| | | | | | What's news: Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan will run Lucasfilm. David Linde has been named CEO of the Sundance Institute. Timothy Busfield has been dropped by his talent agency. Hans Zimmer will co-compose the music for HBO's Harry Potter series. And Anne Hathaway will star in and EP a limited series for Paramount+. — Abid Rahman
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'Star Wars' Shake-Up! Dave Filoni, Lynwen Brennan Take Over Lucasfilm ►End of an era, start of another. After 14 years guiding Star Wars into the modern era through all its ups and downs, Kathleen Kennedy is stepping down as the president of Lucasfilm. Her departure from the company, which is effective this week, has long been expected, but still marks a seismic shift for one of the biggest brands in Hollywood. Kennedy is not departing the galaxy far, far away immediately. As part of her exit, she will continue on as a producer on the next two Lucasfilm movies, The Mandalorian and Grogu and Star Wars: Starfighter. Lucasfilm executive vp and chief creative officer Dave Filoni has been promoted to oversee the creative direction of the company as president and chief creative officer. President and gm of Lucasfilm business Lynwen Brennan will handle the business side of things as co-president. The story.
—No dice. A Delaware judge has turned down Paramount‘s bid to fast track a lawsuit looking to force Warner Bros. Discovery into giving shareholders more information about how it chose Netflix’s $82.7b offer. The judge on Thursday rejected arguments that Paramount would suffer “irreparable harm” if the details aren’t disclosed. Amid plans to launch a proxy fight for WBD, Paramount CEO David Ellison is betting that cornering the company into showing its work will help his case. The story.
—"I don’t know why he would have done that." As Ted Sarandos plots what may be a marathon, not a sprint, for Netflix to eventually buy WBD, he also needs to keep in mind an audience of one throughout the process: Donald Trump. Of late, there’s been some chatter about a posted-without-comment item that Trump made on his media platform, Truth Social, on Jan. 11 of an article titled “Stop the Netflix Cultural Takeover” published by the conservative One America News Network. In a new interview, Sarandos was asked about the president's latest turn on Truth Social, but the exec is trying not to read into it too much. The story.
—The night is darkest just before the dawn. After finishing at historically low levels in 2024, production in Los Angeles hit a new nadir last year. The region recorded just 19,694 shoot days in 2025, the lowest figure observed outside of 2020 when filming was halted amid the pandemic, according to the latest report from film permitting office FilmLA on Wednesday. It’s slightly more than a 16 percent drop-off compared to the previous year as local filming continues to decline since the highs of 2018. L.A. hasn’t seen filming levels increase year-over-year since 2021, though there’s hope that changes with the passage of major alterations to California’s subsidy program for Hollywood. The story. |
Sony Films to Stream on Netflix Worldwide in New Deal ►🤝 Licensing deal. 🤝 Sony Pictures Entertainment is further cementing its relationship with Netflix, entering into a first-of-its-kind global Pay-1 deal with the streamer, expanding on a years-long domestic partnership. On Thursday, Netflix and Sony announced a multiyear global Pay-1 licensing deal that will see Sony feature films stream on Netflix worldwide following their full theatrical and home entertainment windows. This is an expansion of a 2021 deal in which Sony films hit the streaming service in the U.S. That deal, which was worth $2.5b, expires at the end of this year, with the new deal kicking in at the top of 2027 for the U.S. As part of this pact, Netflix will also license rights to select SPE feature film and television library titles. The story.
—"David brings a rare combination of industry fluency, social cause management, and deep commitment to artists." David Linde, the former CEO of Participant Media and Universal Pictures chairman, has been named the permanent CEO of the Sundance Institute. Linde will begin his tenure on Feb. 17, after Sundance’s final film festival in Park City and before it heads to its new home in Boulder, Colorado. In his new post, the Hollywood veteran will lead the nonprofit, which oversees an expansive network of artist labs, grants and fellowships, as well as its namesake festival. The story.
—Exiting. Ron Schwartz, a 27-year veteran of Lionsgate, is set to leave the Hollywood studio at the end of March. Schwartz is currently president and chief operating officer of the Motion Picture Group. He joined Lionsgate after a merger with Trimark in Oct. 2000 and for nearly three decades has helped build what is now a 20,000-title film and TV library. During that time, Lionsgate’s movies have grossed over $15b at the worldwide box office. The story.
