An interesting read that reflects on the state of decision-making in Hollywood at the moment.

The piece has the air of old ‘Kremlin-watching’ analyses in foreign affairs circles.

It’s truly bizarre that Geller and Zhao were given an official decision late on a Friday, just before launching major promotional events for other projects.

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/36996137

A comprehensive perspective on the Guinness Book of World Records longest running screen franchise from The Irish Examiner.

Having a the perspective of an Irish fan and media critic is interesting - Monarch: Legacy of Monsters and other Godzilla media do consistently less well in English speaking countries other than the United States.

From the piece:

But why are giant monsters enjoying a resurgence in 2024, when big franchises such as Marvel are going through a slump? How is it that we have gone cold on men and women in spandex costumes, while we embrace kaiju laying waste to our cities?

“Kaiju have become the new superheroes. Much like anime, after years of blossoming in its niche fandom here in the West, kaiju have expanded into mainstream popularity,” says Nathan Marchand, host of  The Monster Island Film Vault podcast.

A rather timely report following last evening’s Oscar Awards ceremony.

Joss Whedon, who created the original series, is not involved in the animated project.

For those of us wondering how fragile the Skydance-Paramount + WBDiscovery financial construct actually is, it seems that the markets are posing similar questions.

TLDR: despite Ellison senior’s guaranteeing the additional billions in debt, the ratings firms are reclassifying Paramount downwards into a junk bond category.

From the article:

Fitch Ratings said Monday that it placed Paramount on its “negative” ratings watch, and downgraded its credit to BB+ from BBB-, which puts the company’s credit into “junk” territory. Fitch said it took action due to “uncertainty” surrounding Paramount’s $110-billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which the boards of both companies approved on Friday.

Tamara Deverell, who took over Discovery production design after the two pilot episodes, and carried through to the end of season two, shares the Production Design Oscar 2026 for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein with Shane Vieau.

Star Trek fans especially appreciated Deverall’s respectful recreation of the 1701 bridge for Discovery season two.

Tig Notaro’s film Come See Me in the Good Light was nominated for Best Documentary but did not win.

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/36900956

Reading through speculation about what the **Monsterverse’s new kaiju Titan X aka Le Gran Dios de la Mar may be (such as the article linked above), it sounds increasingly as though she may be a new protective mother figure, impacted or possibly even responding to the effects of global heating on the oceans.

If so, this season’s Titan threat may put Monarch: Legacy of Monsters in a unique position among current major science fiction streaming shows in directly taking on a Climate Change/Emergency scenario with no gloss of allegory.

It is nonetheless absolutely in keeping with the long tradition of the broader franchise in critiquing the consequences of human actions on the planet.

The 70+ year Godzilla franchise is unique in embedding the impact of humanity on the Earth’s environment from its outset.

The narrative of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as later nuclear weapons testing and nuclear power plants, calling up kaiju, literally “strange creature”, is a constant within the franchise.

In addition to atomic/nuclear radiation, films such as Godzilla vs Hedorah (1971), with its smog monster, and the more recent Monsterverse film Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), which ends with Godzilla leading an ecological recovery, the franchise continues to underscore its deep theme that humanity shares the Earth and will bear the consequences for its actions.

I really thought biocomputers were just the realm of sci-fi. How long til we get bio-neural gel packs I wonder?

News that underscores that the conglomerate of Skydance-Paramount-WBDiscovery wants all the assets, and unlike the Redstones, has no interest in selling bits and pieces to reduce debt.

I can’t say I was enthusiastic about the prospect of Tyler Perry buying BET+ because it didn’t seem as if it would be large enough or have enough of an international distribution system to be viable. On the other hand, the announcement that BET+ will be ‘rolled in’ gives no comfort.

Now, I’m wondering if the Ellisons are going to want to get Simon & Schuster back.

An interesting series of more candid than usual reflections from three USC film school graduates who are currently at the peak of their careers: Kevin Feige, Shawn Levy and Ryan Coogler.

Feige has personally made a large ‘transformational’ endowment to the program that will in future bear his name.

From Feige:

Marvel has always had a back and forth with fans, going back to the days of the letters pages at the back of its comics, “but it can be wielded with such force now that you have to be beware,” Feige noted, referring to the power, sometimes dark, of fandom on the internet. 

The volume of what is being said online, if you focus too closely on it, “will crush you,” he said, adding, “There are hours and hours of theories on YouTube, hours and hours on TikTok, hours on subreddits … You can read everything on everything and get a different point of view on it. You can go crazy. So, we don’t do that.”

