The Five Biggest Hollywood Storylines for the Rest of 2026

0:04This episode of The Town is presented by HBO Max. HBO Max presents The Pit, nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, including outstanding drama series. The staff of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center juggle personal crises, workplace politics, and high emotions in this Emmy-winning drama series. Don't miss the series USA Today called The Absolute Best Show on TV. The Pit is now streaming on HBO Max. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first, but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach, and reacts.

0:43But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not so great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a word for that, bull spend. Instead, why not invest in what looks good to your CFO? LinkedIn ads generates the highest ROAS of all major ad networks. Reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. You can target by company, industry, job title, and more. So cut the bull spend. Advertise on LinkedIn, the network that works for you. Spend$250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads and get a$250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com slash the town. That's linkedin.com slash the town. Terms and conditions apply.

1:26It is Monday, August 31st. It's been a cautiously optimistic summer around town. Box office is up 20%. World Cup ratings far exceeded expectations in this country. Even the maitre d' at the polo lounge told me last week that business has been up slightly this summer. Always a strong Hollywood indicator. Everyone seems to have had a pretty good few months, except maybe David Ellison and his Warnermount merger. And Netflix, the engagement numbers haven't been great. But now fall is here, and the reality may be about to set in. So what are the big stories going to be for the rest of the year? More Netflix, of course, more WarnerMount, but some other interesting narratives as well.

2:02So today I've got Lucas Shaw here to discuss and prognosticate. One note, we taped this this morning before Trump posted in sport of the federal tax credit for production. So note that when we get to it. Today is the fall narratives for Hollywood. And can the relative recovery keep going? From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is The Town.

2:26okay we are here with lucas shaw from bloomberg our monday guy welcome back lucas you had a wonderful little get together this weekend i was honored to be invited and i gotta say you make a very delicious lemon loaf thanks for coming drag my ass to the east side unlike craig craig can't be bothered to go west or east of downtown craig can be forgiven during fantasy football season. And it was my wife's birthday this weekend. We can all calm down. It was, I really appreciate being invited, Lucas. I'll be at the next one. Okay. Well, you missed out on the lemon loaf. So let's get into this because we got lots of narratives for the fall and I wanted to distill them with you.

3:05And can we first like, just, just get the Paramount stuff out of the way. What do you think is the most important question? If, if we're thinking about this, like most pressing questions for the fall, What is the number one question? Well, obviously, whatever happens with the WarnerMount merger, if they settle, if the talks break down and they continue going towards trial, if David Ellison buys a mansion in Franklin, Tennessee, all of this will be a factor. And honestly, I think one of the biggest sort of ancillary issues is are they going to start to see a brain drain as this drags on? Are we going to see more executives jumping ship?

3:47How many Warner Brothers employees will Netflix hire in the next three months? Exactly. And are these employees going to start to get antsy? And not just employees, but producers and projects and things that, you know, you want an answer. You're a big filmmaker. And maybe the Warner Brothers people can't give you an answer because it's the kind of movie that they would need to bring in the other, the new owners on or something like that. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, when the AT &T Warner Brothers deal got held in limbo for two years, didn't, I can't speak to the, to the movie studio, but at least in the case of like HBO, HBO didn't seem to really miss a beat.

4:26They did just fine. I know. And at this point they are all used to this chaos that has developed the company for the past 10 years. Well, if you're a producer with a deal, you know, you can't really move that quickly. If you're making a hit show like The Pit, it's not like you're going to go, well, we're not going to do any more of this because we're tired of the uncertainty. But I am curious what David Ellison will give up in order to convince Rob Bonta that he needs to negotiate seriously. Yeah, that'll be the big issue. Whatever Ellison is willing to part with or, you know, create some shockingly complex new vehicle for divestiture where they will own some, but not all, or whatever the calculation is to try to get this through.

5:14But we don't have to talk. We've talked enough about this lately. Okay, we've talked about it enough. Yes. All right, so let's go to our big... Do you want to go first here? I'll give you first pick of the big issues for the fall that we're going to be talking about that people should put on the radar. I mean, I feel like you got to start with the biggest, the most valuable entertainment company in the world. That would be Netflix. Okay. So what about Netflix? Two related questions. And, but let's start with a stat, which is Netflix's stock is down 32%, more than 30 % over the last year. Over that time, the S &P is up almost 20 % or about 20%.

