Runner-up: Universal’s marketing and distribution team, for the Odyssey Imax 70mm ticket stunt that managed to eventize a movie a year in advance (and make a few scalpers $400 richer). Other studios gotta copy this now, right? How much for tickets to Avatar 5 on December 19, 2031?

Second runner-up: Bruno Mars, who has the number one (“Die With a Smile” with Lady Gaga) and number two (“APT.” with Rosé) most-streamed songs of the first half of 2025, per Luminate data.

Honorable mention: Stephen Colbert’s Emmy campaign. Now a comedy martyr, Colbert is a shoo-in to beat rivals The Daily Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live! in the three-horse race to win his first series Emmy for Late Show.

Speaking of winners…

A few readers called B.S. when I reported back in early 2024 that Amazon outbid Netflix for the MrBeast competition show Beast Games by agreeing to pay about $100 million. Sir Beast has since acknowledged that number (though he claimed he went so over budget that he lost money), and now I’m reliably told the YouTuber formerly known as Jimmy Donaldson is getting fees that add up to nearly $300 million from Amazon for two upcoming seasons (Amazon says it’s tens of millions less than that), the first of which is now in production. Remember, MrBeast also continues to post videos on YouTube. Not a bad deal, though the money includes production costs, so theoretically he could give it all away if he chooses.

MrBeast also just shot portions of the second season in Saudi Arabia, part of a larger blood pact—sorry, mutually beneficial arrangement—he inked with the country’s General Entertainment Authority. I couldn’t confirm a number; one source told me the Saudis are paying MrBeast nine figures, but his rep denied that. The Saudi arrangement could also include an investment in Donaldson’s company, which has been raising money. His company’s president, Jeff Housenbold, has relationships with sovereigns in the region. Still unclear if the losers on those episodes of Beast Games will be tortured or dismembered.

3.4 million
Average global views for WWE Raw in its first six months on Netflix, more than double the 1.6 million viewers in its final season on USA Network in the U.S. [Netflix]

7
Songs from the soundtrack of the Netflix animated hit Kpop Demon Hunters currently on Spotify’s daily global top 20 chart. [Spotify]

12 percent
Increase in ads per hour that Netflix inserts into original programs versus licensed titles. It’s one of two streamers (along with Prime Video) that runs more ads in originals. [Ampere]

36 percent
Share of survey respondents already “interested” in seeing next summer’s The Odyssey in theaters, despite the trailer having not been officially released online. [Greenlight Analytics]

350 percent
Increase in profit in the first half of 2025 at Pop Mart International, the Hong Kong–based company behind the dumb Labubu dolls. Sales in the U.S. are up 5,000 percent. [Press Release]

“The shows that you now seek to cancel, censor, and control … a not insignificant portion of that $8 billion value came from those fucking shows. That’s what made you that money. Shows that say something, shows that take a stand, shows that are unafraid. Believe me, this is not a We speak truth to power. We don’t. We speak opinions to television cameras, but we try. We fucking try every night. If you believe, as corporations or as networks, you can make yourselves so innocuous that you can serve a gruel so flavorless that you will never again be on the boy king’s radar, [firstly] why will anyone watch you? And you are fucking wrong.”

—Jon Stewart, ripping Paramount on tonight’s Daily Show in the wake of protégé Stephen Colbert’s CBS cancellation. It aired uncensored.

Runners-Up:

“Imagine suing someone mid-blow.” —Stewart again, on Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch.

“I’m not giving in, I’m not going anywhere—I think.” —Stewart on his future at the show.

Note: I think Paramount and Skydance execs like that Stewart and Colbert, who dropped his own F-bombs tonight, are dropping verbal ass-kickings on the air. It’s good TV, and at least it shows the hosts aren’t being censored.

Which leads us to Kim’s take on the wild week in Ellison-land…

“I absolutely love that Colbert got fired,” Trump gloated late last week, pouring gasoline on the already raging inferno of speculation that the president had played some kind of down-low role in the cancellation of the number one late-night show on broadcast TV. After he fired off the Truth Social post, many openly wondered whether CBS’s move had been part of the “side deal” with Skydance that Trump has mentioned in the wake of extracting $16 million from Paramount Global to settle his baseless 60 Minutes lawsuit.

It’s true, as my colleague Matt Belloni has reported, that The Late Show was hemorrhaging money—losing $40 million per year. But even Hollywood insiders who understand those financial pressures can’t help but notice the malodorous decisions piling up around the Paramount-Skydance deal as both parties push to get the damn thing approved already.

