Latest / Studio Signal / Studio Signal — Friday, May 15, 2026
Transcript
- Good morning, I'm Kai Rivers and this is Studio Signal — your daily M&E intelligence briefing, brought to you by Harkins Capital. Let's get into it. Alright, Studio fam, it is Friday, May fifteenth. And the regulatory heat on David Ellison's ambition to merge Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery just went international. We talked yesterday about U.S. politicians raising red flags. well now, the European Commission is officially weighing in. According to a Variety exclusive from Cannes, the E.C.'s Executive Vice President, Henna Virkkunen, said that any potential merger of this scale "might have to be reviewed under several EU regulatory frameworks." This is a huge deal. It’s no longer just a domestic D.O.J. question. Getting a deal of this size past European regulators is a whole different beast, with a completely different set of concerns around market concentration and cultural impact. For Ellison, this adds a massive, complicated, and very expensive new layer to his chess game. The more regulators that get involved, from Washington to Brussels, the more hurdles he has to clear. It’s a sign that the path to creating another media titan is getting rockier by the day. Shifting from the boardroom to the box office, it looks like horror is having another good moment. The new romantic horror flick, 'Obsession', just pulled in a really solid two-point-six million dollars in previews. Deadline reports that the Blumhouse film, which Focus Features picked up for a little over fifteen million, is off to a strong start. A two-point-six million preview number for a movie with that budget is exactly what the studio wants to see. It proves, yet again, that the low-cost, high-thrill horror model is one of the most reliable bets in theatrical right now. And speaking of reliable bets, some old-school action heroes are getting another run. Screen Rant is reporting that Sylvester Stallone’s 'Expendables' franchise is officially bringing a previously cancelled movie back to life. In an industry obsessed with de-risking slates, going back to a known IP with a built-in fanbase is the oldest play in the book. It’s all about leveraging that brand recognition to cut through the noise. We'll see if audiences are still hungry for another go-around with this crew. Meanwhile, over at the Cannes Film Festival, it seems we have another buzzy title emerging. IndieWire and The Hollywood Reporter are both raving about 'Club Kid', the directorial debut from comedian and actor Jordan Firstman. The reviews are calling it brazen, funny, and surprisingly earnest—a wild party movie with a heart. After a few years of provocative online comedy, it sounds like Firstman has successfully reinvented himself as a filmmaker with a real crowd-pleaser on his hands. Keep an eye on that one as the festival market heats up. And hey, if you want to stay on top of all these deals, debuts, and market shifts every single morning, head over to studiosignal-dot-app. The first one thousand users get their first month of Pro for free. Just use the code STUDIO at checkout. Spots are limited, so grab yours while they last. Alright, let's take a quick look at the M&E markets before we wrap up. It’s a bit of a mixed bag out there today, with the overall sector sliding down just a fraction of a percent. The big story seems to be a pullback in the AI infrastructure space. CoreWeave is down more than six percent, and the titan Nvidia is down about four percent. This looks like some classic profit-taking after an absolutely massive run-up for those names. On the flip side, the big software players are having a great day. Microsoft is up more than three and a half percent, and Adobe is climbing over three percent as well, staging a nice little comeback. Warner Bros. Discovery, caught in all that merger talk, is basically flat, just ticking down a fraction. Investors are clearly in a wait-and-see mode as that regulatory story gets more and more complex. The gaming sector is the brightest spot today, up over a percent as a whole, with Take-Two continuing to show some strength. It looks like the market is rewarding software and content today, while cooling off on the hardware and infrastructure that powers it all. That's your signal for today. I'm Kai Rivers — thanks for tuning in, and I'll see you tomorrow.