5:50That is not good by any measure, right? And Netflix is a company that where the, you know, You zoom out 20 years, it's been a remarkable success story, stock has outperformed the market, all these things, and there have been swoons before. But this is an extended one. If you talk to folks at the company, they think it is still kind of a hangover from the Warner Brothers deal, that the Warner Brothers deal really threw investors and they're going to struggle for a couple of years to convince people that the company is doing just fine. Self-inflicted, by the way. Yeah, self-inflicted, the company's doing just fine.

6:22But I think there are two questions that are sort of on everyone's mind. The bigger picture one, which I think is tied to Warner Brothers, is what is next, right? Streaming is still a good business. The company is just minting profit. It's incredibly profitable, but its growth has slowed a lot. It's trying a bunch of different things. It doesn't know which of those is going to work. And so what of those comes next? And, or what comes next in sort of the growth engine? And related, and that's more specific to this year and getting into the kind of the Hollywood rumor mill, when or how can Netflix break its programming slump where it has gone most of the year without having the kind of consistent hits that we have become accustomed to seeing from Netflix, which has led to all sorts of conversations about what changes do or don't need to be made over there.

7:09Particularly in the second quarter, because I think the comps for this year's second quarter and last year's were particularly brutal. There weren't as many returning hits. They didn't have the breakout of K-pop demon hunters like they did last summer. And, you know, I just was reading a report from Peter Cipino, the analyst, and he was citing a lot of his clients who are looking towards the third quarter and are seeing better programming. But we're in the middle of the third quarter. I know, but they're seeing, they're seeing at least some titles for the fall that will juice the engagement numbers.

7:47But who knows? I mean, Netflix hits tend to come out of nowhere. Yeah, that is the track record. Yeah, so we have no idea. But I do think that question of whether the drought will continue at Netflix, the drum beats will start to get louder. So what do they do? Do they just start throwing more podcasts on there? Or do they start to make some big, tough changes, either on the executive front or on the content strategy? Yeah, well, look, the content strategy, they're already doing it, right? So they've done all these YouTube deals this year. They've gotten in this essentially bidding war with YouTube for, they've signed deals with more than a dozen creators.

8:29I think my understanding is there's another 12. Basically, Netflix made a list of like, here are the 30 or 40 creators we care about. We're going to go for all of them. They've signed a number of them. They're going after the rest of them and we'll see how that shakes out. there is the the you know the big podcast push obligatory reference that are obligatory ringer disclosure because they have a deal with netflix i don't even work for the ringer but i'll make it on math's behalf sure well this show is not on netflix so at least we don't have to have a sean fantasy rant here and then there is sports which they continue to dip into and you know they've got some football people assume that they're going to have to go bigger and do more there is gaming which they continue again.

9:08They did another restructuring in that group. So they're doing more and more. I think the big question everyone has for something else they could do is are they going to try to, you know, license or syndicate another big service? I think they would have loved to do a version of what YouTube did with Peacock. And there's been, I know and others have reported that they had at least some preliminary conversations around that. They've had preliminary conversations with Fox around Fox One, which would bring in a lot more sports without Netflix having to buy the rights. Yeah, and an underrated aspect of these ingestion deals is all of that viewership gets counted for Netflix, it would be, on the Nielsen gauge.

9:51Like when you watch an HBO show via Amazon Prime Video channels, that viewership doesn't get counted for HBO Max. It gets counted for Amazon. And a big chunk of their viewership comes from that. And you know, Ted Sarandos would love to capture that viewership and to do a victory lap when they got closer and closer to YouTube. Side note, I think that should reinforce generally how little time people are spending watching Amazon original programming, because Amazon channels is the number one, like third party distributor by a mile, people spend a lot like services like Paramount Plus, HBO Max have a lot of customers via that, via that, throw in all the niche services.

10:38And Amazon is still less than half the viewing of Netflix every month. Yeah. And with a programming budget, that isn't nearly what Netflix does on originals, taking out the NFL. Right. Well, that's, that's a big one. And I know the NFL is a big chunk. Listen, I don't know. I feel like I'm defending Amazon lately because I do feel like they've had shows that have broken through. No, I think they've had a good, they've actually had a decent run. It's just people watch it a lot less. Yeah, when we see the Nielsen numbers on Reacher, the new season, it's going to be number one for a few weeks. Yeah.

