🎬 Thanks, but no thanks

👋 Good morning! If you're a Fortune 500 CEO who's been meaning to get out more, tonight's your night. Neon is hosting a free New York screening of 'No Other Choice,' exclusively for you and your fellow chiefs. Park Chan-wook's black comedy follows a laid-off worker who takes "eliminating the competition" literally after a corporate acquisition, which Neon says "speaks to our gracious executive leaders and the culture they have cultivated." Popcorn situation unclear, but you guys probably have people for that.

Happy hump day. Grab your coffee, we've got the latest from the world of film and TV to get you through to Friday.

📺 Instagram wants a spot on your TV menu. Meta launched an Instagram Reels app for connected TVs yesterday, starting with Amazon Fire TV devices. The app includes curated channels around specific shows, interests, and creators, all designed for lean-back viewing with friends and family. The motivation here is clear: connected TV ads pay significantly more than mobile ones, and YouTube is dominating that space with 12.9% of all TV viewing time as of November, leading all streamers. Reels already generates $50B in annual ad revenue, more than Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and NBCUniversal combined, and that was without any TV presence at all. Now Instagram's officially coming for your living room.

🤖 The creatives are organizing on AI. Over 500 industry professionals (including Cate Blanchett, Rian Johnson, Aaron Sorkin, Natalie Portman, and Taika Waititi) have signed onto the Creators Coalition on AI, a new organization founded by 18 insiders like ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ filmmaker Daniel Kwan and producer Jonathan Wang. The coalition says it's not anti-AI, but wants a seat at the table to help shape industry-wide standards around things like transparency, compensation for data use, job protection, and deepfake guardrails. The group fast-tracked its launch after Disney's $1B OpenAI investment last week, which Kwan said exposed "a vacuum of leadership" in how the industry's handling AI.

🦸‍♀️ Good luck scrolling past ‘Supergirl.’ Warner Bros. made the next chapter of James Gunn's DC universe, the first movie to take over all of TikTok. This past weekend, the trailer was served as the first video to every user across 13 territories including the U.S., UK, and South Korea, meaning anyone who opened the app saw it before anything else. The studio also tested a new ad format letting the trailer interact with TikTok's logo. It makes sense: TikTok is the only place Gen Z reliably encounters marketing at scale, so rather than hoping for organic buzz, Warner Bros. made engagement mandatory. With the film still seven months out, it's an unusually early blitz for an untested superhero property.

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Warner Bros. Discovery is preparing to formally reject Paramount Skydance's hostile takeover bid, recommending shareholders stick with the existing Netflix deal instead. The board's formal response could come as early as some time today.

Quick recap: Netflix agreed to buy WBD's studios and streaming business for $27.75 per share earlier this month. Days later, Paramount went directly to shareholders with a $30-per-share tender offer for the entire company. Now Warner's board is ready to tell them thanks, but no thanks. The key sticking points:

For context, Paramount's bid is backed by a mix of Ellison family money ($11.8B), Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds ($24B from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi), and $54B in debt financing from Bank of America, Citibank, and Apollo.

Looking ahead… The board's rejection is a recommendation, not a final word. Shareholders can still ignore the advice and tender their shares to Paramount anyway. And with the tender offer open until January 8, there's plenty of runway for Paramount to come back with a sweeter deal. David Ellison has already hinted $30 isn't his final number. Stay tuned.

The Academy revealed its shortlists in 12 categories yesterday: Animated Short, Casting, Cinematography, Documentary Feature, Documentary Short, International Feature, Live Action Short, Makeup & Hairstyling, Original Score, Original Song, Sound, and Visual Effects.

This is the crucial preliminary round that narrows hundreds of submissions down to 10-20 contenders before official nominations. The year's biggest races (including Best Picture, Director, Acting, etc) won't be revealed until nominations are announced. Some highlights:

Looking ahead… Nominations voting runs Jan 12-16, with the official noms dropping Jan 22. Conan O'Brien hosts the ceremony March 15 on ABC.

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