| | | | | | What's news: Netflix has hit 302m subs, and is raising its prices again. Trump's second inauguration averaged 26m viewers. Prince Harry has settled his case against The Sun newspaper. Trevor Noah will host the Grammys. ABC has renewed Abbott Elementary and High Potential. Uma Thurman will star in Dexter: Resurrection. — Abid Rahman
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Predicting 2025 Oscar Noms ►Scott's final projections. The nominations for the 97th Academy Awards are announced at 5:30 a.m. PT on Thursday. Ahead of tomorrow's big reveal, THR's executive awards editor Scott Feinberg has made his final projections. Scott's anticipated nominations tallies: The Brutalist and Emilia Pérez with 10 each; Conclave and Dune: Part Two with nine each; and Anora, A Complete Unknown and Wicked with six each. The predictions.
—What the math says. As always, Ben Zauzmer, author of Oscarmetrics: The Math Behind the Biggest Night in Hollywood, offers his final predictions for each category using just math. After crunching the numbers, Ben thinks at least six movies are nearly locks for best picture, per a mathematical formula that factors in awards season data and historical trends. The predictions.
—All set. Rachel Sennott and Bowen Yang will announce the Oscar nominations on Thursday morning. The two actor-writer-comedians will announce nominees in all 24 Oscar categories. The announcement will also be live-streamed globally on Oscar.com, Oscars.org and the Academy’s digital platforms (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook). It will also be broadcast on ABC’s Good Morning America and stream on ABC News Live, Disney+ and Hulu. The story.
—🏆 Infamy 🏆 Joker: Folie à Deux leads the Razzie Awards noms, which recognize the worst movies and performances of the year, with a total of seven mentions. Borderlands, Madame Web, Megalopolis and Reagan followed with six noms apiece, it was announced Tuesday. Unfrosted landed with four noms, while The Crow nabbed two noms. Among the actors receiving mentions were Joaquin Phoenix, Cate Blanchett, Lady Gaga and Jon Voight, one of Donald Trump’s newly appointed “Ambassadors to Hollywood,” who was nominated for his performances in a “near record” four films in one year. The nominations. |
Sometimes a Nazi Salute Is a Nazi Salute ►"Most of us manage to go our whole lives without ever looking like we’re attending a Nuremberg rally." Did Elon Musk intentionally "sieg heil" at Donald Trump's inauguration rally? THR's James Hibberd writes that sometimes it only matters what you do, not what you intend. The analysis.
—Sad. Trump's second inauguration as president wasn’t as widely viewed as his first, keeping with a historical pattern for second-term presidents. Early figures from Nielsen show Trump’s swearing in as the 47th President of the United States averaged 26.05m viewers from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. ET Monday on broadcast networks ABC, CBS and NBC and the three largest cable news channels (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). That looks to be down a good amount from each of the previous two inauguration ceremonies, though the comparisons aren’t exact. In 2021, 39.87m people watched Joe Biden take the oath of office on those six networks, while Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 averaged 38.35m viewers. The ratings.
—"We have to get this stuff built." On Trump's first full day in office for his second presidential term, he gathered Oracle founder Larry Ellison, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son at the Roosevelt Room in the White House to unveil a $500b AI project named after a 1994 Roland Emmerich sci-fi film about intergalactic portals. The plan for the project, titled Stargate, is to build campuses that can provide energy for increasingly powerful AI tools, which sap much more energy than, say, a typical Google search. The first data center campus was announced to be located in Abilene, Texas, with SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX as initial equity funders and Arm, Microsoft, NVIDIA and OpenAI named as tech partners. The story.
—"He’s providing the bread and the circuses, as they said in Roman days." MSNBC’s Morning Joe spent a fair amount of time on Tuesday’s show discussing Trump's day-one actions, including his pardoning of the Jan. 6 rioters. And the exchange, between married co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough and guest Donny Deutsch, grew tense. Brzezinski called out the president calling the rioters "hostages" as he stood with the families of Israeli hostages, while Scarborough said Democrats were "quietly reminding themselves" of the president's narrow margin of victory in the 2024 popular vote. The recap.
