Overalls, first-look pacts and original films are making a comeback — on paper, at least. Deal volume is up, but value is down. And that original film revival? It’s starting to come from outside the studios. Ashley Cullins joins Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey to unpack her two-part series on current deal trends, from Sinners’ mid-budge…

Natalie Jarvey, author of Ankler Media's creator economy newsletter, Like & Subscribe, sits down with Webtoon Entertainment COO David J. Lee and Wattpad Webtoon Studios' global head of entertainment, David Madden at NAB Show in Vegas. In this bonus episode they explore how Webtoon plans to expand the market for digital comics in the U.S. through Ho…

Time was when networks would land a major star, with the next step finding a writer with “auspices” — an industry term for somebody proven, with a hit show already on air. The only issue? Those successful writers often couldn’t write. In spite of that, those series sometimes became massive hits. Which is why Rob Long wants to keep optimism alive. A…

The rare creative exec job posting inspires a mad scrum, and TV writers are scrambling to get staffed. So Hollywood, why not consider the creator economy next door? Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey discuss both how to stand out in traditional Hollywood, and how to stand out if sliding over to one of the many proliferating creator studio …

Like Rob Long’s old Subaru, show business is leaky and can emit a toxic cloud — but it works. That is, until Silicon Valley strides in and tries to plug up the holes with things like “ad-free offerings” and an “all-inclusive monthly price”. What the tech overlords don’t get, though: It’s all those wires and oil and grime that keep the engine runnin…

Hollywood writer and producer David Goyer — known for “Blade,” “Foundation” and his writing on Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” Trilogy — explores new formats of storytelling that are bridging the gap between AI and traditional entertainment through his latest franchise project "Emergence" and the AI-powered platform Incention, powered by the …

The Ankler gets real about what’s happening in nonscripted TV, a diverse and thriving industry that includes documentaries, talent/competition/game shows and of course, reality TV. Boardwalk Pictures founder Andrew Fried, Pantheon CEO and Velvet Hammer co-founder Jen O’Connell, Propagate founder Howard Owens and Wheelhouse president of entertainmen…

Yes, Netflix is huge, but apparently it’s not huge enough for co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, whose recent earnings call revealed a road map for total market domination. Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey break down its plan to capture the 80 percent share of TV consumption not already happening on Netflix or YouTube (think creators …

No matter how successful you are, the pitching never ends. Even the most seasoned TV creator has been known to melt down in front of their G-Wagon when they can’t land a greenlight: “Why don’t they just say yes?” Silicon Valley tech giants thought they could disrupt the “terrible business” of entertainment — less buying and selling, more ownership …

Live from Las Vegas! Exec editor Alison Brower headed into the ring with WWE president Nick Khan, and chief content officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque for The Ankler’s Business of Entertainment program at NAB Show, where the sports execs revealed why Netflix was strategically the right home for RAW, its flagship weekly showcase; how Triple H’s writer…

Live from the stage at NAB Show in Vegas, Elaine Low talks with ‘Fire Country’ co-creators Joan Rater and Tony Phelan as well as CBS executives Bryan Seabury and Yelena Chak about the new boom in TV procedurals on broadcast and streaming. Hear about the inner workings of CBS Studios’ development process, what it takes to expand a storytelling unive…

Storytelling remains fundamental to entertainment. But who tells those stories and how is shifting. A new era of influence revealed itself at The Ankler’s just-wrapped Business of Entertainment program, in partnership with NAB Show in Vegas. Execs, creators and stars behind WWE (Nick Khan and Paul “Triple H” Levesque), Tribeca Festival and Sphere (…

There are two keys to making money in showbiz: make a hit, and make it easy to watch and find. In other words, make the experience more like shopping on Amazon. Easy is why kids are on YouTube, Rob Long is watching The Gilded Age in TikTok snippets and why Amazon makes being online a seamless experience — except on Prime Video. Transcript here. For…

