star wars

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.”

Disney+ is offering a fantastic deal for streaming fans, with households able to get four months for £1.99 a month

Disney+ is presenting a cracking deal for streaming enthusiasts in the UK, offering four months of access for £1.99 a month instead. However, time is running out to grab it with the offer set to expire on June 30.

For less than the cost of a Starbucks brew or a meal deal, Disney+ streamers can indulge in Marvel Cinematic Universe shows, including WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, and Ms. Marvel for much less than the usual price – and the rate will last until the end of October.

The platform also boasts a variety of Star Wars series, such as Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, Ahsoka, The Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and The Clone Wars, ensuring there’s a wealth of content to keep viewers hooked for months. Classic Walt Disney animated films like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Hocus Pocus, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and The Lion King are also ready for your viewing enjoyment.

READ MORE: World-renowned dentists give teeth whitener ‘5-star seal of approval’ in tests

READ MORE: ‘I’m a TV Editor and these are the 5 Disney+ shows I’m bingeing’

There’s also new content including the new season 4 of FX’s The Bear (that premiered on June 26) and the riveting new sci-fi drama, Alien: Earth, which is set for release later this summer (August 13). These join the newly-released Snow White and Ironheart.

The Stolen Girl is another smash hit that has garnered critical praise. The Disney+ £1.99 offer lasts for four months, providing streamers plenty of time to explore the extensive library of content on offer.

Get Disney+ for £1.99 a month

£4.99

£1.99

Disney+

Get the deal here

Disney+ has brought back its popular deal that lets new and returning customers join its Standard with Ads plan for £1.99 per month for four months.

This means members can stream hit shows like Andor, The Bear and Alien: Earth, plus countless titles from Star Wars and Marvel, for a fraction of the usual price.

However, it’s crucial to remember that the £1.99 offer pertains only to the Standard with Ads version, so subscribers will have to tolerate commercials while watching their beloved shows, which may cause irritation.

Disney+ has been met with praise on Trustpilot, where one happy user commented: “Very good selection, friendly support and easy to cancel if you need to. Very easy to navigate their site, and the openness and transparency they show should be a model for others.”

Nevertheless, one disgruntled customer criticised the ad frequency, remarking: “Way too many adverts. Luckily I got it free for three months, but would not pay to extend it.”

For families seeking additional streaming services, numerous offers are available. Sky has its own streaming deals, such as the £15 per month Sky Stream package.

Furthermore, DAZN is giving sports enthusiasts an opportunity to sample its service through a limited-time trial offer. The Disney+ £1.99 deal can be snagged by households here.

It was only a matter of time before the major Hollywood studios started taking the fight to the artificial intelligence industry over its alleged abuse of intellectual property.

Now, it’s on.

Last week, Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures sued AI firm Midjourney in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, accusing the popular image generator of blatantly copying and profiting from copyrighted images of characters from franchises such as “Star Wars,” “Minions,” “Cars,” Marvel, “The Simpsons” and “Shrek.”

The complaint cited numerous examples, illustrated with dozens of striking photos, of San Francisco-based Midjourney’s technology being used to generate virtually indistinguishable copies of Darth Vader, Iron Man, Bart, Woody and Elsa, sometimes in frames quite similar to scenes from the actual movies and TV shows.

The lawsuit says Midjourney employed such images to promote its subscription service and encourage the use of its image generator. The companies are seeking unspecified monetary compensation, as well as a court order to stop Midjourney from further infringement, including by using studio-owned material to train its upcoming video tool.

“Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism,” Disney and Universal’s lawyers wrote in the 110-page complaint. “Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing.”

The stakes of this battle are high, according to the studios. The AI company’s misuse of Disney and Universal’s intellectual property “threatens to upend the bedrock incentives of U.S. copyright law that drive American leadership in movies, television, and other creative arts,” the court document said.

Midjourney has not responded to requests for comment.

AI companies have typically argued that they are protected by “fair use” doctrine, which allows for the limited reproduction of material without permission from the copyright holder.

Midjourney founder David Holz in 2022 told Forbes that the company did not seek permission from copyright holders, saying “there isn’t really a way to get a hundred million images and know where they’re coming from.”

This battle is a long time coming.

Artists — including screenwriters, animators, illustrators and other entertainment industry workers — have been raising the alarm for years about the threat of AI, not just to their actual jobs but to the work they create. AI models are trained on anything and everything that’s publicly available on the internet, which includes copyrighted material owned by studios or the artists themselves, they argue.

The Writers Guild of America last year called on the big entertainment companies to take legal action against tech giants and startups in order to put a stop to such “theft.” But this is the first time any of the major film studios have gone after an AI company for copyright infringement. They may not be the last.

The studios are following the lead of the New York Times and other publishers, who sued OpenAI and its backer Microsoft over alleged plagiarism. The major music labels have also taken AI firms to court over the use of copyrighted music. Studios are in an awkward position because they’re weighing the possibility of licensing their content to AI firms or using the technology for their own purposes.

Reid Southen, a Michigan-based film concept artist whose research on AI was cited at length in the lawsuit, said he hopes Disney and Universal’s complaint encourages others to take a similar stance.

“Hopefully, I think other studios are looking at what’s going on with Disney and Universal now, and considering, ‘Hey, what about our properties?’” said Southen, who has worked on studio films including “The Matrix Resurrections,” “The Hunger Games” and “Blue Beetle.” “If Universal and Disney think they have a strong enough case to pursue this, I would hope other studios would take note of that and maybe pursue it as well.”

Southen became part of the story in December 2023, after the release of Midjourney v6 started making waves online. He saw someone use the tech to generate an image of Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, and he started messing around with it himself to see what kinds of copyrighted material he could prompt it to rip off. He posted the results on social media, which led AI researcher Gary Marcus to reach out.

Marcus and Southen published an in-depth article for IEEE Spectrum in January 2024, making the case that Midjourney and other well-funded AI firms were training their models on copyrighted work without their permission or compensation and spitting out images nearly identical to the studios’ own material.

That article illustrated how simple prompts could produce nearly exact replicas of famous film and TV characters.

The prompts didn’t necessarily need to ask for a particular character by name.

The researchers were able to coax uncanny images from AI with prompts as basic as “animated toys” (resulting in pictures of “Toy Story” characters) and “videogame plumber” (which turned up versions of Mario from “Super Mario”). According to Marcus and Southen, all it took was the phrase “popular movie screencap” to evoke a picture similar to an actual frame from “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” or “The Dark Knight.”

“It shows that they are very clearly trained on hundreds, if not thousands, of movies and YouTube videos and screen caps and all this stuff, because I was able to find matching screen caps and images, not just from trailers, but from deep in movies themselves,” Southen said.

The Midjourney examples were the most egregious, Southen said, but the company was not the only offender. For instance, OpenAI’s image generation technology DALL-E was also capable of producing “plagiaristic” images of copyrighted characters without prompting them specifically by name, Southen said, echoing the findings of his and Marcus’ IEEE Spectrum article.

OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. The Disney and Universal lawsuit did not name OpenAI, which is also responsible for the video generator Sora that is trying to take the film business by storm.

Many chatbots and text-to-image tools have guardrails around intellectual property, but they clearly have limitations. Ask ChatGPT to create an image of Kermit the Frog, and it will flatly reject the request. However, for example, I was recently able to request a picture of a Muppet-like female pig character, and the result was not unlike Miss Piggy, though I wouldn’t quite say it was a one-for-one copy.

Southen argues that this is a sign of a serious flaw in large language model training — the fact that they’ve already been fed on so much publicly available data. “Sometimes it’s not giving you something that’s spot-on, but it’s giving you enough that you know that it knows what it’s doing,” he said. “Like, you know where it’s pulling from.”