—"He has turned it into an instrument of the pressure he wants to put on his competitors or on Europe’s social-democrat governments." Le Monde, France’s newspaper of record, is quitting Elon Musk's X over the billionaire tech oligarch’s political alliance with Trump. In an editorial posted in French and English on Tuesday, Le Monde's editor-in-chief Jérôme Fenoglio said the move to leave X was driven by “social platform bosses” like Musk and Meta CEO’s Mark Zuckerberg cozying up with Trump, which Fenoglio said is "a global threat to free access to reliable information." The story. |
Keith Le Goy Named Chairman of Sony Pictures TV ►"Keith has a remarkable track record at SPE." Sony Pictures Television has filled its top job by hiring from within. Keith Le Goy, who has been with the studio for more than 25 years, has been named chairman of Sony Pictures TV. He succeeds Ravi Ahuja, who moved up to president and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment following the departure of Tony Vinciquerra. In his new post, Le Goy will oversee all of Sony’s domestic and international TV production, including the studio’s game show business (which includes Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune) and cable outlet GSN. The story.
—New banner. In its first big move of the new year, Legendary Entertainment is expanding to launch a standalone production and sales joint venture ahead of a slate of film markets in 2025. Patrick Wachsberger, the former Summit/Lionsgate film chief and producer of Oscar best picture winner CODA, has inked a deal with Legendary CEO Josh Grode to launch a new shingle, titled 193, that will be co-owned by Legendary and produce its own slate of films to sell. That Wachsberger-led joint venture will also rep global distribution rights for films as well as early territory sales for features, Legendary said on Tuesday. (That 193 title refers to the number of territories available worldwide to sell films for release.) The story.
—Big new hire. Megan Ellison has tapped Netflix games executive Leanne Loombe to head Annapurna’s gaming operations. Loombe has been named executive vice president, head of games, and will focus on publishing, development, and creative for the company’s games slate, reporting to Hector Sanchez, the president of Interactive and New Media. Loombe most recently oversaw Netflix’s second and third-party game development and publishing operations, bringing in games like Hades and Grand Theft Auto to the streamer, allowing Netflix users to download and play over 150 titles. The story. |
2025 Songwriters Hall of Fame Class ►Final selection. George Clinton, the Doobie Brothers, Mike Love, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, Tony Macaulay and Ashley Gorley make up the 2025 Songwriters Hall of Fame class. The organization announced on Wednesday that the incoming class will be inducted on June 12 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. Male writers represent the entire 2025 group and the race to enter this year was tight, with acts like Janet Jackson, Alanis Morissette, Eminem, N.W.A. and Sheryl Crow earning nominations but not making the cut. The story.
—Never in doubt. Trevor Noah is set to return as host of the 2025 Grammys. The comedian and former Daily Show host, who has emceed the past four Grammy Awards, joins the show as the music celebration is likely to be a more subdued affair in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires. The announcement comes a little less than two weeks from when the Grammys are set to take place, later than Noah has been lined up as host in past years. The Recording Academy announced last week that they were proceeding with their Feb. 2 awards show date at the Crypto.com Arena, airing on CBS, but the show is set to have a significant fund-raising component to support wildfire relief efforts. The story. |
Chris Brown Files $500M Suit Against WBD Over Doc ►"Their actions exhibit actual malice." Warner Bros. Discovery's Chris Brown: A History of Violence has sparked a defamation lawsuit from Chris Brown, who says the documentary features false sexual assault allegations against him. In a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Brown alleges the doc’s producers knowingly included discredited claims of sexual assault and evidence tampering from an unreliable accuser. He seeks at least $500m, a portion of which he says will be donated to survivors of sexual abuse. The doc, released in October, explores accusations of domestic violence and sexual assault against the singer. The story.
—🤝 Settlement 🤝 Prince Harry has settled his case against the publisher of the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Sun newspaper, with the company offering the prince a “full and unequivocal” apology. The trial against the News Group Newspapers unit of the Murdoch-owned News Corp’s U.K. operation had kicked off at the High Court in London on Tuesday, without the prince in attendance, but last-minute negotiations have officially ended the long-running legal battle. On Wednesday, NGN agreed to pay substantial damages and issued an apology to the prince for the “serious intrusion by The Sun into his private life.” Additionally, NGN apologized to the prince for the impact on him of the "extensive coverage and serious intrusion into his private life as well as the private life of Diana, Princess of Wales." The story.
