GossipOpi’s No Filter Briefing: John Mulaney, Netflix and Hollywood’s Reset Button

Wednesday morning. No filler. Here is what mattered in entertainment while Tuesday disappeared.

John Mulaney May Be About to Become Maxwell Smart

Hollywood has apparently looked at John Mulaney and decided he needs a shoe phone.

Warner Bros. is eyeing the comedian for the title role in a new reimagining of Get Smart, according to TheWrap. Seth Grahame-Smith is writing, with Charles Roven and Andrew Lazar producing.

Important qualification: this is early development. Mulaney has not been officially announced as the next Maxwell Smart.

Still, the idea makes enough sense that you can already hear the rhythm. The original series made Don Adams a comedy institution, and the 2008 Steve Carell movie proved the property still had commercial life.

Hollywood loves recognizable IP. Every once in a while, it also finds a recognizable comedian who might actually fit it.

Netflix Is Finally Going to Tell Everyone What Its Movies Make in Theaters

This sounds like accounting news until you remember who is doing the accounting.

Netflix plans to begin officially reporting theatrical grosses for selected films this fall, a notable change for a company that spent years treating box-office reporting as somebody else’s tradition.

The first group includes La Bola Negra, which is set for a 47-day theatrical window before streaming. Other planned theatrical titles include David Fincher’s Brad Pitt-led The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth and Greta Gerwig’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew.

Netflix is not suddenly becoming a traditional studio. But after years of arguing that streaming engagement was the scoreboard that mattered, it is choosing to step onto Hollywood’s oldest public scoreboard.

Apparently the box office is outdated right up until you decide you would like to win it.

Star Wars Is Going Back to 1977—With a Much Bigger Screen

Disney and Lucasfilm have found a new way to sell audiences the original Star Wars: make it enormous.

A New Hope will return to theaters Feb. 19, 2027, for its 50th anniversary and its first-ever IMAX presentation. Select locations will show it in IMAX 70mm.

Then comes the new generation. Shawn Levy’s Ryan Gosling-led Star Wars: Starfighter is also slated for IMAX 70mm when it arrives in 2027.

The franchise spent much of its recent life expanding through Disney+. Now Lucasfilm is putting both its oldest theatrical weapon and one of its newest on the biggest screens it can find.

Fifty years later, Star Wars apparently still believes the answer is: make the screen bigger.

Sam Altman’s Brother Reviewed the Sam Altman Movie

Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial released its first trailer Tuesday, with Andrew Garfield playing OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ike Barinholtz appearing as Elon Musk.

Then Sam Altman’s brother entered the review business.

Jack Altman joked publicly that he would happily watch a feature-length movie make fun of his brother, while suggesting the trailer had not exactly captured him.

That is unusually efficient publicity for a movie already built around one of the most debated companies and personalities in technology.

The film is due in select theaters on Christmas Day before a wider rollout in January.

Hollywood has made movies about real people who disliked their portrayals before. It is rarer to get the family review before opening night.

Netflix Wants to Saddle Up With Lonesome Dove

Hollywood’s next piece of valuable old IP is not wearing a cape. It is riding a horse.

Netflix has ordered a new television adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove, with Zoe Kazan and Jeb Stuart serving as co-showrunners.

The pair are already working with Netflix on East of Eden, making this another major literary property placed in their hands.

The 1989 Lonesome Dove miniseries became a television landmark. That means the new version inherits the problem facing every remake of something audiences already love.

Nobody is asking whether Hollywood can make another western.

They are asking why anyone needs another Lonesome Dove. That is the harder pitch.

The Next Horror Director Might Already Have Millions of Followers

Hollywood used to discover directors in film schools, festivals and assistant jobs.

Now it can check TikTok.

Viral horror creator Spencer Lackey is making his feature-directing debut with Lust, backed by Neon, Blumhouse Atomic Monster and Spooky Pictures.

Lackey built a huge following through short-form narrative horror, putting him in a growing class of internet-native creators moving into feature filmmaking.

The studios have watched online filmmakers turn tiny budgets and massive digital audiences into real theatrical attention.

