tier users.
WELL: Just when you thought the WBD saga couldn’t get any more creative — meet the “tickling fee” (sadly, I’m not making that phrase up). PSKY has offered WBD shareholders an additional $0.25 per share for each quarter in which its proposed deal hasn’t closed by Dec. 31, 2026.
I.e., Our deal will close much faster — and if it doesn’t, we’ll pay you a bit of a bonus should the Trump admin seal of approval not come before the end of the year.
I.e., You’ll get your money faster with us.
PSKY also said it’ll pay NETFLIX’s $2.8B breakup fee itself.
It’s also eliminating WBD’s potential $1.5B financing cost associated with a debt exchange, which was a point of contention in comments from the WBD board.
So — still no $34 a share, but a few extra billions backstopped by Larry & Co.
And yes, this is still in the “trying to convince WBD shareholders to cut bait” and commit shares to PSKY tactic bin. See you for the VERSANT Q4 call on March 3.
OH: Clearly, MrBeast is watching Industry on HBO this season too — he’s purchased a “youth-focused” financial services app called TENDER STEP, so Gen Z can better manage how much impulse spending they’re doing on TIKTOK and INSTA. Plus, it’s always good to provide finance fundamentals for the masses from a guy whose business was built on giving away large sums of money to one person at a time.
STEP was launched in 2018 and backed by payments processor STRIPE and some VC funds.
The app has over 7M users.
ALSO: HBO MAX will launch in UK/IRE on Thursday, March 26, with prices ranging from $7 a month with ads, to $14 without ads, to $20 for the bougie tier.
If you want TNT SPORTS (UK-only), that’ll be another $42 a month 🤯 . . . which certainly makes ESPN D2C look like a bargain.
This streamer is currently housed inside DISCO+ but will move to within HBO MAX on the launch date.
TNT SPORTS features a lot of football (PREMIER LEAGUE and CHAMPIONS LEAGUE games packages), rugby, tennis (French and Australian Opens) and the LA28 Olympics. Oh and the World Snooker Tour.
THEN: The WASSERMAN 🔥 over Casey Wasserman’s appearance in the latest batch of Epstein files just went up a notch.
GOOD NEWS: All of your INSTA scrolling is really paying off! An estimated $150M to $200M of Zuck’s wealth is now being put into a new property on Miami’s gated Indian Creek barrier island. But, ya know — it’s really the billionaire tax in CA that’s egregious.
Although, gotta say I’m a bit curious what kind of neighborhood welcome gift Bezos sends over. Less so about the one Jared Kushner would send.
YAH: GOOGLE has blocked its AI (GEMINI, NANO BANANA, etc.) from accepting prompts with DISNEY-owned characters after DISNEY sent them a letter to cut it out in December.
According to Deadline, you can still manipulate/use DISNEY IP if you submit photos of it with accompanying text prompts for what you want to do.
THEN: Always great when a company with over $125B of cash on hand — that also just cleared $34B in net profit in one quarter — is issuing $20B of new debt to fund its AI spending. Enjoy your GOOGLE bonds! They’re good for it 😉.
AH: AI text-to-video creator RUNWAY AI is raising $315M at a new valuation of $5.3B, up from $3.3B about 10 months ago.
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
Another January Box Office to forget — what’s wrong here?
As I laid out on Sunday night — if it wasn’t for non-studio theatrical players taking a shot on Super Bowl weekend (VERTICAL, ANGEL, BLEECKER, etc.), this weekend would have been a total disaster at the box office.
Even as is — no movie cracked $10M (Send Help came in at $9M), the #2 movie only made $7M, and we were below $5M by the time we got to 5th place.
Which got my mind going in 2 directions:
Why is this so dire?
Have the first 4-5 weeks of the year always been this bad?
The answers are pretty stark, and let’s start with this January’s big studio releases, which are quite a litmus test on where things stand in the movie business.
Here are your top 3 films to start the year off. Yikes.