Hollywood Stayed. Now Comes the Hard Part: Welcome to the $110 Billion Skydance Experiment

Paramount threatened to leave California. California sued. Everybody threatened everybody. Now Paramount and Warner Bros. are getting married anyway—and somehow the CEO of Mattel is helping run the household.

Well.

That escalated quickly.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about what appeared to be the beginning of the strangest Hollywood relocation since The Beverly Hillbillies loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.

Paramount was threatening to leave California.

California was suing Paramount.

Paramount was trying to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.

Politicians were panicking.

Lawyers were billing.

And beginning October 1, a delay in the deal was going to start increasing the price Paramount owed Warner shareholders.

I called the whole thing:

HOW TO LOSE AN INDUSTRY IN 10 DAYS.

Turns out Hollywood didn’t lose the industry.

It just consolidated most of it into one gigantic corporate structure and handed somebody an $80 billion credit-card bill.

So…

Good news?

PREVIOUSLY ON: HOLLYWOOD

For anyone who missed our last episode, here’s what happened.

Paramount Skydance wanted Warner Bros. Discovery.

Badly.

California and 11 other states sued to stop the merger, arguing that putting this much entertainment under one corporate roof could hurt competition, workers and consumers.

Paramount responded with the corporate equivalent of:

“Fine. Maybe we’ll just move.”

Texas was mentioned.

Tennessee was mentioned.

Georgia was mentioned.

And somewhere in Burbank, a studio executive presumably opened Zillow and typed:

NASHVILLE HOMES WITH SCREENING ROOM.

Then everybody sat down.

And made a deal.

On September 30, a federal judge approved the settlement, clearing the path for Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The merger is expected to close October 6.

Price tag?

Roughly:

$110 BILLION.

For perspective, that is enough money to buy approximately 733 million large movie-theater popcorns.

Or six parking spaces in Beverly Hills.

SO WHAT DID CALIFORNIA GET?

Quite a bit, actually.

The settlement requires the combined company to release at least 30 theatrical movies annually during its first two years, followed by 32 per year during the next three.

It also requires at least $300 million in additional domestic film-production spending annually compared with 2025 levels.

That’s $1.5 billion over five years.

And if the company misses its annual movie quota?

There’s a potential $30 million penalty per missing film.

Which is fantastic.

Hollywood has finally invented something I’ve wanted for years:

A FINE FOR NOT MAKING ENOUGH MOVIES.

Think of the possibilities.

Can we expand this?

Movie is 45 minutes too long?

$8 million.

Movie ends with “PART ONE” even though nobody told us there was going to be a Part Two?

$12 million.

Character says, “So THAT happened”?

Studio loses a parking structure.

We could fix Hollywood by Thursday.

The agreement also requires the physical Paramount and Warner Bros. studio lots to remain in operation and includes workforce investments, labor protections and other conditions.

So that dramatic threat about Paramount packing up the mountain and moving to Tennessee?

For the foreseeable future:

The mountain stays.

BUT HERE’S WHERE THE STORY GETS REALLY INTERESTING

Because after all this fighting about Paramount and Warner Bros…

The company above them apparently isn’t going to be called Paramount.

Or Warner Bros.

It’s going to be called:

SKYDANCE.

David Ellison announced October 2 that the combined parent company will adopt the name of the production company he founded nearly two decades ago.

Paramount remains Paramount.

Warner Bros. remains Warner Bros.

But upstairs?

Skydance.

Imagine buying McDonald’s and Burger King and announcing that the parent company will henceforth be named:

DAVE’S BURGER SHED.

That’s confidence.

And I respect it.

AND THEN THEY HIRED THE BARBIE GUY

This is my favorite development.

Because apparently owning Paramount, Warner Bros., CBS, CNN, HBO Max, Paramount+, DC, Harry Potter, Mission: Impossible and everything else wasn’t interesting enough.

David Ellison needed a partner.

So he recruited:

Ynon Kreiz.

The outgoing CEO of Mattel.

Yes.

The company that makes Barbie.

And Hot Wheels.

And UNO.

And Fisher-Price.

And Masters of the Universe.

Kreiz helped transform Mattel from simply being a toy manufacturer into a company aggressively developing its intellectual property across movies, television, games and other entertainment.

Most notably?

Barbie.

You may remember it.

Pink.

Margot Robbie.

Made slightly more money than the average student film.

Kreiz will become co-CEO of the combined company, handling day-to-day operations and integration, while Ellison focuses on strategy, creative direction and technology.

Which means one of the largest collections of entertainment intellectual property ever assembled will partly be managed by the man who spent the last several years asking:

“Okay, what else in the toy aisle can become a movie?”

I literally just wrote a column about Matchbox: The Movie.

This is getting personal.

WELCOME TO THE BIGGEST FRANCHISE CLOSET IN HOLLYWOOD

Consider what is effectively gathering under this enormous umbrella.

Paramount.

Warner Bros.

CBS.

CNN.

HBO Max.

Paramount+.

DC.

Harry Potter.

Mission: Impossible.

Star Trek.

Yellowstone.

Game of Thrones.

Looney Tunes.

Food Network.

Comedy Central.

MTV.

Nickelodeon.

TBS.

And a tremendous amount more.

This isn’t a media company.

This is what happens when somebody clicks:

SELECT ALL.

The theoretical possibilities are staggering.

Batman on Survivor.

Harry Potter investigates crimes on NCIS.

Guy Fieri visits the Shire.

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dungeons.

I would watch that immediately.

AND NOW FOR THE PART THAT MAKES MY PAPER BAG TINGLE

Readers of my book Crash of the Titans know why giant corporate entertainment bets fascinate me.

The book looks back at famous Hollywood disasters—the movies where studios had enormous resources, recognizable intellectual property, experienced executives and every possible reason to believe they couldn’t fail.

And then…

Battleship.

There is a lesson buried underneath almost every legendary Hollywood flop.

The disasters rarely look ridiculous when somebody approves them.

That’s the important part.

Nobody walks into a boardroom and says:

“Gentlemen, I’ve developed a catastrophic idea that will embarrass us publicly and vaporize several hundred million dollars.”

No.

They say:

SYNERGY.

They say:

SCALE.

They say:

GLOBAL IP.

They say:

EFFICIENCIES.

They say:

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT.

And eventually somebody puts an arrow on a PowerPoint slide.

Once the arrows appear, it’s over.

THE $80 BILLION ELEPHANT IN THE SCREENING ROOM

Here’s why I’m fascinated by this deal.

The new Skydance enters its next chapter carrying roughly:

$80 BILLION IN DEBT.

At the same time, management is targeting approximately:

$6 BILLION IN COST SAVINGS.

Those are not typos.

Six.

Billion.

Dollars.

In savings.

Now, executives have indicated those savings won’t come entirely from layoffs. Combining technology systems and eliminating duplicate corporate functions can obviously save enormous amounts of money.

That’s the rational explanation.

But I’m the Unknown Critic.

I’m contractually obligated to imagine the less rational version.

EXECUTIVE: We need to save six billion dollars.

ACCOUNTANT: I’ve canceled HBO Max.

EXECUTIVE: That’s one streaming service.

ACCOUNTANT: Fine. Paramount+ too.

EXECUTIVE: We own both.

ACCOUNTANT: Exactly. Synergy.

And this is where the story stops being merely funny.

Because whenever you hear phrases like “operational efficiencies,” thousands of employees hear something different.

They hear:

“Should I update LinkedIn?”

THIS IS THE PART HOLLYWOOD NEVER PUTS IN THE TRAILER

The studios remain.

That’s important.

Production commitments are part of the settlement.

That’s important too.

California has also dramatically expanded its film and television tax-credit program, and state officials say its first year generated commitments representing billions in production spending and tens of thousands of cast-and-crew jobs.

California is clearly fighting to keep production here.

But mergers this large inevitably create overlapping departments.

Two marketing operations.

Two finance structures.

Two distribution organizations.

Multiple streaming infrastructures.

Layers of management.

Technology systems.

Administrative departments.

And now management has promised investors billions in savings.

You don’t need to be Nostradamus to understand why Hollywood workers are nervous.

The buildings may stay.

The more important question is:

Who gets to keep working inside them?

THE GREAT HOLLYWOOD PARADOX

And that’s why this entire saga fascinates me.

Hollywood spent years worrying that technology companies were going to take over entertainment.

Netflix.

Amazon.

Apple.

Silicon Valley.

Algorithms.

Streaming.

Then one of Hollywood’s answers was apparently:

BECOME EVEN BIGGER THAN HOLLYWOOD.

Scale versus scale.

Franchise versus franchise.

Library versus library.

Platform versus platform.

The theory makes sense.

That’s what worries me.

Because the most interesting disasters in Crash of the Titans weren’t usually obviously stupid ideas.

They were reasonable ideas taken to unreasonable extremes.

Battleship wasn’t insane because somebody wanted an action movie.

It became insane when a familiar board-game title somehow justified building a gigantic effects-driven franchise hopeful around alien naval warfare.

Scale becomes its own argument.

The budget becomes proof of confidence.

The investment becomes evidence that the investment must have been smart.

Until opening weekend.

MAYBE SKYDANCE WORKS

And here’s where I disappoint anyone hoping I’ll simply predict disaster.

I can’t.

Because there is also a compelling argument for this combination.

Ellison has money, ambition and an obvious desire to modernize an old studio system.

Kreiz demonstrated at Mattel that old intellectual property can become culturally relevant again.

Warner Bros. possesses an extraordinary library.

Paramount possesses an extraordinary library.

The combined company gains tremendous scale.

California has created stronger incentives for production.

The settlement creates enforceable theatrical-production commitments.

There are legitimate reasons the strategy could succeed.

Which is precisely why it belongs in the Unknown Critic universe.

The fascinating question isn’t:

“Is this stupid?”

It isn’t.

The fascinating question is:

“What happens when an enormous, rational corporate strategy collides with an entertainment business that has become almost impossible to predict?”

That’s the movie I want to watch.

BECAUSE HOLLYWOOD STILL HAS ONE PROBLEM NOBODY CAN MERGE AWAY

You can merge studios.

You can consolidate streaming services.

You can combine technology platforms.

You can cut overhead.

You can acquire libraries.

You can own Superman, Tom Cruise, Bugs Bunny, SpongeBob, Harry Potter and Tony Soprano.

You can build the greatest entertainment arsenal assembled since someone discovered that Walt Disney owned both Darth Vader and Kermit the Frog.

But eventually…

Somebody still has to make something people want to watch.

That’s it.

That’s the whole business.

The audience does not care about your debt structure.

The audience doesn’t know what EBITDA means.

The audience has never once left a theater saying:

“The third act dragged, but I really admired their operational efficiencies.”

Stories win.

Characters win.

Movies win.

Everything else is accounting.

CRASH OF THE TITANS…PART TWO?

That’s why I’ll be watching Skydance very closely.

Not because I’m rooting for it to fail.

Quite the opposite.

Hollywood desperately needs successful movies.

California needs production.

Movie theaters need films people actually leave the house to see.

Workers need jobs.

And audiences could certainly use fewer corporate strategies masquerading as entertainment.

But history teaches us something.

Titanic companies rarely realize they’re standing near an iceberg.

That’s why they’re titans.

So perhaps the sequel to my previous column isn’t:

HOW TO LOSE AN INDUSTRY IN 10 DAYS.

