The scarcity of American films, which was on display when Cannes announced its official selection last week, continued into Critics’ Week, or La Semaine de la Critique. None of the seven competition films or four special screenings come from U.S. filmmakers, with almost 20 countries represented but France dominating just as it did in the main lineup.

The opening film will be Vietnamese filmmaker Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated “In Waves,” a first for Critics’ Week. The sidebar will close with Felix de Givry’s “Adieu monde cruel.”

Both the opening and closing films come from first-time directors. Other first-timers in Critics’ Week are Sara Ishaq, Zou Jing, Bruno Santamaria Razo, Julien Gaspar-Oliveri and Pierre Le Gall.

Critics’ Week is its 65th year as Cannes’ oldest independent sidebar. It was the section that brought the Cannes debuts of Guillermo del Toro, Julia Ducournau, Bernardo Bertolucci, Jacques Audiard, Ken Loach and Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Last year’s Critics’ Week selections included Shih-Ching Tsou’s “Left-Handed Girl,” which made the Oscars international shortlist as the Taiwanese Oscar entry, as well as Sven Bresser’s Dutch Oscar entry “Reedland” and Pauline Loques’ Cesar Award winner “Nino.”

New initiatives this year include Sony funding a 4,000 Euro prize for the winner of Critics’ Week’s Discovery Prize for Short Film and the Institut français partnering with the Critics’ Week and the Marché du Film for a program of conferences, panels and workshops.

This year’s Critics’ Week will begin on May 13, the day after Cannes kicks off, and run through May 21. The festival’s other major independent sidebar, Directors Fortnight, is scheduled to announce its lineup on Tuesday.

The lineup:

Opening film:
“In Waves,” Phuong Mai Nguyen

“A Girl Unknown,” Zou Jing
“The Station,” Sara Ishaq
“Dua,” Blerta Basholli
“Seis meses en el edificio rosa con azul,” Bruno Santamaria Razo
“La Gradiva,” Marine Atlan
“Tin Castle,” Alexander Murphy
“Viva,” Aina Clotet

Closing film:
“Adieu monde cruel,” Felix de Givry

Special screenings:
“Stonewall,” Julien Gaspar-Oliveri
“Flesh and Fuel,” Pierre Le Gall

The post Cannes Critics Week Reveals International Lineup, No U.S. Films appeared first on TheWrap.

In 2026 alone, Netflix’s live event roster includes the concert livestream “BTS: The Comeback Live – Arirang,” “Skyscraper Live,” the Baseball World Classic as well as several WWE events and its weekly Monday Night Raw installments, with the streamer also gearing up to move into MMA with a fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano on May 16. That’s coming off of the streamer’s annual NFL Christmas Day games, whose halftime show was headlined by Snoop Dogg.

The events have drawn impressive viewership, with the World Baseball Classic games reaching 31.4 million viewers — the most streamed baseball game ever — while the BTS concert scored 18.4 million global viewers and “Skyscraper Live” brought in 6.2 million views.

By being selective about what it streams live, it’s taking a weakness and turning it into a strength. Netflix has shown a reluctance to commit to any of the major leagues, meaning it doesn’t have the wide array of live programming that a Peacock or Paramount+ may have with its various sports deals. But the secret sauce for Netflix’s live event strategy lies in its choosiness, making the events it does put on all the more high profile and exclusive to keep audiences engaged.

“It creates these sort of tentpoles that happen on a regular basis that are interesting and that aren’t available elsewhere, and give people that reason … pay for one more month of Netflix, because there’s either something interesting happening now or it just creates that general background feeling that more interesting stuff will be coming out in the future,” Hub Entertainment Research founder Jon Giegengack told TheWrap.

Take Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL games. The first iteration in 2024 emulated a Super Bowl halftime show with Beyoncé Bowl, whose performance alone drew 27 million viewers, according to Nielsen. The streamer followed it up with a handful of guest performances alongside Snoop Dogg for the 2025 games, which scored an average of 29 million viewers.

It seems likely that Netflix will stick to its annual NFL games, with Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria telling press during the Next on Netflix event in March the Christmas Day games have worked well for both sides, though they’re open to considering various packages and games. “We’re always going to have the conversation with them about that, always evaluating, is that the right game or the right moment for us to do?”

“I think the strategy of [the] event game on Christmas, and obviously what we did with it, as far as adding Beyoncé Bowl, and then Snoop and doing some more bells and whistles around the NFL Christmas Day … has been an amazing partnership with them,” Bajaria said. “We really love the strategy of doing these Christmas Day games with them, and that’s worked well for us and for them.”

While that might be true, it’s important to note that boasting this strategy is in Netflix’s best interest, given it doesn’t hold season-wide rights. It does, however, hold the rights to WWE’s library of live events for just over a year, whose events tallied 525 million hours of viewing in 2025. Monday Night Raw accounted for nearly 340 million views while 185 million views were tallied by premium live wrestling events broadcast outside of the U.S. like SmackDown, WrestleMania, Elimination Chamber, Money in the Bank, Night of Champions and Royal Rumble.

Beyond that partnership, Giegengack predicts the streamer will keep going for variety in its live programming by selecting “periodic attention-grabbing cultural moments that sit on top of the giant library that Netflix has.”

“It gives off a feeling that Netflix is fresh, and there’s always something new … but because of the volume of scripted content that’s there, I think it’s easier to get that feeling,” he said.

“Love Story” ends with a bang

FX’s “Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette” ended with a ratings bang, soaring nearly 20% ahead of the prior week’s episode and 90% over the series premiere after its first day of streaming.

The finale also boosted viewership of the premiere episode, which added more than one million views on Hulu and Disney+ since the finale’s launch to reach over 14 million multi-platform views across FX, Hulu and Disney+.

“XO, Kitty” debuts strong

The third season of “XO, Kitty” made a splash on Netflix as it debuted as the streamer’s top English-language TV show for the week of March 30 with 12.9 million views. Viewership for the “To All the Boys” spinoff series outpaced “Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen” with 6.9 million views, “The Predator of Seville” with 4.7 million views and “One Piece” Season 2 with 3.5 million views.

“Top Chef” cooks

Following its pre-air debut on Peacock, the “Top Chef” Season 23 launch has tallied 2.4 million total viewers across platforms after one week of viewing on linear and two weeks of viewing on Peacock. Not only did the launch rise 53% over its Season 22 premiere in a comparable time frame, it also ranks as the top cooking reality season or series premieres across streaming in 2026 to date, based on Nielsen data. 

“Top Chef” also benefitted from NBCUniversal’s reality universe, with 65% of first time viewers having tuned in to “The Traitors” season 4, which featured “Top Chef” host Kristen Kish.  

Nielsen streaming spotlight

Nielsen’s top 10 streaming list saw several originals make their mark with debuts during the week of March 2, including “Young Sherlock,” which tallied 678 million minutes on Prime Video for its binge release and “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” which kicked off its second season with 467 million minutes on Apple TV. Hulu’s “Paradise” also made it into the top 5 original titles for the week with 694 million viewing minutes as it shifted to a weekly release after its initial 3-episode drop.

IYCMI

• The “Paradise” Season 2 finale scored season-high viewership for the Dan Fogelman-created series with 4.3 million views in three days
• The historic launch of Artemis II drew an audience of over 18 million viewers as it aired across ABC, CBS, NBC, Telemundo, CNN, FOX News Channel and MS NOW before handing the baton to the streamers for the lunar flyby. There is not yet data for how the flyby performed across Netflix and the other streamers.
• “The View” closed out its first quarter with the strongest overall performance the daytime talk show has seen in five years

The post Inside Netflix’s Winning Approach to Live Programming appeared first on TheWrap.

At a press conference in Paris, Cannes general delegate Thierry Frémaux and president Iris Knobloch unveiled 21 films that will screen in the main competition, along with additional titles in the Un Certain Regard section and in various out-of-competition sections.