—🤝 Stake acquisition. 🤝 Japanese broadcasting and media giant Tokyo Broadcasting System is acquiring a $150m stake in Legendary Entertainment as part of a non-exclusive strategic partnership between the companies, with ambitions to adapt Japanese IP for global audiences. Legendary is betting that it can leverage its experience adapting IP (its projects include the Dune franchise, the Minecraft movie, Street Fighter and Godzilla), in helping TBS IP and content find a global audience. In addition to its TV networks, TBS also operates THE SEVEN, a studio that is behind the Netflix series Alice in Borderland and Yu Yu Hakusho. The story. |
Timothy Busfield: DA Lays Out Next Steps in Sex Abuse Case ►The latest. Timothy Busfield will be back in court next week for a hearing on whether he’ll be allowed to leave jail while a sex abuse case against him moves through the courts. Sam Bregman, the DA for Bernalillo County, New Mexico, said at a press conference Thursday that Busfield will have a pretrial detention hearing on Jan. 20. Bregman’s office has filed a motion that the actor and director remain in custody before going to trial, arguing that Busfield has shown a “calculated pattern” of “predatory conduct” in the past. The story.
—Dropped. Timothy Busfield’s talent agency has dropped him as a client amid sexual abuse allegations leveled against him. The Santa Monica-based Innovative Artists agency ceased working with the actor and director after an arrest warrant was issued for the creative on Jan. 9. The story. |
The Oscars Can't Pretend Anime Doesn't Exist Anymore ►Long overdue. Traditionally, the Animation Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has not been known for risk-taking. Since the best animated feature Oscar was introduced in 2002, the category has overwhelmingly rewarded studio-backed, 3D CGI family fare of the Disney-Pixar-DreamWorks school. As East Asian animation — from Japanese anime to South Korean hanguk aeni and Chinese donghua — exploded into a global pop-culture force, the Academy has remained largely unimpressed. THR's Scott Roxborough writes that after decades of snubs, massive global anime hits like Demon Slayer and KPop Demon Hunters are forcing the Academy to rethink what counts as award-worthy animation. The story.
—🎭 In talks. 🎭 Glen Powell is teaming up with Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail for an original science fiction feature. Esmail is behind Tesseract, the sci-fi project that has landed at Amazon MGM and United Artists. Powell is in negotiations to star in the project and to produce with Dan Cohen, his partner at the duo’s Barnstorm production banner. Like most Esmail projects, the plot is being kept under wraps. The project does call for two other lead roles, both females, according to sources. The story.
—🎭 In the flesh! 🎭 Cate Blanchett is riding the dragons once again. The two-time Oscar winner has inked a deal to reprise her role as Viking warrior Valka in Universal's live-action How to Train Your Dragon 2. Dean DeBlois, who co-created the screen franchise and wrote and directed last year’s first live-action outing, is back as writer, director and executive producer of the feature. The first live-action movie was released in June 2025 and earned $636m worldwide. The story.
—🎭 Steamy. 🎭 Adria Arjona and Kingsley Ben-Adir will discover that finding love can be a dangerous game in Scorn, an erotic thriller gearing up to shoot in the U.K. at the end of the month. Sarah-Violet Bliss, known for co-creating the HBO Max show Search Party, wrote the script as a spec and will direct for Topic Studios. "A woman begins a passionate affair with a married man. When he then tries to re-cast their love as just a fling, she refuses to go away quietly," reads the logline. The story.
—🎭 Filling out. 🎭 M3GAN star Violet McGraw is set to lead a YA comedy feature Summer’s Last Resort. Sophia Bush, Jerry O’Connell and Tim Rozon will also star in the Tubi Original film. Melanie Scrofano directs the film that is currently in production. Summer’s Last Resort centers on Summer (McGraw), a high-strung teen who finds herself trapped on vacation with her free-spirited mom’s (Bush) corny boyfriend, Glenn (O’Connell), who is also her vice principal. The teen sets out to salvage the trip by secretly plotting to break the couple up. The story. |
'Harry Potter' Series: Hans Zimmer to Co-Compose Score ►Sounds great. HBO‘s upcoming Harry Potter TV series will have a new original score composed by the prolific Hans Zimmer, and Bleeding Fingers Music, a composer collective that he co-founded. Bleeding Fingers was founded by Zimmer, Russell Emanuel and Steven Kofsky, and is a collective of composers who create original scores for film, TV and creative projects. Bleeding Fingers composers Kara Talve and Anže Rozman will work with Zimmer on the score for the Harry Potter series, which will debut on HBO and HBO Max in 2027. The story.
—📅 Dated! 📅 Amazon has finally named and dated its documentary series on the rise and fall of the ABA. Soul Power: The Legend of the American Basketball Association, appropriately produced by the face of the relatively short-lived league “Dr. J” Julius Erving, will premiere Feb. 12 on Prime Video. The four-part docuseries is also produced by Common and George Karl, the legendary coach who also hooped in the ABA. Soul Power is directed by Kenan Kamwana Holley. The story.