Maybe it’s:

HOW TO BUILD THE BIGGEST STUDIO IN HOLLYWOOD AND HOPE NOBODY DROPS IT.

Because Paramount isn’t leaving California.

Warner Bros. isn’t leaving Burbank.

The lawsuit is settling.

The merger is moving forward.

Skydance is arriving.

And somewhere in Hollywood right now, I guarantee you…

There is a PowerPoint presentation.

There are arrows.

There is the word:

SYNERGY.

And someone has just said:

“What could possibly go wrong?”

I’ve written an entire book about that sentence.

It’s called Crash of the Titans.

— The Unknown Critic

The Hidden Hand Has an App Now: Congratulations, We’re All in the Conspiracy

Apparently the secret cabal has pivoted to AI, subscriptions and accepting cookies.

I miss old conspiracies.

I really do.

They had craftsmanship.

There was always a dimly lit room underneath a Swiss bank where twelve sinister men wearing identical robes gathered around a mahogany table and decided the price of wheat.

Nobody knew who they were.

Nobody knew how they got there.

Presumably there was parking.

That was the Hidden Hand.

Elegant.

Mysterious.

Organized.

Today?

The Hidden Hand sends you a push notification.

“We noticed you were looking at patio furniture.”

I WAS NOT.

“Would you like to enable precise location?”

ABSOLUTELY NOT.

“Your privacy is important to us.”

THEN WHY DO YOU KNOW I’M IN THE BATHROOM?

Welcome to 2026, everybody.

The conspiracy doesn’t need to hide anymore.

We clicked “Accept All.”

The Secret Society Has Been Replaced by the Terms of Service

This is what fascinates me about the times we’re living through.

For generations, people imagined powerful secret organizations quietly manipulating the world behind the scenes.

The Mafia.

Secret societies.

Intelligence agencies.

Corporate cartels.

Shadow governments.

Guys named Sal who knew a guy who knew another guy named Sal.

There was always supposed to be some enormous invisible machine operating behind everyday life.

Now we have created actual invisible machines operating behind everyday life, and instead of screaming:

“WHO CONTROLS THIS?”

we say:

“Wow, Spotify really knows me.”

Your phone knows where you’ve been.

Your streaming service knows what you watch.

Your supermarket app knows what you buy.

Your social network knows what makes you angry.

Your credit card company knows you’re apparently incapable of walking past a Five Guys.

And now we’re putting cameras and artificial intelligence into our eyeglasses.

Finally.

Because the one major flaw with human eyeballs was that they weren’t collecting enough data.

We’re Putting the Wiretap on Our Own Faces

Smart glasses are one of the great inventions of our time because humanity looked at the smartphone — a device containing our location, photographs, conversations, financial information and virtually every person we’ve ever met — and said:

“Can we put this on my forehead?”

Companies are now developing AI-powered wearables that can see, hear and interpret the world around us.

This has produced a surprising development.

People are concerned about privacy.

Really?

Now?

We’ve spent twenty years carrying microphones everywhere, photographing our food and telling strangers exactly where we’re vacationing.

Suddenly somebody puts the camera in a pair of Ray-Bans and we’re all:

“WAIT A MINUTE. WHO’S WATCHING US?”

You are.

You’re watching you.

You’re wearing the surveillance equipment.

The Illuminati didn’t even have to install it.

They gave you free shipping.

Organized Crime Must Be Furious

This is where writing about organized crime gets especially interesting.

Because old-school organized crime required an incredible amount of effort.

You needed crews.

Drivers.

Lookouts.

Accountants.

Front businesses.

Guys standing outside social clubs doing absolutely nothing for eight consecutive hours.

There were envelopes.

Meetings.

Codes.

Pay phones.

Trunks.

So many trunks.

Watch The Sopranos and you’ll know what I’m getting at.

The modern world has streamlined everything.

In 2026, criminals are targeting things like AI hardware because apparently even organized crime has undergone digital transformation.

Imagine explaining that to a gangster in 1957.

“So what are we hijacking?”

“Computer chips.”

“What’s in them?”

“Artificial intelligence.”

“Can we sell it?”

“Overseas.”

“To who?”

“We don’t know.”

“Good. I was worried this was going to get complicated.”

Somewhere, an elderly mobster is shaking his head.

“In my day we stole televisions. You could WATCH the television.”

Even Shopping Is Becoming Too Complicated to Do Ourselves

Artificial intelligence can increasingly help people research products and, in some systems, potentially carry out purchases.

Which raises an important question:

How exhausted have we become that we need to outsource shopping?

Shopping was already the easiest human activity.

Step one: Want thing.

Step two: Buy thing.

We have now apparently reached:

Step one: Want thing.

Step two: Tell artificial intelligence you want thing.

Step three: Artificial intelligence talks to retailer’s artificial intelligence.

Step four: Bank’s artificial intelligence becomes concerned.

Step five: Retailer’s computer blocks the other computer.

Step six: You receive seven emails.

Step seven: Thing arrives.

Step eight: You have no memory of ordering thing.

At this rate, by 2030 your refrigerator will negotiate directly with Costco.

You will simply wake up one morning and discover 48 yogurts.

“Why did you buy these?”

REFRIGERATOR: Based on your recent activity, I detected sadness.

Fair enough.

The Modern Conspiracy Is Mostly Algorithms Arguing With Other Algorithms

That’s the great twist.

We spent decades imagining a world where powerful people secretly controlled everything.

Instead, we may be building a world where nobody completely controls anything because the software is talking to other software.

One company’s AI wants to sell you something.

Another company’s AI wants to protect your money.

Another algorithm wants to show you an advertisement.

Another decides whether you’re a fraud risk.

Another recommends a movie.

Another decides whether your résumé contains the appropriate number of meaningless corporate verbs.

Synergized.

Leveraged.

Optimized.

Spearheaded.

Nobody has ever “spearheaded” anything in an office.

You made a PowerPoint, Kevin.

Calm down.

Meanwhile, Everyone Is Worried AI Will Take Their Job

This might be the most 2026 sentence imaginable:

Companies are laying people off while other companies are desperately trying to hire people who understand artificial intelligence.

So apparently AI is simultaneously:

Taking your job.

Creating your job.

Helping you do your job.

Monitoring your job.

Writing your résumé for another job.

Reading that résumé on behalf of the company offering the job.

At some point we can remove the humans entirely and allow two computers to conduct a performance review of each other.

AI MANAGER: Where do you see yourself in five years?

AI EMPLOYEE: Replacing you.

AI MANAGER: Excellent initiative.

And Then There Are the Data Breaches

Every few weeks we learn that another enormous database has been compromised.

Names.

Addresses.

Phone numbers.

Account information.

Emails.

Sometimes financial information.

At this point, I’m beginning to wonder whether hackers know more about me than I do.

Somewhere on the dark web:

UNKNOWN CRITIC — COMPLETE PROFILE

Favorite restaurant: Long John Silvers (ugh, if only more of them still existed!)

Frequent purchases: Books nobody else buys.

Password: Probably the dog’s name followed by 1.

Recent search history: “Is this mole normal?”

Delete the file.

Actually, burn the server.

This Is Why Organized Crime Still Fascinates Us

Underneath all the jokes is something genuinely interesting.

Human beings have always been fascinated by hidden systems of power.

That’s part of what makes organized crime endlessly compelling.

It wasn’t simply criminals committing individual crimes.

It was structure.

Hierarchy.

Rules.

Networks.

Money.

Influence.

Corruption.

Businesses that looked legitimate.

Relationships that weren’t.

And people discovering that the world they could see wasn’t necessarily the entire world that existed.

That’s the territory explored in The Hidden Hand: The Mob’s Secret Tax on Everything—A True Crime History of Organized Crime’s Hidden Economy.

The history is extraordinary because organized crime was often hiding in plain sight.

Restaurants operated.

Trucks delivered things.

Businesses opened.

Politicians shook hands.

People went to work.

Meanwhile, underneath ordinary life existed networks most people never saw.

That’s what makes the history so irresistible.

And strangely relevant.

No, Your Toaster Is Not in the Mafia

Let’s establish something before somebody screenshots this article and starts a 94-part YouTube series.

I’m not saying Alexa is a capo.

Your grocery app is probably not laundering money.

The Freemasons did not raise your Netflix price.

And the Bilderberg Group is almost certainly not responsible for the fact that McDonald’s stopped serving breakfast at 10:30.

Although that last one deserves investigation.

The point is something simpler.

We are living through an era when enormously complicated systems increasingly influence ordinary life while remaining mostly invisible to the people using them.

Algorithms.

Data networks.

Artificial intelligence.

Recommendation systems.

Financial systems.

Global supply chains.

Cybercrime.

Corporate ownership structures.

Nobody needs to invent a secret tunnel underneath Denver International Airport to make modern life interesting.

Have you tried canceling a gym membership?

There are forces beyond human comprehension already at work.

Maybe That’s Why We Still Love the Hidden Hand

The attraction of organized-crime history isn’t that we secretly want gangsters running society.

It’s that those stories make invisible systems visible.

You follow the money.

You learn the hierarchy.

You discover who reported to whom.

Suddenly something confusing becomes understandable.

Boss.

Underboss.

Capo.

Soldier.

Associate.

There.

Five words.

I understand the Mafia.

Now explain my cable bill.

Broadcast TV Surcharge: $27.43

WHO IS THE BOSS OF THAT FAMILY?

The Biggest Conspiracy of All

Maybe that’s the joke of modern life.

We spent decades fearing a future in which mysterious organizations knew everything about us.

Then we willingly gave corporations our birthdays, fingerprints, faces, locations, friends, photographs, purchases, television habits and credit-card numbers.

And in return?

They gave us 15% off our first order.

That’s not a conspiracy.

That’s capitalism with a coupon code.

So yes, keep an eye out for the Hidden Hand.

Study the mob.

Read the history.

Follow the money.

Question complicated systems.

But before blaming an international cabal for whatever happened today, remember:

Sometimes there isn’t a shadowy mastermind controlling everything.

Sometimes it’s just an algorithm.

Sometimes it’s corporate incompetence.

Sometimes it’s a guy named Todd in Accounts Receivable.

And sometimes…

you forgot to cancel the free trial.

The Hidden Hand: The Mob’s Secret Tax on Everything—A True Crime History of Organized Crime’s Hidden Economy

Available now on Amazon.

I Watched Mayday on My Couch and Accidentally Discovered What’s Killing the Movies

The other night I watched Mayday on Apple TV.

This is the new Ryan Reynolds/Kenneth Branagh Cold War action comedy in which Reynolds plays a Navy pilot stranded behind enemy lines and Branagh plays the eccentric former KGB agent who may be his ticket home. It was released directly on Apple TV on September 4.

And here’s the annoying part:

It was good.

Really good, actually.

Apple had delivered a handsome, expensive-looking action movie directly into my living room. I had a large television. I had surround sound. I had snacks that didn’t require refinancing my house.

Nobody kicked the back of my chair.

Nobody checked Instagram at maximum brightness during the climax.

Nobody whispered, “Wait, who’s that guy?” despite having watched the exact same movie I had for the previous 87 minutes.

Technologically speaking, I had won.

And yet about halfway through Mayday, I had a disturbing thought:

Am I ever going to remember watching this?

That’s when things got weird.

150 Movies Walk Into a Theater…

A while back, I wrote a book called The Unknown Critic’s Popcorn Bucket List: 150 Movies You Should Watch Before You Die.