In public comments, studio executives have made it clear that they’re not against AI as a whole. “We are bullish on the promise of AI technology and optimistic about how it can be used responsibly as a tool to further human creativity,” said Horacio Gutierrez, Disney’s chief legal and compliance officer, in a statement on the lawsuit.

As media industry expert Peter Csathy put it in a recent newsletter, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do AI.

But even doing it the right way will be disruptive. Use of AI for storyboarding and pre-visualization could save millions of dollars, which translates to more job losses in the entertainment industry. Lionsgate and AMC Networks have announced deals to use AI to streamline operations and processes.

For artists like Southen, that’s a troubling reality. He said he has seen his annual income shrink in half since generative AI technology came on the scene.

“You can point at things like the strikes and other stuff going on, but the story is the same for most of the people that I know — that their income since all this stuff came has been dramatically impacted,” he said. “Work that was otherwise very steady for me for a long time is just nowhere to be found anymore.”

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

Streaming just notched a significant milestone.

The technology’s share of total television usage overtook the combined viewership of broadcast and cable for the first time, according to Nielsen.

Streaming represented 44.8% of TV viewership in May 2025, the data firm said, marking a record, while broadcast clocked in at 20.1% and cable garnered 24.1% for a combined 44.2% going to linear viewing.

Nielsen cautioned that rankings may fluctuate because broadcast networks still command a tremendous share of eyeballs, particularly when NFL football airs.

Finally …

I caught some stellar acts at the Hollywood’s Bowl’s Blue Note Jazz Festival on Saturday. Shout-out to saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin and bassist Derrick Hodge. Here’s Benjamin’s Tiny Desk Concert performance for NPR.

“Spaceballs 2” is incoming, director Mel Brooks confirmed Thursday on social media, 38 years after the original “Spaceballs” crashed onto the space-opera scene.

Hey, what’s a few decades between friends, amirite?

Given that three-quarters of the current moviegoing audience was not even born 38 years ago, a person might wonder why they should care about a “Spaceballs” sequel. Well! We. Have. Answers.

‘Spaceballs 2’ will have a director

The sequel will have a director and that director is not Brooks, perhaps because Brooks is 98 years old. Plus the jokester hasn’t directed a movie since 1995’s “Dracula: Dead and Loving It.” But Brooks was, indeed, the auteur behind “The Producers,” “Blazing Saddles” and “Young Frankenstein,” so he might make it in Hollywood someday. Tell the folks at CAA: “Spaceballs 2” could be the boost his resume needs.

The news so far, according to Variety, is this: Brooks will be back as Yogurt — just plain Yogurt — and Josh Gad will star. Perhaps he’ll star as Outerspace Olaf, a mercenary snowman who likes warm hugs and thinks a space princess is a person worth melting for. Gad, Benji Samit and Dan Hernandez are writing the script, and Josh Greenbaum (“Barb and Starr Go to Vista Del Mar”) will direct.

Everybody loves Bill Pullman

Please don’t argue. It’s a known fact that Everybody loves Bill Pullman.

The “Spaceballs 2” team loves Bill Pullman so much that, according to Variety, in addition to inviting him to reprise his character from the original comedy, they have also cast his son Lewis Pullman in a role to be named later. Let’s hope the elder Pullman’s Lone Starr has eased into retirement and Pullman the Younger gets to play a younger version of the Luke Skywalker-scented hero.

‘Spaceballs’ was good, but not that good

Exactly! There’s still room to improve!

“‘Spaceballs’ might have been much funnier and more inventive on a much smaller budget,” The Times said in its 1987 review of the movie. “Occasionally the expense pays off, as in the wonderful opening shot of an insanely elaborate starship that sweeps over us against inky infinity, going on and on … and on and on! But sometimes the elaborate jokes just clang and clunk, as when Lone Starr jams the Spaceballs radar with real jam — and no peanut butter.”

That sounds like an argument for half the budget, double the jokes and a variety of Uncrustables at the craft services table.

‘Spaceballs 2’ is slated for release in 2027

The year 2027 is so close, yet sounds so far, far away. It also will mark the 50th anniversary of the release of the original “Star Wars” movie, which was once known simply as “Star Wars,” not “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope.”

As the glorious celebrations of Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, Obi-Wan and the gang ring out in Hollywood in 2027, “Spaceballs 2” should land next to them with a resounding fart. A resounding fart joke, at least. Maybe two.

Jar Jar Binks didn’t exist in 1987

Sure, Rick Moranis will be back for “Spaceballs 2,” per Deadline, reprising the role of Dark Helmet, the villain whose voice resonates and booms when his helmet is down and turns squeaky and annoying when the mask is raised. And Keke Palmer, who was born in 1993, will reportedly have a part as well, though no clues have been given as to who or what she’ll play.

Just don’t have Palmer play Jar Jar Binks’ father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate, please, because Dark Helmet already spent that punch line on Lone Starr back in 1987. Jar Jar was, of course, the duck-billed breakout star, sorta, of 1999’s “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace.” Don’t click that link, just take our word for it.

That said, you know there just has to be a Jar Jar Binks gag or two in “Spaceballs 2.” Read aloud with me now: Mesa no tink so, you say? Ex-squeeze me, but yousa be wrong. Terrible tings goen happen if Jar Jar remains nothing more than the most annoying and unnecessary CGI character ever to please George Lucas. Give the Gungan some gas to go with that pidgin English and anything could happen.

Times have changed — or have they?

In our post-#MeToo landscape, rife with “you can’t say that” sensibilities, some “Spaceballs”-style gags might fall flat. Then again, as The Times said in its 1987 review of the original film, “This is a multimillion-dollar extravaganza satirizing other multimillion-dollar extravaganzas — which begins to seem a bit like attacking a President by hitting him over the head with another President.”

Given that in the occasionally dystopian 2020s, hitting presidents over the head with other presidents is no big deal, the new film might make perfect sense, even if it doesn’t improve one bit. Then again, will Yiddish gags play to the keffiyeh-clad youngs? Or will the jokes simply bomb?

Only “Spaceballs 2” will tell.

Disney+ is back with a mega-cheap £1.99 streaming offer – these are the series our team is loving

The weekend is here and for those keen to relax on the sofa with a bingeable series, there’s lots on offer. Disney+ is making headlines for the return of one of its most affordable deals, as prices drop to £1.99.

The deal ditches the usual £4.99 per month price of the Standard with Ads plan for a much cheaper £1.99 rate. It makes it the cheapest major streaming site, less than Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV+ tariffs.

Shoppers will have to sign up for the subscription to get the £1.99 price, but there is no required contract and users can leave after each 30-day window. The deal is available to snap up by June 30, and it lasts for four months before rising to the previous £4.99 rate.

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With a packed TV guide for the summer, including the live-action Snow White and Marvel’s Ironheart, there’s plenty to watch. As a team filled with series lovers, we’ve got a handful of recommendations from the new Welcome to Wrexham season, reality dramas The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, or decade classics like Grey’s Anatomy.

Get Disney+ for £1.99 for four months

£4.99

£1.99

Disney+

Get the deal here

Disney+ has brought back its popular deal that lets new and returning customers join its Standard with Ads plan for £1.99 per month for four months.

This means members can stream hit shows like Andor, The Bear and Alien: Earth, plus countless titles from Star Wars and Marvel, for a fraction of the usual price.