The festival announced fewer films than it usually does, particularly in UCR, but Frémaux promised additions to the lineup in coming days, saying that some deals had yet to be finalized.

Past winners of the Palme d’Or returning to Cannes include Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won for “Shoplifters” in 2018 and is back with “Sheep in the Box”; and Cristian Mungiu, a winner for 2007’s “4 Weeks, 3 Months and 2 Days” who this year has the Norwegian-language film “Fjord,” starring the Oscar-nominated “Sentimental Value” actress Renate Reinsve.

Kore-eda’s film will be distributed in the United States by Neon, the company that has released the last six Palme d’Or winners. The company also has the competition selection “The Unknown” from Arthur Harari, the co-writer of the Palme winner “Anatomy of a Fall.”

The lineup also includes the previously announced “Propellor One-Way Night Coach,” the directorial debut of actor John Travolta; and “The Electric Kiss,” a French film by Pierre Salvadori that will be the opening-night attraction.

While the lineup has a smaller-than-usual contingent of American films and an absence of major-studio movies, U.S. directors with films in the official selection include Gray; Ira Sachs, with “The Man I Love”; Howard and Soderbergh, with the documentaries “Avedon” and “John Lennon: The Last Interview,” respectively; Jane Schoenbrun, the indie director of “I Saw the TV Glow” who has the Hannah Einbinder/Gillian Anderson slasher film “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” in Un Certain Regard; comedian/filmmaker Jordan Firstman, also in UCR with “Club Kid”; and actor-turned-director Andy Garcia with “Diamond.”

Other notable international auteurs in the selection are Andrey Zvyagintsev (“Leviathan”) with “Minotaur,” Laszlo Nemes (“Son of Saul”) with “Moulin,” Ryuske Hamaguchi (“Drive My Car”) with “Sudden” and Asghar Farhadi (“A Separation”) with “Parallel Tales.”

Actors with films in the official selection include Sandra Huller with “Fatherland,” Javier Bardem with “El Ser Querido,” Sebastian Stan with “Fjord,” Woody Harrelson and Kristen Stewart with Quentin Dupieux’s “Full Phil,” Charles Melton with Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Her Private Hell,” Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander with Na Hong-jin’s “Hope.”

This year’s announcement comes after an impressive seven-year streak in which at least one film from the Cannes official selection has gone on to earn an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture every year, with a high of three nominees in 2024 and 2022. Over the last 10 festivals, 51 Cannes films have been nominated for Oscars, 16 have been nominated for Best Picture and two, “Parasite” and “Anora,” have won Best Picture, the first to turn that double play since “Marty” in 1955.

The festival previously announced that director Peter Jackson and actress/singer/director Barbra Streisand will receive Honorary Palme d’Or awards.

Additional selections will be announced in the coming weeks. The 79th annual Cannes Film Festival will begin on Tuesday, May 12 and run through Saturday, May 23, with South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook serving as the president of the main competition jury.

The Directors Fortnight and Critics Week sidebars are expected to announce their lineups next week.

Here is the 2026 official selection.

Main Competition

“Bitter Christmas” (“Amarga Navidad”), Pedro Almodovar
“Parallel Tales,” Asghar Farhadi
“Minotaur,” Andrey Zvyagintsev
“The Beloved” (“El Ser Querido”), Rodrigo Sorogoyen
“A Woman’s Life,” Charline Bourgeois-Tacquet
“The Man I Love,” Ira Sachs
“Fatherland,” Pawel Pawlikowski 
“The Birthday Party,” Lea Mysius
“Moulin,” Laszlo Nemes
“Fjord,” Cristian Mungiu
“Gentle Monster,” Marie Kreutzer
“Notre Salut,” Emmanuel Marre
“Nagi Notes,” Koji Fukada 
“Hope,” Na Hong-jin
“Sheep in the Box,” Hirokazu Kore-eda
“Another Day,” Jeanne Herry
“The Unknown,” Arthur Harari
“All of a Sudden,” Ryusuke Hamaguchi
“The Dreamed Adventure” (“Das Getraumte Abenteuer”), Valeska Grisebach
“Coward,” Lukas Dhont
“The Black Ball” (“La Bola Negra”), Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo

Un Certain Regard

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma,” Jane Schoenbrun (opening film)
“Elephants in the Fog,” Abinash Bikram Shah
“Iron Boy,” Louis Clichy
“Ben’imana,” Marie-Clementine Dusabejambo
“Congo Boy,” Rafiki Fariala
“Club Kid,” Jordan Firstman
“Ula,” Viesturs Kairiss
“La mas dulce” (“Strawberries”), Laila Marrakchi
“The Meltdown” (“El Deshielo”), Manuela Martelli
“Forever Your Maternal Animal” (Siempre Soy tu Animal Materno”), Valentina Maurel
“Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep,” Rakan Mayasi
“I’ll Be Gone in June,” Katharina Rivilis
“Words of Love,” Rudi Rosenberg
“Everytime,” Sandra Wollner
“All the Lovers in the Night,” Sode Yukiko

Out of Competition

“The Electric Kiss,” Pierre Salvadori (opening night film)
“Diamond,” Andy Garcia
“Her Private Hell,” Nicolas Winding Refn
“L’Abandon,” Vincent Garenq
“Karma,” Guillaume Canet
“Crescendo,” Agnes Jaoui
“La Bataille de Gaulle: L’Age de fer,” Antonin Baudry

Cannes Premiere

“Propellor One-Way Night Coach,” John Travolta
“Kokurojo” (“The Samurai and the Prisoner”), Kiyoshi Kurosawa
“Visitation” (“Heimsuchung”), Volker Schlondorff
“The Third Night” (“La Troisieme Nuit”), Daniel Auteuil
“The Match,” Juan Cabral and Santiago Franco

Special Screenings

“Rehearsals for a Revolution,” Pegan Ahangarani
“Les Matins Merveilleux,” Avril Besson
“L’Affaire Marie-Claire,” Lauriana Escaffre and Yvo Muller
“Avedon,” Ron Howard
“The Survivors of Che,” Christophe Reveille
“John Lennon: The Last Interview,” Stephen Soderbergh
“Cantona,” David Tryhorn and Ben Nicolas

Midnight Screenings

“Colony” (“Gun-Che”), Yeon Sang-ho
“Full Phil,” Quentin Dupieux
“Roma Elastica,” Bertrand Mandico
“Sanguine,” Marion Le Coroller
“Jim Queen,” Nicolas Athane, Marco Nguyen

The post Pedro Almodovar, Steven Soderbergh, Ron Howard Films Headed to 2026 Cannes Film Festival appeared first on TheWrap.

The first time Oblivion (577,000 TikTok followers), posted about her workplace, she was nervous Staples wouldn’t be thrilled one of its employees was making content on the clock. That fear crept in again in late February when she posted “Serving KUNT by the Keurig.” 

“I thought that would be the line,” Oblivion, who asked to be referred to by her TikTok handle, told me. Instead, the office supply store responded with a viral gif of Anthony Mackie dancing.

Oblivion and Staples’ partnership has become one of the buzziest brand stories of the year. It’s also the best arguments to date about why it’s a smart move for brands to fully trust creators rather than giving them a sterile list of bullet points to read. Known as the Staples Baddie, Oblivion gained attention earlier this year for her funny takes and earnest passion for everything you can do at Staples. Did you know you can make a custom mug at Staples? Take a passport photo? Create a direct mail campaign based on demographics? Oblivion knows. And thanks to her endlessly iconic delivery, now TikTok knows it too.

“Staples really did a really great job of not censoring me and letting me just do my thing,” Oblivion said. “We supported each other. We didn’t try to correct each other. We let each other be humans. I feel like that’s something that’s especially lacking in the corporate influencer space.”

