| | | | | | What's news: California’s top prosecutor says Paramount taking WBD is "not a done deal." Episodes of HBO's A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms averaged 26m worldwide. BattleBots is coming back. The Ties That Bind Us and Nouvelle Vague were the big winners at the Cesars. And Jonathan Majors will star in an action film produced by Ben Shapiro and The Daily Wire. — Abid Rahman
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Netflix Backs Out of WB Bidding! Paramount Set to Win ►Stunning twist! On a dramatic Thursday, Netflix declined to raise its bid for Warner Bros., positioning David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance as the winner in the battle for the fabled studio. Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters released a statement Thursday outlining their decision, namely that the deal is “no longer financially attractive” and that it "was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price." With Netflix out, Paramount’s latest bid is almost a sure thing to be accepted by the Warners board, which determined earlier Thursday that it was a “superior proposal” to Netflix’s deal. The story.
—"Not a done deal." California’s top prosecutor weighed in on Paramount‘s proposed merger with WBD. “Paramount/Warner Bros. is not a done deal,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said on Thursday. “These two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny — the California Department of Justice has an open investigation, and we intend to be vigorous in our review.” THR's Winston Cho writes that if the U.S. government rubber stamps the deal as largely expected, the only approval Paramount would need to complete the merger is from European regulators. Another consideration is potential lawsuits from states looking to block the acquisition. California will almost surely lead any effort on this front. The story.
—Netflix walks and wins? THR's business editor Georg Szalai reports that Wall Street analysts have started chiming in on what Thursday's seismic news means for Netflix, especially since it pulled the plug on its pursuit of WBD very quickly, well ahead of a final Wednesday deadline to improve its own offer, and on a day that saw co-CEO Ted Sarandos travel to Washington, DC. The story.
—"David Ellison wins. It doesn’t yet make him a winner." THR's Steven Zeitchik offers his take on the stunning development in the bid to win control of WBD. Steven writes that David Ellison defying the odds with money isn't nearly as difficult as defying the odds with movies. The analysis.
—"High debt will lead to downsizing." After voicing initial skepticism over Netflix’s blockbuster $82.7b deal, Gregory Orr, the grandson of WB founder Jack Warner, eventually came around to Ted Sarandos’ team as the fight for the historic studio intensified. Then the streaming giant backed out. Despite Warners now favoring David Ellison’s Paramount offer, Orr believes Netflix would’ve been the better option. The story. |
Kanye Claims His Art Allows Antisemitic Speech ►"Ye’s public and private personas form a continuous, provocative performance that challenges societal taboos surrounding race, religion, gender, power, politics and censorship." Kanye "Ye" West's public apology for his years of antisemitic comments, published in the WSJ in January, and his explanation that it was the result of a brain injury and subsequent bipolar disorder is now being scrutinized in a legal case the rapper and mogul is embroiled in. Ye's attorneys repeated in a legal filing this week that similar antisemitic references he made in the workplace were part of his creative process and therefore protected as artistic expression. The rapper’s lawyers filed in the California Court of Appeals seeking to halt a workplace harassment lawsuit filed by a former Yeezy marketing staffer from moving forward after it cleared an initial hurdle in a lower court. The story.
—Grooming, assault allegations. Actor Crispin Glover has been hit with a civil lawsuit from a British woman claiming he coerced her to move to Los Angeles, forced her into becoming his live-in girlfriend and “sex slave,” before rendering her homeless after the two had a physical altercation nearly two years ago. Glover, best known for his breakout role as father George McFly in the beloved 1985 blockbuster Back to the Future , is being accused by a woman identified only as “Jane Doe” in the civil suit filed in California Superior Court. He is accused of battery and assault; fraud and wrongful eviction; malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress; and a violation of California’s civil rights statute, the Bane Act. Glover denies the allegations. The story.
—The latest. Shia LaBeouf can remain unincarcerated while he awaits trial after his arrest during an extended Mardi Gras bar crawl that erupted into violence, a court has ruled. During a hearing at a New Orleans courthouse on Thursday, Parish Judge Simone Levine set the actor’s bail at $100,000. He’s been charged with two counts of battery for fighting two men involved in ejecting him from a bar, where he was allegedly causing a disturbance and displaying violent aggression. One of the alleged victims later characterized the confrontation as a hate crime because he was called a homophobic slur, though the court declined to add additional charges. The story. |
JLD, Cecily Strong to Lead Apple's 'Nanny Squatter' ►🎭 It's hard to find good help these days. 🎭 Apple TV is eyeing a limited series starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Cecily Strong for its next green light. The streamer is developing a show based on the New York Magazine story “The Nanny Squatter” by Bindu Bansinath. Mary Bronstein, the writer-director of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, is adapting the article and is set to serve as showrunner. The project comes from Apple Studios and is nearing a series order. The series will follow a couple “whose lives are upended after welcoming a seemingly ideal caregiver into their home, only to find boundaries blurred and control slipping as the arrangement spirals into a tense, unsettling power struggle,” the logline reads. The story.
