In 2024, Republican candidate Heather Lappin lost out on the Pima County sheriff’s seat to incumbent Democrat Chris Nanos, the man currently in charge of finding Nancy Guthrie, by 481 votes in a recount. More than 487,000 people voted in the election, making the margin of victory less than 0.1 percent.
There is no love lost between Lappin and her former boss, and you can count Lappin among those who believe Sheriff Nanos is currently bungling the Guthrie kidnapping case, which may soon be a murder case. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Lappin, a former Nanos lieutenant (literally — that was her rank), had nothing nice to say about America’s Sheriff.
“He is a tyrant,” Lappin says. “He tries to be super charming. Like when he did his quote [at the Guthrie press conference], ‘I’m not used to people hanging on my every word and trying to hold me accountable.’ And then he put his hands on his hips because he was trying to be cute. Nobody thinks you’re cute. You’re a 72-year-old man, nobody thinks you’re cute.”
OK, so maybe some of Lappin’s grievances are a little petty. But not all of them.
After her loss, Lappin says she asked to be transferred to another county department — any of them. The request was denied and she eventually relocated to Phoenix, a one-hour, 40-minute drive from Tucson, where she found new employment.
It’s been a ride. After challenging him for the sheriff’s post, Lappin claimsNanos transferred her to a corrections role at the Pima County Adult Detention Center. Lappin had no corrections experience (but 20 years as a cop on the street), and by then, the jail was a very bad place to be — even for jail.
“We had an exorbitant amount of jail death because Nanos decided to come in and fire corrections officers only for not getting the COVID vaccine,” Lappin says. “They didn’t fire deputies, they only fired corrections officers.”
Nanos lost an election for sheriff in 2016 amid a RICO investigation. He won in 2020. The same year, COVID-19 began to kill inmates, but so did the realities of a small staff, Lappin says. “[The inmates] were literally kept in these rooms, just getting food,” she adds. “That’s it — no exercise, no nothing.”
It was also difficult for the remaining corrections officers to monitor drugs coming into the prisons, she says.
In a few years, Lappin would face those challenges, the consequence of being on the ballot opposite Nanos, she contends. Her new work was hard and unfamiliar, and her nights weren’t a whole lot better than her days. Lappin says she was the target of 13 internal affairs investigations in just six months, each allegedly an effort for Nanos to discredit his political opponent.
Nanos also attempted to “intimidate” Lappin at campaign events, she claims. “He sent his two female captains to my campaign events to try to intimidate me,” Lappin says. “He’s like a mafioso, that’s what he’s like.”
“Right now, our focus is on this investigation and serving the victims and this community. Political commentary distracts from this active investigation, and it is unfortunate,” Sheriff Nanos tells THR when asked for comment on the accusations in this story. “My focus remains on justice and transparency.”
Nathan Congleton/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
After Nanos won by a razor-thin margin, Lappin says, “He just kept coming after me.” The result of the efforts was an administrative leave for Lappin, where she says she was basically put under “house arrest.” She sued for $2 million.
Now, Lappin is trying to not talk about the Guthrie case — but she did criticize the sheriff’s work. (Lappin declined to comment on plans to run for Pima County sheriff in 2028, though she says she can from an eligibility standpoint.)
Earlier this month, Nancy Guthrie, the elderly and infirm mother of Today show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, was violently taken from her home in Tucson, Arizona. More than three weeks into the investigation, law enforcement, which now includes the FBI, have no real leads.
“A lot of the Guthrie case is just consequences of his really bad decision making, the years of decimating his units,” Lappin says. “Three of our best homicide detectives, probably in [all of] southern Arizona, were removed from Homicide because they supported me [in the election].”
One popular criticism of Nanos, who to his credit has taken much of it head on, is a reported rift between his office and the feds. It is not entirely clear who has primary jurisdiction as the details of the crime remain so unknown. Lappin says she would have handled the case differently.
“Why didn’t you become the support agency and give this to the FBI? They have the resources. They can bring in the hundreds and hundreds of people that command those tip lines. He’s trying to do that with 395 deputies — we don’t have the resources,” Lappin says.
