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The cuts in Hollywood just keep coming, following a sadly familiar script.

Last week it was Paramount, which laid off about 1,000 workers in the first wave of a deep staff reduction planned since tech scion David Ellison’s Skydance Media took over the storied media and entertainment company.

The cuts affected a wide swath of the company, from CBS and CBS News to Comedy Central, MTV and the historic Melrose Avenue film studio, my colleague Meg James and I reported. Another 1,000 layoffs are expected in the coming weeks.

But Paramount isn’t the only one in the media business that’s shedding jobs and payrolls.

Earlier, cable giant Charter Communications said it would lay off 1,200 people nationwide, as the company faces increased competition for its broadband internet packages. NBC News, too, laid off 150 employees last month amid declining TV ratings and lessening ad revenue.

Other recent media-adjacent layoffs included 100 cuts to Disneyland Resort’s Anaheim-based workforce and the massive 14,000 worker reduction at Amazon, including at the company’s gaming and film and TV studios.

And that doesn’t even include widespread job losses that happened earlier this year at companies such as Walt Disney Co., Warner Bros. Discovery, NBCUniversal and Six Flags Entertainment Corp.

It all adds up to a grim picture for Hollywood’s workers, who have faced a near endless marathon of economic hurdles for the last five years.

First it was the pandemic, followed by the dual writers’ and actors’ strikes in 2023, cutbacks in spending after studios splurged on streaming productions, and the outflow of production to the U.K. and other countries with lower costs than California.

Then, in January, nature struck a blow, with the fires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades destroying many industry workers’ homes.

Topping it off, Saturday marked the first day that millions of low-income Americans lost federal food assistance due to the government shutdown that began Oct. 1. That has affected some 5.5 million Californians and probably some who work in the entertainment industry.

“It’s been one crisis after another, without enough time in between,” said Keith McNutt, western regional executive director of the Entertainment Community Fund, which provides social services for arts and entertainment professionals. “People are concerned and very worried and really trying very hard to figure out where they go from here.”

McNutt reports that the nonprofit group has already heard from some people who were recently laid off, and has experienced a sharp increase in demand for its services, particularly from those in the film and TV industry. The fund offers healthcare and financial counseling and operates a career center. It also provides emergency grants for those who qualify.

Clients include not only low-income people who are always hit hardest in downturns, but also veteran entertainment industry professionals who’ve worked in the business for 20 to 30 years.

Those who were lucky enough to have savings saw those wiped out by the pandemic, and then were unable to replenish their rainy-day funds after the strikes and industry contraction, said David Rambo, chair of the fund’s western council.

“It has been snowballing very slowly for about five years,” Rambo said.

Many in the industry are hopeful that California’s newly expanded film and television tax credit program will bring some production — and jobs — back to the Golden State. That’s what backers campaigned on when they lobbied Sacramento legislators to bolster the program. Dozens of TV shows and films have received credits so far under the revamped program, but it’ll take some time to see the results in filming data and employment numbers.

And that doesn’t help the workers who were just laid off last month. For those folks, McNutt suggests calling the fund’s health insurance team to make sure they understand their options and also to spend some time with career counselors to understand how Hollywood skills can be transferable to other employers, whether that’s on a short- or long-term basis. Most importantly, don’t isolate yourself.

“You’re not alone,” he said. “Nobody’s alone in this situation that the industry is finding itself in right now, and so reach out to your friends, reach out to your colleagues. If you’re not comfortable with that, reach out to the Entertainment Community Fund.”

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The Los Angeles Dodgers’ wild 11-inning win on Saturday over the Toronto Blue Jays notched nearly 26 million viewers, making it the most-watched World Series game since 2017, according to Nielsen data.

The 2017 Game 7 win by the Houston Astros over the Dodgers had an audience of 28.3 million.

The Dodgers are now the first Major League Baseball team to win back-to-back championships in 25 years. On Monday, thousands of Dodgers faithful turned out for the team’s victory parade through downtown L.A.

Finally …

You’ve no doubt heard of L.A.’s famous star tours. But what about a tour of a historic cemetery?

My colleague, Cerys Davies, wrote about local historian and guide Shmuel Gonzales — or as he calls himself, “Barrio Boychik” — and his walking tour of Boyle Heights’ Evergreen Cemetery.

The cemetery is the final resting place for many of L.A.’s early movers and shakers, including the Lankershims and the Hollenbecks, and it’s also a prime example of L.A.’s multicultural history.

Small screen giant Netflix has once again turned to the big screen, this time with the release of its latest buzzy film, “Frankenstein.”

Written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, the film opened last weekend with a limited release in 10 theaters in Los Angeles, New York and a few other cities, and will expand to more sites for a total theatrical run of three weeks. The film stars Oscar Isaac as the titular egomaniacal scientist and Jacob Elordi as the Creature (who, contrary to popular belief, is not named Frankenstein — you can thank my English major for that tidbit).

The film is getting some awards attention, particularly for the performance of the prosthetics-and-makeup-laden Elordi, and notched a solid 86% approval rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. As of Sunday afternoon, Del Toro posted that the film had sold out at least 57 screenings. “Frankenstein” will debut on the streamer on Nov. 7.

Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is just the latest in a long line of adaptations of the classic 1818 novel by Mary Shelley. From the first silent film short in 1910 to Boris Karloff’s famed turn as the monster in 1931 and the Kenneth Branagh-directed movie in 1994 that starred Robert De Niro as the creature (Branagh played Frankenstein and Helena Bonham Carter was Elizabeth Lavenza), the classic horror story has proved ripe for filmmakers’ commentary on humanity, science and nature.

In fact, “Frankenstein” has been a lifelong passion project for Del Toro, who has made an award-winning career out of analyzing and depicting monsters, from 2006’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” to 2017’s “The Shape of Water.”

For Netflix, it’s a reminder of why film remains an important, if unlikely, part of the streamer’s strategy.

It’s no secret that Netflix has built its reputation — and its streaming prowess — on the strength of its series, from “Orange Is the New Black” to “Stranger Things” and “Bridgerton.” After all, popular episodic shows keep viewers on the platform, rack up hours of engagement and help draw new subscribers to the service.

The Los Gatos, Calif., company’s embrace of movie theaters may seem surprising given its longstanding testy relationship with movie theater exhibitors and their distribution strategy.

In fact, Netflix has also long said its main goal is to offer subscribers first-run movies on its platform, directly undermining the traditional 90-day “window” between a film’s release in theaters and when it appears in the home.

Earlier this year, Netflix Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos poured salt on the wound when he called the theatrical business “outdated,” at a time when many chains are struggling to fill seats to pre-pandemic levels.

Yet, theaters are still important to Netflix, which releases about 30 films annually in cinemas.

One reason: the allure of Oscar glory.

For the last few years, Netflix has submitted dozens of movies for awards-qualifying runs.

It’s typical for those films to be in cinemas for about two to three weeks before showing up on the platform. (Sometimes, those theatrical showings are for marketing purposes, like the recent “KPop Demon Hunters” singalong screenings.)

Netflix has won numerous Academy Awards over the years, ranging from animated feature (Del Toro’s “Pinocchio” in 2023), supporting actress (Laura Dern for “Marriage Story” in 2020 and Zoe Saldaña for “Emilia Pérez” in 2025) and director (Alfonso Cuarón in 2019 for “Roma” and Jane Campion in 2022 for “The Power of the Dog”).

Best picture, however, has continued to elude the company.

Theatrical releases also help the streamer to attract filmmakers and build relations with key talent. For instance, Netflix’s upcoming “Narnia” film from Greta Gerwig will get a two-week Imax run next year. Netflix previously ran Del Toro’s well-received horror anthology series “Cabinet of Curiosities.”

And while serial narratives may reign supreme, to maintain subscribers, you need other kinds of content to keep it fresh. That’s where movies (and live events) come into play.

As consumers decide which streaming services they can’t live without, a platform that has a little bit of everything has an advantage.

“Having a good mix of movies and serial content is really important,” says Alicia Reese, senior vice president of equity research in media and entertainment at Wedbush Securities. “A lot of people use this as their one and only subscription.”

In other fronts, is the fight over OpenAI’s new Sora 2 dying down? Maybe not, but there are signs of easing tensions.

On Monday, United Talent Agency, SAG-AFTRA, Creative Artists Agency, Assn. of Talent Agents, actor Bryan Cranston and OpenAI released a joint statement noting that Cranston’s voice and likeness was able to be generated “in some outputs” without consent or compensation when the tool was launched two weeks ago in a limited release.

“While from the start it was OpenAI’s policy to require opt-in for the use of voice and likeness, OpenAI expressed regret for these unintentional generations,” the statement said. “OpenAI has strengthened guardrails around replication of voice and likeness when individuals do not opt-in.”

