| | | | | | What's news: Amazon made a whopping $17.7b from ads in Q3. Netflix is set for a 10-for-1 stock split. Actors’ Equity has voted to ratify its contract with the Broadway League. Hulu has renewed King of the Hill for two seasons. And Wicked: For Good is tracking to open at $115m+. — Abid Rahman
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Disney Channels Go Dark on YouTube TV After Failed Talks ►Punishing the consumer. Disney went dark on YouTube TV. Channels owned by the entertainment giant, including ABC, ESPN, Disney Channel, Freeform and others were pulled from the Google-owned pay-TV service at midnight ET after the two sides failed to come to terms on a new carriage agreement ahead of a deadline. With ESPN and ABC pulled, YouTube TV subscribers may need to seek alternatives for their college football, NFL, or NBA fix. YouTube TV says that if Disney’s channels remain off the platform for an extended period, they will give customers a $20 monthly credit. The companies had warned consumers about the potential blackout a week ago. The story.
—More exits. As Paramount Skydance undertakes a major round of layoffs affecting 1,000 employees, one of the company’s two TV studios is also reorganizing its executive team. Paramount Television Studios head Matt Thunell announced a number of changes to the studio’s leadership in a memo to staff on Thursday. As part of the reorganization, several high-level execs — including Keri Flint, executive vp and head of global production for MTVE/Showtime; Jeff Hegedus, executive vp business and legal affairs for Skydance; Paramount Media Networks, Showtime and MTVE CFO Candice Brancazio; and Shauna Phelan, head of live action series, films and talent at Nickelodeon and Awesomeness TV — are leaving the company. The story.
—10-for-1. The price of a share of Netflix is about to get less expensive, with the streaming giant’s board of directors signing off on a 10-for-1 stock split, the company said Thursday. Netflix was trading at $1,089 at market close Thursday. At that price, shares would trade at about $109 post-split. The split is meant specifically “to reset the market price of the Company’s common stock to a range that will be more accessible to employees who participate in the Company’s stock option program.” Netflix encourages its employees to take some of their income in stock, but at over $1,000 per share that can be a big ask for many staffers. The story. |
Amazon Ad Revenue Soars to $17.7B ►Woof! Amazon smashed Wall Street forecasts in Q3 delivering net sales of $180.2b, net income of $21.2b, and operating margins of 9.7 percent. And Amazon’s growing dominance in the advertising sector was in full display, with ad revenue soaring by 24 percent year over year to $17.7b. Amazon’s ad sales business encompasses sales on the platforms for sellers and vendors, as well as ads on Prime Video, display advertising, and its burgeoning demand side platform business, which now lets advertisers and media buyers buy inventory on effectively every major subscription streaming platform, including Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, Tubi, Fox One, and others. The results.
—Steady as she goes. Roku reported net revenue of $1.21b and net income hit $24.8m for its Q3, with both beating Wall Street expectations. The company also achieved positive operating income for the first time since 2021, reaching $9.5m. Platform revenue was up 17 percent year over year, hitting $1.065b, due to strength in video advertising and streaming services distribution activities, including premium subscriptions and the company’s acquisition of Frndly TV. Devices revenue declined percent to $146m. The results.
—🤝 Deal closed. 🤝 As Puck, the media company led by co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly, scales up with the acquisition of Air Mail, founder Graydon Carter is stepping back. On Thursday, Puck announced that it has bought Air Mail, the culture and lifestyle media company founded by Carter, the former editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Amid the sale, Julia Vitale, who currently serves as Air Mail’s deputy managing editor, has also been promoted to editor as Carter gives up his reins. He is expected to stay on for a limited time as a consultant. The story.
—🤝 Settlement. 🤝 Sling TV will pay $530,000 to settle a lawsuit from California accusing it of failing to provide an easy-to-use mechanism for consumers to stop the sale of their personal information and provide sufficient privacy protections for children. Under the deal, the Dish-owned company will streamline the opt-out process and provide parents with clear disclosures and tools to minimize the collection and use of their children’s data. The settlement comes amid a sweeping probe of streaming platforms suspected of violating the California Consumer Privacy Act, which mandates an easy way for consumers to stop the sale of their data. The story. |
Actors' Equity Members Vote to Ratify Broadway Contract ►✊ Almost there. ✊ Actors’ Equity has voted to ratify its contract with the Broadway League. The vote comes after the union for actors and stage managers reached a tentative agreement with the Broadway League over a new contract Oct. 18, after threatening to strike if a deal could not be reached. After weeks of negotiations, Equity had voted to authorize a strike if necessary and had members sign strike pledge cards. A mediator ultimately stepped in, and the tentative agreement was reached after an all-night session. Seventy-one percent of eligible members voted to ratify the deal, but only 45 percent (or 1,456 people) of the possible eligible voters cast a vote, according to communications sent to Equity members. The story.