@blivxx

We got you covered

♬ original sound – oblivion

It’s an approach that’s worked. Staples has seen “measurable increases in store traffic” and “meaningful lifts” in the categories Oblivion has highlighted, according to the New York Times. Now she has an employee badge, is part of an advisory board and has been at the head of the table at corporate meetings.

For years, creators have complained that strict guidelines on brand partnerships harm creativity and make campaigns less effective. Oblivion’s success proves that brands are starting to listen. Back in December, Romeo (1.6 million TikTok followers) pitched a theme song for Dr. Pepper that went viral. They’ve since made jingles for both Hyundai and Vita Coco, songs that have prompted other creators to make their own remixes and music videos using the audio. Clothing company Garage has taken this idea a step further by actively encouraging its sales associates to post on the job.

As for Oblivion, her love of Staples’ custom-made items may have opened the door to fame, but she has big plans for her future. She’s already had a partnership with Lyft and, as the offers come in, wants to try her hand at acting, modeling and voice acting work.

“The hardest part about this is I want to do it all,” she said. “Truly the world, it’s my oyster, and I can’t figure out which angle to shuck it from.”

Now onto the rest.

Kayla Cobb

Senior Reporter
kayla.cobb@thewrap.com

P.S. We have some big news at TheWrap. Today is our first-ever Creators x Hollywood Summit, an invite-only Los Angeles gathering of the top creators, entertainment leaders and brand partners who are shaping the future of storytelling and the new entertainment economy. So watch this space for some interesting panels and articles. 

The event is presented in partnership with global creator agency Whalar and The Lighthouse, both part of the Whalar Group, and sponsored by City National Bank, Fox Entertainment, Lionsgate, Loeb & Loeb LLP and WEBTOON. 

What’s New

MrBeast’s livestream peaked at 1.1 million viewers

You know that if MrBeast (475 million YouTube subscribers) is involved, it’s going to be big. The creator’s latest jaw-dropping stunt was a three-hour livestream that involved 50 of the top streamers and $1.5 million in giveaway cash. Creators like Pokimane, Ludwig and Fanum all competed for the chance to win $1 million to give to their followers. And people were watching. Viewership for the stream peaked at 1.1 million viewers, a number so high that the chat, poll and clipping functions on the YouTube livestream struggled to keep up.

This now ranks as MrBeast’s most-watched livestream after his 100 million subscriber special in 2022.

More than 200 organizations and experts call on YouTube to ban AI slop from its kids platform

More than 200 organizations and experts, including the American Federation of Teachers and the American Counseling Association, signed an open letter last week calling for YouTube to remove AI slop from its children’s platform. The term “AI slop” refers to the wave of mass-produced, AI-generated videos that have been flooding YouTube lately. Many of these videos seem specifically designed to engage children. 

That’s not the only parental complaint that’s been made against YouTube. Australia accused YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok of not doing enough to enforce the country’s social media ban. If you need a refresher, users under the age of 16 are no longer able to use social media platforms. There may be a court case from Australia if things don’t change.

AnimationEpic celebrated its 15-year anniversary in Regal theaters

The animated YouTube channel AnimationEpic (900,000 YouTube subscribers) celebrated its 15-year anniversary in a big way — by debuting three episodes in theaters. The nationwide theatrical event took place across more than 40 Regal Cinemas theaters. A one-night event isn’t going to save the theatrical industry. But, after the success of Markiplier’s “Iron Lung” and ahead of Kane Parsons’ “Backrooms,” this continues the trend of creators moving to the big screen.

Platform Updates

YouTube will roll out “Coachella TV” this weekend, a 24/7 dedicated livestream

Coachella is almost upon us, which is basically the influencer Super Bowl. And YouTube is prepared for the influx of attention. In addition to livestreaming all seven stages simultaneously, the platform is also launching“Coachella TV,” a 24/7 interactive music viewing channel that will show both archival performances and festival highlights. Yep, YouTube has basically remade MTV. Sorry Paramount.

Creators can launch, host and monetize podcasts directly from beehiv

Beehiv, the creator-focused platform that brings together newsletters, websites and tools, has officially entered its podcast era. Creators will now be able to publish a new episode of a podcast, share it with their subscribers and track its performance and growth all without leaving beehiv. Considering the fact that podcasts have become a major audience growth tool, it’s a good move from the platform.

Instagram Plus may let you anonymously watch Stories

Last week, it was confirmed that Meta has been testing a premium subscription called Instagram Plus. The offering will let subscribers watch a Story — a photo or video that disappears after 24 hours — without the original poster knowing they watched it. It will also let subscribers see how many people watch their Stories, extend a Story beyond 24 hours and let them create unlimited audience lists for their Stories. Right now, Instagram users can only post Stories to their Close Friends list. Insta creeping is about to get a little more expensive.

Movers and Shakers

Khaby Lame will  an ambassador for the 2026 Youth Olympics

The most popular TikToker around Khaby Lame (161 million TikTok followers) will be an ambassador for the 2026 Youth Olympics, which will take place in his  home country of Senegal. He will be the Dakar 2026 ambassador.

John Chungus is getting his own interview show

Five months ago, John Chungus — a cheery older man in a bowtie — went viral for encouraging the internet to go out and touch grass. That turned out to be an Anthony Po stunt, the creator who’s a master at orchestrating viral events out of thin air. But John Chungus will live on. The character will star as the host of “The John Chungus Show,” an interview show produced by Anthpo’s studio, Pufferfish. And based on his announcement video, it sure seems like Olivia Rodrigo will be his first guest.

Gianmarco’s “The Downside” joins Vox Media Podcast Network

Gianmarco Soresi’s weekly comedy podcast “The Downside” is coming to the Vox Media Podcast Network. Co-hosted by Russell Daniels, the podcast was previously with Headgum, but Vox will take over  sales, marketing and distribution for the podcast. It’s a move that continues Vox’s investment in creator-led podcasts.

Vox isn’t the only media company turning to creators. Last week marked the launch of “Let’s Talk Numbers,”a new show from The Washington Post that’s hosted by JC Rodriguez (597,000 TikTok followers).

Who to Watch

@huskistaken What’s going on… Full reaction vid @Mostly Human Media ♬ original sound – Husk

Husk

When Husk (369,000 TikTok followers) first started asking ChatGPT questions, it started as a bit about how much a person could annoy an AI assistant. Yet despite his worst intentions, Husk has intentionally become one of the greatest AI critics around. He has single-handedly shown that ChatGPT confidently lies about its ability to tell time and translate languages. His videos have become so popular and influential, they were even shown to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman(For the record, when Husk showed Chat the video of Altman saying the AI model isn’t able to keep track of time, Chat confidently disagreed with Altman Really heartwarming stuff). When the AI uprising comes, Husk will almost certainly be the first to go. But until then, his boots-on-the-ground reporting has become must-watch entertainment.

Bonus Content

• How Instagram’s ‘PG-13’ Branding for Teens Unraveled (via The New York Times)
• Inside the Multibillion-Dollar Business of Child Influencers (excerpt via The Rolling Stone)
• Adam W Is Taking Creator Strategy Off Screen And Into The Real World (via Forbes)

Want more? Explore WrapPRO now.

This report provides a weekly deep dive into the creator economy. It highlights key trends, political and technological developments, data points and industry leaders all with the goal of making you smarter about this constantly evolving space.

The post Creatorverse: More Relaxed Brand Standards Can Lead to Big Rewards appeared first on TheWrap.

President Donald Trump had an opportunity on Tuesday morning to dial back his apocalyptic threat to wipe out a “whole civilization” if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz — but instead, he doubled down.

“8 p.m. is happening,” Trump told Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who recounted his conversation with the president. Baier said negotiations could change the course, but otherwise Iran will endure an attack like it’s never before seen. 

