It’s the last day of November — quickly checks calendar to make sure November has only 30 days — yup, it’s the last day of November, so there’s no better time than now to do a quick recap of the month’s big pop culture news with the latest edition of The Monthly.
Hopefully you’ve recovered from your Thanksgiving feasts, since now it’s time for the three things you need to know, two trailers you need to watch and one story you need to read.
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Taylor Sheridan, Jon Stewart, Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz. / Paramount+, Comedy Central, Universal Pictures
3 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
Sheridan bails on Paramount
I honestly don’t know if Paramount+ has shows that aren’t part of Taylor Sheridan’s sprawling universe of sometimes-connected content. Do people use the streaming service to watch anything besides Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King, Lioness or Landman? (A lot of people watched Landman.)
Paramount will soon find out if the streaming service can stand without Sheridan, as he’s signed a new five-year deal that will take his services to NBCUniversal once his contract with Paramount is up in 2028. (Puck)
📖 Taylor Sheridan Burning Questions and Smoking Guns(Matthew Belloni, Puck): “Sheridan’s film deals are a bit more nuanced than has been reported. He’s currently under an exclusive movie pact with Paramount. But while Universal gets into business with him starting in March, Paramount will maintain its first-look for film projects that Sheridan writes through the end of 2028, when his TV deal ends. (That’s because Sheridan’s current film arrangement grew out of his TV contract.)”
• • •
Stewart sticks around
With the same company that cancelled Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show owning Comedy Central, the assumption has long been that Jon Stewart wouldn’t still be behind the Daily Show desk — or that they’d even be a Daily Show desk — after his current contract was up.
So it was surprising news when we learned earlier this month that The Daily Show will continue on, with Stewart renewing his contract through December 2026. (LateNighter)
• • •
They're making a third Mummy movie. Again.
Hey, didn’t Universal already make a third Mummy movie starring Brendan Fraser? you’re probably asking. You’re correct. They did. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor hit theaters in 2008, with Fraser returning while Rachel Weisz was replaced with Maria Bello.
But now Fraser and fans of the franchise are going to get a true third Mummy movie, with Fraser and Weisz reuniting.
“The third one was a model of … how can I say this to the AP reporter? NBC had the rights to broadcast the Olympics that year. So they put two together and we went to China,” Fraser told The Associated Press when asked about the news of a new Mummy movie. “Working in Shanghai, an incredible experience. I’m proud of the third one because I think it’s a good standalone movie. We picked up and did what we do with a different crew on deck and gave it our best shot. But the one I wanted to make is forthcoming. And I’ve been waiting 20 years for this call. Sometimes it was loud, sometimes it was a faint telegraph. Now? It’s time to give the fans what they want.”
It’s time to give the fans what they want. You know what this fan also wants to see? Superman star David Corenswet step into the role of the son of Fraser and Weisz’s characters. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Ryan Gosling, Bullseye and Jessie. / Amazon MGM Studios, Pixar
2 TRAILERS YOU NEED TO WATCH
Project Hail Mary
Project Hail Mary has the potential to be a fascinating experiment in what happens if you take two books written by the same author (Andy Weir) and adapt them into screenplays by the same writer (Matthew Goddard) but then have one project directed by Ridley Scott and the other project directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.
We know that The Martian went on to score a Best Picture nomination, among other Oscar honors. Will Project Hail Mary follow that same path?
• • •
Toy Story 5
It’d be super easy to critique Toy Story 5 for being an unnecessary sequel, but at least Disney and Pixar are actually telling a new story through animation with the upcoming Toy Story sequel instead of spending that money on — oh, I dunno — a soulless and creatively bankrupt live-action remake of Moana?
Brian Merchant is one of the best tech journalists out there right now, covering the push to change society and the economy to accommodate the companies that stand to lose a ton of money if AI isn’t the next big thing.
📖 OpenAI Can’t Fix Sora’s Copyright Infringement Problem Because It Was Built With Stolen Content(Emanuel Maiberg, 404 Media): “The flaw in OpenAI’s attempt to stop users from generating videos of Nintendo and popular cartoon characters exposes a fundamental problem with most generative AI tools: it is extremely difficult to completely stop users from recreating any kind of content that’s in the training data, and OpenAI can’t remove the copyrighted content from Sora 2’s training data because it couldn’t exist without it.”
CATCHING UP
Here’s what you might have missed from The Omnicosm this month ...
The Omnicosm founder. Popculturology, Deep SNL Thoughts and Snackology writer. A Rochester, N.Y., native now living in the Washington, D.C., area. Won’t pass up a Genny Cream Ale.
While I can’t wait to see ‘Project Hail Mary,’ the ‘Moana’ cash grab is as creatively bankrupt as we feared. PLUS: New trailers for ‘Avatar,’ ‘Wake Up Dead Man’ and ‘Hunger Games,’ and you need to watch ‘Death by Lightning.’
