🎬 Stepping Down

👋 Good morning! ABC has ordered a hide-and-seek show where the hider is 7-foot-1. In ‘Can You Hide... Shaq?,’ eight contestants try to hide Shaquille O’Neal in public places around Dallas, which is basically hiding someone with the camouflage instincts of a parade float. Players can disguise him, distract bystanders or flat-out lie, and their prize money goes into a “Shaq-pot.” So far the only one who’s managed to hide Shaq is Sinbad, who half the country misremembers as the genie in 1996’s ‘Kazaam.’ (It was Shaq.)

It’s Wednesday, the day of the week with the least personality. We’re here to help. Top off your coffee and we’ll catch you up. 👇

Someone go reset the "days since DC rebooted its leadership" sign. James Gunn and Peter Safran are out as co-CEOs after four years, and Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham (he helped build the MCU and worked with Gunn on 'Guardians of the Galaxy') takes over. Skydance said a month ago the two were staying, and people inside the company were reportedly just as surprised as the rest of us. Read "stepping down" however you like. What’s changing:

So how did Gunn and Safran actually do? 'Superman' did the job, $618.7M worldwide and the third-biggest domestic movie of 2025, but the new owners reportedly felt it never had the pop culture impact a Superman movie should. 'Clayface' was a nice surprise, #1 two weekends running on a $44M budget, though word is it won't break even until home release. 'Supergirl' was a flop, and on TV, they delivered three of the five shows they promised, and 'Lanterns' was the closest thing to a hit.

Looking ahead… Latcham starts Dec. 1. Already locked are 'Man of Tomorrow' (July 2027), 'The Batman Part II' (Feb. 2028), 'Creature Commandos' S2, and the 'Gorilla Grodd' series. Everything else is his call, including 'Lanterns' S2, 'Penguin' S2, 'Swamp Thing', and a planned 'Batman and Robin' movie. He could tear it all down, but a full reboot is ambitious. The last one took nearly three years to produce a movie, and Skydance has 30-plus releases a year to deliver and $80B in debt to pay down. The likelier play is keeping what works and adjusting.

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Disney and Adobe just signed a multi-year deal to build custom AI tools trained on Disney's own characters, worlds, and visual styles.

How it works: it's a closed system. Adobe takes its existing Firefly model (built on licensed material) and trains a private version on Disney's own material. That's how it learns the details, like what each character looks like, how their worlds are designed, and the visual style of each franchise. Nothing gets scraped from the internet, and Disney's material stays private. What it means on the production side:

Disney's theme park designers have a head start. They're already using it to turn hand-drawn sketches into fully rendered concept art. Feed in a doodle, get back a castle.

Sound familiar? Lionsgate tried something similar with Runway in 2024, training a model on its library alone. It reportedly stalled because one studio's catalog wasn't enough material (insiders said even Disney's would fall short). Disney's workaround is starting with Adobe's model and layering its IP on top.

Zoom out: Disney keeps describing all of this as "human-centered and artist-led," meaning the tools are supposed to help artists work faster while people still make the creative calls. This is the direction Disney is headed. Josh D'Amaro has named technology one of his three big priorities since taking over as CEO in March, and Disney has also taken AI companies like Midjourney to court for using its characters without permission. So AI is welcome at Disney, as long as Disney is the one in control.

📉 Skydance gave its first earnings update since the Warner Bros. merger closed. Co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz say $6B in cuts are coming (the latest layoffs just hit Skydance Games), along with a Paramount+/HBO Max bundle in early 2027. Wall Street didn't seem sold, with shares down 8% yesterday.

💌 Warner Bros. is developing a new take on ‘You’ve Got Mail.’ Jason Orley (‘I Want You Back’) is directing and writing, with Neal Moritz producing. No word yet on how a 1998 AOL romance gets updated, but ‘You’ve Got a DM’ doesn’t have the same ring. It joins reboots of ‘13 Going on 30’ and ‘Serendipity’ in the rom-com revival.

🏅 The Webby Awards launched an IMDb-style credits database. The 30-year-old awards for internet work now let anyone credited on a winning or nominated project claim a verified profile in the Global Webby Credits Registry. The Webbys say verified credits help people get found as AI takes over search.

🤝 WME is combining its film lit and talent departments into one Motion Picture division. Broadly, that puts agents for writers and directors on the same team as those repping actors. UTA made a similar move last month. One insider says it's because more clients now act and direct. Reportedly, no layoffs are part of the reorg.