Cranston, who brought the issue to SAG-AFTRA’s attention, said he was “grateful” to OpenAI for improving its policies and “hope that they and all of the companies involved in this work, respect our personal and professional right to manage replication of our voice and likeness.”

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NBC News sent termination notices to 150 staffers last week, as the network struggles with declining TV ratings and ad revenue. Layoffs have been prevalent throughout the media landscape this year, but have been felt especially hard at broadcast news outlets, as audiences increasingly migrate to streaming platforms and cut the cord.

In addition to these issues, my colleague Stephen Battaglio reported that the NBC News layoffs were also attributed to the spin-off of cable networks MSNBC and CNBC. NBC News now no longer shares resources with those outlets, which will become part of a new company called Versant.

Affected employees were encouraged to apply for 140 open positions throughout the news group.

Finally …

I had to do it. With the Dodgers returning to the World Series, my colleague Jack Harris looks at the team’s season this year and how they fought through multiple injuries on the roster to eventually turn the ship around.

Pay TV providers have a new message for consumers: Your ex wants you back.

While the media industry watches the once massive number of subscribers to cable and satellite services diminish like a slow-melting iceberg as audiences move to streaming, the companies are aggressively developing ways to slow the trend and perhaps win some business back.

Spectrum and DirecTV have both recently held fancy press events in New York to tout their efforts to offer a more consumer-friendly experience and services that add value for the still substantial number of customers they serve. Giving consumers more choice and flexibility is their new mantra.

The latest evidence of this emerged last week when Spectrum introduced an app store, where customers can get subscriptions to the streaming platforms such as Disney+, Hulu, AMC+ and ESPN, and access them alongside the broadcast and cable channels that still carry the bulk of high-profile sports and live events.

The Stamford, Conn.-based company’s 31 million subscribers can now get ad-supported streaming apps as part of their TV packages, which would otherwise cost an additional $125 a month. Ad-free versions are also offered at a discounted price.

Over the last year, El Segundo-based DirecTV rolled out smaller packages of channels aimed at consumers who no longer want a big monthly bill for the panoply of networks that have accumulated in the pay TV bundle over the years. The satellite TV service now offers smaller “genre packages” of channels and streaming apps that cater to a particular interest available at a lower price — designed for news junkies, sports fans, kids and Spanish-language speakers. There is one for entertainment channels as well.

There are early indications consumers are responding. In the second quarter of this year, Spectrum reported a loss of 80,000 cable customers due to cord-cutting, a significant decline from the same period in 2024, when 408,000 homes ditched cable.

DirecTV does not disclose its subscriber numbers, but Vincent Torres, the company’s chief marketing officer, said the smaller and more bespoke channel packages are drawing younger consumers who have bypassed pay TV subscriptions up to now.

For Spectrum, the deal to get the Disney apps came out of an ugly carriage dispute in August 2023 that for 12 days left customers without programming, including the U.S. Open tennis tournament and the start of the college football season. The standoff followed comments by Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger that taking the company’s program services directly to the consumer and bypassing its traditional pay TV partners was inevitable.

Spectrum CEO Chris Winfrey suggested his company could get out of the video distribution business and stick to selling its far more profitable broadband internet services.

The dispute was a sharp example of the pressure on cable providers that have been asked to pay more to carry the channels from Disney and other media conglomerates as they feel the pressure of rising programming costs and sports rights fees. The costs are passed along to customers who are paying more for content that is available on streaming services. Spectrum insisted on a deal that made Disney’s streaming apps available to its customers at no additional cost.

The tensions subsided and, in June, Spectrum reopened and extended its contract with Disney before it was up — a rarity in the contentious arena of carriage negotiations that lead to channel blackouts.

DirecTV’s slimmer cable packages came after a similarly bruising dispute with Disney last September, with customers losing access to the channels for 13 days.

But there was a new spirit of unity on stage at Spectrum headquarters, where ESPN Chair Jimmy Pitaro, the architect of ESPN’s direct-to-consumer strategy, was among the guest speakers.

Although Pitaro has long hammered away at how ESPN needs to be accessible to sports fans wherever they are, he touted the value of the cable subscription and described the relationship with Spectrum as “the best it has ever been.”

Spectrum customers already get ESPN channels through their cable subscription, but adding the direct-to-consumer app allows them access to its features such as enhanced real-time stats during live games and a personalized “SportsCenter” that uses AI to create a custom highlight show for users.

Spectrum has enlisted the networks it carries to make promotional spots touting its new services. Speaking at the Spectrum event, Winfrey acknowledged it will take some time for consumers to get used to the idea of getting more from their cable provider at no additional cost.

“Our No. 1 issue is — and this may shock you — but customers don’t trust the cable company,” Winfrey said. “Maybe with good reason. For how many decades did the cable industry go out and say HBO is included for free? And it was for three months and then, $10 would show up on your bill. We’ve conditioned people to think it’s a free trial period.”

Torres notes that more consumers are experiencing what he calls “content rage” as the prices of individual streaming services such as Peacock and Disney+ continue to rise. As programming gets sliced and diced for the growing number of services, consumers are finding that more than one subscription is necessary, especially for fans of the NFL or NBA, which have spread their games over several services.

“You see a growing frustration that ‘I can never find what I want to find when I want to watch it,” Torres said. “The fragmentation of the content is creating customer dissatisfaction. They can’t always find what they’re looking for.”

Along with its slimmer channel packages, DirectTV recently introduced a new internet-connected device called Gemini that combines streaming apps with traditional TV channels.

Pay TV companies are also offering voice-controlled remotes to help consumers find what they want to watch, whether on streaming or a traditional channel.

Executives say more enhanced viewing experiences are coming to keep the pay TV customer connected.

Starting this season, Spectrum’s SportsNet channel will be offering its Los Angeles customers several Lakers games in an immersive video format that can be streamed through an Apple Vision Pro device. The technology will give users a courtside view of the game at Crypto.com Arena. All that’s missing is a seat next to Jack Nicholson, but as AI advances, who knows?

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Disney’s sci-fi sequel “Tron: Ares” got off to a weak start, opening with just $33.5 million in North American theaters.

The results were well below 2010’s “Tron: Legacy,” which opened to $44 million. The production budget for “Tron: Ares” was reportedly $180 million.

Still, Disney does have two potential box office hits later this year with “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and animated sequel “Zootopia 2.”

Finally …

Stacy Perman’s deeply reported piece on fake collectible movie props is a must read. Bonus points for an appearance by notorious movie and TV executive Jim Aubrey, known as “The Smiling Cobra.”

Taylor Swift has already conquered the music world and the concert business, so it’s no surprise that this weekend she reigned supreme over the box office — again.

Swift’s latest venture into theaters came in the form of a listening session/fan party of sorts for her latest album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”

The 89-minute movie, titled “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl,” featured the premiere of the Swift-directed “The Fate of Ophelia” music video, as well as behind-the-scenes footage and commentary from Swift about the inspiration for her new songs.

As expected with anything Swift, the film quickly rocketed to the top of a weekend box office that didn’t have a lot of new big-name releases. The one-weekend-only affair hauled in $34 million in the U.S. and Canada, AMC said Monday morning. Globally, it made more than $50 million. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” was the runner-up in its second outing this weekend, grossing about $11 million domestically.

But the lack of competition doesn’t dilute the impact Swift had — and has had — on the box office. Her three-day theatrical total beats opening weekend grosses for other recent, studio films such as the Leonardo DiCaprio-led “One Battle After Another” ($22 million), 22-year sequel “Freakier Friday” reuniting Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis ($28.6 million) and my personal favorite, “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale” ($18.1 million).

I may not be a Swiftie, but I know plenty who made their way to theaters this weekend, with some dressing up for the occasion. My colleague, Malia Mendez, wrote about the Taylormania that took over AMC Century City, which screened the Swift film 21 times over three screens, just on Saturday.

There’s something to be said about harnessing the power of a fan base to drive people to theaters. Look at Swift’s last theatrical appearance — 2023’s “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” made about $180 million domestically and brought in more than $261 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing concert film of all time.

As she did with the “Eras Tour” film, Swift bypassed the typical Hollywood system and worked directly with AMC Theatres Distribution to release “The Official Release Party of a Showgirl.” The film played at all of AMC’s 540 locations and also showed at other theaters such as Cinemark and Regal.

The unconventional release was welcome news for theaters, which have struggled to bring in crowds as they did before the pandemic

“On behalf of AMC Theatres and the entire theatrical exhibition industry, I extend our sincerest appreciation to the iconic Taylor Swift for bringing her brilliance and magic to movie theatres this weekend,” AMC Chief Executive Adam Aron said in a statement. “Her vision to add a cinematic element to her incredible album debut was nothing less than a triumph.”

The film’s success is another reminder of the value of nontraditional, alternative content for theaters at a time when they need to employ fresh strategies to lure younger audiences to the multiplex.

