The studios’ new lead labor negotiator can take at least a temporary victory lap after the typically militant Writers Guild agreed to a surprise deal well before the deadline and without so much as a single public saber-rattle. The devil will be in the still-secret details, of course, but a four-year contract already breaks the usual three-year mold and—if the SAG-AFTRA and DGA dominoes fall as expected—potentially ensures labor peace into the next decade.

More: I broke this news on Saturday, and I’ll admit I didn’t believe it when I first heard. But we all knew the WGA didn’t have much leverage. The health plan is running a crushing $122 million deficit over two years, writer employment is down 24 percent from 2022, per the guild’s own data, and after the bruising 2023 strike, there was zero appetite for another work stoppage among members. The guild had that extra year to give in order to shore up the health plan, so they gave it.

Adding this Times of London piece to his impressive body of work, I think we can induct Cox into the Hall of Fame of celebrity interview subjects:

Speaking of bollocks…

Since billionaires Jay Penske and Todd Boehly swiped the Globes a few years ago from the foreign journalists who controlled it for 80 years, the awards have been voted on by 300 or so media people “working for an internationally based media outlet.” But according to a recent voter recruitment email shared with me, the Globes owners are “now opening the process to U.S.-based entertainment journalists working for domestic media outlets.”

Before you ask: Yes, I’d be honored. No, I’m kidding. But you know who would jump at the chance to rise above their station in the awards industrial complex by voting for the most popular of all the fake awards shows? Tons of journalists who work for Penske Media Corporation at the dozens of “domestic media outlets” he owns, including his monopoly on the legacy trade publications that cover his Globes show.

Alas, a rep for Penske tells me, “No additional U.S.-based PMC journalists will be added to the voting body this year,” but a cynic might argue it’s only a matter of time before Jay and the entirely for-profit Globes want to control more of the voting process, and thus the campaigns, the nominees, and the winners, by placing Penske employees at the center of it all.

26 percent
Year-over-year increase in total domestic box office for the first quarter of 2026. [Comscore/WSJ]

$33 million
Ticket sales from two L.A. concerts last week by Ye, part of a comeback that includes getting a new song on a Spotify playlist less than a year after the release of “HEIL HITLER.” [Bloomberg]

3 million
U.S. viewership for Netflix’s MLB season opener between the Yankees and Giants, the biggest-ever audience for a baseball game on a streaming service, but lower than the 3.2 million viewers for Dodgers–Diamondbacks the next night on NBC and Peacock. [Netflix/Nielsen]

33 percent
Estimated decline in U.S. unscripted series since 2022, down 15 percent in just the past year alone. [Luminate/NYT]

18.1 million
Viewers who tuned in for the Artemis II launch on April 1 across broadcast networks and cable news. YouTube added another 9 million live viewers. [Nielsen/YouTube]

More: Why wasn’t this launch on Netflix, which just signed a big broadcast deal with NASA? I’m told the streamer bypassed the launch to focus instead on today’s lunar flyby because each live event on Netflix requires a big technical lift, and the fixed time window of the flyby made more sense.

Now here’s Scott on this weekend’s wild grosses…

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opened to $191 million domestic over the holiday weekend—$15 million ahead of tracking and only slightly below the 2023 original’s $205 million five-day Easter launch. Not to belittle the creative process, but the formula for Universal and Illumination/Nintendo was pretty simple: Stuff the sequel with more of what worked the first time. What’s more interesting, however, is the company that Mario is keeping: Pixar’s Hoppers ($330 million globally), Sony Animation’s GOAT ($185 million), and the family-friendly PG-13 epic Project Hail Mary ($421 million) are all holding steady in multiplexes simultaneously.

Once upon a time, mid-tier wins among all-audience pics were common: In 2018, Warner Bros.’ Smallfoot earned $218 million on an $80 million budget; in 2011, Paramount’s Rango grossed $245 million on $135 million and won the Oscar for best animated feature. Blue Sky’s Rio films—$487 million in 2011, $497 million in 2014—were the gold standard. The disappearance of these types of movies arguably reshaped the 2020s box office more than the pandemic.

Indeed, during the past half-decade, bad decisions artificially suppressed the animated theatrical slate. Disney’s acquisition of Fox shuttered Blue Sky. Comcast’s purchase of DreamWorks Animation consolidated the output of two studios into one. And when Covid hit, nearly every company prioritized streaming over theatrical. Sony licensed Mitchells vs. the Machines and Hotel Transylvania 4 to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, respectively. Paramount (which was rarely really an A-level player in the category, save for the 2006-12 run distributing DreamWorks titles) sent Rumble and The Tiger’s Apprentice directly to Paramount+.

Now, however, theaters are suddenly flooded with major-studio options, and families are showing up. AMC Theatres sold more than 6 million tickets globally from April 1 through April 5. Hoppers is the best-performing original animated feature in North America since Coco in 2017—and on track to surpass Elemental’s $155 million domestic total in 2023. And the Steph Curry–produced GOAT is only Sony Animation’s fifth entirely animated theatrical release since The Emoji Movie in 2017. If Warner Bros. Pictures Animation kicks off its promised consistent slate with The Cat in the Hat in November, it would mark a rare expansion from a studio that has historically underindexed in animation.