—Nothing to panic about. The Nielsen streaming stats for the season 2 premiere of Fallout are significantly smaller than those for season 1 in 2024 — but that’s hardly the complete picture. Fallout accumulated 794m viewing minutes on Prime Video for the week of Dec. 15-21; season 2 debuted on Dec. 16. In raw numbers, that’s way down from the 2.9b minutes of watch time for season 1’s opening week in April 2024, which stands as the best premiere for a series ever on the platform. There are a couple of big differences between the seasons, however, that help account for the disparity. Prime Video released Fallout season 1 as a binge. For season 2, the streamer opted for a weekly release, and it dropped only one episode on Dec. 16, rather than two or three as it has done for a number of other series. The ratings.
—Expanding franchise. Staying with Fallout, the series has inspired a competition show based on that world. Amazon's Fallout Shelter will feature “a series of escalating challenges, strategic dilemmas, and moral crossroads [in which] contestants must prove their ingenuity, teamwork, and resilience as they compete for safety, power, and ultimately a huge cash prize.” It will be set inside the bomb-proof Vault-Tec vaults seen in the series. Fallout Shelter will join a roster of competition shows at Prime Video that also includes Beast Games and 007: Road to a Million. The story.
—🎭 Rejoice! 🎭 Saoirse-Monica Jackson is reuniting with her Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee. The two are working together on McGee’s hotly anticipated Netflix show How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, with Jackson joining an ensemble cast including Roísín Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan and Caoilfhionn Dunne. The eight-part series follows three friends as they investigate the mysterious death of a former schoolmate. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast, arriving in February, is pegged as a story about "friendship, memory and what happens when life doesn’t turn out quite like you’d expected." The story.
—Change-up. Netflix is doubling down on one of its most reliable Korean unscripted hits. The streamer has renewed Culinary Class Wars for a third season, while rolling out a major overhaul to the format that shifts the competition from individual chefs to full restaurant teams. Season 3 will pit four-person kitchen brigades against one another, turning the series into a collective test of leadership, coordination and pressure-cooker performance. The change is designed to raise the stakes by tying victory — and failure — to entire restaurants rather than lone competitors. The story. |
Anne Hathaway to Star in True-Crime Drama 'Fear Not' ►🎭 Small screen return. 🎭 Anne Hathaway will star in and executive produce Fear Not, a six-episode drama from Paramount+ based on a Vanity Fair story by Julie Miller. Bash Doran is adapting the story. Fear Not , slated for 2027, will tell the story of prolific serial killer Stephen Morin and Margy Palm (Hathaway), a Texas woman who was his last abductee. The show’s logline reads, "Morin’s abduction of Palm, which started as a deadly captive situation, took an unlikely turn: one which included compassion, prayer and profound courage. Palm’s devotion to her faith and her insistence that Morin could be transformed, became the impetus of a relationship that lasted long after Palm was returned to safety — until Morin received the death penalty." The story.
—On the move. New York City’s new Sunset Pier 94 Studios has its first major tenant, and Dexter: Resurrection is moving to Manhattan full-time. Paramount Television Studios has signed the first lease at the new Sunset Pier 94 Studios, occupying 70,000 of its impressive 232,000 square feet. Sunset Pier 94 Studios opens later this month. First to film will be the second season of the Dexter sequel series, which hails from Showtime and streams on Paramount+. Resurrection, which shot season one across Westchester County, Long Island and all five boroughs of the city, will occupy two (of six) sound stages with 36-foot heigh ceilings, as well as production support and offices spaces. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 Starz is adding another period drama to its lineup, snagging U.S. rights to a limited series adaptation of Amadeus. The five-part series stars Will Sharpe as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Paul Bettany as his fellow composer and rival Antonio Salieri, and Gabrielle Creevy as Mozart’s wife, Constanze Weber. The show, which debuted in December on Sky in the U.K., will come to Starz later this year. The story.