In our phone call, I informed Lappin of the latest beat of the ongoing Nancy Guthrie case: a $1 million reward “for any information that leads to her recovery,” as Savannah Guthrie laid out in a Tuesday video. An individual close to the family told THR the Guthries wanted the reward out there on day one, but law enforcement discouraged the idea in an effort to prevent fake tipsters.
“[Nanos’] ego doesn’t let him make the decision to give it up because he thinks it’s going to make him look bad,” Lappin says. “When you put your own ego and your own [image] to the public over the health and safety of an 84-year-old woman, then that’s a problem.”
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, The Hollywood Reporter may receive an affiliate commission.
Released by Penguin Press, the book is available now as a 304-page hardcover. Newsom also narrates the audiobook version of “Young Man in a Hurry,” which you can listen to for free right now with a free trial to Audible here.
Newsom has made headlines in recent months both for squaring off with Donald Trump and for his grand plans to halt Hollywood’s so-called “filming exodus.” The Governor has pledged to return television and movie production to California, signing a bill last year that would double the state’s tax incentives for film and TV projects from $330 million to $750 million annually. Still, Newsom has faced his fair share of detractors — even from Hollywood insiders — on issues outside of the industry.
In October, Joseph Gordon Levitt said the Governor was “too scared” to veto legislation that would have banned companies from making AI chatbots available to people under the age of 18 (Newsom attributed his decision to the bill’s “broad restrictions,” though he did sign a law that requires platforms to remind users they are interacting with a chatbot and not a human, as well as prevent the promotion of self-harm content). Halle Berry, meantime, criticized Newsom in December for vetoing a menopause bill she backed, adding that, “That’s okay, because he’s not going to be governor forever, and the way he has overlooked women… he probably should not be our next president either.”
The new book was written too late to respond to the criticisms, but nevertheless seeks to position Newsom as an underdog, who took up baseball as a way to deal with his family dysfunction and his long time struggles with dyslexia. The running theme throughout Newsom’s memoir: This is just a guy who has lived his whole life trying to make his home state proud.
“Born in San Francisco, his parents divorced at a young age, and his childhood was spent being tugged between two worlds: his mother worked three jobs in order to care for her children while his father, a close friend of the Getty family, brought Newsom into San Francisco society, a world of wealth and connections,” reads a book description. “The dissonance was frustrating, and made all the more difficult because of undiagnosed dyslexia, but the vantage point was valuable: he inherited his mother’s perseverance and his father’s reverence of California, not only its wildness, but its opportunity.”
For what it’s worth, Newsom has never lived outside of California — something that has both endeared him to locals and left him open to critique from potential voters in the rest of the country. The 58-year-old also memorably saw off a GOP-led recall effort in 2021.
For Newsom, “the California Dream” is what keeps him going, the publishers’ notes say. “His great-great-grandfather, a cop, walked a beat in San Francisco, where almost 150 years later, Newsom would be elected as mayor, running on the values instilled in him by his family history: that California’s open arms must continue to extend to each new generation,” a description reads.
Of course the book chronicles Newsom’s entire political career, including his time as Mayor of San Francisco, where he issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples, more than ten years before the Supreme Court made same-sex unions legal. The book also lauds his “bold efforts” to “counter climate change, improve mental health care, and enhance gun safety.”
As the book description states, Newsom’s memoir is a “deeply resilient California story of identity, belonging, and the defining moments that inspired a life in politics.”
Paramount president Jeff Shell improperly disclosed specific details about the timing, cost and structure of the public company’s $7.7 billion media rights deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship almost a month before its August 2025 announcement — that’s the allegation of leaked confidential data that an outside law firm is now investigating, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The SEC is also now reviewing a related whistleblower complaint.
UFC parent TKO Group Holdings’ stock price surged 10 percent following news of the Paramount pact.
The reporting party is R.J. Cipriani, a high-stakes gambler with a documented history as a federal whistleblower. He’s been in settlement negotiations with Shell over a dispute involving consultation services. He declined to comment.
