The Five Biggest Hollywood Storylines for the Rest of 2026

Key takeaways

• Netflix's stock has fallen more than 30% over the past year while the S&P rose roughly 20%. Insiders blame a hangover from the failed Warner Bros. pursuit, but the deeper issue is slowing growth plus a hit drought, with a brutal second quarter that had no returning tentpoles and no breakout like last summer's "K-pop Demon Hunters." The response so far is more YouTube creator deals, podcasts, sports, and a gaming reorg. Shaw expects no executive shakeup before year end unless an activist investor forces it.
• The Netflix-YouTube fight escalated over the past four to six weeks. YouTube now offers to help fund top creators' programming while threatening to demote anyone who releases day-and-date on Netflix, because it does not want to lose its "only place for these creators" pitch to advertisers or be cast as the JV team to Netflix's major leagues. Whether Disney, Amazon, and Paramount can still build meaningful creator partnerships is an open question.
• Warner Bros. Discovery's merger uncertainty risks a brain drain of executives, producers, and projects that need answers from owners who do not yet exist. The pivotal negotiation is what David Ellison will divest to get California's attorney general to bargain seriously. Casey Bloys is likely to wait out the deal since his contract expires next year, which hands him leverage.
• Grand Theft Auto 6 arrives in November with pre-sales already at $260 million and one firm projecting $4.5 billion by launch week. GTA 6 could out-earn any movie's annual haul—and do it in six weeks. Take-Two stock has doubled in three years, the Netflix trailer drop briefly knocked the service offline, and films opening in November and December could lose oxygen. Belloni argues games stay culturally underweighted because business outlets staff video game coverage far below media and publishing.
• A federal film tax credit bill could be introduced in September. It has rare bipartisan backing, but passage hinges on Trump, who has favored tariffs. Georgia, hit hard by runaway production and facing a contentious Senate race, may be the swing factor. Such a credit would not end state-versus-state incentive wars, though it would help against London, Eastern Europe, and Canada.
• The 2030 World Cup US rights are expected to be settled by year end. Fox paid just $485 million this year as a make-good for the Qatar tournament, then saw record ratings; Telemundo paid $600 million for Spanish-language rights, and the two sold a combined $1.2 billion in ads. FIFA is likely to bundle English and Spanish rights to lure streamers, and both hosts see Disney and Netflix as the frontrunners, with buyers possibly overpaying even though 2030's European and North African time zones point to lower ratings.

Notable moments

• Belloni's summer barometer: the maitre d' at the Polo Lounge told him business was up slightly, "always a strong Hollywood indicator," alongside box office up 20% and strong World Cup ratings.
• Shaw's blunt framing of the core Netflix question: "when or how can Netflix break its programming slump" after most of a year without consistent hits.
• The observation that Netflix hits "tend to come out of nowhere," so analysts predicting a better back half are largely guessing.
• Netflix's public statement after the GTA 6 trailer that "some members briefly experienced an issue accessing Netflix, but we quickly recovered," a reaction not seen for a "Wednesday" season.
• Belloni on games coverage gaps: outlets have "way more people covering media and entertainment and even like publishing than they do video games," while Microsoft seeks a blanket deal for film and TV adaptations of Xbox titles.
• The Toronto Film Festival border banter, with Shaw ribbing Belloni that he specifically will "get hassled at the border."
• "Digger," the Tom Cruise movie carrying a reported budget well above $150 million, skipping fall festivals to avoid a "Joker" style backlash, with the hosts debating whether the real Joker lesson was Elemental and Indiana Jones.
• AMC's new Leawood Films, a distribution arm for outside-financed movies built on the Taylor Swift concert film and Markiplier's "Iron Lung," advised by Toby Emmerich and Ricky Strauss, with the open question of whether Regal and other chains will book AMC-distributed titles.

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