Narin’s favourites – Daredevil: Born Again and Welcome to Wrexham

Daredevil: Born Again might be the best TV series I’ve watched this year so far. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio reprise their roles as Daredevil and Kingpin as the two old adversaries clash once more, with both men trying to juggle their public personas and secret lives inextricably linked with New York’s crime-ridden underbelly.

The result is a show that takes the best of the already-brilliant Netflix run (including some fan favourite returns) and surprisingly makes it even darker and more brutal – what would Walt say?

As a proud comic book geek I freely confess that Marvel fatigue has been a thing for a while now, with much of their output proving a miss rather than a hit for me. Daredevil: Born Again (and actually also Thunderbolts which will be coming to the streaming giant in due course) are a pleasing and much-needed return to quality and definitely a must-see.

Welcome to Wrexham season four is streaming now on Disney+ and this £1.99 deal allows you to watch the thrilling climax of the celeb-led club’s season week by week. In the four short years since A-listers Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought Wrexham AFC for £2 million the club’s fortunes have transformed, taking it into a £150m+ force in football.

This show offers a great behind-the-scenes look at that ascendance, led by both men alongside a cast of supporting characters, including the team’s sweary yet brilliant manager Phil Parkinson and Executive Director Humphrey Ker.

Don’t let the football distract you, though – at its core, this is as much a show about the community and people who live around Wrexham as the on-pitch shenanigans and all the better for it. If you like your reality TV heartwarming rather than angsty then this is your next perfect binge watch.

Harriet’s favourite – The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives

If drama, gossip, affairs and the craze of social media is your thing then I’d highlighy recommend The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Season 2 of the reality series has recently hit Disney+ after a gripping first season – and I’ve never been more hooked on a series.

Yes, you have to enjoy shows like Keeping Up with Kardashians and The Real Housewives to love this. The series follows a group of MomTok influencers and their Mormon community as they navigate growing social presence and scandals.

Jake’s favourite – Andor Season 2

I’ve been a huge Star Wars fan since I was a little kid, but had almost given up on the franchise after some of its recent output left me with Jedi fatigue. That was until the new season of Andor pulled me well and truly back in.

After admittedly not being blown away by the first season, I was completely gripped by the eponymous rebel spy’s latest mission, so much so that I binged the whole thing in one weekend. It may not feature any lightsabers or Jedi, but what it does offer cements its position as one of the greatest Star Wars titles there is and without doubt, the best episodic instalment yet.

There simply aren’t enough superlatives to describe the series; it’s beautifully shot, each performance is Emmy-worthy and the high-stakes of Andor’s mission result in incredibly intense viewing – especially in the latter half of the series. Going back to watch Rogue One – which is set immediately after the Andor finale – completely changes the viewer’s perspective on the story, making a great film even better.

Jada’s favourite – Abbotts Elementary

Quinta Brunson has been on my radar since she first went viral for her ‘he got money’ videos when I was a teenager, with her enthusiastically telling anyone who would listen that her cinema date was rich since he bought a large popcorn. I’ve watched her through the Buzzfeed years and when I heard that her award-winning show was going to be available to stream on Disney+ I knew it was time to get a subscription.

Abbott Elementary is about a public school in Philadelphia where the odds aren’t really in anyone’s favour. It’s so consistently funny that I’d love to be a fly on the wall of their writer’s room. Quinta plays Janine Teagues, a perky second-grade teacher with so much enthusiasm to make a positive difference. The cast are all hilarious in their own right, Ava the principal (played by Janelle James), who bribed her way into a job has to be one of the standout characters and over the seasons she seems a little more vulnerable even if she remains obnoxiously tone deaf.

There’s romantic tension with Janine and Gregory, played by Everybody Hates Chris star Tyler James Williams, that had me routing for them the whole way through as they awkwardly navigate their feelings.

It’s easily the best mockumentary sitcom I’ve ever seen, my only gripe is the episodes are released later in the UK than the US – so I made sure to catch up to the season finale when I visited the states earlier this year.

Eve’s favourite is something Disney+ doesn’t offer

1883 is, without a doubt, one of the best TV series I have watched to date. I’m a bit of an all-rounder when it comes to the shows I watch.

I’m a sucker for Gilmore Girls and Ginny & Georgia (both on Netflix) as well as the hit, edge-of-your-seat, relatively brutal mob-family extravaganza Mobland (Amazon Prime), Ted Lesso (Apple TV), The Last of Us (NOW) and New Girl (Disney+). All of which bring very different things to the table. But when I was recommended 1883, aside from knowing the bare bones of its description, I had no idea what to expect.

Ginny and Georgia season 3 – Get Netflix free with Sky

from £15

Sky

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Sky is giving away a free Netflix subscription with its new Sky Stream TV bundles, including the £15 Essential TV plan.

This lets members watch live and on-demand TV content without a satellite dish or aerial and includes hit shows like Ginny and Georgia.

A prequel to the highly regarded Yellowstone (a show still on my watch-list), 1883 is an American Western drama miniseries which follows the origin story of the Dutton family to the Yellowstone ranch. The show sees the five Dutton family members in post-Civil War America flee poverty in Texas and embark on a long, arduous journey through the Great Plains in the hope of a better future in Montana.

A description of the show on IMDB reads: “The post-Civil War generation of the Dutton family travels to Texas, and joins a wagon train undertaking the arduous journey west to Oregon, before settling in Montana to establish what would eventually become the Yellowstone Ranch.”

Exploring the use and roles ranchhands/cowboys as well as the history, challenges and conflicts faced by the Indiginous Americans during this period, it’s an action-packed, heart-wrenching story that had me hooked.

The 10-part series features some pretty big names in the world of film as country music such as Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliott and even has cameos from Billy Bob Thornton and Tom Hanks. Its sequel, 1923, stars Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford – also an incredible watch on Paramount+

Phoebe’s favourite – Grey’s Anatomy

Grey’s Anatomy is my mum’s favourite TV show of all time. She has been a loyal viewer since the first series aired in the mid-2000s, so when it was announced that the American medical drama would be available on Disney+, I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

I signed up and began binge-watching the gripping show right away. I can happily say Grey’s Anatomy has earned a place in my top TV shows of all-time. It’s full of heart and passion, and a bunch of characters I adore. The show’s creator Shonda Rhimes has me laughing out loud one minute and ugly crying the next. With there being 21 series and over 400 episodes waiting to be watched, it’s sure to keep households entertained for months.

Disney Plus has brought back a mega monthly deal that shaves 60% off its usual price and makes it the cheapest streamer compared to Netflix, Prime Video and Apple TV+

Disney+ is offering a subscription for £1.99 with the return of a hugely popular streaming deal. The streamer from the House of Mouse has just kicked off a ‘limited-time promotion’ that saves 60% compared to the usual price.

It allows both new and returning customers to subscribe to Disney+ Standard with Ads for £1.99 per month for four months. This would usually cost a total of £19.96 but is now up for grabs for £7.96 – a £12 discount.

However, the deal won’t be around for long and is due to expire on June 30. After the four-month promotional period, Disney+ Standard with Ads will automatically renew at the then-current monthly retail price until cancelled.

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The deal makes Disney+ the most affordable major streamer compared to the cheapest subscription tiers of Netflix (£5.99), Amazon’s Prime Video (£5.99) and Apple TV+ (£8.99). It comes ahead of a packed summer slate of new and returning films and series, led by Disney blockbuster Snow White, streaming now.

Also on the way this summer are Marvel’s Ironheart (June 25), season four of The Bear (June 26) and new prequel series Alien: Earth (August 13). They’re set to join an ever-growing library featuring recent hits and critically acclaimed series, Andor, Welcome to Wrexham, Rivals, Only Murders in the Building and Shōgun.