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/36676851

For those interested in creature models — both practical physical models and vfx — as well as anything Monsterverse or kaiju in general, this new AppleTV official featurette is a ‘must see.’

When to see it will depend on your interest in or willingness to be spoiled as it does give some things away about what’s upcoming in season two of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

It seems to make clear that Le Gran Dios de le Mar aka “Titan X” is a wholly new creation for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. There remains nonetheless much to speculate about.

Here’s an interesting piece about some of the concrete if prosaic realities that Skydance — that ate the larger Paramount and now is set to swallow the yet larger WB-Discovery — will need to contend with to serve its estimated combined 200 million subscribers.

For those of us who’ve experienced the unfortunately incapacity of the Paramount+ application, it’s clear that its tech stack won’t do. However, WB-Discovery HBO MAX isn’t state of the art either.

This idea of Paramount+/HBO Max integration is frankly “too new” to “contemplate how you can merge two streaming services of that size together,” Rayburn told THR. “There’s no way you would know.”

Here’s what we do know: “We … plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million direct to consumer subscribers,” Ellison said last week. “We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the space.”

Picking up on what seems to be a new trend in the adorable-but-horrific-creature category, I’m bringing this inter-franchise question here for lack of another community where it wouldn’t be off topic.

Lower Decks gave us the adorable bone-drinking, huge mouthed horror called Moopsy.

Now the Monsterverse has actually given us some big eyed, round-faced horrors called Scarabs that, when they look up at the heroes, seem actually cute, mouths full of teeth, shiny dark shells, and little tentacles notwithstanding.

Not sure this fits with Risa, so I’m hoping the admin will indulge me here.

In the spirit of great monster face offs : WHO WOULD WIN?!!

An interesting and analytical piece from Variety on the potential implications and risks of Saudi Sovereign funds financing $24 B out of the total $ 110 B purchase price of WBDiscovery.

There are a lot of angles to look at this from, especially with the current attacks/conflict/war in the region.

Here’s just one:

“Big sovereign investors negotiate the level of visibility they want into strategy and major decisions,” said New York-based lawyer and analyst Irina Tsukerman. “They automatically get ongoing access to leadership and leverage tied to future financing, even without publicly acknowledged voting rights,” she pointed out.

This casting announcement passed me last week — Paul Wesley will be in the recently greenlit third season of The Buccaneers, AppleTV’s historical romance drama loosely based on the popular novel by Edith Wharton.

It’s a bit of a milestone in SNW cast making new commitments in the absence of any confirmation of a sequel series.

Crossposting here to quark’s…

Well known comic publisher IDW, is getting into official/licensed TTRPG’s with a forthcoming Godzilla TTRPG funded by a Kickstarter campaign that’s already well surpassed its pledge objective.

From what I can see, IDW’s games line has only done tabletop board games up to now, and has relied on Kickstarter to create momentum as well as raise funds.

Star Trek Adventures, and other franchise TTRPGs, are published by UK-based Modiphius Entertainment. It sounds like IDW is trying to establish itself as a competitor.

Having posted Flix Patrol’s show specific ranking charts, I thought to look to see if Parrot Analytics has anything of interest available for public view.

What I found is their 2025 analysis of trends is now publicly accessible.

It tells a story of how the United States entertainment media production no longer dominates globally the way it did not long ago. Streamers that assume they can just make things to target the US market, and then free ride with revenues globally, don’t seem to be the ones to succeed in future. (Looking at you former Paramount owners and senior executives.)

The report’s top bullets:

Across TV, movie, and talent, 2025 reinforced several strategic realities:

• Audience demand is a leading indicator of value, not a retrospective metric.
• Global travelability increasingly determines upside, even for regionally rooted IP.
• Sustained engagement matters more than launch spikes for long-term economics.
• Fandom behavior has become a structural driver of performance, not a side effect.

Parrot Analytics is incorporated in the UK, and relies on diverse metrics beyond viewer minutes to construct estimates for the demand for a show or movie. They argue that this is a more effective tool for planning and marketing screen content than just past viewership but they certainly incorporate actual viewership numbers and demographics in their analysis.

So, it will be Larry Ellison, not the Saudis, who will be putting up the additional $40 billion to win the hostile takeover of WBDiscovery over Netflix.

And he’s going to allow investors some greater visibility into the Ellison family trust.

As someone who respected the way Americans once took antitrust mechanisms and actions deeply seriously, this doesn’t give much comfort.