The Spyglass chief and Scream 7 shepherd can thank Harvey Weinstein, who shrewdly held on to the horror title in his Disney divorce and was later forced to offload his entire library. That enabled Barber to snap it up and restart the franchise, ultimately culminating in this weekend’s huge $97 million global debut. Melissa Barrera who?

Runner-up: Michael B. Jordan and the cast of Sinners, who finally injected some intrigue into this paint-by-numbers Oscars season with top wins at the Actor Awards. Speaking of…: Can we just skip the TV portion of these awards shows? The same three series (The Pitt, The Studio, and Adolescence) have won the top drama, comedy, and limited series honors at every major show this season: Emmys, Actor Awards, Producers Guild, Critics Choice, and Directors Guild (Adolescence wasn’t eligible for that one, throwing Dying for Sex a bone). At this point, do we need the Writers Guild to tell us The Pitt is well-written? Speaking of the WGA…: That loud sound echoing around Hollywood is every studio and talent agency head laughing uncontrollably at the famously militant union’s labor standoff with its own employees, which just caused the cancellation of its L.A. awards event. Big-time “I learned it by watching you, Dad!” P.S.A. energy in that fight. And speaking of fights…: Jeff Shell, the Paramount president being investigated over his ties to a man who claims Shell told him company secrets, has hired a new lawyer. I’m told Shell is now being repped by Steve Olson at O’Melveny & Myers, who coincidentally handles LA28, the Olympics nonprofit that just probed (and cleared) its own top executive, Casey Wasserman. And speaking of Wasserman…: The auction of his sports and music agency could go down more quickly than expected. Two sources close to the dealmaking told me last week that while it’s still early, the typical five-to-six-month process of selling a company of Wasserman’s size would likely be sped up to prevent significant defections. There’s also a ton of interest. UTA, with at least one financial backer, is preparing to bid aggressively, I’m told. (Wasserman would exclude or offload the Brillstein management firm in that hypothetical case; several potential P.E. suitors are interested, as is Lionsgate, which already owns 3 Arts.) Excel, which was recently snapped up by Goldman Sachs, is also expressing interest in Wasserman. Providence, the agency’s majority owner, would like to keep it together in a sale, hoping the value will be higher as a diversified (and potentially “A.I.-proof,” the pitch goes) sports and live events play. But the list of suitors gets a lot longer for specific parts of the company.

“This whole process has been challenging, it’s been exciting, it’s been thrilling.” —David Zaslav, the Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O., taking a cringey victory lap in a glowing Times profile the day after its sale to Paramount was announced.

A little more on this: Really, Zaslav? Thousands of Warner employees are about to get fired in service of a deal that is set to generate nearly $800 million for you personally, and you instantly gloat to The New York Times about how fun this has all been for you? Really? Before talking to your own frightened employees in a town hall? Man, even some of your inner circle were shaking their heads at this one. You’ve clearly learned nothing from all the past ego-driven media missteps.

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Still more: Let’s be honest: While this $111 billion transaction represents a huge win for Warner Discovery shareholders and its dealmaking team, it’s a catastrophic kick in the nuts for Warner employees and the entertainment industry at large. And it changes nothing about Zaslav’s overall management of the company, which shrunk in value by two-thirds until the sale reports appeared. The whole strategy—take a dying cable TV company, Discovery Communications, and piggyback it onto HBO and a movie studio—didn’t work. The Max rebrand—didn’t work. The promised financials—didn’t happen. WBD initially projected $14 billion in annual EBITDA, and despite the relentless cost-cutting, the company reported $8.7 billion in EBITDA in 2025. The only thing that worked was David and Larry Ellison deciding they would go shopping. It wasn’t because of any “turnaround” at the company. It wasn’t because the Warner movie studio had a nice string of hits last year. It was the 100-year-old library and the HBO brand, both of which existed long before Zaslav arrived with his headcount hatchet and his grotesque pay package. Thanks to Larry, all of a sudden, a company valued at $7 per share was worth $19, and the rest is Netflix bidding war history. (Standard disclosure: Due to a recent transaction, Zaslav is a de minimis investor in Puck.)