11:10What do you think, we sort of talked about the programming side on the, like, or the content strategy. What would you, if you had to bet, do you think that Netflix will make some executive change between now and the end of the year? And if the answer is yes, how high up the pecking order does it go? I don't think that they will do it before the end of the year. I think they'll see what the results are for the rest of the year. Unless something emerges where they get an activist shareholder or something where they really have to act. I don't think we're at that point yet. And at least the strategy is coming from the top.

11:48You know, and they're doing this, Greg and Ted, like they are fully on board with these content strategy shifts to the YouTubers and all this stuff. So I think they're going to see how that plays out. And also it becomes like, who do they go after? Like everybody keeps talking about Casey Boyce from HBO going over there. But if I'm Casey, I'm going to sit and ride out this Warner Brothers Discovery thing because his deal is up next year. I've said this before. And they're going to have to figure out what to do with him, possibly before this deal closes. so he could be in a particularly good situation to extract a new deal or to leverage another company um and possibly go there when his deal is up so i don't know if he's going to make a move now before that before there's resolution there yeah so all right how much do you think this netflix versus youtube war escalates you've done a lot of reporting about netflix's attempts to bring YouTubers over and in addition, YouTube's efforts to keep people on the platform.

12:51Do you think they, YouTube increases their offers to their creators to keep them or do they just not care? Well, I think we're in the middle of a bidding war. There's, it has escalated, right? What happened and I've reported on it a few times. What's happened over the last, you know, let's call it four to six weeks is YouTube went from wondering, should we respond to Netflix's pursuit of a lot of our biggest stars to we are going to and we're going to both make them a compelling offer, which is we will help to fund your programming either directly or indirectly. And also we will threaten to punish you if you do these deals with Netflix, because YouTube's concern is the programming goes day and date on Netflix and YouTube.

13:31And then when YouTube's talking to advertisers, it can't tell them, hey, this, you know, we are the only place you can come for these creators. And I think also perceptual in terms of perception, YouTube does not like that it presents Netflix as sort of the, where you graduate to the major leagues and YouTube is the JV team. And they don't like that. A related question will be, you know, there's been more and more noise about Disney and Amazon and even Paramount and others trying to get into the business, get into this same. And like, is it too little too late for any of them to have meaningful creator partnerships?

14:04Or is it just going to be all Netflix and YouTube? We did see Howard Stern go to HBO Max today, which is interesting. I thought maybe he would do a Netflix deal. And Ted Sarandos, huge, huge CERN fan. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so my first narrative for the fall is how big and how disruptive will Grand Theft Auto 6 be? I didn't know you were a gamer. I'm not a gamer, but I celebrate success. And this is one of the biggest properties in the history of entertainment. Yeah. You know, the pre-sales for this. This game doesn't go on sale. until November, pre-sales are already at$260 million. There was a CNBC report from a company, an analytics firm called New Zoo, that predicted$4.5 billion in sales by launch week.

14:57Yeah. That would put it up amongst the biggest properties ever. Yes. It will make more money this year than any movie has ever made in a calendar year. And it'll stock of Take-Two, which is the parent of Rockstar Games, the stock has already doubled in the past three years because people are anticipating this. Strauss Zelnick, the CEO, has been talking about how do we prevent disruptions in streaming services when this comes online? Because there's going to be such... I mean, we saw this past week when Netflix put up the trailer and they put out a statement saying, quote, some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered.

15:42Like, you don't see that with the latest season of, you know, Wednesday. Yeah, I mean, I guess speaking tied to our last conversation, do we think that the Grand Theft Auto trailer will be the biggest hit for Netflix in the third quarter? Well, they did some new deal where they're accessing it early or they're getting something early. What does the Netflix deal with? I forget what that is. So your concern or question is that the enthusiasm for this game and the time and money spent on this game will affect other types of entertainment much in the same way. Not concerned. I mean, obviously. You know, in a year where there's a World Cup like this year, right, that everyone that had delivered huge ratings in the U.S., it suppresses viewership of other types of television because people are watching that.

