Whether Warner Bros. ends up making much money on Sinners in theaters is still an open question, but Coogler delivered a $48 million domestic opening, highest for an original film since Us in 2019, and the best-reviewed studio movie of the year so far, per Rotten Tomatoes. At least in the U.S., the go-to franchise director is now a franchise, himself. A little more here: Warner Bros. is hustling to put out a $170 million worldwide “breakeven” box office target for Sinners, which is curious for a couple reasons. First, Warners gets to that number by including ancillary revenue like home video that a movie with a $170 million gross would eventually make, which isn’t typically part of a theatrical profitability calculus. Second, the studio is also telling media outlets that the marketing spend overseas, where the movie is not performing well, was “commensurate with a film of this budget and with the kind of star power behind Sinners.” Okay, but in a typical global release, studios usually put the breakeven number at about 2.5x the production budget, which would be $225 million if we use Warners’ purported $90 million spend—or about $260 million if we use the $105 million production budget that my sources at the studio are saying is more accurate. According to two insiders, Coogler deferred some of his fixed fee to help cover costs when Sinners went overbudget, and one source says his backend definition was modified then, too (though another source denies that). Any up-front reduction for Coogler would bring the breakeven number down slightly, but Warners is kinda attempting to play both sides of this debate, claiming Sinners got a full-freight global marketing campaign and also a release that lowered its profitability number to below what one might expect for a full-freight release. Which one is it?

“What’s worse is that the face of Wendy’s is a woman, which makes this decision not just hypocritical, but painfully ironic.” —An “exclusive source” close to Katy Perry (I’m gonna go out on a limb and credit Ambrosia Healy at Universal Music, early candidate for publicist of the year), in a statement to People leveraging a silly logo (and feminism!) to counter the burger chain’s “Can we send her back” post lambasting Perry and the other “girl power” space travelers. Now my take on one writer’s battle vs. her own union…

If you’re wondering whether the Writers Guild leadership is fiery enough to greenlight another strike next year, take a look at how the guild is treating some of its own members today. It’s not just that a handful of writers were recently suspended from the guild. Perhaps most damaging, these writers were publicly shamed via emails to members (and, subsequently, the media) after they were found to have violated guild rules during the 2023 shutdown. In a town where even the appearance of union disloyalty can cost someone jobs, it’s a pretty massive hammer to drop. So massive that the full membership will vote, in a couple of weeks, on whether to overturn the board-issued punishments against the four writers who appealed—Julie Bush, Tim Doyle, Edward Drake, and Roma Roth. Every case is different, of course. But while some in the private Facebook and WhatsApp groups are arguing that the guild is rightfully instilling the fear of god (or WGA president Meredith Stiehm) ahead of studio talks in early 2026, others think the famously militant union has again gone overboard and is ruining reputations as a power move.

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The Julie Bush situation is a good Rorschach test. A writer-producer on shows like Apple TV+’s Manhunt, Bush admitted that she turned in a pilot script 20 days after the May 2, 2023, strike deadline. That was a no-no, so… what’s the issue? After all, labor strikes mean nothing without participation from all union members, and the 11,000 or so striking writers certainly suffered during the historic 148-day work stoppage. But Bush’s case is a bit more nuanced. Her work was for Exile Content Studio, a Spanish-language producer that was not a signatory to the guild agreement—though, in the guild’s findings, Exile had promised that it was in the process of becoming a signatory. And in the run-up to that strike deadline, a guild lawyer had been helping Bush and her attorneys at the Yorn Levine firm close her deal and hopefully bring Exile in as a WGA signatory. At the time, Exile had recently been sold to Candle Media, the private equity–backed production company roll-up. After Bush’s deal closed, Exile subsequently decided not to become a WGA signatory, according to the guild findings. The company then canceled Bush’s deal and never paid her, which prompted Bush to seek assistance from her union—which led to its leadership finding out she turned in a script during the strike. So Bush never actually performed work for a struck company, and while she did provide a script to a non-signatory in violation of the guild’s Working Rule 8, which prohibits such employment, she never actually benefited from that gig.