Get Disney+ for £1.99 for four months

£4.99

£1.99

Disney+

Get the deal here

Disney+ has brought back its popular deal that lets new and returning customers join its Standard with Ads plan for £1.99 per month for four months.

This means members can stream hit shows like Andor, The Bear and Alien: Earth, plus countless titles from Star Wars and Marvel, for a fraction of the usual price.

The £1.99 deal also provides access to the Stolen Girl, Good American Family and season two of the beloved reality series, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. For those put off by the prospect of adverts interrupting their viewing, the Disney+ plan plays on average less than four minutes of ads per hour of TV, which is less than on terrestrial TV.

What’s more, adverts will only play before a film starts and not during. Aside from the deal, Disney+ also offers the equivalent of two months free to those paying for a year upfront on the Standard or Premium plan.

Opting for an annual plan provides 12 months access for the price of 10 and saves up to £25.98, as well as higher video quality up to 4K UHD and HDR and the ability to stream on four devices simultaneously. Of the many positive reviews left by Disney+ members on Trustpilot, one says: “Offering a fantastic and constantly updated collection.”

Another says: “I love Disney+. I’m a Star Wars and Marvel fan but since the addition of Starz it boosted my love, there’s even more content for adults now that’s worth it all round.

However, the same user added: “Only reason it didn’t get five stars is Disney are not using their other brands in the subscription. If they did this could easily be the best subscription service ever but there is much more content locked behind their own service.”

However, another five-star review says: “Good servers, good services, this nostalgia when watching old cartoons from TV. The subscription is really cheap compared to other streaming services.”

Meredith Hayden, a New York-based social media influencer and cookbook author, didn’t start out wanting to create comforting content.

But that’s exactly what resonated with audiences.

She went viral a few years ago by posting about her “day in the life” as a private chef in the Hamptons. Now she has a large following on YouTube for her Wishbone Kitchen brand and her “Dinner With Friends” video series, where she shows herself setting up relaxing dinner parties, making French-style hot chocolate and re-creating a cozy coffee shop at home.

You might see her online wearing pajamas or in bed with her dog while talking to the camera. She doesn’t edit out the parts where she messes up the recipe, saying her fans appreciate the flubs. Hayden, who recently completed a tour for “The Wishbone Kitchen Cookbook,” said she isn’t necessarily going for a vibe, at least not intentionally, despite the clear Ina Garten influence.

“This is really just how I live my life,” Hayden, 29, said by phone. “I am glad it comes across as comforting, because I’m definitely someone who gravitates more towards ‘comfort content’ myself.”

“I’m not planning on watching ‘Severance,’” she added, saying she gravitates toward more wholesome, grounded content, such as home makeover shows of the non-competitive variety.

That personal preference aligns with a broader trend among young adult viewers, according to recent data from United Talent Agency, the Beverly Hills representation firm. The company’s data and insights group, UTA IQ, compiled stats suggesting that many younger consumers are leaning toward material that soothes the nerves and acts as a warm blanket, rather than ratcheting up the anxiety.

“Comfort content” is like popping a Lorazepam (though not in the excessive dose Parker Posey’s character takes in “The White Lotus”) or CBD gummy at the end of the day. The trend is playing out across TV, streaming, literature and social media, said UTA IQ executive Abby Bailey.

She sees it in the rise of #CleanTok videos (totaling 49 billion views last year), in which people do mundane household chores, as well as robust streaming viewership of nostalgic low-intensity sitcoms including “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” and the successful February debut of a new CBS soap opera, “Beyond the Gates.”

“Somber themes, intellectual depth, cultural satires — those have always defined prestige entertainment, and it’s left many to discount the value and the viewership of this more lighthearted, comforting programming,” Bailey told The Times. “But as audiences are prioritizing their well-being and taking brain-breaks from the weight of the world, the definition of what’s capital ‘I’ important in entertainment is shifting.”

The changing attitudes are particularly noticeable in the young adult entertainment space, which several years ago was dominated by postapocalyptic teen dramas such as “The Hunger Games” and the “Divergent” series.

More than half (58%) of U.S. adults ages 18 to 30 say TV shows and movies depicting young adults have become too dark and heavy, according to UTA IQ’s April poll of more than 1,000 people. More than 70% said they want to see lighter and more joyful TV shows with young people.

That’s not to say that the upcoming season of the dark and sexually explicit “Euphoria” won’t be successful or that the next “Hunger Games” film won’t work at the box office. That type of content still has its place, even as tastes evolve. But studios and streamers appear to be noticing the audience’s shifting habits.

Examples are popping up in the young adult space on streaming services, including Tubi’s 2024 sports romance movie “Sidelined: The QB & Me,” which is getting a sequel. The Netflix teen drama “My Life With the Walter Boys” was recently renewed for a third season, ahead of its Season 2 premiere.

There are plenty of other opportunities now for young people to take mental breaks on the couch, from the rise of “cozy gaming” to the crossover appeal of “healing fiction,” a genre of whimsical books from Japan and Korea that have taken off elsewhere. Olympic diver Tom Daley, who went viral when he was photographed knitting between his events in Tokyo, created a competition show called “Game of Wool” that will debut on Channel 4 in the U.K.

Some millennial parents have turned to gentler, less overstimulating TV shows from decades ago — think “Arthur” and “Clifford the Big Red Dog” — to co-view with their young children.

Comfort content is certainly nothing new. The term brings to mind the idyllic autumnal walkways of Stars Hollow, the fictional small town from “Gilmore Girls,” as well as just about anything on the Hallmark Channel, which has enough of a following to justify its own $8-a-month subscription streaming service.

But there may be a reason the category is finding renewed purchase in trying times. Bailey hears that theme from consumers who just aren’t in the mood for any more nail-biters. “Time and time again, I get people saying, ‘I just can’t bring myself to watch anything serious,’” Bailey said. “‘Like, all I want to do is watch Bravo.’”

Stuff we wrote

Studio splitsville

As expected, Warner Bros. Discovery will split into two companies, separating its streaming and studios businesses from the struggling television networks business, the New York-based media giant said Monday.

The Streaming & Studios company will consist of the film and TV studios as well as HBO and HBO Max. The Global Networks company (which is taking on much of the debt) will have CNN, Discovery and other channels.

The divorce is aimed to be completed by mid-2026. Afterward, Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav will be CEO of the streaming and studios group, while Chief Financial Officer Gunnar Wiedenfels will run the networks.

The firm previously foreshadowed this move by restructuring its operations along similar lines.

Warner Bros. Discovery thus joins Comcast’s NBCUniversal, which is sweeping basic cable networks, including MSNBC and USA, into a new separate entity called Versant. It’s widely speculated that Paramount Global — if and when the Skydance deal happens — will also eventually unload declining legacy networks.

The breakups reflect an ongoing reality — linear television is in big trouble. The struggles of the cable bundle have continued to weigh on studio finances, with customers moving rapidly to on-demand services.

Indeed, if anyone thought the entertainment business’ bloodletting was over after last year’s series of layoffs, Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. Discovery disabused them of that notion in recent days.

Disney slashed several hundred employees on June 2. An actual number was not disclosed, but the cuts are significant, coming after Bob Iger embarked on a plan to reduce staff by 8,000 two years ago following his return as chief executive.

The latest layoffs hit film and television marketing teams, television publicity, casting and development as well as corporate financial operations. The cuts happen to land as the company is celebrating huge box office results from “Lilo & Stitch.”

The new downsizing comes amid Disney’s efforts to pare down its production pipeline after binge-spending during the streaming wars. The reduction corresponds to Disney’s efforts to focus on quality over quantity while also cutting costs.