7.6 million Estimated U.S. subscribers who have both HBO Max and Paramount+, representing 27.9 percent of HBO Max subs and 21.1 percent of Par+ subs. [Antenna]

99.7 percent Decline of the market value of AMC Theatres since June 2021, when its shares peaked amid the meme-stock frenzy. [Bloomberg] 33 percent Year-over-year drop in new U.S. paid streaming subscribers, from 27 million new subs in 2024 to 18 million in 2025 [Antenna] 40 percent Share of time listening to spoken-word audio that is now spent with podcasts, the first time it has topped AM/FM radio (39 percent). [Edison] 2,000 Wannabe stars who attended the in-person open casting call for the Fox reboot of Baywatch. [KOMO News] Now Scott Mendelson is back to analyze maybe the biggest box office bet of the year…

Rarely has a film’s title so aptly matched its commercial aspirations. Opening on March 20, Project Hail Mary is likely to define Amazon MGM Studios’ yearlong plunge into mainstream global theatrical distribution. Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (Into the Spider-Verse, 21 Jump Street) and starring Ryan Gosling as a high-school science teacher sent into space as the only hope to prevent an extinction-level calamity, the movie is the tech giant’s attempt to show the industry that it deserves to be embraced as a major theatrical player and can do what the legacy studios mostly can’t: launch a nearly $200 million-budgeted, non-franchise, sci-fi crowdpleaser toward actual commercial success. While not technically an original—its Drew Goddard–written screenplay is an adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling 2021 novel—PHM is the closest thing to a franchise-free, one-and-done global blockbuster that Hollywood has attempted since Tenet in 2020.

But what does success look like for such a film in 2026? Tenet, which grossed $366 million worldwide for Warner Bros., was kneecapped by Covid. Red One, Amazon’s own $250 million-plus Dwayne Johnson- and Chris Evans-starring holiday comedy, which was beset by miserable reviews and a shorter-than-hoped-for theatrical window, barely cracked $185 million worldwide in late 2024. And then there’s F1, the Apple-produced and WB-distributed Brad Pitt movie, which brought in a truly aspirational $630 million worldwide but was based on an iconic brand and I.P. Currently tracking to open at about $50 million domestic, perhaps Project Hail Mary could end up closer to Lionsgate’s The Housemaid, an R-rated, female-skewing erotic thriller also based on a buzzy bestselling book and released by a mini-major studio, which has pulled in $385 million worldwide since its December premiere. But I assume that Amazon has greater ambitions for its much more expensive, PG-13, and stereotypically all-quadrant sci-fi flick. (The gross production budget was $248 million, according to an internal Amazon document, but tax credits from the U.K. and elsewhere brought it down to just under $200 million.) Presuming Project Hail Mary’s early social media buzz correlates to strong anticipation, five elements of traditional indicators of success remain to varying degrees: an ensemble cast, a marquee director, an easy elevator pitch, strong reviews, and the promise of big-screen escapism. And so far, Project Hail Mary has at least three of those five. It’ll probably fly into theaters with strong reviews, an easy-to-explain plot, and the promise of providing a P.L.F.-worthy good time at the movies. After that, though, its promise gets flimsier. Gosling has never quite been a butts-in-seats opener—he had plenty of support on Barbie, and The Fall Guy underperformed. While The Martian (also based on an Andy Weir novel) surrounded Matt Damon with Jessica Chastain, Donald Glover, Kristen Wiig, Michael Peña, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, Project Hail Mary is more just the Ryan Gosling show. And while Lord and Miller also directed solid crowd-pleasers Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and The Lego Movie, they aren’t exactly Nolan or Ridley Scott, at least not yet.