As the number of movies released by studios has decreased, theaters are on the hunt for content to put on their screens. Lately, that’s ranged from episodic streaming series like “The Chosen,” which chronicles the life of Jesus, to concert films, opera performances and anniversary screenings of hits such as “The Sound of Music,” “Jaws” or “Back to the Future.”

It’s a business that really took off after the pandemic. Distributor Fathom Entertainment has specialized in this kind of nontraditional content for more than 20 years, but it is now seeing increased interest in these types of titles, particularly anniversary screenings, which now tend to make up between 20% and 40% of the company’s annual revenue.

Providing these kinds of titles is a way to mitigate the uncertainty of the film business, where there can be highs driven by hotly anticipated releases and lows when there’s little in the lineup.

“Our bread and butter is, and has continued to be, the big studio releases,” said Daniel Fastlicht, chief operating officer of the Lot, a luxury dine-in theater chain based in La Jolla with four locations. “What we want to see more than anybody is more content. But if that doesn’t happen, we still need to fill our auditoriums with people.”

All of the Lot’s theaters had at least one or two screens showing the Swift film, and the atmosphere was light, with people singing and dressing up, including a few in Travis Kelce jerseys, said Marcos Sayd, director of operations. He noted that alternative content helps their theaters fill the less-scheduled holes in their calendar. In addition to the Swift release, the Lot also programs local documentaries and films, as well as one-off events such as the Newport Beach Film Festival to draw audiences in.

And they’re not alone. Other theaters have been looking to position themselves as gathering places for communal experiences, whether that’s to celebrate T-Swift fandom, sing and dance to “KPop Demon Hunters” or collectively scream at a horror movie. Will the post-pandemic zeal for connection repopulate theaters again? Only time will tell, but the popularity of Swift’s latest film is a positive sign.

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Last week, YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a lawsuit President Trump filed after his account was banned by the Google-owned streamer following the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol.

San Bruno-based YouTube is the latest tech and media company to settle one of Trump’s lawsuits. Meta, Twitter (now X), Paramount Global and Walt Disney Co.-owned ABC News have all paid multimillion dollar sums in settlements. Most of the YouTube settlement dollars will go to Trump, who plans to contribute it to the Trust for the National Mall, which is “dedicated to restoring, preserving, and elevating the National Mall” and will also fund construction of the White House State Ballroom, according to court documents.

Finally …

My colleagues, Matthew Ormseth and Summer Lin, wrote about how the strange case of an illicit casino-turned-marijuana stash house/psilocybin mushroom-growing location that eventually led police to find an Arcadia mansion filled with 15 children, most of whom were born to surrogates.

The Ellison era of Paramount was barely a month old when another major potential Hollywood merger appeared on the horizon.

Last week the share prices of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery surged following reports that the former was preparing a bid to take over the latter with a mostly cash offer backed by the Larry Ellison family. This would come a remarkably short time after Skydance Media, the production company founded by Larry’s movie producer son David, combined with Paramount in an $8-billion deal.

A merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery would have profound ramifications for the media and entertainment industry.

It would consolidate two of Hollywood’s oldest studios, Paramount and Warner Bros., in the most significant movie business merger since Walt Disney Co. devoured the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox in 2019. The film industry has still not recovered from having the 20th Century Fox studio effectively taken off the board.

Additionally, a merger would put two mass-market streaming services, Paramount+ and HBO Max, under the same roof, probably leading to the eventual melding of the two. The Ellison clan’s move would also bring Warner Bros. Discovery’s linear TV networks, including CNN, HGTV, Food Network and TNT, together with Paramount’s Comedy Central, MTV and BET.

All of this would lead to substantial “synergies,” meaning cuts and layoffs, at a time when the job market in entertainment and corporate media is already fraught as the industry reconfigures itself. Paramount is currently bracing for thousands of layoffs as the new owners seek $2 billion in cost savings.

That’s not to mention the changes that would likely come if CNN came under the control of Ellison.

Larry Ellison, the Oracle Corp. billionaire who, depending on the day, is one of the world’s two wealthiest people alongside Elon Musk, is known to be Trump-friendly. The effects of the Ellison reign are already being felt at Paramount’s CBS News, where a former conservative think tank leader was recently appointed as ombudsman and where center-right and staunchly pro-Israel journalist Bari Weiss is expected to have an influential role after Ellison buys her digital media startup the Free Press.

So why is all this happening now, and why so quickly?

After all, the Wall Street Journal first reported Ellison’s interest in Warner Bros. Discovery on Sept. 11, just weeks after the Paramount-Skydance combo closed on Aug. 7.

In a sense, this scenario is unsurprising. Wall Street has been practically begging for another wave of consolidation in the media business, as the audience for theatrical movies shrinks, cord-cutting guts TV profits and more of viewers’ attention turns to YouTube, Netflix and TikTok. Most of the legacy entertainment companies don’t have the streaming firepower to compete. They need to combine to measure up.

But the timing is unexpected, and the unavoidable political considerations are particularly interesting.

With Trump in the White House, the political winds are clearly blowing in the Ellisons’ direction, after the Skydance and RedBird Capital team that bid for Paramount placated federal regulators with promises to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and to make CBS News more balanced, at least in eyes of Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.

Paramount paid $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” Kamala Harris interview. Ellison and his team want to make a Warner Bros. deal happen when a friendly administration is in power.

Paramount has lately upped its spending, acquiring the rights to UFC (run by Trump friend Dana White), locking down “South Park” for Paramount+ and announcing a deal with Activision to make a “Call of Duty” movie.

Also of note is that Ellison’s group is coming in with an offer for the whole company even as Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav prepares to split the media giant into two firms: one with the studios, HBO and streaming businesses, and the other with the TV networks. Putting in a bid now could dissuade other potential buyers that might be interested in just one part.

Apple and Amazon have long been seen as potential bidders for Warner Bros. (Amazon already owns MGM), but it’s unlikely they would want a bunch of TV channels that are on the brink of being orphaned. Analysts have speculated that one reason for the proposed split was to make the studio and streaming assets more attractive to buyers by uncoupling them from the challenged pay-TV business. That split is expected to take place sometime in mid-2026.

Paramount’s bid could also preempt those that may want to do a deal, but are firmly on the Trump administration’s bad side. NBCUniversal owner Comcast Corp.’s CEO Brian Roberts has been the subject of disparaging Trump missives. Comcast is liberal network MSNBC’s parent company (for now). A regulatory review involving a perceived Trump enemy would likely not go well.

Of course, competitive bids could emerge anyway, for example, if a private equity player such as Apollo Global decided to get into the mix after previously expressing interest in Paramount through an unsuccessful team-up with Sony.

Big mergers in media and entertainment often fail, and they’re always disruptive.

Warner Bros. itself was involved in some of the most disastrous deals ever: AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner, and before that, the media company’s ill-fated marriage with AOL. Warner Bros. is now on a box-office hot streak, but that has come after years of Zaslav taking heat for killing projects such as “Batgirl.”

Such deals result in mass layoffs. Movie theater owners will most likely see darker days ahead as they’ll be minus yet another big supplier of blockbusters. Journalist Richard Rushfield, of the Ankler newsletter, demanded that somebody do something to stop it. We’ll see.

An Oracle scion buying two studios one after the other probably wasn’t the tech takeover of Hollywood that many people envisioned. Analysts long assumed that Apple would be the one to buy an entertainment powerhouse — maybe even Disney — despite having not shown any particular inclination for doing so. But though it’s not the Silicon Valley roll-up people anticipated, it may be the one they’re going to get.

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An anime film slayed its Hollywood competition at the box office over the weekend.

“Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle,” already a big hit in Japan, was the highest-grossing movie domestically, beating new films “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale,” “The Long Walk” and “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.”

The film, distributed by Sony Pictures and Crunchyroll, opened with a better-than-expected $70 million in ticket sales from the U.S. and Canada, according to studio estimates, making it the biggest anime opening ever. It’s also the highest-grossing domestic debut of the year so far for an animated film.

Its global weekend for Sony, which owns the Crunchyroll anime brand and streaming service, totaled $132.1 million, which includes 49 international markets.

Including grosses from Japan, the movie’s worldwide tally has surpassed $450 million, according to Comscore.

The success of “Demon Slayer,” part of a long-running popular franchise and not to be confused with Netflix’s hit “KPop Demon Hunters,” is a relief to theater owners at a time when other genres are struggling, including superheroes, comedies and original animation. It’s the latest evidence of anime’s growing global clout.

Comedian Nate Bargatze didn’t shortchange the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, nor did he kill the Emmys telecast’s ratings on Sunday night.

The 77th Emmy Awards ceremony from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles delivered an average of 7.42 million viewers on CBS, up 8% from last year’s audience for ABC.

Once among the most-watched live awards shows on television, the Emmy Awards audience declined dramatically over the last decade as most of the series celebrated no longer have the broad reach they did when traditional TV still dominated the culture, reports Stephen Battaglio.