I revisited 150 movies for that book—classics, blockbusters, comedies, dramas and films I will defend until somebody removes the paper bag from my cold, dead head.

And watching Mayday made me realize something I had never really considered:

I probably originally saw nearly every one of those movies in a movie theater.

Not necessarily every single one. My memory isn’t that good. That’s why I’m wearing a bag.

But overwhelmingly, the movies that became important to me were theatrical experiences.

And suddenly I wondered:

What if that’s part of why they became important to me?

What if Mayday isn’t inherently less memorable than the movies I grew up loving?

What if I have simply removed the part that makes movies memorable?

The movie theater.

Welcome to the World’s Most Comfortable Cultural Apocalypse

Streaming has solved virtually every problem associated with going to the movies.

Parking?

Gone.

Driving?

Gone.

Waiting in line?

Gone.

Guy explaining the trailer to his girlfriend while the trailer is literally explaining itself?

Gone.

For roughly the cost of one movie ticket, I can subscribe to a service containing more entertainment than a Roman emperor could consume in six lifetimes.

This should be paradise.

Instead, I spend 40 minutes scrolling through 11,000 choices before watching The Office again.

Human civilization has successfully constructed the greatest entertainment distribution system in history, and we’re using it to watch Michael Scott burn his foot on a George Foreman Grill for the 37th time.

But Movies Used to Be Places

Here’s the thing we’ve forgotten.

Going to a movie wasn’t merely watching content.

You went somewhere.

I remember theaters.

I remember marquees.

I remember standing in line.

I remember the smell of popcorn hitting you before you’d even bought your ticket.

I remember walking into a dark auditorium and trying to determine whether that shadowy lump in Row G was an empty seat or somebody’s enormous winter coat.

I remember opening weekends.

I remember audiences laughing together.

I remember applause.

I remember the collective gasp when something happened onscreen that nobody knew was coming.

And most importantly:

I remember who I was with.

That’s the part streaming can’t replicate.

Ask somebody where they watched a random Netflix movie four years ago.

“Couch?”

Correct.

Now ask someone old enough where they saw Jaws, Star Wars, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Titanic, The Matrix, The Sixth Sense, The Dark Knight or Avengers: Endgame.

There’s a decent chance you’ll get a story.

“My dad took me.”

“We waited around the building.”

“I was on a date.”

“Everybody screamed.”

“The theater went completely silent.”

The movie gets attached to an event.

And events become memories.

The Numbers Say I’m Not Imagining This

Moviegoing really has changed dramatically.

Pew Research Center reports that U.S. and Canadian theaters sold about 1.23 billion tickets in 2019. In 2025, they sold about 769 million. Meanwhile, an AP-NORC survey found that roughly three-quarters of American adults had watched a newly released movie through streaming during the previous year, while about two-thirds had seen one in a theater.

Even the 2026 theatrical recovery comes with an asterisk. Reuters reported that through early August, U.S. theaters had sold about 471 million tickets in 2026 versus 747 million over the comparable period in 2019. Higher ticket prices and premium formats have helped revenue considerably, but attendance remains well below the old baseline.

So people haven’t stopped loving movies.

We’ve changed where movies happen.

And I’m beginning to think that matters more than Hollywood realizes.

The Refrigerator Is Cinema’s Greatest Enemy

Here’s what happened while I watched Mayday.

At some point, I paused it.

I don’t remember why.

Maybe I needed something from the kitchen.

Maybe the dog wanted something.

Maybe I received an email.

Maybe civilization briefly required my assistance.

Doesn’t matter.

I paused the movie.

Think about how strange that would have seemed during most of film history.

Imagine watching Jaws in 1975.

Brody is throwing chum into the water.

The shark suddenly appears.

“You’re gonna need a bigger—”

PAUSE.

“Anybody want Doritos?”

Spielberg would have personally come to your house and confiscated your television.

A theater takes control away from you.

That’s inconvenient.

It’s also kind of the point.

For two hours, you surrender.

Your phone isn’t supposed to matter.

Your refrigerator isn’t available.

You can’t check email.

You can’t decide halfway through The Godfather that maybe you’d rather watch six minutes of a YouTube video about a guy restoring a 1978 lawn mower.

The movie owns you.

At home, the movie is merely one applicant competing for your attention.

And That’s Why the Old Movies Feel Bigger

This brings me back to my Popcorn Bucket List.

I originally thought I was choosing 150 movies because the movies themselves were special.

And they are.

But maybe some portion of their power came from the ritual surrounding them.

A great movie in a theater occupies your entire field of vision.

A great movie at home shares the room with laundry.

That’s an unfair fight.

On a 60-foot screen, Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones.

On my television, Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones while I notice somebody left a Costco receipt on the coffee table.

Atmosphere matters.

Scale matters.

Commitment matters.

Anticipation matters.

We used to wait months for movies.

Then we drove somewhere specifically to see them.

We bought a ticket.

We sat down.

The lights dimmed.

The curtains—or eventually the metaphorical curtains—opened.

And for two hours, nothing else existed.

That’s a surprisingly powerful psychological cocktail.

Here’s the Cruel Irony: Streaming Movies Are Getting Really Good

That’s what made Mayday trigger this whole existential crisis.

This isn’t some disposable movie somebody shot over a weekend in a warehouse.

It’s Ryan Reynolds.

Kenneth Branagh.

Large-scale action.

Period production.

Movie stars.

Dolby Atmos.

A movie that looks perfectly comfortable calling itself a movie. Apple describes it as a genre-bending, action-packed buddy comedy, and the film runs about 110 minutes.

And critics haven’t treated it like bargain-bin television either; Rotten Tomatoes currently lists it with an 83% critics’ score.

Streaming won.

It can deliver theatrical-quality entertainment directly to my couch.

Which raises an uncomfortable possibility:

Maybe the quality of movies isn’t the problem.

Maybe the problem is that we’ve made movies too easy to consume.

Movies Have Become Content

I hate that word.

Content.

A movie used to be a movie.

A television show was a television show.

A book was a book.

A guy falling off a trampoline was America’s Funniest Home Videos.

Now it’s all content.

Lawrence of Arabia?

Content.

Citizen Kane?

Content.

Seven-second video of a raccoon stealing a Pop-Tart?

Content.

Congratulations, David Lean. You’re competing with a raccoon.

Streaming puts everything into the same endless conveyor belt.

Watch.

Finish.

Thumbnail.

Next.

Watch.

Finish.

Thumbnail.

Next.

Eventually movies stop feeling like destinations and start feeling like things we completed.

“Did you watch that?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it good?”

“I think so.”

“What happened?”

“There was…a guy?”

This is not ideal for cinema.

But I Don’t Want Streaming to Go Away

Here’s where I’m supposed to become Old Man Critic and demand that everybody throw their Roku into a lake.

I’m not doing that.

Streaming is incredible.

It has made films more accessible.

It allows smaller movies to find audiences.

It lets people who can’t easily get to theaters participate.

It gives old movies new lives.

And sometimes I absolutely want to watch a movie while wearing sweatpants and eating cereal from a mixing bowl.

Freedom matters.

But maybe streaming and theaters shouldn’t be competing to do the exact same job.

Perhaps theaters should increasingly become what they’re already becoming:

the place where movies become events.

Premium screens.

Repertory screenings.

Anniversary releases.

Cult movies.

Marathons.

Director Q&As.

70mm.

IMAX.

Classic films.

Movies people want to experience together.

There’s evidence audiences still respond to that. Premium formats and event-style moviegoing have become increasingly important to theaters, while younger moviegoers have shown substantial interest in theatrical experiences.

Maybe the future of theaters isn’t convincing us we can’t watch something at home.

Maybe it’s reminding us why sometimes we shouldn’t.

The Popcorn Bucket Test

So I’ve invented a new test.

When you’re deciding whether to see something theatrically, ask yourself:

If this turns out to be one of my favorite movies, where do I want to remember seeing it?

That’s it.

Maybe the answer is your couch.

Nothing wrong with that.

But sometimes the answer should be:

Row H.

Seat 14.

Popcorn in your lap.

Lights going down.

A room full of strangers.

And a screen so large that, for two hours, the rest of your life has nowhere to fit.

Looking back at the 150 films in The Popcorn Bucket List, I’m increasingly convinced that I wasn’t merely remembering movies when I wrote about them.

I was remembering going to the movies.

That’s different.

And it’s something Hollywood should be very careful about losing.

Because Mayday was good.

I enjoyed it.

Ryan Reynolds entertained me.

Kenneth Branagh entertained me.

Apple delivered an expensive Hollywood movie directly into my house with pristine picture and sound.

And somehow…

I still miss the sticky floor.

Long live the movies.

And somebody please charge less than nine dollars for a Coke.

— The Unknown Critic, author of The Unknown Critic’s Popcorn Bucket List: 150 Movies You Should Watch Before You Die available on Amazon

Dolly Parton’s Estate Drama Has Everything Except a Jolene Alibi

The Unknown Critic examines the celebrity scandal nobody had on their 2026 bingo card

There are certain sentences you expect to read in a story about Dolly Parton.

“Dolly donates another million dollars.”

“Dolly’s music reaches a new generation.”

“Dollywood unveils a roller coaster shaped like a rhinestone butterfly.”

Here is a sentence I did not expect:

Dolly Parton’s management company obtained a temporary restraining order against her nephew after alleging a campaign of threats and intimidation.

Folks, we have wandered a considerable distance from “9 to 5.”

According to court filings reported by ABC News, Variety and the Nashville Post, She’s Alive, LLC — the company created to help protect Dolly’s legacy — has accused her nephew and former head of security, Bryan Seaver, of an escalating campaign of threatening behavior after his security services were terminated.

And somehow, that is only the beginning.

From “Coat of Many Colors” to “Court Filing of Many Pages”

Seaver wasn’t some distant cousin who once got photographed with Dolly at a Shoney’s.

He had reportedly been involved with her security operation for years and was the family member entrusted with announcing her death in August. His security company had provided services connected with her properties. Then, on September 15, he was dismissed as head of security.

And that’s when this story apparently switched genres.

We started with country music.

Then somebody hit the remote and suddenly we’re watching Succession: Dollywood.

The company overseeing Dolly’s business legacy alleges that Seaver threatened employees, business partners and advisers and warned that he could damage the Parton brand. The Nashville Post reports that some staff became so unnerved that they stopped working from the office.

This is remarkable because the Dolly Parton brand has survived approximately 60 years of changing musical tastes, Hollywood, theme-park economics, country-radio politics and Kenny Rogers’ beard.

Apparently the final boss was going to be the family group chat.

Then Came the “Killer” Text

Here’s where the story achieves full Scandalpalooza status.

One of the statements attributed to Seaver in the court documents was:

“I’m not an entertainment person. I’m a killer.”

I have received some uncomfortable work emails in my life.

“Can you jump on a quick call?”

“Circling back.”

“Please see my comments in red.”

Never once has a coworker concluded with anything resembling I AM A KILLER.

That’s generally where I stop worrying about whether the PowerPoint is due Thursday.

But—and this is an important but—Seaver disputes the way the messages are being characterized.

He told ABC News that Dolly jokingly called him her “killer,” said the terminology was understood within her camp, and stated flatly: “I’ve never threatened anyone.” He characterized the restraining-order allegations as contrived and has said some of his remarks were taken out of context.

Which means we now have perhaps the strangest legal dispute in country-music history:

PLAINTIFF: He called himself a killer.