Even after a decade of Trump’s incendiary rhetoric — and just two days after he warned Iran to “Open the F–kin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell” — his Truth Social post Tuesday was striking in its bleak yet perfunctory tone: “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.” 

Alongside the potentially catastrophic nature of the threat is a countdown clock that turns a global crisis into appointment viewing, the latest example of the president’s reality TV approach to leadership — taken to a grim extreme. Trump followed up his Sunday threat to bomb bridges and power plants — attacks on civilian infrastructure that could be considered war crimes— with a separate post announcing, “Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!”

As Bulwark managing editor Sam Stein noted, “When you’re getting [a] breaking news alert that the president is threatening to end a civilization tonight (tune in, tonight to see if he follows through!) you’re really through the looking glass.”

Trump’s grave warning to a country of more than 90 million quickly raised alarms on social media and cable news, as Democratic lawmakers and a wide array of political commentators, including former allies like Marjorie Taylor Greene, condemned the threat, with some calling for Trump to be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. Host Piers Morgan said Trump’s threat was “madness” and a “pre-admission of genocide.” 

The ultimatum made for strange political bedfellows: Figures on the right like Alex Jones said Trump “sounds like an unhinged super villain,” while “Pod Save America” co-host and former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau framed the threat as “genocidal language from a deranged person who should be removed from office.” Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on Congress to return from its break to  “end this reckless war of choice in Iran before Donald Trump plunges us into World War III.”

Trump has pushed global crises to extremes, only to extend deadlines or pull back. (He’s been mocked before with the acronym TACO, or “Trump always chickens out,” which happened so consistently the term evolved out of a Wall Street trading strategy). Some commentators on Tuesday suggested the threat was characteristically Trumpian bluster, a hardball negotiating tactic to push Iran toward a deal. Still, news outlets can’t ignore a president making an unprecedented threat, and journalists and anchors framed the threat in stark terms.

On MS NOW, “Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire said Trump may be bluffing, “but even just issuing that threat from the Oval Office is a remarkable escalation, and something we have never before seen from any president of the United States.”

“This is the rhetoric we associate with people like Vladimir Putin, with people like Kim Jong Un, with the monsters of history, and yet we have heard it now from the sitting president,” Lemire said. The New York Times’s Peter Baker said Trump was “using the language of war crimes in a way that no other American president, certainly in our lifetime, ever has.”

The administration’s messaging throughout the five-plus-week war has been anything but conventional, starting with Trump announcing in late February the U.S. and Israeli strikes in a Truth Social video from Mar-a-Lago at 2:30 a.m. ET.

Trump has spoken by phone to dozens of journalists, at times offering differing rationales for the military operation, while on Monday he threatened to jail a journalist over an alleged leak (without specifying who or what media company). Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has taken opportunity to bash the media at news briefings, though the Pentagon also went for a stretch of more than 10 days without holding one.

But on Tuesday, the line of questioning on cable news reached uncharted territory. While debates over military conflict have played out for decades on television, CNN anchor John Berman’s question to Republican Congressman Mike Lawler was without precedent: “If there is no deal by eight o’clock tonight, do you support making a whole civilization die?” Lawler said he didn’t, while broadly expressing support for the administration’s war in Iran. 

Another CNN veteran, Christiane Amanpour, wrote on X that “never in all my years” of reporting on “America at war have I heard anything like this: an American president threatens to destroy a ‘whole civilization’ and says it’ll take 100 years to rebuild.” 

“The fate of tens of millions of humans, right now on a knife’s edge, because if nothing changes in the next four hours, and Donald Trump follows through on the things he said out loud, his public threat, we may all soon be witness to a military assault so generationally and intentionally brutal that war crimes are not just possible, but they become U.S. policy,” MS Now host Nicolle Wallace said at the start of her 4 p.m. ET program.

“But that is only if you take Donald Trump at his word,” she said. “It’s risky.”

Some pundits dismissed the coverage as overheated, insisting that Trump is playing hardball with Iran.

“Donald Trump has been a national politician for a decade. Anyone still reacting to the guy’s negotiating tactics and hyperbole with this sort of hysteria ten years in should be disqualified from political commentary,” wrote Jeremy Boreing, a conservative host and co-founder of The Daily Wire. “If he nukes Tehran at 8pm, I’ll admit I’m the crazy one.”

Let’s hope Boreing is right. And a deal or delay could still come. But for now, the world will left be tuning in at 8 p.m. ET to see whether the threat becomes reality — or if the president once again ignites a media frenzy, only to pull back from the brink.

The post Trump’s Iran Ultimatum Turns Apocalyptic Threat Into Prime-Time Spectacle | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.

First, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” blasted off to a huge $372.5 million at the worldwide box office, on pace with how the first movie — which ultimately grossed $1.4 billion — performed despite dismal reviews. Even the demographics were similar, with a mix of kids/families and nostalgic Millennials/Gen Z (35% came from the 18-35 demographic).

The lesson: Illumination’s formula of bright, critic-proof IP continues to work — and dangling the promise of “more of the same, plus a little something new” seems to be a key to its strategy. Presales were soft until marketing revealed that Glen Powell would play Star Fox character Fox McCloud in the sequel, hyping up the possibility of even more Nintendo cameos to be discovered.

Next, “Project Hail Mary” is no flash in the pan. The film dropped only 43% in its third weekend, scoring a healthy $30.6 million to bring its domestic total to $217.2 million, with a $420.7 million global haul.

The lesson: When in doubt, bet on creatives with a strong vision. Phil Lord and Chris Miller drove this adaptation with full confidence from Amazon MGM. See also: “Sinners,” “One Battle After Another.”

Finally, A24’s “The Drama” is a hit with $14.1 million. This was not a given. The super famous Robert Pattinson and Zendaya have been heavy on the press circuits, but so were Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence for “Die My Love” which flopped. Ditto Sydney Sweeney and “Christy.” So why’d this one work?

The lesson: Movie stars alone don’t cut it. A24 leaned into the twist at the heart of “The Drama” in its marketing, which drove opening weekend sales and online discussion. It was the hook of two actors people liked, plus a “mystery box” story — you had to go see the film to be in on the discourse.

Now, on to the rest.

Box Office: ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ Soars With $372.5 Million Global Opening

Universal/Illumination’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is already the 2026 box office’s second-highest-grossing film worldwide after its $372.5 million 5-day global opening weekend, and should pass Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary” for the top spot by next weekend.

This global start includes a $190 million domestic launch that ranks fourth highest for all animated films over five days and exceeds the $158.8 million Thanksgiving weekend opening of Disney’s “Zootopia 2.”

The overseas start is led by a $29.8 million opening weekend in Mexico, the highest ever for a Universal release, and also includes openings of $19.7 million in U.K./Ireland, $15.8 million in Germany, $13 million in France and $10.8 million in Spain, with a release in Japan still to come on April 24.

Both domestically and internationally, “Super Mario Galaxy” has surpassed the entire theatrical run of Disney/Pixar’s “Hoppers,” which added $18.2 million worldwide in its fifth weekend for a total of $149.6 million domestic and $332.2 million globally. It’s the latest sign of how, even with original animation finally showing some signs of life, it is franchises that are carrying the post-pandemic box office more than ever.

Meanwhile, “Project Hail Mary” is still holding very well despite losing premium format screens to “Mario,” grossing $30 million in its third weekend for a $217 million domestic total. It is the first Amazon theatrical release ever to cross the $200 million mark in North America and stands globally at $420.7 million.

