Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison sits with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Halloween has come early to Hollywood, where Paramount’s push to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery has the town spooked and bracing for job cuts along with a shrinking roster of content buyers that such an entertainment behemoth would bring.
It doesn’t help that the Trump administration appears to be putting its thumb on the scale for Paramount and its controlling family, the Ellisons, in an unprecedented manner, borne not out of policy concerns but the president’s habit of favoring those who he thinks will be the nicest to him.
The consolidation threat represents a longstanding concern within Hollywood, as the industry seeks to adapt to a media ecosystem undergoing a wrenching transition. But the studio approach to get bigger—seeking scale for streaming services, cost savings and leverage in negotiations—is likely to have profound consequences, from employees whose overlapping jobs will be eliminated to talent and agencies with fewer competitive buyers to vie for their services.
In conversations I’ve had this week with industry insiders, it’s become clear…
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The latest episode of Power Lines just dropped.
In this week’s episode: We discuss David Zaslav’s attempts to stave off David Ellison’s aggressive bid for Warner Bros. Discovery and what it could mean for CNN’s future, Fox News’ endless attacks on Zohran Mamdani, media mogul Jay Penske’s willingness to legitimize far-right podcasters in exchange for some Golden Globes cash, Karoline Leavitt’s “your mom” meltdown, and more.
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Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere." (Photo by Macall Polay/20th Century Studios)
Deliver Us From Cynicism: Born three years after Donald Trump and less than two hours away in New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen has emerged as one of Trump’s most pointed critics in the cultural realm, drawing on his long history of rebellious patriotism. Yet it’s a very different spotlight that falls on The Boss with “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” a deeply personal film about both his artistic integrity and inner demons.
Avoiding the familiar format of a conventional biopic, writer-director Scott Cooper focuses on a singular widow in Springsteen’s life, as he grappled with his rising fame while throwing himself into creating “Nebraska,” his stark 1982 masterpiece. The roots of that project, however, stemmed from unaddressed wounds in Springsteen’s youth, putting him at risk of a breakdown at his moment of artistic (and soon, commercial) triumph.
Drawing from a book by Warren Zanes, the film exposes…
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