{"id":486154,"date":"2026-05-15T14:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486154\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T14:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T14:43:11","slug":"hollywood-winners-losers-upfronts-and-the-odyssey-culture-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/486154\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Winners & Losers: Upfronts and \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 Culture War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA paralyzed Warners (with puppies!). A gloating Netflix<\/a>. And some thoughts about the culture war backlash to Christopher Nolan\u2019s The Odyssey<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLOSER<\/strong>: Warner Bros. Discovery Presentation. <\/strong>\u201cThat\u2019s it?!\u201d said attendees at the conclusion of WBD\u2019s presentation, which was heavy on familiar clips and light on substance, stars, news and everything else. It was like HBO\u2019s The Sopranos cut-to-black ending in upfront form. CEO David Zaslav? Absent. HBO boss Casey Bloys? Not on stage. Warner Bros. Discovery advertising\u00a0president Bobby\u00a0Voltaggio opened the show by pledging<\/a>, with not-entirely-convincing cheerfulness, to address \u201cthe Ellison \u2014 I mean the elephant \u2014 in the room,\u201d and then proceeded to essentially not do that (\u201cWe\u2019ve been through change and challenges before,\u201d he optimistically said of the pending Paramount merger).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was surprising to see a company with so many hugely popular streaming franchises \u2014 Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, DC, Dune \u2014 not advance the conversation about any of them. The biggest reaction from the stoic Madison Avenue audience was when puppies were brought out on stage, infusing some oxytocin into the crowd\u2019s upfront-numbed brains, courtesy of a company that\u2019s waiting to be told what to do. <\/p>\n

\n\tWinner: Disney<\/a>\u2019s Presentation<\/strong>: The Devil Wears Prada 2 star Anne Hathaway introduced Disney\u2019s new CEO Josh D\u2019Amaro by saying \u201cthe new boss claims he is nicer than Miranda Priestly\u201d which had to make the audience think, \u201cWait, didn\u2019t this guy just lay off 1,000 people?\u201d D\u2019Amaro then tried to ingratiate himself with the New York crowd by playfully noting he\u2019s a Boston Celtics fan, which went over about as well as you\u2019d expect. At that point, I conspiratorially wondered if Disney\u2019s upfront writers were deliberately sabotaging this guy. Then D\u2019Amaro smartly noted how the brand appeal of Disney \u2014 it\u2019s magic, if you will \u2014 is \u201cwhat every audience, every sponsor, every brand in this room is actually trying to buy.\u201d Basically: We own entertainment culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rest of the Disney presentation was heavy on sports, especially with ABC getting the Super Bowl next year. Dwayne Johnson promoted the upcoming live-action remake Moana that somehow still looks like an animated movie. The trailer for Ryan Murphy\u2019s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis\u2019s novel The Shards looks exactly like something his fans will enjoy. Battle-scarred Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s roast of the industry was even stronger<\/a> than usual (the best bit: \u201cI cost our company a lot of money this year, billions. It is very possible that no employee in the history of any company has cost their employer more than hiring me 24 years ago. Just from a purely mathematical standpoint, it was the worst personnel decision that Disney Corporation has ever made\u201d). <\/p>\n

\n\tWINNER<\/strong>:<\/strong><\/strong><\/strong> Netflix\u2019s Presentation<\/strong>: The streamer won social media with red carpet pics of Millie Bobby Brown, Florence Pugh and Jennifer Lopez and a firehose of press announcements (such as an adaptation of the Barbaric comic series and Kim Kardashian producing a sure-to-be-classy teen drama titled, naturally, Calabasas). Netflix\u2019s ad-tier plan now reaches a staggering 250 million users globally, and they pledged to keep finding more nooks and crannies during your viewing experience to shove ads into. Netflix remains the streaming rabbit everybody is chasing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWINNER<\/strong>: <\/strong>Amazon\u2019s Presentation<\/strong>: With its deep pockets, Amazon loaded up the stage with Oprah Winfrey, Chris Pratt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael B. Jordan \u2014 Jordan has three projects with Prime Video (including a Creed spin-off series). So what if Arnold was there to promote the same movie, The Man With The Bag, that he promoted last year? Surprisingly, nothing on Blade Runner 2099, which has been in the works for four years and is (supposedly) debuting this year. After some rough times, Prime Video feels like it\u2019s been getting some momentum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDraw:<\/strong> YouTube\u2019s Presentation<\/strong>. Yes, YouTube ate TV<\/a>, then podcasts<\/a>, and is now the dominant streaming platform. Yes, they ponied up for Chappell Roan to perform. But YouTube remains a content creator platform without a personality \u2014 sort of the anti-Disney. It\u2019s brand is \u2026 a video player. The most compelling thing MrBeast has made, Beast Games, is on Amazon. This is, admittedly, not a business problem. But at least Warner Bros. and Paramount feel like companies you want to succeed rather than an algorithmic digital appliance.<\/p>\n

