David Reads The Trades: April 8, 2026
Toplines
- The Academy Awards confirmed they will stick with their late February/early March date for the foreseeable future; PGA announced two years of dates slotted two weeks prior, and SAG-AFTRA followed suit.
- Jeff Schell is out as Paramount president, per Deadline’s exclusive, though he has effectively been on eggshells since the Skydance deal closed.
- The $24 billion in Middle Eastern funding for approximately a quarter of the Paramount Skydance acquisition was reconfirmed, despite having been known since last fall.
- Cinema United announced the formation of a Filmmaker Leadership Council featuring Jerry Bruckheimer, Emma Thomas, Ryan Coogler, Brad Bird, Jason Reitman, and Celine Song, with Greg Foster serving as executive director. The council will present at CinemaCon in Las Vegas next week.
- Euphoria Season 3 reviews are largely negative, with critical pieces from Daniel Feinberg at The Hollywood Reporter, Alison Herman at Variety, and Ben Travers at IndieWire all expressing reservations about the series’ continued relevance.
- Steven Soderbergh revealed he burned 44 years’ worth of notebooks in a fire pit in the Hudson Valley; his new film The Christophers is nearing release.
- The Michael Jackson biopic underwent 22 days of reshoots costing $15 million, completely changing the film’s ending ahead of its release in a few weeks.
- Markets rallied following de-escalation of Iran tensions, with the Dow up nearly 1,200 points, though indices remain roughly 5% below pre-crisis levels. Disney rose 3.3% to nearly $99/share.
The Academy’s Commitment to Stagnation
The news has already disappeared from the front pages of the trades, barely 24 hours later, and we’ve already established that the Academy Awards have decided to give up on making anything better and just keep riding out that late February, early March date they’ve beaten into the ground while watching audiences get smaller and smaller.
I was going to write a piece yesterday, frankly, and I just had a hard time getting excited or even thoughtful about something I’ve been talking about for 20 years. It’s just stupid. It’s just dumb. But it is what it is. You can’t fight city hall. The Academy will do what it wants. The Academy has every right to do what it wants. I am not the king of the Academy. I’m not even a member of the Academy. I will never be a member of the Academy, because I’m not allowed. But even if I was allowed, I don’t know if I’d be a member in any case.
The decision to stick to March was followed immediately by all the monkeys — as I call them, unkindly — with PGA and SAG-AFTRA falling right in line, grabbing their slots two weeks before the Oscars. The PGA actually announced two years’ worth of dates. SAG only went for one year, but they’ll certainly be in the same place. And now we’ll get to hear from the fake Golden Globes. I say “fake” the way Trump would say it — bad for me, bad, bad. But they are a fake organization now, owned by two very wealthy men, one of whom was very nice to me recently. Still fake.
This past awards season was bad in a lot of ways for a lot of people. Obviously it was good for Warner Brothers, though even for Warner Brothers, I think they didn’t really control the season so much as they had the good fortune of having the two movies that were most obvious to be in position. They managed to screw up one battle after another just enough to not be able to avoid the inevitable winner winning — because it was such an inevitable winner from the day it opened.
Unlike, interestingly, The Departed, which opened in a similar time slot, also without the film festivals. I think it opened a couple weeks later, but it also went around all of that and was up against a variety of films that people really loved. It was kind of the movie where we didn’t know it would win because other things won along the way. There were distractions. There are always distractions. There’s always this idea that we need to create a race out of the Academy, which is what the media is there for, I guess.
The Academy just seems perfectly happy getting to the next deal. They don’t seem interested in change of any kind.
Influencing the Influencers: On Critics, Trades, and Relevance
I was reading a Rick Ellis piece today on Substack, which is worth taking a look at, about the role of critics versus the role of influencers, and where he tries to suss out a place in all of that over the many years he’s been in the business. He and I have kind of parallel lives — me leaning much more toward the movie side, him leaning much more toward television. I’ve worked in both and written about both, and I actually started my career in television. Well, I started in theater, but that’s a whole different conversation.
Reading his piece, I realized something about my own role in all of this over the years: I have really been an influencer for the influencers. My audience has never been as big as whomever. I’ve had success and I’ve had position. I was, many years ago in the late ’90s, really the person — with the help of Rough Cut, which was part of Time Warner at the time, and TNT Cable — to break through to the studios and make the internet safe and available and accessible as part of the process of movie marketing and publicity.