Original movies in theaters? It’s true! Sean McNulty dials in from CinemaCon to tell Elaine Low about his reaction to Amazon’s bold film slate kickstarting a new era of studio leadership. Meanwhile, in L.A., Lesley Goldberg dishes with Elaine and Natalie Jarvey about the mess left in the wake of Jen Salke’s exit from Prime Video, and what agents an…

TV shows take longer to develop, writers rooms are shorter and naturally “no one wants to continue to work for free,” says Lesley Goldberg, who joins Sean McNulty and Elaine Low to share her survey of top writers on how they’d fix TV. There’s Shawn Ryan’s proposal to better train showrunners in writers rooms; details on how Zoom pitching creates op…

Rob Long recently sold all the old junk from his house: airplane bottles of Dutch gin, a Yemeni incense burner, asparagus tongs and two boxes of computer cables, naturally. Refreshed and ready to begin a new chapter, Rob thinks studios need a similar garage sale with each other’s libraries. Offer up titles, make some swap deals — and reset the whol…

First, streamers wanted YouTube and TikTok’s screen time. Now they’re gunning for their talent. Like & Subscribe’s Natalie Jarvey joins Sean McNulty and Elaine Low to talk about MrBeast and Ms. Rachel’s streaming hits, whether Jake & Logan Paul and Benito Skinner are next — and what Hollywood has to give up for its shot at digital cred. Plus: Apple…

Languages other than English have special words for special situations (looking at you Germany and your fingerspitzenfühl). Now, Rob Long proposes a new local lexicon to help capture this particular moment now in the industry, a place where schadenfreude is giving way to another, strange new feeling: Hope for even someone else’s show, any show, to …

Can Jeff Bezos be trusted with 007? Is James Gunn the hero DC needs right now? Will Casey Bloys help Harry Potter make it safely to TV? All of Hollywood’s signature IP franchises face uncertain, perilous paths forward, and Richard Rushfield, Elaine Low and Sean McNulty decide whether they’d buy, sell or hold these tentpoles plus Marvel and Star War…

Mid-life, Rob Long has gone back to school. Princeton Theological Seminary has been a nice timeout from Hollywood — no profanity, shouting or the pressure to wrap up every meeting with a joke. But Rob is not ditching Hollywood. Instead he ponders bridging the secular and ecclesiastical divide by showing up to his next meeting in a priest’s collar t…

With the debut of Netflix’s With Love, Meghan, longtime royal observer Tina Brown and Ankler Media CEO Janice Min joined forces for a rollicking Substack Live conversation over at Brown’s Fresh Hell. Brown and Min appraise the Duchess of Sussex’s new career act (“always brilliantly behind the curve,” says Brown), debrief on the Academy Awards and D…

Hollywood execs want more “aggression” out of their young proteges, but Gen Z — raised in remote work and new rules — came to age without traditional role models. The Ankler team shares advice from their interviews with Greg Berlanti and Ted Hope for young creatives to stand out, something even more essential as the state of showbiz is begging for …

Broadcast TV may be what “your uncle and your mom watches,” but it’s a bright spot for the studios. Series Business’ Lesley Goldberg joins Elaine Low to discuss her interview with CBS President Amy Reisenbach, why all those spinoffs and reboots give producers an “edge” and how year-round development helps “get the creative right.” Plus: Elaine, Sea…

The New York Times gave author Michael Wolff’s new book a glowing review, but President Donald Trump disagrees, calling it a “total FAKE JOB, just like the other JUNK he wrote.” As with Wolff’s three earlier books about the president, All or None is filled with juicy tidbits with fly-on-the-wall accounts from the chaos inside Trump’s orbit. In unsp…

Brand extensions? Prequel? Janet Bond?? Rob Long bets meetings at Amazon are underway with those bullet points in a PowerPoint now that the franchise has been wrested away from its legendarily impossible owners, the Broccolis. Corporate-controlled and obligated by fiduciary responsibility, 007 has secured the plot of his next adventure: shaking eve…

