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In This Issue

• Film
• Brand Funded Entertainment
• Misc.

Battles, Mergers, Disruption

The Oscars were pretty f-n bland, but they might be a high-water mark for the future if the Paramount-WBD merger gets approved. The films being honored weren’t the problem – it was a stellar year in almost every category. But the show had no oomph, no one made any real political stand, the humor was almost absent, viewership was down 9%, and the impact on culture was nonexistent. But that’s the norm for the Oscars – declining relevance as an event. But the films are almost always great, and that was true this year. But we can’t count on the films, going forward. There’s serious debate over whether the new Warners would make the kinds of films they won for on Sunday night. The cost-cutting needed post-merger alone might kill those kinds of ambitions, and no one knows what will be left of artistic ones under the new leadership. And as mergers and consolidation hit the industry, there will be less buyers and outlets for the quality cinema still being made by others (indies, the New Yorker (oh, that’s underpaid indies…), Neon, Etc.). It’s all downhill from here. 

There’s been a lot of back and forth online the past few weeks about whether the merger matters or not. The problem is – the merger does matter, a lot; the need to build new systems is just as urgent; the possibility of blocking the merger, even with some smart State Attorneys General, is unlikely under this administration; the public doesn’t barely know what’s going on; the stakes are not only our democracy, given the politics behind this, but even more existential if you believe as I do that good art transcends the moment, and we might lose it as a merger leads to more of a monoculture; – but, one can go crazy trying to keep track of all of this and decide they should just smoke pot on their couch all day and leave the battles to younger voices instead of dealing with all of this anxiety, as Leo essentially did in One Battle, but that is clearly not the answer (except, maybe, for me). 

That’s also essentially the argument Dana Harris-Bridson made in her Indiewire article that raised hackles with some of my friends – leave it to the kids on YouTube, and don’t worry about the merger. Her argument was much more nuanced than that, of course, but that’s what it was reduced to, as her summary was – you can spend energy blocking the merger, but it won’t bring back the infrastructure we need, so you might as well build the new one. Those sentiments align with my post the week prior, where I said that yes, we need to fight the merger, but we also need to build new things. I think Jon Reiss best summed up the proper path forward when he wrote back to Dana’s article in his newsletter saying – do both – fight the merger, and build for the future, because (as I say above), this is also about democracy. So, yes, we need to fight the merger, while also building what’s new.

That being said… The reality here is that the merger also represents another set of old people throwing up their hands and saying, “let’s leave it to the kids to sort out,” but it’s the old guard, seeing that their business model is dead, so they’re selling a bag of goods to a young, rich buyer who is too dumb to realize the gig is up. What Malone and Zaslav have done is a classic move – sell high and get out, just before it all goes to hell. That’s what Chernin did, selling North Road to Mediawan back in January, as well. And even moves that look like strategic scaling efforts to compete as a “global content juggernaut,” such as the Banijay/All3 Media merger are going to go the same route – a ton of debt, multiple layoffs and cost-cutting, and then a sale of a bigger bag of goods to some other fool within a few years. 

We are watching the final battles of a dying industry, as people fight for to be the last empires standing before it all crashes down. People will blame this all on AI someday, but remember, this started happening a long time ago (I’d say a year before Covid hit), before any of us were asking Claude for a summary of our problems, and prompting ChatGPT for a business plan for the future. AI will contribute to the problem, but it will also help a new generation build what’s next. 

This comes down to the same problem we’ve been facing since the web came along, really – digital technology has shattered every business model built upon scarcity – that things were expensive and difficult to make and distribute, and you needed things like studios, and agencies, and movie stars, and expensive educations, and so on, and so forth. That’s all gone. But everyone who had vested a lot of time and money into that system can’t let it go, won’t adapt to the new reality, and is either going big (mergers, fundraising, sales), or going home. 

The problem is, we’ve been watching this movie for a long time, and I still don’t know if it’s a horror movie or a comedy, but the adage goes that comedy is tragedy plus time, so I guess we know where this is going. The problem is, a lot of tragedy is gonna take place before we gain the perspective to laugh about any of it. Layoffs hit real people. Companies will shut down. Films won’t get made, or will somehow get made, but barely get seen. Entire economies built around the status quo will disappear. Real pain.

But the key to moving forward is to hold multiple truths in one’s head at the same time. All of that is true. But simultaneously, great new things are being built. Billions are being made in the creator economy. More people have access to the means to make films and get them to an audience than ever before. No, YouTube isn’t perfect,  and is another merger that shouldn’t have been approved, but it sure beats the old system of HBO, Bravo, or… cable access. Yes, the infrastructure that sustains our indie and arthouse film world is crumbling, but at the same time (and mainly behind the scenes right now), multiple people are building new models that might replace it. 

Back in January, 2025, I predicted all of this, and I wasn’t ahead of the curve. As I said back then, disruption is the name of the game right now, and only disruptive ideas will thrive. We’ve been disrupted for a long time, but a lot of people/businesses are just starting to realize it. Everything is now up for grabs. The center does not hold. So, realizing we are in an age of disruption is step one. Step two is embracing it, and step three – if you want to thrive – is being one of the disrupters. That’s the only path forward that makes any sense, and that’s my focus now and for the rest of 2026 (and probably longer).

Brand Funded Entertainment

Brands As Creative Collaborators, Not Just Sponsors: TheWrap gathered leaders from NBCUniversal, Sony, Warner Bros. Discovery, Diageo, UTA, Google TV and more, asking them how brand integration has evolved in a changing entertainment sector. Key takeaways: (1) Brand collabs are essential to offset industrywide cost-cutting; (2) “In-film partnerships are just the tip of the iceberg in the digital age.” Meaning, brand integrations need to extend into multi-platform content (YouTube…etc) to be most effective; (3) Advertising is moving toward algorithmically targeted, individualized experiences, with everyone’s home screen looking different.” (4) Most importantly, the more a brand behaves like a creative collaborator (not just a sponsor), the more effective the integration becomes. For instance, for the animated film “Goat,” Sony and Under Armour co-designed a custom sneaker just for the film (they didn’t just place a product). Another example: Captain Morgan collaborated with the horror movie M3GAN to create Captain M3GAN,  and sold a limited-edition, glow-in-the-dark Captain M3GAN when the film was released. Read on at Tess Patton’s piece for TheWrap. (GSH)

Ferrari’s New Competition — Sephora: On March 13th, the beauty brand debuted at the 2026 season’s first-round race in Shanghai on an F1 driven by teenage Spanish driver Natàlia Granada. The event comes shortly after Sephora announced a multi-year partnership with F1 Academy, the women’s racing championship founded by Formula One Group. “[We heard] that young women are fans of F1, and there’s a growing female [audience]. The excitement around [Netflix’s] ‘Drive to Survive’ and the F1 Academy content series and being at one of the races is continuing to uptick. So how do we get into the space? (Celessa Baker, VP of marketing partnerships at Sephora.)” The takeaway: This is just the beginning of a multi-year partnership where Sephora can shape the narrative and tap into a fast-growing, digitally native (and increasingly female) fanbase, with most of the value living off-track in content and distribution. Emily Jensen for Digiday has the news. (GSH)

Brian Newman & Sub-Genre Media

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