| | | | | | What's news: TIFF 2025 is underway. An AI company is looking to recreate the missing 43 minutes of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. Inside the NFL is heading to X. Legendary has inked a three-year pact with Paramount to distribute its movies. Mark Rylance has joined the cast of Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial. — Abid Rahman
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TIFF's (Unofficial) Market Hot List ►🇨🇦 Jesus Murphy, these are hot! 🇨🇦 Unlike Cannes or Berlin, Toronto has never been a market-first festival. But ahead of the launch of the official TIFF market next year, Toronto is looking to boost its industry credentials, positioning itself as the go-to for finished films — particularly mainstream English-language fare — without domestic distribution. THR's Scott Roxborough and Mia Galuppo run through this year’s lineup of hot projects, including prestige thrillers, A-list dramas and a dead body or two. The hot list.
—"Don’t push a Canadian too far." Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney opened TIFF on Thursday night on a patriotic note as he lauded the late John Candy for standing up to bullies in many of his classic Hollywood comedy roles. “In many of his movies there would have been a scene, where John would pivot, having been pushed too far,” Carney recounted, adding with a sly grin: “Don’t push a Canadian too far, someone richer, someone more powerful, someone more arrogant, I don’t know.” Without naming Donald Trump directly, Carney made veiled references to Canada and the U.S. negotiating a resolution of an ongoing tariffs war and a new trade deal that includes Mexico. The recap. |
WBD Sues AI Giant Midjourney ►Huge! Warner Bros. Discovery is suing a prominent artificial intelligence image generator for copyright infringement, escalating a high-stakes battle involving the use of movies and TV shows owned by major studios to teach AI systems. The lawsuit accuses Midjourney, which has millions of registered users, of building its business around the mass theft of content. The company “brazenly dispenses Warner Bros. Discovery’s intellectual property” by letting subscribers produce images and videos of iconic copyrighted characters, alleges the complaint, filed on Thursday in California federal court. WBD joins Disney and Universal, which earlier this year teamed up to sue Midjourney. By their thinking, the AI company is a free-rider plagiarizing their movies and TV shows. The story.
—Time for a Butlerian Jihad. Amazon-backed Showrunnner has announced a new AI model designed to generate long, complex narratives — ultimately building toward feature film length, live action films — for its platform completely dedicated to AI content that allows users to create their own episodes of TV shows with a prompt of just a couple of words. Over the next two years, it’ll be utilized to re-create Orson Welles’ follow-up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, 43-minutes of which was lost after studio executives burned the footage. The effort won’t be commercialized because Showrunner hasn’t obtained the rights to the film from Warner Bros. Discovery or Concord. The story.
—RTO mandate. As Paramount enters its next chapter, newly minted CEO David Ellison is also putting his stamp on workplace culture. The Skydance mogul sent a companywide memo to employees of Paramount Pictures, CBS, Paramount+, Showtime, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET and Comedy Central outlining a policy for full-time staffers in New York and Los Angeles to work in-office by January 2026, moving toward five days a week on-site. Ellison wrote on Thursday that Paramount will offer severance packages for those employees who don’t opt in. The story.
—Don’t worry, HBO Max is still HBO Max. HBO just changed the names of six of its U.S. linear channels. The new lineup: HBO2 is now HBO Hits, HBO Signature is now HBO Drama, HBO Zone is now HBO Movies, MoreMAX is now Cinemax Hits, ActionMAX is now Cinemax Action and 5starMAX is now Cinemax Classics. The updated names will also be reflected in available HBO Max live in-app “Channels,” which launched last year on select plans. The feature enables subscribers to stream live HBO programming via simulcasts. The story.
—Reboot. Inside the NFL will return for the 2025-2026 season, but the long-running studio show is getting a wholesale reboot, changing formats, and moving to a new home: X, the tech platform controlled by Elon Musk. Inside the NFL on X will debut its first episode on Sept. 8, with plans to release at least 10 short-form episodes each week leading up to next year’s Super Bowl on Feb. 8. NFL Films will continue to produce the series. Ryan Clark, the ESPN NFL analyst and former safety for the Pittsburgh Steelers, will host the show, though NFL Films executives suggest that other names could join him as the season progresses. The story. |
'Sesame Street,' 'Twilight' Films to Hit YouTube ►🤝 Streaming deal. 🤝 YouTube is picking up some prime new real estate: Sesame Street. The video platform says that it has inked an expanded partnership with the nonprofit behind the show, Sesame Workshop, which will make YouTube the largest digital library of Sesame Street content available, including hundreds of classic episodes, beginning in January 2026. Sesame Street, of course, will debut new episodes on Netflix and PBS in November, and Netflix has picked up about 90 hours of library episodes. Warner Bros. HBO Max also continues to make some library episodes available. YouTube, however, will top both of them, alongside new content created specifically for YouTube. The story.