In third is the other newcomer this weekend, A24’s “The Drama,” which earned a superb $14.3 million opening from 3,082 theaters. It sits only behind “Marty Supreme” ($27.1 million) and “Civil War” ($25.5 million) as A24’s third highest opening weekend in company history. – Jeremy Fuster

The Spotlight

The multi-million-dollar question in Hollywood: How do you get your movie greenlit? In the latest installment of TheWrap’s new series Trade Secrets, we spoke to several film producers and executives to find out what is getting movies made right now — who’s buying what? What elements should your script have? How important is casting? And what’s the secret to selling a movie to Netflix? Read our full story here.

New Releases

Sad Robot: How did Bad Robot go from $250 million megadeal to shutting down its LA offices and downsizing? Umberto Gonzales takes a closer look at J.J. Abrams’ shingle, once the coolest production company in town.

Can AI Make Movies Better?: Roger Cheng put new AI tool Quilty through the wringer, asking it to analyze scripts for “Sinners,” “Christy,” “Barbie” and “Die Hard.” The results were shocking.

The Antidote to Hollywood Doom and Gloom: Sharon Waxman writes on the hopeful themes of “Project Hail Mary” and the AI bubble — maybe things aren’t as bad as we feared.

Making a 324-Minute Documentary: Casey Loving spoke with filmmaker Julia Loktev about making “My Undesirable Friends,” an epic doc about journalists’ last days in Russia.

More optimism: The U.S. box office posted its best first quarter since the pandemic with $1.77 billion.

Concession Stand

Elijah Wood is back as Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum,” but Viggo Mortensen is not returning as Aragorn.

The film industry lost 1,100 jobs in March.

After top execs exited the company, new distributor Row K had to pull out of its planned CinemaCon presentation.

Ryan Gosling entered and then exited talks to star in the new Universal film from directing duo Daniels.

The next big movie from a YouTuber is “Backrooms,” from 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons and A24. And it looks great.

Alcon will use Parrot Analytics data to fuel decisions around its IP library like “Blade Runner” and “The Matrix.”

“Project Hail Mary” fans don’t have to wait for the Blu-ray for the director’s commentary — it’s going up on an app to listen to in the theater.

After outcry over the Alamo Drafthouse’s shift to mobile food and drink orders during movies — thus negating their strict “no phones” policy that many moviegoers loved — workers at a Colorado location went on strike.

Clock it — Meryl Streep called out studios for skimping on budgets for “chick flicks,” saying for “Devil Wears Prada 2,” Disney “spent the money.”

Streaming Corner 

• There are a ton of new movies hitting streaming this month, including “Marty Supreme,” “The Housemaid” and “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple,” as well as streaming-only debuts of new films from directors Jonah Hill (on Apple) and Peter Farrelly (on Prime Video).

What I’m Watching 

I bought my four-year-old son his first Blu-ray this weekend for Easter (I’m doing my part to keep physical media alive), and it was “The Wild Robot,” so we rewatched Chris Sanders’ wonderful 2024 film that I still contend was maybe the best movie released that year. Such compassion, and what a gorgeous piece of work.

The post Reel to Real: 3 Big Lessons From This Weekend’s Box Office appeared first on TheWrap.

On Thursday, OpenAI acquired TBPN — the “Technology Business Programming Network”— in a deal the Financial Times pegged in the “low hundreds of millions.”

It was a dizzying move that initially felt like a delayed April Fool’s joke. Why would the AI juggernaut behind ChatGPT get into the media business by buying a podcast? 

OpenAI’s motivation isn’t primarily journalistic: Hays and Coogan riff on the news, but would be the first to admit they’re not reporters. It’s not to gain political clout; the hosts actively avoid politics, unlike some founders who’ve entered the media space. And it isn’t to capitalize on TBPN’s growing $30 million advertising business, since that’s being shut down as part of the deal.

What the young hosts bring is palpable enthusiasm for the tech world, and a strong connection with viewers — qualities that can serve OpenAI given gloomy public perceptions of AI. “They’re fun, they’re not sensationalist,” OpenAI chief Sam Altman told Axios. “They go into real levels of technical depth, and it resonates with people.”

OpenAI is essentially buying TBPN for the vibes. By bringing the show under its communications and marketing arm, rather than folding it into a more traditional media division, OpenAI is signaling that product is only part of the equation – success in AI also depends on perception. The timing is striking ahead of OpenAI’s planned IPO in late 2026. 

“The standard communications playbook just doesn’t apply to us,” Fidji Simo, OpenAI’s CEO of applications, wrote in a memo, noting TBPN’s “amazing comms and marketing instincts.”

In recent years, entrepreneurs and venture-capital firms have built their own media ecosystem, in part out of frustration with media coverage of Silicon Valley and as a way to boost their own narrative. 

Coogan and Hayes, who both hail from the tech world, are part of this trend: the former co-founded Soylent with investment from Altman, the latter co-founded start-up fundraiser Party Round. Not surprisingly, TBPN has provided a welcoming platform for industry heavyweights like Mark Zuckerberg, Satya Nadella, Alex Karp,  Marc Andreessen and Altman. 

OpenAI has promised editorial independence to TBPN, and will not interfere with topics and guests. There’s little risk that TBPN — which boisterously covered the AI talent arms race last year the way ESPN covers a draft — is going to unearth unflattering information about OpenAI or its competitors. Reporting isn’t part of the show’s DNA. 

“We were never in the scoop industry,” Coogan said on Thursday’s show. “People were kind of asking, is this journalism? Is this commentary? We’ve always been like, hey, we like to talk to a lot of people, have a conversation, bring in people.” 

Even when companies offer exclusives, Hays said they’d suggest taking such scoops to the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Bloomberg. “Then come contextualize it with us,” Coogan added. “Let us dig in and understand more about the strategy.”

The TBPN hosts has some gripes with journalists — “Sometimes they’ll have good intentions but they’ll miss the true story,” Hayes told Vanity Fair — but they aren’t harsh critics of the mainstream media like Andreessen, or, say, Elon Musk. They’ve sat for profiles this past year in VF, the New Yorker and the Times, telling a reporter from the latter: “We can’t do what we do without you guys.” 

In the New Yorker piece, Hays pointed to AI companies failing to better to tell their story. “We get that a lot of people hate AI. If I’m the average person in America, and I see a really terrible video generated by AI, and I hear that these companies are trying to take my job…” he said, trailing off. 

“We’ve had people on the show, and we think it’s honestly hilarious that they’re just saying this out loud,” Hays added. “They’ll say, ‘This is a big opportunity because we’re displacing labor.’ I’m, like, how can you say that? Say it better. Paint me a better vision for this technology.”

By acquiring TBPN, OpenAI is banking on the “Technology Brothers” to help the public better understand — and ideally embrace — the transformative products its building. 

DC media shake-up

Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, has “a lot of affection” for the Washington Post, where he started his career, and believes “it’s important to have strong national newspapers.”

Then he added: “If the Washington Post’s ownership and management is going to drive away its best journalists, I’m more than happy to give them a home.”

Goldberg spoke to TheWrap as the Atlantic poached four reporters from the Washington Post, including Matt Viser, the paper’s White House bureau chief, and as NOTUS — a site launched by Politico co-founder and former owner Robert Allbritton — added at least a half-dozen Post alums.

I took a deep look at the talent scramble in the capital. Check it out here: Washington Post Upheaval Redraws the DC Media Map | Analysis

TMZ ambushes Congress

While Washington media companies duke it out over talent, an unlikely outlet is making waves on the Hill: TMZ

Disgusted with members of Congress taking a spring break before hammering out a deal to end the partial government shutdown, executive producer Harvey Levin put out a call for viewers to help reveal what lawmakers are up to — and did they ever. 

TMZ obtained shots of Sen. Lindsey Graham roaming through Disney World, holding a bubble wand, images that quickly went viral. 

But TMZ posted pictures of numerous lawmakers, including Rep. Seth Magaziner partying with some “Real Housewives,” Rep. Robert Garcia at a Las Vegas casino, a congressional delegation touring Edinburgh Castle and Rep. Jared Moskowitz keeping time at his son’s basketball game — more heartwarming image than tabloid gotcha.