Budgets for studio theatrical slates and TV lineups are disappearing as fast as federal agencies these days. But there’s hope! Dealmakers’ Ashley Cullins joins to break down the new rules for landing a greenlight for an original film today, while Elaine Low reveals ways to navigate new small screen realities, from acing that Zoom pitch to turning t…

As President Trump seeks to banish diversity, equity and inclusion, Disney buried its initiative this week, and Amazon continues to “evolve” its own. Sean McNulty, Elaine Low, Richard Rushfield and contributor Nicole LaPorte dive into whether Hollywood was ever committed to the cause — as Nicole says, “the erosion of DEI here has been going on for …

Disney started its latest earnings call with an uncharacteristically terse Bob Iger avoiding a trio of unpleasant topics: linear TV, declining Disney+ subscriber totals and Donald Trump. What wasn’t said spoke volumes, but a few messages rang clear: film keeps churning out hits, ESPN has good/less good news, and the streaming division is firmly in …

One of the problems facing showbiz right now: Too many production companies, private equity investors, and celebrity shingles — but not enough set-up projects. That’s why it’s worth remembering the actor-producer-garbageman Rob Long once hired, whose business card was a reminder of simpler times: the producer’s vanity card. Transcript here. For mor…

Just two deals and Sundance is almost over? Ouch. Richard Rushfield, on the ground at the fest, gives his report on indie malaise and how to fix it. Plus: Sean McNulty, Elaine Low and Richard on Peacock and NBCU’s troubling Q4, and Netflix’s showy 2025 slate, while Natalie Jarvey, author of the new Like & Subscribe newsletter, on why Hollywood abso…

Natalie Jarvey, author of Like & Subscribe, Ankler Media's new newsletter about the creator economy, speaks with YouTube stars Sean Evans, host of Hot Ones, and Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal — aka Rhett & Link, hosts of Good Mythical Morning. With 40 million subscribers between them, these digital innovators unpack the opportunities — creative, co…

New streamers all want to be the place that gets it. They’ll say, “Come here and be creative! Give us your quirky, oddball stuff!” But before you know it, Rob Long finds they’re giving notes on the act break and telling writers to raise the stakes. But anybody that’s been in this business awhile, or had any degree of success, can relate — it’s easy…

The entertainment industry for years turned its nose up at brand-backed film and TV, but in a disrupted Hollywood scrambling for new business models and fresh voices, the tide is turning. Natalie Jarvey, the writer of Like & Subscribe, Ankler Media's new standalone newsletter about the creator economy, moderates a discussion with four top stakehold…

Who loves doing free work? No one. Who loves getting free work? The studios. “If-come” deals — where a writer develops a show under contract but only sees money if the show sells — are on the rise post-Writers Guild strike and have led to a new “involuntary servitude,” even among big-name scribes. Ashley Cullins joins Sean McNulty, Elaine Low and R…

When the streets of L.A. and New York hummed with production, Rob Long would pass so many shoots that he’d zip through and stealthily swipe a coffee and pastry. Now, though, as production shrinks, artisanal donuts and Nespresso pods have given way to Dunkin’ and off-brand coffee. And you know the industry’s in really bad shape when rumors about hav…

Can Jon Voight save Hollywood? Probably not. But President Trump’s announcement that the Midnight Cowboy, Mad Max (Mel Gibson) and Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) would be his “special envoys” in L.A. on the eve of his inauguration followed the latest report on L.A.’s continued production exodus. Sean McNulty, Elaine Low and Richard Rushfield dissect th…

When tourists come to Manhattan, some check out “historical landmarks,” like the Sex and the City cupcake shop, where a bite of buttercream frosting can spark the fantasy of a romantic adventure in the Big Apple with best friends. Indeed, Rob Long believes showbiz is at its greatest when, in hard times, it lets the audience daydream. Especially tod…