16:30It did not seem to have a particularly negative impact on the box office. Maybe it did a little bit. I guess some of the bombs were during the World Cup. Yeah, and some of the studios did avoid that time because of World Cup. But the movies that were hits were hits anyways. If I was releasing the Hunger Games movie in mid-November, I'd be a little concerned about this, that it's going to take all the oxygen. If I was releasing Hexed, the Disney animation movie over Thanksgiving, maybe a little concerned. Meet the Fockers or Focker-in-law. How many eight-year-olds are playing GTA? Their parents.

17:09their parents are. No, but you know what I'm saying. I think it's just going to eat up. The first Grand Theft Auto in 13 years, it's going to eat up the culture. Why do you think we never talk about individual game titles in the same way that, for the most part, that we do individual movies? It's just a subculture. People like you and I don't play games and we're not familiar with it. People who are into gaming talk about it. And I just think that it's just a subset. But I'm not talking about us specifically. I mean, the video game business is really interesting right now because the console business is in the toilet.

17:45Yeah. And all of these publishers are, not all, but a lot of them are struggling. There's been massive layoffs. Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard, and that doesn't seem to be going great. They had huge layoffs this last month. I reported this last week that Microsoft wants to do a blanket deal for film and television adaptations of Xbox titles, in part because they want money. Yeah. you're not excited i i think you're right because it is seen as a subculture there gotta be as many people who play grand theft auto as watch a lot of these big movies now it's different games are more expensive and so you get to a higher gross with a smaller base especially with the way video games work now where you're often kind of continuing to spend money on the game as you go i just think that the business press and i i wouldn't say this about bloomberg We have two excellent video game reporters on my team.

18:38But for the most part, you know, you look across the journalistic outfits and like they'll have way more people covering media and entertainment and even like publishing than they do video games. Yeah, we're trying to change that. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, campaigns slow down, insights get buried and opportunities get missed. That's why Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business.

19:15The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. To learn more, check out Accenture.com slash Spotify. This episode is brought to you by Boris Head. It may have been years ago, but I still remember the feeling of unpacking my kids' lunch boxes after school and to find nothing left. As a parent, that's a total win. Boar's Head maple honey ham, American cheese, maple honey turkey, all-time greats in the school lunch game. It's real quality protein that tastes great, so you can feel that winning feeling all term long. Whether you're doing wraps, sandwiches, or a quick snack box, Boar's Head makes packing school lunches easier.

19:54You'll be proud of what you pack. They'll be happy to finish it. Fuel their school day with the premium choice Boar's Head. For lunchtime inspiration, visit boarshead.com slash back to school or head to your local deli counter. Evening. Buyer's remorse. Buy a new car? I'll be moving in. Let's get started. Sorry, I think there's been a mistake. I bought it from Carvana. You what? Yeah, great price. I even have seven days to love it or return it. So there's no... No, no buyer's remorse. More like buyer's rejoice. I guess I'll let myself out. Congratulations. I mean it. Buyers rejoice. Buy your car today on Carvana.

20:36Limitations and exclusions may apply. See our seven-day return policy at Carvana.com. Let's move on to the next topic. One of the big things to watch between now and the end of the year is, is Congress going to finally pass a federal film tax credit? There's been a lot of momentum behind this for the last year or two, a lot of concern about production leaving the U.S. It's been an unusually bipartisan issue. You've got Trump buoyed by John Voight behind it. You also have a lot of Democrats. And I mean, Hollywood generally leans left who would love it. I had been skeptical for a long time because it just doesn't seem like most senators or representatives would want to put their name on a bill that is giving money to Hollywood.

21:20But it feels like in this more nationalist moment where we can say we don't want jobs to leave the country, that there's enough momentum behind it. Yeah, I've been skeptical as well. I think the key factor here will be if Trump supports it. Because Trump has not said anything. Remember, he did his outburst last year. Well, he was all about tariffs. He wants the tariffs to prevent the outsourced production. But nobody believes that's feasible. So if they can convince Trump, whether it's Jon Voight or Sylvester Stallone or someone else. Or David Ellison and Ted Sarandos. Because it was funny during the Netflix Paramount bidding war for Warner Brothers where both sides didn't want to talk about the fact that they were also pushing for this tax credit in their meetings.

