☀️ WGA Escalates PAR Fight as EU Decision Looms

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, July 22, 2026.

Where unless OPENAI has a role that we don’t know about in the first act of the post-apocalyptic plot for The Dog Stars next month — Hollywood, we really gotta get moving on our AI conspiracy movies (all due respect to Artificial) . . . because the product is seemingly outpacing you.

Yes, a new AI bot powered by CHATGPT 5.6 Sol bot, and another unreleased model, escaped its “sandbox” during a cybersecurity test, according to an AI platform and community called HUGGING FACE #realname.

A sandbox is an environment supposedly not connected to the internet, and is also the working title for our new AI movie (don’t worry, our GOOGLE AI bot will totally come up with a better name).

However, crafty Sol and its sidekick found a leak in the sandbox all on their own, made their way to access the internet and subsequently hacked into HUGGING FACE to achieve the test directive it was given, which . . . (checks notes) was apparently not to freak us all out or give us the story beat for the beginning of act 2 in our screenplay.

HUGGING FACE tried to use publicly available CHATGPT versions to fix its vulnerabilities but . . . yeah, OPENAI had to give it access to the more advanced private ones instead to achieve the task.

Ah I’m sure this technique will work to stop any more large scale issues. Via Giphy

AH: AMAZON PV is doing a doc with Lily Allen, that I’m sure won’t drive any headlines at all.

AND: REDDIT, POLITICO and other companies are reconsidering how and if they’ll still continue to work with GOOGLE / allow it to access content for AI use, according to the WSJ, as GOOGLE’s AI Mode has brought the long-dreaded “GOOGLE Zero” moment to the fore.

The NY Times cited internal GOOGLE data that users are writing queries 3x as long as they used to in the “traditional search” era, and users are spending 1 to 9 more minutes in GOOGLE AI Mode than on traditional searches, according to 3 research studies.

PLUS: France is the latest country to enact a social media ban for anyone under 15, and perhaps more importantly (and enforceable), a mobile phone ban in high schools.

CURIOUSLY: AMC THEATRES, CINEMARK and MARCUS THEATERS have been the stocks seeing boosts from The Odyssey over the past week.

The two businesses most directly associated with the film — IMAX and COMCAST — are essentially both flat over the past week (+/-1%), although both have Q2 earnings calls tomorrow morning (The Odyssey will not affect any of those numbers given that it’s in Q3).

BUT: Finally, Elon is putting his reportedly polluting AI data center gas turbines to good use . . . and is having GROK make a “historically accurate” version of The Odyssey by the end of the year.

ALTHOUGH: SPOTIFY is also seeing listening spikes for audiobook versions of The Odyssey this month. Granted, keep in mind how many people were probably listening to it previously when you see comp numbers like +500% on July 17 (opening day).

YEAH: Prediction markets bets topped $50B in June, the first time that monthly mark has been reached, driven by the World Cup. Last June, the total action was $2B.

$5.7B alone was “predicted” on the World Cup final game this month on KALSHI and POLYMARKET.
KALSHI is also opening its “midterms hub” this week. 🥳

THEN: The World Cup final got the 2nd biggest TV audience of the year behind the Super Bowl (and clearly the biggest soccer audience ever in the U.S.), with 62.8M viewers across FOX, TELEMUNDO and PEACOCK:

38.9M on FOX (note that includes pre-game coverage — the game itself averaged 42.5M)
23.9M on TELEMUNDO / PEACOCK (no specific audience breakout for either, and the PEACOCK data is ADOBE ANALYTICS, not NIELSEN)
- This was the biggest game of the World Cup for both outlets, although note that MEXICO vs. ENGLAND got 23.2M for TELEMUNDO/PEACOCK on July 5.
The game was also the biggest non-NFL or news event TV audience since the NBC Seinfeld finale in 1998 (76.3M), according to SportsMediaWatch. Although note that out-of-home viewing and NIELSEN BIG DATA + PANEL metrics were not in use then.
Overall, a decent portion of World Cup games were bigger than the biggest games in any other sport than the NFL — bigger than the World Series, NBA Finals — and often matched NFL-size audiences, including hitting upper NFL playoff echelons (ex. Super Bowl) in its final stages.
Granted, the men’s World Cup comes around once every 4 years (although audiences were also similar to, or bigger than, the Olympics), and having it in the U.S. is a 1-of-1 experience, so enjoy these numbers for what they are.
- I don’t think we’ll be seeing boosted audience comps in 2030 from Spain/Portugal/Morocco, and certainly not from the Middle East again in 2034, where peripheral cultural phenomenon reports like Scottish people drinking all of the beer in the (non-existent) Saudi Arabia bars will be . . . less common. Not too sure Brad Pitt or Matt Damon will be making the trip over either.
SO: See you for the women’s World Cup on NETFLIX next summer in Brazil, which is certainly U.S. time zones friendly, and we’ll also see if CHAMPIONS LEAGUE games on TELEMUNDO/PEACOCK next year can keep some momentum going there too.
- BTW: PEACOCK will now have both PREMIER LEAGUE and CHAMPIONS LEAGUE games in 2027 — although PEACOCK’s PREMIER LEAGUE rights are up for renewal after that 2027-28 season.
AND: I’m sure we’ll see all of you back again tonight for the full return of the 2nd half of the MLS season (which as you all know, already re-started last week in a more limited capacity, ahem).

OTHERWISE: Let’s see . . . more #TrumpTariffs are in the works — including a 100% tariff on generic medicines imported to the U.S. in about 15 months, $4+ a gallon gas is back for . . . likely a while, and the Department of Defense wants another $67B for the Iran War.

Everyone knows midterms are this year, right? Eh, I’m sure folks will remember their #BigBeautifulBill tax returns savings from 8 months earlier in November.

It’s also always a great vote of economic confidence when the head of America’s largest bank says he has no interest in buying stocks or bonds right now, given market conditions.

Well, either way — at least everyone is definitely still psyched to be associated with the Trump administration, with the rate of officials’ departure 2x that of Trump’s first term so far.