—🎭 Elle's foil. 🎭 Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is going back to high school. The star of Netflix’s Never Have I Ever has joined season two of Elle, Amazon Prime Video’s Legally Blonde prequel that tracks Elle Woods’ teen years. The show is set to premiere in July, and the streamer gave Elle an early season two pickup last month. In season two, Ramakrishnan will play Sam, who is Elle’s (Lexi Minetree) foil in high school — "possessing all our hero’s ambition and none of her optimism," the character description reads. The story.
—Woof! Like Ser Duncan the Tall, viewing figures for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms are sizable. The Game of Thrones spinoff drew its largest audience to date for the Feb. 22 season finale. HBO says 9.5m viewers in the U.S. watched the episode over its first three days. Since its Jan. 18 premiere, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms has averaged 14m U.S. viewers across all platforms and 26m worldwide, HBO says — numbers that will continue to grow for a while, since HBO measures viewing for a series for 90 days after it debuts. The ratings.
—Regency reigns. A 19-month wait between seasons of Bridgerton seemingly did little to dissipate the ardor for the Netflix series. Season four of the period drama premiered at No. 1 overall on the Nielsen streaming charts for Jan. 26-Feb. 1, scoring 3.03b minutes of viewing for the week. That’s 10 percent higher than the opening week of season three in May 2024; like the current season, that one was split into two parts, premiering four weeks apart. About 2.24b minutes — 74 percent of Bridgerton’s total for the week total — were devoted to the four new episodes that premiered Jan. 29, Nielsen says, with the remainder coming from previous seasons. The tally for the new episodes alone would have easily led the week. The streaming rankings. |
Apple Strikes F1 Deal With Netflix ►🤝 Surprise! 🤝 Apple and Netflix are teaming up for select Formula 1 programming. The deal will include Netflix simulcasting the F1 Canadian Grand Prix May 22-24 (it will also be on Apple TV, of course), and with Apple TV getting streaming rights to season eight of Drive to Survive alongside Netflix. The deal delivers something for each company: Apple gets F1 shoulder programming that it can place alongside the live races, and expanded reach for its F1 programming through the Canadian Grand Prix simulcast. Netflix, meanwhile, will get live F1 racing in the U.S. in May, continuing its strategy of frequent live event event programming. The story.
—"It's robot fighting time!" BattleBots is coming back. The robot-fighting series has been given a 20-episode order, which filming scheduled to begin in April in Las Vegas for a June premiere. This time around, the series will premiere first on YouTube with new episodes debuting on a weekly basis through November, before being distributed to broadcasters internationally in 2027. The folks behind BattleBots say this will give fans around the world the chance to watch new episodes at the same time. The story.
—Shocker! Smiling Friends fans have fewer reasons to smile as the Adult Swim show comes to an abrupt end. Michael Cusack and Zach Hadel co-created the project that debuted in 2022 and centers on co-workers Charlie (voiced by Hadel) and Pim (Cusack) attempting to bring positivity into the lives of others. Although THR exclusively reported in June that the animated series had been picked up for two additional seasons, Cusack and Hadel announced late Wednesday that they had decided to end it with season three. “This is not a bit,” Hadel explained in a recording posted to Adult Swim’s social media. “This is not a joke. Michael and I are here to announce that Smiling Friends will be ending after season three is done.” The story.
—No-brainer. Fox is starting to firm up its lineup for the 2026-27 season. The network has renewed the workplace comedy Animal Control, starring Joel McHale, for a fifth season. The pickup is the first for a live-action scripted show on Fox this season, though several of its animated shows are all in the midst of multi-year orders. The renewal for Animal Control comes on the heels of the show scoring an NFL-assisted series high in total viewers and adults 18-49 in late December. The show’s current season streams on Hulu, and past seasons have been on Netflix for the past two months, where they’ve accumulated nearly a billion minutes of viewing time. The story. |
Feinberg Forecast: Scott's Projections as Oscar Voting Gets Underway ►The end is in sight. The final round of Oscars voting began at 9 a.m. PT on Thursday and will run through 5 p.m. PT a week from yesterday. THR's executive editor for awards Scott Feinberg is back with his latest projections after digesting the outcomes of the BAFTAs, the Spirit Awards and a host of big campaigning events. This is Scott's last forecast before his final picks for the 98th Oscars. The forecast.
