07-23-2026 Daily Edition

Vroom vroom. Jonathan Levine and Tom Cruise Cindy Ord/Getty Images; Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images The engines are ready to roar again. Paramount is finally putting the pedal to the floor on a sequel to Days of Thunder, giving the keys to Jonathan Levine to sit in the driver’s seat as director of the Tom Cruise vehicle. Cruise is on board to star in the follow-up to his 1990 racing drama and is producing with Jerry Bruckheimer, one of the producers of the original. The feature is intended to be Cruise’s next production. Paramount’s tapping of Levine, whose deal is in the midst of negotiations, is a strong vote of confidence in Mr. Irrelevant, its upcoming sports drama that Levine helmed. That movie, which stars David Corenswet and has a prime Christmas Day wide release, has been hitting stratospheric highs during test screenings earlier this spring. Days of Thunder was a reteaming of Cruise with his Top Gun helmer Tony Scott, and while it didn’t fly as high as the latter, it still proved to be among the more memorable Cruise outings. The actor played hotshot NASCAR racer Cole Trickle who lives life in the fast lane, while crashing cars, finding love and winning Daytona 500s. The stellar cast included Robert Duvall and Nicole Kidman, as well as Cary Elwes and Randy Quaid. Details for the new story are being kept under the hood, but the script is written by Will Staples, who has written video games such as Call of Duty 3: Modern Warfare, and co-wrote the Michael B. Jordan action movie Without Remorse. Few directors have as varied a résumé in Hollywood as Levine, who has successfully shifted lanes from slasher horror (All the Boys Love Mandy Lane) to Sundance audience winners (The Wackness) to cancer dramedy (50/50) to zombie love story (Warm Bodies). He even has Seth Rogen comedies The Night Before and Long Shot, the latter also starring Charlize Theron, on the list. Levine most recently spent time in the prestige TV world, directing episodes of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers, the drama starring Kidman and co-created by David E. Kelley. He is repped by WME and Goodman Genow. The 2026 World Cup by the Record-Breaking TV Numbers The tournament shattered all previous marks for soccer in the United States. Ferran Torres of Spain celebrates after scoring the only goal in the 2026 World Cup final on July 19. David Ramos/Getty Images Pretty much from the opening kick, the 2026 men’s World Cup was setting viewing records in the United States. The opening match between Mexico and South Africa on June 11 drew 13.4 million viewers for Telemundo and Peacock’s Spanish-language telecast and 7.19 million for Fox’s English-language presentation. Both were all-time highs in the U.S. for the opening game of the World Cup, and for Telemundo and Peacock, it was the most watched World Cup game ever on Spanish-language TV in this country. The latter mark lasted all of seven days, until Mexico’s next match. NBCUniversal, which owns Telemundo and Peacock, and Fox Sports would go on to break and re-break multiple audience records throughout the World Cup. The last one the two companies set — a combined audience of 62.8 million viewers for the July 19 final (and 66.4 million for the match alone) — obliterated the previous all-time high for a soccer telecast in the United States, which was 26.7 million for the 2015 women’s World Cup final. The high mark for a men’s match was 25.78 million for the 2022 final. Having the World Cup in North America — which from a TV perspective meant afternoon and evening timeslots for nearly every match, a huge advantage over the past few World Cups — certainly helped fuel the ratings. Changes to the way Nielsen measures on-air viewing in recent years also helped around the margins, but even with those advantages, both Fox and Telemundo blew past expectations for how successful a TV event it would be. The top 11 matches, in honor of the 11 players on the pitch for a soccer team, from the World Cup are below; all figures are combined audiences for Fox, Telemundo and Peacock. Below the chart are some more eye-popping figures from the tournament. Other numbers from the World Cup: 14.04 million: Average viewers for the 104 games in the World Cup (7.74 million for Fox, FS1 and Tubi; 6.3 million for Telemundo, Peacock, Universo and other NBCU platforms). The expansion of the field to 48 teams meant several extra groups from the past seven World Cups (when the field was at 32 teams), an additional knockout round and 32 more matches. 116, 143: Percentage increases in viewers for Fox Sports and Telemundo/Peacock compared to the 2022 World Cup, which was played in Qatar in November and December of that year. 9: The number of Fox telecasts that beat the previous all-time high for an English-language broadcast of a men’s World Cup game (16.78 million for the 2022 final). 