Initially, Ain’t It Cool News had a very different position and scared the shit out of people, generally speaking, because they were reckless. Don’t tell them that, because one of them will scream at you. But my role was not to make it palatable — I was always a hard-ass in my way, sometimes too much when I was younger and trying to get more attention. As things moved along, Movie City News had its place in the history of all of this. But ultimately, my role as a writer has been to influence the influencers. That’s my audience. Smaller, but significant in a way, and it continues to be.
However, the people I’m influencing have gotten older, not younger. I do have some young people who pay attention, but I’ve never been one to chase a younger audience, which I probably should be. There is a group of people under 40 who truly have no idea who I am or why I’m asking them for access to anything. That’s something I just have to live with, even though I have access to all the people they want access to.
This connects to something bigger about relevance itself. The Hollywood Reporter’s lead story is Daniel Feinberg’s review of Euphoria Season 3, framed around the question: has Sam Levinson’s HBO drama aged out of relevance? I have a great deal of respect for Feinberg, and I would say this probably for myself as well — being my age, how would I know? What is relevance? Do I know what’s relevant? Does Daniel still know what’s relevant? Do any of us who are over a certain age?
The thing is: is it relevant to a 25-year-old? Is it relevant to a 35-year-old? Is it relevant to a 55-year-old? How we connect to movies and television has a lot to do with how old we are and what generation of viewing experiences we’ve had. Your mileage may vary. The idea of relevance is actually somewhat irrelevant at this point.
This is the problem with having brands reviewing movies instead of people. Variety has another Euphoria review from Alison Herman, and it doesn’t seem very happy either. I’m not connected enough to Herman’s work as a TV critic to really know what to take from it. There’s nothing wrong with her, but I don’t really know her work enough to care. Unless I have some sense of what a critic thinks and why they think it and how they think — not a personal relationship, but some intellectual familiarity — I couldn’t care less. It’s just another person talking. Everybody has a fucking opinion.
IndieWire’s Ben Travers says Sam Levinson’s HBO drama grows old and boring. People are easily bored, as we’ve learned. I haven’t watched the season yet, so I don’t have a strong opinion, and I don’t need to fight about it. But the reviews seem not so positive. I love the series and I’m very curious. I’ll have an opinion about the show itself. I don’t think I’ll have an opinion about its “relevance.”
We’ve got to keep the forest and the trees in view at the same time. You need to be able to see both. That’s a recurring theme on this show.
The Trades and Their Discontents
The funny thing is, trades always had their place. I make fun of them on a regular basis, every day. But the truth is that trades had a certain position when I came into this business, and my engagement with the trades was actually one of the reasons I got into entertainment journalism, which I had no intention of doing.
When I came back to Los Angeles and was looking for something to do, I did a story for the Chicago Tribune that turned out to be much more complicated than expected. It was around the movie The Flintstones, and I uncovered this conspiracy — huge is relative, of course — about the writers and who got credit and who got paid. The point is, I found out then that the trades had no interest in investigative journalism of any kind. Nor did a lot of other outlets, including the Tribune. There was this story about 32 writers on the movie, and the more in-depth story I was pursuing got poo-pooed by a bunch of people, including The New Yorker and other places, because supposedly it had already been done — even though my story had nothing to do with what had been done. The Last Action Hero had also happened, which turned out to have some bad reporting in it, so there was a big drama over that. People were gun-shy and uninterested in doing entertainment journalism.
The role of the trades has been an issue for me from the start of my career. And it’s evolved in this weird way. The idea that it could get worse is actually a strange thing, and yet here we are.
Looking at today’s trade landscape: Deadline’s lead breaking news is Jeff Schell out as Paramount president. They have it as an exclusive. I have it as old news. Was Jeff Schell really ever the Paramount president? Kind of. He’s been on eggshells since the deal closed. A lot of this stuff that’s come down today officially has just been the norm.
Their number two story is Extraction 3 getting a summer slot at Netflix. So maybe the least unsuccessful big expensive action title at Netflix is going to go for a third time. The piece will tell you how popular it is and how wonderful it is. I wouldn’t watch it if you tortured me, frankly. And I really like Chris Hemsworth. No interest at all.