A couple days after Disney’s layoffs, Warner Bros. Discovery cut staff from its cable television channels business. Those Warner Bros. Discovery reductions were smaller in scale (eliminating fewer than 100 roles), but the message to the industry couldn’t be clearer. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has also undergone layoffs.

The question is: What comes next? Many expect the cast-off Warner and NBCUniversal networks to merge at some point, with Paramount channels perhaps joining them one day.

Finally …

Listen: Turnstile’s new album “Never Enough” is out. Also, The Beths have a new tune. Sabrina Carpenter’s latest has already been declared the “song of the summer.”

The PG rating has made a major comeback in Hollywood.

It’s strange to remember now, but during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic — when studios were sending many of their family-friendly movies straight to streaming services — there were serious conversations in the movie business about whether youngsters and their parents would ever return to theaters in full force.

Streaming was just too convenient and affordable, compared with a Saturday outing of two parents and 2 1/2 kids, the logic went.

But in recent years, the family audience has proved to be a bulwark for the theatrical movie business.

Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch” topped the domestic box office again over the weekend with $63 million in ticket sales, for a total of $280 million so far. It beat the latest “Mission: Impossible” and the new “Karate Kid: Legends,” both rated PG-13. As of Sunday, “Lilo & Stitch” had crossed $610 million globally.

Warner Bros. and Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie,” also rated PG, has amassed $423 million in the U.S. and Canada, the best of the year so far. Adding international grosses, its global tally is $947 million.

Nine PG-rated movies have been released in more than 2,000 locations this year, up from six during the same period in 2024, according to industry estimates. Those movies have accounted for 41% of ticketing revenue in the U.S. and Canada this year, compared with 21% a year ago. (The Pixar megahit “Inside Out 2” was released in mid-June of 2024.)

Family films are a boon to studios and theaters at a time when other categories — such as comic book films and one-off dramas and comedies — have been less reliable than they were in the past.

And there’s more to come, including Universal’s “How to Train Your Dragon” remake, Pixar’s “Elio” and DreamWorks Animation’s “The Bad Guys 2.”

Importantly, many of these movies are coming one after the other, which is essential if the industry hopes to re-create the moviegoing habit for current and future generations, especially as social media, YouTube and video games claim more of young people’s attention.

“One of the things that I think the industry has struggled with over the last number of years is just having a regular cadence of movies in the theater,” said Michael O’Leary, head of the trade group Cinema United (formerly the National Assn. of Theatre Owners). “If you’re a young person, and there’s a six-month gap between movies, there’s a lot of things going on, and your attention wanes.”

The focus on PG-rated content stands in contrast with a few years ago, when the PG-13 rating was widely seen as the way to include a broad, “four-quadrant” audience: men, women, old and young. A PG rating tagged a new release as more of a kids movie. PG-13, the label for Marvel and DC movies, had more of a cool factor for teens and young adults.

O’Leary has a theory for why things have shifted, and it has to do with the media consumption habits of today’s very young, known as Generation Alpha, or those who came after Gen Z.

Kids now are more than just digitally native.

They’re aware of new movies and TV shows coming out, in part because of exposure to social media at an earlier age compared with past generations of children. Parents will naturally be more comfortable taking their 7- and 8-year-olds to something like “Minecraft,” because they’re less likely to be presented with objectionable content.

The Motion Picture Assn.’s rating system, though sometimes fraught and misunderstood, is meant as a guide for parents.

“Younger people are inundated with more and more content at an earlier age, and they’ve become, in some ways, more discriminating connoisseurs of what they want to see,” O’Leary said.

Surely there are some parents who take their kids to the movies less often now after the pandemic with the proliferation of at-home entertainment options. But overall, family movies are leading the industry. If the pandemic proved anything, it’s that if you’re a parent, you really can’t spend all your time in the house.

Gen Z — now anywhere from 13 to 28 years old — is clearly doing its part. According to a recent NRG survey, 37% of Gen Zers say they go to the movies more than six times a year, up from 29% who agreed with that statement in February 2023.

Adults, too, might be interested in seeing more PG content in theaters, particularly in the American heartland.

Angel Studios’ animated Jesus film “The King of Kings” performed well (though somewhat ironically, most of Angel’s live action movies are PG-13).

The post-pandemic recovery of the family audience hit a big milestone in 2023 with Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which grossed more than $1.36 billion worldwide. That was followed by the success of 2024 sequels such as “Inside Out 2,” “Moana 2,” “Despicable Me 4” and “Mufasa: The Lion King,” which all benefited from multigenerational appeal.

The blockbuster Broadway adaptation “Wicked” was also rated PG, which helped make it a family moviegoing event.

Now, the category is again on a hot streak. Industry analyst David A. Gross declared in a recent edition of his FranchiseRe newsletter, “the production pipeline is full and any loss of audience to streaming during the pandemic is over.”

What hasn’t come back as strongly? Most notably, superhero pictures — one of the pillars of moviegoing for the last couple decades. Before the pandemic, the industry averaged seven superhero movies a year, and those would drive billions of dollars in global revenue, Gross said. Lately, the genre has been significantly thinner and far less consistent.

R-rated horror movies are thriving (look at “Sinners” and “Final Destination Bloodlines”), but other adult-oriented movies are hit and miss.

Increasingly, when studios want to draw a mass audience, that means going younger.

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

What’s the magic number that will allow Paramount’s $8-billion merger with Skydance to go through?

The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount was willing to part with $15 million to settle President Trump’s lawsuit against the company over edits to its pre-election “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.

No surprise, that’s apparently not enough. Trump’s team wants more, the Journal reported. The president wants $25 million and an apology from CBS News, a source told the paper.

Trump’s critics, journalists and 1st Amendment experts say the lawsuit is basically a shakedown. Some anti-Trump lawmakers say a settlement by Paramount could amount to an illegal bribe.

Paramount is awaiting merger approval from the FCC, which is tasked with reviewing the transfer of broadcast licenses. Sources have told my colleague Meg James that the FCC approval process has been bogged down.

The company stresses that it sees the legal dispute and the FCC review as separate issues. No one believes Trump sees them that way.

On Monday, Paramount said it would add three new board members.

Finally …

There’s been an unreal amount of good TV on lately. I’ve been catching up on Nathan Fielder’s “The Rehearsal,” and often can’t believe what I’m seeing.

Also, Marc Maron is ending his podcast after 16 years. I’ve linked to various episodes in this newsletter. Here’s one I’m looking forward to catching up with.

Tourists have been warned to avoid the city of Dubrovnik in Croatia during the summer months, after holidaymakers have said the area has been ‘killed’ by huge crowds

Brits jetting off to Croatia for their summer holidays have been warned about immense crowds that have dampened the spirits of some travellers. The travel advisory concerns Dubrovnik – renowned as a key filming hotspot for blockbuster hits like ‘Star Wars‘ and ‘Game of Thrones’.

However, it seems that Dubrovnik’s allure extends beyond cinephiles and TV buffs, with early birds who’ve visited the city during peak season warning of overwhelming throngs that are tarnishing the charm of the locale. A Reddit user lamented the swarms of tourists, labelling them “insane” and indicating that Dubrovnik might only appeal to those who can “handle the crowds”.

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The commenter said: “We did a lot of Croatia some summers ago, it was REALLY crowded! Not even the cities, but places like the Plitvice Lakes were insane; also very hot! But there is a reason they are all there, it is worth it if you can handle the crowds!”

Despite its picturesque scenery and coveted coastline, Croatia is often knocked for being overpopulated, especially during tourist season.