—📅 Wait, what? 📅 YouTube is really flexing now, with news on Thursday that the platform will stream the Twilight franchise for free. Lionsgate revealed that all five films — Twilight (2008), New Moon (2009), Eclipse (2010), Breaking Dawn – Part 1 (2011) and Breaking Dawn – Part 2 (2012) — will be streamed for free on YouTube for the first time ever. Fans can watch the vampire pics, starring Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, on a loop from Sept. 7 at 12 p.m. PT through Sept. 14 at 11:59 p.m. PT. The streaming event will also be available on Lionsgate’s official Twilight YouTube channel. The story. |
'Scrubs' Revival Adds John C. McGinley ►🎭 The gang's (almost) all here. 🎭 ABC’s Scrubs revival is continuing the rebuild of the orginal series’ core cast. John C. McGinley is the latest actor to (re)join the show. He’ll reprise his role as the sharp-tongued (but secretly bighearted) Dr. Perry Cox. He joins fellow returnees Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison and Judy Reyes in the cast. McGinley’s return means that five of the show’s seven regulars for much of Scrubs’ 2001-10 run on NBC and ABC are back in the fold for the revival, due to premiere during the 2025-26 season. Neil Flynn (the Janitor) and Ken Jenkins (Dr. Bob Kelso) were the other regulars. The story.
—📅 Many shows. 📅 Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson is going to host a show for Fox Nation, the Fox News-owned streaming platform. Jackson will host and executive produce the true-crime series 50 Ways to Catch a Killer, which will premiere on Fox Nation on Sept. 16. Jackson’s G-Unit Film & Television is producing the series alongside Lionsgate Alternative Television. The six-episode series “offers viewers a deep journey inside investigative units as they unravel real-life murder mysteries and uncover critical breakthroughs all leading to the prime suspect and pursuit of justice,” Fox says. The story.
—📅 Starting off strong. 📅 Paramount+ has set a premiere date for its Tracy Morgan-led comedy Crutch — and is planning a cross-platform crossover to help launch the show. The full, eight-episode season will premiere Nov. 3 on the streamer. That evening, Morgan will also guest star in an episode of CBS’ The Neighborhood as Francois “Frank” Crutchfield, known as Crutch. In the episode, Calvin (Cedric the Entertainer) reaches out to his cousin Crutch to get Malcolm (Sheaun McKinney) a sweet deal on a new floor. However, Crutch (who lives in New York) insists on coming to L.A. to oversee the work himself, where he drives Tina (Tichina Arnold) crazy — and reveals an emotional vulnerability. The story.
—Monster opening. Netflix only offered half of Wednesday’s second season with the show’s return in early August, but that was more than enough to secure a big opening in the U.S. streaming charts. The Addams Family-inspired series logged 3.75b minutes of viewing for the week of Aug. 4-10. That’s the second largest single-week total for any streaming title on the Nielsen charts in 2025, behind only the 4.6b minutes for Squid Game in the first week of the year. The 3.75b is also behind the massive opening week for season one of Wednesday in November 2022 (just under 6b minutes), but that figure was for the full season and came over the Thanksgiving holiday, when TV viewing is considerably higher than in early August. The streaming ratings. |
'Street Fighter' Moves to Paramount as Legendary Deal Becomes Official ►🤝 Distribution deal. 🤝 Street Fighter — and its parent studio Legendary — have a new place to call home. Legendary has inked a three-year pact with Paramount to distribute its movies, with the Capcom video game adaptation Street Fighter the first out of the gate. The Kitao Sakurai-directed feature now has a release date of Oct. 16, 2026. The film is currently in production, with Paramount and Legendary releasing the first plot details for the movie, which will be set in 1993, the year the popular game Street Fighter II hit arcades. Legendary’s former partner Warner Bros. will continue to distribute key franchises such as the eventual sequel to the nearly $1b hit A Minecraft Movie, as well as 2026’s third Dune and 2027’s Godzilla x Kong: Supernova. The story.
