Paramount Wisely Pivots on 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' IP as Its Pursuit of Warner Bros. Intensifies

Happy Thursday, folks!

This weekend, I have tickets to Wicked: For Good — because Universal took me off its All Media list for a bullshit reason — and I hope to carve out a couple of hours to check out the Sisu sequel, as I loved the first film from talented Finnish filmmaker Jalmari Helander.

I’d also like to remind folks that the Patricia Clarkson movie Lilly is now streaming on Netflix, and she’s said to give another terrific performance in that film, as she always does.

I wonder how many movies like Lilly Disney could finance with the $180 million the studio is reportedly paying Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Idina Menzel to reprise their voice roles in Frozen 3 and Frozen 4. That’s $30 million for each of them, per movie. Holy moly! But those figures include the actors’ backend participation, so given the ridiculous amount of money Disney is going to make off the Frozen sequels, I’d say it’s a fair deal. What was Disney supposed to do — let them go? Get that bag, gang!

Tonight’s top story concerns Paramount’s Ninja Turtles pivot and the studio’s ongoing pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery, which accepted official bids today from David Ellison as well as Netflix and Comcast.

There are also items about Kevin Costner playing Bill Clinton, Kumail Nanjiani’s return to Amazon and the streamer’s new Stargate series, the hot young cast for A24’s new horror movie, Daisy Ridley’s latest action-thriller, and the Wednesday creators returning to Netflix, which has also partnered with Reese Witherspoon on a new comedy spec. Plus, my thoughts on the teaser for Mona Fastvold’s Searchlight movie The Testament of Ann Lee, starring Amanda Seyfried.

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