The experts at Responsible Travel offer advice on how to avoid the crowds of tourists in Dubrovnik, stating: “Anyone who’s timed their holiday to Dubrovnik just wrong will know that sinking feeling of standing on the city walls, watching as a sixth cruise ship rocks up to the horizon.

“Like Venice and Barcelona before it, Dubrovnik has become synonymous with over tourism.” It’s worth noting that the city now imposes restrictions on the number of cruise ships that can dock within a certain timeframe.

The travel firm further clarified that the notion “tourism has ruined the city – or that you shouldn’t visit at all – isn’t quite right” as “Dubrovnik is still one of the prettiest cities in the world, spun with impossibly picturesque streets.”

However, they advised against visiting the city during the peak summer months. Responsible Travel continued: “Thanks to its location in the deep south of Croatia, Dubrovnik boasts some of the sunniest, warmest days in the country.

“Summer sees six ships a day docking in Gruz port, families taking advantage of school and work holidays, crowded beaches and city streets rivaling Venice in terms of crowds.

“Putting crowds aside, it’s not always the best time to visit the Dalmatian Coast anyway. July and August see temperatures soaring to 28°C, which turns the city and beach crowds into a different kind of ordeal.

“Activity holidays often take a break during this period; hiking in heatstroke conditions is no fun.”

When filmmakers say they’re experimenting with artificial intelligence, that news is typically received online as if they had just declared their allegiance to Skynet.

And so it was when Darren Aronofsky — director of button-pushing movies including “The Whale” and “Black Swan” — last week announced a partnership with Google AI arm DeepMind to use the tech giant’s capabilities in storytelling.

Aronofsky’s AI-focused studio Primordial Soup is producing three short movies from emerging filmmakers using Google tools, including the text-to-video model Veo. The first film, “Ancestra,” directed by Eliza McNitt, will premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 13, the Mountain View-based search giant said.

Google’s promotional materials take pains to show that “Ancestra” is a live-action film made by humans and with real actors, though it’s bolstered with effects and imagery — including a tiny baby holding a mother’s finger — that were created with AI.

The partnership was touted during Google’s I/O developer event, where the company showed off the new Veo 3, which allows users to create videos that include sound effects, ambient noise and speech (a step up from OpenAI-owned competitor, Sora). The company also introduced its new Flow film creation tool, essentially editing software using Google AI functions.

Google’s push to court creative types coincides with a separate initiative to help AI technology overcome its massive public relations problem.

As my colleague Wendy Lee wrote recently, the company is working with filmmakers including Sean Douglas and his famous father Michael Keaton to create shorts that aren’t made with AI, but instead portray the technology in a less apocalyptic light than Hollywood is used to.

Simply put, much of the public sees AI as a foe that will steal jobs, rip off your intellectual property, ruin your childhood, destroy the environment and possibly kill us all, like in “The Terminator,” “2001: A Space Odyssey” and the most recent “Mission: Impossible” movies. And Google, which is making a big bet by investing in AI, has a lot riding on changing that perception.

There’s a ways to go, including in the entertainment industry.

Despite the allure of cost-savings, traditional studios haven’t exactly dived headfirst into the AI revolution. They’re worried about the legal implications of using models trained on troves of copyrighted material, and they don’t want to anger the entertainment worker unions, which went on strike partly over AI fears just a couple years ago. The New York Times and others have sued OpenAI and its investor Microsoft, alleging copyright theft. Tech giants claim they are protected by “fair use.”

AI-curious studios are walking into a wild, uncharted legal landscape because of the amount of copyrighted material being mined to teach the models, said Dan Neely, co-founder of startup Vermillio, which helps companies and individuals protect their intellectual property.

“The major studios and most people are going to be challenged using this product when it comes to the output content that you can and cannot use or own,” Neely said by phone. “Given that it contains vast quantities of copyrighted material, and you can get it to replicate that stuff pretty easily, that creates chaos for someone who’s creating with it.”

But while the legacy entertainment business remains largely skeptical of AI, many newer, digitally-native studios and creators are embracing it, whether their goals are to become the next Pixar or the next Mr. Beast.

The New York Times recently profiled the animation startup Toonstar, which says it uses AI throughout its production process, including when sharpening storylines and lip-syncing. John Attanasio, a Toonstar founder, told the paper that leaning into the tech would make animation “80 percent faster and 90 percent cheaper than industry norms.”

Jeffrey Katzenberg, the former leader of DreamWorks Animation, has given a similar estimate of the potential cost-savings for Hollywood cartoons.

Anyone working in the traditional computer animation business would have to gulp at those projections, whether they turn out to be accurate or not. U.S. animation jobs have already been hammered by outsourcing. Now here comes automation to finish the job. (Disney’s animated features cost well over $100 million to produce because they’re made by real-life animators in America.)

Proponents of AI will sometimes argue that the new technology isn’t a replacement for human workers, but rather a tool to enhance creativity. Some are more blunt: Stop worrying about these jobs and embrace the future of uninhibited creation. For obvious reasons, workers are reluctant to buy into that line of thinking.

More broadly, it’s still unclear whether all the spending on the AI arms race will ultimately be worth the cost. Goldman Sachs, in a 2024 report, estimated that companies would invest $1 trillion in AI infrastructure — including data centers, chips and the power grid — in the coming years.

But that same report raised questions about AI’s ultimate utility.

To be worth the gargantuan investment, the technology would have to be capable of solving far more complex problems than it does now, said one Goldman analyst in the report. In recent weeks, the flaws in the technology have crossed over into absurd territory: For example, by generating a summer reading list of fake books and legal documents polluted with serious errors and fabrications.

Big spending and experimentation doesn’t always pan out. Look at virtual reality, the metaverse and the blockchain.

But some entertainment companies are experimenting with the tools and finding applications. Meta has partnered with horror studio Blumhouse and James Cameron’s venture Lightstorm Vision on AI-related initiatives. AI firm Runway is working with Lionsgate. At a time when the movie industry is troubled in part due to the high cost of special effects, production companies are motivated to stay on top of advancing tech.

One of the most common arguments in favor of giving in to AI is that the technology will unshackle the next generation of creative minds.

Some AI-enhanced content is promising. But so far AI video tools have produced a remarkable amount of content that looks the same, with its oddly dreamlike sheen of unreality. That’s partly because the models are trained on color-corrected imagery available on the open internet or on YouTube. Licensing from the studios could help with that problem.

The idea of democratizing filmmaking through AI may sound good in theory. However, there are countless examples in movie history — including “Star Wars” and “Jaws” — of how having physical and budgetary restrictions are actually good for art, however painful and frustrating they may have been during production.

Even within the universe of AI-assisted material, the quality will vary dramatically depending on the talent and skill of people using it.

“Ultimately, it’s really hard to tell good stories,” Neely said. “The creativity that defines what you prompt the machine to do is still human genius — the best will rise to the top.”

Like other innovations, the technology will improve with time, as the new Google tools show. Both Veo 3 and Flow showcase how AI is becoming better and easier to use, though they are still not quite mass-market products. For its highest tier, Google is charging $250 a month for its suite of tools.

Maybe the next Spielberg will find their way through AI-assisted video, published for free on YouTube. Perhaps Sora and Veo will have a moment that propels them to mainstream acceptance in filmmaking, as “The Jazz Singer” did for talkies.

But those milestones still feel a long way off.

Stuff we wrote

Number of the week

The Memorial Day weekend box office achieved record revenue (not adjusting for inflation) of $329.8 million in the U.S. and Canada, thanks to the popularity of Walt Disney Co.’s “Lilo & Stitch” and Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.”

