Show Notes
The summer box office is already popping, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael raking in millions before Memorial Day — and with new movies coming from Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, Marvel, Pixar and A24’s youngest director ever, it feels like the industry might have its best summer since 2019. (Even if The Mandalorian and Grogu fails to launch.) Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey make their picks for the season’s biggest hits in Ankler Agenda‘s first-ever summer box office draft (fantasy football-style), as they predict the next top performers of the summer.
Plus: With President Trump voicing support for The Hills alum Spencer Pratt in his run for mayor of Los Angeles — “I’d like to see him do well” — and Pratt gaining ground among the Hollywood elite, the town gets closer to seeing the reality show president push the reality show mayoral candidate to the top (or is it bottom?) of the food chain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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To hear Ted Sarandos tell it, things are going great at Netflix.
Steve Hilton has been talking with David Ellison, Ted Sarandos and Trump Hollywood ambassador Jon Voight about how to bring production back to California. And the Republican candidate for governor has a big idea: blow past the state’s existing film tax incentives with an uncapped credit that could reach 40 percent, covering everything from stars’ salaries to animation and postproduction.
David Ellison has an ambitious pitch for Hollywood: Skydance will spend more on content than Netflix or Disney, crank out roughly 190 series and 30 movies a year, find at least $6 billion in savings and pay down its mountain of debt. All while keeping the creative community happy. How, exactly, is all of that supposed to work when even Wall Street doesn’t see it?
The new Paramount is taking shape fast. On the eve of the Warner Bros. deal concluding, David Ellison is bringing in fresh blood — and bloodletting. Former Mattel chief Ynon Kreiz boards as the surprise co-CEO, charged with day-to-day management and integration (read: layoffs). And after months of heated rivalry between Cindy Holland and Casey Bloys over who would control the combined company’s original-content future, we have an answer: it’s Casey at the bat.
Mike Schur calls Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. a “nightmare scenario” for Hollywood — and now that David Ellison has cleared the biggest obstacle to getting the deal done, he’s even more alarmed about what comes next. “It’s gasoline on a fire,” the Parks and Recreation co-creator and Dig producer tells Elaine Low, pointing to an industry already hollowed out by years of consolidation. “I hate to be doomsday-ish here… but the ecosystem is just shrinking and shrinking and shrinking.”