Honestly, whether Bush broke the rules isn’t really the issue here; she admits she violated Working Rule 8. But after an eight-hour trial, where Bush was defended not by a litigator but by fellow WGA member Van Robichaux, a “trial committee” of five writers recommended to the board that she only be prevented from serving as a WGA captain for a few years and censured privately for her relatively minor transgressions. You can see where this is going… In a 15-3 vote (Justin Halpern, Dante Harper, and Melinda Hsu abstained), Stiehm and her board ignored the tribunal’s recommendation and instead suspended Bush for the remainder of the current studio contract and dropped that nuclear bomb of public shaming. In fact, in at least three of the cases on appeal, the board went further than what the member tribunal recommended. Bush can still work on WGA projects—if anyone will hire her now that she’s been identified in trade articles as a strike-breaker. “There is a bloodlust,” Bush told me last week. “I’m terrified that I’m basically a pariah now.” The WGA leadership didn’t respond to my request to chat publicly about this, but the guild position papers are clear: Strike work is strike work, and punishment must punish. Because Exile wasn’t a guild signatory, Bush “didn’t technically break the rules, but she broke the spirit of the rules,” WGA lawyer Corri Freedman testified. No matter that the board adopted the tribunal finding that Exile had represented it would become a signatory, and that a WGA lawyer was helping in that process. “Bush seems to argue that she should be granted safe harbor because she contacted the guild’s legal department for assistance in getting paid for the scab writing she did during the strike,” the WGA brief argued. “But Bush’s violation should not be excused just because she disclosed it to the guild legal department.” As for the public shaming, “the membership also has a right to know the consequences for those who choose to write during the strike.” More accurately, the board has a right to scare its members straight. Considering these complexities—the fact that Bush seems to have been misled or at least strung along by Exile, and that she ultimately received nothing—the confidential censure seems, to me, a bit more reasonable. Both Bush and Drake, one of the other punished writers, openly questioned why the WGA was going so hard after lower-earning members rather than some of the bigger celebrity showrunner types who many believe made a mockery of strike rules under the guise of “producing.” “As someone who doesn’t yet have a manager or agent, and has only worked on low-budget indies, the board thought I was an easy target,” Drake told THR. “But isn’t protecting the most vulnerable the very point of having a union?” Yes, but barely two and a half years after a debilitating strike that tested its members’ patience, the WGA is facing another nasty negotiation with the studios and streamers, this time when writer employment is down 42 percent from pre-strike levels, according to the guild. Stiehm and the board know the 2026 negotiations will start soon, and keeping everyone in line is their mission—regardless of potential shrapnel victims like Bush. “They said going into the strike that they were ‘tough-on-crime liberals,’ and now they’re doing a big show of force to show the town that strike-breakers are not going to get off easy,” Bush told me. “In the few edge cases that got reported to them, they threw the book at us.” Bush is now asking the full WGA to reinstate the trial committee’s more lenient punishment, which, given that she’s already been outed, would be more of a symbolic win to her—yet still meaningful for someone who has been involved for years in guild activities, right up to the moment she was suspended. “I picketed for hours alongside many of these board members. I’ve known them for years and they’re acting like they don’t even know me,” she said. “I’m deeply embedded in the guild, and for them to turn on me like this, it’s just bizarre. What’s next, are they gonna deport me to a Salvadoran prison?”

Thanks to the Academy board of governors for listening to my rants and requiring Oscar voters to at least attest to having watched the nominated films. (All those anonymous ballots saying voters skipped Dune 2 were infuriating.) Yes, it will be hard to police, but the plan is for the Academy Screening Room portal to track what members have watched, supplemented by a “seen elsewhere” form. (Unclear what happens if someone turns off, say, The Brutalist, at the 200-minute mark.) So it’s an honor system, but similar strategies have been employed in specialty categories in the past, and at least the specter of oversight should improve viewership rates. [AP] Speaking of the Oscars, podcasters who want their own version (the Poddys??) are discovering what Hollywood people have known for decades: Awards shows are a cynical cash grab. [NY Times] Was vastly overpaying for music catalogs just a bad idea, or was Hipgnosis founder Merck Mercuriadis run out of the business for other reasons? [Bloomberg] Big congrats to publicist Leslie Sloane for getting Blake Lively into the Time 100 “Titans” section… and with a blurb written by civil rights lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill! [Time] Sure, Amazon has spent $100 million on Phoebe Waller-Bridge and generated zero shows, but… she narrates a new Prime Video nature doc called Octopus!. [Telegraph] Matthew Specktor, author and former studio exec, parses what The Studio gets right and wrong about studio execs. [GQ] Speaking of Specktor, I’m reading his well-done new memoir, The Golden Hour, about growing up in Hollywood as the son of agent Fred Specktor. The Journal has an excerpt. [WSJ] Vulture’s survey of 2,000 streaming viewers generated a few gems, like the fact that nearly half of boomers scroll for 5-10 minutes before giving up. [Vulture] Wherein Larry David eviscerates Bill Maher without mentioning his name. [NY Times]