Disney’s live-action remake generated $183 million in domestic ticket sales, exceeding pre-release analyst expectations, while the latest Tom Cruise superspy spectacle opened with $77 million. The weekend was a continuation of a strong spring rebound for theaters. Revenue so far this year is now up 22% versus 2024, according to Comscore.

This doesn’t mean the movie business is saved, but it does show that having a mix of different kinds of movies for multiple audiences is healthy for cinemas. Upcoming releases include “Karate Kid: Legends,” “Ballerina,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and a Pixar original, “Elio.”

“Lilo & Stitch” is particularly notable, coming after Disney’s previous live-action redo, “Snow White,” bombed in theaters. While Snow White has an important place in Disney history, Stitch — the chaotic blue alien — has quietly become a hugely important character for the company, driving enormous merchandise sales over the years.

The 2002 original wasn’t a huge blockbuster, coming during an awkward era for Walt Disney Animation, but the remake certainly is.

Finally …

Watch: Prepping for the new “Naked Gun” by rewatching the classic and reliving the perfect Twitter meme.

Listen: My favorite episode of “Blank Check with Griffin & David” in a long time — covering Steven Spielberg’s “Hook” with Lin-Manuel Miranda.

If you want to understand what’s going on in the streaming business, go find Elmo and Cookie Monster.

Netflix’s recent deal to stream the upcoming season of “Sesame Street” is, on its own, a major step in the entertainment giant’s effort to become a go-to destination for preschooler programming. At the same time, it’s a useful way to understand one of the media industry’s other big stories of the last week — Warner Bros. Discovery’s re-rebranding of its streaming service back to HBO Max.

First, the deal itself.

Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix will begin streaming the beloved children’s show’s upcoming 56th season, along with 90 hours of older episodes, later this year. New “Sesame Street” episodes will continue to air in the U.S. on PBS’ stations and digital platforms, the nonprofit Sesame Workshop’s longtime TV partner (which could use a win amid Congress’ efforts to defund public broadcasting). Episodes will premiere the same day on PBS and Netflix.

The new season will be released in three batches, and will include some format changes and the return of popular segments such as “Elmo’s World” and “Cookie Monster’s Foodie Truck.” Episodes will now be built around one 11-minute story, reflecting the shorter attention spans of younger viewers. The partnership includes a new animated segment, “Tales from 123.” Additionally, Netflix will be able to develop “Sesame Street” video games.

Netflix is welcoming “Sesame Street” to its block after HBO parent company Warner Bros. Discovery opted not to re-up its deal for new episodes, citing a shift in corporate priorities during a period of harsh cost-cutting.

HBO — and by extension, the streaming service known until recently as Max — had been the home of “Sesame Street” for years. The company then called Time Warner inked its deal with Sesame Workshop a decade ago, before AT&T or David Zaslav and his Discovery empire entered the picture.

Having Big Bird appear on the exclusive and adult-skewing “Game of Thrones” network never made much sense, but the deal was a lifeline for Sesame Workshop and kept the show alive, though it raised concerns among parent groups.

After AT&T took over, WarnerMedia launched HBO Max, a much reviled rebranding that was meant to make room for more populist content, including “Friends” and “The Big Bang Theory.” It also allowed for more kids’ programming, such as shows from Cartoon Network and Hanna-Barbera, along with “Sesame Street.”

Then came Zaslav, who stripped HBO from the streamer’s name entirely, leaving it as just Max. Part of the justification of the change was that the name HBO, while well known and respected among fancy people in New York and L.A., was a turnoff for Middle America and those who might otherwise sign up to binge-watch “Dr. Pimple Popper” and Guy Fieri.

The executives were also convinced that the HBO brand, known for “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” was a deterrent for parents.

This was the era when streaming services were trying to be everything to everyone, and were losing billions of dollars trying to catch up to Netflix. Few companies other than Walt Disney Co. and HBO had distinct brands that made sense to people outside corporate conference rooms.

The decision to excise the HBO moniker was widely derided at the time as flawed managerial thinking.

Larry Vincent, a professor at USC Marshall School of Business and former UTA chief branding officer, called it a “classic case of right question, wrong answer” that will go down alongside New Coke in the annals of marketing blunders.

The name HBO has historically stood for quality, to the point that when people try to describe Apple TV+’s boutique streaming strategy, they compare it to early HBO. Last week, in an effective mea culpa during the media business’ big upfront week of presentations for advertisers, the company said the service would be called HBO Max again.

“It just violated everything we know about how you build a premium brand,” Vincent said of the earlier rebrand. “HBO has been at this for 50 years. It connotes a certain level of quality…. What we see now is that this is a reset to going back to the default position, because they realized this was silly.”

The backpedaling move drew howls from social media, journalists and rivals. Even Max’s own X account joined in on the fun. Warner Bros. Discovery executives were bracing for whatever John Oliver would say Sunday night during his show, and the comedian — never shy about bashing his own bosses — did not disappoint.

The decision was an admission of a couple things: First, that trying to be an “everything store” for entertainment was foolhardy when Netflix and Amazon both serve that exact purpose; and second, that it was a mistake to shy away from the brand that makes the streaming offering special.

Casey Bloys, chairman of HBO and Max content, said in a statement that returning to the old name “clearly states our implicit promise to deliver content that is recognized as unique and, to steal a line we always said at HBO, worth paying for.”

As my colleague Stephen Battaglio recently pointed out, when media companies put out new streaming services these days, there’s a tendency to avoid the now-cliche plus sign and stick with the brand name consumers already understand.

For example, Disney’s new $30 a month ESPN flagship service is simply called ESPN (ESPN+ is already taken by a more limited service).

Under Bloys, HBO has continued its tradition of highly regarded original series, with recent examples including the latest seasons of “The White Lotus,” “The Last of Us” and “The Righteous Gemstones.”

The brand confusion is still real, though. I’ve spoken with agents and read publications that should know better that mistakenly think “Hacks” and “The Pitt” are HBO shows, when they’re actually Max originals. That may not be important to consumers, but within the industry and for artists, it matters.

As for preschool-focused programming such as “Sesame Street,” that’s no longer a priority for Warner Bros. Discovery’s streaming strategy. The company has said it now wants to focus on “stories for adults and families.”

People who want shows for their toddlers can find them almost anywhere, including for free on YouTube. Disney+, of course, has troves of kids content, including Australia’s acclaimed and much-watched “Bluey.”

And, increasingly, kids are tuning into Netflix, which is now the land of “Ms. Rachel,” “CoComelon” and “Blippi,” all of which rose to popularity on YouTube. Kids and family programming now accounts for 15% of the platform’s viewership, according to the company. Netflix also has “Peppa Pig” and “Hot Wheels Let’s Race.”

Suffice to say, if you want or need to turn your little ones into couch zombies for a while, Netflix has an increasingly crowded ZIP Code of shows for you.

Stuff we wrote

Numbers of the week

Cable’s consolidation continues with Friday’s announcement that Charter and Cox will merge in a $34.5-billion deal, uniting Southern California’s two major cable TV and internet providers.

The Charter-Cox combination would have 38 million customer homes in the nation, a larger footprint than longtime cable leader Comcast.

Of the many interesting aspects of the deal, this one is particularly relevant to Los Angeles residents — if approved by Charter shareholders and regulators, the merger would end one of the longest TV sports blackouts, my colleague Meg James reports.

Cox customers in Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates and Orange County would finally have the Dodgers’ TV channel available in their lineups. For more than a decade, Cox has refused to carry SportsNet LA because of its high cost.

