| | | | | | What's news: It's magazine day! This week's cover star is the supremely talented Teyana Taylor. Paramount Skydance is reorganizing its linear TV business. Netflix is stepping up its efforts to secure more video podcasts, and the streamer has renewed Nobody Wants This for a third season. Trump’s 60 Minutes interview scored 14m viewers. And critics hate, hate, hate Hulu's All's Fair. — Abid Rahman
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Teyana Taylor Takes Over ►On the cover. After hustling in music, film and fashion since she was 15, Teyana Taylor has dominated the conversation in 2025. Taylor’s résumé is getting thicker by the day, but it’s her lauded performance as live-wire revolutionary Perfidia Beverly Hills in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another that's signaled a shift in her career — and given her early frontrunner status in the best supporting actress race. THR's Mikey O'Connell spoke to Taylor about OBAA and the Oscar buzz, as well as the blitz of work she's currently undertaking. The cover story. |
THR's Next Gen 2025 ►35 rising Hollywood executives under 35. THR's 2025 Next Gen class is behind some of the year’s biggest entertainment. You can thank Carina Sposato for the tears you cried watching the Netflix drama Adolescence, while Olivia Heighten spurred your car obsession after that Imax screening of F1. But maybe more impressive than their credits and A-list clients — CAA’s Ben Levine handles all things Martha Stewart — is their ability to navigate an industry that continues to experience gale-force headwinds. If they can survive (and thrive!) in Hollywood in 2025, then the future is in steady hands. The list. |
What Zohran's Win Means for Liberal Hollywood ►Up the Arsenal! Zohran Mamdani's thumping win in New York's mayoral election on Tuesday has reverberated throughout the country, as liberal Democrats scored the first major win of the Trump II era. And, needless to say, reverberated throughout Hollywood. But Gotham's big race was hardly the only one that lands with media and entertainment pros — a governor’s race in the suddenly hopping production area of New Jersey and the fight over Proposition 50 as an anti-Trump tool in California have also seized the town. Here’s THR's breakdown of these three key races as their results come in Tuesday night. The analysis.
—"False and highly misleading." The Motion Picture Association is telling Meta Platforms Inc. to back off its rating system. Last month, Meta’s Instagram announced that it would take a cue from the MPA and that its teen accounts would “be guided” by the PG-13 rating. The MPA said at the time that Meta had not contacted it before announcing the move. In a legal letter sent last week, the MPA demanded that Meta and Instagram stop using the PG-13 mark, calling the claims made by the tech giant “literally false and highly misleading.” The story.
—"This decision was not made lightly." The International Cinematographers Guild has decided to shutter its nearly century-old ICG Magazine publication as it transitions to “new ways of connecting with members.” The union’s national president John Lindley told members last week that its national executive board made the decision after “thoughtful discussion” about how to communicate with its roughly 10,000 members. “After thoughtful discussion, the Board made the difficult choice to sunset ICG Magazine as we transition toward new ways of connecting with members,” the message stated. The story. |
Netflix Starts Bigger Push Into Video Podcasts ►Look out YouTube! Netflix is attempting to make more big moves into the podcasting space. The streamer has sent out dozens of requests to agents at WME, UTA and CAA in an attempt to sign on more video podcasters, sources familiar with the matter tell THR's Caitlin Huston . “Sounds like they’re making a big push for Q1,” says an agency source. Netflix wants to have a library of known shows when they launch video podcasts on the platform in early 2026, sources add. This comes as iHeartMedia is in talks to license some or all of its video podcasts to Netflix, and the streamer's first major podcasting deal with Spotify last month. The story.
—Copyright suit. Netflix has been drawn into a copyright battle over Brazilian Formula One miniseries Senna by author Lauren Wild, who alleges that the title rips off a script he wrote when he was in talks to be the showrunner for the production. The show follows the life and career of Ayrton Senna leading up to his death at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. Eager to draw the global F1 crowd, Netflix reportedly dropped north of $170m into the series. It was filmed in Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, with Gullane producing the title. The story.