It’s no longer shocking that federal sign-off on the deal was delayed so that Trump could collect what Colbert had boldly called a “big fat bribe” from Shari Redstone’s long-suffering company. Left to the imagination, and the anxieties, of liberal Hollywood are what other concessions might have been discussed. Trump claimed that Skydance and the Ellisons had agreed to air millions of dollars’ worth of ads or P.S.A.s, while Skydance has declined to comment on whether there’s an agreement and what it would allegedly entail. At this point, suspicions have been aroused, and every move will be scrutinized for even a hint of Trump appeasement.

CBS insisted that the decision to ax Colbert was unilaterally reached by Paramount Global co-C.E.O. George Cheeks. But it’s very hard for most sentient beings in Hollywood and beyond to believe that Cheeks chose this moment to announce that CBS would dump Colbert with zero input from Redstone or David Ellison. Network sources have let it be known that execs would normally be looking at contract renewals for Colbert and his staff around now, but—having decided to end the show in May 2026—couldn’t ask for shorter-than-usual deals without the end date becoming public. What’s clear is that when Colbert was told of that end date, he insisted on going public right away. And just like that, CBS might have handed him a quick chance at revenge.

It’s interesting that we’re being told that Cheeks made this decision entirely on his own even as the South Park creators have lawyered up, claiming that the Skydance team has interfered in their business before the merger is done. Paramount’s deal for South Park is massive—a material deal to the company—so Skydance can argue that it has a legal right to weigh in. But based on the backlash from Capitol Hill to Hollywood, Colbert’s show was also regarded as pretty material, if not in the legal sense of the word.

“In television, if you have a financial problem with a show, you go to the show and say, We’re going to cut 50 percent of staff. And you say, Stephen, we need you to take a pay cut. You don’t kill the whole fucking show!” a broadcast veteran told me. “The obvious proof that they wanted to kill Colbert and everybody associated with him is they got rid of the 200 people [on the staff].”

And if Paramount is about to change hands, why should Cheeks sully his name by obliterating Colbert’s show? Why not let it be Skydance’s headache? One possible answer is that even in a world where it’s widely understood that the late-night format is going away, Ellison wouldn’t want to dirty his hands by axing a show starring one of the most gifted satirists of our era. Cheeks is expected to remain on the job even after the deal is approved, so he certainly appears to have spared his future boss that fate. “When a company is going to change hands,” said a longtime industry executive, “it’s a well-known maneuver to have the previous regime spill the blood.”

When I checked in with one of the town’s wise elders about the Colbert situation, he responded with moderation. Such decisions, he said, “have many facets,” starting with the bad economics of late night and broadcasting generally. But, as Matt noted the other night, nothing is just business these days with this company. “You and I will never know whether politics was 10 percent or 40 percent or 70 percent” of the decision, the wise elder told me. As to whether Ellison or Shell had a hand in it, he said, “We will never know whether there were whispers.”

Meanwhile, journalists at CBS News are undoubtedly reacting with fascination and/or horror to reports that their soon-to-be boss is maneuvering to place Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press and perpetual victim of the “strident left,” in an extremely influential job “advising” on their operations. (“Bari doesn’t advise anybody,” a TV news veteran told me. “Just watch—they’re going to appoint her to be head of content.”)

There is also plenty of anxiety about Matt’s other scoop—that the Ellisons and incoming Paramount president Jeff Shell are hoping to reinstall former CBS News president David Rhodes. A veteran news exec (not at CBS) called Rhodes an “imperious bureaucrat” who made a “disastrous” decision in 2017 to replace Scott Pelley with Jeff Glor, during whose 18 months in the anchor chair third-place CBS Evening News fell even further behind. (Pelley said he was fired for complaining about a hostile work environment, which makes it seem noteworthy that Rhodes’s boss at the time, Jeff Fager, was subsequently pushed out over conduct issues. And Fager’s boss in those days? Les Moonves.) This news exec doesn’t believe Rhodes can improve ratings at Evening News, nor does he think Weiss can be of use. “Bari Weiss has never produced an hour of television in her life,” he said. “She doesn’t know a thing about television. Does Bari Weiss even watch the evening news?” To be fair, at this point, not many do. But this potential arrangement “makes sense only in one way,” the exec said, “which is that they don’t give a fuck about CBS News.”

Even before the Colbert news broke and radically amplified the Ellison-sucking-up-to-Trump narrative, I had started asking around town about whether Paramount’s new management might be risking ongoing blowback from the famously progressive creative community in Hollywood. “With Brian Grazer doing what he did”—e.g., saying on camera, to Fox Nation no less, that he voted for Trump—“the winds either died or changed directions,” said one brand-name talent. “It created a permission structure for people to say, Everyone’s entitled to their beliefs and it’s a transactional business. I’ve been worried and dismayed about that. Do we have a spine at this moment in time? Is this the beginning of something different—where we’re either playing ball or not working?” This person, who previously had a positive experience working with Ellison, added, “I do think David does care about, and has genuine affection for, movies.”

