| | | | | | What's news: Squid Game S3 attracted 60.1m viewers in its first three days of release. Jennifer Aniston will lead an Apple series inspired by Jennette McCurdy’s memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died. Scooter Braun is stepping down as CEO of Hybe America. Warner Music Group will undergo layoffs. — Abid Rahman
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Paramount Settles Trump '60 Minutes' Suit For $16M ►Shocker. In a widely expected but still stunning decision, Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16m to settle a lawsuit from Donald Trump, who sued over an October interview that 60 Minutes conducted with Kamala Harris. Under the deal, announced Tuesday evening, the money will go to Trump’s presidential library. It involves an agreement from Paramount, will not apologize as part of the settlement, to release 60 Minutes transcripts of interviews with presidential candidates after they’ve aired, according to a statement from the company. By most legal observers’ thinking, the lawsuit was destined for dismissal because of industry-wide norms related to editing interviews. But the deal provides a pathway to regulatory approval of Paramount’s sink-or-swim merger with Skydance. The story.
—"This merger is a shitshow." South Park season 27 has been delayed by Comedy Central amid a streaming-rights battle between the creators and the channel’s parent company, Paramount Global. The 27th season is now expected to premiere on July 23 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, which represents a two-week scheduling push. Series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have had enough of this “shitshow” — their words, not ours. “In response to the press release from Comedy Central about the change in premiere date for South Park, Trey Parker & Matt Stone said — ‘This merger is a shitshow and it’s fucking up South Park . We are at the studio working on new episodes and we hope the fans get to see them somehow,’” a tweet posted to the show's official X profile reads. The story.
—Lawfare. The primary federal regulator of workplace discrimination may next set its sights on the Los Angeles Dodgers. America First Legal, a conservative outfit founded by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, filed a civil rights complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the Dodgers and controlling owner Mark Walter’s Guggenheim Partners. It alleges illegal discrimination under the umbrella of their diversity, equity and inclusion policies. America First Legal, which has taken aim at Disney and CBS Studios, has been a key cog in Trump's DEI crackdown, with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission being deployed against entities seen as hostile to the president's priorities. The story.
—Cleared. Randall Emmett has been released from writers-union jail. The WGA West first sentenced the film producer to its strike/unfair list in 2020, following a dispute over payments to writers on the television series Pump. The union claimed that Emmett and business partner George Furla still owed more than $477,000 in arbitration awards to writers on the series, which never saw the light of day but at one point was set to star Arnold Schwarzenegger. After sending over a payment of $630,000 to the WGA West on Friday, Emmett has been removed from the list. The roughly 14,000 members of the WGA West are prohibited from working with producers or companies on the strike/unfair list. The story. |
Bob Vylan Addresses Glastonbury Controversy ►"We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs, or any other race or group of people." English punk-rap duo Bob Vylan have issued a new statement following their controversial “death to the IDF” chants at Glastonbury over the weekend, denying claims of antisemitism while continuing to call for a free Palestine. “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs, or any other race or group of people,” the duo wrote in a post on Instagram on Tuesday. “We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine — a machine whose own soldiers were told to use ‘unnecessary lethal force’ against innocent civilians waiting for aid. A machine that has destroyed much of Gaza.” The story.
—They're back! BTS, the record-breaking, chart-topping K-pop group, has announced plans for their long awaited return. The seven-member group, in their first group broadcast in nearly three years, took to the Hybe-owned Weverse fan platform for a livestream Tuesday, where they laid out the plan for their post-military enlistment future. BTS told fans that they’re all heading to the U.S. this month to begin working on new music that is currently slated for a spring 2026 release. The story.
—Stepping back. Scooter Braun is transitioning his role at Hybe, the South Korean entertainment giant, moving from CEO of Hybe America to an advisory position that will have him joining the Hybe Board of Directors as a director and a senior adviser to chairman and CEO Bang Si-Hyuk. The move marks the end of a five-year run at Hybe, which is home to such K-pop acts as BTS and Katseye. It's been a busy few months for the music mogul, who also settled outstanding financial issues with former management client Justin Bieber. The story.