—Leaked footage. The Justin Baldoni–Blake Lively legal battle continues over exactly what transpired on the set of the hit movie It Ends With Us. On Tuesday, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman and his public relations team released behind-the-scenes footage they say disproves several key allegations brought against Baldoni by Lively. The footage involved a scene of Lively and Baldoni’s characters slow-dancing in a bar early on in the movie as their romance grows, but the audience cannot hear what they are saying by deliberate design. Lively’s attorneys wrote in the statement to THR that “every frame of the released footage corroborates” the actress’ claims. The story. |
Netflix Adds Record-Breaking 19M Subs in Q4 ►Dominance. The NFL and a record-shattering boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul helped Netflix add 19m subscribers in Q4 — a new record for the company, surpassing even COVID-era highs — as the streaming giant further cemented its place as the leader in the space. Netflix now has 302m subscribers, though going forward Wall Street will have to make its own guesses around sub growth, with the company set to stop providing quarterly updates on subscriber numbers in order to put its focus on its revenue and profit growth. The company reported $10.2b in revenue, operating income of $2.3b, and a margin of 22.2 percent. The results.
—Funding those rights deals. Netflix is raising its prices once more. The streaming giant is upping the cost of its standard ad-supported tier to $7.99 a month in the U.S., up from $6.99, and the cost of the premium tier is increasing by $2, to $24.99. The standard plan is increasing to $17.99 from $15.49. The cost of adding an extra member on a plan without ads is increasing to $8.99 from $7.99. Price changes are taking place across most plans in the U.S., Canada, Portugal and Argentina. The story.
—Back for more. Netflix has renewed the David E. Kelley legal drama The Lincoln Lawyer. Production will begin on a fourth season next month in Los Angeles. Season four will comprise 10 episodes and will be based on the sixth book in the Lincoln Lawyer series by Michael Connelly, The Law of Innocence. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo will return as Mickey Haller, the hotshot L.A. defense attorney working his way through the criminal justice system from his trademark Lincoln. Also returning is Becki Newton as Lorna, Jazz Raycole to play Izzy and Angus Sampson as Cisco. Neve Campbell in the character of Maggie McPherson will also return for the entire new season. The story.
—🎭 All set 🎭 Netflix's next Harlan Coben adaptation has filled out its cast with James Nesbitt, Ruth Jones, Minnie Driver and Alfred Enoch leading the ensemble. The eight-episode series Run Away follows Simon (Nesbitt), who seemingly had the perfect life. But then, his eldest daughter Paige ran away and everything fell apart. When he finds her, vulnerable and strung out on drugs in a city park, he finally has the chance to bring his little girl home. Run Away will also star Lucian Msamati, Jon Pointing, Ellie de Lange, Adrian Greensmith, Ellie Henry, Anna Greene, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Annette Badland, Ingrid Oliver, Maeve Courtier-Lilley, Finty Williams, Joe McGann and Amy Gledhill. In keeping with previous Coben adaptations Fool Me Once and Missing You, Run Away will relocate the story from the U.S. to the U.K. The story. |
Uma Thurman Joins Cast of 'Dexter: Resurrection' ►🎭 A-list addition 🎭 Uma Thurman is set to star with Michael C. Hall in the Dexter franchise’s next series, Dexter: Resurrection. Thurman will play the series regular role of Charley, the head of security for mysterious billionaire Leon Prater. Dexter: Resurrection stars Hall as titular serial killer Dexter Morgan; he will also be the narrator, as he was in the previous series. Paramount+ With Showtime already announced three familiar faces also among the cast: David Zayas as Detective Angel Batista, friend and co-worker to Dexter; James Remar as Dexter’s deceased father, Harry Morgan; and Jack Alcott, who played Dexter’s son, Harrison Morgan, in Dexter: New Blood. The story.
—No-brainer. ABC has ordered a fifth season of Abbott Elementary, the Emmy-winning comedy from creator and star Quinta Brunson. The renewal comes midway through the show’s fourth season, and on the heels of the show’s most-watched episode of the current season. The show’s Jan. 8 episode, a crossover with FX’s It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, drew 8.05m viewers with a week of multi-platform viewing — a season high for Abbott Elementary and its second most-watched episode over that time frame ever, behind a post-Oscars showing last year. The story.
