☀️ PSKY’s Pricey Debt Terms; NETFLIX Loves Lohan

Mornin! Here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026.

Where it’s not just you, Hollywood liberals, who the Trump administration loves trolling on social media by using your music and images in posts in a totally unauthorized fashion.

The DHS has now refused to take down a post featuring footage of PHILADELPHIA EAGLES player Brian Dawkins, despite the NFL’s request.

Well, I’m sure the league will totally not have POTUS at any of its games this year to show its displeasure.

WELL: SONY is really gunning for the $1B domestic box office mark with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. The studio announced a new version with “unseen footage” will hit theaters at some point and include a deleted scene with Rosario Dawson.

PLUS: John Mayer set a residency at Sphere in April; the pre-sale starts Oct. 7, with “the regulars” getting access on Oct. 9.

AND: The federal production tax credit bill added 8 new co-sponsors in the Senate.

OI!: SNL U.K. set its next 3 hosts: Danny Dyer, James Norton and Cynthia Erivo, who will round out the fall season before the show returns in 2027. Music guests will be Sasha Keable, The Streets and Blossoms.

MY MAN: A sláinte 🍻 goes out to cyclist Brandon McNulty for making the McNulty name proud and being the first U.S. cyclist in 33 years to hold the title of road racing world champion! And yes, I’ll totally be pretending we’re directly related going forward.

THEN: The latest example of the power of the NFL as a lead-in, the VMAs hit 8.4M viewers on CBS & MTV in prelim NIELSEN numbers, with 7.6M coming from CBS, 686k from MTV and an encore on MTV got 142k viewers.

That’s +51% vs. last year’s 5.6M, which also had an NFL lead-in . . . albeit not one that came down to a last-second play featuring the NFL’s most popular team on TV that led right into the start of the show.
No word on the exact size of that NFL audience.
But that’s the biggest audience since 2015, bringing in over 12M across several PARAMOUNT cable networks.
Keep in mind the usual NIELSEN methodology changes since 2020, which have bumped audience counts (out-of-home viewing, BIG DATA + PANEL, etc.).
8.4M is about the same size as the Globes back in January at 8.7M — although that was only on CBS with no encores and without an NFL lead-in, and both were up against Sunday Night Football.

AH: Despite having the World Cup here this summer, American tourism is on pace to be -2M YoY this year and -20% vs. 2019. And you say theme park visitors at UNI’s EPIC are seeing softness? (although that may be more due to the U.S. economy — take your pick.)

WELL: Gotta love Lady Gaga is keeping the art of the overseas market celebrity ad alive and well in Japan with . . . this, I’m told, employee recruitment ad for a convenience store chain called FAMILY MART.

OH: Can I interest you in some FY2025 ANTHROPIC numbers? And the actual kind, not the “12-month run-rate” kind.

$4.8B in revenue
-$8B in net loss, or -$42B if you count accounting charges related to internal stock valuations.
Operating loss was -$8B
25% of total revenue comes from just 2 clients (they are unnamed).

YEAH: Gotta love the irony that making versions of the Monopoly board game entirely in the U.S. was both costly and problematic. In the end, the dice still had to come from China, which is ironic given our growing affinity for gambling. #USA!USA!

KUDOS: To women’s hockey, as the PWHL is reviving Hockey Night in Canada for 8 weekends this season on the CBC. The NHL vacated the broadcast TV tradition after 74 years for streaming.

REST IN PEACE: Goes out to Dennis Haskins, who died at the age of 75, and will forever be a beloved name amongst Gen Xers and beyond.