—Woof! The first season of The Pitt was HBO Max’s biggest original show of 2024-25. Season two is shaping up the same way — only a lot bigger. The streamer says the season two premiere of The Pitt notched 5.4 million viewers in the U.S. in its first three days, then grew to 7.2m over a full week. The three-day total of 5.4m is almost triple what the series premiere in January 2025 drew in the same time frame. According to Nielsen, in the 2024-25 season The Pitt brought in 6.18m viewers per episode — over 35 days. The numbers in the paragraph above are first-party data from HBO Max, but if they’re anywhere close to Nielsen measurement, the season two premiere has already surpassed the show’s five-week average for season one. The streaming rankings. |
Film Review: 'The Rip' ►"Brawny and efficient." THR's chief film critic David Rooney reviews Joe Carnahan's The Rip. An all-star cast feature in this Netflix crime thriller about a Miami narcotics unit navigating a high-stakes situation in a cartel stash house. Starring Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Steven Yeun, Teyana Taylor, Sasha Calle, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Scott Adkins, Kyle Chandler, Néstor Carbonell, Jose Pablo Cantillo and Lina Esco. Written by Joe Carnahan. 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 James Cameron. The massively influential filmmaker behind The Terminator, Aliens, Titanic and three Avatar films, among others, reflects on his unusual path to the business, why his films tend to blend science/sci-fi and love stories, what has enchanted him about Pandora and the Na'vi for more than 30 years, and which question he hopes never to be asked again. The podcast.
—Awards Chatter. In this live episode, Scott spoke to Ariana Grande. The Grammy-winning singer/songwriter and Oscar-nominated actress returns to the podcast and candidly discusses how she found her pop sound, how she approaches music vs. acting, what she looks for in collaborators, why Wicked means so much to her, how singing as herself and as Glinda are completely different, and what's next for her. The podcast.
—Awards Chatter. In this live episode, Scott spoke to Joel Edgerton. The Australian actor/writer/director reflects on how he wound up in George Lucas' second Star Wars trilogy, his memorable turns in art house standouts like Warrior and Loving, and the challenges and rewards of giving a largely dialogue-free performance in Clint Bentley's adaptation of Denis Johnson's 2011 novella Train Dreams, about a laborer in the early 20th-century American West. 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 hosts filmmaker Nia DaCosta, who pipes in from London to talk about her spin on the 28 Years Later franchise — just don't call them zombies! — after I Said No Gifts host Bridger Winegar pays a visit to discuss pressing Utah-set reality TV news and the state of comedy writing in 2026. The podcast.
In other news...
—Dark Winds S4 trailer: Zahn McClarnon races against time to save missing girl
—Peacock's Ted S2 trailer features "dirty bear sex"
—GOT siblings Sophie Turner and Kit Harington reunite as lovers in The Dreadful trailer
—First-look: Sophie Turner revealed as Lara Croft in Tomb Raider reboot
—Berlin: Fest to open with No Good Men from Afghan director Shahrbanoo Sadat
—Foo Fighters light up Kia Forum for one-night benefit show
—DDA taps Matt Andrée Wiltens, Ryan Smith for key roles in U.S. expansion
—The Pitt creator R. Scott Gemmill signs with UTA
—Tom Estey, longtime Hollywood publicist and Nanci Ryder protégé, dies at 61
What else we're reading...
—Nicole Sperling has a comprehensive and very newsy interview with Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos [NYT]
—Ben Smith and Max Tani talk to journalist Ryan Lizza about his ex Olivia Nuzzi, RFK Jr., and the Substack-ification of a scandal [Semafor]
—Giles Turner and Josh Sisco look at how Saudi Arabia’s big bet on LIV Golf has failed to attract fans and TV audiences [Bloomberg]
—Franklin Foer writes that MAGA's own Jewish intellectuals, especially Ben Shapiro, helped create the right's anti-semitism problem [Atlantic]
—Here's your Friday list: 2016 nostalgia: 16 films and TV shows that debuted a decade ago [THR]
Today...
...in 2015, Sony released Jeremy Garelick's The Wedding Ringer in theaters. The buddy comedy, which starred Kevin Hart, Josh Gad and Kaley Cuoco, was savaged by critics but was a big hit with audiences. The original review.
Today's birthdays: John Carpenter (78), Lin-Manuel Miranda (46), Richard T. Jones (54), FKA twigs (38), Atticus Ross (58), Jennie Kim (30), Julie Ann Emery (51), Birgitte Hjort Sørensen (44), Jake Epstein (39), Yerin Ha (28), Yvonne Zima (37), Marwan Kenzari (43), Debbie Allen (76), Ricardo Darín (69), Mark Steger (64), Liz Larsen (67), Josie Davis (53), Kabir Bedi (80), Renée Felice Smith (41), David Chokachi (58), James May (63), Gillian White (51), Curran Walters (28), Lee Min-ki (41), Tsianina Joelson (51), Erkan Kolçak Köstendil (43), Jonathan Mangum (55), Eva Habermann (50), Katie Maloney (39), Dameon Clarke (54), Annika Peterson (54), Shaun Benson (50) |
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