But the audience level appears to have stabilized. Nielsen data shows that ratings for the Emmy Awards grew for the second consecutive year. The figure is the highest since 2021, when the telecast also aired on CBS.

HBO Max’s “The Pitt,” Apple TV+’s “The Studio” and Netflix’s “Adolescence” were big winners.

Film shoots

Finally …

Listen: The music of Le Tigre, just because it rocks. I just started the audiobook of Le Tigre and Bikini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna’s memoir, “Rebel Girl.” Essential for punk rock fans.

“The Conjuring: Last Rites” gave movie theaters a needed jolt over the weekend with a much better than expected domestic opening of $84 million and a global take of $194 million, a franchise best and the latest success for Warner Bros. and its New Line Cinema banner.

But it will take more than supernatural scares to ease Hollywood’s jitters after a weak summer movie season that exposed more challenges facing the traditional film industry.

Ticket sales fell slightly from last year’s summer season, which for the movie business spans from the first weekend of May through Labor Day. Movies grossed $3.67 billion in the U.S. and Canada this summer, down 0.2% from the same period in 2024, according to data from Comscore. More importantly, it’s still down from the pre-pandemic norm of about $4 billion, a disappointing result given that summer typically accounts for about 40% of annual grosses.

If you account for inflation, it’s even worse. Adjusting for today’s dollars, summer revenue was down 34% from 2019, meaning theater attendance was weaker than the topline revenue stats suggest. With actual attendance still impaired compared with the days before COVID-19, there’s a growing sense that the industry’s fears have come true: Audience habits have changed, and they’re not going back.

The problem wasn’t a lack of movies compared with last year. The effects of the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes have dissipated by now.

Rather, the issue was a shortage of big studio movies that audiences really wanted to see. The biggest release was Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” remake, which collected $424 million domestically. There was nothing like last summer’s “Inside Out 2” or “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which both generated more than $600 million in North America.

The problem of the shrinking overall audience could be due to multiple factors.

In particular, theater owners blame the shrinking of the theatrical window — the period of time a new movie is held back from home video after its big screen debut — to roughly 45 days from the previously standard 90 days. Audiences know they don’t have to wait long before a new movie becomes available in their living room. That encourages them to save their money for only the biggest, Imax-worthy spectacles. The growing influence of Imax and premium large format screening may exacerbate that trend, as audiences choose between paying extra for a better “experience,” or just waiting to see “F1 The Movie” on their couch.

There were plenty of sequels and reboots, but those often performed worse than prior installments, indicating that audiences were less enthusiastic about seeing another Marvel movie or rampaging dino feature. “Jurassic World: Rebirth” made $861 million globally, which was big, but still the series’ smallest outing since 2001’s “Jurassic Park III.” Warner Bros.’ “Superman” collected a healthy $614 million, but that was still less than 2013’s “Man of Steel” ($670 million).

Superheroes didn’t come flying to the rescue. Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” put up a modest $382 million while “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” opened strong but collapsed in subsequent weeks for a total of $511 million worldwide, a middling outcome for the Disney-owned comic book universe. No wonder studios are increasingly looking at video games as a source of intellectual property for movie adaptations, as my colleague Sam Masunaga recently wrote. After all, Generation Alpha’s list of favorite franchises is dominated by video game-related titles, according to a recent National Research Group report.

Another threat emerged as international audiences appeared to sour on some U.S. blockbusters. “Superman” and “Fantastic Four” grossed less abroad than they did at home, which is an unusual result for big-budget action flicks.

It’s not clear why, but some explanations have been floated. China is no longer the reliable source of revenue that it once was, as audiences increasingly favor local-language productions. Some speculate that America’s diminished standing abroad has contributed to audience fatigue. The quintessential Americanness of the Superman brand is also widely believed to be a factor in that film’s underperformance outside the U.S.

Original animation struggled, as Pixar fielded its worst opening weekend ever with “Elio.” To add insult to injury, Sony Pictures Animation’s “KPop Demon Hunters” became a cultural phenomenon, but only after first launching on Netflix.

The rest of the year has some major releases, but they’re not expected to bring the business back to full strength. September is usually a slow month for moviegoing, “Last Rites” notwithstanding. Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” Universal’s “Wicked: For Good” and James Cameron’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash” will probably do huge business. But while individual films can do well, the overall picture isn’t so rosy.

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Artificial intelligence company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to authors and publishers to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of illegally using written work to train its chatbot Claude.

The topline figure is the largest known settlement for a copyright case, equating to $3,000 per work for an estimated 500,000 books, The Times’ Queenie Wong reported.

But the case was not an outright win for authors worried about AI being trained on their published material. Far from it.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco ruled in June that Anthropic’s use of the books to train the AI models constituted “fair use,” meaning it wasn’t illegal. Fair use is a doctrine that allows for the limited use of copyrighted materials without permission in certain cases, such as teaching, criticism and news reporting. It’s an essential part of AI companies’ defense against copyright infringement claims.

The real problem for Anthropic was that the startup had illegally downloaded millions of books through online libraries. So the piracy was the true sin in this case, not the training of AI on books without permission.

Anthropic pirated at least 7 million books from Books3, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, online libraries containing unauthorized copies of copyrighted books, to train its software, according to the judge. However, it also bought millions of print copies in bulk and scanned them into digital and machine-readable forms, which Alsup found to be in the bounds of fair use.

Film shoots

Finally …

Listen: Zach Top’s “Ain’t in It for My Health,” for throwback country goodness.

Read: Amy Nicholson’s review of “The Wizard of Oz” at Sphere in Las Vegas.

It was bound to happen sometime. This year, the most important Hollywood movie of the key summer season didn’t start its quest for world domination in movie theaters. It came out on Netflix.

“KPop Demon Hunters,” the cartoon musical about a girl group using catchy tunes to keep evil at bay, has become a viral phenomenon since it launched on the streamer June 20. With 210 million views globally so far, it’s the most watched animated movie ever on Netflix, and is expected to soon top “Red Notice” as the company’s most popular film.

That should be no surprise at this point. Unlike many previous widely watched Netflix movies, “KPop” — produced by Culver City-based Sony Pictures Animation — has penetrated the cultural zeitgeist, leading to gushing from millennial parents’ group chats including mine, chart-topping songs and, of course, memes galore.

To keep the momentum going, Netflix took the unusual step of putting the movie in theaters weeks after its streaming debut.

“KPop Demon Hunters” sing-along screenings played in more than 1,750 locations domestically to packed houses, with more than 1,150 sold-out showings, though it did not play in AMC cineplexes. It was the No. 1 movie in theaters, scoring in the ballpark of $18 million in ticket sales, according to industry sources, enough to top the third weekend of Zach Cregger’s horror hit “Weapons.” Netflix released the sing-along version of “KPop Demon Hunters” for streaming on Monday.

Netflix, as is its typical practice, did not report actual box office grosses, so the counts for its first No. 1 box office hit aren’t official. Nonetheless, theater operators were clearly relieved to have the movie, even if for only two days. The August box office doldrums are in full swing, with little to cheer about from the traditional studios.

The summer blockbuster season is expected to end with about $3.5 billion in total revenue from the first weekend of May through Labor Day, according to analysts, which would be either roughly flat or slightly down from last year’s thin slate. More than $4 billion is considered normal or healthy by pre-pandemic standards.

The biggest hit this summer was Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch,” a live-action remake that collected $422 million in the U.S. and Canada and more than $1 billion globally. Last summer, two movies topped $600 million: Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine,” both of which were Disney titles.

Netflix has had a tense relationship with the theatrical business since it first got into making movies. The company puts movies in cinemas for limited runs as part of marketing efforts, awards campaigns and as a way to appease filmmakers who prefer the big-screen experience. Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos earlier this year called the theatrical business “outdated” for most people, citing weak box office numbers after the COVID-19 closures.

Indeed, theatrical attendance has shrunk even more than the top-line revenue figures suggest, with shortfalls partly papered over by increases in ticket prices over the years.

When Scott Stuber ran Netflix’s film business, he pushed the company to do more with theaters because auteur directors wanted it. The film side is now run by Dan Lin.

People who advocate for the multiplex keep hoping that some event will persuade Netflix that its theory is wrong — that something like the “KPop Demon Hunters” screenings or next year’s Imax rollout for Greta Gerwig’s upcoming “Narnia” project will prove that Sarandos is mistaken and theatrical windows will actually benefit Netflix beyond using them as promotional ploys.

Rivals say their movies do better on streaming services when they’re already theatrical hits, a theme repeated by the new owners of Paramount who are trying to grow their direct-to-consumer business.

But if anything, Netflix is digging in.

The company sees the success of “KPop,” along with the recent release of “Happy Gilmore 2,” as proof that movies can resonate culturally without theaters and the massive advertising budgets necessary to open a film on 4,000 domestic screens. The Adam Sandler-starring sequel scored 46.7 million views in its first three days on the service and set a Nielsen record for the most-watched streaming movie in a single week.

