The Biggest Winners and Losers of 2026 So Far

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0:36Matt Belloni:This episode is presented by AMC Network. A new chapter in Anne Rice's Immortal Universe begins with AMC's The Vampire Lestat. Get a backstage pass to the iconic frontman who Pace Magazine calls a Bowie-inspired rocker that will have fans screaming. Don't miss the legendary vampire Lestat de Liancourt in his own electrifying rock saga. Watch the Vampire Lestat Sundays only on AMC and AMC+. Learn more at amcplus.com. It is Monday, July 6. We've reached the halfway point of 2026 in Hollywood. So far, I think it's been a year of recovery. Deal volume in the entertainment media space hit$112 billion, highest since 2021 at this point.

1:21Matt Belloni:Box office is up about 15 % over last year and is on track for the first$10 billion domestic year since 2019. And the World Cup viewership is setting new records in this country. But don't get me wrong, this is still a hugely challenged industry. Job losses have continued. Even Netflix is now struggling with its viewership numbers. For all the success of the box office, just in the past month, We've had Minions and Supergirl and Masters of the Universe, all disappointments at the box office, at least domestically. So at the halfway point, it's time for the mid-year winners and losers report. We've got Lucas Shaw here from Bloomberg, and we're going to go through our picks one by one.

1:57Matt Belloni:Winners, losers, and some of the WTF moments so far in 2026. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

2:10Matt Belloni:All right, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg back again. I got to say, Lucas, for the second weekend in a row, a big flashy wedding that I was not invited to. First yours, and then Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey's. You were not there, correct? I was not. You know, I spoke to some people who were going, whom both of us know, and I have yet to get my full debrief from the people who were there. I don't care. I know the public does, and so we're going to talk about it. Oh, come on. It made me feel icky. Come on, the guest list was fascinating to me. And we're not going to get into it. Go to Jam Session if you want that.

2:52Matt Belloni:They have a great recap. But we got to discuss our guy, Adam Aaron, my friend, CEO of AMC Theaters. just going online, posting about the whole thing, revealing the dress, revealing the tux, and then he deleted his LinkedIn. Amazing stuff. We'll never get invited to a Taylor Swift-related event ever again. Maybe her next movie will be exclusive to Regal, you know, after his behavior today. Oh, I hope not. Don't say that. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing. I talked to a couple other executives who were like, I can't talk to you because I don't want to get the Adam Aaron treatment.

3:36Matt Belloni:It's crazy, though, the number of execs that were there. I mean, sort of revealing. Basically, all the top execs at Disney were there, except Josh Jamarro. He doesn't have a relationship with her. But all the GMA people, you know, she used to reveal her album stuff on GMA. The Disney film people that are working on the film with her, like, interesting stuff there. She invited the head of the Academy, Lynette Howell Taylor. She was there. She wants an Oscar. She wants an Oscar for that Toy Story song. I know. I think they may have another relationship there. But yeah, all the UMG people were there.

4:15Record label people, concert promoters, actors that she's barely met. It's gross. Sorry. I know.

4:22Matt Belloni:Unfortunately for us, we were not invited. All right. That's enough about that. We're not going into that. But we are here. to talk about the winners and losers of the year so far. Adam Aaron, not on that list. He might have been a good candidate for a winner until now. They've had a box office is up. Although shaky, shaky weekend. I know, that's true. Trust me, I'm monitoring this. I have minions in the draft. And now Moana's got to work. It really does. But I'm hoping that the minion softness will help Moana. Okay, so let's go through our winners and losers. And this is our own subjective selections, Our criteria is who has had the best business year so far, personal stuff outside.

5:03Matt Belloni:Let's start with losers. Is that okay, Greg? Yeah, I'll allow it. Sure. You're such an optimistic guy. Instead of calling it winners and losers, we're going to call it losers and winners. The math. That's fine. But I think this is the most interesting loser of the year because you and I both identified these people as winners earlier this year. And I'm talking about Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, the co-CEOs of Netflix. When the whole Warner Brothers thing didn't work out, they walked away with$2.8 billion. They ran up the price on Paramount to buy the asset. And we both said, okay, they came out of this pretty well.

5:40Matt Belloni:Cut to a few months later, the stock is down nearly 20 % this year, 40 % since they started going after Warner Brothers. They've sort of tipped their hand to cause Wall Street to be nervous about the company. You reported this weekend about their engagement problems on Netflix. Yeah, in particular, the fact that they're experiencing these huge drop-offs from season one to season two. And it's not just like a lot of people say, oh, it's because shows have been, they take too long in between seasons or binge. Those don't really explain it because it applies to shows that came back after a year. The binge model's been around forever.

