
Bari Weiss
Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press/CBS
After a brief burst of good ratings results, CBS News is once against under a dark cloud of allegations of MAGA appeasement and corporate overlord overreach.
With her contract now expired and inhibitions lapsed, longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfsonsi tore the Bari Weiss-run division a new one over the direction the onetime home of Walter Cronkite has gone since Donald Trump‘s “good friend” David Ellison bought Paramount last year.
“Fearless, independent reporting has always been the defining standard at 60 Minutes,” Alfonsi said Wednesday, calling her exit from the newsmagazine after months of butting heads with Weiss “a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.”
Back in December of 2025, well-respected Alfronsi pulled back the veil on the early days of anti-woke warrior Weiss’ reign after a planned and advertised 60 Minutes segment on the Trump administration’s deportation of migrants to harsh El Salvador prisons was pulled from the Sunday show at the 11th hour. At the time, Weiss said the long vetted piece wasn’t balanced enough for primetime. Alfornsi, who noted all the usual moves and requests had been made and approved in advance, went public and called the pulling of her piece a “political” move by bosses who wanted to be in fickle Trump’s good graces.

Bari Weiss
Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Uber, X and The Free Press/CBS
Now, after a weary Anderson Cooper left 60 Minutes at the end of the just concluded season, the 20-year CBS News vet Alfonsi, who is still employed at the company as of right now, took her POV even more big picture.
“Today, CBS management is abandoning that mission, choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it,” Alfonsi said in a long statement (see below) over her segment (which later did air) and potential larger issues at play. “The wall between editorial independence and corporate interest at CBS is being methodically torn down. Journalists willing to challenge authority are being pushed aside in favor of those who will not. If this continues, the result will be a broadcast that looks like 60 Minutes but lacks the courage and character to produce journalism that matters.”
The past year has seen the previous owners of Paramount pay out $16 million to the former Apprentice host to settle a weak $20 billion lawsuit he brought over a 2024 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, as well as Ellison and crew fete the media lambasting Trump at a private dinner before this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Almost simultaneously with Alfonsi’s very blunt concerns about press freedom and journalistic integrity, the Freedom of the Press Foundation is planning to send Ellison and Paramount brass a blistering letter signed by the likes of former ABC News superstar Sam Donaldson, ex-CNN White House correspondent Jim Acosta (who recently called the looming situation “state-controlled media” in the making), ex-MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, and nearly 200 more journos, academics and filmmakers. The missive warns that Paramount’s $111 billion purchase of CNN parent company Warner Bros Discovery will “open the door to improper political meddling in journalists’ editorial decisions.”
The letter, first revealed by Status late May 26, goes on to name names and point fingers.
“Ellison will likely alter CNN’s editorial direction (not to mention meddle with HBO’s documentaries) to be more friendly to the administration, threatening press freedom,” it says, noting the MAGA gang (as made explicit by Pete Hegseth and others) “expect exactly that.”
The Alfonsi 60 Minutes exit and the Freedom of the Press Foundation letter both landed just ahead of the News & Documentary Emmy Awards on, respectively, Wednesday and Thursday nights.

Jim Acosta
Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images
The Alfonsi news hit just before the Freedom of the Press Foundation this morning kicked off a stark press call with documentary filmmakers and journalists titled: How the Paramount Skydance/Warner Brothers Merger Threatens Press Freedom and Documentary Film.
In case you were still unclear about where this was all going, Acosta laid it out bluntly.
“I think what’s happening right now is pretty dangerous,” said the Trump-battling former CNN Chief White House Correspondent. “For Paramount, for CBS, to fire Sharon Alfonsi from 60 Minutes is a very in-your-face move by people who … don’t care very much about the First Amendment. If they were all that worried about is this going to get through the Justice Department, is this going to go through, they would not have fired Sharyn Alfonsi at the very same time.”
BTW – Acosta was slightly off there. As we said before, Alfonsi was not fired from 60 Minutes — her contract expired and was not renewed.
In a dig at new-ish CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil and the broadcast’s consistent low ratings (which bopped up over 4 million last week for the first time in ages), Acosta added on Wednesday’s call, “If you’re going to measure things as they normally are in this line of work, then he should be worried about his position — not Sharyn Alfonsi — inside CBS. But this is a very determined group of people who have taken over CBS.”
“They are now on the verge of taking over CNN and if you care about CNN, as I do, then you have to be very worried about what is going to happen to this nation’s 24-hour news network of record, and whether or not the same kinds of editorial decisions that are being driven by partisan ideologues is going to affect the news gathering and editorial decision,” he went on to note. “My sense of it is, is that they’re going to do the same thing at CNN as they were doing over at CBS, because guess what, everybody’s just letting them get away with it.”