—🎭 Award-winning addition. 🎭 Oscar winner Mark Rylance has joined the sprawling cast of Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial, Amazon MGM’s drama centered on the true-life story of artificial intelligence company OpenAI. The casting marks a reunion between the actor and the director, with the two having previously worked together in Guadagnino’s Bones And All. Artificial stars Andrew Garfield, Yura Borisov, and Monica Barbaro, who lead a cast that includes Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Hoffman, Ike Barinholtz, Cooper Koch, Billie Lourd, Zosia Mamet, Chris O’Dowd, Will Angus, Thaddea Graham, Nicholas Hamilton, Angus Imrie, and Will Price on the call sheet. The story.
—📅 Awards run incoming. 📅 Sydney Sweeney’s boxing movie Christy is getting a U.S. theatrical release via Black Bear. The Teddy Schwarzman outfit, which also produced the movie, recently launched a U.S. distribution arm headed by CAA vet Benjamin Kramer. Christy, which is set to hit theaters on an awards friendly Nov. 7 date, will be the division’s inaugural release. David Michôd directs the film, which will bow at the Toronto Film Festival. It stars Sweeney as the titular Christy Martin, a pioneer of women’s boxing with a harrowing personal story. Ben Foster, Merritt Wever, and Katy O’Brian also star in the movie, which was written by Mirrah Foulkes and Michôd. The story. |
Ben Stiller, Jeremy Allen White Circling 'Airman' ►Flying once again. THR's Borys Kit has the scoop that a feature based on the nonfiction book The Lost Airman: A True Story of Escape From Nazi-Occupied France is in the works, this time with the help of A-listers Ben Stiller and Jeremy Allen White, as well as A24, who are all in various stages of talks to bring the adaptation to the screen. If the deals make, Stiller will direct and produce the adaptation of the book written by Seth Meyerowitz which would star White. A24 is in negotiations to land the package, which will be titled simply Airman. Jake Gyllenhaal, who was to have starred in an adaptation being developed in the late 2010s, remains involved as producer via his Nine Stories banner. The 2016 book tells the incredible true story of Arthur Meyerowitz, an American turret-gunner whose B-24 bomber was shot down over Vichy France in 1943. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 RuPaul’s Drag Race is sashaying to the big screen with a camp runaway train thriller as the MTV drag queen competition series continues to expand its storytelling universe. Bleecker Street has picked up the North American rights to an untitled action comedy feature to be directed by Adam Shankman and to center on camp drag queens on a chaotic high-speed train journey. “We are so excited to be boarding this train,” Kent Sanderson, CEO of Bleecker Street, said in a statement on Thursday ahead of a planned theatrical release in 2026. The story.
—🎭 Filling out. 🎭 Garrett Clayton, known for such projects as the Teen Beach franchise, is among the cast additions to the thriller feature The Subscriber. Clayton, Lisagaye Tomlinson and Mario Silva have joined the cast of director Ivo Raza’s indie film. Ron Rogge, Robin Curtis, Kipp Tribble, Rajiv Shah and Xiomara Yordan will also appear in the film. The project’s previously announced cast members include Eddie McClintock, Billy Morrison, Naomi Grossman and Spencer Garrett. The Subscriber centers on a high-end escort who, after witnessing the death of a wealthy client, kidnaps a burglar in a panic while trying to flee the premises. The story. |
Film Review: 'John Candy: I Like Me' ►"The affection is infectious." For THR, Michael Rechtshaffen reviews Colin Hanks' John Candy: I Like Me. The TIFF opener features reminiscences by colleagues including Steve Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Dan Aykroyd, Martin Short, Conan O'Brien, Mel Brooks and Tom Hanks. The review.
—"Honest — and hard to watch." THR's Jordan Mintzer reviews Shu Qi's Venice competition entry, Girl. The star of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Millennium Mambo and The Assassin gets behind the camera for the first time in a portrait of family violence set in 1980s Taiwan. Starring Roy Chiu, 9m88 and Bai Xiao-Ying. Written by Shu Qi. The review.
—"A minor film from a major director." Jordan reviews Claire Denis' The Fence. The French auteur's latest, premiering at TIFF, takes place during one long night on a construction site marked by murder and sexual tension. Starring Matt Dillon, Isaach De Bankolé, Mia McKenna-Bruce, Tom Blyth and Brian Begnan. Written by Suzanne Lindon, Andrew Litvack and Claire Denis, adapted from the play Black Battles with Dogs by Bernard-Marie Koltès. The review. |
TV Review: 'The Lowdown' ►"Harjo & Hawke are a potent combo." THR's chief TV critic Daniel Fienberg reviews FX's The Lowdown. Ethan Hawke plays a journalist and used book dealer investigating a murder that might not be a murder in the Oklahoma-set comic mystery. Also starring Keith David, Kyle MacLachlan, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kaniehtiio Horn, Michael “Killer Mike” Render, Tim Blake Nelson and Tracy Letts. Created by Sterlin Harjo. The review.