“I don’t mind what TMZ is doing here,” wrote Garcia, who said he was visiting his father. “Like I said a few days ago, Speaker Mike Johnson should have never sent us all home.”

TMZ has tried to make inroads in Washington before, but Levin’s latest effort, tapping into populist, anti-establishment disgust with government, has truly resonated. “People are really, really outraged,” Levin said on Thursday on X, adding: “Maybe they’re hearing your anger. Maybe not.”

Shaming lawmakers has also given way to booking them, with Rep. Jim McGovern appearing that day on “TMZ Live” to talk about his efforts to make a deal — and to jab at Graham’s Disney vacation. It’s also led to access, as Levin said TMZ is hearing from congressional offices saying they’d like to work with them.

“We’re going to have a full-time presence in Washington D.C.,” said Levin, because “it feels like the time is right.”

NYT AI controversy

How newsrooms incorporate AI is one of the most hotly debated topics in media circles, and journalists are grappling with how to best use the technology — with examples of misuse serving as cautionary tales.

Ars Technica fired a senior reporter last month after retracting a story that included AI-generated quotes, and now the New York Times has cut ties with a freelance writer, Alex Preston, after he inadvertently incorporated elements of a Guardian review while using AI to assist with his work, as Corbin Bolies reports.

“For staff journalists and freelance writers alike, reliance on A.I. and inclusion of unattributed work by another writer is a serious violation of The Times’s integrity and fundamental journalistic standards,” the paper said. 

Check out Bolies’ piece here: New York Times Cuts Ties With Book Review Writer Over AI Use | Exclusive

AGs hold the line

Lucas Manfredi reports how state attorneys general “may represent the last line of defense” in this moment of accelerating consolidation in local television and Hollywood. 

 “The federal government is retreating from its traditional role, abdicating its responsibility to enforce antitrust law and seemingly picking winners and losers,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta told TheWrap.

Check out Manfredi’s full piece: State AGs Are Pushing Back Against Media Consolidation. Is It Too Late?

Also on TheWrap

Bari Weiss Expected to Shake Up ‘60 Minutes’

MS NOW Posts Double-Digit Growth as Rebecca Kutler Hits One-Year Mark | Exclusive

CBS News 24/7 Union Reaches Contract Deal With Network

Fox News Hits 1.5 Billion YouTube Views in 2026’s First Quarter | Exclusive

WSJ Digital Subscriptions Grow 30% in 3 Years Under Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker

Versant Interested in Vox Media’s Podcast Business

On my radar

“Can a Journalist Be a Celebrity Anymore?” (Jonah Bromwich, The New York Times)

“New Media Energy” (People vs Algorithms)

“Inside the Meltdown of a Right-Wing Publisher” (Will Sommer, The Bulwark)

“Joanna Stern on quitting the Wall Street Journal and building a media business with AI” (Mixed Signals, Semafor)

The Most Powerful People in the World Are Obsessed With Media Again (Alex Weprin, The Hollywood Reporter)

After newsroom cuts, The Washington Post turns to creator-led video deals (Sara Guaglione, Digiday)

“The Profession That Does Not Exist (A Baffler symposium)

The post The Media Front: Why OpenAI Bought Tech Talk Show TBPN appeared first on TheWrap.

Production has declined. Entertainment has fled LA. Many jobs have disappeared. Studios are merging. AI hovers like a menacing cloud. At this point, it’s become almost passé to intone that “Hollywood is dead,” headed toward more misery and consolidation and job loss and, apparently, the trash bin of history. All last week, the Wall Street Journal went to the mattresses on a stark vision of Hollywood going to hell with these terrifying graphics: 

Then last month we had a strange counternarrative – what’s this? The box office woke up. “Project Hail Mary,” a sci-fi adventure film with no franchise history and released by Amazon Studios which has scant experience in blockbuster distribution – in fact, not much going for it besides a good-looking movie star and those nerdy guys from “The Lego Movie” — came careening into theaters and grabbed a massive $80 million weekend. “Hail Mary” has just completed its third weekend with a stunning $420.8 million total at the global box office and plans to go back to Imax theaters as soon as another juggernaut in the sequel of “Super Mario” — which raked in about $372 million globally in its opening weekend – gets out of the way. 

As TheWrap reported, the Q1 box office of 2026 has surpassed 2023 to give theaters the best start to the calendar year since the COVID pandemic. Four movies rocketed past $100 million at the box office, including “Hail Mary.”

So I’m not trying to harsh your doom and gloom – I, too, enjoy feeling sorry for myself — but I do want to point out that all may not be lost. 

It’s worth considering that the tone of “Hail Mary,” with its star character named “Grace” (Ryan Gosling), is a vision of the best of humanity, about a scientist sent light years from Earth to figure out how to save the planet from an organism that is dimming the sun’s energy and will ultimately cool and kill us all. The movie has charm, humor, inspiration and visual delights to lift the spirit. Gosling gives a nearly one-man performance in a two-hour and 36-minute adventure that is riveting and transporting, and a reminder of what large-scale entertainment can be at its best. 

Though sci-fi, the movie is not a smorgasbord of visual effects or computer graphics. The spaceship was built in real life and the production shot as much practically as possible. The alien Rocky was played by the delightful James Ortiz and a team of puppeteers, not a Siri cyber-concoction. 

And it shows. The movie has great heart, harkening back to the optimistic sci-fi adventures of decades past, with its “ET”-like moment of alien and human touching fingers, and with Grace and Rocky communicating with the five musical notes we all recognize from “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

The music in the film likewise nods to a deeply humanist foundation, from Daniel Pemberton’s soulful score to Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times,” sung movingly by Sandra Huller, who plays the head of the “Hail Mary” project, to “Two of Us” by the Beatles. 

And the message, lest we overlook the most obvious, is that humanity is worth saving. That other species are also worth saving. And that self-sacrifice for a great cause is a worthy choice.  

We certainly need a reminder of that. Even as things shift, and even if the movie industry is hardly going back to its glory days, there is an audience waiting to be fed inspiration, humor and daring. 

There are other glimmers of optimism worth pointing out through the cracks in the doomsday narrative.  

The inflated idea that AI is coming for ALL the jobs is starting to lose some air. We’ve now gone through three and a half years of AI hype: it’s going to end the world. It’s going to save the world. It’s going to kill all the white-collar jobs. It’s going to replace human beings. 

Like many of you, I’ve been watching this narrative closely because – who the hell knows, it could it be true, right? 

But here we are three and a half years since the launch of ChatGPT, and predictions of radical change have not come to pass. Yes, AI is creating efficiencies, squeezing out certain lower level jobs, and we see tech companies like Meta, Oracle and Amazon shedding thousands of coding jobs. That is notable. 

But AI is not writing scripts. AI is not even successfully evaluating scripts, as our new test run of the Quilty tool showed last week. 

We are not seeing studios adopting AI at scale to replace any significant part of the creative process. Producers constantly tell me that AI is saving them time and money by helping create instant storyboards (I was recently told at a dinner party that Martin Scorsese, 83, used this technique for his current movie “What Happens at Night”), and saving on production costs.

But Disney’s $100 million internal AI investment didn’t pan out, and neither did its Sora video deal with OpenAI, which has been canceled. Other studios have been notably low-key about how and where they are using AI, if at all. 

I’m starting to think that the hype got ahead of itself, and so did our own panic response. 

Finally there is opportunity, the gleaming draw of what might replace the shrinking, century-old system that defined Hollywood. After all Netflix, the market-leading studio of the 21st century so far, happened because Reed Hastings was willing to take a leap that no one in legacy Hollywood could imagine three decades ago, to offer a monthly fee for unlimited TV and movies, and then to stream it on the Internet. His risk-taking, and the remarkable execution by Ted Sarandos, have changed the industry. 