“News outlets have a First Amendment right to report from whichever perspective they see fit, and Freedom of the Press Foundation will defend that right regardless of politics, regardless of whether any of us personally agree with how the right is exercised,” stated Seth Stern, chief of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation opening today’s call. “But presidents don’t have a right to abuse their offices to shape the editorial that the Constitution places in the hands of journalists. If executives like David Ellison “are willing to let presidents do so [they] need to stay out of the news business. There are plenty of more lucrative widgets they can go sell if they want to treat news just like any other product.”
Acosta and Stern were joined on Wednesday’s call by podcaster, tech journalist and CNN contributor Kara Swisher, Emmy-winning documentary filmmakers Laura Poitras and Geeta Gandbhir and journalist Katie Phang.
“This is not a new, unnatural position by corporations to get things from government,” said Swisher, who has declared she will not work for the Ellisons if they take over CNN. “But what I’m most concerned about is that the people that are buying these things, and you’ve seen it happen with Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, and elsewhere, is that a single group of people … with very little experience in media, with very little love of media” are making the decisions, she added, noting pressure by Trump and administration officials on news outlets over their reporting on the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran. “They don’t care if it’s a cat video, an AI cat video, or a journalistic report from Iran, a really good one.”
Having heard such comments and concerns almost from the moment Ellison turned his eye and wealth (with some help from Papa Larry Ellison and his Oracle billons and some Middle Eastern money) to WBD, Paramount was quick to respond.
“We respectfully disagree with efforts to characterize this transaction as harmful to journalism or competition,” a Paramount spokesperson told Deadline today.
“The proposed transaction is fundamentally pro-competitive and reflects a commitment to invest in the future of journalism, not diminish it,” they added, echoing the Paramount party line of the past several months. “Far from limiting competition or press freedom, the combined company will have greater scale and resources to compete in an increasingly consolidated media landscape dominated by global streaming and technology platforms — strengthening consumer choice, supporting creative talent and reinforcing the long-term sustainability of trusted news organizations.”
Of course, talk is cheap and promises can prove worthless once economic (aka the over $80 billion in debt the merged ParaBros will be encumbered with once the deal is done) and political pressures come to bear.
With that, read Sharyn Alfornsi’s full statement on the end of her 60 Minutes contract here:
Over the weekend, my contract with CBS News expired, drawing to a close nearly twenty years with the network, including more than a decade at 60 Minutes.
Following an intense editorial dispute over our CECOT story, repeated attempts by my representation to establish a path forward were met with absolute silence from network executives. The message could not be clearer: my time at 60 Minutes is apparently over.
In the coming days, network leadership may attempt to hide behind corporate euphemisms like “modernization” and “restructuring” to explain away my departure. Don’t be misled. This was not a routine corporate transition; it was a deliberate choice to penalize a journalist for refusing to sanitize factually accurate reporting, and it sends a chilling message to the entire newsroom.
Fearless, independent reporting has always been the defining standard at 60 Minutes. Today, CBS management is abandoning that mission, choosing access journalism over accountability and protecting power rather than scrutinizing it.
The wall between editorial independence and corporate interest at CBS is being methodically torn down. Journalists willing to challenge authority are being pushed aside in favor of those who will not. If this continues, the result will be a broadcast that looks like 60 Minutes but lacks the courage and character to produce journalism that matters. To my colleagues, who became family – working beside you has been the privilege of a lifetime. You are second to none. I’ve learned exactly what it costs to hold the line right now. Hold it anyway. Viewers and the people who trust us with their stories deserve nothing less.
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Qatar’s Doha Film Festival (DFF) has unveiled the International Feature Film Competition lineup for its second edition which is due to take place this November.
The fifteen titles include Hosam Abu Dan’s Gaza-shot drama Thirteen in Gaza, a coming-of-age drama about a motherless thirteen-year-old living with her father in a Gaza displacement camp without privacy or protection. It won the NETPAC Award in Toronto in September.
It is among four Palestinian films in competition alongside Muayad Alayan’s Venice–selected Conversation with the Sea about a Palestinian man caught in the crosshairs of Israeli bureaucracy over a social security debt for his son who drowned in the Red Sea some two decades previously.
They also include Rabab Khamis’ documentary Sama, which will world premiere in the festival. It revolves around a ten-year-old girl who collects plastic and cardboard in Deir al-Balah in Gaza to sell as fuel and help sustain her family.