Then as now, the goal isn’t universal breakout success but rather volume—more family films at varying scales, with varying results. By that logic, GOAT’s performance on a $80 million budget is perfectly healthy—about as viable as Storks grossing $185 million on $70 million in 2016, especially when post-theatrical revenue and S.V.O.D. performance are factored in. There are 26 PG-rated movies slated for wide release this year, up from 18 in 2024, when five of the top six movies worldwide were PG, not the more typical PG-13: Inside Out 2, Moana 2, Despicable Me 4, Wicked, and Mufasa: The Lion King.

The future of theatrical doesn’t rest entirely on animation, of course, but it may hinge on expanding and redefining what counts as kid-friendly. One can argue that Ryan Gosling’s Project Hail Mary, which is now tracking toward The Martian’s $631 million global benchmark, skews adult. But the Amazon MGM Studios sci-fi epic remains broadly accessible, which very much counts.

Moviegoing is increasingly a family activity, and studios chasing pure adult demographics are swimming upstream. Consumers will kvetch about $8 popcorn and then happily drop $150 to take five people to Despicable Me 4 or Lilo & Stitch, rather than use a date night for a grown-up flick. To wit: Project Hail Mary—nominally PG-13, though, no disrespect to directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, there’s nothing remotely edgy about it—works precisely because it’s adult-leaning but accessible to preteens and even younger kids. This overlap is increasingly where the money lives. A similar dynamic applies to edgier PG-13 titles like Dune: Part Two or It Ends With Us, and even some R-rated films like Wuthering Heights and Oppenheimer that are marketed as cool to teen audiences.

The sequel success of Super Mario Galaxy proves that refashioning an old brand still works (recall that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 closed out 2024 at $492 million globally). But the runaway success of A Minecraft Movie ($955 million), Five Nights at Freddy’s ($297 million), and Markiplier’s self-distributed Iron Lung ($50 million on a less than $5 million budget) makes a compelling case for meeting younger audiences where they actually are… rather than dragging them toward I.P. they know from their parents. Cinema United’s 2025 “Strength of Theatrical Exhibition” report puts an exclamation point on it: Gen Z are the most frequent moviegoers, averaging 6.1 annual visits. Even after two months on Netflix, KPop Demon Hunters grossed $25 million domestically. Blumhouse’s Black Phone 2 ($132 million globally) nearly doubled the Running Man retread ($69 million).

Studios tend to suffer when they default to legacy I.P.—Tron sequels ($142 million global), Springsteen biopics ($45 million), the Snow White remake ($205 million on a more than $300 million budget), Smurfs reboots ($124 million)—at the expense of what’s genuinely resonant with younger audiences. The Housemaid earned $400 million globally, more than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The audience has spoken, Hollywood executives just need to listen.

Does it get more depressing than CBS renting its late night timeslots to Byron Allen’s variety show equivalent of Suzanne Somers’ ThighMaster infomercials? [Reuters]

Wait, I thought everyone in town was sure the Middle East money in the WarnerMount deal would back out amid the Iran war. [WSJ]

Eric Deggans traces Louis C.K.’s path back from being canceled for masturbating in front of women to headlining a Netflix comedy event and special. [Switching Codes]

Lena Dunham’s origin story, co-starring Greta Gerwig, the Safdies, and Slamdance, is getting me excited for her memoir. [New Yorker]

The hype/B.S. shoveled at the Runway AI summit would make any Hollywood P.R. firm blush. [Wired]

Ben Thompson notes that OpenAI buying a tech talk show makes zero sense, which doesn’t matter unless the deal suggests other stuff OpenAI is doing that makes zero sense. [Stratechery]

TMZ going after politicians seems like something that should’ve happened 20 years ago. [Politico]

I’m sure WME’s odd statement supporting client Blake Lively after her sexual harassment claims against Justin Baldoni were tossed had nothing to do with its ultra-lucrative representation of her husband, Ryan Reynolds. [THR]

My Thursday takes on J.J. Abrams gutting Bad Robot and the NFL’s coming rights fee bonanza drew spirited responses. A couple examples…

“Truth is the business has changed. I don’t know that it’s possible for someone to ‘build a broad business’ the way [Bad Robot] could 5-10 years ago. Television shows are far more authored. There is no giant backend, nor are there 22-episode orders. Which means it’s hard for Bad Robot to earn enough to cover its overhead. The number of streaming episodes you’d need to cover $10 million-plus in overhead is staggering. That doesn’t mean J.J. is failing. Warner probably loves having Presumed Innocent. But J.J. isn’t writing relevant TV. He’s not directing pilots. That low-touch era has ended.” —An agent

“I do think that we will see a massive change on broadcast television, especially with scripted programming. I don’t see how CBS can have over 18 hours dedicated to that content with the NFL rights taking away a majority of that budget.” —A filmmaker

“I know this will sound crazy but I think [the NFL’s] popularity is almost underappreciated for one reason: the length of the games. Take Sunday Night Football. It’s basically the equivalent of four hourlong dramas (factoring in the preview show), which wouldn’t get anywhere close to the NFL ratings, or eight 30-minute comedies, which also wouldn’t come close.” —A publicist

“Next Netflix live event: Hans Schroeder and Gunnar Wiedenfels have a staring contest.” —An executive

Have a great week,
Matt

Maya Tribbitt contributed research for this issue.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or explanation for why there’s plenty of seats available for Springsteen’s L.A. shows this week? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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