Lackey is not being brought into Hollywood despite being an internet creator. Being an internet creator may now be the résumé.

Norah O’Donnell Went Back to Where She Started

Seven years after leaving the morning desk for the CBS Evening News, Norah O’Donnell is back on CBS Mornings.

O’Donnell formally rejoined Gayle King and Nate Burleson Tuesday as the show’s permanent third host.

CBS called it a homecoming. That is accurate, but the television business around her is very different from the one she left in 2019.

Evening-news prestige is no longer automatically the highest rung of a broadcast career. Morning television offers longer airtime, personality-driven interviews and a broader daily relationship with viewers.

O’Donnell went from mornings to evenings and now back again. Sometimes television’s career ladder turns out to be a circle.

Nick Nolte Reminded Venice He Is Still Nick Nolte

Nick Nolte is 85.

He also walked a Venice Film Festival red carpet Tuesday for the premiere of Company, Casey Affleck’s third film as a director.

It was a rare public appearance for an actor who has largely stayed away from the celebrity circuit. Nolte stars alongside Ben Mendelsohn, Scoot McNairy, Emily Alyn Lind and others in the drama.

There is something appropriately old-school about the whole appearance.

No franchise announcement. No elaborate viral stunt. An 85-year-old actor showed up at one of the world’s biggest film festivals because he had another movie.

Some careers do not need a comeback. They simply keep going.

The Man Who Helped Build The Suite Life Has Died

Jim Geoghan, co-creator and executive producer of Disney Channel’s The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, has died at 79.

His daughter confirmed that he died Sunday at his Los Angeles home. No cause of death had been publicly disclosed when the report was published.

For a generation, The Suite Life was simply part of growing up with Disney Channel. For Hollywood, it was also a launchpad for Cole and Dylan Sprouse and an important early showcase for Ashley Tisdale and Brenda Song.

Geoghan’s television career stretched much further back, including work connected to Three’s Company, The Facts of Life, Family Matters and Sanford.

Children eventually grow out of children’s television. The people who built those shows quietly become part of their childhood forever.

Laika Would Like to Remind Everyone That Humans Still Make Things

There may not be a more perfectly timed title for an entertainment project than this: Made by Humans.

Stop-motion studio Laika is launching Made by Humans: Creatives in Conversation, a video and podcast series about the craft behind filmmaking.

The series brings Laika artists together with filmmakers, designers, performers, puppeteers and digital creators to talk about how creative work is actually made.

The timing is not subtle. Entertainment is having an increasingly loud argument about AI, automation and what happens when software can imitate pieces of creative work.

The studio that still physically builds puppets, costumes and miniature worlds has chosen its framing.

The title is practically a campaign slogan.

Jimmy Kimmel Came Back—and Made the Exit Rumors Look Even Stranger

GossipOpi already has the ABC side of this story. Tuesday night added something new.

Hours after ABC pushed back on a report that Jimmy Kimmel Live! would end when Kimmel’s current contract expires in May 2027, Kimmel returned from summer break and went straight into a lengthy political monologue.

That does not prove he will remain at ABC after the current deal. The network has not announced a renewal.

But his first night back did not look much like the beginning of a ceremonial farewell tour.

Afternoon: everybody argues about whether the show is ending.

Night: Kimmel comes back behaving exactly like Jimmy Kimmel.

The No Filter Bottom Line

Tuesday’s entertainment news had one obsession hiding underneath almost everything else:

Hollywood keeps trying to figure out what should survive.

Warner Bros. may revive Get Smart. Netflix is bringing back Lonesome Dove. Lucasfilm is putting a 50-year-old Star Wars movie on an IMAX screen.

At the same time, Netflix is changing rules it spent years defending, studios are recruiting filmmakers from social media, Laika is planting a flag for human creativity and Norah O’Donnell has discovered that sometimes the next chapter looks suspiciously like an old one.

Hollywood loves to describe itself as an industry obsessed with what comes next.

Tuesday was another reminder that much of the business is actually about deciding what from yesterday is still valuable enough to bring into tomorrow.

That is your GossipOpi No Filter Briefing.