“Everybody was feeling really optimistic going into this year,” says Elaine Low — and while there are encouraging signs for Hollywood, from new business models to a return to the fundamentals, she and Richard Rushfield tell Sean McNulty about friends who have lost homes, Richard’s memories of growing up in Pacific Palisades, and Elaine’s anxiety ov…

“Gelson’s is gone.” That’s what Rob Long heard the TV newscaster say solemnly as he watched flames engulf the grocery store. Rob loved that now burned-down market off Sunset in the Palisades, now in the midst of catastrophic loss. All kinds of industry folk — executives, crews, a couple of famous faces — also did. Now with an industry-wide contract…

For the capstone of his Hollywood Stories series exploring the 1990s — an era of explosive creativity and innovation in the entertainment industry — Richard Rushfield talks to two execs who helped New Line Cinema become the movie studio of that golden moment. Mike De Luca is today the co-chair and CEO of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, but in th…

Blake Lively alleges a full-on smear campaign aimed against her. Justin Baldoni claims the star of his It Ends With Us used the New York Times to destroy his reputation. Sean McNulty, Elaine Low and Richard Rushfield discuss the fallout of the feud heard round the world, the YouTube journalist roped into the ruckus, and why Richard boils it all dow…

At the dawn of the internet as we know it today, long before social media exploded the Hollywood hierarchy, there was Ain’t It Cool News, an in-your-face site, launched in 1996, that covered the movie business — passionately, disruptively and absolutely without fear or favor. Drew McWeeny, who joined Harry Knowles’ Austin startup in its earliest da…

One sure precursor to any Golden Age in Hollywood? A long fallow period preceding it, not unlike the one we’ve been in. Now, with a spec market for originals coming back to life, and fresh opportunities for producers and writers to make money through YouTube, branded content, podcasts and yes, AI, Sean McNulty, Elaine Low, Richard Rushfield and Jan…

From founding CAA to leading Universal Studios, Ron Meyer built one of the entertainment industry’s most storied careers. The high school dropout and former Marine talks with Richard Rushfield about his entire legendary run, especially the events surrounding the pivotal moment in 1995 when he successfully executed a maneuver that has stymied other …

Writers are getting paid $1 million or more on so-called “naked” scripts — no IP, actor or director attached. It may sound like Shane Black’s 1990s, but it’s happening right now as Nicole LaPorte joins Sean McNulty and Elaine Low to reveal a fast change in the market (thanks, Dan Lin!), and the kinds of scripts selling (think Sherry Lansing). Plus:…

As a 24-year-old aspiring screenwriter in L.A., Rob Long didn’t have the money or job prospects to purchase a $400 leather jacket. So, naturally, he did. As luck had it, Rob got his first job as a TV writer a few weeks later. And now, decades later — and oft-bemoaning how things used to be better — he reflects on his good fortune, and why he shares…

Richard Rushfield sits down with Winnie Holzman, creator of the beloved but short-lived teen drama My So-Called Life, which ran for one 19-episode season from 1994-95 and later became a cross-generational cult hit. The show that launched Claire Danes and Jared Leto also captured adolescent angst onscreen in a totally new way — “School is a battlefi…

Pro-free speech, anti-trans, anti a lot of things, the standup comedians who made their bones on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast — from Theo Von to notorious Trump rally opener Tony Hinchcliffe — are rewriting how big comics can get without movies and TV. Ankler contributor Lachlan Cartwright joins Sean McNulty to discuss why Gen Z loves these guy…

From the moment the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO hit the news until the arrest of suspect Luigi Mangione in a McDonald’s, every loudmouth had a theory about the killer and his motive. You see, whether it’s a murder case, the Middle East or Hollywood’s upheaval, the know-it-alls all pretend they have all the answers. But society needs th…

In this new Ankler series, Hollywood Stories, we are starting with wild untold showbiz tales from the '90s. For our debut episode, Richard Rushfield sits down with Adam Leff and Zak Penn, the original screenwriters behind one of film's most iconic flops, Last Action Hero. Speaking publicly together for the first time about the screenplay they sold …