☀️ 'Practical Magic' Further Curses WB

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, September 13, 2026.

Where I’m back in NYC from Toronto today, and life is already 20% less polite.

Rushfield told me it’s customary for people attending their first TIFF as a member of the press to take a photo in front of the TIFF sign doing the Borat pose — and in retrospect, I suspect that was Rushfield once again f’ing with me.

HOWEVER: A big kudos to TIFF and their wonderful volunteer staff for the kind and helpful hospitality, and for making for a very smooth and really enjoyable festival experience.

I managed to get to 7 movies in 3 days — certainly a personal record for me, and I saw a lot of great stuff!

Seconding things that already have buzz:

Wild Horse Nine rocks (if I’m paraphrasing Christopher Rosen’s reaction to it from Telluride correctly), with talent all operating at the top of their game.
Club Kid also really came together well to land the plane in the 3rd act with a deft and memorable touch — and certainly is also an ode to the wonders of partying in NYC until the wee hours of the morning.
Fjord has excellent performances and really anchors you in a different world, an experience which I love about a good movie.

A couple shout-outs to other films to put on the radar:

I thought the animated pic Tangles was great, a very effective and creative way to tell both a personal story and take a fresh attempt at a genre.
I also enjoyed Trash Mountain, which dealt with similar sibling and family themes as the very good Skeleton Twins from 2014 with Bill Hader and Kristin Wiig, but in its own way. A nice reflective fall movie, a personal favorite genre.

PLUS: A thanks to A24 for the invite to check out Rosalind Eleazar’s great performance at the premiere of Misty Green, and to the SONY PICTURES CLASSICS team for the invite to a fun dinner last night — I also recommend checking out their Bedford Park pic (and not just because it’s set in Jersey), which has its international debut at TIFF.

NOW: Back to our regularly scheduled programming — be sure to enjoy your big 60 Minutes night tonight, and let’s go Big Blue on NBC at 8 p.m.! Can’t wait to see if GIANTS QB Jaxson Dart has a new gold chain.

YAH: FCC ~~henchman~~ honcho Brendan Carr once again felt the need to share thoughts on something outside of his jurisdiction, calling Kimmel’s YOUTUBE interview with Texas Senate candidate James Talarico ~~“entirely within his rights as an American and well beyond the FCC’s jurisdiction”~~“the same hoax he did a few months ago on Colbert for the purpose of getting clicks and donations.”

The interview is now up to 8M views on YT.

THEN: A24 will screen the Elizabeth Holmes / Nathan Fielder doc You Can See Everything on Sept. 30 at the NYFF.

PLUS: Snoop Dogg is your host for the VMAs on Sept. 27 in L.A.

#JERSEYNEWS: The Montclair Film Festival announced its initial lineup of pics, including SEARCHLIGHT’s Wild Horse Nine and Behemoth!, which will top and tail the festival, as well as NETFLIX’s animated Ray Gunn and doc 14th, plus FOCUS’ Elsinore.

ALSO: Alan Ritchson and his wife, Catherine, announced that they’re divorcing after 20 years of marriage.

AH: PSKY and the state AGs will have 2 days of court-mandated settlement talks sometime at the end of October (date requests to be submitted Tuesday morning). Then again, they could already be having those talks on their own.

WELL: Enjoy your 2027, folks:

“Given the accelerating rate of AI capability development, it’s my worry that in 6–12 months such a (AI bot) swarm could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage), and that the scale of damage would continue to increase from there if AI becomes more powerful without the necessary guardrails.” — ANTHROPIC CEO Dario Amodei.
In fact, Sam Altman, GOOGLE’s DeepMind chair Demis Hassabis and even TIFF documentary subject Elon Musk today all seconded this call for an AI development slowdown / “Yeah, this stuff is getting dangerous” sentiment.

AND: Bloomberg picked up Dawn Chmielewski from Reuters as an editor in the L.A. bureau, working across both Media & Entertainment and California / national news beats.

FINALLY: A great time for SNL U.K. to return this weekend.

This Weekend in Hollywood’s Fresh Ideas For Gen Z Moviegoers:

SEARCHLIGHT is doing a sequel to the 2005 pic Family Stone with SJP, Rachel McAdams, Craig T. Nelson, Clare Danes and the rest of the cast returning, obviously sans Diane Keaton. The pic will shoot this fall.
PAR is developing a Hawaii Five-O movie with Destin Daniel Cretton (Spider-Man: Brand New Day). That’s on top of WB’s Get Smart movie development news last week with John Mulaney.

SO: Just some food for thought for the older Gen X and Boomer execs out there still mining the depths of the TV and movie vaults on the backlots (while they’re still in Hollywood):

For today’s core 18-34 moviegoing demographic — making Hawaii 5-O and Get Smart movies today is like Hollywood making movies based on TV shows from the 1940s back when you were in your 20s. Good luck with the marketing sell.

WAKEUP BOX OFFICE PREDICTION

Even my $32M bottom number for Practical Magic 2 was too optimistic, so add one to the loss column for me.