| | | | | | Welcome to 2026. To help sage the room of all the leftover "best of" lists, The Weekender is looking ahead. Here's a few things to watch for and the narratives that Hollywood will likely be grappling with soon. — Erik Hayden
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1. Is Hollywood Hiring? Have you heard? No one’s hiring. At least that’s the narrative from the biggest corporations in America right now, the thinking being that execs are waiting to see how AI will disrupt their business or they’re looking to show how effective they can be with their current workforce. Hence the empty-looking job listings sites. That hasn’t been great for entry-level workers, nor those looking to advance the ranks. In 2026, does the entertainment industry take its cues from Wall Street and stay lean? Or does the proliferation of new avenues for video content (microdramas, video podcasts and more) lead to more work, just in new spaces and locations? David Ellison has pledged that Paramount will be a growth engine after his team cuts deep, next up could be the building phase. |
2. Are There Enough Movies? Each year since 2020, major exhibitors — from AMC to Cinemark to Regal — have essentially said, “If we just had more product to show on our screens, more audiences would walk through our doors and box office grosses would rise, helping out everyone.” But, whether it’s been the pandemic or labor strikes or consolidation, theater chains haven’t gotten what they’ve asked for. Will they ever? In 2025, domestic grosses clocked about $8.9 billion with about 112 movies hitting wide release in 2,000 screens. That figure is the most since 120 titles hit wide release in 2019. Looking over the Most Anticipated Movies of 2026 list, there’s every type of blockbuster (a Christopher Nolan tentpole, Dune and Avengers all in the same year) to give theaters what they may be looking for. That said, the largest chain, AMC, just saw its stock hit a low, to the point that CEO Adam Aron issued an essay to shareholders to stay calm. |
3. What Do Unions Want? It was nearly three years ago that Hollywood was gearing up for what would end up to be a 148-day Writers Guild strike and 118-day SAG-AFTRA strike. It’s now getting closer to negotiations time between the guilds and the studios once again. In 2026, as Katie Kilkenny reported, it will be SAG-AFTRA that will kick off talks with the studios, repped by the AMPTP, in early February. This time around, Sean Astin is at the helm of the actors union after being elected as Fran Drescher’s successor but the group’s chief negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland , is still in place to lead talks as he was in 2023. Also of note: AMPTP chief Carol Lombardini has retired and Gregory Hessinger will lead talks for the studios. How will the actors union set the tone? |
4. Awards Are Changing The rhythms of the kudos tour — from Sundance to Cannes to Telluride/Venice then Toronto, then high-gear as the crafts awards commence — have long guided studio calendars and release dates. Can something beloved (or at least familiar) stay looking and feeling relatively the same even as the studio system undergoes rapid change? The relative shock of YouTube landing the Oscars starting in 2029 could be a jolt to the dynamics at play, even if it’s unclear what the new normal will become. Yet it's clear that talent will still be on center stage. To that point, check out the latest from THR’s flagship series — this time featuring Dwayne Johnson, Jacob Elordi, Michael B. Jordan, Adam Sandler, Jeremy Allen White, Wagner Moura and Mark Hamill — on the Actors Roundtable. |
5. TV News May Get Crowded For all the attention paid to Bari Weiss’ overhaul of CBS News, or how MS Now is faring cleaved off from NBC News or whether CNN can keep its reputation as the go-to destination when world news breaks (i.e. like today for this Maduro operation), there’s an often overlooked aspect to TV news. Namely, it’s a space that’s had, depending on how you count it, about six major players in the U.S. But streaming is finally at a place where that may change. Consider a scenario where, say, The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or even The Washington Post jumps in to launch a streaming channel and it gets added to YouTube TV. The outlets that were previously text-based now have a chance to take real market share from traditional “TV” broadcasters. Will they roll the dice and try? It may depend on… |
6. Advertising Is Shifting In his forecast for the new year, Alex Weprin notes that what we traditionally think of as TV is on the outs with marketers: “While commerce media (think stoppable and retail-driven ads), social media and search continue their double-digit growth, and YouTube also continues to grow rapidly, television continues to collapse, with Madison & Wall projecting a 12 percent decline in Q3 for national TV and a 4 percent decline in local TV.” Meaning, “even as streaming TV offsets some linear losses, the growth elsewhere in the ad ecosystem continues shrinking TV's piece of the pie.” |
7. Video Podcasts Boom Last year saw audio stars realizing they could mint more money with video deals for their 45-minute “emergency pod” missives, as well as Netflix dipping its toe into the space by inking pacts with the likes of Spotify, iHeart and Barstool. Next up to watch for is to see which platform is best at bundling all those video stars together. (Yes, it’s easy to argue it’s YouTube . But there’s room for more than one mega video platform, especially as apps take over from the open web that the Google-owned platform dominates.) It’s not out of the question to start seeing more FAST-type channels emerge to bundle these audio-turned-video podcasts together. |
8. What's After 2024? A Trump election victory brought 12 months of studios getting in line with MAGA rhetoric on diversity and inclusion initiatives along with scrubbed DEI language and goals. ABC News and CBS News paid out $15 million and $16 million, respectively, to settle Trump attacks on news reports while tech moguls (and even Netflix’s Ted Sarandos) paid dues in visits at the White House to smooth things over with the President. But midterms campaign momentum could turn the page of this Trump fealty narrative quickly in 2026 — especially if the Democrats look like they’re going to make gains (that’s a big if). Does that mean Hollywood execs find a spine again and start standing up to the White House in their corporate policy choices? |
9. AI Creep The print-only hometown paper of Netflix’s $1 billion, 292-acre production base in New Jersey just ran a front cover headline reading, “Won’t A.I. Make Netflix at Fort Monmouth obsolete?” It’s not a bad shock headline from the triCityNews. But for all the existential worries that AI brings, it’s not in the near-term that the likes of Sora 2 replaces a weekly diet of Stranger Things and Emily in Paris or starts offering HBO-quality production levels. Where AI creep will come in to play in the near-term is for all the ambient media that we consume on a daily basis and scroll by, whether that’s memes, or news-like posts or music (i.e. algorithmic playlists of AI muzak “tailored to your mood”). The adoption and acceptance of that type of AI slop will say a lot about how people ultimately want to consume synthetic content. There’s also the theory that AI slop could become the equivalent to daytime TV, while viewers head to premium villas like Netflix or Apple TV or Hulu for appointment-esque viewing. |
10. Disney's IP Tests When Rise of Skywalker hit theaters in 2019 enroute to $1.07 billion at the box office, few moviegoers expected that it’d be the last they’d see the franchise in theaters for more than a half a decade. While Star Wars shows crowded into Disney+ during that time, the big question that Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm executives may be wondering is, “Did a blockbuster theatrical brand get diluted?” That’ll be the test for Star Wars’ biggest Disney+ star, Pedro Pascal’s Mandalorian, as The Mandalorian and Grogu hits theaters in late May. The last time a Star Wars movie took a May release date was in 2018, when spinoff Solo disappointed at the box office with $393 million. It’s easy to make similar observations about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, despite some apples-and-oranges comparisons with Star Wars (namely, there’s still been a steady stream of MCU movies in theaters). But Avengers: Doomsday next holiday season will likewise be a big indicator of whether the Marvel spark still hits in theaters like it did throughout the 2010s. Illustrations by Peter Oumanski |
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