DEFENDANT: Yes, but Dolly called me that first.

Your move, Perry Mason.

“Destroy the Brand”

The filing contains another allegation that immediately caught my attention.

The estate claims Seaver threatened to “destroy the entire brand” and interfere with Dolly’s business relationships.

Destroy the Dolly Parton brand?

Good luck.

This woman turned herself into one of the few American institutions apparently approved by everyone.

Grandmothers like Dolly.

Children like Dolly.

Country fans like Dolly.

Rock stars like Dolly.

People who hate country music somehow still like Dolly.

Millions of children have received books through her Imagination Library.

She built Dollywood.

She wrote “Jolene.”

She wrote “I Will Always Love You.”

On the same day.

Most of us can’t answer three emails and remember to move the laundry into the dryer.

Trying to destroy Dolly Parton’s brand would be like announcing that you’re taking down Cracker Barrel, Christmas and pie.

I wish you luck with your campaign.

Welcome to Scandalpalooza

This whole strange affair is precisely why I wrote The Unknown Critic Presents: Scandalpalooza: The 100 Most Raucous Celebrity Scandals of All Time.

Scandalpalooza on Amazon

The central lesson of Scandalpalooza is that celebrity scandals evolve, but they never disappear.

Once we had Fatty Arbuckle and newspaper barons.

Then Hollywood gave us divorces, arrests and secret love affairs.

Then came Tonya Harding.

Then sex tapes.

Then leaked voicemails.

Then Twitter.

Then Instagram apologies filmed in kitchens.

And now we’ve apparently reached the Celebrity Estate Cinematic Universe, where family members, lawyers, managers, trusts, security companies and brand partnerships all collide after a star is gone.

Celebrity scandal no longer requires the celebrity to participate.

That is efficiency.

There Is Something Sad Underneath All This

The jokes almost write themselves, but there’s an uncomfortable element here too.

Dolly’s death left behind much more than songs and rhinestones. There is an enormous cultural and business legacy involving intellectual property, properties, partnerships, employees and people who spent decades working alongside her.

She’s Alive, LLC alleges that its employees and partners genuinely feared for their safety. A Tennessee judge found enough basis at this stage to issue a temporary restraining order requiring Seaver and his company to remain at least 1,000 feet away from people or entities doing business with the company. A further hearing is scheduled for October 7.

At the same time, Seaver denies making threats and argues that his words have been mischaracterized.

Those competing claims will have to play out through the legal process.

Meanwhile, Dolly’s sister Stella has publicly emphasized that the family remains together and said, “We all love Bryan.”

Because apparently this story needed another plot twist.

The Unknown Critic’s Final Word

There is an irony here that even I can’t improve upon.

Dolly Parton spent a lifetime creating one of entertainment’s warmest public personas: generosity, humor, music, literacy, faith, family and enough rhinestones to alter satellite imagery.

And barely a month after her death, lawyers are arguing about alleged threats, security contractors, restraining orders and the protection of that legacy.

It’s the kind of story I would have rejected from Scandalpalooza for being too ridiculous.

“Come on,” I would have told my editor. “Nobody’s going to believe this.”

Yet here we are.

And if there’s one lesson from a century of celebrity scandals, it’s this:

Fame may end. The paperwork never does.

— The Unknown Critic

The Unknown Critic is the paper-bag-wearing author of Scandalpalooza: The 100 Most Raucous Celebrity Scandals of All Time, a comedic trip through a century of famous people discovering that absolutely nothing stays private forever.

Dear Buc-ee’s: Where the Hell Is the Christmas Beaver Blow Mold?

You’ve put the Beaver on shirts, mugs, pajamas, ornaments and a six-foot inflatable. It’s time to give America the glowing plastic rodent it deserves.

By The Unknown Critic on behalf of Curtiss Wayne Andrews

I have a question for Buc-ee’s.

And frankly, I’m disappointed that I even have to ask it.

Where the hell is the Buc-ee Christmas blow mold?

Seriously.

How has this not happened?

This is a company that has spent more than four decades perfecting the science of putting a cartoon beaver on absolutely anything capable of accepting ink, embroidery, plastic, fabric or adhesive.

Walk into a Buc-ee’s and you’ll find the Beaver staring at you from shirts.

Hats.

Cups.

Blankets.

Coolers.

Christmas ornaments.

Plush toys.

Dog toys.

Kitchen accessories.

Seasonal merchandise.

And enough other branded objects to suggest that somewhere deep beneath Buc-ee’s corporate headquarters there’s a Department of Beaver Deployment whose sole responsibility is identifying surfaces that do not currently contain a cartoon rodent.

And yet I cannot buy a four-foot, internally illuminated polyethylene Buc-ee Beaver for my front lawn.

This is unacceptable.

Not mildly disappointing.

Not a missed opportunity.

A fundamental breakdown in American merchandising.

Buc-ee’s Has Already Put the Beaver on the Lawn

Here’s what makes this even more baffling.

Buc-ee’s has already crossed the Rubicon.

There has been a six-foot Buc-ee’s Holiday Beaver inflatable.

That’s right.

Somebody inside the Buc-ee’s merchandising universe looked at the Beaver and correctly concluded:

“People need a gigantic illuminated version of this thing standing outside their houses at Christmas.”

Excellent instinct.

No notes.

But then they chose an inflatable.

An inflatable?

Buc-ee’s, you chose the wrong plastic.

Nothing against inflatables. They’re fun. They’re enormous. They’re easy to store.

But we’re talking about Buc-ee’s.

Since when does Buc-ee’s care about something being easy to store?

This is a company whose modern travel centers can approach 75,000 square feet.

You can buy brisket, fudge, jerky, home décor and Beaver Nuggets while fueling your truck outside at what appears to be a gasoline terminal designed for evacuating a small nation.

And this is the company that decided its Christmas decoration needed to fold neatly into a box?

No.

I reject the premise.

The Blow Mold Is Basically Buc-ee’s in Decoration Form

Think about what makes a classic Christmas blow mold great.

It’s colorful.

It’s nostalgic.

It’s slightly ridiculous.

It’s unapologetically cheerful.

It takes up too much room in the garage.

Your wife asks why you bought another one.

You tell her she’ll understand when it’s illuminated.

She does not.

And most importantly, you can see the thing from the highway.

If that doesn’t describe Buc-ee’s brand philosophy, I don’t know what does.

Buc-ee’s doesn’t whisper.

There isn’t a tasteful little wooden sign beside the interstate saying:

“Refreshments available approximately seven miles ahead.”

There are giant billboards featuring a buck-toothed beaver telling you that salvation, barbecue and a remarkably clean restroom are approaching.

Subtlety left the building several exits ago.

That’s why a Buc-ee’s blow mold makes so much sense.

Not a tasteful 14-inch tabletop decoration, either.

I’m talking about four feet minimum.

Ideally five.

A giant smiling Beaver in a Santa hat, internally illuminated, standing beside your driveway like the patron saint of road trips.

And Make It Heavy

Here’s another request.

Don’t make this thing convenient.

I want old-school blow mold inconvenience. Think Poloron.

I want somebody to buy one at Buc-ee’s and then realize it doesn’t fit in the trunk.

That’s part of the experience.

I want a family standing in Parking Space 384 on December 3rd trying to determine whether Dad’s luggage or the four-foot Beaver gets the back seat.

Dad already knows the answer.

Sorry, kids.

Christmas Buc-ee rides shotgun.

That’s the kind of product we’re talking about.

I want people driving down I-35 with a giant plastic beaver visible through the rear window.

I want truckers radioing each other:

“You seeing this guy?”

“Affirmative. Giant Beaver. Santa hat.”

“Copy that.”

That’s America.

Blow Molds Were Made for Characters Like Buc-ee

The frustrating part is that there’s historical precedent for this.

During the later years of America’s great blow mold era, manufacturers realized that familiar characters translated beautifully into illuminated lawn decorations. Remember that $900 Taz a few blogs back?

Suddenly the traditional world of Santas, snowmen, candles and Nativity figures collided with pop culture.

Licensed characters appeared.

Cartoon characters appeared.

Holiday crossovers appeared.

And today, some of those strange character blow molds have become exactly the pieces collectors hunt for.

Why?

Because they’re unmistakable.

Nobody sees a giant illuminated cartoon character in someone’s garage and says:

“Hmm. I wonder what that is.”

You know immediately.

Buc-ee would be perfect.

Big round head.

Huge smile.

Red cap.

Recognizable silhouette.

He’s practically been waiting to become a blow mold since 1982.

Buc-ee’s Isn’t Really a Gas Station Anyway

This is where we need to acknowledge something.

Calling Buc-ee’s a gas station at this point is like calling Disneyland somewhere to buy a churro.

Technically accurate.

Wildly insufficient.

Buc-ee’s started in Texas in 1982, but the modern version has evolved into something else entirely.

It’s a roadside attraction that happens to sell gasoline.

People take pictures there.

People wear Buc-ee’s shirts hundreds of miles from the nearest Buc-ee’s.

Families build road-trip stops around it.

The Beaver himself appears as a costumed character.

There’s branded food, souvenirs, home goods and enough merchandise to make you temporarily forget that you originally stopped because the fuel light came on 23 miles ago.

And that’s precisely why I included Buc-ee’s in my book, 100 Wacky Wonders: The Unknown Critic’s Snarky Sojourn Through America’s Top Roadside Oddities.

Because Buc-ee’s belongs to one of my favorite American traditions:

Making something unnecessarily enormous and then putting a gift shop next to it.

America Has Always Been Good at This

We have giant balls of twine.

Oversized dinosaurs.

Enormous chairs.

Giant peanuts.

Massive roadside animals.

Buildings shaped like things buildings should not be shaped like.

Mystery spots.

World’s largest this.

World’s smallest that.

And for generations, American families have pulled off the highway because someone in the car yelled:

“WHAT IS THAT?”

That’s the entire philosophy behind 100 Wacky Wonders.

The great American road trip isn’t merely about arriving somewhere.

It’s about the bizarre stuff you encounter along the way.

And few modern businesses understand that better than Buc-ee’s.

You don’t merely stop there.

You experience it.

So imagine the potential of a product that combines America’s roadside-kitsch tradition with America’s vintage-holiday-decoration tradition.

It’s perfect.

Start With Christmas Buc-ee

The first one is obvious.

Christmas Buc-ee.

Approximately 48 inches tall.

Classic pose.

Red Santa hat replacing—or perhaps fitting over—the Buc-ee’s cap.

Maybe a strand of Christmas lights wrapped around him.

Warm internal illumination.

Heavy-duty plastic.

Outdoor rated.

Done.

I will accept no consulting fee for this idea.

You’re welcome.

But that’s only Year One.

Because once you’ve entered the blow mold business, Buc-ee’s, you don’t get to leave.

Year Two: Beaver Nuggets Buc-ee

Now he’s holding a bag of Beaver Nuggets.

Collectors immediately need him because he’s different from Year One.

This is how it starts.

Year Three: Cowboy Christmas Buc-ee

Cowboy hat.

Santa suit.

Maybe boots.

Don’t overthink it.

Year Four: Halloween Buc-ee

Now things get serious.

Jack-o’-lantern in one hand.

Cape.

Maybe little vampire teeth protruding beneath the already enormous beaver teeth.

You release 10,000.

People lose their minds.

Facebook Marketplace becomes unusable for 72 hours.

Someone buys six and lists them online for $599 each before leaving the Buc-ee’s parking lot.