—🤝 Settlement. 🤝 Universal Music Group is settling its copyright infringement lawsuit against AI music generation platform Udio, the companies confirmed late Wednesday night, with the two companies saying they’d now be collaborating to develop new AI music generation and streaming platform. UMG and Udio didn’t provide any financial details of the settlement but said the new platform would come out sometime in 2026 and would be trained on licensed music from UMG’s catalog. The story.
—Sentenced. David Pearce, a serial rapist who lured women into his orbit by lying that he was a Hollywood producer, has been sentenced to 146 years in prison for fatally drugging a model and her architect friend. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Eleanor Hunter handed down the sentence on Wednesday after Pearce was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Christy Giles and Hilda Marcela Cabrales-Arzola. He was also found guilty of the sexual assaults — including three counts of forcible rape, two counts of sexual penetration with force and one count each of rape of an unconscious victim and forced sodomy — of seven other victims from 2007 to 2021. The story.
—Release the files! King Charles III is stripping his disgraced brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicting him from his royal residence after weeks of pressure to act over Andrew’s relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Buckingham Palace said Thursday that the king has “initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honours of Prince Andrew.” Andrew will be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and not as a prince, and he will move from his Royal Lodge residence into “private accommodation.” The story. |
Paramount Hold on to Taylor Sheridan for 'Call of Duty' Movie ►Just when he thought he was out, they pull him back in! While Taylor Sheridan is known for his vast empire of television shows for Paramount+, his output on the film side has been as arid as a Texas drought. That is about to change. Despite the recent headlines of Sheridan exiting Paramount for NBCUniversal, the cowboy isn’t done with his old studio just yet, and just landed one of the highest-profile gigs of this career. Sheridan has closed a deal to write the adaptation of Call of Duty, one of the biggest video games of all time. The dealmaking comes as Lone Survivor filmmaker Peter Berg has closed his deal to direct and also write the adaptation. The story.
—🎭 Rising star. 🎭 Young Aussie actress Alyla Browne has boarded the new Australian-set psychological horror film From Below. Browne, who played the younger version of Anya Taylor-Joy’s titular Furiosa in the Mad Max film and Maria in the latest Sonic movie, will play Riley, a 15-year-old travelling across the outback with her dad. When an invisible force drags her father away, Riley finds herself in a life-or-death struggle against a terrifying creature that is only visible to its next victim. The story. |
Box Office Massacre: October Revenue Falls to 27-Year Low ►Something bad. Halloween is shaping up to be scarier than expected for Hollywood and its exhibition partners, but not in a good way. THR's Pamela McClintock writes that domestic box office revenue for October 2025 is expected to come in at roughly $425m — the worst showing in 27 years, according to Comscore. This excludes October 2020, the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, when revenue was a mere $55m, powered by Christopher Nolan’s Tenet . Otherwise, the last time October was this low was 1997, when combined ticket sales were $385.2m, not adjusted for inflation. In 1998, revenue jumped to $455.6m before crossing $600m for the first time a year later in 1999. The new millennium brought steady gains, save for a few bumps in the road, before the pandemic hit. The dramatic downturn in North America is due to a scarcity of product and the failure of fall event pics to connect with audiences, including the ill-fated Tron: Ares and the Dwayne Johnson starrer The Smashing Machine. The box office report.
—Something good. Universal's highly anticipated Wicked: For Good is tracking to open to a victorious $115m-plus at the Thanksgiving box office, according to prerelease tracking. That would set yet another new record for a musical adaptation of a Broadway musical. The second title in Jon M. Chu's ambitious big-screen adaptation of the iconic musical about the witches of Oz opens in North America on Nov. 21, the weekend before the big feast. It’s also opening day-and-date around the globe. Leading market research firm NRG has the female-fueled film debuting to $115m domestically, but insiders with access to NRG’s raw data believe it could approach, or even clear, $120m. The box office report. | Hulu Renews 'King of the Hill' for S16 and 17 ►Fire up the propane grill! King of the Hill is staying around for a while longer. Hulu has ordered two more seasons of the revived animated series, the 16th and 17th overall and third and fourth seasons as a streaming original (King of the Hill aired on Fox for its 13-season original run). Season 14 premiered in August and is the first half of Hulu’s initial two-season, 20-episode order; season 15 is set to debut in 2026. The show’s return brought in big viewing numbers for Hulu: During the week of season 14’s premiere, King of the Hill racked up 1.21b viewing minutes, according to Nielsen, with more than three fourths of that coming from the new episodes (the remainder was for the show’s prior seasons). The story.
—Quick as you like. The Gen Z characters of FX’s Adults will get a little more time to grow up. FX has ordered a second season of the comedy series from creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw. The renewal comes five months after the show’s first season released all at once on Hulu. Adults stars Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao and Owen Thiele as five twentysomethings who share a house in Queens and few boundaries. The story.
