The first trailer for the film premiered this week, and it definitely feels like a James Gunn movie. PLUS: Netflix and Paramount battle over WB, trailers for ‘The Boys’ and ‘The Drama,’ and Kimmel renews his ABC deal.
It’s Snackology’s biggest roundup ever, covering a whopping 18 different new and returning season offerings.
The ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ star makes his ‘SNL’ debut this weekend.
The first trailer for the film premiered this week, and it definitely feels like a James Gunn movie. PLUS: Netflix and Paramount battle over WB, trailers for ‘The Boys’ and ‘The Drama,’ and Kimmel renews his ABC deal.
Hey there, Popculturology fans. Welcome to the Friday newsletter. The week has been dominated by the quest for Warner Bros., with Paramount throwing a wrench into Netflix’s winning bid for the historic studio.
We all laughed at Sam Altman earlier in the week when he appeared on The Tonight Show and told Jimmy Fallon that there was no way you could have a baby without having ChatGPT to turn to, but then came the news on Thursday that Disney was investing $1 billion in OpenAI while at the same time licensing “more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters” to the tech company for “short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans.”
I really don’t understand Disney’s motive behind this deal — especially when you remember that there’s probably no company more protective of its IP than the Mouse — but Disney CEO Bob Iger seems to think Disney+ users want to see this kind of content on the streaming service.
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With Christmas less than two weeks ago, this is the perfect Friday newsletter to highlight my extensive chat about A Muppet Family Christmas with Brian Jay Jones from 2022. I love this special. It’s the Avengers of the entire Jim Henson universe, bringing together the Muppets, Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock. (I would’ve love to have seen a Skeksis or two in the A Muppet Family Christmas, if I had one note.)
Jones published the fantastic Jim Henson: A Biography back in 2013. The ending of that book moved me to tears, and I reached out to Jones to tell him just how impressive that biography was. I had a blast talking to him about A Muppet Family Christmas three years ago, and I love letting new Popculturology readers know about our deep dive each holiday season.
Bill Kuchman
James Gunn didn’t direct Supergirl, but his fingerprints are all over the first trailer for the upcoming DCU film. It’s not surprising that Gunn had an influence on the film — he is the co-chief of DC Studios, after all — but I didn’t expect director Craig Gillespie’s film to feel wildly inspired by Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies.
I hope the film, which stars House of the Dragon’s Milly Alcock as Kara Zor-El/Supergirl and was written by Ana Nogueira, preserves everything that made Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the graphic novel crafted by Tom King, Bilquis Evely and Matheus Lopes, fantastic, but I’m down for what Gunn and Gillespie are doing here.
When the last edition of Popculturology hit your inboxes, the news seemed simple. Netflix was buying Warner Bros. (the film and TV studios plus HBO Max), with plans to do so after Warner Bros. Discovery spun CNN and its TV networks off as a separate company. Depending on the math, the deal was for somewhere between $72 billion and $82.7 billion.
Then things took a turn.
The sequel delivered a $63M opening weekend to prove that its predecessor’s debut wasn’t a fluke.
The box office titan boards the ‘Batman’ and ‘Exorcist’ franchises. PLUS: Netflix wins the Warner Bros. bidding war, trailers for ‘How to Make a Killing’ and ‘Ready or Not 2,’ and what’s going on with Spider League?
Disney’s animated sequel easily outfoxed ‘Wicked: For Good.’
Three things to know. Two trailers to watch. One article to read. Here’s what you need to know for this month.
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