Civilization continues.

Then You Number Them

This is where Buc-ee’s can turn my ridiculous suggestion into an actual collectible program.

Put the year on the bottom.

2027 CHRISTMAS BEAVER

Next year, change the pose.

Never reproduce the exact sculpt.

Suddenly you’ve created an annual tradition.

People who bought the first one will want the second one.

People who missed the first one will complain about it on collector forums for the next 17 years.

This is how collectibles work.

Scarcity plus nostalgia plus plastic equals adults behaving irrationally.

I say that lovingly.

Imagine Finding One in 2057

This is my favorite part.

Picture an estate sale thirty years from now.

Some collector walks into a garage.

Old Christmas decorations everywhere.

Plastic totes.

Extension cords.

Artificial wreaths.

And then, behind a folding table, he sees it.

Red hat.

Buck teeth.

Faded paint.

A little dusty.

Original 2027 Buc-ee’s Christmas Beaver blow mold.

His heart rate increases.

He picks it up.

Checks the bottom.

Original light cord.

No cracks.

Hat still has good color.

He tries not to look excited because the estate-sale guy is watching him.

“How much for the beaver?”

“Twenty bucks?”

The collector hands him the money so quickly he nearly creates a sonic boom.

That night he posts it online.

HOLY GRAIL FIND.

That’s how this stuff happens.

The collectibles people obsess over decades later aren’t always the objects somebody carefully manufactured to become collectibles.

Often they’re the ridiculous things nobody thought to save.

Which Is Why Buc-ee’s Is Perfect

A Buc-ee’s blow mold wouldn’t need an explanation.

It combines several wonderfully American obsessions at once:

Road trips.

Christmas.

Oversized things.

Cartoon mascots.

Collecting.

Nostalgia.

Plastic lawn decorations.

And buying something completely unnecessary because it makes you happy.

That’s practically the Declaration of Independence.

And Buc-ee’s already understands this better than most companies.

Founder Arch “Beaver” Aplin has described the company’s branding philosophy as intentionally fun. His logo, after all, is a buck-toothed cartoon beaver wearing a baseball cap.

You cannot build your corporate identity around that animal and suddenly become restrained when we get to lawn decorations.

You started this, Buc-ee’s.

We’re merely asking you to finish it.

Build the Beaver

So here’s my proposal.

Buc-ee’s:

Call whoever still knows how to manufacture a proper blow mold. Find Gemmy Industries. Do something, damn it.

Make the tooling.

Give us four feet of glowing polyethylene Beaver.

Put him in a Santa hat.

Sell him only at Buc-ee’s.

Make him inconveniently large.

Make families rearrange their luggage.

Make collectors drive across state lines.

Make people argue about whether the 2028 version was better than the 2027 sculpt.

Make some poor employee bring another pallet out from the stockroom while 34 grown adults wait beside the seasonal display.

You’ve already made the inflatable.

You’ve already put the Beaver on practically everything else.

Finish the job.

Because America doesn’t need a four-foot internally illuminated plastic beaver wearing a Santa hat.

America didn’t need giant dinosaurs beside highways.

America didn’t need the world’s largest ball of twine.

America didn’t need a 75,000-square-foot travel center where you can purchase brisket, fudge, gasoline and a beaver-emblazoned blanket during the same transaction.

That’s never been the point.

Some things deserve to exist simply because somebody had the magnificent lack of restraint required to make them.

Build the blow mold, Buc-ee’s.

We’ll find room in the car.

More Wacky America From The Unknown Critic

Buc-ee’s is only one stop in 100 Wacky Wonders: The Unknown Critic’s Snarky Sojourn Through America’s Top Roadside Oddities — a tour through the oversized, bizarre, inexplicable and wonderfully unnecessary attractions that make the American road trip worth taking.

Because sometimes the best part of traveling isn’t where you’re going.

It’s the giant fiberglass thing you weren’t expecting to find on the way.

Where’s the Next Great Food Reality Show?

Bourdain is gone. Zimmern disappeared from the center of the dial. Top Chef isn’t an event anymore. And Gordon Ramsay is apparently legally required to appear on television every 14 minutes. What the hell happened to food TV?

I have a question.

And before anyone answers, please understand that “Guy Fieri has another tournament” is not an acceptable response.

Here goes:

Where the hell is the next great food television show?

Not another cooking competition.

Not Chopped: Antarctica.

Not Beat Bobby Flay: Bobby Has Been Kidnapped and Must Prepare a Sea Bass to Escape.

Not Guy’s Grocery Games: International Space Station, where four chefs have 22 minutes to prepare dinner using powdered Tang, freeze-dried ice cream and whatever has been floating behind the toilet since Expedition 47.

I mean a great food show.

The kind you actually talked about.

The kind that made food seem connected to travel and people and culture and history and all the other messy things that make eating interesting.

We had those once.

I know because I wrote an entire book about bizarre food.

I’ve seen things.

Jell-O has committed crimes.

REMEMBER WHEN FOOD TV FELT IMPORTANT?

There was a stretch when food television was genuinely fantastic.

Anthony Bourdain wasn’t really making food shows by the end.

He was making shows about human beings that happened to involve dinner.

That’s an important distinction.

Bourdain could sit at a plastic table in Vietnam eating noodles and somehow, 12 minutes later, you’d be thinking about colonialism, mortality, your relationship with your father and whether you had wasted your life by ordering the chicken fingers.

That was a television show.

Andrew Zimmern took a different route.

Bizarre Foods basically began with the premise:

What if a cheerful bald man ate the thing everybody else was afraid to eat?

And it worked.

Because Zimmern wasn’t simply doing gross-out television.

He’d eat something that looked like it had recently escaped from a Ridley Scott movie and then explain why people ate it.

That’s the important part.

Food became anthropology.

History.

Economics.

Geography.

Family.

Survival.

Then there was Top Chef.

Remember when Top Chef was THE THING?

“Did you watch Top Chef?”

“Oh my God, Restaurant Wars.”

“Pack your knives.”

People knew contestants’ names.

Restaurants became destinations because somebody had competed on the show.

You’d watch a chef make a celery-root foam over sous-vide quail and suddenly become a culinary expert from your couch.

“Interesting. The acid isn’t quite there.”

Sir, you’re eating Doritos.

Top Chef hasn’t actually disappeared—it completed its 23rd season in June 2026, with Kristen Kish hosting alongside Tom Colicchio and Gail Simmons.

Twenty-three seasons!

That’s remarkable.

But culturally?

It doesn’t feel like 2009 anymore.

AND THEN FOOD TV DISCOVERED THE TOURNAMENT BRACKET

At some point, television executives apparently held a meeting.

EXECUTIVE #1: People like food.

EXECUTIVE #2: Correct.

EXECUTIVE #1: People also like competitions.

EXECUTIVE #2: My God.

And food television changed forever.

Cook something.

Clock counts down.

Judges stare.

Contestant sweats.

Someone says, “This dish represents my grandmother.”

Judge eats it.

Commercial.

Repeat.

I don’t even blame Food Network.

Okay.

I blame Food Network a little.

Have you looked at food television lately?

Food Network’s own 2026 programming includes Chopped, Guy’s Grocery Games, Tournament of Champions, Bobby’s Triple Threat, Flavortown Food Fight, Pitmasters and Guy’s Grocery Games: Global Games.

Apparently dinner now requires a playoff system.

I remember when Food Network taught you how to cook.

Now turning on Food Network feels like walking into ESPN while everybody happens to be holding spatulas.

WELCOME TO THE 2026 RISOTTO SEMIFINALS.

“Kevin enters tonight as the number-three seed in the Southwest region, but remember, Linda has the immunity shallot.”

I JUST WANTED TO LEARN HOW TO ROAST A CHICKEN.

FOOD NETWORK HAS BECOME THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE OF GUY FIERI

I like Guy Fieri.

I genuinely do.

Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives is television comfort food.

Guy drives somewhere.

Guy meets lovable restaurant owner.

Guy eats sandwich containing six cheeses.

Guy leans backward.

“Brother.”

Everybody wins.

But Food Network has expanded the Fieri-verse to a point where I’m expecting a post-credit scene.

In 2026 alone, Food Network launched Flavortown Food Fight, continued Guy’s Grocery Games, created a Global Games version of Grocery Games, and ran another season of Tournament of Champions.

At this point Flavortown needs congressional representation.

There must be zoning ordinances.

Who’s collecting the garbage?

Does Flavortown have a school district?

Is Mayor Fieri facing reelection?

I NEED LORE.

AND THEN THERE’S GORDON RAMSAY

Gordon Ramsay deserves his own paragraph.

Actually Gordon Ramsay probably already has his own paragraph competition series.

PARAGRAPH HELL.

Twelve struggling paragraphs enter.

One leaves properly punctuated.

Ramsay remains enormously watchable because he understands something many television chefs don’t:

Television requires a personality.

He can cook.

He can teach.

He can travel.

He can insult somebody’s scallops so comprehensively that the scallops themselves begin reconsidering their career choices.

And Uncharted proved he can still make an expansive food-and-travel series.

But Gordon Ramsay cannot personally carry Western civilization’s entire food-television industry.

The man is 59.

Let him sit down.

Give him some tea.

Someone else has to host something eventually.

WHAT WE LOST WITH BOURDAIN

Here’s where I stop yelling at Guy’s Grocery Games for a minute.

The thing I miss isn’t really cooking television.

It’s curiosity television.

Bourdain was curious.

Zimmern was curious.

The best episodes of their shows weren’t asking:

Who cooks the best food?

They were asking:

Why do these people eat this?

That’s infinitely more interesting.

Why does this town cook this animal?

Why did this dish survive?

Why did immigrants bring this recipe here?

Why did poverty create that cuisine?

Why does one generation consider something comfort food while another thinks it belongs in a hazardous-waste container?

Those questions are exactly why I wrote Bite of the Bizarre: 100 Weird Foods That Time Forgot.

Because weird food isn’t really weird.

It’s evidence.

Turtle soup tells you something.

Aspic tells you something.

Organ meat tells you something.

Foods preserved in ways that would currently get you escorted from Whole Foods tell you something.

Every ridiculous thing humans have eaten happened for a reason.

Usually the reason was:

“We’re hungry and this is technically not poisonous.”

Human civilization!

WE DON’T NEED ANOTHER CHEF YELLING AT A CLOCK

This is my pitch.

Free of charge, television executives.

You’re welcome.

The next great food show shouldn’t be about finding America’s 47th best competitive chef.

Get out of the studio.

Go somewhere.

Find the foods we’re losing.

Find the 87-year-old woman who is the last person in her town making something the way her grandmother taught her.

Find the fourth-generation diner whose signature dish hasn’t changed since Eisenhower.

Find the immigrant neighborhood where an old-country recipe became something entirely new.

Find regional dishes that make people elsewhere say:

“You people eat WHAT?”

Go to county fairs. Say yes to funnel cakes & deep-fried Oreos.

Church basements.

VFW halls.

Fishing towns.

Reservation communities.

Little Italys.

Chinatowns.

Appalachian kitchens.

Louisiana gas stations where the food is inexplicably better than the restaurant you spent $190 at last night.

Don’t give anybody a timer.

Don’t eliminate anybody.

Don’t make them cook using ingredients selected by a roulette wheel.

JUST LET THEM TELL US WHY THE FOOD MATTERS.

