Evenin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LINKEDIN here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on SUNDAY, July 5, 2026. Where here is Adam Aron’s exclusive first-person report from the big Taylor/Travis event at MSG on Friday . . . what’s that? He didn’t send it? Ah, come on, Aron! Well, thankfully, Page Six took pictures of about 90 attendees for the curious (Fallon, Colbert and Seth made the list, but alas, it seems Kimmel and Oliver were left off — the next Strike Force Five pod recording is gonna be really awkward). I didn’t see Mr. Aron in the Page Six photo cavalcade . . . so I don’t think “CEO of AMC THEATRES” was on their tip sheet. Sorry, Adam.
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| They’re all very close personal friends. Ya know, from college. Via Giphy |
BUT: John Oliver was clearly too busy to attend. Catch the riveting conclusion of his General Hospital run this week! 
WELL: Trump didn’t get that FIFA peace prize for nothing . . . I mean, it was still a terrible call — but way to keep that integrity solid, FIFA.
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| Via NYT |
THEN: MLB is doing an interesting kinda “test run” with NBC/PEACOCK today — all 15 games are streamable on PEACOCK (you can select up to 4 to have on at once), and 2 of the games are on NBC (one was at 12 noon, the other starts at 7 p.m.).
- All of MLB’s TV/streaming rights deals are up in 2028.
OH: This NYT map showing how various ethnicities are distributed at the town level in the U.S., based on self-reported census data, was pretty fascinating. And pretty spot on for my area of the Jersey Shore. NETFLIX, you won’t have any issue casting Irish and Italian extras in your new East Coast soundstage home. SPEAKING OF THE IRISH: This clip last week on FOX’s James Corden World Cup late night show with Colin Farrell forgetting he had to dial back the cursing for live TV was pretty priceless if you didn’t catch it. 
ALSO: CROWDFLARE is taking on the role of correcting #BigTech’s “crafty” ways. It’ll block “mixed-use” site crawlers — ones that combine both traditional search crawlers and AI-bot training searchers, like, say, GOOGLE does — from accessing any web pages that host ads as of September 15. PLUS: Here’s a PEW survey of about 9,700 folks surveyed at the end of May. So, factor in any increases in purple after seeing Toy Story 5.
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| Via Axios |
OH: Ashton Kutcher is changing VC firms — he’s exiting SOUND VENTURES, which he established with Guy Oseary over a decade ago, and launching a new one with Morgan Beller, who previously co-led META’s crypto effort called Libra, among other entries on the CV. THEN: If you want to see what a real #BigTech fine 💰 looks like — you have to go to the EU, as always. GOOGLE was not able to get out of paying a $4.7B EU fine issued . . . uh, last decade for anti-competitive measures taken around mobile phone software.
AH: It’s funny what happens to sales for your car business when you decide that being outspoken in the spotlight and doing things like wielding chainsaws on stage as your policies put tens of thousands of people out of a job is a bad look — TESLA sales were +25% in Q2 vs. DOGE Q2 in 2025.
- Never underestimate the brevity of American memory . . . and an EV interest bump thanks to the policies of that CEO’s former BFF in the White House.
OH: If you’re wondering why Zuck is now suddenly being generous in offering AI cloud computing capacity at his META data centers to outside clients — he also said in a town hall last week that the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” according to Reuters. 👀 FINALLY: Just a #goodread to round out Independence Day weekend from a part of the world that is still defending its freedom, 4 years and counting, in Ukraine. Often lost in the narrative are the kids who are growing up in that country amidst the headlines of drone strikes and unreliable support from certain political regimes. But this read about what prom looked like for a group of friends in Ukraine this year was a great reminder to both appreciate the freedoms we have and to continue fighting encroachments on them by the current U.S. administration, which decided not to take the weekend off from its pursuits.
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| Via NYT |
🎥 The Box Office
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| Via Giphy |
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