—Ballooning numbers. The premiere of It: Welcome to Derry enticed a lot of viewers back into Pennywise’s clutches. The HBO series debuted to 5.7m cross-platform viewers (measured over three days), making Welcome to Derry the third-biggest series debut in HBO’s history. It trails only the premieres of House of the Dragon — which had nearly 10m day-one viewers in 2022 — and The Last of Us, which opened with 4.7m on its first night in 2023 and moved well past 5.7m in the following the three days. Welcome to Derry is a prequel to the It movies, which are based on Stephen King’s novel. The story.
—Monstering the competition. The third iteration of Netflix’s Monster anthology started its run in the same place as the previous two: at the top of the streaming charts. Monster: The Ed Gein Story led Nielsen’s rankings for the week of Sept. 29-Oct. 5 with 1.53b viewing minutes (it premiered Oct. 3). That’s a little behind the 1.72b minutes for the Menendez brothers-focused second season in 2024 (which, in turn, was well off the pace of 2022’s first season, which had a huge debut of more than 3.6b minutes of watch time). Coming in second place was Wayward, which grew by 54 percent over its premiere week on Netflix to 1.3b minutes of viewing. It was the only other title to clear the billion-minute threshold for the week. The streaming rankings. |
Theater Review: 'Little Bear Ridge Road' ►"Laurie Metcalf is in blazing form and Micah Stock is a revelation." THR's David Rooney reviews Joe Mantello’s Little Bear Ridge Road. Laurie Metcalf and Micah Stock are dueling forces as a semi-estranged aunt and nephew in small-town Idaho in Mantello’s production, brought to Broadway by Scott Rudin and Barry Diller. Also starring John Drea and Meighan Gerachis. Written by Samuel D. Hunter. The review.
—"The Lady from Chengdu." THR's Jordan Mintzer reviews Zhang Lu's Mothertongue. The new film from the Korean-Chinese director behind The Shadowless Tower, which premiered at the Tokyo Film Festival, revolves around a movie star who heads back to the Sichuan capital of Chengdu. Starring Bai Baihe, Liu Dan, Wang Chuanjun, Peng Jib and Liu Shuyi. Written by Zhang Lu and Liu Shuyi. The review.
In other news...
—Scream 7 trailer: Neve Campbell returns to face Ghostface
—Spartacus: House of Ashur red-band trailer is so very bloody
—Santa Barbara: Sydney Sweeney, Jacob Elordi and Chase Infiniti tapped for awards
—Teresa Moneo joins Good Chaos as creative director, producer
—Asylum executive Paul Bales named chair of IFTA
—PGA Awards: Amy Pascal to receive David O. Selznick achievement honor
—Beauty vlogger Nabela Noor signs with CAA
—Floyd Roger Myers Jr., Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actor, dies at 42
—Kent Gibson, Emmy-winning sound designer on Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, dies at 77
What else we're reading...
—With the U.S. increasingly becoming an Nvidia-state, Matteo Wong and Charlie Warzel look at how the AI crash happens [Atlantic]
—Following a deluge of chilling videos of ICE arrests, Andrea González-Ramírez warns Americans "your U.S. citizenship will not protect you" [The Cut]
—Elisabeth Bumiller reports on former Biden press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre's hellish book tour that has been beset by calamity after calamity [NYT]
—Paul Pringle and Alene Tchekmedyian report that days before the Palisades inferno, firefighters were ordered to leave a smoldering burn site [LAT]
—Here's your Friday list: The 2025 sports podcast power list [Awful Announcing]
Today...
...in 2014, Clarius Entertainment released Rowan Joffé's Before I Go to Sleep in theaters. The psychological mystery drama, which starred Nicole Kidman, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, and Anne-Marie Duff, was a commercial and critical misfire. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Peter Jackson (64), Dermot Mulroney (62), Justin Chatwin (43), Shayna "Junglepussy" McHayle (34), Brian Doyle-Murray (80), Stephen Rea (79), Letitia Wright (32), Mike O'Malley (59), Ruben Fleischer (51), Kirk Jones (61), Don Winslow (72), Ron Rifkin (86), Piper Perabo (49), Suzanna Son (30), Kayla Wallace (32), Vanessa Marano (33), Erica Cerra (46), Samaire Armstrong (45), Sanjeev Bhaskar (62), Sadie Laflamme-Snow (26), Nolan North (55), Holly Taylor (28), Patti Harrison (35), Danielle Rose Russell (26), Brian Hallisay (47), Eddie Kaye Thomas (45), David Dencik (51), Johnny Whitworth (50), Keith Jardine (50), Kathryn Kelly (32), Deidre Hall (78), Craig Kelly (55), Sydney Park (28), Byeon Woo-seok (34), Michael J. Anderson (72), Beverly Lynne (52), Billy Bryk (26) |
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