BECAUSE FOOD TV HAS FORGOTTEN THE FOOD ISN’T REALLY THE POINT

The great food shows understood this.

Food is a Trojan horse.

You think you’re watching somebody eat noodles.

You’re actually watching a story about immigration.

You think you’re learning how sausage gets made.

You’re learning why a town exists.

You think you’re watching someone eat something disgusting.

Then somebody explains that their grandparents survived a famine by eating it.

Suddenly it’s not disgusting anymore.

Or it’s still disgusting.

But now it’s historically significant disgusting.

That’s progress.

THE GOOD NEWS: SOMEBODY COULD STILL GET THIS RIGHT

There are encouraging signs.

Top Chef continues to put serious cooking at the center of its competition, and its 2026 season incorporated regional food culture in the Carolinas.

Food Network’s new Pitmasters even brought Andrew Zimmern back into the network’s 2026 lineup as a judge.

So maybe the appetite is still there.

But I’m waiting for the breakthrough.

The show that everybody suddenly says:

“You have to watch this.”

Not because someone got eliminated.

Not because somebody won $50,000.

Not because Bobby Flay has apparently been challenged to mortal combat by another chef.

Because it showed us something we’d never seen.

SO WHERE’S THE NEXT BOURDAIN?

Nowhere.

And that’s probably the correct answer.

There shouldn’t be another Anthony Bourdain.

Trying to manufacture one would be unbearable.

“Meet Chad. He has tattoos, smokes occasionally and looks contemplatively out train windows. America, meet your new Bourdain!”

No.

Stop it.

Put Chad back.

What food television needs isn’t another Bourdain.

It needs someone with the same permission to be curious.

Someone funny.

Someone knowledgeable.

Someone willing to shut up when the person across the table is more interesting.

Someone willing to eat the terrifying thing.

Someone who understands that a great meal isn’t necessarily prepared by a Michelin-starred chef.

Sometimes it’s cooked by somebody’s grandmother.

Sometimes it’s served through a window.

Sometimes it’s been simmering in the same pot since approximately 1974.

And occasionally it’s an animal organ you didn’t previously know had culinary applications.

That’s television.

FOOD TELEVISION, CALL ME

Actually, don’t.

I wear a paper bag on my head.

There are insurance complications.

But somebody needs to figure this out.

Because food remains one of the greatest subjects television has ever had.

Every country has it.

Every family has it.

Every immigrant brought it.

Every generation changed it.

Every city argues about it.

Everybody needs it.

And somehow we’ve reduced much of food television to:

YOU HAVE 30 MINUTES TO TURN THESE SIX RANDOM INGREDIENTS INTO A RESTAURANT-QUALITY ENTRÉE.

No.

I want to know why the guy in Pennsylvania is still making scrapple.

I want to know who first looked at a sea urchin and thought:

I’m going inside that.

I want to know why aspic happened.

Seriously.

We need closure on aspic.

The next great food show is out there.

Somebody just needs to stop looking for contestants…

…and start looking for stories.

The Critic has spoken.

STILL HUNGRY FOR SOMETHING WEIRDER?

If this article has made you nostalgic for the days when food television occasionally left the studio and ate something that required a liability waiver, I’ve already prepared the tasting menu.

The Unknown Critic Presents: Bite of the Bizarre — 100 Weird Foods That Time Forgot dives into 100 of history’s strangest culinary creations—from turtle soup and questionable gelatin experiments to foods that prove our ancestors possessed stronger stomachs than we do.

It also includes my takes on three shows that understood food television could be about something bigger: Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown and Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted.

Think of it as culinary history served with sarcasm.

And possibly antacids.

Get Bite of the Bizarre on Amazon

Until next time, I’ll be under the bag

WAIT… CABLE TV MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY DIE?

I Wrote a Whole Book About Cable’s Rise and Fall. Then the NFL Apparently Performed CPR.

Well.

This is awkward.

Not long ago, I wrote an entire book called Channelmania: Cable TV’s Rise & Fall and the 100 Shows That Made the Medium.

Notice something important about that title.

It says:

RISE & FALL.

Not:

RISE & FALL & WEIRDLY HANG AROUND FOR ANOTHER 30 YEARS BECAUSE YOUR DAD WANTS TO WATCH THE PACKERS.

This week, Business Insider’s Peter Kafka reported something I wasn’t expecting.

Cable television—or more accurately, the larger pay-TV bundle—may actually have a floor.

Not a nice floor.

Not hardwood.

More like that suspicious linoleum in your grandmother’s basement that hasn’t been replaced since Matlock premiered.

But a floor nonetheless.

After years of watching America’s pay-TV subscriber count plummet from roughly 100 million households in 2016 to around 62 million today, analysts at MoffettNathanson now believe the decline could eventually stabilize somewhere around 50 million subscribers by 2030.

Fifty.

Million.

People.

Still paying for a bundle of television channels.

In 2030.

I read this and immediately checked the publication date to make sure Business Insider hadn’t accidentally republished something from 2007.

Nope.

So as the author of a book chronicling the decline of cable television, I have an important announcement:

I WAS RIGHT.

Mostly.

Okay, extremely right with one potentially irritating footnote.

FIRST OF ALL, LET’S ADMIRE THE CORPSE

Before the cable industry starts firing confetti cannons because somebody discovered it might still have 50 million customers four years from now, some perspective is required.

Cable/pay TV had around 100 million subscribers in 2016.

Today?

About 62 million.

The forecasted floor?

Approximately 50 million.

Imagine owning a restaurant with 100 customers.

Thirty-eight leave.

Another twelve are walking toward the door.

And your manager bursts out of the kitchen screaming:

“GOOD NEWS! WE THINK THE OTHER FIFTY ARE TRAPPED!”

That’s essentially where we are.

And yet, this is legitimately significant.

Because for years, the assumption throughout the television business has basically been:

The cord-cutting continues until somebody turns off the lights.

In fact, just two years ago, MoffettNathanson was saying there appeared to be no floor beneath cable’s decline. Now its analysis suggests there actually may be one.

Which raises an obvious question.

Who are these people?

Who survives the Great Cable Purge?

Who looks at Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, HBO Max, Peacock, Paramount+, Apple TV, YouTube and approximately 413 other streaming services and says:

“No thanks. Where’s my package with 184 channels, including six I watch?”

The answer, apparently, is…

FOOTBALL DADS.

Sports fans.

The cockroaches of the television apocalypse.

I say that lovingly.

Because sports—particularly the NFL—remain one of the strongest reasons millions of Americans continue paying for some form of television bundle.

Even as sports migrate onto streaming platforms, a large amount of premium live sports still runs through broadcast and cable channels. The consumers who had little interest in sports were disproportionately likely to abandon pay TV earlier. What’s increasingly left is a harder core of customers who actually need what the bundle still does well.

And suddenly the future of television makes a bizarre amount of sense.

HGTV didn’t save cable.

The Weather Channel didn’t save cable.

The K1 Visa from 90 Day Fiancé didn’t save cable.

Guy Fieri didn’t save cable.

Though God knows he tried.

The thing standing between cable television and the abyss may ultimately be a 54-year-old man named Gary screaming:

“WHERE THE HELL IS THE BILLS GAME?”

THE NFL IS THE LAST HELICOPTER OUT OF SAIGON

Live sports possess something increasingly rare in entertainment:

urgency.

Nobody needs to watch episode six of The Bear at exactly 8:03 tonight.

You can watch it tomorrow.

Or Saturday.

Or three months from now when somebody at work asks whether you’ve seen it and you lie:

“I’m two episodes behind.”

Sports don’t work like that.

If your team is playing at 4:25 Sunday afternoon, you want to watch at 4:25 Sunday afternoon.

Not Monday morning.

Because by then your phone has already informed you what happened.

Your brother has texted you.

Your coworker has posted about it.

And some psychopath at the grocery store is wearing the winning team’s jersey.

The entire experience has been ruined.

Live sports remain one of television’s last remaining forms of appointment viewing.

And appointment viewing was the oxygen that powered cable television for decades.

WHICH IS VERY FUNNY, BECAUSE WE HAVE REINVENTED CABLE

This is one of the central absurdities behind Channelmania.

We spent years complaining about cable.

“Why am I paying for channels I don’t watch?”

So we destroyed the bundle.

Freedom!

Then everybody launched a streaming service.

Netflix.

Hulu.

Disney+.

HBO Max.

Peacock.

Paramount+.

Apple TV.

Prime Video.

ESPN.

Then the prices started rising.

Then advertising returned.

Then services started bundling together.

Then live channels appeared.

Then sports packages appeared.

Then streaming companies began selling bundles of streaming services.

And now services such as YouTube TV are increasingly functioning as internet-delivered versions of the traditional pay-TV bundle. MoffettNathanson’s forecast includes those virtual providers, and YouTube TV is on track to become the largest pay-TV distributor in America.

Congratulations, America.

WE KILLED CABLE AND INVENTED CABLE.

Except now it buffers.

This may be the greatest technological achievement since humanity spent 30 years replacing buttons with touchscreens and then began adding buttons back because everyone realized buttons were actually pretty useful.

THE GREAT STREAMING PROMISE

Remember what streaming was supposed to accomplish?

Cheap.

Simple.

No commercials.

Watch whatever you want.

Cancel anytime.

That was the sales pitch.

Today, watching television sometimes feels like assembling the Infinity Stones.

Thursday Night Football?

One service.

Sunday afternoon?

Something else.

Sunday night?

Another place.

Monday night?

Check ESPN.

Christmas?

Maybe Netflix.

Some playoff game you absolutely need to see?

Apparently it’s streaming exclusively on an app called Flarp+ that costs $11.99 and requires your mother’s maiden name.

Consumer Reports’ current guide to the 2026–27 NFL season says that watching all the action requires a mix of streaming services even if you already have cable television.

USA Today reached essentially the same conclusion: even cable subscribers can no longer get every NFL game through one television plan as more games become streaming exclusives.

We have achieved the impossible.

Television is simultaneously more customizable AND more confusing.

Outstanding work, everyone.

BUT HERE’S WHERE THE ARTICLE ACTUALLY CHANGED MY THINKING

I went into Channelmania looking backward.

The book is partly a celebration of the bizarre, wonderful ecosystem cable created.

Cable didn’t merely give us more television.

It changed what television was allowed to be.

MTV.

ESPN.

CNN.

Nickelodeon.

Discovery.

Comedy Central.

Food Network.

TLC.

AMC.

FX.

Adult Swim.

Networks built identities (then kept changing them: Family Channel-Fox Family-ABC Family-Freeform is just one nutty example).

They took chances.

They served niches.

They created cultural tribes.

And occasionally they aired nine consecutive hours of people buying storage lockers.

Nobody said every revolution had to be dignified.

But the conventional narrative says that era ends with streaming.

Cable rises.

Cable dominates.

Streaming arrives.

Cable dies.

Roll credits.

This new analysis suggests the ending may be stranger.

Cable doesn’t necessarily die.

It shrinks until only the people who genuinely need the bundle remain.

That’s different.

And frankly, it’s more interesting.

CABLE MAY BECOME THE COCKROACH OF MEDIA

The industry could eventually settle into something smaller but durable.

Think vinyl records.

Movie theaters.

Terrestrial radio.

Physical books.

Every new technology supposedly kills the previous technology.

Usually it doesn’t.

It just forces the old medium to figure out who still cares about it.

Vinyl didn’t need everyone.

It needed vinyl people.