Both men have shared the same attorney: noted Hollywood power lawyer Patricia Glaser, who no longer reps Cipriani.
When asked for comment, Glaser said in a statement, “we were presented with a draft complaint riddled with clear errors of fact and law and the threat that it would be filed, but if he makes the mistake of going ahead with it, we will strongly respond.”
The Shell investigation surfaces at a sensitive time for Paramount, which on Feb. 23 sweetened its politically charged bid to purchase larger competitor Warner Bros. Discovery — and, in the process, elbow out Netflix. The streaming giant previously entered a $82.7 billion deal for WBD. Shell is said to have notified Paramount once he learned of the whistleblower’s draft complaint.
In 2023, Shell was terminated from his previous top job as NBC Universal’s CEO over allegations of inappropriate conduct involving a CNBC correspondent. Yet he found resurrection in Paramount owner David Ellison, who elevated Shell to his current post from an interim perch with private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, which helped Ellison’s Skydance Media acquire the studio.
Cipriani is a colorful figure whose exploits as a high roller and government whistleblower have included battles with a Las Vegas casino behemoth as well as an international drug lord. He toldTHR in September 2025 that a Mark Wahlberg-produced Amazon Prime docuseries about the latter saga, Cocaine Quarterback, portrayed him in a false light. Cipriani has said he’s been in development on a scripted project about the risky business that is his life. The working title is Jackpot, which is the codename the FBI conferred on him.
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, The Hollywood Reporter may receive an affiliate commission.
The newest member of the Tapestry Collection by Hilton, the hospitality brand’s portfolio of boutique properties, has a very specific audience in mind: concertgoers, sports fans and entertainment seekers.
Officially opened in February 2026, The Anthem Hotel is located in the heart of Los Angeles’ Stadium District, the city’s entertainment and sports hub. The 179-room property is a quick walk or Uber ride from some of L.A.’s biggest venues: Intuit Dome (0.1 miles), SoFi Stadium (0.9 miles), YouTube Theater (0.9 miles) and Kia Forum (1.1 miles). It’s also a 10 minute drive from LAX and 20 minutes to the beach.
On top of its proximity to the action, The Anthem will lean into its guests’ interests with a year-round lineup of programming and activations, including game-day celebrations, concert-night takeovers and exclusive experiences tied to global events. Local sports bar and restaurant Tom’s Watch Bar is connected to the property, overseeing The Anthem’s full food and beverage program, including its Soundwave Pool Bar.
To celebrate its opening, The Anthem is offering a limited-time launch promotion when customers book directly through this link. Use code P0 on The Anthem Hotel’s booking page to earn 10,000 Hilton Honors Points per night when booking the exclusive Private Rate.
“The Anthem isn’t just near the action, it’s part of it,” says Stephen Chavez, the property’s General Manager. “We’ve created a space that reflects the rhythm of the Los Angeles Stadium District: vibrant, connected, and full of possibility. Here, events start and end at The Anthem, where the crowd becomes the atmosphere itself: a sea of fans in jerseys, tie-dye, and festive glam. It’s an energy unlike what other places can offer.”
The Anthem Hotel, Tapestry Collection by Hilton is located at 3900 W Century Blvd., Inglewood, CA 90303. Book now via this link with code P0 to earn 10,000 Hilton Honors Points per night.
The show is called Newlyweds, and in a life-imitating-art situation, its two lead actors are (almost) newlyweds as well.
Tim Daly has joined the NBC comedy pilot about a later-in-life marriage alongside his real-life wife, Tea Leoni (who was the first to join the cast earlier this month). The couple married in July 2025, though they have been together for more than a decade after meeting on CBS’ 2014-19 drama Madam Secretary.
Along with adding Daly to the cast, Newlyweds has also set Pam Fryman (How I Met Your Mother, Happy’s Place) to direct and executive produce the pilot.