6:21There are very real engagement concerns at Netflix right now that are getting talked about inside the company and with their partners.

6:28Matt Belloni:So that's the question I have for you is what is the solution here? What are the possible paths for Netflix to reverse and regain the confidence? Do they have to go out and buy NBCUniversal? Do they have to launch a free tier of Netflix? I think that's a more likely scenario. What do they have to do here? As it pertains to the program in particular, I don't think that they would say they have to do anything drastic, at least not right now. I think they would argue that this is just part of the normal ups and downs that they have. I'm just saying what I think they would say, where they have months where they don't have anything.

7:08And then guess what? Right now they do, in fact, have a huge hit, this Harlan Coben adaptation. And maybe they have a few more out the rest of the year. and we stopped talking about it because their engagement, even if it's not growing at what I think they hoped it would be, it still has been inching in the right direction. But I think to me, the bigger question is like the target for Netflix used to be basically replacing cable. And that just didn't happen, right? They are the number one paid streaming service. They are next to YouTube, the number two streaming service. But their share of television in the US is like 8 % and it's not going to suddenly jump to 10 or 15.

7:46So it feels like, you know, that, yeah, they, they, they may do something more significant. It's why they're experimenting with vertical videos. It's why they're experimenting or doing more in live sports. It's why they're trying podcasts. I think, you know, they had teased doing free before and then ultimately didn't do anything. I think it's totally reasonable to think that they would look at it again and what that might. Well, look at who they're losing to.

8:09Matt Belloni:They're losing to YouTube, which is free. They're now going to be facing Fox and Roku combined, and they have a pretty formidable free offering. And the content mix that they have been offering lately is leaning towards that direction. The podcast stuff is lower cost, lower return, we think, but it could be the basis of a free service that maybe puts some of this old library content that Netflix has been unwilling to license out onto a free service that serves as a pretty significant funnel to the paid service. I mean, Netflix is talking all about ads these days. A free tier would give them lots of ads.

8:50Matt Belloni:So would adding Peacock to Netflix. They could do some kind of a deal where they ingested the TF1 network in France and are now showing that in the Netflix ecosystem. You know, they could shake things up. Brandon Ross, the analyst, he said last week that they should replace Bella, the content chief, with Casey Bloys from HBO. I don't know that that would help make them more populous. Casey does a lot of more highbrow shows. You know, maybe replace Ted. I don't know. Like, how long does this go on before they do something? They've obviously had well-publicized talks with Casey. I don't think that Bella necessarily welcomes the idea of Casey joining the fold.

9:29And I don't see Casey at this point wanting to report to anyone but a CEO. So I don't know how that would resolve itself.

9:36Matt Belloni:I don't think Casey wants to be making 20 murder docs a year. I could be wrong, but I don't think he wants to be overseeing a slate of hundreds of titles. Right. I mean, you know, doing a spinoff of the Big Bang Theory is populist enough. And most of the populist stuff he pushes on as an HBO Max original anyways, so he doesn't paint the HBO brand. Yeah, but they're doing a lot of those. I've noted they're doing a lot of the franchise spinoff stuff, which seems to be working. I know. I don't think it's panic time at Netflix yet, but it will be interesting to see how they act in the next six months, especially after earnings come out, especially after the new engagement report comes out.

10:19Matt Belloni:And they need to do something. So we'll see what they do. All right. Let's move on to our. Do you want to do your first loser or do you want to do a winner? Let's let's lighten things up. Let's do a winner. A winner. Okay. Well, then I'll just keep it in the Netflix family. I feel like Ben Affleck is a huge winner for the first half of the year. Oh, good one. I mean, he takes a company that nobody knew he had and sells it for more than$600 million to Netflix. But that also, by the way, manages to allow them both to do an AI deal that doesn't cause huge outrage because Ben Affleck is a filmmaker.

10:55And so people trust that he is doing things sort of the ethical right way. I mean, that's what I've always wondered about this deal.

11:02Matt Belloni:Is this a game changer in the tech category or is this a$600 million press release? I think it's in between those two. I don't think people who really know AI video would necessarily describe it as a game changer. I mean, this is not, you know, a new video platform. It's not something that we're hearing everyone talk about, you know, using to make their videos. But I think if it comes to sort of professional film content, it's something that Netflix hopes they can use across a lot of their projects, or at least gets their division started. It's sort of like, it's also a little bit of an acquihire.

11:37I think it's more than just a nice press release, but I don't think this is going to change how everyone makes movies.