—Layoffs incoming. Warner Music Group will undergo layoffs as part of a wider cost-saving and restructuring initiative, WMG Robert Kyncl told staff in an internal memo on Tuesday. In the memo, Kyncl wrote that WMG is looking to reduce costs by about $300m to “future-proof” the company and “reinvest in the business,” particularly into the music itself. Kyncl didn’t disclose how many employees would be let go but wrote that WMG is looking to cut about $170m through headcount reduction. The remaining $130m will be targeted through administrative and real estate expenses. Kyncl wrote that many of the changes would happen within the next three months, and the rest in the 2026 fiscal year. The story.
—🤝 JV deal. 🤝 On a busy Tuesday for WMG, the company also unveiled a new $1.2b joint venture with investment firm Bain Capital, the two companies announced Tuesday, with the companies targeting iconic recording and music publishing catalogs. WMG and Bain Capital will identify potential catalog acquisitions together, the companies said, with WMG handling marketing, distribution, and administration. The story. |
'Squid Game' Final Season Sets 3-Day Record ►Massive. It’s no surprise that the final season of Squid Game attracted a huge worldwide audience — it’s the biggest show Netflix has ever hosted, after all — but the scale of the Korean hit continues to impress. The third and final season of the series amassed 60.1m views worldwide from June 27-29, the largest three-day tally Netflix has ever recorded in its internal rankings. Season two, which premiered Dec. 26, 2024, had a higher opening-week total of 68m views, but those came over four days. Both seasons made Netflix’s all-time top 10 for non-English-language shows in their first week, the only times that has happened on either the English or non-English series charts. The ratings.
—As you were. Fox News and ABC News continued to hold sizable leads in TV news ratings for the second quarter. On the broadcast networks, ABC’s World News Tonight led the April-to-June period with an average of 7.37m viewers each weeknight. The David Muir-anchored evening newscast led the NBC Nightly News (5.79m) and CBS Evening News (3.85m) by sizable margins. In fact, World News Tonight ’s 1.58m-viewer lead over NBC is its largest margin of victory in a second quarter in 30 years. On cable, Fox News maintained its big lead over CNN and MSNBC in both the full-day and primetime Nielsen numbers, though the margin shrunk a bit: Fox came down some from a record-setting first quarter, fueled by the early days of the second Trump administration, and the other two were fairly steady. The ratings.
—Need for speed. Keanu Reeves, a famed motorsport enthusiast, has unveiled a documentary series produced in partnership with North One, part of RedBird IMI's production giant All3Media, that will showcase the behind-the-scenes story of the Cadillac Formula 1 Team in its effort to build a racing team from the ground up amid signs of U.S. audiences’ growing love for F1. With exclusive access to the Cadillac team, owned by Mark Walter and Thomas Tull’s TWG Motorsports and General Motors, "the series traces the creation of the sport’s newest and uniquely American team as it prepares for its debut at the 2026 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season opener in Melbourne." The story.
—📅 Dated! 📅 Welcome to Wrexham spinoff series Necaxa, which follows the Liga MX’s Club Necaxa, has a release date. The spinoff is premiering Aug. 7 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on FXX, with episodes available to stream the next day on Hulu and available on Disney+ internationally. Necaxa will release two episodes each Thursday for the first three weeks of its (TV) season. The subsequent four episodes will roll out one per week each Thursday until the season finale on Sept. 18. In Necaxa , which hails from FX and Disney+ Latin America, Eva Longoria “sets out to reignite the soul of one of Mexico’s oldest and most storied football clubs, Club Necaxa — enlisting the help of fellow owners Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds, fresh off their headline-making revival of Wrexham AFC,” the logline reads. The story.
