Paramount and Warner Bros. Become Skydance, 'Verity' Buries 'Digger,' and Hollywood's Sept. 28-Oct. 4
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery settle on the name Skydance, Colleen Hoover's Verity tops the box office as Tom Cruise's Digger flops, and Taylor Swift crashes Saturday Night Live.
The week of Sept. 28–Oct. 4 brought a new name for the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, a Colleen Hoover thriller to the top of the box office, and Tom Cruise's lowest opening in 19 years.
| Story | Lane | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Verity and Digger | Box office | A Colleen Hoover thriller wins the weekend as Tom Cruise posts his worst opening since 2007. |
| Neagley | Streaming | A Reacher spinoff takes Nielsen's top spot in its premiere week. |
| Saturday Night Live | TV | Taylor Swift crashes Dakota Johnson's monologue. |
| The Shards | TV | Ryan Murphy's FX thriller waits on a renewal call. |
| Animals | Film | Ben Affleck explains how he used AI on the Netflix movie. |
| A Statement | Film | Tom McCarthy's climate drama premieres at the New York Film Festival. |
| Zurich Film Festival | Awards | Flesh and Fuel takes the Golden Eye. |
| Oscars | Awards | Pakistan picks a documentary for its international entry. |
| Skydance | Industry | Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery settle on a name for their $110 billion combination. |
| Studio leadership | Industry | Three top studio jobs get filled as Warner Bros.' film chiefs head for the exit. |
| Michael Douglas | Celebrity | He reveals a long-ago romance with Kathleen Turner; she responds. |
| Tilda Swinton | Celebrity | The actress will publish a memoir told through objects. |
Box office and streaming
1. Verity wins the weekend as Digger sinks
Amazon MGM's adaptation of Colleen Hoover's Verity opened to an estimated $33.6 million from 3,510 theaters, the second-best debut for one of her novels and the weekend's No. 1. Warner Bros.' Digger, the Tom Cruise satire that Alejandro G. Iñárritu directed for a reported $160 million-plus, managed $8 million, Cruise's lowest opening since 2007's Lions for Lambs; both films drew a C+ CinemaScore from audiences.
The weekend ran to about $101 million, the third straight $100 million frame this fall. September closed at $601.9 million domestically, the second-best post-pandemic September on record. The figures are Saturday estimates.
2. Neagley takes Nielsen's No. 1 in its first week
Prime Video's Neagley, a spinoff of Reacher, drew 1.78 billion viewing minutes in the week of Sept. 14–20 and debuted at the top of Nielsen's weekly U.S. streaming chart, pushing its parent show down to third. Maria Sten plays the title character, a Chicago private eye, and Prime Video has already renewed the series for a second season.
Netflix's Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story opened second with 1.48 billion minutes, and Reacher finished third at 1.42 billion during its fourth-season finale week. Nielsen counts U.S. viewing on TV sets only.
Film and TV
3. Taylor Swift crashes Dakota Johnson's SNL monologue
Taylor Swift joined Dakota Johnson's opening monologue on Saturday Night Live, repaying the host's cameo in her "Patient Zero" music video. Swift called Johnson, a star of Verity who turned 37 the next day, her "literal therapist," and gave Travis Kelce a nod from the stage.
4. The Shards waits on a renewal call
More than three weeks after The Shards ended its first season on a cliffhanger, FX has not said whether the Ryan Murphy series will return. The show, adapted from Bret Easton Ellis's novel about Los Angeles prep school kids in the early 1980s and a possible serial killer, averaged about 237,000 live viewers an episode and stayed off Nielsen's streaming top 10.
Murphy has said he and Ellis imagined the story running for several seasons. FX has a record of taking its time on renewal decisions.
5. Ben Affleck on the AI he used in Animals
Ben Affleck said he used AI on Animals only through a proprietary dataset he built, so the tools drew on the film's own material and "wouldn't have to be extractive." At the Netflix movie's premiere, he called the technology "deeply and fundamentally limited" and said he had no interest in films "where you just type things and things come out."
Affleck sold his AI company InterPositive to Netflix for nearly $600 million earlier this year. Animals opens in select theaters and streams Oct. 9.
Awards and festivals
6. Tom McCarthy's A Statement premieres at the New York Film Festival
Tom McCarthy's A Statement had its premiere in the New York Film Festival's Spotlight section, a verbatim drama about a 1980 Florida conference on carbon emissions that closes without agreement. Adapted from Nathaniel Rich's book Losing Earth, it stars Paul Rudd, Paul Giamatti, Evan Peters, Amy Ryan and John Turturro, and opens in theaters Dec. 4.
7. Flesh and Fuel takes Zurich's Golden Eye
Flesh and Fuel, French director Pierre Le Gall's feature debut about a long-haul trucker, won the Golden Eye for best film at the 22nd Zurich Film Festival on Saturday. Pete Muller's Bucks Harbor took the festival's documentary prize.
8. Pakistan picks a documentary for the Oscar race
Pakistan has selected Mo Naqvi's Hanging By a Wire as its entry for Best International Film at the 99th Academy Awards, the first time the country has chosen a documentary for the category. The film reconstructs the 2023 rescue of six schoolchildren and two adults stranded in a cable car 900 feet above a valley in northern Pakistan, using eyewitness footage and survivor testimony. It premiered at Sundance in January and reaches Paramount+ later this month.
Industry and celebrity
9. Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery become Skydance
David Ellison announced Friday that the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance, with the $110 billion deal set to close Tuesday. Ellison, who will run the company with co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, wrote that the name keeps Paramount and Warner Bros. as distinct brands under one parent. The combination follows a year-long pursuit and a two-month delay from antitrust suits by 12 state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America, settled under a five-year consent decree that keeps the two operations separate in several businesses.
10. The post-merger studio jobs take shape
The reshaped company is filling its top studio posts. Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, the Warner Bros. film chiefs, are out, and Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg are set to run the combined movie studios. On the television side, George Cheeks will oversee all three studios — Warner Bros. Television, CBS Studios and Paramount Television Studios — with Channing Dungey and Matt Thunell reporting to him, while HBO's Casey Bloys is in line to run the combined streaming operation, which is expected to bundle HBO Max and Paramount+ as separate brands.
11. Michael Douglas reveals a Romancing the Stone romance
Michael Douglas writes in his new memoir One Helluva Ride that he and Kathleen Turner had a secret relationship while filming 1984's Romancing the Stone, a story the two denied for 40 years. Turner's response, given to People: "Good heavens what a fuss about something 40 years ago!" Douglas wrote that the relationship ended after his then-wife, Diandra, visited the set and made her view of their separation clear.
12. Tilda Swinton will publish a memoir told through objects
Tilda Swinton will publish her debut memoir, Material Evidence, in the fall of 2028 through Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book skips chronology and tells her life through objects, among them a christening dress, a wooden leg, a letter and a length of embroidery silk. Swinton called it "a book about curiosity."
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