New Line Cinema’s horror franchise revival “Final Destination: Bloodlines” won the weekend box office with $51 million in the U.S. and Canada (more than $100 million globally), exceeding pre-release analyst estimates.

The horror genre’s power to draw moviegoers is undeniable. The marketing was clever (complete with morbid 3D billboards), and this series has built-in nostalgic value. The new grisly supernatural teen movie comes 14 years after the previous one, “Final Destination 5.” The audience response has been generally positive.

With a reported production budget of $50 million, this was a no-brainer, and another win for Warner Bros. chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy coming after “Minecraft” and “Sinners.” All eyes are now on James Gunn’s “Superman,” coming in July.

Finally …

Listen: “Chaise Longue” rock band Wet Leg has new music on the way. Here’s a preview.

Looking back, casting Diego Luna in “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” may well prove to be the single most consequential decision in that storied franchise’s history. Hearing Luna’s Mexican accent in a galaxy far, far away was not only refreshing. It was radical.

And as Season 2 of “Andor” proved, it set the stage for what has to be the most Latino-coded of all the “Star Wars” tales, which is fitting considering this Tony Gilroy-created series was designed not just to explore Cassian Andor’s backstory but flesh out the dashing revolutionary spirit Luna had brought to the character. What better place to, pardon the pun, mine for inspiration than the vast history of resistance and revolution throughout the American continent?

Here are a few ways in which “Andor” felt particularly Latino.

Warning: this article contains some spoilers.

Undocumented laborers

Season 2 of “Andor” found Cassian, Bix (Adria Arjona), Brasso (Joplin Sibtain) and Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier) relocated to the agricultural planet of Mina-Rau. It’s a place that served as a safe haven for these Ferrix folks, allowing them to be housed while working for a local farmer — all without papers. Yes, our very own Cassian is an undocumented laborer (when he’s not, you know, on some super-secret Luthen-guided mission, that is).

“Andor” has always focused on the way the Empire functions at a granular level, while the “Star Wars” feature film trilogies are all about big-picture stuff. In its two-season run, this Luna-fronted project followed the day-to-day lives of those living under the thumb of the Empire. And in the scenes at Mina-Rau, the show insisted on showing what happens when those with a semblance of power (a uniform, a weapon) confront those who they think have none.

When Lt. Krole (Alex Waldmann), a lowly Imperial officer carrying out a run-of-the-mill audit of the crops in Mina-Rau, comes across Bix, he sees an opportunity. She’s clearly alone. And, perhaps most obviously, at a disadvantage: She has no papers. If she’s caught, the secure, if precarious, life she and Cassian have built in Mina-Rau will come crumbling down — all while putting them at risk of being revealed as smugglers and rebels.

Still, watching Krole escalate his slimy sexual advances into a rape attempt was a reminder of the impunity of such crimes. When those who are undocumented are seen as undeserving of our empathy, let alone the protections the law is supposed to provide — like many people in our current government seem to think — the likes of Krole are emboldened to do as they please.

Hiding in plain sight and los desaparecidos

Such ideas about who merits our empathy are key to authoritarian regimes. Borders, after all, aren’t just about keeping people out or in. It’s about drawing up communities and outlining outsiders; about arguing for a strict sense of who belongs and who does not.

When Cassian and Bix land in Coruscant after their escape from Mina-Rau, they struggle with whether to just lay low. You see Cassian being jumpy and constantly paranoid. He can’t even handle going out shopping; or, if you follow Bix’s winking joke at the grocer, he can’t really handle the spice. But that’s expected if you constantly feel unsafe, unable to freely move through the world, er, galaxy.
More tellingly: If your existence is wedded to bureaucracy, it’s easy to be dispensed with and disappeared. Bix knows that all too well. She’s still haunted by the specter of Dr. Gorst (Joshua James), the Imperial Security Bureau officer who tortured her. He appears in her nightmares to remind her that this is a war now littered with “desaparecidos”: “His body won’t be found and his family won’t know what happened to him,” his hallucination taunts her. It’s not hard to read in that line an obvious reference to those tortured and disappeared under the military dictatorships of Argentina, Brazil, Chile and the like.

Throughout “Andor” Season 2, we also watched the Empire slowly rev up its border policing — especially when it came to Ghorman. At first a planet most known for its gorgeous textiles, Ghorman later became the anchor for the show’s entire narrative. The best way to control a people is to surveil them, particularly because soon enough they’ll start surveilling themselves.

The Ghorman Massacre

The beauty of “Star Wars” has always been its ability to speak to its time. When the original film first premiered in 1977, echoes of the Vietnam War and anti-imperialist sentiment could be felt in its otherwise outlandish space-opera trappings. But not until “Andor” could the politics of George Lucas’ creation be so viscerally felt. This is a show, after all, that didn’t shy away from using the word “genocide” when rightly describing what happened in Ghorman.

In “Who Are You?” audiences got to see the Empire at its cruelest. Watching the Death Star destroy Alderaan from afar is one thing. But getting to watch Stormtroopers — and a slew of young, inexperienced Imperial riot police officers — shooting indiscriminately into a crowd that had just been peacefully singing in protest was brutal. It was, as Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) would later frame it, unconscionable.

The chants in the crowd “The galaxy is watching” are clearly meant to evoke the chants heard at the 1968 Democratic National Convention: “The whole world is watching.” But the essence of the massacre harks back to another infamous 1968 event: the Tlatelolco massacre.

Just like Ghorman, the Oct. 2 student protests at Mexico City’s Plaza de las Tres Culturas began as a peaceful demonstration. But soon, with helicopters up above and an encroaching military presence from every which way, chaos followed and the incident has long served as a chilling example of state-sanctioned violence. The kind now best distilled into a fictional massacre in a galaxy far, far away.

Villa, Zapata, Andor

In the hands of Gilroy and Luna, “Andor” billed itself over two seasons as the begrudging rise of a revolutionary. Cassian spent much of Season 1 trying to hide from who he could become. It took being sent to a grueling slave prison complex in a remote location (sound familiar?) to further radicalize the once-smug smuggler.

But with every new Empire-sanctioned atrocity, he found himself unable to escape his calling as a member of the Resistance. Yes, it costs him his peaceful life with Bix, but neither would have it any other way. Cassian has a solid moral compass. And while he may not play well with others (with authority, really), he’s a charming leader of sorts whose childhood in Ferrix set him up to be the kind of man who would sacrifice his life for a cause.

You don’t need to have Luna sport a mustache, though, to see in his rascal of a character hints of revolutionary icons from Latin America. Even if Cassian is more Emiliano Zapata than Pancho Villa (you’d never find him starring in films as himself, for instance), the revolutionary spirit of those historical Mexican figures is undeniable. Especially since Cassian has long been tied to the marginalized — not just in Ferrix and Mina-Rau but later still in Ghorman.

Add the fact that his backstory grounds him in the indigenous world of Kenari and that he is quite at home in the lush jungles of Yavin IV (where he may as well be playing dominoes in his spare time) and you have a character who clearly carves out homages to resistance models seen all over Latin America.

As attacks on those most disenfranchised here in the United States continue apace, “Andor” (yes, a spinoff sci-fi series on Disney+!) reminds us that the Latin American struggles for liberation in the 20th century aren’t mere historical stories. They’re warnings and templates as to how to confront this moment.

And yes, that message obviously works best when delivered by the devilishly handsome Luna: “The Empire cannot win,” as his Cassian says in the first episode of the show’s stellar second season. “You’ll never feel right unless you’re doing what you can to stop them. You’re coming home to yourself. You’ve become more than your fear. Let that protect you.”