11:44Matt Belloni:And do they get the rip two, three, four, and five out of this as well? This is starting a pretty significant relationship with a guy who has previously not made movies for Netflix. And who makes the type of smart, populist-type entertainment that Netflix says is its bread and butter. Yeah, it's a good move. All right, so I'm going to then pivot to a winner here. I'm going to do as one of my winners, and this is going to pain me because he's been pretty awful to me during this entire process. I'm going to say Graham King is a big winner of the year. The producer of Michael, the Michael Jackson movie.

12:24Matt Belloni:That movie is going to get to a billion dollars and hasn't gotten there yet. We have not seen the big triumphant press release. But this is a movie that hit the absolute worst possible speed bumps on the way to theaters, having to scrap the entire third act, having to deal with all of the lawsuits. They finally just went full populist, give the fans what they want. A performance movie avoids all the controversy. We in the media jumped up and down, stomped our feet about how lame it is they did that. And then, boom, a billion dollars. So Graham was right. You view him as singularly responsible or just the most responsible?

13:07Matt Belloni:He was driving this train. And I think anyone associated with the movie, even Antoine Fuqua, the director, who gets credit here, Graham jumped on this project early, championed it as a full believer in Michael Jackson's innocence, I believe. He has not said that publicly. But he wanted to make this film. He got the Bohemian Rhapsody writer to get involved, John Logan. When everything fell apart, he put it back together. They are definitely going to do a second movie. The question is just when they're going to get everyone back together. He found the star, Jafar Jackson, who turned out to be amazing in the film.

13:45Matt Belloni:And I do think the movie will probably get some awards attention. I don't know that he'll get a nomination, but it'll probably get makeup and hairstyling. and it could get some other nominations there. So overall, huge win. Yeah. Would you consider that the biggest, maybe not surprise, I don't think people were shocked by it, but sort of like the biggest win relative to expectations for any movie so far this year? No, it's got to be Obsession. We'll get to that. Do you want to do a winner for yourself? I am going to do, well, I feel like I should do a loser. I haven't done a loser yet. All right, do a loser and then we'll get to the horror stuff.

14:22Matt Belloni:This will stay in the movie business. We'll just do a long run of movie stuff. I mean, I think that an obvious loser has to be James Gunn and Peter Safran, the DC guys. Oh, the DC heads. I mean, Supergirl, after two weekends, is that$100 million worldwide? Barely. Barely$100 million worldwide. Clearly the bomb of the year. Well, maybe Matt. Along with Matt. I would actually say this is bigger than Masters of the Universe because nobody thought Masters of the Universe was really going to work other than maybe a couple of people at Mattel. like Amazon, you know, DC, this was supposed to be the, you know, the, the rebooted DC under these two guys who knew what they were doing.

15:02They took a big victory lap after Superman, which was a hit, but not the massive hit that they made it out to be, especially given the cost. And then huge flame out on the second movie. It doesn't mean that they're going to necessarily abort the strategy, but if you're David Ellison and you get your deal done, how much faith are you putting in these guys to know what they're doing if they can't make Supergirl work? I know.

15:24Matt Belloni:Peter Safran did a rare statement to the New York Times the Sunday after the movie came out saying, well, Supergirl did not meet our box office expectations. It's just one component of a broader long-term strategy, i.e., David Ellison, we've got a long-term strategy. Please do not fire us. We have a vision. We know what we're doing. We remain confident in this is Peter Safran's quote. I don't know. I know it's the worst possible timing for them to have a the bomb in the summer. The only question is, why didn't you give me this movie? You had the opportunity to give me this movie and you chose Digger in our box office draft.

16:01I thought about it, but I just figured clearly incorrectly that the floor on a superhero movie was still like 250, 300. Like I didn't this movie is not going to sniff to. I kind of liked Millie Alcock. I thought the movie could potentially be decent, but yeah, no. You weren't at CinemaCon. It was kind of a disaster. I was not at CinemaCon. Clearly, I need to go to CinemaCon.

16:25Matt Belloni:You do. Honestly, we got to get you there next year. It's kind of ridiculous that you don't go. I'm probably going to go next year. We always do an outing with the Ringer people, with the big picture people. We went to Wizard of Oz this year. Last year, we did David Copperfield. I'm trying to get us to go to Carrot Top, but Craig keeps putting his foot down. I throw my body in front of that every year, yeah. It will happen. We will see Carrot Top before he retires. All right. So that's your loser. Now, is it time for a winner for me or a loser? You can go whichever direction you want. All right, you know what?