Newlyweds, from creator Gail Lerner (Will & Grace, Black-ish), centers on a free-spirited woman (Leoni) and a buttoned-up professor (Daly) who get married after a whirlwind courtship. Daly’s Tony is a recently divorced man who runs into Jeanie (Leoni) at a valet stand and is so taken with her that they wind up having dinner, kicking off the aforementioned whirlwind. He soon realizes that life with Jeanie won’t be the quiet, low-key one he enjoys, but he’d rather change than live without her.
Daly is coming off a recurring part in Netflix’s sitcom Leanne. He starred in NBC’s 1990s comedy Wings and also counts Private Practice, Superman: The Animated Series and a guest role on The Sopranos, for which he earned an Emmy nomination, among his credits. He is repped by IAG, Gateway Management & Production and Behr Abramson.
Newlyweds is produced by Universal Television. Lerner executive produces with co-creator Jamie Lee Curtis, Eric Tannenbaum, Kim Tannenbaum, Scott Schwartz, Lionsgate Television and Fryman. Leoni is a producer.
AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron on Tuesday gave an update to investors on his recovery from a minor stroke on Nov. 17 of last year during a visit to London.
“Just before Thanksgiving, during a business trip to London, I suffered a minor stroke. Fortunately for me, I got immediate care at a superb London hospital run by the United Kingdom’s National Health Service,” Aron told analysts on a conference call about his stay at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurological Sciences, a public hospital in London known for its stroke care.
“It was envisioned that I would have a speedy and full recovery,” Aron added in prepared remarks on the call following the release on Monday of the company’s fourth quarter and full-year 2025 financial results. “There was no cognition problem at the time of the stroke, no issue with reasoning or logic or decision making or memory.”
Aron said he lost his ability to speak for a “day or so,” and that was followed by speech therapy. “That was 14 weeks ago. You can hear for yourselves my voice today. My voice is back. I am delighted to report to you all that I am in fighting shape and fully ready to do battle,” he added as he continues to serve as chairman, CEO and president of AMC.
At the time of his minor stroke, AMC in a statement said: “Fortunately, there are no indications of loss of cognitive brain function related to Mr. Aron’s ability to process complex information, his memory or his written communications, which are all normal and undiminished. His only meaningful limitation was an initial slurring of his speech. He immediately commenced speech therapy, and has already seen a remarkable recovery in the quality and tenor of his voice. He expects to make a speedy and full recovery.”
[This story contains spoilers from the three-episode premiere of Paradise season two.]
If the first season of Paradise was a post-apocalyptic survival drama — albeit, a twisty one — the second season of Dan Fogelman‘s hit Hulu series starring Sterling K. Brown is about something even bigger — and less tangible.
“This season is about: Do you believe that things happen for a reason, or is it chance? It’s a big, emotional question. It’s almost a religious question; a philosophical question. What do you believe?” executive producer and writer John Hoberg tells The Hollywood Reporter about the newly released second season of Paradise.
Fogelman, who famously created This Is Us, set out to make Paradise with a clear three-season vision, one that had a beginning, middle and an end. Hoberg, who has previously detailed the end-of-the-world research that went into Paradise, says they stuck to that vision. Now that the second season has released its first three episodes, viewers see that the series has traveled outside of the survival city bunker called Paradise that was the main backdrop of season one and is exploring the remnants of the world above after a nuclear fallout — not only to follow protagonist Xavier (Brown) in his search for the wife who he thought had died, but also to introduce new characters, played by Shailene Woodley and Thomas Doherty, and show how everyone else outside of the bunker has been surviving.
Below, Hoberg details to The Hollywood Reporter what Fogelman and team are setting out to do with season two, while hinting at some big looming questions that will be raised ahead and revealing that they have already plotted out almost all of season three (while they await for an official renewal) that will close out this story. They also promise to answer the biggest question already raised: Who is Alex?
***
Creator Dan Fogelman said he had a very clear three-season vision for this show from the start. So when you all returned to the writers room for season two, how much was laid out for you, and what was trickiest to figure out?