Variety’s top story and cover is that Hacks ends on a high. The idea that you’re doing a cover story, which is a feature, and kind of positioning it like it’s a criticism piece — it’s by Michael Schneider, who does write television criticism. So what is it? It’s lunch meat and shoe polish at the same time. They’ve also got their Legal Impact Report for 2026, which is when Variety tries to influence influencers and get attention and ad sales by thanking top attorneys for being so wonderful.
Then there’s a headline I’m not going to name the show for, but it’s about why the creator explains why a certain character — spoiler, they literally have the word “spoiler” in the headline — was killed off early in the season. Which is a spoiler by itself. Without actually giving away the name of the character, you’re telling the audience that somebody important dies early in the season. Most people reading the trades aren’t TV critics who’ve seen it early. That’s called a spoiler. Even if you don’t tell me exactly who’s going to die, now I have it in my head. But they need headlines, they need clicks.
Jeff Schell, Paramount, and the Middle Eastern Money
Jeff Schell’s departure is being presented as breaking news, but it’s a formality. He’s been a dead man walking since the Skydance deal closed. This is similar to the $24 billion from the Middle Eastern groups that are funding roughly a quarter of the Paramount Skydance purchase. The Wall Street Journal presented it as new news a week or so ago. I guess that’s their role — when something becomes more official and specific, they put it out there. But we’ve known this was there the whole time. Since the middle of last fall, really, we were aware that this big chunk of funding was coming from the Middle East.
And of course, the Trump administration isn’t going to do anything about it or concern themselves with it, even though it’s borderline illegal in terms of the historic rules about who can own broadcast networks and things like that. I don’t think they’re going to act on it. They should do something, but what are the odds?
Paramount Skydance is also launching a publishing imprint, which is kind of ironic. The one time a merger was actually stopped that people in this industry can point to involved Paramount and Simon & Schuster. So in the midst of all this corporate drama, they’re starting a book imprint. I’m sure it’ll be fine.
Cinema United’s Filmmaker Leadership Council: Good Intentions, Wrong Tool
Cinema United — which used to be NATO, the National Association of Theater Owners, until they got tired of being confused with the boom-boom group — has announced a Filmmaker Leadership Council. Jerry Bruckheimer, Emma Thomas, Ryan Coogler, Brad Bird, Jason Reitman, and Celine Song are on the board, with more expected to join. Greg Foster, Cinema United’s senior consultant, was instrumental in forming the council and will serve as executive director.
I’m a big supporter of Cinema United. I don’t agree with everything they’re doing these days, but I believe in what they represent. However, here’s the problem.
These are not the people to be leading the push for exhibition. They are very, very pro-exhibition, and I respect that enormously. Emma Thomas is Chris Nolan’s wife and producer — a great producer who has made his visions possible functionally and then some, a partner in all kinds of ways. I give her enormous respect. Jerry Bruckheimer has one of the great producing careers of all time, top ten no question, and even if you’re not a huge fan of his kind of movies, you have to respect what he’s done. I think Brad Bird is a freaking genius. I know how Jason Reitman thinks about the industry. I have a sense of Ryan Coogler.
But can they, in this committee role, be anything more than front people for the movement? “Let’s keep cinema going, let’s keep cinema going.” Per the organization, the council will work with Cinema United to provide vital feedback and recommendations on the most pressing issues facing theatrical exhibition today — consolidation, windows, promotion, marketing, innovation, and technology.
Greg Foster, my fingers are crossed for you, but I think you’re basically setting up a promotional event, all things considered. And that, to me, is unfortunate, because there’s a lot of work to do.
The last time we had a bunch of important people sitting on a stage talking about exhibition, it was Scorsese and Spielberg — as important as anybody is or has ever been in this business — saying it’s over, movie theaters are over. Before that, it was 3D is coming, 3D is the thing. Which of course turned out to be something nobody really wanted outside of Avatar. They still do it, particularly with animation, because it’s easier and cheaper and they can screw another buck or two out of families. But for regular movies, 3D has been a failure. Then it was different frame rates. That came and went. We keep hearing from geniuses — and they are truly geniuses, I’m not making fun of them on that basis — but they keep saying “this is the thing.” And then Spielberg and Scorsese just kind of gave up. Of course, they’re both still making movies for theaters.