Netflix has long faced skepticism from Hollywood over its film business, which can put up big viewership with movies like “Red Notice” and “The Adam Project” that seem to vanish from audiences’ consciousness without a trace.

We kind of already knew that movies, particularly animated musicals aimed at kids, could find a big audience online without being a theatrical smash. “Encanto,” released in November 2021 during the pandemic and the Bob Chapek era, did paltry box office by modern Disney standards but became a phenomenon when its Lin-Manuel Miranda-penned songs took off on social media.

When kids latch onto something, they watch it repeatedly, and they don’t care if it’s been in theaters or not. If the movie is good and relevant to them, it can work regardless of the release strategy.

Would “KPop Demon Hunters” have worked if it had been released in theaters exclusively? Who knows. If it had opened to modest box office results, as animated original movies tend to do lately, it would have immediately been written off as a disappointment. Instead, it stayed on the Netflix top 10 lists for weeks and climbed the Nielsen rankings because of word of mouth.

Part of its success is that the movie feels very “now,” whereas animated films sometimes aim for timelessness. It’s culturally specific, with universal themes (friendship and young people’s need to belong) that have powered Disney blockbusters for decades. A colleague of mine aptly described it as a sort of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” meets “Frozen.” Its music is current and rides the wave of everything influenced by South Korean pop culture.

Will it have the enduring influence of the “Frozen” franchise or “Moana,” movies that started primarily as properties for girls but became touchstones for a broader audience? Perhaps not, but it does give Netflix another data point to validate its streaming movie strategy.

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Even $3-trillion Apple isn’t immune to streaming inflation.

Apple TV+, home of series including “The Studio” and “Ted Lasso,” is raising its subscription price by $3 to $12.99 a month, following the lead of other streamers chasing better returns.

Finally …

Read: I’m listening to the audiobook of Blink-182 bassist Mark Hoppus’ “Fahrenheit-182.” A must for this San Diego native.

Movies from India’s prolific film industry have found success on the world stage before.

“RRR,” an over-the-top Telugu-language action film, energized audiences in the U.S. and elsewhere a few years ago, even scoring a history-making Oscar for its original song “Naatu Naatu.” Hindi screenings have long drawn crowds to American multiplexes.

But the filmmakers behind “Ramayana” — an upcoming two-part epic based on one of the most important ancient texts in Hinduism — have something more ambitious in mind.

The massive productions — each estimated to cost $200 million to $250 million — are aimed not merely at an Indian audience, nor are they meant to appeal primarily to Hindus, who number an estimated 1.2 billion globally, according to Pew Research Center.

Rather, the goal is to turn “Ramayana,” with its grand-scale adventure story and high-tech computer-generated effects, into a full-blown international blockbuster, filmed specifically for Imax’s giant screens in what is intended to be the largest-ever rollout for an Indian film, according to its backers.

Executive Namit Malhotra — who is financing and producing the project through his firm Prime Focus — set the bar high in a recent interview with The Times, comparing his film to the likes of James Cameron’s “Avatar,” Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” and the movies of Christopher Nolan.

While Hollywood studio bosses talk about reaching all four demographic “quadrants” (men and women, young and old) with their tentpole movies, Malhotra wants to draw two additional categories: believer and nonbeliever. For such a so-called six-quadrant movie to work, to use Malhotra’s terminology, it would have to succeed in the U.S.

“In my mind, if people in the West don’t like it, I consider that as a failure,” Malhotra told The Times recently. “It is meant for the world. So if you don’t like it, shame on me. We should have done a better job.”

Poster art for the upcoming film ‘Ramayana.’

(DNEG)

It’s a major gamble for Malhotra, who founded Prime Focus in Mumbai in 1997. The firm expanded significantly when it acquired British effects house Double Negative, and rebranded as DNEG. Malhotra owns nearly 68% of the parent company, Prime Focus Ltd.

He’s going to great lengths to make sure his big bet pays off. DNEG, headquartered in London with offices in India, Los Angeles and elsewhere, is handling the visuals. The firm has produced special effects for global studio features for years, creating Oscar-winning work for such movies as Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Two” and Nolan’s “Tenet.”

“Ramayana” is directed by Nitesh Tiwari, the man behind 2016’s “Dangal,” the highest-grossing Bollywood film ever, including huge sales in China. Hans Zimmer and prolific Indian musician-composer A.R. Rahman (“Slumdog Millionaire”) are collaborating on the score, while the visual effects and production design team includes veterans from “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Avengers: Endgame” and the “Lord of the Rings” franchise.

The success of “RRR,” which told the story of two Indian legends with larger-than-life abilities fighting British imperialism, is one reason Malhotra is confident that “Ramayana” might connect with Westerners more familiar with the Bible and “The Odyssey” (the subject of a much-hyped 2026 Nolan film) than with Hindu mythology. U.S. cinephiles have in the past embraced mythical Asia-set films such as Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Life of Pi.”

So why not “Ramayana?”

After all, family, good vs. evil and personal striving are all key themes that transcend national borders.

“Emotions are universal,” said Tiwari in a video call. “If the audience connects with you emotionally, I think they will connect with the whole story. Emotions have powers to travel across boundaries.”

Filmed entirely on soundstages, the first part of “Ramayana” is scheduled to hit theaters next year, with a significant push from Imax. “Part 2,” currently in production, is planned for 2027. Each part is timed for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. The films do not yet have a U.S. distributor.

This comes as Imax has beefed up its clout as what is increasingly seen as a linchpin component for the release of big-screen movies, not just for Hollywood spectacles but also, lately, for local language films. Imax showcased just a handful of Indian movies on its screens in 2019, according to Chief Executive Richard Gelfond. Last year, the company played 15.

So far this year, international films made in their local language have accounted for more than 30% of Imax’s total global box office revenue, Gelfond said. Much of that tally came from “Ne Zha 2,” a Chinese-produced animated film that grossed roughly $2 billion worldwide, mostly from its home country.

As such, Gelfond has high hopes for “Ramayana.” “Judging from what we’ve seen, this has all the elements to be a global success,” Gelfond said.

At its core, “Ramayana,” based on the epic poem from thousands of years ago, tells the story of Hindu deity Rama, an incarnation of the god Vishnu, and his quest to rescue his love Sita from the demon king Ravana.

A three-minute teaser trailer introduced the concept, emphasizing the big names attached (including actors Ranbir Kapoor as Rama, Sai Pallavi as Sita and Yash as Ravana), displaying some “Game of Thrones” opening credits-style visuals and conveying the tale’s historical importance. “Our truth. Our history,” reads the onscreen text. The video has 9.4 million views on YouTube.

“Ramayana” is a quintessentially Indian story. It has been adapted for stage and screen before, perhaps most notably as a series for Indian TV in the late 1980s.

For the new version, Malhotra wants to eliminate any language barriers. DNEG is using syncing technology from its Brahma AI unit to seamlessly present the film in local languages for international audiences. In the U.S., for example, the movie will screen in English.

“It’s a global film from the day we start,” he said. “I’m not trying to make it to appease Indian people in India. … If you go and watch ‘Ramayana’ and your family watches it, and people in India watch it, what’s the difference? It should speak to you like any other film.”

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Airing election misinformation continues to be expensive for cable news networks.

Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election that aired on the right-wing news channel.

The network announced the settlement with the voting equipment maker Monday but did not apologize for its reporting.

Fox News settled a similar case with Dominion in 2023 for $787.5 million after it aired incorrect election claims. Newsmax is much smaller than Fox, which continues to battle a lawsuit from another voting machine company, Smartmatic.

Streaming is getting closer to another major milestone. According to Nielsen’s the Gauge report, streaming services accounted for 47.3% of U.S. TV usage in July, compared with 22% for cable and 18.4% for broadcast. That’s what happens when there’s new “Squid Game” on Netflix and there’s not much on regular TV.

Finally …

Listen: No Joy, “Bugland.” Excellent ’90s-style rock.

It’s been a dramatic couple of weeks in the wide world of sports rights, as media companies locked down a slew of deals that remake the way that fans watch their favorite athletic competitions.

On Monday came a big one: David Ellison, the new owner of Paramount, came into the ring punching hard with a $7.7-billion deal for the streaming and TV rights to UFC matches. In the seven-year pact with UFC owner TKO Group Holdings, the Ellison-led Paramount will pay an average of $1.1 billion annually — about twice what Walt Disney Co. was paying to air the mixed martial arts league on ESPN.

It’s a signal that Ellison is willing to spend big bucks on content that he and his fresh executive team think will make Paramount+ a more formidable competitor to Netflix, Amazon’s Prime Video, HBO Max and others. Paramount+ will have the rights to stream 13 marquee “numbered” UFC events and 30 fight nights, while certain numbered events will be simulcast on the company’s broadcast network, CBS.