—Living up to its potential. ABC has also renewed the Kaitlin Olson-led drama High Potential for a second season in 2025-26. The show has been a breakout for ABC, ranking among the top first-year series of 2024-25 so far and drawing strong streaming numbers in addition to its on-air ratings. The first two episodes of the series averaged better than 10m cross-platform viewers after seven days, with streaming making up more than a third of that total. ABC says the pilot episode’s audience has grown to more than 30m in the four months since it debuted. The story. |
Ryan Gosling in Talks to Star in Shawn Levy's 'Star Wars' Movie ►Darth Ken. THR's Borys Kit and Pamela McClintock have the big scoop that Ryan Gosling is in negotiations to topline the Star Wars feature project that will be directed by Deadpool & Wolverine filmmaker Shawn Levy. Details on the feature as scant, Levy has been developing his Star Wars film since 2022 and Jonathan Tropper has been working on a script for over a year. Levy is also producing the feature via his 21 Laps banner, joining Star Wars stewards Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm. It is unclear when Levy’s project is set, it is, however, unconnected to the Skywalker Saga, the stories centered on well-established and beloved characters Luke Skywalker and his father, Anakin. The story.
—Rejoice fight fans. Kickboxer: Armageddon, the latest sequel in the rebooted Kickboxer franchise, has landed distribution from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment in the U.S. and Canada. This long-running martial arts film series first launched with Jean-Claude Van Damme playing Kurt Sloane in the 1989 release Kickboxer, which has earned a cult following. Dimitri Logothetis is helming Armageddon from a script he co-wrote with Jim McGrath. Shooting is set to begin this spring, with Logothetis, Rob Hickman and Joel Shapiro serving as producers. A planned release date has not yet been announced. Mark Dacascos is joining the cast alongside previously confirmed stars Alain Moussi and Scott Adkins. The story.
—📅 Dated! 📅 The fourth movie in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is set to speed into theaters on March 19, 2027. Paramount had long been eyeing a spring 2027 release for Sonic 4, the latest installment in the film series based on the popular Sega video game. The news comes just days after Sonic 3 became the top-grossing title in the franchise, with more than $422m in ticket sales at the global box office. That’s a great feat for the threequel, which added Keanu Reeves in the role of Shadow. The story. |
Film Review: 'Inheritance' ►"Maybe use real cameras next time?" THR's Frank Scheck reviews Neil Burger's Inheritance. In this globe-trotting thriller shot entirely on an iPhone, a young woman (Phoebe Dynevor) discovers her father (Rhys Ifans) isn't who she thinks he is. The review.
In other news...
—Netflix's Zero Day trailer picks up after catastrophic U.S. cyberattack
—YouTube star Bailey Sarian signs with Underscore Talent
—Ke Huy Quan signs with WME
—Francisco San Martin, Days of Our Lives and Jane the Virgin actor, dies at 39
—Garth Hudson, organist for The Band, dies at 87
What else we're reading...
—With the Supreme Court on the verge of upholding age-verification laws, Marc Novicoff writes that the era of easy access to online porn might be coming to an end [Atlantic]
—Nicole Narea explains Trump’s executive orders about immigration and what they tell us about the future — spoiler: it's not good [Vox]
—Abigail Hauslohner, Jonathan O'Connell and Dan Lamothe report on the disturbing new allegations against Pete Hegseth [WaPo]
—Kate Connolly reports on the shocked reaction in Germany to Elon Musk's inauguration salute [Guardian]
—Kat Tenbarge reports that Meta's pivot to the right has sparked a user boycott and calls for an exodus [NBC News]
Today...
...in 2003, Comedy Central premiered Chappelle’s Show at 10:30 pm. The Dave Chappelle-led variety series went on to run for 28 episodes over three years. The original review.
Today's birthdays: Diane Lane (60), Jim Jarmusch (72), Gabriel Macht (53), Linda Blair (66), O-T Fagbenle (44), Balthazar Getty (50), John Wesley Shipp (70), Tim Dillon (40), Olivia d'Abo (56), Daryl McCormack (32), Raquel Cassidy (57), Sami Gayle (29), James Murray (50), Rishi Nair (34), August Wittgenstein (44), Beverley Mitchell (44), Jennifer Spence (48), Matt Iseman (54), Mara Davi (41), Katie Finneran (54), Michael Cristofer (80), Willa Ford (44), Dan Finnerty (55), Angela Winkler (81), Justin Hurwitz (40), Guy Fieri (57), Steve Vinovich (80), Anne Gaybis (72), Sarah Abbott (19), Phoebe Strole (42) |
| Jules Feiffer, the provocative satirist, cartoonist, playwright and 1960s counterculturist who wrote the screenplays for Mike Nichols' classic Carnal Knowledge and Robert Altman's Popeye, has died. He was 95. The obituary. |
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