These filmmakers will do a CinemaCon event next week in Vegas. They’ll share their insight into how great movie theaters are and how important the communal experience is — stuff we hear every single year. They’re much more important to the film business than I am, great minds all. And yet they can’t change anything. My experience is that they don’t really understand the business of exhibition and distribution and the relationship between them.
These are filmmakers. They’re making art, and they make great art. Even as producers, they’re making art. Making the donuts, however complicated and however brilliant, is not the same thing as selling the donuts. And it’s not the same thing as being the retailer for the donuts, which is what exhibition essentially is — maintaining a brick-and-mortar operation and everything that entails.
I hate to be cynical about it. I wish I could get excited and tell you it’s going to change something. But it doesn’t change anything. It just creates more stories in the trades.
What Exhibition Actually Needs
What I’ve found over the years, particularly back when Cinema United was still NATO, is that there’s this fundamental difficulty with really bringing exhibitors together. There are now four exhibitors in the country with over 1,000 screens each. The other roughly 18,000 screens belong to smaller exhibitors — some with 150 or 300 screens, so they’re not nobodies, not irrelevant at all. But the exhibition business has gotten very top-loaded.
And then there’s this sense within the organization and the industry that exhibitors can’t collude. Meanwhile, studios are colluding all the time and just lying about it. The exhibitors have this kind of moral high ground, and they don’t collude effectively. There is no consistency between the groups.
The MPA pays an enormous amount of money to their leadership — former government officials — to go to Washington and try to change policy. That’s their primary role. Cinema United, even though they’re related to MPA and used to be very tight with them, are no longer quite as close. There’s disagreement between the groups. There’s been a separation. Things they used to do in tandem, very effectively, don’t really get done anymore.
What we need is the ability for exhibitors to collude to some degree. They should be lobbying the government for clarity and room to do it legally. Something like making Tuesdays and Wednesdays $5 days or 50% off days should be a standard across the industry. Every exhibitor has their own slightly different version and wants to do their own thing, but the inability to unite as a group and say “across America, exhibitors are going to offer this” is a real problem.
I went through this very specifically with 80 for Brady, a Paramount movie where Chris at Paramount created a promotional stunt with cheaper tickets on multiple days. It played out, but not as well as it should have because it was only in certain markets, and this market was a little different and that market was a little different. The exhibitors couldn’t get together — they’re not allowed to have a unified voice. The idea was right, but it couldn’t work under those conditions.
I am not a believer in variable pricing. I think that would actually come close to the end of exhibition. It’s very destructive, and we’ve seen this with DVD in particular. When you start price competition between theaters and certain movies, the audience is not capable of or interested in chasing all of it down. We’ve found this historically over and over again. They don’t want to figure out that it’s $6 for the 3 o’clock show at one theater across town and $7.50 for the 8 o’clock show somewhere else and which kind of IMAX is this or that. They just don’t want to do it. What happens is it creates distance from actually making the sale, and then people withdraw from the whole conversation and just don’t go.
In this era, it’s easier than ever to not go and wait for something to come to your house. Now that Universal has given up on the 17-day window — great — the next thing is the window to paid video on demand and streaming. That needs to be longer. The window is now as short as two months, which is crazy, and no longer than three and a half to four months. Four months is the long average. It needs to be five or six months.
That window needs to be clearer, because that’s when people feel they’re getting the movie for free, even though they’re paying a monthly subscription. It feels like it’s coming to their house for free as part of this other package. Obviously the cost of going to a movie theater for one ticket, in most cases in most cities outside of matinees, is over $10.
The clarity of the window is critical because the audience begins to sense — and we’ve had this with the very short VOD window — that just three weekends into a movie’s life, it’s already going to TV. It’s over. And that perception lives in people’s heads. It’s not necessarily a function of how people actually behave or spend their money. It’s completely a function of how they think about that window. The movie window, as I’ve explained many times, is not for everyone. Only 10 to 15 percent of America drives the movie business primarily. Every once in a while, 10 or 15 times a year, the bigger movies pull in a wider audience. Sometimes you get movies like The Passion of the Christ where an audience that never goes to movies comes out. Angel Studios has taken advantage of that phenomenon as well.
But no matter how brilliant these filmmakers are — and they are brilliant — putting them on a stage doesn’t solve the structural problems of exhibition.