Mohanad Yaqubi’s Revolutionaries Never Die, taking its cue from 113 reels of films preserved by Lebanese filmmaker Jocelyne Saab, will also compete. It won the Special Jury Prize in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at Locarno over the summer.
They are among 11 films in the main competition supported by the Doha Film Institute (DFI), which oversees the festival.
The unveiling of the selection is a sign that the DFI is confident the event will go ahead in spite of regional instability caused by the U.S.-Iran-Israel war.
Qatar is a key mediator in indirect talks between the U.S. and Iran, at the same time as negotiating directly with the latter for a regional non-aggression security framework.
Further titles from the Arab world include Concrete Land by Asmahan Bkerat, following an Afro-Palestinian Bedouin family on the outskirts of Amman as luxury villas close in around them. Filmed over eight years, the filmmaker’s debut feature premiered in the Semaine de la Critique at Locarno.
Moroccan director Tala Hadid will present Bardi, about the centuries-old equestrian tradition of Tbourida, which premiered in the Currents section at the New York Film Festival.
As previously announced Yemeni Scottish director Sara Ishaq’s The Station, set against the backdrop of a women-only petrol station in war-torn Yemen, both opens the festival and competes.
Out of sub-Saharan Africa, Cameroonian director Auguste Bernard Kouemo competes with House of the Wind, which debuted in the Venice Film Festival’s Orizzonti sidebar winning its Special Jury Prize and the Lion of the Future for a Debut Film.
Also out of the region, is My Semba by Hugo Salvaterra. It follows three orphaned siblings in Luanda who fight for dignity through faith, fury and verse. The film won the Feature Film Competition Award at the International Film Festival Innsbruck.
Asia is represented by Thai director Sompot Chidgasornpongse’s 9 Temples to Heaven, about a family which visits nine temples in a single day in the hope of keeping their grandmother alive. The film debuted in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight. It went on to win Best Director and Best Actor in the Asian New Talent Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival and is Thailand’s submission for the 99th Academy Awards.
Also out of Asia are Zou Jing Cannes Critics’ Week Fipresci-winner A Girl Unknown, about a girl abandoned at birth who passes between three families, and Rafael Manuel’s Filipiñana about teenage tee-girl at a Manila country club who begins to uncover the violence beneath its manicured lawns.
The latter film won the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award for Creative Vision at Sundance and is Philippines submission for the 99th Academy Awards.
Further contenders include Chilean director Manuela Martelli’s The Meltdown, which premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard and is Chile’s 99th Academy Awards entry, and Alessandra Sanguinetti’s The Illusion of an Everlasting Summer, following two cousins on the Argentine Pampas through the photographer’s lens over 25 years. It won the Golden Leopard in the Filmmakers of the Present competition at Locarno.
Rounding out the selection is Tin Castle by Alexander Murphy follows an Irish traveller family, two parents and ten children, threatened with eviction as they fight to preserve their way of life in an old caravan.
“This year’s features competition reflects great ambition. The 15 films from across the world are united by the courage, imagination and urgency of their filmmakers. Each has travelled a remarkable journey, and it is deeply meaningful that Doha is a part of that journey, ensuring that these powerful works are seen, shared and remembered,” said Fatma Hassan Alremaihi, CEO of Doha Film Institute and Director of DFF.
The competition will feature a jury of five industry experts who select winners in Best Narrative (with prize money of US$75,000), Best Documentary (US$50,000), Best Artistic Achievement for feature narrative or documentary (US$45,000), and Best Performance (US$15,000) categories. A certificate of Special Mention will also be presented to a feature narrative or documentary.
The festival expands on the DFI’s long-running family-focused festival of Ajyal which ran for more than a decade during the same period.
Alongside the DFI, key partners on Doha Film Festival include Katara, Media City Qatar, Film Committee and Visit Qatar.
The festival will unfold from November 19 to 27.
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Coming off his breakout role this year, Michael Johnston is teasing what’s next.
The Obsession star, who is openly gay, recently teased an upcoming role in “a really incredibly queer story,” which includes a “steamy moment” on screen for LGBTQ fans.
“There will be a really incredible queer story in my future, and I’m so excited to play it and to have my steamy moment,” Johnston told Attitude.
Johnston previously noted that after the success of Obsession, he’s able to “choose what I want to do,” explaining that he’s “definitely looking forward to playing a really intentional queer role, story that’s really meaningful.”