—🎭 Next up. 🎭 Bella Ramsey will set their sights on a new drama series at the U.K.'s Channel 4. The Last of Us star has been cast in Maya, and Ramsey will co-lead the cast of the six-part show, created by BAFTA-nominated Daisy Haggard, who starred in the critically acclaimed comedies Back to Life and Breeders. Haggard will also star as Ramsey’s mother and at the same time, make her directorial debut. Jamie Donoughue co-directs. Ramsey will play the titular Maya, teenage daughter of Anna (Haggard). Forced into a witness protection programme to escape a life-threatening danger, Anna and Maya leave their London lives behind, taking on new identities and relocating to a small rural town in Scotland. The story. |
'The Bear' Renewed for S5 at FX ►Order up. The final episode of The Bear’s fourth season is titled “Goodbye,” but it won’t be a permanent one. FX has ordered a fifth season of the Emmy-winning series, with the renewal coming less than a week after The Bear’s fourth season premiered on June 25. As with previous seasons, the series will stream on Hulu. Season five is due sometime in 2026. FX and Hulu have not released any viewing figures for season four. Past seasons have performed well, however: Season three spent six weeks on Nielsen’s streaming top 10 charts — a fairly long time for a binge release — and racked up about 4.5b viewing minutes in that span. The story.
—🎭 Mommy issues. 🎭 Jennifer Aniston has lined up another series at Apple TV+. The star and executive producer of The Morning Show will lead a series inspired by Jennette McCurdy’s memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died at the streamer. McCurdy is adapting her book alongside Ari Katcher, and the two will serve as co-showrunners. Aniston is also an executive producer. Former iCarly star McCurdy’s book details the relationship she had with her abusive mother and the road to recovery she took following her mother’s death in 2013. I’m Glad My Mom Died became an instant bestseller after it was published in 2022. The story.
—Mr. Cools rejoice! Netflix has renewed Shane Gillis' comedy Tires for a third season, which will debut in 2026. In the show, Will (Steve Gerben), the “nervous and unqualified heir to an auto repair chain,” attempts to turn his father’s tire-shop business around “despite constant torture from his cousin,” Shane (Gillis). Tires was created by Gillis, its breakout star Gerben and the director John McKeever who also write and executive produce the show. In addition to Gillis and Gerben, Tires also stars Chris O’Connor, Kilah Fox and Stavros Halkias; guest stars include Andrew Schulz, Vince Vaughn, Thomas Haden Church, Ron White, Jon Lovitz, Veronika Slowikowska and Steph Tolev. The story.
—Exit. Moira Walley-Beckett is out as showrunner of Amazon’s planned Fourth Wing adaptation. WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer has signed a deal with Amazon MGM Studios, and is being eyed to replace Walley-Beckett, a Breaking Bad writer and producer, who also created the series Anne With an E. The Fourth Wing TV project hails from Amazon and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society. There are three novels currently out in the series of best-selling romantasy books by Rebecca Yarros, collectively referred to as The Empyrean Series. Fourth Wing (May 2023) was the first book in the series. The novels are set at Basgiath War College, where the story’s 20-year-old protagonist Violet Sorrengail must train to become a dragon rider, following in her mom’s military footsteps. The story. |
'The Odyssey' Teaser Trailer Leaks Online ►It's always X. The hotly anticipated first trailer for Christopher Nolan's next film, The Odyssey, has been released into the wild. Universal has placed the trailer for the film — billed as a “mythic action epic” — in front of Jurassic Park Rebirth, which has its first screenings Tuesday evening. The trailer wasn’t officially released online. Nolan prefers his trailers to be a cinematic experience, and the first teaser trailer for his Oscar-winning 2023 blockbuster Oppenheimer likewise debuted only in theaters. Yet, unfortunately for Universal and Nolan, smartphones exist. So almost immediately, the trailer popped up on X (and the resulting video is, needless to say, less than cinematic in quality). The story.
—No Nate! The sequel to the beloved film The Devil Wears Prada is advancing, but one of the characters from the 2006 original movie won’t be in the follow-up. Monday, it was announced on social media that the movie begins production this week. Filming takes place in New York and Italy. Stars returning from the first film include Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci. Meanwhile, Kenneth Branagh has joined the cast for the sequel. However, Adrian Grenier, who played Hathaway’s character’s boyfriend, Nate, in the first movie, will not be in the second film. The story.