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HBO Original comedy series, The Rehearsal, follows one man’s journey to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life. With a construction crew, a legion of actors, and seemingly unlimited resources, Nathan Fielder helps ordinary people prepare for life’s biggest moments. In Season 2, Fielder puts his resources toward an issue that affects us all. Watch new episodes of The Rehearsal on Sundays at 10:30 p.m., exclusively on Max. WATCH NOW

Now here’s Scott Mendelson with more on the Sinners success calculus…

The success of the $90 million+ period horror-drama, written and directed by Ryan Coogler and starring Michael B. Jordan, doesn’t necessarily have a bearing on other upcoming non-franchise films, other than affirming what’s possible. And while the film isn’t exactly a global hit (it did just $15.5 million in its overseas debut), the domestic performance and positive reception make it valuable to Warner Bros.—at least until 2050, when its rights revert to Coogler. Herewith, some lessons…

The most obvious lesson is that Premium Large Format (PLF) continues to be a key motivator for theatrical attendance. And while concerns remain about the “Go Imax or stay home” mentality, large formats accounted for 45 percent of Sinners’ opening weekend grosses. The hope now is that the film won’t crater when Marvel’s Thunderbolts steals its PLF screens in two weeks. Moviegoers could decide that if they miss Sinners in Imax, they’ll wait and stream it. After all, unless you’re Christopher Nolan, your big movie is probably not holding those screens for more than a few weeks.

Sinners demonstrates the broad commercial power of the high-concept horror/genre hybrid. In fact, since June 2015, nearly all of the biggest openings for wholly original, live-action films have been high-concept horror flicks, including Split, Get Out, A Quiet Place, Us, and Nope. One downside: The presumed safety of the genre is tempting studios to run almost every non-franchise film through the fright night filter.

Audiences showed up to Sinners at least partially because they recognized writer-director Coogler as the guy who made Creed and Black Panther, and they cared enough to see what he’d do with an original concept and $100 million. The famously multiplex-shy Netflix wouldn’t be shelling out for an Imax theatrical engagement for a new Chronicles of Narnia if Greta Gerwig weren’t in the director’s chair. And no wonder studios are engaged in an arms race for established A-list talent. WB threw big bucks at Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Leo DiCaprio–starring, Imax-debuting One Battle After Another in September will be another test for the De Luca–Abdy team. Universal’s Jim Orr closed out the studio’s 2025 CinemaCon panel by boasting about a 2026 slate featuring “stars” Nolan and Steven Spielberg. Even Disney is allowing David Greenbaum to seemingly transform 20th Century Studios into more than just a Hulu content mill and a periodic provider of I.P.-specific tentpoles—it recently snapped up a… Continue reading online…

Light feedback, so I’m including this smart text from a longtime John Malone watcher when I asked why Warner Discovery shareholders have remained quiet as the stock languishes, C.E.O. David Zaslav is awarded gigantic pay packages, and now Malone exits the board… “I think most investors believe that Malone has a long-term strategy, even if it’s not apparent what it is. And David has always made sure that he has a decent long-term story to tell in order to distract from near-term problems like their stock price. So David has focused on debt reduction, Max sub growth, I.P. for the studio, and the possible spin-off of the linear networks, and I think that constitutes a decent strategy in the eyes of most investors, particularly if it seems to have Malone’s stamp of approval. “The same thing happened at Discovery, where the stock also had a long-term decline before the Warner merger, but David always talked more about the future than trying to explain the present, and everyone thought he had to be right because of Malone. So it’s hard to see any near-term event that would get a big investor up in arms. “The spin-off [of Comcast’s and, presumably, Warner Discovery’s cable networks] will be interesting to watch, but maybe more interesting on the ‘growth’ company side than the ‘declining asset’ business. While the growth assets that stay with Comcast will have access to the cash flow of a huge cable and broadband business, the growth assets that stay with WBD will have only the cash flow they generate themselves. That could end up being the key long-term issue for David, but I’m sure he will have found another golden future to talk about by the time investors figure that out!”

Have a great week, Matt Got a question, comment, complaint, or leftover chocolate bunnies? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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