After a series of massive concessions by everyone from state attorneys general to the WGA to the great mass of the American people, the Paramount Skydance–Warner Brothers Discovery merger looks to be complete. Eyebrowless scion David Ellison will now be in charge of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world
Although the concessions are too numerous to list in full, they include the facts that the new company will only have to make fifteen films per year, that Elon Musk may be a major investor, and that there’s a force majeure clause that allows Paramount to back out of the consent decree in the event of economic catastrophes such as the inevitable bursting of the AI bubble
A massive sinkhole has opened up in front of National Treasure actor Nicolas Cage’s Malibu home
The Economist magazine reports that the presence of nepo babies in front of and behind the camera now dominates Hollywood film production. Twenty-eight percent of actors, twenty-six percent of directors, and eighteen percent of writers had family ties to famous people in the industry in 21st-century film production
Conservative media irritant Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire film production enterprise is currently in Montana shooting a movie about the Minneapolis ICE raids that ended in the death of Renee Good. Several Montanans showed up to protest while the crew filmed scenes in which anti-ICE protestors were dragged from the side of a truck and Good was assassinated
Last week the new documentary NAZA, about the use of AI to kill Palestinians in the ongoing genocide, beat the re-release of Avengers: Endgame at the Italian box office
Steve Leder, the Hollywood rabbi who acted as a consultant on the Netflix series Nobody Wants This, has publicly chastised Adam Brody, who played the rabbi on the show, for his comments in support of a free Palestine. “You by your own admission are a relatively ignorant Jew,” said Leder in an Instagram message
Animated anti-NAZA ads made using AI have begun appearing on Tubi, America’s favorite ad-supported streaming network. In addition, anti-NAZA trucks bedecked with LED displays reading CRITICAL THINKING REQUIRED: ARE THEIR CLAIMS VERIFIED? NOT EVEN ONE have been parked in front of screenings at the New York Film Festival, which is going on now
Noticing this anti-NAZA activity, Warner Brothers is trying something similar with the critically maligned new Tom Cruise movie, Digger. Ads for the beleaguered release now suggest potential viewers should “decide for yourself”
Skeletal former Quibi head Jeffrey Katzenberg is high on artificial intelligence. “It will be a renaissance in Hollywood,” he said in a recent interview. “These tools will be put in the hands of the best artists, the best storytellers,” he continued, not specifying who these people are or might be
The former Dreamworks honcho has also launched a new AI start-up with the former head of Sora, OpenAI’s briefly lived video generator app that shut down earlier this year due to its exorbitant costs and massive compute
Super-agent Ari Emanuel despises the former Disney animation guru, but not for the reasons you might think. As Emanuel told the New York Times, he’s holding a grudge against Katzenberg because he bought Lakers courtside seats Emanuel wanted for himself, and was dishonest about former President Joe Biden’s incipient dementia
In the same article, Emanuel described his morning routine. This highly successful and notorious talent agent starts his day by waking up at 4 AM, stretching for forty minutes, doing breathwork, sitting in the sauna, meditating, taking an ice plunge, undergoing infrared light therapy, drinking a protein shake, and swallowing a cup of live worms
100 Zeros, not to be confused with 100 Gecs, is an AI-focused collaboration between Google and Range Media Partners, a talent agency. The venture’s starry-eyed goal is to get filmmakers to portray dystopic technologies in a happier light. To that end they have enlisted Suicide Squad actor Margot Robbie to narrate a documentary about the Galapagos Islands in which users can interact with an AI-generated Charles Darwin
Artificially generated actress Tilly Norwood, who’d claimed she had retired, appeared on Piers Morgan’s talk show with Oppenheimer actor Tom Conti, and while talking with the two men glitched and began conversing in Chinese
Master Gardener screenwriter-director Paul Schrader plans to use AI for all the Black characters in his next movie because, he says, “no Black actors wanted to play in a movie where there are no good Black people”
Stanford University recently used AI on a campus promotional banner to change the photo of a real Hispanic man into a fake Black woman
Speaking of Stanford, the infamous Stanford prison experiment, in which subjects were charged with being either prisoners or guards in a simulated jail setting, is being turned into a reality series by Netflix. The show, which will be called The New Stanford Prison Experiment, premieres October 21. Says series producer Jane Lipsitz: “Despite its serious ethical flaws, [the Stanford prison experiment] asked a fundamental question that feels even more relevant today”
Wrinkle in Time actor Oprah Winfrey is taking over the Sphere in Las Vegas. Her massive multimedia spectacular will somehow also include poet, essayist, novelist, and photographer Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, and YouTube sprite Jacob Collier. The name of this presentation is AHA
Union-hating liberal screenwriter Aaron Sorkin has started his promotional campaign for The Social Reckoning, his belated and unwanted sequel to the 2010 movie The Social Network. Sorkin has shown up for events with one of the deepest tans in the history of Hollywood, looking as if he had been left on the hot dog roller too long
The building housing the eccentric Film Noir Cinema in Brooklyn is up for sale, signaling the demise of the beloved theater. The listing calls the building “a true blank canvas ready for an investor, owner-user, or business owner to live their dreams in one of the world’s most dynamic locations”
A man at a screening of the Paul Greengrass movie The Uprising at the AMC Burbank 16 movie theater in Burbank, California became annoyed when another man sitting nearby began using his cell phone, so he pepper-sprayed him and the other moviegoers sitting nearby. Matthew Ware, 34, was arrested in the lobby of the theater wearing a Terrifier T-shirt, and is now considered a hero across the land