Now those sightings of the tech scion-turned Hollywood mogul speaking with President Trump at UFC fights make even more sense, as do Ellison and Paramount’s recent peripheral dealings with superagent Ari Emanuel, TKO’s executive chair. In a key part of the deal, UFC will move away from showcasing fights through its pay-per-view model, which should dramatically increase the reach of a sport with strong appeal among young men.

The deal is also the latest sign that the streaming wars are far from over, at least when it comes to sports broadcasts. Last week, the NFL inked a deal to take a 10% stake in ESPN as part of a complex arrangement that will give Bob Iger-led Disney control of the NFL cable properties, including the NFL Network and the linear RedZone channel. The ESPN stake is estimated to be worth more than $2 billion.

This highly anticipated blockbuster deal further aligns the financial interests of the most powerful TV sports brand with what is by far the nation’s most popular sports league, which accounts for the vast majority of most-watched programs every year. The agreement is part of Iger and ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro’s strategy to bulk up the content offering available through the network’s upcoming stand-alone streaming service, which will cost $30 a month when it launches later this month.

Separately, ESPN is staying in business with TKO, having agreed to pay $1.6 billion over five years to stream WWE events including WrestleMania, Royal Rumble and SummerSlam. Analysts say that should ease some of the pain of losing UFC to Ellison and Paramount. The WWE events are moving to ESPN’s service from their current streaming home, NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Disney’s fees will be nearly twice those of NBCUniversal.

Disney will use the new ESPN service to make its wider streaming offering more attractive, bundling it with Disney+ and Hulu.

All this is happening amid a broader overhauling of the sports media landscape in the streaming age that has made life more confusing for fans as fewer people subscribe to all-in-one cable and satellite TV bundles.

NFL games, for example, run on a broad array of streaming services, including Paramount+, Prime Video (for Thursday night games), and, in the case of Christmas Day matchups, Netflix. The league, which has significant leverage, is widely expected to exercise its option to renegotiate media rights deals starting in 2029.

Apple is expected to win the rights to Formula One racing telecasts, adding to its sports portfolio that includes MLB games and Major League Soccer. The NBA last year got itself a big pay bump, securing media rights deals with NBCUniversal, Amazon and Disney worth $77 billion over 11 years.

As these shifts take place, the media industry is about to go through a major test: How many people are willing to pay for a lot of — but not all — the sports content they want to watch, and what will they be willing to fork over?

The entertainment and media companies say they are aiming these services at cord-cutters and cord-nevers, people who don’t pay for a more-or-less traditional package of TV channels but still want to watch sports.

The question is whether such people actually exist.

Despite its branding power and its significant share of sports rights, ESPN’s direct-to-consumer app will have limited appeal. Many analysts estimate that the offering will attract 2 million subscribers in the short term.

For most of the kind of dedicated sports fans who might be interested in streaming ESPN, a digital bundle such as YouTube TV ($83 a month) probably makes more sense than cobbling together individual brands.

Recognizing the limitations, the media companies are taking another stab at consolidating their sports streaming offerings at a discount. On Monday, Disney and Fox Corp. said they would offer a bundle of the ESPN streamer and the new Fox One — which includes live sports, news and entertainment — for $40 a month. On its own, Fox One will be priced at $20 a month.

A previous attempt at a more inclusive offering — a proposed joint venture called Venu Sports from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery — was abandoned after a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the media giants in an antitrust lawsuit from FuboTV. The saga ended up with Disney making a deal to take a 70% stake in Fubo and merge it with its Hulu Live TV service.

But the question for all services and mini-bundles remains the same: Who are they really for?

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Filmmaker Zach Cregger won the weekend with his acclaimed new horror movie “Weapons,” which topped expectations with $43.5 million in ticket sales through Sunday in the U.S. and Canada.

Cregger’s follow-up to his surprise hit “Barbarian” is the latest win for Warner Bros., marking six successful openings in a row (after “A Minecraft Movie,” “Sinners,” “Final Destination Bloodlines,” “F1 the Movie” and “Superman”). Not bad, considering the studio’s leaders were rumored to be on the chopping block earlier this year.

Doing solid business was Disney’s “Freakier Friday,” a body-swap comedy sequel reuniting Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan more than 20 years after the first one, itself a remake of a 1976 movie. The new installment opened with $28.6 million domestically.

After this and “The Naked Gun,” I’m certainly not going to declare that Hollywood big-screen comedies are back, but the genre is not completely lost either, as long as there’s intellectual property attached.

Finally …

Watch: Marc Maron has a new HBO stand-up special, “Panicked.” As always, it’s funny, acerbic, insightful and sometimes deep.

Listen: On Aug. 14, the estate of Woody Guthrie will release a collection of home recordings, including a version of “This Land Is Your Land” and his take on “Deportee.” Absolutely fascinating.

As a deep-pocketed producer, David Ellison helped breathe new life into Paramount franchises including “Mission: Impossible,” “Star Trek” and “Top Gun.”

But can the high-flying son of a billionaire make a full-fledged media company airworthy again? Can he use Silicon Valley money and movie business know-how to restore the legacy of one of the entertainment industry’s original studios, following a deal clinched through an act of political appeasement?

Those are the questions Hollywood talent, studio rivals and insiders will be asking as Ellison takes the controls of the new Paramount, after regulators finally approved the long-awaited $8-billion merger with his Santa Monica production company Skydance Media. The deal — two years in the making, and approved by the FCC only after a $16-million settlement with Trump and promises to mindwipe any trace of DEI from the company — is expected to close Aug. 7.

After that, Ellison, backed in large part by his father, Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison, will bring in his own team to face the daunting challenges.

Chris McCarthy, the architect of Paramount’s recent streaming strategy, is out. Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon head Brian Robbins is also expected to exit while CBS chief George Cheeks is staying. The incoming management team includes former NBCUniversal Chief Executive Jeff Shell, who is currently a heavyweight at Ellison’s bidding partner RedBird Capital.

Skydance Chief Creative Officer Dana Goldberg will run the film studio, and former Netflix executive Cindy Holland will play a major role at the new company. Also joining is Sony Pictures movie executive Josh Greenstein.

This may be a different team from the one that labored under outgoing controlling shareholder Shari Redstone, but it’ll be contending with most of the same problems.

Paramount is dogged by issues buffeting all legacy media companies, including the decline of traditional TV ratings, the post-COVID-19 realignment of the theatrical box office and the escalating costs of sports rights, as my colleague Stephen Battaglio and I reported last week. Those difficulties were exacerbated at Paramount by chronic underinvestment and years of shambolic leadership, as corporate governance experts have long pointed out.

Ellison has direct experience with movies, having produced many of them, including some of Paramount’s biggest hits (as well as some notable flops). He’s less steeped in running TV channels and streaming services, which have urgent needs. The scion is also coming in to make good on a promise to investors: to find $2 billion in cost cutting, which will mean layoffs and disruption.

Paramount+ has been growing, thanks in part to the NFL, CBS shows and a run of original hits including “Landman,” “1923” and “Tulsa King.” But the service has lost money for years, and the app is clunky. (It’s expected to reach full-year U.S. profitability in 2025.) McCarthy spent big bucks on talent, including Taylor Sheridan and the creators of “South Park,” enough to make Matt Stone and Trey Parker billionaires, according to Forbes.

Analysts say the service will need substantial investment in content and technology to make it competitive while also partnering with other companies to increase its reach through discounted bundles and other initiatives.

The new owners will have to decide what to do with the cable channel business, which includes such eroding brands as MTV, BET and Comedy Central.

Many observers tend to assume Ellison will eventually spin those off, following the lead of NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery. In a sadly comical reminder of what can happen with a merger gone wrong, David Zaslav’s Warner Bros. Discovery on Monday announced that the two companies resulting from its pending breakup will be called — wait for it — Warner Bros. and Discovery Global.

TD Cowen analyst Doug Cruetz, in a recent note to clients, speculated that Ellison didn’t buy the Paramount assets just to “break it up for parts.”

We’ll see.

Another looming and potentially costly issue is the NFL’s relationship with CBS Sports. The change of control will trigger an early renegotiation of Paramount’s contract with the league once the transaction closes. That’s important because the NFL has significant leverage in dealmaking, considering that its games account for the vast majority of most-watched programming on television.

Ellison has promised to bring technological enhancements to Paramount. That would mean a more functional app for Paramount+ and an improved personalized recommendation system. It might mean using tech to make movies cheaper and faster. A year ago, Ellison noted a partnership between Skydance Animation and Oracle to build a so-called studio in the cloud. What technology can’t do is pick the movies people want to see, and that’s where the new leadership group will have to prove themselves.

But the biggest hurdle will be overcoming the stain covering the deal itself after the concessions required to get it over the finish line.