\n\tLOSER<\/strong>:<\/strong> NBC Universal\u2019s Presentation<\/strong>. Upfront presentations should not be two hours. It\u2019s like somebody handing you a six-page r\u00e9sum\u00e9 \u2014 with two pages devoted to hyping Peacock, the streaming service that lost $432 million<\/a> last quarter. NBC otherwise had a huge ratings season thanks to the Olympics and Super Bowl, and now faces the unenviable task of convincing those viewers to stick around (joked Seth Meyers: \u201cWe have taken down CBS. Well, the Ellisons did, but I like to think we helped\u201d). Perhaps the biggest headline was Vin Diesel announcing four Fast & Furious shows in development, which feels less like \u2026 a lot? Fitting for a company living one quarter mile \u2014 and quarterly report \u2014 at a time.<\/p>\n

\n\tDraw: Fox\u2019s Presentation<\/strong>: The trailer for the Baywatch remake looked fun (lifeguards battling plane crashes, tornados, wildfires \u2014 typical lifeguard stuff). Toughest sell: \u201cIn the battle for attention, passion wins\u201d \u2014 while promoting Tubi, the streaming app you have never once clicked on first (though has rather impressive ad stats). Gordon Ramsay came out to bark, \u201cPeople really like watching other people doing some stupid fucking shit!\u201d \u2014 which is one way to promote your content. What was striking is how Fox, a decade or so ago, was still considered a relatively youthful network, but there was a CBS-level of gray hair among its showcased talent. When an anxious-looking teen came out to promote a sitcom, one feared she would be sacrificed for her collagen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLOSER<\/strong>: The Odyssey Race Critics<\/strong>. Shifting gears here. So, believe it or not, there are people looking at The Odyssey \u2014 a movie starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson and Jon Bernthal \u2014 and going, \u201cNope, still not white enough!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe backstory: I wrote a story Tuesday<\/a> about Lupita Nyong\u2019o being confirmed as Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra in The Odyssey. Then Daily Wire\u2019s \u201cI\u2019m not racist but\u2026\u201d podcaster Matt Walsh screenshot the story and wrote: \u201cNot one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong\u2019o is \u2018the most beautiful woman in the world.\u2019 But Christopher Nolan knows that he would be called racist if he gave \u2018the most beautiful woman\u2019 role to a white woman.\u201d The world\u2019s richest person, Elon Musk, amplified the tweet and wrote \u201cTrue.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThoughts: There\u2019s an ironic lack of awareness to declare that you know real beauty while saying something that any healthily socialized person would consider so ugly (especially over something as trivial \u2014 yes, trivial \u2014 as a movie). The line I italicized gives their game away \u2014 they assume the most beautiful woman role should go to a white woman. Because \u2026 why? And the story of Helen is partly a love story. You know who finds Nyong\u2019o \u2014 or literally any woman, for that matter \u2014 \u201cthe most beautiful woman in the world\u201d? Somebody who loves her. That\u2019s part of what love is. One suspects many chronically online men, sadly, haven\u2019t experienced this. Nolan, for his part, smartly isn\u2019t being drawn into this culture war.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tLupita Nyong\u2019o <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFrazer Harrison\/WireImage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A paralyzed Warners (with puppies!). A gloating Netflix. And some thoughts about the culture war backlash to Christopher…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486155,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[434,1887,18,117,208149,19,17,127,30853,31461],"class_list":{"0":"post-486154","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-disney","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-hollywood-winners-and-losers","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-netflix","16":"tag-the-odyssey","17":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116579126999916129","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}