Following his 2015-’17 run as Corey Bryant on MTV’s Teen Wolf, Johnston recalled he “still wasn’t comfortable with my sexuality at the time, but I had no idea the impact that just being myself and playing this character authentically would have. I got thousands of messages from people thanking me and telling me how they feel better about themselves. They were able to come out to their parents.
“The impact that I made just from doing something that scared me and being brave… and not only that was really cool, but also kind of helped me learn how to accept myself, so that’s something I’m really looking forward to,” added Johnston. “I don’t know, maybe I’ll write it myself.”
Johnston, who made his breakout performance as the toxically hopeless romantic Bear in Curry Barker’s Obsession, has most recently been in talks to join Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz in the upcoming fourth installment of The Mummy.
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Heavy hang the heads who wear the crowns, and that goes for Skydance Pictures Co-Chairs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, who’ll be tasked with getting under the hood and tuning up the incoming Warner Bros. theatrical 2027-2029 slates.
The first fire to put out: ensuring that Barbie 2 becomes a reality with its original franchise director Greta Gerwig and leads Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. There are other projects to look at as well, read the Jonah Hill directed reportedly finished comedy The Cut Off which was originally dated against The Odyssey this year and then undated. What’s up with that movie?
One of the next big auteur swings greenlit by the previous regime was director Baz Luhrmann’s next project Jehanne d’Arc. The director is currently waiting on a new draft of the script in hopes of a spring start.
While we’ve told you about the dated titles that Warners is delivering to the new Skydance, some of these are in various forms of production and development, read: the Sept. 8, 2028 dated New Line Weapons prequel, Gladys. That one is awaiting a final draft before attaching a director.
Going back to the desert days of Hollywood, it’s prime for any new administration to go through the previous regimes’ pickings and determine whether there are horses still worth getting behind. This went on when Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy arrived at Warner Bros. in June 2022 (the shot Batgirl was shelved, while WBD CEO David Zaslav wrote down and sold Coyote vs. Acme) and it occurred when Goldberg and Greenstein arrived at Paramount in the late summer of 2025 (read: one of the most prolific projects from the previous Brian Robbins regime which didn’t move to a greenlight was was the R-Rated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Last Ronin. In exchange, a new live-action feature of the sword carrying reptiles is in the works aimed at families).
And despite the recent bomb that is Warners’ $160M Tom Cruise political satire, Digger, Skydance co-CEO David Ellison says he’s not anti-big swing. At Tuesday’s Day One Skydance presser, he reminded everyone that Sinners was his favorite movie from last year.
In addition to franchises, “We’re going to make a complete diverse slate,” asserted Ellison. “One of the things I’m a big believer in is original storytelling.”
“One of the areas to be very cautious about is doing anything that jeopardizes the quality of these pictures, and anything that would jeopardize the quality of the marketing campaigns,” said Ellison, who believes that there’s a way for this two-headed monster of a studio to win, specifically the pro-forma content spend of $30 billion-plus annually, despite the burden of $79B in net debt.
Those are hard numbers for some financial analysts to wrap their heads around, but Ellison and his new co-CEO Ynon Kriez are out to prove to the town that their anomaly of a merger can indeed keep both legacy studios alive and grow product while paying down debt. While co-financing is always a solution, particularly on risky bets, it remains to be seen whether the new Paramount-Warner Bros. sometimes takes the easy way out. How’s that? Rather than risk a $300M feature gamble in production cost and marketing, will they simply accept the stage AGs’ penalties and shell out $30M for any film they’re unable to deliver in a 30-picture slate? It’s a cheaper alternative.
Ellison also underscored yesterday that when he took the reigns of Paramount a year ago, they overdelivered on synergies with $2.7B while doubling the slate to 15 films annually and greenlighting four new series.
For the many who feared the consolidation of the two historic studios, what should come as some balm is that with Warner Bros operating separately from Paramount Pictures under Jesse Ehrman and Mike Ireland, the two studios will respectively be able to compete against each other on projects.
“But there will be coordination,” emphasized Kriez in that regard.
He expounded, “The plan is to keep the studios independent creatively, so that each will have its own slate, its own relationship, same opportunities, and then we will choreograph the release schedule, and optimize it by genre and by audience demographic to achieve the best for the company as a whole.”
While we’ve told you what has been dated before, below is a sampling based on our previous reports of the kit and caboodle that’s coming Goldberg and Greenstein’s way. We’ve sussed what is ready and real on the 2027 and 2028 slates. Excluded from this list are myriad lit acquisitions made during the previous De Luca and Abdy regime.