—The reorganization continues. A week after a heavy round of layoffs, Paramount Skydance is reorganizing its linear TV business under George Cheeks, chair of TV media at Paramount. The changes will add cable outlets BET, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon to Cheeks’ portfolio in the TV Media division alongside broadcast network CBS. As part of the changes, Laurel Weir will lead programming and global acquisitions for Paramount TV Media. Jules Borkent will head Nickelodeon Kids. Ashley Kaplan and Alec Botnick lead Nick’s animation studio. Ari Pearce will head Comedy Central, Sitarah Pendelton will oversee MTV’s series and specials, and Jeannie Scalzo will team with Weir to head MTV’s business side. Trevor Rose moves over from Paramount TV Studios as head of talent and content strategy, and Nadja Webb will oversee music initiatives while continuing to head programming operation and business affairs for BET. The story.
—🤝 Rights deal. 🤝 Paramount has cut another deal with TKO Group Holdings. The media company has inked a five-year rights deal with Professional Bull Riders to make Paramount+ the streaming home of Unleash the Beast, PBR’s flagship tour. The Unleash the Beast 2026 season kicks off on Dec. 12. It is worth noting that Paramount was already in business with PBR, with CBS Sports holding rights through 2030, including for a game of the week. But the new deal greatly expands on that, and follows a string of deals that Paramount has done with TKO, including a massive $7.7b UFC deal, as well as a deal for Zuffa boxing, the new boxing league that TKO is launching alongside Sela and Turki Al-Sheikh, chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority. The story.
—🤝 Sold! 🤝 Fox Entertainment is continuing its run of recent cross-media investments with the acquisition of scripted podcast producer Meet Cute. The deal will bring Meet Cute, which produces scripted audio rom-coms (as the company name implies) and dramas and will serve as a “rapid-development content incubator” at Fox Entertainment under Hannah Pillemer, head of scripted for Fox Entertainment Studios. Meet Cute founder Naomi Shah is joining Fox as senior vp operations and strategy, focusing on AI innovation, entertainment technology and IP expansion. The story. |
Fraser, Weisz Back for New 'Mummy' Movie ►Shut up and take my mummy! Universal’s turn-of-the-century The Mummy franchise is back from the dead. Brendan Fraser, who led the trio of movies made between 1999 and 2008, and Rachel Weisz, who starred in the first two, are in talks to star in a new Mummy sequel. Radio Silence is set to direct. The filmmaking team of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett broke through with the clever and fun horror movie Ready or Not in 2019 and are known for helping revitalize the Scream franchise with a pair of movies in 2022 and 2023. Sean Daniel, who produced the original movies with his late partner James Jacks, is back as producer. The story.
—🎭 There can be only one? 🎭 The Highlander remake’s call sheet keeps getting longer and longer as Siobhán Cullen, Jun Jong-seo, Nassim Lyes, and Kevin McKidd have joined the Amazon MGM’s remake of the 1980s cult classic. The voluminous roll call has Henry Cavill leading a cast that already includes Russell Crowe, Marisa Abela, Dave Bautista, Karen Gillan, Jeremy Irons and Djimon Hounsou, as well as Max Zhang and Drew McIntyre. The action fantasy, which hails from Amazon MGM’s United Artists banner, is being directed by Chad Stahelski and is slated for a theatrical release. Production was to have started in the fall, but was pushed after Cavill sustained an injury during pre-production. Filming will now begin in early 2026. The story.
—🎭 Lead in place. 🎭 Oscar winner Renée Zellweger is set to star in and produce the psychological thriller Phantom Son, with David Yates to direct and Stuart Ford’s AGC Studios to finance and co-produce the project. The film will center on Ronnie, a young and struggling runaway taken in by Audrey (Zellweger), a lonely woman whose own son was kidnapped twenty years earlier. As Audrey becomes convinced that Ronnie actually is her long-lost son, a twisted game of cat and mouse develops to blur the line between deception and delusion. The story.