I was one of the people who was in [on the show] really early. It was me and [writer/co-executive producer] Scott Weinger with Dan [Fogelman] and Jess [Rosenthal, executive producer]. This was before we even gathered the [writers] room and Dan was trying to decide where it was going to go. That’s where we formulated the three-season idea and what those seasons would be. We knew we were in the bunker season one, and we knew we were going out and Xavier [Sterling K. Brown] was going to look for his wife [in season two]. We also knew that we were headed for a collision of two different worlds. So when you have that beginning and you know where you’re swimming to, you know the high points. We probably knew what the midpoint of season [two] was and the final thing [of the season]. There was a lot of debate over, “When will Xavier get to Atlanta [where wife Terri is believed to be]? What’s going to happen along the way? How long do we want to be on the road?” Those are the things we really started to figure out.
You knew you would release three episodes with launch. Why did you want to structure the first three episodes this way, and kick off season two by introducing new characters Annie (Woodley) and Link (Doherty) before catching back up with Xavier and returning to the bunker?
The big debate was, “Do we do what we felt was the right, but more gutsy, move of starting with the Shailene episode, where you don’t see Xavier until the last second?” That was the big discussion. We knew we wanted that episode. We knew we wanted to give the audience a chance to experience what the last day out in the world was like — not with the president and all the protected people [as was shown in season one], but what it was like for an everyday person when the world ended.
Everything except for that episode is through Xavier’s emotional experience. He’s driving the entire show. So we knew we needed to put him through it when he finds those kids [in season two] to say, Here’s the new world you’re in. This is a different reality than he had experienced before [in the bunker]. The rules are different. We knew we wanted that, and we also knew we wanted to check in on the bunker.
There was discussion of, “Do we flip [episodes] one and two? Do we flip episodes two and three?” Because they could flip. Ultimately we landed on this format, and decided that it was the best path to invest you in the world you’re about to get into and then be like, “Oh, that’s right. Xavier’s there.”
Newcomers Shailene Woodley as Annie with Thomas Doherty as Link in season two.
Disney/Ser Baffo
There are mysterious nose bleeds and what I’m referring to as memory flashes in these first episodes. What did you call these unexplainable acts in the room?
We call them flashbacks. I’ve become a believer that we all walk around and our memories give us this ability to transport us to a different time. That’s what our characters are doing. Xavier, when he’s in and out after what’s happened to him when he’s in the plane crash, is flashing to Terry [Enuka Okuma]. In his experience, he’s with Terry. So what we try to do is find these flashbacks that are informing you about the character, but also taking you back and forth through time in the character’s experience.
Already this season seems to be moving from a post-apocalyptic survival drama into a sci-fi story that will raise even bigger questions about what we believe. What were some of the conversations you had in the room about these questions you wanted to pose, and how you would gradually raise them throughout the season?
This season is about: Do you believe that things happen for a reason, or is it chance? It’s a big, emotional question. It’s almost a religious question; a philosophical question. What do you believe? We want the audience to think about, What do these nosebleeds mean? Is that a coincidence? Is it not? That’s really important for us, especially in these first three episodes. Where do you land on what’s going on? Is your Spidey sense going up a little bit? It might not. You might be right for it not to, and you might be right for it going up.
Do you feel like the genre of the show changes this season?
The weird thing is that the genre I have in my head for this show is a Western. Xavier is a Western hero. He is that person with an uncompromising goal. He has a set of values he won’t compromise. So even if the genre is shifting one way or another, the anchor to the entire show is him. We’re testing him. Every episode, we’re going to test him on his moral and personal codes to see if he is going to crack. So even if it the show blends into different things, he holds it together.
We meet Shailene Woodley’s new character Annie at Graceland. We got her survival backstory there, and that’s where she takes Xavier in. I know you all do a ton of research, so why did you chose Graceland as a key location for season two?
A big thing we read up on was really depressing. There are people who I call disastereologists. People who focus on: “What will human beings do in the event of something like this?” One of the things we discovered is what most apocalyptic shows show: the mean-men-with-guns thing. That’s very real. There’s this thing they call “the killing years.” It’s two years when it is ugly and people are fighting for resources, and things are what we have seen in a lot of these shows. But then there is this thought that, at year three, the people who survive are the ones who work together, and gather resources together and can kind of figure things out.