The Academy’s Deeper Problem
This all connects, in some ways, back to the Academy Awards. The Board of Governors is as brilliant a group as you’d ever find to talk about movies, the making of films, and the quality of art. And yet they’ve let the Academy itself slide into a place where it is less and less relevant every year — not because movies are less relevant, but because the Academy’s choices have been to be deflective, to protect itself rather than actually lead in a real way.
And even when it tries to lead, it screws it up. The inclusion requirements — where you have to fill out a list cataloging the demographics of your cast and crew to qualify for an Oscar — are utter bullshit. That idea comes from Franklin Leonard, the same person involved with BAFTA doing something similar. But BAFTA and the BFI give money to people to make films. They are in charge of deciding who gets funding. If you are funding movies as an organization, you have every right and every reason to say you want filmmakers to live by a set of principles. The Academy does not fund films.
The Academy Awards saying you can’t get an Oscar if you don’t fill out this form — which is not really the stated purpose, and I understand that, but it is effectively what happens — doesn’t belong in that situation. The Academy Awards are not a judgment of your moral standard. Whether or not you have the “right kind of people” on your crew or cast — whether it be gay, trans, any gender, any religion — has nothing to do with the quality of a movie. That’s a different issue, and quality is what the Academy Awards are supposed to be for.
This brilliant Board of Governors has allowed things to slide into a weird place where everything is equivocation. The pendulum has swung left and right, and the Academy has swung pretty far to the left. But that’s not the complaint, certainly not my complaint. My concern is that instead of approaching things aggressively, they’ve chosen passivity. We didn’t do it. It’s not our fault. Don’t mess with anything. Don’t change anything. Keep it the same because that’s how you grow. No, it’s not.
Steven Soderbergh Burns His Past
Steven Soderbergh burned 44 years’ worth of notebooks and says it was the right thing to do. I love Steven and haven’t seen him in many years now. I used to see him pretty regularly. We actually shot an interview with him once — just his feet, because he didn’t want to be seen on camera. I was hoping it would become legendary. It hasn’t turned out to be legendary, but some people love it. I love it.
The notebooks contained work product from over four decades of film and television projects — some made, some abandoned. Anything still relevant had been typed into computer files years ago. He didn’t want to hand them over as part of his archive, and he realized he didn’t want them invading his space with a false sense that they were still important. He went to a friend’s house in the Hudson Valley, leafed through the notebooks at a fire pit, sprayed them with lighter fluid, and torched them. He said it was really cathartic.
Steven is a dramatic human being and a brilliant one, truly one of our greatest filmmakers, though he hasn’t been as prominent as he once was. I look forward to seeing The Christophers, which I think I’m seeing tomorrow. I haven’t had a chance to see it before now. I relate to the impulse to strip down — I’ve been giving away my poster collection, because I have too many and not enough wall space. They should be seen. So for birthdays and events, I’m giving them away, trying to strip down to the essentials.
Steven was one of the great genius filmmakers of his generation, absolutely brilliant. He makes great movies and brings extraordinary skill to everything. And at the same time, he tried to get into the distribution side and just got slammed in the face because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about in that regard. Could not be a smarter human being — as smart a person as you’ll ever find in this business — and yet it’s not his thing. He had this theory, he had that theory, but he was wrong. I think we had that discussion once. Never had it again.
He just didn’t get it. It’s hard to get it, because you have to be thinking on a different wavelength. The different roles in this business are not the same.
The Rest of the Day
Arnie Olson passed away. He wrote Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. He was 64 years old — way too young. He also wrote Cop and a Half, which was a Burt Reynolds movie and a punchline for a long time. It was in that category with Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot — not Kindergarten Cop, because that was actually a hit.
Mitchell Fink passed away at 82. He’d been around forever. I wouldn’t say I knew him very well, but I knew him back in New York. He may have taught a television class I was in at NYU at some point. I’d run into him places — “Hey, Mitchell, how you doing?” He was a nice enough guy. Rest in peace.
Film Independent, which also backs the Independent Spirit Awards — which, like the Academy Awards, has faded completely — received a legacy gift from Samuel and Ruth P. Cohen and will fund a new fellowship for international filmmakers. Honorable, good, and great. Thank you, Film Independent.