—🎭 She's running. 🎭 Shailene Woodley is set to star in the upcoming psychological thriller Ultra from writer/director Victoria Negri. The Big Little Lies actress will play Eve, an ultramarathon runner who, following the tragic death of her twin sister, enters the most intense competition on the planet: The Badwater 135 Ultramarathon, a 135-mile race through Death Valley. In the midst of the run, fighting physical exhaustion and psychological trauma, Eve notices she is being pursued by an unknown runner in white who is closing in on her. Negri draws from her personal experience as a long-distance runner and as the director of ultramarathon doc short Personal Best for the feature. The story. |
Tokyo: 'Palestine 36' Takes Grand Prix ►🏆 Omedetou gozaimasu! 🏆 Annemarie Jacir’s epic historical drama Palestine 36 took the Tokyo Film Festival’s top prize, the Grand Prix, at the closing ceremony in the Japanese capital on Wednesday. In what has been a banner year for Palestinian cinema, and Palestine 36 in particular, the film adds the Tokyo prize after a rapturous reception at the Toronto Film Festival, including a lengthy standing ovation. The film was also selected as Palestine’s official entry for the best international feature category at the 2026 Academy Awards. Elsewhere, Zhang Lu's Mothertongue won two prizes, including best director and best actor and Rithy Panh’s documentary We Are the Fruits of the Forest took the special jury prize. The winners.
—🏴 Wales mentioned. 🏴 The Brit List, the platform for emerging British screenwriting talent, has unveiled its 2025 lineup of the best unproduced film and TV scripts. Topping the list is Don’t Even Go There by Robert Cawsey, whose synopsis reads: “A family hiking trip in Wales, intended to bring Will and his estranged parents closer, goes horribly wrong when an ancient monster is unleashed, seeking revenge on the locals.” The second-ranked script comes from Blake Ritson, known for portraying Oscar Van Rijn in The Gilded Age, and his brother Dylan. Their feature script P.O.V is set in “a dystopian world where state-issued glasses control everyone’s outlook on life,” per the synopsis. The list.
—🏴 Wales mentioned, again! 🏴 Welsh acting legend Anthony Hopkins and Charlotte Rampling will play Charles and Emma Darwin in a new period drama from The Other Boleyn Girl director Justin Chadwick. Written by Jacob Killion and set against the backdrop of Victorian England, The Species will also star Tom Hollander as publisher Marshall Winwick, with Billy Howle portraying Charles and Emma’s son, George. The film is set to focus on Emma, surrounded by memories of visionary scientist and her late husband, Charles, at their estate Down House. The story.
—🏴 Wales mentioned, again, again! 🏴 Port Talbot's finest Anthony Hopkins is at it again, with the two-time Oscar winner, as well as Charlie Plummer, Stephen Graham, Toni Collette, Isabela Merced and Maisy Stella joining the cast of Ibelin, a dramatization of the real life story of Norwegian gamer Mats Steen and his virtual alter ego in World of Warcraft. The film will be directed by Morten Tyldum from a screenplay by Ilaria Bernardini and with current revisions by Hossein Amini. The story is based on Steen’s blog Musings of Life , which detailed his life with a degenerative muscular disease and the relationships he built online as “Ibelin.” Steen’s story was told in Benjamin Ree’s Emmy-nominated doc The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. The story. |
'Nobody Wants This' Renewed for S3 ►Everybody wants this. Netflix has renewed Nobody Wants This for a third season, just two weeks after season two was released on the streamer. The announcement dropped on social media on Tuesday, with a video of its female lead, Kristen Bell, telling castmembers on individual FaceTime calls that they were coming back for another round. The buzzy Jewish rom-com, which is loosely based on creator Erin Foster’s life, stars Adam Brody as a rabbi who falls in love with Bell’s Joanne, who is an agnostic sex podcaster. The story.
—🎭 Boarding. 🎭 Xolo Maridueña is jumping from one Netflix family friendly hit to another. The Cobra Kai star has signed onto the third season of One Piece. Maridueña will play “Portgas D. Ace” in the show, which is set to go back into production later this year in Cape Town, South Africa. Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece is based on Japan’s highest-selling manga series of all time by Eiichiro Oda. The high-seas adventure “follows Monkey D. Luffy on his quest to find the legendary fabled treasure, the One Piece, and become King of the Pirates.” The story.