—"Overwrought and undercooked." THR's Angie Han reviews Tom Dean and Mac Eldridge's Charlie Harper. A young couple navigate the ups and downs of a five-year relationship in the directing debut by Dean and Eldridge, premiering at Toronto. Starring Emilia Jones and Nick Robinson. Written by Tom Dean. The review.
—"Visually lush but a little vapid." For THR, Leslie Felperin reviews Julia Jackman's 100 Nights of Hero. Emma Corrin, Maika Monroe, Charli xcx Rock and Nicholas Galitzine star in Jackman's Venice-bowing second feature, a historical fantasy film. Also starring Amir El Masry, Richard E. Grant, Felicity Jones, Varada Sethu, Tom Stourton, Christopher Fairbank, Safia Oakley-Green and Clare Perkins. Written by Julia Jackman, based on the graphic novel One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg. The review. |
Thank Pod It's Friday ►All the latest content from THR's podcast studio.
—It Happened in Hollywood. THR senior writer Seth Abramovitch goes behind the scenes of the pop culture moments that shaped Hollywood history. In this episode, Seth spoke to Charlie Kaufman. The Oscar-winner breaks down the making of his 2008 postmodern mindbender Synechdoche, New York starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman. The podcast.
—Awards Chatter. THR's executive awards editor Scott Feinberg talks to the great and the good of Hollywood. In this live episode, Scott spoke to Abbott Elementary star Janelle James. The fan favorite reflects on how she stumbled into standup comedy and then into acting, how she landed the part of elementary school principal Ava Coleman on Quinta Brunson's ABC series and why she's prouder of her Emmy-nominated work on its fourth season than any prior. The podcast.
In other news...
—Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love trailer: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert Pattinson lose their cool
—Landman: Billy Bob Thornton and Demi Moore partner up in tense S2 trailer
—John Candy: I Like Me trailer reveals gentle, vulnerable comedy genius
—Talamasca: The Secret Order trailer teases new entry in Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe
—Charlie Hunnam unveils bone-chilling Ed Gein in Monster teaser trailer
—John Legend, Irving Azoff among 2025 BMAC gala honorees
—Range launches new marketing division overseen by Kai Gayoso
—Harold Matzner, longtime Palm Springs Fest chairman, dies at 88
What else we're reading...
—Ludovic Hunter-Tilney looks at whether AI will kill the pop star [FT]
—Jack Ewing and Peter Eavis report that Elon Musk could become the first trillionaire under a new Tesla pay plan [NYT]
—Matthew Specktor reflects on how Giorgio Armani (and Richard Gere) taught Hollywood players to dress like American gigolos [GQ]
—The BBC reports that David Bowie’s secret final project has been discovered locked in his study [BBC]
—Here's your Friday list: 30 of the most memorable TV theme songs [THR]
Today...
...in 2014, Freestyle Releasing released Dustin Marcellino's The Identical in theaters. The musical drama film starred Elvis impersonator Blake Ryan, as well as Ray Liotta, Seth Green, Ashley Judd and Joe Pantoliano, and was panned by critics, and hold a 6 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Werner Herzog (83), Michael Keaton (74), Paddy Considine (52), Annabelle Wallis (41), Carice van Houten (49), Rose McGowan (52), Graham Yost (66), James Ponsoldt (47), Olivier Richters (36), Kat Graham (36), William Devane (86), Dennis Dugan (79), Emmy Raver-Lampman (37), Max Mittelman (35), Erin Krakow (41), Lucille Soong (90), Glenn Fleshler (57), Michael Horton (73), Laura Bertram (47), Kerry O'Malley (56), Joseph Makkar (53), Kristian Alfonso (62), Helena Barlow (27), Gage Golightly (32), Brittany Furlan (39), Lisa Yamada (23), Carol Lawrence (93), Joey Kern (49), Phillip P. Keene (59), Debbie Turner (69), Kim Hye-su (55), Jonny Phillips (62) |
| Barbara Hein, a longtime Capitol Records studio operations manager who worked alongside such music legends as Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, Placido Domingo, Tina Turner and Andrew Lloyd Webber, has died. She was 77. The obituary. |
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