—Next batch. Demi Moore, Javier Bardem, Chris Evans, Chase Infiniti, Maya Rudolph and Kumail Nanjiani are the latest batch of presenters set to take the stage at the 2026 Oscars. Last year’s best actress winner Mikey Madison was previously announced as a presenter alongside her fellow 2025 acting winners: Adrien Brody (best actor), Kieran Culkin (best supporting actor) and Zoe Saldaña (best supporting actress). The story.
—🏆 Félicitations! 🏆 Carine Tardieu’s family drama The Ties That Bind Us, based on Alice Ferney’s novel L’Intimité, beat out Richard Linklater’s Nouvelle Vague to take best film at the 51st César awards, France’s equivalent to the Oscars, held Thursday night in Paris. Ties That Bind Us also won for best adapted screenplay and the best supporting actress César for Vimala Pons. Nouvelle Vague, a French-language, black-and-white deep dive into the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 classic Breathless, won best director for Linklater, as well as best cinematography (David Chambille), costume design (Pascaline Chavanne) and editing (Catherine Schwartz). The winners.
—🏆 Maisler does it again! 🏆 On Thursday night, the Casting Society announced their winners for the 41st annual Artios Awards — the first to take place since the Oscars’ introduction of their own casting category. This should bode well for Francine Maisler, who took home the Artios in the big-budget feature drama category for her work on Sinners. Maisler had a big night overall, also winning on the TV side alongside Melissa Kostenbauder for her work on Apple TV's The Studio in the first-season comedy category. All in all, Maisler has now won 17 Artios Awards. The winners.
—🏆 Night 4. 🏆 The NAACP Image Awards has revealed even more winners ahead of Saturday’s 2026 NAACP Image Awards ceremony. During Thursday’s non-televised Creative Honors event, the NAACP Image Awards presented awards in various TV and film categories. Sinners, which leads this year’s NAACP Image Awards nominations with 18 nods, racked up four more wins with Ryan Coogler winning best writing and directing for a film and Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo named best supporting actress and actor, respectively, in a motion picture. The winners. |
Jonathan Majors to Star in Action Movie From Daily Wire ►🎭 Rock bottom. 🎭 Jonathan Majors is getting started on a new feature as he continues to pursue projects outside of the studio system following his 2023 conviction for assault and harassment. Majors is set to star in writer-director Kyle Rankin’s action movie that hails from Daily Wire and Bonfire Legend. The title and plot details have not yet been shared for the film that launched production this week in South Carolina and has been described as being in the vein of Red Dawn and Toy Soldiers. Producers include Ben Shapiro for Daily Wire and Dallas Sonnier for Bonfire Legend. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 Katarina Zhu and Rachel Sennott‘s feature Bunnylovr is set to hop into theaters following its Sundance launch. Utopia has acquired North American theatrical rights to Bunnylovr and will release the film theatrically on April 10. Zhu stars, produces and makes her feature directorial debut, while Sennott co-stars and also produces. Set in New York, Bunnylovr centers on Rebecca (Zhu), a Chinese-American camgirl navigating a toxic relationship with a client while reconnecting with her estranged father. Austin Amelio, Perry Yung and Jack Kilmer round out the cast for the movie that premiered at last year’s Sundance. The story.
—"Ferocious, funny, chaotic, romantic and fueled by another knockout Jessie Buckley performance." Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! held its world premiere in London on Thursday night, and not long after the screening early reaction to the Warner Bros. film started to hit social media. There was praise for Gyllenhaal’s ambition and risk taking and also star Jessie Buckley‘s performance. With shades of Bonnie and Clyde, The Bride! is a brash and imaginative take on Mary Shelley’s classic story Frankenstein . Set in 1930s Chicago, the film centers on a lonesome monster, played by Bale, who recruits Dr. Euphronios to create a companion for himself. A cracked love story, the monster and his bride then embark on a killing spree, while being pursued by police. The film is released in theaters on March 6. The story.
—"A miracle of a movie." Another film reveling in glowing early social media reaction is Phil Lord and Christopher Miller‘s hard sci-fi epic Project Hail Mary. The film starring Ryan Gosling as an astronaut stuck in space and trying to save Earth held its first press screenings this week and the early reaction seems overwhelmingly positive, with many suggesting a genre classic maybe incoming. The film is based on Andy Weir’s bestseller. Weir was also behind the equally ambitious and hugely successful book The Martian which was adapted for the screen by Ridley Scott. Project Hail Mary hits theaters on March 20. The reaction.