Paramount paid a substantial sum to make peace with President Trump, who had sued the company over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with his 2024 election rival, then-Vice President Kamala Harris. The case was frivolous, 1st Amendment experts said. But the Redstone family and the Ellisons were desperate to get the deal done. As a result, the new company is starting off on a crooked foundation, as one Hollywood insider put it to me.

Stephen Colbert, speaking on “The Late Show,” called Paramount’s settlement a “big fat bribe.” Days later, he learned that his show would be ending in May. Even assuming the company told the truth in saying that the cancellation was a purely financial decision (i.e., the show was too expensive and it was losing money), the optics were bad.

Comedians responded the way comedians do. The “South Park” team, having secured a $1.5 billion deal to bring the long-running animated series to Paramount+, opened their 27th season with, effectively, a pair of middle fingers raised to Trump and their parent company.

The show depicted a flapping-headed cartoon Trump in bed with Satan, similar to its past portrayal of Saddam Hussein, and ended with an AI-generated PSA showing the president wandering the desert and stripping naked, revealing tiny, talking genitalia.

The Trump settlement cast a pall over whatever plans Ellison has. CBS News lost key figures in part due to Paramount’s push to reach a peace accord with the president (Tanya Simon being named to run “60 Minutes” is seen as a relief). But whatever you say about the corporate behind-the-scenes machinations that took place to make the deal happen, you can’t say the artists have lost their spine.

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In a return to form for Walt Disney Co.’s Marvel Studios, “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” opened with a robust $118 million in the U.S. and Canada and $218 million globally, according to studio estimates, slightly outperforming prerelease projections.

This comes after middling results and poor reviews for “Captain America: Brave New World” and tepid sales (but better reviews) for “Thunderbolts*.” Last summer’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” was a $1.34-billion hit.

Like Deadpool and Wolverine, the Fantastic Four — known as Marvel’s first family — came to Disney through the company’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox entertainment assets. Fox made three “Fantastic Four” movies, all bad. “First Steps” earned mostly positive reviews from critics and fans (88% on Rotten Tomatoes; “A-” from CinemaScore).

The $218-million global opening weekend was similar to that of James Gunn’s DC reboot “Superman,” released earlier this month. That film just crossed the $500 million box office milestone, with a strong $289 million domestically and a less-impressive $213 million overseas.

Theaters have been on a winning streak this summer. So far this year, ticket sales are up 12% from 2024, according to Comscore. But the rest of the season looks thin. Next weekend features Paramount’s “The Naked Gun,” Universal’s animated “Bad Guys 2” and Neon’s Sundance horror breakout “Together,” starring real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie.

Finally …

One marker of a great artist is the number and diversity of musicians who take inspiration from their work. And Ozzy Osbourne, the Black Sabbath frontman who died last week, had plenty of admirers who covered his songs.

The Times’ Mikael Wood already rounded up the Prince of Darkness’ 10 essential tracks. Here are some of the best covers, with help from Rolling Stone and Loudwire.

No surprise, 2025 has been an eventful year so far in Hollywood.

In addition to the megahits and epic bombs at the box office, the entertainment industry has been roiled by chaotic forces.

The second Trump administration. The ongoing Blake Lively–Justin Baldoni legal saga. The federal trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs, resulting in a mixed verdict in which the hip-hop mogul was acquitted of the most serious charges — racketeering and sex trafficking. And of course, the devastating wildfires that ravaged the Los Angeles area, particularly Pacific Palisades and Altadena, back in January.

But in terms of the actual business of movies, TV and streaming, there’s plenty of serious stuff to dig into that could shape the future of entertainment — from streaming’s continued ascent, to Disney and Universal’s lawsuit against Midjourney, to the race for state tax credits to save California’s beleaguered production economy.

Here’s our Wide Shot midyear review, by the numbers.

The box office has been on a roller-coaster ride since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the release schedule feeling the effects of the industry’s broader retrenchment. Although the 2023 strikes that thinned out the release schedule are in the rearview mirror, the uncertainty has very much continued.

After a brutal first quarter (ouch, “Snow White”), sales have rebounded thanks to hits including “Minecraft,” “Sinners” and “F1,” with grosses reaching $4.43 billion so far domestically, according to Comscore. That’s up 15% from the same period last year, but still down 26% from 2019. Attendance is up 6.5% from 2024 with about 350 million tickets sold, according to Steve Buck at EntTelligence.

The challenges remain the same.

Studios struggle to draw crowds with much other than the biggest blockbusters and whatever they can convince Gen Z is an “event” movie. And the films themselves are so expensive that even big numbers don’t guarantee that an action spectacle with a robust audience will break even during its theatrical run. Even horror movies aren’t really low-budget anymore (see “Final Destination: Bloodlines” and “28 Years Later”).

After years of shortened theatrical windows, audiences know they can wait to see a new movie at home, often after just a few weeks. That’s why theater owners at the industry convention CinemaCon called on studios to commit to a longer standard gap between a movie’s theatrical release and its availability for home viewing. Meanwhile, audiences face ever longer preshows, with ads now playing between the trailers at AMC. With so much debt, the chain sure needs the money.

The slate for the rest of the year is lumpy.

July is looking strong after “Jurassic World Rebirth’s” $147-million Fourth of July weekend opening, with Warner Bros. and DC’s “Superman” reboot, and Disney and Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” hoping to reinvigorate the superhero genre. Prerelease tracking for “Superman” is all over the place, but an opening of $125 million is a fair target. “Fantastic Four” is poised for a debut in the ballpark of $100 million. But August is lacking in obvious hits. Maybe Paramount’s “The Naked Gun” will bring pure comedy back — but we’ll see.

Paramount caved, reaching a $16-million deal to settle President Trump’s lawsuit over CBS News’ “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. Trump declared victory over the “Fake News media,” while 1st Amendment advocates and journalists howled, fuming that the owner of one of TV’s most respected brands chose to buy peace rather than fight the case — widely considered frivolous — and stand up for press freedom.

There are still unanswered questions. In the aftermath of the deal, a source close to Trump‘s world said the president’s team is also anticipating millions of dollars in airtime for PSAs related to MAGA-friendly causes and antisemitism — an alleged side deal that Trump himself referenced after the fact. Paramount said its deal with the Trump team did not include PSAs.

In any event, Paramount’s leaders — not to mention its incoming owners at Skydance Media and RedBird — are eager to move on. David Ellison and Shari Redstone are now counting on the Federal Communications Commission to finally approve the $8-billion merger so they can get to work reshaping the storied entertainment firm.

Speaking of Paramount, one of the company’s biggest franchises is causing headaches for the new owners — and vice versa — as the company wrangles with the creators of “South Park” over the future of the long-running, foulmouthed cartoon.

Skydance balked at a proposed overall deal worth at least $2.5 billion for the “South Park” guys, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, sources have said. (Their current $900-million deal is still in place.) Separately, the two sides are trying to work out the streaming rights to the show. Paramount wants to run the episodes on Paramount+, but it also wants to share the rights (and the costs) with another streamer — perhaps the 300-plus episodes’ current home, HBO Max. The streaming rights are expected to fetch north of $200 million a year.

In Hollywood’s current era of downsizing, Skydance may have legitimate reasons to not want to overpay for a show entering its 27th season. But Parker and Stone still have leverage: Without “South Park,” the cupboard at Comedy Central is pretty bare.

Parker and Stone’s lawyers have gone to the mat, accusing David Ellison’s allies — namely former NBCUniversal boss and current RedBird executive Jeff Shell — of overstepping their authority in the negotiations. The “South Park” team expressed its displeasure in a way only the makers of Cartman and Kenny could. After Comedy Central announced a delay for the new season premiere, the show’s X profile tweeted a statement saying the Skydance deal was “a s—show and is f— up South Park.”

Hollywood got its long-sought lifeline from Sacramento, as Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a beefed-up film and television tax credit program, allocating $750 million annually for productions in the state.

That’s more than double the previous program, which was capped at $330 million a year. Shortly afterward, the state legislature passed a law to increase the tax credit to as much as 35% of qualified expenditures for movies and TV series shot in the Greater Los Angeles area — and up to 40% for productions shot outside the region. It also expanded the types of productions that could qualify.

California currently provides a 20% to 25% tax credit to offset qualified production expenses, such as money spent on film crews and building sets. The plan does not cover above-the-line expenses, such as actor and director salaries, which remains a disadvantage as California tries to compete with other states and countries. New York and Texas are both ramping up their own incentive programs.

The Golden State’s production economy has been devastated by competition. Boosting the tax incentives is one lever the state can pull to lure shoots back. There’s also been a push to overhaul red tape at the local level in Los Angeles. Whatever good all this does, it’s sure to be more effective than Trump’s now-largely forgotten call for tariffs on movies produced abroad.