Bill Lawrence is talking about Season 3 of Shrinking, which I think is now all online. Terrific season. It does feel like the end of this cycle, and Lawrence has talked about the fact that the next season — and he hopes the next three seasons — will be another cycle with a different focal point in terms of the core story. That makes perfect sense, but everybody else is getting very confused by it and wanting to turn it into something wacky. I don’t know why.
Guy Pearce, Raffey Cassidy, Andrea Riseborough, and Alessandro Nivola wrapped production on a movie called High End in Ireland. Good for everybody. There’s also a great cast assembling for Armand Hammer’s The Thing That Hurts, which Wes Anderson is producing — Alfre Woodard, J.K. Simmons, Noémie Merlant, Golshifteh Farahani, Felicity Jones, among others. Armand is a great filmmaker, so I’m always happy to see what comes out next. He’s close friends with very close friends of mine, but that’s not why I look forward to his work. He’s always kind of dismissed me, which is weird. He looks at me in social situations like, “Why the hell are you here?” Life is funny sometimes.
IndieWire has a piece on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how to screw up a reboot. The deal didn’t go through. People are obsessed with the property, but the commercial industry — not just one studio — decided they didn’t want to do it. Is that “screwing it up”? If that’s your tree and you’re obsessed with that tree, sure. But the forest says maybe they didn’t think it was worthy. All of these companies sell their television products to other studios when they don’t want to make them. I just watched a new series going to Hulu that’s made by Warner Brothers — the first thing that comes up is a Warner Brothers logo. This is the norm. The idea that nobody would make Buffy the Vampire Slayer 25 or 30 years later is not unusual, not a freak show, not a rare thing.
The Michael Jackson biopic reshoot story — Kate Erbland reports it took 22 days and cost $15 million, completely changing the ending. God bless Lionsgate and their publicity team, cleaning up the mess before it becomes a mess. The movie’s coming out in a few weeks, so we’ll all know soon enough.
Tom Holland saw The Odyssey and calls it an absolute masterpiece. Not surprised, not unexpected, and even if he’s in the movie, I respect his opinion. Bless him. The new Chris Nolan movie was shot entirely on IMAX cameras, apparently. They’re pushing the art form, as artists do.
The National Enquirer’s archives are being mined for microdramas in a new deal with a company called Gamma Time. They’re betting that microdrama viewers have a taste for the sensational, with upcoming productions about Drew Peterson, Richard Ramirez, Karen Read, and Wanda Holliday. That’s kind of funny.
J.J. Abrams downsizing — I think we talked about this yesterday. It was actually not a terrible story. He’s turning 60, his business has changed, and he doesn’t need the entire infrastructure in Santa Monica. He has so much money that if he just wanted to keep it, he would. This is not a man under financial stress or being run out of town.
Jennifer Salke is apparently producing a series at Amazon MGM Studios, which I guess is part of her exit package.
The Market
Trump called off his escalation with Iran late last night. In his infinite… whatever — we can’t really call it wisdom, even as a joke — he decided not to plunge us all into death and despair for many decades to come. Good choice, Don. You’re a genius.
The Dow is up nearly 1,200 points. This morning it was up over 1,500. But it’s still 5% lower than it was when all of this started. It was 10% lower; now it’s 5%. So it has not recovered. The S&P 500 is up 150 points. NASDAQ is up about 680.
How is this affecting entertainment stocks? Same answer as always: not very much. Everything is up except Comcast, which is down almost four cents — meaning almost nothing. Disney is the one company really affected by Middle East tensions because of gas prices and park attendance. They’re up 3.3%, almost at $99 a share. I expect by tomorrow they’ll be over $100 again, which is where they should live. Netflix is also up, closing in on $100 post-split, which is about right — though I think the valuation of Netflix is still wildly oversized. Paramount is up a little but still just an $11 share, which is about where they want to be. Warner Brothers Discovery is floating in that $27 range, which means nothing. Sony is up half a buck, about 2.5% of the company’s value.
Up and down, up and down.
We’re still eight days away from Netflix quarterly earnings, which will come out during CinemaCon. And of course, Netflix doesn’t go to CinemaCon. They would have been there had they bought Warner Brothers, but they didn’t. So we’ll be dealing with those earnings while sitting in Vegas on the last day of the convention.
Not a lot of actual news today. Kind of the norm lately.