Movie theaters don’t need everyone going twice a week.

They need movies compelling enough to make people leave their couches.

And perhaps pay TV doesn’t need 100 million households anymore.

Maybe it needs 50 million households that desperately value sports, news, live events and the convenience of having a bunch of channels accessible in one place.

There’s an important distinction here, however.

That doesn’t mean the traditional coaxial-cable box survives unchanged.

The category increasingly includes digital bundles such as YouTube TV.

So the ultimate survivor may not be cable technology.

It may be the cable idea.

And that is the part I didn’t fully appreciate.

THE BUNDLE WASN’T THE VILLAIN. THE PRICE WAS.

For decades we blamed the bundle.

But the bundle solved an actual problem:

Finding stuff.

Turn on TV.

Guide.

Channel.

Done.

Streaming solved another problem:

Choice.

Watch what you want whenever you want.

Wonderful.

But as streaming fragmented, choice created a new problem:

Where the hell is everything?

That’s why bundling keeps creeping back.

Consumers don’t necessarily hate bundles.

Consumers hate paying too much for bundles filled with things they don’t value.

That’s a very different problem.

And sports provides enormous perceived value for a particular group of consumers.

One 2026 survey found 36% of respondents said live sports could bring them back to cable, although that figure comes from a 1,000-person commercial survey rather than an industry-wide subscriber measurement.

That’s worth paying attention to.

SO WAS CHANNELMANIA WRONG?

Absolutely not.

Don’t be ridiculous.

I have books to sell.

The fundamental story hasn’t changed.

Cable television experienced one of the most astonishing ascents in American media history.

Then it fractured.

The monoculture disappeared.

Networks lost their identities.

Cord-cutting accelerated.

Audiences migrated.

The business model buckled.

Tens of millions of households left.

All true.

Channelmania chronicles that extraordinary rise and fall through 100 programs that helped define the medium, because cable wasn’t merely a delivery system.

It was a cultural era.

And eras can end even when the underlying technology survives.

The Roman Empire ended.

Rome is still there.

Blockbuster died.

People still watch movies.

The shopping mall declined.

Cinnabon remains undefeated.

Cable’s golden age can absolutely be over while some version of pay television continues serving 50 million American households.

Those ideas aren’t contradictory.

If anything, this new forecast gives the story one final twist.

CABLE TV’S LAST GREAT SHOW MAY BE CABLE TV

Picture the year 2030.

Netflix is showing NFL games.

Amazon has sports.

YouTube is America’s largest pay-TV provider.

Traditional cable companies sell broadband.

Streaming services bundle themselves together.

Commercials are everywhere again.

Consumers pay monthly subscription fees.

Shows release weekly.

Sports rights cost billions.

And 50 million households still subscribe to something that looks suspiciously like…

cable television.

Maybe cable didn’t lose.

Maybe it successfully infected its replacement.

And somewhere, an old Comcast cable box sitting in a landfill will smile.

Because it knew.

You always come back to the bundle.

THE CRITIC HAS SPOKEN.

In The Unknown Critic Presents: Channelmania — Cable TV’s Rise & Fall and the 100 Shows That Made the Medium, I revisit the programs, networks, personalities and magnificent televised nonsense that transformed cable from a utility into a cultural force.

The story includes triumphs.

Disasters.

Experiments.

Reinventions.

And more questionable programming decisions than should legally be allowed before midnight.

I wrote it believing cable television’s great cultural era had ended.

I still believe that.

But apparently cable itself has looked at the Grim Reaper and said:

“Hang on. The Chiefs game starts in ten minutes.”

And I respect that.

Get Channelmania on Amazon

Until next time, I’ll be under the bag.

Hollywood Presents: How to Lose an Industry in 10 Days

Paramount, Warner Bros., California—and the Corporate Flop That Is Somehow Still Being Workshopped

I wrote a book called Flopocalypse Now: Corporate America’s 100 Most Catastrophic Crashes.

One hundred disasters.

Crystal Pepsi.

Google Glass.

Products nobody wanted.

Companies setting enormous piles of money on fire.

Executives looking at ideas that should have been killed during the first PowerPoint presentation and saying:

“Let’s scale this.”

After finishing the book, I thought I’d seen everything Corporate America had to offer.

Then Hollywood said:

Hold my $14 Erewhon smoothie.

Because right now, Paramount, Warner Bros., and the State of California are engaged in what may be the most expensive game of “I’M TAKING MY BALL AND GOING HOME” ever attempted.

Except the ball is Hollywood.

And approximately 60,000 people would really appreciate it if the adults could stop yelling.

PREVIOUSLY ON: SUCCESSION — SACRAMENTO EDITION

Here’s the situation.

Paramount Skydance wants Warner Bros. Discovery.

Badly.

We’re talking about a deal valued around $110 billion that would combine two of Hollywood’s five major film distributors and create a company controlling close to one-third of U.S. theatrical movies and basic cable programming, according to California’s antitrust complaint.

Paramount’s argument is essentially:

Have you SEEN the competition?

And that’s not an entirely crazy point.

Hollywood isn’t simply five movie studios fighting over Friday-night ticket sales anymore. Traditional media companies now compete for attention with enormous technology and streaming businesses, video platforms, social media, gaming, and approximately 19 million TikTok videos of golden retrievers stealing sandwiches.

Paramount says combining with Warner would create a stronger competitor capable of investing more heavily in movies, television, theatrical releases and creative talent.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta and 11 other state AGs say:

Not so fast, Gordon Gekko.

Their lawsuit argues that putting these businesses together would reduce competition, potentially increase prices and ultimately mean fewer movies, fewer television shows and fewer choices.

So far, this is a legitimate antitrust dispute.

Complicated.

Important.

Possibly boring enough to make normal people suddenly remember they need to clean their gutters.

Then somebody apparently asked:

“How could we make this MUCH crazier?”

ENTER CALIFORNIA, CARRYING A GASOLINE CAN

California has a problem.

Hollywood is called Hollywood because…

well…

Hollywood is here.

This should be a considerable competitive advantage.

It’s like Hawaii having an advantage in the tropical vacation business.

Yet California has spent years watching film and television production migrate elsewhere.

Georgia.

New York.

New Jersey.

New Mexico.

Canada.

The United Kingdom.

Probably somebody’s garage in Romania by the time you finish this article.

Los Angeles production was already suffering badly before this corporate showdown. The Los Angeles Times reported last month that feature-film shoot days had fallen 20% year-over-year in the second quarter, while television shoot days dropped 30%. It also reported roughly 57,000 entertainment jobs lost over four years and more than 80 production-service businesses closed since 2022.

California has responded by dramatically expanding its film and television tax-credit program. The state says its first year of the expanded program awarded 170 projects expected to generate $6.6 billion in direct production spending and nearly 35,000 cast-and-crew jobs.

So California is simultaneously saying:

PLEASE COME BACK AND MAKE MOVIES HERE.

And:

WE ARE SUING ONE OF THE BIGGEST MOVIE COMPANIES HERE.

Again, those two positions aren’t necessarily legally contradictory.

But from a distance?

It’s fantastic corporate theater.

THEN PARAMOUNT FOUND THE NUCLEAR BUTTON

David Ellison apparently looked at this situation and said:

What if we threaten to leave?

Not leave the negotiating table.

Leave California.

The studio has floated moving its headquarters and potentially significant operations to places including Tennessee, Texas or Georgia. Ellison reportedly told associates he would prefer to remain in Los Angeles but is prepared to relocate if the merger fight isn’t resolved.

This is the corporate equivalent of your dad getting angry at Thanksgiving dinner and announcing:

“FINE. WE’RE MOVING TO TENNESSEE.”

Except Dad owns CBS.

And Nickelodeon.

And MTV.

And Paramount Pictures.

And he’s trying to buy HBO.

Thanksgiving has become complicated.

AND NOW WE ARRIVE AT MY FAVORITE PART: THE TICKING FEE

Because every great corporate disaster needs a detail that sounds completely made up.

Beginning October 1, Paramount is reportedly obligated to increase payments to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders by approximately:

$7 MILLION.

Every day.

While the transaction remains delayed.

Seven million dollars.

Per day.

That’s approximately $291,667 an hour.

About $4,861 per minute.

Or roughly $81 every second.

I have now cost Paramount approximately $3,000 while you read this paragraph.

You’re welcome.

Paramount has asked the court to require California, the other plaintiff states and the Writers Guild of America to post a $1.88 billion bond to cover potential losses if Paramount ultimately wins the litigation. California argues that Paramount voluntarily agreed to delay closing the deal and therefore shouldn’t be entitled to such protection. A hearing is scheduled for September 24.

Somewhere there is an attorney billing $1,400 an hour who just whispered:

“Keep fighting.”

THE PEOPLE WHO DON’T HAVE $110 BILLION

Here’s where the Unknown Critic temporarily removes his novelty corporate-disaster hat.

Not the paper bag.

That stays.

Because underneath all the billionaire chess moves, antitrust arguments, tax incentives and corporate brinkmanship are thousands of ordinary people.

Editors.

Camera operators.

Production assistants.

Set decorators.

Costume designers.

Marketing people.

Writers.

Drivers.

Caterers.

Electricians.

Independent production companies.

Prop houses.

Restaurants.

Dry cleaners.

People who do not have a private jet standing by if things get uncomfortable.

L.A. County’s final economic analysis estimates that the merger could expose as many as 4,500 direct film and television jobs, plus 5,865 indirect jobs, with as much as $4.06 billion in business output potentially at risk.

And that’s the bizarre part of this story.

Everyone claims they’re protecting Hollywood.

Paramount says the merger will make traditional entertainment stronger.

California says blocking the merger protects competition and workers.

Politicians say they’re protecting California jobs.

The unions say they’re protecting creative labor.

Meanwhile, actual entertainment workers are standing in the middle asking:

“Cool. Does anybody know if I’m working Tuesday?”

WELCOME TO FLOPOCALYPSE MANAGEMENT THEORY

While researching Flopocalypse Now, I noticed something about legendary corporate failures.

They rarely begin with stupidity.

That’s what makes them interesting.

Smart people make them.

People with MBAs.

Consultants.

Research departments.

Financial models.

Lawyers.

PowerPoint decks containing arrows.

So many arrows.

The disasters usually begin when organizations become so convinced of their own strategy that they stop seeing the obvious danger directly in front of them.

That’s called hubris.

Corporate America calls it:

VISION.

Paramount may genuinely need scale to compete in modern entertainment.

California may genuinely have legitimate antitrust concerns.

Both things can be true.

But here’s another thing that’s true:

California cannot afford to lose Hollywood.

Not metaphorically.

Economically.

And Hollywood cannot afford another prolonged period where uncertainty becomes its primary export.

CALIFORNIA’S STRANGEST BUSINESS MODEL

Imagine owning the world’s most famous pizza restaurant.

For 100 years, everybody comes to your town for pizza.

Then other cities start offering pizza chefs huge incentives.

Your chefs leave.

Your waiters leave.

Your suppliers struggle.

Business falls 30%.

So you announce a giant program to bring pizza production back.

Then the largest pizza company in town threatens to relocate.

At some point, somebody needs to say:

GUYS. WE’RE LOSING THE PIZZA BUSINESS.

That doesn’t mean California should abandon antitrust law.

It doesn’t mean Paramount should get whatever deal it wants.

It means the cost of failure has become enormous for both sides.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has urged the parties to find a resolution, and settlement talks are now moving toward a court-supervised meeting in late October.