16:58Matt Belloni:We're doing movies. Let's do another loser. And this is going to go in the sort of bomb that says more about where the company is going. and I'm gonna go with my old friend Kathleen Kennedy, the former head of Lucasfilm. One final kiss-off disaster she left behind before she'd stepped down at the beginning of this year. The Mandalorian and Grogu got to$330 million worldwide. Not great for a Star Wars movie. By far the lowest grossing of any Star Wars project. The thing is, the movie was fine. Like, Favreau did a good job. It's just the appetite for a TV show movie was not there. This is now a TV franchise.

17:44Matt Belloni:You just had to kick her on the way out. I did because you know what? Nobody was talking about the fact that she did this. Now, Dave Filoni, who is currently running Lucasfilm with another executive, he was very involved in this movie too. He's a Mandalorian guy as well. And so he is not blameless here. But this strategy, they didn't have a Star Wars movie for seven years. and to relaunch the movie franchise with a TV show episode did not work. And we blame the leadership of Lucasfilm more than your buddy, Jon Favreau. I do, because the movie's fine. The movie's, I mean, I'm biased. I like Favreau.

18:20Matt Belloni:I think he's great. And he's a very commercial filmmaker when he wants to be. But he was a director for hire on this one. They came to him and said, why don't we do this as a theatrical movie? So that was coming from Disney. and whether it was Kathy or whether it was Alan Bergman or even Iger that said, let's play it absolutely safe. This is the problem with Star Wars. They played it absolutely safe and it's blown up in their face. They couldn't do a Lord and Miller Star Wars movie. It was too outside the box, but yet they're bringing the Emperor back in Rise of Skywalker because it was just the bottom line base.

18:56Matt Belloni:What will the fans be okay with? And they thought that was the same with a Mandalorian movie. It turns out not true. I hear you and I encourage risk taking, but you just praised Graham King for playing it safe on Michael Jackson. And now we're ripping Disney for playing it safe on Star Wars. But that's a different scenario. That was a scandal hot potato. And who knows? Maybe the original version of Michael would have also done a billion dollars. Maybe engaging with the allegations against him would have done a billion dollars. Maybe. Probably not, but maybe. but with Star Wars with a 50 year old franchise you gotta do something new and interesting with it and you know the movie didn't you didn't learn anything about the Mandalorian there was nothing new there were no big stars in it there was not they did an episode two episodes of the show they were good episodes of the show but that's not enough that's not theatrical we'll see what Sean Levy does next year with Gosling one final kiss off from Kathy Kennedy okay you want me to do a winner or a loser let's do a palate cleanser do a winner I'm going to save one for later Because I think it's too obvious I feel like we got to do Greta Gerwig as a winner Okay, give me your argument My argument would be that She is getting the biggest theatrical release In the history of Netflix And that whether Sure, maybe it was timing Maybe it was right movie But she proves to be the one director Who gets Netflix to do what They've never done for any other director and I think it speaks at least partly to some of the power that she and the producers on that movie had in the marketplace to be able to push it, right?

20:37She's not Nolan, but she's definitely in that next tier of directors who can kind of call her shot on a lot of this stuff.

20:43Matt Belloni:And she has the IP card to play with Netflix as well. Netflix doesn't have a lot of IP and she's attached to this big piece of IP in Narnia that Netflix would like to turn into a major franchise. And I do think that Ted is coming around to this notion that you need this big, splashy theatrical marketing moment to create real IP value. And I think we're seeing it with what you reported this past week about their TV shows losing consciousness with their audience between first and second season. It's not just that they wait a long time to produce the second season of a show. It's that the binge model encourages, you suck it down, you enjoy it, you instantly forget about it, and you're hungry again.

21:37Matt Belloni:It's the Chinese food of TV shows. So with something as important to Netflix as Narnia, they're going to give her theaters. That's what Ted has decided. Well, I think also the only reason I pause is I think for television, they are still kind of reluctant to really do the pre-release marketing and one of the issues on the seasons is like they just basically tell people who watch the first season to watch the second one they don't put in a lot of effort to expand the tent which is something that hbo does a lot right sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't but shows like industry grow over time succession grows over time netflix shows generally don't grow but with movies you got no choice you got one shot at it.

22:20You either got to get people to show up that first weekend or they don't. And if they don't, sure, maybe something will get discovered online like has happened with certain movies. But usually in those cases, there was a robust marketing budget and it just pays dividends later. Like with Encanto and Disney Plus, it did okay in theaters and then it blew up at home, but it had a real marketing budget.