So we started researching that. “What’s a place you might be able to wait out those dangerous two years? Where could this woman be? A bank vault, or another type of shelter?” And then we really let the character lead, and we got into this idea of a woman fighting agoraphobia. Someone [in the room] brought up that they had a friend who was fighting agoraphobia who ended up becoming a tour guide at the Getty Museum, and it was this release because there was a script. We started building with that, and Dan suggested Graceland as being an incredible way to show the end of the world. Throughout the whole season, you’re going to find Americana left behind or repurposed. Gracelan set that theme of how we used to use things versus how people might use them in this kind of world.
The big question viewers are asking after these first three episodes is, who the hell is Alex?
Good! I want people to ask, who the hell is Alex? The one thing with this show is that we answer questions. That’s really important. That was important to Dan from the beginning. We’ll pose questions and we will answer them, and bring up new questions. So if you’re wondering if you will find out who Alex is, you will find out who Alex is.
SInatra (Julianne Nicholson, left) survived the season one finale attack on her life by Jane (Nicole Brydon Bloom).
Disney/Gilles Mingasson
Dan had confirmed Sinatra [Julianne Nicholson] would come back in season two alive, but that it would be different for her. When she wakes up, she’s knocked down a peg. She has to fight to get back in charge, and we see her addressing her own humanity. What story are you telling with Sinatra this season?
Sinatra is up to something much bigger. Is it nefarious? Is it good? Who knows? But she is driven and. Hopefully it makes you question like all the extremes she’s gone to in trying to protect the bunker. But it seems like she’s trying to protect something bigger than the bunker. And that’s what her goal is — her life’s goal is something other than just the bunker. That’s what we’re going to learn about her.
You brought back James Marsden’s President Cal and John Beavers’ Billy through flashbacks. Was that important to keep them among the cast, and will you find a way to do that again if you come back for season three?
Yes. The great thing if you’re an actor on a Dan Fogelman show is you kind of never disappear. You may die, but that doesn’t matter, because there are so many flashbacks. The story is informed in the past, and this collection of people have roles they have to play. They’re very interconnected, and that’s something that will continue — the interconnectedness of life.
Each season two episode is focused on a character’s backstory. Was that something you set out to do more of this season? Did you debate who would get that treatment, and were there people left out?
Yes, there are people left out from getting their flashbacks. In season three, which we’re already breaking — we’re breaking episode seven right now and we know where it ends [with eight]; we know what episode eight is. Everybody gets their due. I will say that. But there’s only so much real estate and the story really dictates. I personally want to know more about Robinson’s [Krys Marshall] backstory, and we’ll get that, along with other characters. Everyone will have a moment, but it’s when they come to significance in the grander story when we made those decisions.
Since you are breaking season three and you know how it ends, does that mean you remain set on three seasons and there won’t be a fourth season of Paradise? The ending is plotted out?
We know what the end is, and it’s an end that would make it very difficult to make a season four come afterward.
What would you say the second season is building to, and how would you say it sets up your vision for season three?
It is setting up that there’s a lot of things going on in two different places. And if I were a viewer, I would wonder if those two different things might come together at some point.
You can stop holding your breath for a Madame Web 2.
Or a Kraven the Hunter 2…
Or a Morbius 2…
Yet the Spider-Man extended universe isn’t dead, either.
Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Tom Rothman confirms the studio is planning a “fresh reboot” to the Spider-Man extended universe after the franchise’s string of box office disappointments (aside from the trio of Venom films, which performed well).
Rothman was asked by Matt Belloni on The Town podcast, “Where are we in the Spider-Man franchise? Not the animated Spider-Verse. Is the larger Spider-Verse dead?”
“No,” replied Rothman.
“Are you going to go back to those at some point?”
“Yes,” Rothman confirmed.
“But it’ll be a fresh reboot?”
“Yes.”
“New people?”
“Yes, yes.”
The executive added that “scarcity has value … you got to make the audience miss you.”