—"Shockingly terrible." The reviews for Scream 7 are looking pretty scary. The latest film in the iconic horror-comedy franchise — which has Neve Campbell reprising her role as Sidney Prescott and series creator Kevin Williamson directing for the first time — has potentially the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score of the series. With critic review embargoes having lifted early Thursday morning, the film currently stands at only 42 percent positive across its 50 reviews. While many more reviews are sure to be added, and the movie’s average could easily still change, Scream 7 now ranks as the worst-reviewed of the franchise — just slightly below 2000’s Scream 3, which has 45 percent. The reaction. |
TV Review: 'DTF St. Louis' ►"Coarse and semi-funny, then sentimental and semi-moving." THR's chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg reviews HBO's DTF St. Louis. Patriot's Steven Conrad writes and directs the seven-part limited series about infidelity, insolvency, hip-hop dancing and death in a Midwestern suburb. Starring Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Linda Cardellini, Richard Jenkins, Joy Sunday, Arlan Ruf, Peter Sarsgaard and Chris Perfetti. Created by Steven Conrad. The review.
—"Blandly sunny and dully old-fashioned." THR's Angie Han reviews MGM+'s American Classic. A self-absorbed Broadway star returns to his Pennsylvania hometown and puts on a show to save the local theater with a production of Our Town. Starring Kevin Kline, Laura Linney, Jon Tenney, Len Cariou, Nell Verlaque, Billy Carter, Elise Kibler, Ajay Friese, Jessica Hecht, Stephen Spinella, Aaron Tveit and Tony Shalhoub. Created by Michael Hoffman and Bob Martin. The review. |
Thank Pod It's Friday ►All the latest content from THR's podcast studio.
—Awards Chatter. THR's executive awards editor Scott Feinberg talks to the great and the good of Hollywood. In this episode Scott spoke to Jessie Buckley. The Irishwoman who is widely regarded one of the finest actresses of her generation reflects on her path from 17-year-old BBC talent show contestant to RADA student to star of stage and screen; what she learned from early costars like Judi Dench and early jobs like Wild Rose, The Lost Daughter and Women Talking; and how filming Maggie Gyllenhaal's upcoming The Bride! right before Chloé Zhao's story of the Shakespeares helped to shape her Oscar-tipped turn as Agnes in Hamnet. The podcast.
—I’m Having an Episode. THR’s Mikey O’Connell attempts to stay on top of the latest TV and entertainment news with a little help from his friends, colleagues and a revolving door of actors, writers, showrunners and filmmakers. In this episode, Mikey interviews Connor Hines, showrunner of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, who talks about the challenges of casting and executing his buzzy FX drama. That's after reporter Ashley Cullins, author of Your Favorite Scary Movie, joins Mikey to dig into the history of the Scream franchise before its seventh entry hits theaters. The podcast.
In other news...
—Dynasty: The Murdochs trailer reveals the real-life Succession fight for Fox News
—The Comeback trailer: Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie finds out her sitcom is written by AI
—SXSW adds Joey Power’s rom-com Love Language
What else we're reading...
—Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson report that Amercians are leaving the U.S. in record numbers [WSJ]
—Kathryn VanArendonk profiles comedian Chris Fleming, the oddball performer who is about to go huge [Vulture]
—Edward Wong writes that Trump's foreign policy can be boiled down to the idea of resurrecting empire [NYT]
—Abigail Hauslohner breaks down a new Gallup poll that shows Americans now sympathize with Palestinians more than Israelis [FT]
—Here's your Friday list: Margot Robbie’s 11 best performances, ranked [THR]
Today...
...in 1992, Sony Pictures Classics held the premiere for James Ivory’s Howards End adaptation in New York. The film would go on to earn nine Oscar nominations at the 65th Academy Awards, winning three, including best actress for Emma Thompson, adapted screenplay and art direction. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Timothy Spall (69), Kate Mara (43), Noah Emmerich (61), Donal Logue (60), Nikki Amuka-Bird (50), Josh Groban (45), Christopher Landon (51), Li Bingbing (53), Baltasar Kormákur (60), Charles Baker (55), Grant Show (64), Jenny Boyd (35), John Pyper-Ferguson (62), Carmela Zumbado (35), Richard Coyle (54), Lindsey Morgan (36), Alba Rohrwacher (47), Rebecca Hanssen (32), Brittany Ashton Holmes (37), Susan Yeagley (54), Stephen Wight (46), Ji Sung (49), Juan Riedinger (45), Hannah Love Lanier (18), Eija Skarsgård (34), Josh Whitehouse (36), Seo Hyeon-jin (41), Sea Shimooka (31), Violet Brinson (22) |
| Bobby J. Brown, who portrayed the Baltimore cop Bobby Brown on HBO’s The Wire, has died after being caught in a barn fire in Maryland. He was 62. The obituary. |
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