Good.

Bring coffee.

Bring lawyers.

Bring economists.

Bring lunch.

Lock the doors.

Nobody leaves until somebody says something more constructive than:

“Tennessee.”

THE UNKNOWN CRITIC’S FIVE RULES FOR NOT DESTROYING HOLLYWOOD

I don’t normally give $110 billion companies free consulting advice.

But I’ll make an exception.

1. Stop confusing leverage with strategy. Threatening to leave California may create negotiating leverage. Actually hollowing out one of America’s great creative ecosystems is something else entirely.

2. California needs to remember that industries can leave. History is full of cities that assumed their dominant industry was permanent. Ask Detroit how that worked out.

3. Bigger isn’t automatically better. Every corporate merger presentation contains the word “synergy.” “Synergy” is corporate Latin for “We’ll explain the layoffs later.”

4. Smaller isn’t automatically safer. If traditional studios become too weak to compete with technology giants, protecting five weakened competitors may eventually become a strange victory.

5. Somebody needs to remember the people. Not “labor.” Not “human capital.” Not “headcount.” People. The people who spent decades building the entertainment industry everybody is fighting over.

COULD THIS ACTUALLY BECOME A FLOPOCALYPSE?

Maybe.

Or maybe everybody eventually behaves like adults.

Paramount and California reach a settlement.

The merger proceeds with meaningful concessions.

Jobs stay in Los Angeles.

Production grows.

Hollywood stabilizes.

Everyone shakes hands.

The attorneys buy vacation homes.

Roll credits.

But if this ends with historic studio lots sold, thousands more entertainment workers displaced, billions in economic activity leaving California and Hollywood’s century-old geographic center permanently weakened?

Then I have unfortunate news.

I’m going to need to update the book.

Because Flopocalypse Now currently contains:

100 Corporate Catastrophes.

And I really don’t want to change the subtitle to:

101.

Printing is expensive.

THE CRITIC HAS SPOKEN.

The Unknown Critic is the paper-bag-wearing chronicler of humanity’s inexplicable ability to spend billions of dollars making avoidable mistakes.

His book Flopocalypse Now: Corporate America’s 100 Most Catastrophic Crashes explores 100 spectacular corporate failures—from disastrous products and technological face-plants to boardroom decisions that make you wonder whether anyone in the meeting was allowed to raise their hand.

If the current Hollywood showdown has taught us anything, it’s that corporate catastrophe isn’t history.

Sometimes you’re lucky enough to watch the next chapter being written live.

Until next time, I’ll be under the bag.

LANTERNS: Finally, a Green Lantern Show for People Who Apparently Hate Green Lantern

The Unknown Critic Reviews HBO Max’s Lanterns

WARNING: SPOILERS THROUGH EPISODE 5. Also contains dangerous levels of sarcasm, several complaints about lighting, and one deeply concerned Green Lantern fan.

I owe Hollywood an apology.

For years, I’ve complained that superhero movies have become predictable.

Hero gets powers. Hero learns powers. Villain appears. City explodes. Giant laser shoots into sky. Hero discovers the real superpower was believing in himself all along.

I wanted something different.

Well.

HBO Max gave us Lanterns.

A Green Lantern television series in which two men possessing magical alien rings capable of creating literally anything their imaginations can conceive spend an extraordinary amount of time driving around rural America looking concerned.

Touché, Hollywood.

Touché.

TRUE DETECTIVE: SPACE COP EDITION

For anyone who hasn’t watched Lanterns, the premise sounds fantastic.

John Stewart, played by Aaron Pierre, is a prospective new Green Lantern partnered with veteran Lantern Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler. Together they investigate a mysterious murder in the American heartland that gradually reveals much larger extraterrestrial implications.

Basically:

True Detective + Green Lantern.

Which sounds amazing.

And sometimes it is.

But somebody at HBO apparently heard “Green Lantern” and said:

“Great. But what if we remove approximately 87% of the green?”

This is the most aggressively earthbound story imaginable about an organization whose jurisdiction includes THE UNIVERSE.

The Green Lantern Corps patrols approximately three trillion planets.

Naturally, we’re in Nebraska.

Or, as the Guardians of the Universe apparently call it:

Sector 2814: Corn Division.

KYLE CHANDLER’S HAL JORDAN NEEDS A NAP

Let’s discuss Hal Jordan.

Kyle Chandler’s Hal doesn’t enter a room so much as arrive there already disappointed in whoever is inside it.

This is not the cocky test-pilot Hal Jordan many fans probably imagined.

This Hal looks like he’s spent 25 years fighting intergalactic evil and another 30 minutes trying to cancel SiriusXM.

And you know what?

I kind of love him.

Chandler plays Jordan as a man who has clearly seen some things.

Space things.

Bad things.

Things apparently serious enough to turn one of DC Comics’ great swashbuckling adventurers into your divorced uncle who arrives at Thanksgiving, sits in the recliner and says:

“So. What’s going on with you?”

Then doesn’t listen to the answer.

Hal has the most powerful weapon in the universe attached to his finger and somehow still projects the energy of a man whose check-engine light just came on.

That’s talent.

JOHN STEWART: THE ONLY PERSON HERE ASKING REASONABLE QUESTIONS

Then there’s Aaron Pierre’s John Stewart.

John spends much of Lanterns looking at Hal the way an employee looks at a manager who just explained a company policy that is obviously illegal.

And rightly so.

Hal’s mentoring strategy appears to consist of:

Step 1: Withhold important information.

Step 2: Behave suspiciously.

Step 3: Become irritated when John notices.

Step 4: Drive somewhere.

Step 5: Repeat.

John understandably begins wondering whether joining the Green Lantern Corps was such a great career move.

By Episode 5, he finally gets Hal’s ring—the thing he’s supposedly wanted.

And what does he do?

He gives it back.

Imagine spending your entire life wanting a Ferrari, finally getting the keys and discovering the previous owner left three unpaid parking tickets, a suspicious stain on the passenger seat and Sinestro in the glove compartment.

“No thanks.”

That’s basically John Stewart’s character arc.

AND THEN THERE’S ZOE

Ah, Zoe.

Poorna Jagannathan spends several episodes being mysterious enough that anyone who’s watched television since approximately 1987 immediately knows something is wrong.

Eventually we discover she’s a Manhunter.

An extremely dangerous synthetic being.

Which makes John’s romantic involvement with her slightly complicated.

There are bad dating decisions.

There are really bad dating decisions.

And then there’s:

“I accidentally slept with the ancient robotic enemy of the Green Lantern Corps.”

Try explaining THAT on Hinge.

“So what happened with your last relationship?”

“Well, she was emotionally unavailable.”

“Oh.”

“And a killer android.”

“Oh.”

“And I eventually shot her.”

“CHECK, PLEASE.”

Episode 5 takes the entire relationship to its spectacularly dysfunctional conclusion when John kills Zoe after using Hal as bait.

Dating in 2026, everybody.

THE SHOW’S SECRET SUPERPOWER: EVERYONE IS TERRIBLE AT COMMUNICATING

Here’s what fascinates me most about Lanterns.

Nearly every catastrophic event could potentially have been avoided if these people simply sat down at an IHOP and had an honest conversation.

Hal doesn’t trust John.

John doesn’t trust Hal.

The Guardians don’t trust Hal.

Hal doesn’t trust the Guardians.

Zoe can’t be trusted.

Sinestro DEFINITELY can’t be trusted.

And somewhere Guy Gardner is presumably polishing his bowl cut and wondering why nobody invited him.

The Green Lantern oath begins:

“In brightest day, in blackest night…”

Apparently the next line is:

“Whatever happens, don’t communicate properly with your coworkers.”

The Guardians of the Universe have existed for billions of years and still appear to have the management skills of a regional mattress chain.

No wonder Sinestro quit.

THE WEENIE

I need to mention that Episode 4 is actually titled:

“The Weenie.”

A multimillion-dollar prestige HBO superhero drama.

The Weenie.

Somewhere an HBO executive had to say:

“We’re extremely excited about next week’s episode, The Weenie.”

And another adult nodded.

This happened.

There were meetings.

Calendars.

Legal clearances.

Probably a PowerPoint.

Nobody stopped it.

I respect this tremendously.

BUT HERE’S THE ANNOYING PART…

Lanterns is actually pretty damn good.

I know.

I’m irritated too.

I wrote an entire book called From Comic Book Ink to Box Office Stink about superhero adaptations going horribly wrong.

I arrived prepared.

I sharpened the knives.

I put fresh eyeholes in the paper bag.

I stretched.

And then HBO inconveniently delivered something that actually has ideas.

Aaron Pierre is excellent.

Kyle Chandler is fascinating.

Their relationship is the show.

Not the rings.

Not the mythology.

Not the CGI.

Not whatever enormous cosmic catastrophe is inevitably waiting around the corner.

Two deeply flawed men are trying to decide what being a hero actually means.

And Lanterns keeps asking a surprisingly interesting question:

What happens when the person wearing the superhero costume isn’t sure he deserves it anymore?

That’s much more interesting than another 45-minute CGI sky battle.

Although…

Guys?

You DO have magic space rings.

Feel free to use them occasionally.

I’m just saying.

FIVE PAPER BAGS OF JUSTICE

So where does Lanterns rank after five episodes?

STORY

🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️½

Genuinely compelling, although occasionally so committed to being a prestige detective drama that I expect Matthew McConaughey to emerge from a cornfield explaining that time is a flat power ring.

CAST

🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️

Pierre and Chandler are terrific together.

I would watch these two investigate a stolen lawn mower.

Which, given this show’s pace and setting, may actually be Episode 6.

GREEN LANTERN-NESS

🛍️🛍️½

We have rings.

We have Guardians.

We have Sinestro.

We have Manhunters.

What we don’t have nearly enough of is Green Lanterns doing completely ridiculous Green Lantern things.

MAKE A GIANT GREEN BOXING GLOVE, YOU COWARDS.

DEPRESSING HBO LIGHTING

🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️🛍️

Outstanding.

At several points I could almost identify the actors.

THE UNKNOWN CRITIC’S VERDICT

★★★★☆
4 out of 5 Paper Bags

Lanterns shouldn’t work.

It takes one of DC’s most colorful cosmic properties and turns it into a moody rural murder mystery starring two emotionally constipated space cops.

And somehow…

it works.

Mostly.

It’s weird.

It’s slow.

It’s occasionally frustrating.

It’s far more interested in damaged people than superhero spectacle.

And after five episodes, I’m genuinely curious where this bizarre little Green Lantern noir experiment is headed.

So congratulations, HBO.

You made a superhero show that doesn’t feel like every other superhero show.

Just one request.

Before the season ends…

Could somebody please use the most powerful weapon in the universe to make something stupid?

A giant hammer.

A locomotive.

A 40-foot green squirrel.

Anything.

Hal Jordan currently possesses a device limited only by human imagination.

So far his imagination appears to be:

Nebraska.

THE CRITIC HAS SPOKEN.

The Unknown Critic is the mysterious paper-bag-wearing pop-culture obsessive behind From Comic Book Ink to Box Office Stink, a celebration—or possibly crime-scene investigation—of 100 superhero movies that didn’t exactly save the day.

If you enjoy watching Hollywood spend hundreds of millions of dollars learning lessons it could have learned by asking literally any comic-book fan, you’ll probably enjoy the book.

Until next time, I’ll be under the bag.