🎬 Strike = Avoided

👋 Good morning! It's been 54 years since humans last visited the Moon, and today, the drought ends (kind of). At 1 p.m. ET, the Artemis II crew will slingshot around the lunar far side, breaking Apollo 13's record for the farthest anyone's traveled from Earth. Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV, and Roku are all livestreaming it. Finally, something in every streamer's content library. Your move, Stanley Kubrick truthers.

Happy Monday. However you spent the holiday weekend, hope it was a good one. Let's get into it. 👇

The bigger picture: The YTD scoreboard is looking healthy: domestic crossed $2B this weekend, up 26% from the same stretch in 2025, fueled by a steady flow of hits rather than one tentpole doing all the lifting. Plus, 'Michael,' 'The Devil Wears Prada 2,' 'Mortal Kombat II,' and 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' are all queued up, so the summer pipeline’s looking loaded. Also worth noting that PG-rated family films have outgrossed every other rating for two straight years now, and Mario just added another data point to the thesis that kids (and their parents) are the most reliable theatrical audience left.

Nobody had "surprise labor deal" on their holiday weekend bingo card, but the WGA and AMPTP landed a tentative four-year contract on Saturday after just three weeks of negotiations. That's a far cry from 2023, when talks collapsed into a 148-day strike.

It's a four-year deal, not the typical three, which means no strike risk from the writers until 2030. That's a massive win for labor stability in an industry still recovering from the 2023 shutdowns. And because the WGA is historically the most aggressive of the three major guilds, the fact that they agreed to this sets a strong precedent for SAG-AFTRA and the DGA heading into their own negotiations.

The vibes were noticeably different this time around. New AMPTP chief Greg Hessinger (who replaced Carol Lombardini) reportedly came in looking to reset the relationship with the guilds. The WGA didn't even hold a strike authorization vote this cycle.

Looking ahead... The deal still needs approval from the WGA board and a membership ratification vote, expected later this month. Full details won't drop until after that. SAG-AFTRA is expected back at the table in June, and the DGA bargains in May (both contracts expire June 30). With the writers already on board, the path to longer, more stable deals across the board looks increasingly likely.

The Skydance-Paramount deal came with a side effect most of Hollywood wasn't tracking: it triggered a change-of-control clause in CBS's NFL deal, giving the league an early window to renegotiate. Live sports have become the single most important content category for traditional TV networks, basically the only programming that still reliably delivers massive audiences in real time, and the NFL sits at the very top of that food chain.

The leverage play: The NFL is using deep-pocketed streamers like Netflix, Prime Video, and YouTube (all of whom are hungry for live football) to drive up the price on its traditional broadcast partners. A recent MoffettNathanson report projects total NFL rights will jump from ~$10B to ~$15.9B annually (a 58% increase). Networks like Fox (which already spends over a quarter of its content budget on NFL rights) and a debt-heavy Paramount can't easily absorb that.

MoffettNathanson put it bluntly:

In plain English: the money to pay for football is coming out of film and TV. That could mean fewer series orders, smaller deals, and tighter development budgets across the board. The trend is already visible–only 36 scripted series aired on the Big Four networks at the start of the latest season, down 45% from a peak of 66 eight years ago.

Looking ahead… Only Paramount is at the table right now, but the other partners are watching closely. Whatever CBS agrees to will likely set the floor for every deal that follows.

🍿 Cinema United's calling on attorneys general to kill the Paramount-WBD merger, arguing the deal would gut small-town theaters and drain local economies. The timing's clearly meant to turn up the heat ahead of CinemaCon, where theater owners will face Paramount execs in Vegas next week.

📚 An 'Animorphs' TV series is in the works at Disney+, with Ryan Coogler's Proximity Media producing. The beloved '90s book series previously ran as a Nickelodeon show for two seasons. It's the latest in Disney+'s growing stack of YA book adaptations, joining 'Percy Jackson' and 'Eragon.'

🚶 IATSE crew walked off the set of a Daily Wire action film starring Jonathan Majors after he and a co-star fell through an unsecured window. Crew cited a pattern of safety issues including black mold and no stunt coordination meetings. When reached by Deadline, producers said they “don't negotiate with communists.”

📉 Hollywood shed another 1,100 jobs in March, bringing the sector total to 337,400 (down from 350,700 a year ago). The losses add to a rough stretch that's seen cuts at Netflix, Starz, WME, and Epic Games, and nobody's feeling great about what the Paramount-WBD merger might mean for headcount.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

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