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But Project Hail Mary doesn’t need a perfect five out of five if other elements overcompensate accordingly. And there’s a case to be made that the popularity of the novel, or at least its association with The Martian, could make up for the potential shortcomings. And if the film clicks, it’ll be the consensus pick for general moviegoers between March 20 and April 24, when Michael comes out. For the record, in a healthy ecosystem, a well-received Project Hail Mary would and should thrive alongside The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and other smaller-scale potential sleepers like The Drama and The Mummy.

So what must Hail Mary make to be considered a success? The answer requires a brief history lesson. I began 2015 with a list of 10 commercially promising live-action originals, including Dwayne Johnson’s San Andreas and Brad Bird’s $190 million Tomorrowland. By early 2016, I would grimly note that Warcraft stood out merely by being among the few big-budget tentpoles that were merely a new-to-cinema adaptation as opposed to a remake of, reboot of, or sequel to an existing franchise. By the end of 2016, just three years after Gravity soared to $724 million and two years after Interstellar legged out to $677 million, Sony was considered to be making a risky bet by spending $90 million–$110 million on the outer space romance Passengers, starring Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt. The movie grossed $303 million worldwide despite mixed reviews.

Hollywood never actually stopped trying to make new-to-you movies—projects that, while not entirely original, are sold more as their own thing. For example, The Black Phone, while based on a short story by Joe Hill, was sold by Universal and embraced as an original horror flick. In such cases, marketing invites fans of the book even while promotionally prioritizing big-screen FOMO value regardless of source awareness. Before Tenet, Hollywood’s last such attempts at even a mega-budget new-to-you adaptation would probably have been the $150 million The Meg and the $175 million Ready Player One in 2018, as well as the $170 million Alita: Battle Angel in early 2019. Then Covid hit, expectations in China decelerated, and overseas box office became less certain even for high(er) domestic grossers. Anyway, the old-school 2.5x-the-budget rule of thumb would mean that Project Hail Mary must haul in about $500 million worldwide—below F1’s $632 million and The Martian’s $631 million from 2015. That gross would essentially tie Project Hail Mary with the $475 million (sans inflation) global finish of 2015’s San Andreas, which reigns (give or take F1) as the top-earning live-action original to come out of Hollywood in the past decade. That film cost $110 million and arrived in theaters when a halfway-decent The Rock vehicle could top $100 million in China without breaking a sweat. In the end, PHM’s success will be determined by whether it matches global revenue benchmarks that would have been unquestionably considered good enough a decade ago, even without the presumed post-theatrical riches of P.V.O.D. So an outcome anywhere between San Andreas and The Martian would be nice, and anything closer to Interstellar ($677 million in 2014, sans reissues) and Gravity ($724 million in 2013) would be superb. After all, Project Hail Mary can’t rely on a safety net from China. While a helping hand is still possible (Alien: Romulus topped $100 million in the Middle Kingdom in August 2024), Hollywood has dialed back its expectations, thanks to a decade-long public embrace of local releases and a stingier Chinese government.

Project Hail Mary has one obvious ace in the hole: the marketing and cross-promotional power of a company that enables more than 8 million consumer transactions a day in the U.S. and has enough levers to pull to ensure relative long-term success if the film is well-received and doesn’t outright embarrass itself on the global stage. Even so, the company’s theatrical track record, while artistically ambitious, thus far does not yet reflect such advantages. For example, WB’s The Accountant earned $156 on a $44 million budget in 2016, but its Amazon-released sequel barely topped $100 million on an $80 million budget.

