The Drop Issue 35 Skydance Eats Everything

Big news this week. The $110 billion Paramount Warner Bros megadeal finally closed, and David Ellison, son of Oracle founder and Hawaii-island-owner Larry Ellison, has decided the whole thing will be called Skydance. Not Paramount. Not Warner. Skydance. That's the name of the little studio his daddy's money bought him in 2010. He posted it on X on a Friday the way a guy announces he's getting into cold plunges. A hundred years of Warner Bros history, the lot where they shot Casablanca, the Looney Tunes library, all of it now a sub-brand under a logo that mostly makes Tom Cruise movies about running.

Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, the two people actually running the Warner film side, got walked out the same week per Deadline. Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg from Paramount are taking the combined unit. That's how it always goes. One side wins the merger before the ink dries, the losing side gets a press release about new adventures, and six months from now there's a slate of nine Mission Impossible spinoffs and a live action Scooby Doo. Enjoy the content.

The Drops

East of Eden (Netflix). Zoe Kazan adapted the Steinbeck doorstopper into a seven episode Netflix series, with Florence Pugh playing Cathy Ames, Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist as the Trask brothers, Ciarán Hinds as Samuel Hamilton. On paper this is the week's prestige swing. Pugh promoted it on Fallon on Tuesday which, incidentally, is why Fallon is on the list. The novel is one of the two or three best American books of the last century, so Netflix has roughly a 20 percent chance of not fumbling it (the book it's based on on Amazon). The cast is strong enough that even a half fumble is watchable. Give it two episodes.

✅ WORTH IT

Ted Lasso season 4 (Apple TV+). They said it was over. They said season three was the end. They lied, because Apple TV+ needs the one show anyone has heard of to keep running. Episode 9 this week killed a beloved character (Decider spoiled it in a headline, so blame them, not me) and Tanya Reynolds is out doing press about honoring Mae in the finale. Four seasons in, the show has become a grief delivery system wearing a mustache. The 8.4 average is doing a lot of work covering for a run that lost its fastball somewhere in season two. Fans will still watch. Fans would watch Ted Lasso read a cereal box.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Lanterns (HBO Max). This is the one everybody missed. Damon Lindelof, Chris Mundy, and Tom King built a Green Lantern show that is basically True Detective with power rings. Kyle Chandler as Hal Jordan, Aaron Pierre as John Stewart, a murder in the American heartland, cosmic cops doing procedural work in a cornfield. An 8.4 average rating on 484 votes is not a fluke. DC has been a scorched earth campaign for a decade and somehow the one thing that works is a prestige noir about a lantern. Figures.

🏆 DROP EVERYTHING

UNABOMBER (Netflix, movie). Russell Crowe as the Harvard psychologist who ran creepy ego-breaking experiments on young Ted Kaczynski, Jacob Tremblay as Ted himself, Shailene Woodley as the FBI agent on the manhunt. Janus Metz directing. The premise is actually interesting: the Murray experiments as origin story for the manifesto guy. The execution lands somewhere around a 6.6, which is the Netflix biopic baseline. Watchable, a little cheap, you will text somebody about it, you will not remember it in six months.

🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

American Horror Story season 13 (Hulu). They are back for a thirteenth season, titled or themed around something called The Return of Devil's Night. Thirteen seasons. That is a prison sentence. Ryan Murphy at this point is less a creator and more a landlord collecting rent from the FX budget. If you still watch AHS you already know whether this one is for you. The 8.0 is historical rating inflation from the good seasons dragging up the carcass of the bad ones.

🐍 SLOP

The Final Problem (Netflix). Spanish limited series about a retired actor who used to play Sherlock Holmes getting pulled into a real murder at a small hotel on an island near Mallorca. That is a great logline. Jose Coronado and Maribel Verdú in the cast, which, if you know Spanish TV, is pedigree. Only 23 votes so far, but a 7.1 for a crime show nobody has told you about is a decent bet for a quiet weekend.

✅ WORTH IT

Also out there, briefly

The Simpsons season 38 (Hulu). Thirty eight. That is older than most people reading this. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

LEGO One Piece (Netflix). A LEGO version of the live action LEGO version of the anime. We are three layers of plastic deep. 🐍 SLOP

WWE Raw (Netflix). The weekly reminder Netflix paid $5 billion to be a cable channel. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

The Tonight Show / Late Night with Seth Meyers (Peacock). They exist. They had Florence Pugh on to plug East of Eden. That is all you need. 🐍 SLOP

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation season 3 (Hulu). The isekai about a 34 year old who gets hit by a truck and reincarnates as a wizard baby. The anime people know. The anime people have strong feelings. The 8.4 is real. ✅ WORTH IT

Pick of the Week

Lanterns on HBO Max. Lindelof writing a cosmic cop show as a slow burn murder mystery is exactly the kind of accident that only happens when the content committee is too busy renaming the company for the fourth time to notice. Watch it before Skydance finds out.

The Closer

Here's where we are. Disney licensed Ice Age, Percy Jackson, Will Trent, and Elio to Netflix per Variety, because the Mouse would rather monetize the enemy's 325 million subs than keep its own stuff on Disney+. Paramount and Warner are now one studio called Skydance. Fallon is still on the air. A guy made a video game to promote NERDS Clothing at Comic Con. Elizabeth Holmes was secretly filmed in her house by Nathan Fielder for sixteen hour shifts with a seven person crew. The industry is a dying mall, and we're the people still eating at the Sbarro.

See you next week.