Rothman also confirmed a 2021 report for the first time that Spider-Man: No Way Home was banned in China due to the film’s climax taking place at the Statue of Liberty.
The executive pointed out the film made $1.9 billion globally, which “pisses me off to have to say this.”
“You say, ‘$1.9 billion, what’s wrong with [saying] 2?’ Well, it didn’t get into China, but in my mind [the film’s box office is] over 2 [billion] because I know what we would have done in China.”
“They just said, ‘Small thing, no problem, just cut out the Statue of Liberty’ — which is where the climax is. That was their request. Also, I really didn’t look forward to sitting in front of Congress telling them why I cut the Statue of Liberty out at the request of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Of course, given the sheer amount of screen time that takes place at the iconic New York landmark, cutting out the statue would have been pretty much impossible.
Sony reportedly courted China heavily for Spider-Man: No Way Home, even releasing a Chinese poster amid hopes it would be the first Marvel Phase 4 film to clear censorship approvals. The prior film, Far From Home, made $200 million in China.
Rothman was also asked about his relationship with Marvel boss Kevin Feige, and opined, “They’re two people about whom I would say this — and maybe more if I think about it — but never bet against Jim Cameron and never bet against Kevin Feige.”
The live-action Spider-Man universe movies were plagued by both poor reviews and weak box office. Launched with 2018’s hit Venom, which set a high-water mark for the franchise with $856 million globally, the efforts included 2022’s Morbius ($162 million globally), 2024’s Madame Web ($100 million globally) and 2024’s Kraven the Hunter (an abysmal $60 million globally against an estimated production budget of more than $100 million).
If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, The Hollywood Reporter may receive an affiliate commission.
Donald Trump‘s 2026 State of the Union address, the first of his second term in office, will be take place on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET. Since the speech will be broadcast live on most major networks and cable news channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN and PBS), it can also be livestreamed via TV streaming services that carry those networks, including DirecTV (with a five-day free trial period), Fubo (with a five-day free trial period), Sling and Hulu + Live TV.
Dozens of Democratic lawmakers will be boycotting Tuesday’s speech, instead joining the “People’s State of the Union” counter-rally on the National Mall.
State of the Union 2026: Air Date and Time, Where to Watch Online
Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress during the 2026 State of the Union on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 6 p.m. PT/9 p.m. ET. The speech will be broadcast live on most major networks and cable news channels, including ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, C-SPAN and PBS.
A growing number of Democrats have announced they will not be attending Tuesday’s address as a form of protest, instead joining the “People’s State of the Union” counter-rally. The Hollywood Reporter will provide new information as it comes in.
Paramount has upped its offer for Warner Bros. Discovery to $31 a share, above its previous offer of $30 per share.
Warner Bros. Discovery said the board has not yet made a determination as to whether the offer is superior to Netflix’s but says it could reasonably be expected” to lead to a “company superior proposal.” Netflix has offered $27.75 per share for the company’s streaming and film assets.
The revised proposal from Paramount includes an increased purchase price of $31.00 per WBD share in cash, plus a daily ticking fee payable to shareholders equal to $0.25 per quarter beginning after Sept. 30, 2026, as well as a $7 billion regulatory termination in the event the transaction does not close due to regulatory matters. Paramount has also agreed to pay the $2.8 billion termination fee that WBD would be required to pay to Netflix to terminate the existing merger agreement.
The ticking fee schedule was originally slated to start Dec. 31, and the $7 billion fee is also a new addition.
If the WBD board determines that Paramount’s offer is a “Company Superior Proposal,” Netflix will have four business days to negotiate with WBD and to propose any revisions to its bid.
Paramount has been launching hostile takeover bid directly with shareholders in its effort to undo the previously agreed $82.7 billion Netflix deal. That deal was first unveiled in December and amended into an all-cash bid in late January. Warner Bros. board members had given Paramount a deadline of early this week for a revised best and final bid.
Earlier this morning, Warner Bros. had said its board, along with financial and legal advisors were reviewing Paramount’s latest new offer, but did not reveal exact details of the bid.