—📅 Dated! 📅 Netflix’s feature adaptation of Emily Henry’s best-selling novel, People We Meet on Vacation, will debut on the streamer on Jan. 9, 2026. The story centers on longtime best friends Alex (Tom Blyth) and Poppy (Emily Bader), who for the past decade have taken one week of summer vacation together. That is, until they stopped speaking. When Poppy reaches out and convinces Alex to take one more vacation together, she sees it as her time to fix their broken relationship. However, there’s just one unspoken truth they have yet to confront. The story. |
Film Review: 'The Old Guard 2' ►"Gets the job done but stints on the excitement." THR's chief film critic David Rooney reviews Victoria Mahoney's The Old Guard 2. Uma Thurman and Henry Golding join the returning cast in this follow-up to 2020’s adaptation of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández's graphic novel series about immortal soldiers battling to protect humanity. Starring Charlize Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Veronica Van and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The review.
—"Heavy-handed but winsome." THR India's Anupama Chopra reviews R.S. Prasanna's Sitaare Zameen Par. A remake of the 2018 Spanish film Champions, the film centers on a basketball coach assigned to train a team of players with intellectual disabilities. Starring Aamir Khan, Genelia Deshmukh, Ashish Pendse, Aroush Datta, Aayush Bhansali, Rishi Shahani, Gopi Krishnan K Verma, Rishabh Jain, Vedant Sharma, Simran Mangeshkar, Samvit Desai, Naman Misra, Dolly Ahluwalia Tewari, Gurpal Singh and Bijendra Kala. The review.
In other news...
—Heidi Klum makes her Project Runway return in S21 trailer
—Cate Blanchett to receive Freedom of the City of London honor
—Vaughn Hillyard, Laura Barrón-López, David Noriega and Marc Santia join MSNBC
—Jimmy Swaggart, televangelist whose ministry was toppled by sex scandals, dies at 90
What else we're reading...
—Carl Hulse writes that the Senate GOP is gambling its legacy and political fate on Trump's ruinous tax bill [NYT]
— Will Oremus writes that the only good thing to come out of tax bill drama is that Big Tech's bold bid to curb AI laws fell apart [Washington Post]
—Ali Breland profiles Sean Feucht the rocker at the center of MAGA who is bringing Christian nationalism to the masses [Atlantic]
—Gregory Wakeman has the inside story on one of the most infamous Hollywood photos, the 1957 snapshot of Sophia Loren giving Jayne Mansfield side-eye [BBC]
—Maxwell Zeff reports that cloud infrastructure provider Cloudflare is launching a marketplace that lets websites and content creators charge AI bots for scraping [Tech Crunch]
Today...
...in 1946, director-star Orson Welles unveiled noir film The Stranger in Los Angeles. The film went on to earn a nomination in the writing category at the 19th Academy Awards. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Larry David (78), Margot Robbie (35), Lindsay Lohan (39), Ashley Tisdale (40), Elizabeth Reaser (50), Owain Yeoman (🏴47), Saul Rubinek (77), Andrew Divoff (70), Wendy Schaal (71), Vanessa Chester (41), Lee Boardman (53), Ryan Serhant (41), Dave McCary (40), Kim Go-eun (34), Yancy Butler (55), Nelson Franklin (40), Caitlin Carmichael (21), Robert Ito (94), Jean-François Richet (59), Julia Montgomery (65), Moon So-ri (51), John Emmet Tracy (56), Scott Aukerman (55), Peter Kay (52), Jerry Hall (69), True Whitaker (27), Keith Morrison (78), Quin Walters (43) |
| Jim Shooter, the comics industry titan who went from teenage writing prodigy to seminal but divisive editor-in-chief for Marvel Comics in the 1980s, has died after a battle with esophageal cancer. He was 73. The obituary. |
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