But has streaming transformed things forever? I doubt it. Imagination is the life force of this industry. Opportunity, created by all this disruption, beckons.

“Project Hail Mary” is the first film directed by Lord and Miller since they were fired from “Solo: A Star Wars Story” in 2017, towards the tail end of production, over creative differences. That dispiriting moment could have defeated them, but instead they picked themselves up and channelled their creativity into two smash-hit “Spider-Verse” movies and, now, “Project Hail Mary.”

So in this moment of spring, I’ll choose to believe that some old problems may be resolving, and some good things may be around the bend.

The post The Optimism of ‘Project Hail Mary’ Is the Antidote to Hollywood’s Doom Loop  appeared first on TheWrap.

After its celebrity-filled Season 2 broke through as a cultural phenomenon, the following two installments grew in viewership, with Season 4 skyrocketing 72% when compared to Season 3, according to first-party data from Peacock. All together, “The Traitors” tallied 6.4 billion minutes viewed on Peacock since the Season 4 launch, according to Nielsen viewing numbers from the Jan. 8 premiere through March 8.

“Traitors” stands out amid the broader unscripted landscape because of that increase, according to Dave Kaplan, NBCUniversal’s EVP of content analytics and measurement. “You look at two or three dozen [unscripted] shows across the landscape, the vast majority of them are either stable or down in their early seasons after launching,” he said.

“‘Traitors’ has definitively bucked that trend,” Kaplan added. “Since Season 1, we’ve seen an upward trajectory in terms of its performance every season, including in the most recent fourth season, so it really is charting a path that we do not typically see in terms of new unscripted shows.”

“The Traitors” is enjoying a similar bounce to Peacock’s “Love Island USA,” which saw ratings growth in its seventh season after breaking out in its sixth, which Kaplan noted reflects both an influx of Peacock subscribers as well as increased engagement from existing subscribers with each new season. In fact, 43% of viewers for “The Traitors” Season 4 were first-time viewers of any “Traitors” title.

“We’re galvanizing our existing base, but we’re also growing it from new users, meaning people that are coming in and signing up for Peacock for the first time to watch these shows,” Kaplan said.

What’s fueling that growth for both series, beyond enticing casting, is Peacock’s appointment TV strategy, which was embraced for “Love Island” with a daily release schedule — which Kaplan noted created a “ritualistic behavior” — while “The Traitors” dropped new episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT. Appointment viewing for “The Traitors,” which is counted as the number of people watching right at the time the new episode drops, saw a steady progression throughout the season, with anticipation — and the fear of spoilers — mounting in the lead-up to the finale.

The appointment TV strategy goes hand-in-hand with weekly watch parties, “The Traitors” ranking as Peacock’s No. 1 unscripted title for co-viewership with 56% of season 4’s audience watching with someone else.

This bucks the trend of most people watching shows on their own schedules now, opting to stream new episodes hours or even days after they premiere, or even waiting until a full season is out to binge-watch it. But “The Traitors” leveraged the urgency surrounding its twists and turns to train its audience to watch live, which in turn has been a boon for Peacock.

“There was really this moment in time that they wanted to experience alongside other people, whether that was in the room with them,” Kaplan said. “They were coming together at a very specific time to experience and discuss the show together, and I think people wanted to be able to talk about it on social … but not have anything revealed … I think, drove this more urgent tune-in effect.”

Notably, “The Traitors” Season 4 has tallied 366 million video views across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube and X since its launch.

After “The Traitors” Season 4 dropped its first three episodes on Jan. 8, the show scored 790 million minutes during the week of Jan. 5, per Nielsen, marking a new weekly viewership high for the series, that was quickly broken the following week with 892 million minutes.

Viewership slowed down across the subsequent weeks, but scored another weekly high with the debut of the finale and the reunion on Feb. 26, which delivered
913 million minutes during the week of Feb. 23.

As overall viewership grew, so did appointment viewing, with Kaplan noting appointment viewing for Season 4 doubled from the launch through the finale. “That kind of appointment viewing pattern not only grew within the season, but it also grew versus prior seasons as well,” he said. “I think the show just increasingly has become a little bit more of a cultural touch point for audiences.”

Beyond “The Traitors” itself, the competition series drove viewers to other Peacock series that feature “Traitors” contestants, with “Top Chef” seeing an influx of new viewers after seeing Kristen Kish on the show.

“It’s not an accident that we’ve created this flywheel within the Peacock platform that really helps to extend the fandom across assets and across shows,” Kaplan said, noting the familiar Bravo talent helped make “The Traitors” an “easy” entry point for viewers. “We definitely see it working in both directions.”

While the crossover trick for reality stars has been noted as a surefire way to bring in impressive ratings, Kaplan notes the importance of stoking the fandom via social content or other content to not only drive engagement between episodes, but increase “holistic” interest in the show itself.

Opening Day scores out of the ballpark

The MLB’s opening day saw several platforms hit their ratings out of the ballpark, including NBCUniversal, whose two-game presentation delivered the largest MLB Opening Day audience on record for a multi-game presentation by a single network with an average 2.7 million viewers across NBC and Peacock.

Netflix’s opening day scored an estimated average minute audience (AMA) of 3 million US viewers, whereas Fox’s two-game slate scored 2.59 million viewers, marking the network’s best season-opening telecast since 2021.

“Outlander” final season debuts strong

 The debut of “Outlander” Season 8 scored 3 million multiplatform viewers in its premiere week, marking a four-year series high and securing the top spot for the week among all scripted cable programs.

IYCMI

• “The Madison” scored the biggest first season launch that a Taylor Sheridan series has ever seen.
• “CBS Evening News” dipped below 4 million viewers months after its rocky relaunch.
• The “Hannah Montana” 20th anniversary special climbed to 6.3 million views in three days on Disney+ and Hulu.
• “Fallout” Season 2 reached 83 million viewers globally in first 91 days.
• The “Peaky Blinders” movie remained atop Netflix’s top 10 movies list with 19.4 million views in its second week.

The post Appointment TV Isn’t Dead Yet: How ‘The Traitors’ Scored Its Biggest Ratings in Season 4 appeared first on TheWrap.

Then he added: “If the Washington Post’s ownership and management is going to drive away its best journalists, I’m more than happy to give them a home.”

Goldberg spoke to TheWrap as the Atlantic poached four reporters from the Washington Post, including Matt Viser, the paper’s White House bureau chief, and as NOTUS — a site launched by Politico co-founder and former owner Robert Allbritton — added at least a half-dozen Post alums.

Allbritton has “money, drive, desire and experience,” Goldberg said. “If I were the Washington Post, I’d really watch out.”

Since the Post slashed its newsroom in February, resulting in more than 300 journalists exiting, local and national competitors have hired recently laid-off reporters and editors, as well as others who survived the newsroom culling but are looking to leave. Reverberations from the Post’s upheaval can be felt at national publications, like the New York Times, local sites such as City Cast and the Baltimore Banner, and the sports obsessed Athletic and ESPN — which have together added a dozen Post alums. 

The Washington talent scramble is playing out amid a relentless news cycle, with President Donald Trump conducting a war abroad and waging political and legal battles at home — including against the media itself. Journalists have been flexing their unusual access to the president, dialing him directly on Iran. But whereas Trump’s first term felt like endless jockeying between the Times and Post for scoops, the second has provided opportunities for a broad array of outlets — big and small — as well as independent journalists to command attention.

One publication looking to capitalize in the second term is NOTUS, whose founder Allbritton saw an “opportunity” to expand in response to the Post’s retrenchment. He and Editor-in-Chief Tim Grieve — another Politico alum — have their sights set on their old stomping grounds, recently hiring defense reporter Joe Gould and national political reporter Elena Schneider, who expressed her excitement Monday to join “a newsroom with a clear, exciting vision.” 