Streaming hit a major symbolic milestone earlier this year, as television usage for YouTube, Netflix and their brethren overtook broadcast and cable for the first time in May, according to Nielsen. Streaming services combined to attract 44.8% of all TV set viewing, representing the largest share to date for direct-to-consumer platforms. Viewership for linear networks was just behind at 44.2%.

Nielsen’s regular viewership report — the Gauge — is a useful snapshot of the state of television today. Combined with the rapid decline of cable and satellite bundle subscriptions, the drop-off in viewing explains much of what’s going on at the legacy media companies.

Firms including Disney and Paramount are still cutting hundreds of jobs to adjust to the new realities. Warner Bros. Discovery — which has been on a yearslong quest to reduce its heavy debt load — said it will split its operations in two, cleaving the studios and streaming business from its global networks. That decision followed NBCUniversal’s move to spin off its cable nets into a new company called Versant.

Those plans are gambles. Cable networks are in decline, but they’re profitable. For most media companies, streaming is growing but has only just gotten into the black after years of losing billions.

Honorable mentions:

$417.5 million: Alcon Entertainment, the production company known for “The Blind Side” and “Blade Runner 2049,” gained a prized asset by acquiring the film library of bankrupt Village Roadshow. The $417.5-million deal gives the firm Village’s stakes in movies including “Joker” and “Mad Max: Fury Road,” both released by Warner Bros. Village Roadshow declared bankruptcy amid a brutal legal battle with Warner Bros. over its release of “The Matrix Resurrections,” which went to streaming and theaters at the same time.

$400 million: “It Ends With Us” director Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits against actress Blake Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, the New York Times and others were tossed last month, with a judge ruling that the claims — including defamation, extortion and breach of contract — failed to pass legal muster. U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman granted motions to dismiss both a $400-million countersuit against Lively, Reynolds and others and a $250-million defamation claim against The Times.

$2 billion: The biggest movie of the year isn’t from Hollywood at all. It’s “Ne Zha 2,” an animated Chinese film that grossed more than $2 billion, the vast majority of which came from its home country. Despite trade wars and the dominance of local productions, though, U.S. movies can still do well in China. “Jurassic World Rebirth” opened with $41.6 million there.

$20 million: Walt Disney Co. and Universal are suing AI firm Midjourney for allegedly ripping off and copying their intellectual property with its image-generating technology. With 150 violations cited in the lawsuit, at a statutory $150,000 per infringing item, that’s a total of more than $20 million in potential damages.

$300 billion: The eye-popping valuation for privately held OpenAI, the San Francisco company behind ChatGPT and Sora.

$9.2 billion: The amount Disney ultimately paid for Comcast’s Hulu stake, valuing the service at $27.6 billion. After a mediation process, Disney paid less for the stake than Comcast wanted.

— Times staff writers Meg James, Samantha Masunaga, Wendy Lee, Stephen Battaglio, Stacy Perman and Josh Rottenberg contributed to this article.

Stuff we wrote

Finally …

Listen: For your morning run, Killswitch Engage’s “This Consequence.”

Watch: I finally started “Apple Cider Vinegar” over the weekend, and hoo boy, what a fascinating, infuriating story.

The $145-million global opening of Apple’s “F1 The Movie” came as a relief — both for the iPhone maker itself and theater operators hoping for an original hit during this sequel-dominated summer of blockbusters.

The expensive Brad Pitt action sports drama, directed by Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”) and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, was a high-stakes gamble by the Cupertino-based tech giant, which until now has enjoyed little success at cinemas.

In the U.S. and Canada, the film did better than expected, generating $57 million in ticket sales through Sunday, according to studio estimates. Analysts were projecting $40 million to $50 million, based on prerelease tracking. Warner Bros. Pictures, which is on a much-needed hot streak, distributed “F1” in partnership with Apple.

Because the movie cost at least $200 million to make (and perhaps far more, according to some reports) after tax breaks and before significant marketing costs, the picture is still far from profitable. But with strong reviews from audiences and critics — an “A” CinemaScore, 83% “fresh” on the Tomatometer and 97% approval from moviegoers on Rotten Tomatoes — the film should continue to perform well in the coming weeks.

It’ll face some serious competition, with Universal Pictures’ “Jurassic World: Rebirth” arriving in theaters Wednesday for the Fourth of July holiday weekend and Warner Bros.’ “Superman” from James Gunn coming shortly afterward.

Nonetheless, “F1” has the all-important Imax screens locked down until “Superman,” and that should be an advantage, given that the movie plays like both an old-school blockbuster and a thrill ride.

The question now: What does this mean for Apple’s film business and how the company approaches theatrical releases in the future?

Since Apple got into Hollywood six years ago with the launch of Apple TV+, the movie slate has struggled to come up with a big-screen success, despite huge spending on prestigious projects and big-name talent.

Its Sundance acquisition “CODA” won the 2022 best picture Oscar, albeit in a weird year, in a first for a streaming company.

But Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” weren’t commercial hits. “Argylle” and “Fly Me to the Moon” flopped, and “Wolfs” was scaled back from its planned theatrical release. The Miles Teller–Anya Taylor-Joy feature “The Gorge” went straight to streaming.

Analysts and movie industry insiders have speculated that the performance of “F1” would heavily influence whether Apple dove further into blockbuster filmmaking or abandoned theaters altogether. Apple certainly treated it like a high-stakes release, having Chief Executive Tim Cook give an interview with Variety and promoting the film through various parts of the company, including its retail stores and its music, fitness, maps and podcast apps.

Apple lacks an in-house theatrical distribution arm and instead enlists traditional studios for those duties. Burbank-based Warner Bros. worked with Apple on the marketing side while also contributing financially to the campaign, according to people close to the studios.

As of now, it’s unclear what Apple’s ambitions are for the multiplex.

Spike Lee’s Denzel Washington-starring thriller “Highest 2 Lowest,” a reimagining of the 1963 Akira Kurosawa classic “High and Low,” is getting a miniature theatrical window from A24 ahead of its September streaming release on Apple TV+. Apple has already inked a deal for another upcoming Kosinski-Bruckheimer collaboration, about UFOs.

An Apple spokeswoman did not respond to a question about future movie plans.

Theater owners want to see more from Apple at a time when they’re often struggling with a lack of compelling material, especially for grown-ups. With “F1,” they saw a glimpse of hope.

“F1” is a racing movie with throwback vibes, which is no guarantee of success. But the F1 brand is strong, especially internationally, where the movie is doing particularly well ($88.4 million so far). The companies sold the movie as a sort of “Top Gun: Maverick” on wheels, an approach that resonated with audiences. People familiar with the data say the film is drawing in audiences who don’t typically go to theaters, which the theaters desperately need.

The box office performance bodes well for the title’s eventual streaming release on Apple TV+.

With the exception of Netflix, which remains set against doing a true traditional theatrical business, film studios say movies that open in theaters do better on streaming than if they’re simply dumped onto a crowded service. Amazon has again committed to theaters since acquiring MGM Studios after slinking away from the business model years ago.

On the other hand, theatrical releases are risky, especially for a company that cares about its reputation the way Apple does. Flops are embarrassing, even for a company that’s worth $3 trillion and can afford to subsidize a filmmaker’s vision.

In both movies and TV, Apple has been selective with its programming strategy.

It doesn’t have a vast library or a deluge of new releases to keep people interested the way Netflix does. Thus, its subscriber counts have lagged the bigger rivals with more voluminous offerings, according to analysts. (Apple doesn’t disclose subscriber numbers.)

Ask anyone in Hollywood why, exactly, Apple is in the movie business at all and you’ll get varied answers.

Of course, the company wants to grow Apple TV+, which Apple views as part of a larger play to boost its services business. Having a hit movie, in theory, should help with that. People who work with Apple will often argue that the company is more interested in the branding glow that comes with a great movie than whether any particular title makes money.

The company has developed a reputation for quality, especially with buzzy TV projects including Jon Hamm’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” Seth Rogen’s “The Studio” and, more recently, “Stick” starring Owen Wilson.

“We studied it for years before we decided to do [Apple TV+],” Cook told Variety. “I know there’s a lot of different views out there about why we’re into it. We’re into it to tell great stories, and we want it to be a great business as well. That’s why we’re into it, just plain and simple.”

For Apple, the question of whether to commit to the blockbuster business is a billion-dollar component of a $3-trillion car.

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

California legislators voted Friday to more than double the amount allocated each year to the state’s film and television tax credit program, raising that cap to $750 million from $330 million.

The increase is a win for the studios, producers, unions and industry workers who have lobbied state legislators for months on the issue, Samantha Masunaga reported.

Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed the increase to help lure productions back to the state at a time when local film and TV employment is sparse.

But other states have not given up the arms race.

New York recently upped its film tax credit cap to $800 million. Texas is also ramping up its incentive program to compete with regional rivals.

Finally …

Watch: “Becoming Led Zeppelin.”

Listen: Dream Theater, “Night Terror.”