77.2 billion: Minutes of World Cup coverage consumed on Telemundo, Peacock, Universo and other Telemundo digital platforms during the tournament. That’s more than the combined total for the 2022 and 2018 tournaments (43.2 billion). 4: The number of telecasts since Jan. 1, 2024, that drew a larger combined audience in the United States than the Spain-Argentina final. They are the past three Super Bowls (which all had more than 120 million viewers) and the September 2024 presidential debate (67.14 million across 17 networks). 4 billion: Views for FIFA’s official YouTube channel during the World Cup. 1.7 billion: The number of unique viewers worldwide who watched World Cup-related videos on YouTube during the tournament, according to the streamer’s internal data. 21 million: Average viewership for 40-plus official YouTube broadcasts worldwide of the final match. 17.2 billion: Views of World Cup content across all of Fox Sports’ digital and social channels during the tournament. 2.25 billion: Video views on Telemundo’s social platforms, a ninefold increase from the 2022 and 2018 World Cups. Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal Blessed by European Union Regulators So far, antitrust cops in over a dozen countries have cleared the deal. David Ellison Paramount Skydance Competition enforcers in the European Union have signed off on Paramount’s $111 billion bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, another key approval as the company fights a legal challenge from a coalition of 12 states. The European Commission cleared the deal on Wednesday after Paramount agreed to withdraw from United International Pictures, its film distribution joint venture with Universal Pictures. The studio also said it wouldn’t enter into any film distribution deal with Universal for the next ten years. “These commitments fully address the competition concerns identified by the Commission by ensuring that the films of the merged entity will not be distributed jointly with those Universal or Disney,” states the commission’s release. The greenlight comes days after a federal judge in California temporarily blocked Paramount from closing the deal. The court will consider next month whether the transaction should be frozen until the case is decided, putting the studio at risk of having to pay hefty financial penalties to Warners shareholders. In June, the Justice Department approved the deal without any concessions. The commission investigated the impact of the acquisition on the production and distribution of films for release in European Union theaters, plus the supply and licensing of content. At the production level, the commission found that there’s sufficient competition from rivals, including Disney, NBCUniversal, Sony and Amazon MGM. But at the distribution level, it concluded that there’ll be “high concentration” and “increased transparency” in countries where Paramount has a partnership with Universal because of the addition of Warners’ movies portfolio. The deal would’ve led to the distribution of Warners’ movies via United International Pictures. Without Paramount’s commitment to secure approval of the deal, cinema operators would’ve faced worse rental and distribution terms. There are also other pledges from the studio related to theatrical distribution in the region. Paramount must surrender its stake in UIP within 13 months of the closing of the deal. “Not only does this combination not pose any competitive harms, it actually enhances competition by creating a scaled media and entertainment company with the ability to truly challenge the tech platforms that have come to dominate the industry,” said Paramount legal chief Makan Delrahim in a statement. “By strengthening competition it will support increased investment in content, expand opportunities for creatives and deliver greater choice for consumers.” So far, antitrust enforcers in over a dozen countries have cleared the deal. Regulators probing foreign investments from Gulf sovereign wealth funds in Germany, Italy, France, Romania, Slovenia, Belgium, Czechia, New Zealand and Spain have also approved the merger. 'Furious' Review: Emmy Rossum and Lola Petticrew Lead Hulu’s Complex, Ultimately Satisfying Epstein-Era Serial Killer Thriller Elizabeth Meriwether created the eight-part cat-and-mouse series, loosely based on the 1987 Debra Winger/Theresa Russell film 'Black Widow.' Emmy Rossum and Quincy Tyler Bernstine in 'Furious.' Disney/Sarah Shatz In Bob Rafelson’s 1987 thriller Black Widow, Debra Winger’s Alex, a government agent obsessed with the possibility that several recent deaths are connected, tricks her slimy boss (Terry O’Quinn) by explaining that her own history of abuse allows her to understand the mindset of a suspected serial killer (Theresa Russell). When she senses he’s convinced by her theory, she points and laughs. “Don’t you know? No one knows why anyone does anything,” she says. It’s safe to assume this line played at least some role in Elizabeth Meriwether’s approach to making Black Widow — the 