The poaching comes as Politico on Sunday named Jonathan Greenberger as its new editor-in-chief, succeeding co-founder John Harris. Greenberger told staff in a memo that Politico “will invest — significantly, and immediately — in our world-class journalistic talent,” and reiterated that push in a Tuesday town hall, urging staff to alert him to hiring needs, according to sources. 

The Post, even if diminished, has continued to stand out in coverage of Trump’s use of executive power, federal cuts, proposed renovations to the Kennedy Center and White House ballroom and military operations in Iran, including reporting Monday on the Pentagon preparing for ground operations. And despite gutting its Metro desk, the Post appears to still have the biggest local news staff in the city — for now.

City Cast DC, one of a network of local podcasts and sites owned by Graham Family Holdings — the family that previously owned the Post — has also sensed an opportunity to move into the Post’s turf, adding three reporters and editors from the paper.

“When the Post imploded,” City Cast CEO David Plotz told TheWrap, the company saw an opportunity “to really serve DC and to grab a lot of the territory that the Post has abandoned.”

“We will not be the largest local newsroom yet,” Plotz said. “But our goal is to become the largest local newsroom.”

NOTUS grows

Allbritton has taken on the Post before.

In 2006, he co-founded Politico along with then-Post journalists Harris and Jim VandeHei, who later left to launch Axios with Mike Allen. 

The print publication and ambitious digital play were new terrain for Allbritton, a banking and communications scion who at the time owned a number of TV stations, including local outlets WJLA-TV and NewsChannel 8. But Allbritton was following in a family tradition: His father, the late Joe Allbritton, once owned the Washington Star, a Post rival that folded in the early 1980s. 

In recent years, Allbritton scaled back his media holdings, selling the company’s TV stations to Sinclair in 2014 for nearly $1 billion, and then offloading Politico to German media conglomerate Axel Springer for another reported $1 billion. He committed to spending $20 million in 2023 to launch the nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute, which aimed to produce non-partisan coverage of government and politics and train aspiring journalists.

The institute and its news site, NOTUS — which stands for News of the United States — weren’t seen as an attempt to take on Politico. Indeed, Semafor reported at the time that Allbritton “agreed to some restrictions about his own next business moves as part of the deal (primarily not turning around and starting a Politico competitor).”

Ambitions clearly grew, evident in a NOTUS memo last month to rebrand and build the “next great Washington newsroom,” which would cover “government, politics, policy, local news and D.C. sports with the power of the Washington Post of the 1970s, the punch of Politico in the 2010s and the audience focus required to build a sustainable news organization in 2026.”

NOTUS declined interview requests for Allbritton and Grieve. 

Washington journalists familiar with NOTUS’ pitch to prospective hires boiled it down to: You’ll make more money; you won’t be forced to churn out copy but will instead focus on stories you really want to do; and you’ll work for a local owner committed to journalism and the city, rather than a large corporate entity. (Breaker reported Tuesday that NOTUS is also eyeing Times journalists and part of that pitch is that reporters’ bylines can get lost in that stacked newsroom.)

Even as NOTUS employees took to X this week to introduce themselves, their beats and promote open roles, there’s still uncertainty among Washington journalists about how exactly the site will compete on government and national political stories as well as local news and sports. (“It does seem like a black box,” said one journalist.)

The more skeptical view among journalists is that NOTUS’ hiring binge echoes The Messenger, an ambitious media venture that quickly fizzled out. (Some Allbritton-backed outlets have had relatively short lives: both local Washington site TBD and the tech-focused Protocol were shuttered within three years.) Still, others see Allbritton as a capable steward, given his 15 years at Politico and his personal fortune to provide the outlet runway as its business model matures.

NOTUS currently has around 45 staffers and hopes to grow to around 90-95. (Politico, by comparison, has around 300 newsroom staffers, according to a spokesperson.)

The newsroom expansion presents a test for Allbritton to demonstrate he can build a successful media brand without Harris and VandeHei, and perhaps pick up where his father left off decades back with the Star.

“I find myself in this really odd position,” Allbritton told Chuck Todd last week in a Noosphere interview. “I’m sort of mourning the loss of my old friend the Washington Post.”

Allbritton said he was “really sad” about the Post, but thought, “Somebody’s got to do something about this.”

Atlantic dives in the talent pool

Veteran media critic Jack Shafer captured on Tuesday how much the D.C. media landscape is shifting.

Goldberg noted that the Post “has been a deep pool of talent” — one his magazine has tapped before. The Atlantic has hired roughly 30 Post journalists over the last couple years, including Ashley Parker, Michael Scherer, Shane Harris and Sally Jenkins.

In addition to Viser, the latest round includes technology reporter Will Oremus and culture reporters Kelsey Ables and Janay Kingsberry. The Atlantic now boasts more than 200 newsroom staffers.

Last month, Post owner Jeff Bezos reaffirmed his commitment to the Post during a lunch at his Kalorama home with a few dozen Post reporters and editors. Some staffers are staying put, like managing editor Peter Spiegel, who was in contention for the top job at Politico.

But the four journalists heading to the Atlantic — along with several to NOTUS, including chief economics correspondent Jeff Stein, congressional reporter Kadia Goba and columnist Dana Milbank — had survived the Post cuts, signaling that talent retention remains an issue.

The Post, Goldberg said, has done its “level best to make some of the country’s best journalists want to get the hell out of Dodge.” Meanwhile, he said the Atlantic’s “ambitions are growing, and it just so happens that our period of growth and profitability coincides with a period of mismanagement at the Washington Post.”

The Atlantic also has a billionaire owner with roots in the tech world, Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of Emerson Collective and wife of late Apple chief Steve Jobs. Goldberg emphasized that Powell Jobs is not “subsidizing the Atlantic” and that she demands the magazine make a profit — though she allows that profit to be reinvested in the magazine.

“This is how we grow and we get to hire more journalists, make more journalism,” he added. “The more journalism we make, the more readers we attract.”

Graham Family looks local

City Cast’s Plotz, who grew up in Washington D.C., said he practically “learned to read from the Washington Post sports section.”

Watching the Post scale back has been “painful,” he said, especially as he works with members of the Graham family, who for decades put “passion and care” into the paper. 

Plotz said it’s “insulting” for the Post to focus more on over-serving audiences in tech and politics than maintaining its “connection to the human beings who inhabit here, work here, play here, raise children here, go to sports here.”

He considers City Cast to be “one small piece of trying to remedy that.” He also applauded Axios DC and the 51st for their ongoing coverage of local matters.

City Cast has hired three Post alums: City Hall reporter Michael Brice-Saddler, reporter Emma Uber and managing editor Yu Vongkiatkajorn. The site also hired Michael Schaffer, a veteran of the Washingtonian, Washington City Paper and Politico, as executive editor. 

Plotz said City Cast DC will focus on local politics, business development, transportation and cultural life — and notably not sports, which he considers well-served by competitors.

The Graham family, which sold the Post to Bezos in 2013, still owns publications like Foreign Policy and Slate, where Plotz was once top editor, and has invested in Atlas Obscura, where he was previously CEO. Plotz said that City Cast’s DC expansion is rooted in seeing opportunities in advertising and potentially subscriptions as the outlet builds its audience.

“Local media is a good business when done right,” he said, “and there’s an opportunity for new models.”

The capital has already seen its once-dominant player, the Washington Post, cede ground to Politico, Axios and Punchbowl News — and is now competing for turf with upstarts backed by families deeply tied to the city.

The D.C. media map is being redrawn as a consequential presidency tests the press corps’ power like never before.

The post Washington Post Upheaval Redraws the DC Media Map | Analysis appeared first on TheWrap.