That’s the great hope, anyway. One agent scoffed at the idea that anyone would hesitate to do business with Skydance/Paramount. He made the undeniable point that everyone worked with the Murdochs when they owned the Fox film and TV studio, and no one pushed back when the studios sucked up to the Chinese government—even while the Uyghurs were being persecuted and forced into camps. Might it not make a difference, I asked, that we now have camps in our own country, and people are being disappeared off the streets? He scoffed again. “People are grateful to have a friggin’ buyer,” he said. The main thing is that David Ellison is “somebody who likes movies, likes storytellers. We are happy.”

But let’s not forget that Skydance has said that the merged company will implement $2 billion in cost efficiencies and synergies—and we know what that means. And at a time when A.I. fears are already off the charts, Ellison has said the new company will be “tech-driven.” Reality may hit hard, after the deal finally gets done. Unfortunately, more pain is on the way, and much of it will have nothing to do with the person sitting in the Oval Office.

Jason Zinoman is right: Colbert’s next act will be far more interesting than what he was doing on CBS. [NY Times]

New ad stats: The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon grew its ad revenue 34 percent to $80.2 million over the past 12 months. This came from 13 percent more airings on NBC and Peacock. The Late Show With Stephen Colbert earned $59.9 million in ad revenue in that period, down 2 percent, and Jimmy Kimmel Live! took in $46 million, down 16 percent. [MediaPost]

More on New Paramount’s courtship of David Rhodes to run CBS News: Cheeks recently met with Rhodes in London, per Dylan Byers. [Puck]

Peacock jacked up its monthly prices $3 in advance of launching the NBA, forcing Bravo fans who fled cable because they hate paying for sports they don’t watch to… pay for sports they don’t watch. [Vulture]

As late-night TV implodes, it’s really hard to determine exactly how many podcasts are now being watched as videos, but it’s a lot. [NY Times]

One to watch: Japan’s Godzilla studio, Toho, is on a buying rampage. [Bloomberg]

It’s still funny how triggering Billy Joel is for music critics. [Slate]

Of course the super-expensive (and super-creepy) Walt Disney audio-animatronic broke down on opening day at Disneyland. [TikTok]

It was Colbert, Colbert, Colbert in my inbox. A few interesting responses…

“The dam just burst. No network wants to go first. But now they can all follow.” —A producer

“Come on, Matt. Colbert cancellation has nothing to do with Trump. Don’t know why you are even mentioning that possibility. Cheeks has been complaining for over a year how much money they lose in late night. This was inevitable. George wants to keep his job and look like a hero [to the Skydance people] in cutting costs.” —An agent

“Feels a bit similar to back in the day when [Chris] McCarthy canceled Tosh.0 and replaced [MTV shows] with Ridiculousness 24/7. This is Cheeks showing he can make the hard calls.” —An executive

“George Cheeks is part of the old Viacom machinery. Read: under Shari’s thumb. I have no idea about whether Stephen was a blood offering to SCROTUS or whether Jon [Stewart] will be next. But the chaos of Trump’s second term has turned so many previously engaged “traditional” (GenX +) news and late-night viewers off. We can’t bear to watch it anymore—it’s just too goddamned depressing.” —A professor

“Good financial decision. Horrible optics and timing. I think they killed two birds with one stone.” —Another producer

The Warner Bros. hot streak could continue into early September as The Conjuring: Last Rites scores high on The Quorum’s early film tracking chart…

Here’s Kim with her own tribute to Skip Brittenham—and a little surprise…

I also want to say a few words about super deal lawyer Skip Brittenham, who died last week at 83. Skip was always generous with me, even when I wrote a piece about his friend and client John Lasseter that led to Lasseter being put on permanent leave from Disney. Skip wasn’t happy, but he didn’t yell or threaten—he just kept on helping me when he could. (It may be worth noting that, years back, Larry Ellison hired Skip to mentor both David and Megan Ellison when they waded into Hollywood. Skip worked with David but only got so far with Megan.)

Skip had a side hustle, a passion project that he’d been working on for years. It was an invention, and I’d tell you about it except I signed an NDA. The idea was that if the invention came to market, I would get to write the story. Now, it’s unclear whether the project will go forward. I got to try it over a few iterations, as did many others in Skip’s world. Maybe someday I can tell the tale. But the work he put into it showed the range of his intellect and his optimism, which were just two of the traits that make this loss so heavy.

Have a great week,
Matt

Julia Alexander and Maya Tribbitt contributed research for today’s issue.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or your own doodle gift from Donald Trump? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.

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