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Two scoops! It’s the optimal ice cream portion — I hope you enjoyed some on July 4th — and it’s what The Ankler served up this week with a pair of exclusives that had the town buzzing.
But first: Today only, you can upgrade to a paid yearly subscription at 25% off and finally get full access to everything The Ankler has to offer. A paid subscription gives you top-in-class career insight and insider information you can’t get anywhere else — always unvarnished, independent and fearless. No trade slop, no gossip, no bait-and-switch headlines. Just the smartest, most authoritative reporting in the industry, including:
Now, back to those two scoops! First, there was Richard Rushfield’s Tuesday bombshell about the HFPA, where he broke news that the organization had voted to reconstitute itself and investigate the Golden Globes’ nope-not-yet-completed-despite-reports sale to Jay Penske and Todd Boehly. The move by the group’s legacy membership — which also voted Thursday to oust Helen Hoehne, who transitioned in 2023 from leading the nonprofit HFPA to running the for-profit Golden Globes, LLC — could spell the unwinding of the deal, which was announced two years ago but has yet to win approval from California Attorney General Rob Bonta. It was a development so major that the Penske-owned trades, which haven’t touched the mounting troubles and conflicts at the Globes, actually were compelled to follow Richard’s reporting (in a rare move, some of them even credited The Ankler, because journalism).
Then, on Wednesday, Lesley Goldberg brought you a Last of Us shocker: the exit of Neil Druckmann, who co-created the OG game, from the hit HBO series. After serving as EP, writer and director on the first two seasons under showrunner Craig Mazin, Druckmann is stepping back ahead of the third to focus instead on his next title for game publisher Naughty Dog. Lesley’s deep sourcing and trusted reporting put her way ahead of the crowd on this one — check it out.
Matthew Frank also stirred up conversation with his feature on the AI fight at top film schools, where professors teach and embrace the tech even as students rage that it’s cutting off their entry-level path to Hollywood. Matthew dove into the fraught debate with top industry stakeholders including CAA’s Alan Braun and Ken Ziffren, plus students and deans at USC, AFI and Chapman, as Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns offered this warning to the industry’s next generation: “Participate in the revolution or sit it out.”
Now, without further ado, ICYMI, even more of our best of the week:
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Google’s Veo 3 won’t just speed up AI video generation — it’s set to imminently alter Hollywood production (and jobs). Erik Barmack breaks down (paid subscribers only) the steps the powerful new tool eliminates, what that means for budgets — and how more than 118,000 behind-the-camera jobs could be impacted in the next 18 months:
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Entertainment Strategy Guy checks in on the state of the Mouse House — where his previous doomsday hypotheses (trouble at Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar, and cable’s demise) and new risks (sports, succession) make a potent mix of troubles to watch:
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 | War of the Worlds at 20: Steven Spielberg’s Unlikeliest Blockbuster Still Packs a Punch Prestige Junkie 32:18 |
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Sean McNulty lays out the details of Paramount’s $16 million Trump settlement, what comes next for the Skydance merger talks:
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Survivor and Traitors alum Parvati Shallow is “a true icon of our times,” says Richard, and she joins him to dish on life as a reality TV star, and how the coping mechanisms she learned during a tumultuous childhood — the very things that made her so powerful on Survivor — have held her back outside the show:
 | Druckmann Ditches HBO: ‘The Last of Us’ Faces a Creative Apocalypse TheAnkler.com Episode |
 | Dumb Comedies Will Save Hollywood Martini Shot 9:17 |
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Top paranormal YouTube creators Sam and Colby gave me a first look at their new horror escape room in Hollywood, and I lived to tell the tale, with details of how they designed the escape room like a YouTube video, complete with viral “moments” baked in — and why the future of creator monetization may lie in immersive, offline worlds…
4 days ago · 2 likes · Natalie Jarvey
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This week, Andy Lewis’ selection of the best IP available includes a procedural with a stripper investigating the disappearance of two fellow dancers, a winking slasher-thriller with a supernatural twist set at an all-girls boarding school and a dark-academia satire about a sorority…
3 days ago · Andy Lewis
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