22:08But then on the sly, it would be like, by the way, we're really pushing for this. And don't report it, but David Ellison, Ted Sarandos, really pushing. Well, there was a Politico report this weekend that this bill could be introduced in September. So very soon. And the key here, I think, is Georgia. Because Georgia, not a super liberal state, has really been decimated by outsourced production. Obviously, the production went there and ran away to Georgia and has now run elsewhere. And there's a Senate race there that is pretty contentious as well. So I think that if Georgia becomes a factor that Republicans can care about.

22:49Maybe this becomes something that they push and maybe it's something that Donald Trump gets behind and obviously won't solve all the problems. If you give every state the same amount of credits, they still battle each other. We'd still have wars between states over production, but it would help with the London issue. Right. Or the Eastern Europe issue or the pick, or even the Canada issue, seeing as Trump is at war with Canada right now. So this could give him something against Vancouver and Toronto. Yes, I know. We're both going to the Toronto Film Festival. Are we going to get like hassled at the border?

23:24You specifically will get hassled. Why me? I've just, I've heard that people really - Do I look like a Trump supporter? You're just as much of a white male. I just think, I've heard that there are issues with you in the North. Sure. Yes, exactly. No, I'm huge in Canada. Trust me. The Niagara Falls area. They love me. All right. I want to talk about another topic. Yeah. And that is who is going to get the 2030 World Cup rights in the U.S.? This is a huge issue, very important for all the media companies to be in on this. Fox, as we know, got a sweetheart deal for this year's English language rights.

24:07They only paid$485 million. and this was a make good for the 2022 tournament that was in Qatar and had to be moved to the winter because of the weather. So basically FIFA gifted Fox this below market deal. Then it turns out the ratings are gigantic and both on Telemundo and on Fox, Telemundo paid 600 million for the Spanish language rights this time. Both companies said they ended up selling $1.2 billion in ads for this World Cup. Expected that the next one in 2030, maybe not as big because it's not going to be in the U.S., but still going to be big. And FIFA has had some preliminary talks with potential partners.

24:52The speculation is that they're going to bundle the English and Spanish language rights in the U.S. to potentially get streamers involved because obviously they could have both on their platforms. This is going to be resolved, I think, before the end of the year and will be a pretty big moment for whoever gets these rights. And I think it's probably not going to be Fox. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I think the question is who's going to overpay for World Cup rights? Because World Cup is all about location, at least if you're talking about the U.S. rights. And so surprise, surprise, the U.S. World Cup sets all sorts of records.

25:31And so then that is going to make... Why is it only about location? Because of time zones. I mean, it's mostly about time zones, right? But that's what I mean. It's about time zones. So then the next one is Western Europe and North Africa. So the games will be on middle of the night, first thing in the morning, depending on when it is, not a great time. The one after that, assuming they sell the two together, is in the Middle East. These are going to be, the ratings are going to go down a lot. And so it'll be very interesting because I think because of the popularity of this summer's World Cup, companies will be willing to spend more than they...

26:07It'll be the opposite of the Fox situation, whereas they sort of got the obvious most popular World Cup in the U.S. for a low price, and now you're going to have people overpay for World Cup where the ratings will go down. Yeah, and to be honest, I'm not... I think they will schedule a lot of those European games like at 10 p.m., 11 p.m., which they did in this country too in order to get the weekend afternoon audience on the East Coast. And I don't think it's... It's not going to be like calamitous. It's not like they're in China or something. No, the 2034 will be calamitous. Disney feels like the favorite here just because they always are with sports rights.

26:45But it also... I think Netflix. I was about to say. It's perfect for Netflix. Let me finish. This is perfect for Netflix. Yes, I was going to say, I think it's between Disney and Netflix. The World Cup is the perfect event for Netflix. They always talk about other strategies built around big events. They're already doing the Women's World Cup. in 2027. And I, yeah, I think it's, um, that would make a lot of sense for them. And what did we talk about at the beginning of this show? They need splashy things. Like part of the problem for them in Q2 was that everybody was watching the world cup on Fox and they had no, they had no sports to speak of.