45th highest grosser of 1987 — into one of the odder pieces of IP mined in the streaming era. If Black Widow meant to shock viewers with the notion that sometimes a woman might be capable of committing murder simply for money, Hulu’s Furious is all about a more nuanced sense of motivation for female rage. If anything, the actions in Furious seem over-motivated — at worst to the point of coincidence and contrivance, but at best making the persuasive case that if society and its most trusted institutions are incentivized to ignore the exploitation of girls and young women, then taking extreme steps is defensible, or at least uncomfortably comprehensible. This makes Furious one of the rare film-to-television transplants with enough plot and more than enough thematic concern to justify going from 100 minutes to eight hours. The series unsteadily walks the line of gawking sensationalism in its first half but, especially in its home stretch, becomes a complex, well-acted and even funny thriller about the ongoing toll of trauma, the psychic cost of revenge and the danger of a life driven by anger. Despite the “Inspired by...” credit and the presence of screenwriter Ronald Bass as executive producer, Meriwether’s (The Dropout, Dying for Sex) adaptation leaves Black Widow behind almost immediately. Emmy Rossum plays Alice, a probational agent transitioning to the FBI after years as an NYPD homicide detective, a job she left in part to escape an abusive cop boyfriend (Jake Lacy’s Marshall). Alice wants to work in the FBI’s sex crimes department, but until she gets a formal assignment she’s stuck answering calls from crackpots. Then her former NYPD partner (Scoot McNairy) calls her in to consult on a case that appears to involve the overdose death of the son of one of New York City’s richest men. Alice quickly becomes certain that it’s one of several recent deaths that are linked, and she’s able to get FBI jurisdiction under the oversight of Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), an alcoholic hardened by years of exposure to crimes against children. Now operating out of a gloomy basement office of outcasts — shades of Dept. Q or several seasons of The Wire — Alice quickly realizes that her suspicions are correct. We’re immediately introduced to Lola Petticrew as a woman first seen in a cat mask and later explained to be named Catherine. She’s calculating and vicious, preying on men who prey on girls. Alice isn’t wrong to want to bring Catherine down, but Alice’s own past and a lot of paralleled editing suggest that the two women and their agendas aren’t actually that different. What follows is an extended game of cat and mouse in which both adversaries might be mice, but the mice have fangs. If shows like MTV’s Sweet/Vicious and films like Promising Young Woman caught the zeitgeist of the #MeToo movement — the thirst for a justice long overdue — Furious joins Hulu stablemate The Testaments in catching the zeitgeist of the Epstein Files era: fury at the way justice is willfully denied by the very people entrusted with our protection. I’m not sure if Brian Kirk was exactly the right or exactly the wrong person to direct the first couple of Furious episodes. The opening installments look and feel like a very familiar serial killer show, a genre in which Kirk (Dexter, Luther) is well-versed. From its treatment of violence to the nudity that Catherine deploys as a weapon as potent as a fentanyl-filled syringe, those early episodes are often distractingly lurid and voyeuristic. One could argue that this is a bit of a bait and switch — an intentionally off-putting application of the male gaze (so characteristic of a genre in which the antagonists and protagonists are usually men and the victims frequently women) to a story in which most of the principal characters are women, with the men reduced to simplistically villainous and sympathetic secondary roles. Still, “I see what you’re doing” isn’t necessarily the same as “I appreciate what you’re doing.” The fourth episode, directed by Karena Evans, marks the point at which I started to appreciate the friction that Furious is creating between the way audiences expect this story to be told and the way Meriwether and company want to tell it. This is a messy and emotionally ragged story focused on people who have earned that melodrama, but it helps when Furious is able to approach the story from the fringes. It isn’t that stars Rossum and Petticrew are bad. Both are excellent as women emerging from a pupa of damage and tentatively fluttering their wings. Petticrew, who is 30 but played a teen convincingly as recently as 2024’s Say Nothing, portrays Catherine as the sociopathic consequence of a culture prone to sexualizing the young. Catherine enjoys doing what she’s doing because she was never taught to enjoy normal things. Rossum, by contrast, conjures a woman unable to enjoy anything; her dead-eyed smiles, meant (unsuccessfully) to put others at ease, are haunting.