—Trump bump. Donald Trump’s first 60 Minutes interview in five years drew the newsmagazine’s largest audience in several years. Sunday’s edition drew 14m viewers, according to Nielsen’s big data plus panel ratings. That’s the highest same-day total for 60 Minutes since January 2021 and well ahead of the show’s season average of 8.93m viewers. Norah O’Donnell’s interview with Trump took up about half of the show’s running time, edited down from a 90-minute session. CBS News put an extended, 73-minute cut of the interview on YouTube and the 60 Minutes Overtime site and published a complete transcript online. The ratings. |
TV Review: 'All's Fair' ►"Brain dead." THR's Angie Han reviews Hulu's All's Fair. Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, Teyana Taylor and Niecy Nash-Betts star in this series about an all-female firm of divorce lawyers who represent all-female clients. Created by Ryan Murphy, Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken. The review.
—"The worst TV show of the year." Ryan Murphy’s latest legal drama All’s Fair debuted on Hulu Tuesday, and the cast and crew behind the show may not think its less-than-shining reviews are all that fair. Despite an enticing list of stars, critics have not been too fond of the series. As of midday Tuesday, the series had a zero percent critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The review roundup. |
Film Review: 'Predator: Badlands' ►"Understands the assignment." For THR, Richard Lawson reviews Dan Trachtenberg's Predator: Badlands. The filmmaker's theatrical-first follow-up to Hulu features Prey and Predator: Killer of Killers, stars Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as an outcast member of the extraterrestrial titular species who is helped by Elle Fanning's robot. Written by Patrick Aison. The review.
—"A smooth ride that would have benefited from more bumps." THR's Jordan Mintzer reviews Yōji Yamada's Tokyo Taxi. The latest feature from the 94-year-old Japanese filmmaker follows a cabbie and elderly passenger on one long, nostalgic ride through Japan’s capital. Starring Chieiko Baisho, Takuya Kimura, Lee Jun-young, Yu Aoi and Yuka. Written by Yuzo Asahara and Yōji Yamada. The review.
In other news...
—Ted Danson goes back undercover in A Man on the Inside S2 trailer
—Benjamin Flaherty’s feature doc Shuffle debuts trailer
—Golden Globes: Helen Mirren to receive Cecil B. DeMille Award
—Alice Rohrwacher to receive European Achievement in World Cinema Award
—Palm Springs: Sentimental Value cast to receive International Star Award
What else we're reading...
—After a stunning night of electoral success, Lisa Lerer writes that the Democrats took a big step toward getting their groove back [NYT]
—In his piece summing up the New York mayoral race, Ross Barkan writes that Zohran Mamdani is a leader for a new age [Intelligencer]
—Subrat Patnaik reports that investor Michael Burry (of The Big Short fame) is betting big that the AI bubble is about to pop [Bloomberg]
—David Sims reflects on Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague and Blue Moon, "two unlikely biopics about unlikable people" [Atlantic]
—After Jennifer Lawrence's recent admission that she's reticent to talk about politics in the Trump 2.0 era, Jesse Hassenger looks at whether celebrities speaking out makes much difference [Guardian]
Today...
...in 2004, Pixar unveiled The Incredibles in theaters, where it would go on to gross $633m worldwide and win two Oscars, including best animated film, at the 77th Academy Awards. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Tilda Swinton (65), Sam Rockwell (57), Judy Reyes (58), Famke Janssen (61), Robert Patrick (67), Jonny Greenwood (54), Tatum O'Neal (62), Brian Duffield (40), Kris Jenner (70), Luke Hemsworth (45), Tamzin Outhwaite (55), Sam Page (49), Seth Gilliam (57), Dax Flame (34), Corin Nemec (54), Michael Gaston (63), Armin Shimerman (76), Madison McLaughlin (30), Dominique Thorne (28), Keala Settle (50), Aitana Sánchez-Gijón (57), Alex Hook (24), Dewayne Perkins (35), Elizabeth Bracco (68), Sebastian Arcelus (49), Nestor Serrano (70), Leila Mimmack (32), Han Ji-min (43) |
| Gilles Blais, the veteran National Film Board of Canada documentary director, has died. He was 84. The obituary. |
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