Sure, the accepted strategy is for Amazon to leverage the prestige and awareness of a theatrical release to give a jolt to less surefire or presold titles (like Saltburn, Challengers, and American Fiction) in hopes of bigger Prime Video viewership. But if Amazon wants to be seen as a major theatrical studio, it can’t constantly wave away otherwise underwhelming performances due to eventual (and theoretical) streaming value. That’s doubly the case when discussing the kind of big-budget spectacles that Hollywood still prioritizes, like Project Hail Mary or this summer’s Masters of the Universe. Amazon’s Mike Hopkins assembled a film team under Courtenay Valenti to compete in theaters. Now they need to deliver. Heck, merely doubling the reported budget (around $380 million worldwide) would mean that Project Hail Mary will have earned as much as over 40 percent of the studio’s current combined 2023-26 theatrical box office revenue (around $945 million). And even many of its “hits,” like Air (which was not MGM-affiliated but earned $90 million globally on a reported $70 million budget in early 2023), were merely considered as such on a curve. Should it fall short of unquestionable rate-of-return grosses, success for Project Hail Mary might be the extent to which Amazon can still argue it’s a win while keeping a straight face.

An anonymous WBD employee started a grim Substack to report on the awkward Zaslav & Co. town hall and the coming era of “Ellislop”: “They stand in front of their Poland Spring bottles and tell us this is going to be great, then they log off, and the rest of us sit in our offices wondering if we can make rent in six months.” [Ellislop]

Netflix’s Ted Sarandos used his Warners postmortem chat with Lucas Shaw to delightfully poop on Paramount’s “irrational” deal and speculate that “if you look at the history of Warner Bros.,” the company could be up for sale again soon. [Bloomberg] Related: As part of the global antitrust review, I’m told the country of Albania today okayed Netflix buying Warner Bros. It’s not happening, of course, but it’s still amusing that the “Albanian army” that Time Warner once joked could never take over the company now has official approval to do so. “Sean Penn” + “Brooklyn Hasidic man” + “Bolivian prison” = instant click from me. [New York] I’m happy to enable media scrutiny of the bad food served at awards shows. [N.Y. Times] Roku was profitable last year for the first time since pandemic-boosted 2021. Huh. [WSJ] Marion Maneker has the L.A. Frieze art sales report. [Puck] Speaking of art, Jason Blum told a great story at the PGA Awards about his dad and Andy Warhol. [YouTube] Peter Hamby got Gavin Newsom to talk about Clavicular. [Puck]

Obviously, readers have opinions on Paramount–Warner Discovery, the Netflix aftermath, and my Thursday crosstalk with Bill Cohan. Some examples…

“Just doing some napkin math on how many new series the [$2.8 billion] breakup fee can fund. Thanks, Larry!” —A writer-producer “Netflix’s thesis presumably remains the same: ‘We need diversification beyond S.V.O.D.’ Therefore they will not be going quietly into that good night. They will come out swinging. Everything will be in play in a big way. Sony for theatrical distribution. Roku for FAST segmentation. Epic Games for gaming. ESPN for sports, once Josh [D’Amaro] gets tired of it. SiriusXM for music streaming. Hell, throw in Bloomberg, which is also a premium subscription tech company at heart. The least likely scenario is they turn around and say, ‘Let’s just continue to incrementally grow this awesome thing we created.’ It’s pivot time to empire building.” —A professor “Why aren’t you and Cohan calculating exactly how many jobs could be saved at Warner Bros. by simply not paying Zaslav and the leadership the $1 billion they will be owed?” —An analyst “Other than changes at CNN, something to watch is how much the Ellisons might try to appease Dear Leader Trump by creating films and TV shows with even less diversity. Moving backward makes no sense from a business perspective, considering current audience trends.” —A publicist “Bummer Netflix lost. I think they could have won if the WBD bankers could have found an M&A solution for CNN.” —Another analyst “You don’t think HBO Max With Paramount+ With Showtime is a top contender [for the streamer name]?” —A consultant “Does Ellison bring back Kevin Tsujihara to join John Lasseter, Max Landis, and Brett Ratner?” —A publicist

Have a great week, Matt

Clarification: Kristina Schake was first hired as Disney’s top communications exec by Bob Chapek, not Bob Iger, as I implied on Thursday. Maya Tribbitt contributed research for this issue. Got a question, comment, complaint, or the perfect name for the Ellison streaming service? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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