PRIORITY
Barbie 2
Ideally Greta Gerwig return to direct and co write with Noah Baumbach and Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling returning to star in a sequel to Warner Bros’ highest grossing movie ever at $1.44B.
FINISHED (or nearing finish for release).
Clayface (Oct. 23) (DC)
The Cat in the Hat (Nov. 6)
Cut Off
Jonah Hill directed comedy which he stars in with Kristin Wiig
Dune: Part Three (Dec. 18)
Animal Friends (Jan. 22, 2027)
Remain (Feb. 5, 2027)
M. Night Shyamalan just screened at BeyondFest.
Panic Carefully (April 9, 2027)
F.A.S.T (May 14, 2027)
POST-PRODUCTION
The Revenge of La Llorona (Feb. 27, 2027)
Godzilla x Kong: Supernova (March 26, 2027)
Bad Fairies (May 21, 2027)
Man of Tomorrow (July 9, 2027)
-James Gunn’s sequel to Superman.
A Minecraft Movie Squared (July 23, 2027)
Jared Hess returns to direct.
Shiver (Aug. 13)
The Conjuring: First Communion (Sept. 10, 2027)
The Great Beyond (Oct. 1, 2027)
-J.J. Abrams’ Glen Powell and Jenna Ortega original sci-fi film.
Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum (Dec. 17, 2027 release)
-Directed by Andy Serkis off a screenplay by Philippa Boyens, Fran Walsh, Peter Jackson, Phoebe Gittens and Arty Papageorgiou.
Evil Dead Wrath (April 7, 2028)
IN PRODUCTION
Untitled Ocean’s Prequel (June 25, 2027)
-Bradley Cooper co-wrote, directs, produces and stars alongside Margot Robbie, who produces via LuckyChap.
Margie Claus (Nov. 12, 2027)
Untitled Nancy Meyers Movie (Dec. 25, 2027)
-Nancy Meyers directing from her own script
-Owen Wilson, Jude Law, Kieran Culkin and Erin Doherty star
The Batman Part II (Feb. 18, 2028) (DC)
Matt Reeves directed production is paused.
The Lunar Chronicles (Nov. 3, 2028)
animated
Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (May 17, 2028)
Jon Chu’s animated feature take of the classic Dr. Seuss children’s book.
Hello Kitty (July 21, 2028)
animated
Dynamic Duo (Sept. 22, 2028) (DC)
animation with puppets
PRE-PRODUCTION
Final Destination 7 (New Line) (May 12, 2028)
Michael Blanchart directing.
–Nasty (Clockwork)
Mary Bronstein directed Jenna Ortega and Rose Byrne off Isabella Jarosz screenplay. LuckyChap producing.
Sean Baker’s Ti Amo! (Clockwork)
Jehanne d’Arc (Nov. 22, 2028)
-Baz Luhrmann directing
-Schuyler Weiss and Catherine Martin producing. Currently awaiting next draft.
GREENLIT
By previous administration
Gremlins 3 (Oct. 6, 2028)
Chris Columbus directing. Awaiting rewrites.
The Jetsons Live-Action Movie
-Jim Carrey starring
-Colin Trevorrow attached to direct
Sean Penn’s Untitled January 6th Movie (Clockwork)
-Penn writing, directing and producing
-Bradley Cooper to star
The Brigands of Rattle Creek (Clockwork)
Park Chan-Wook domestic acquisition
GREENLIGHT CANDIDATES (or nearing):
The Flood (Aug. 2028)
Zach Cregger’s next movie with New Line starring Jennifer Lawrence.
Gladys (Weapons prequel set for Sept. 8, 2028)
In rewrites
Matrix 5 – Drew Goddard writing. (a 2029 release candidate)
DEVELOPMENT
Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman Reimagining
-Tim Burton directing
Blow Up the Chat
– Temple Hill producing
Care Bears
-Josh Greenbaum directing
-Good Fear, GoldDay producing
City of Angels Reboot
-Ashley Avis writing and directing
-Atlas Entertainment, Perez Pictures producing
Constantine 2
The Executioner
-Peter Safran producing
Forbidden Planet
-Emma Watts producing
Frank Bullitt Movie
-Steven Spielberg directing
Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest (June 1, 2029)
The Goonies 2
-Steven Spielberg, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Holly Bario and Chris Columbus producing
Live-Action Hot Wheels Movie
– Bad Robot and Jon M. Chu’s Electric Somewhere producing
Last Friday
– Ice Cube starring
Meerkat Manor (Warner Bros. Pictures Animation)
– The Green Room producing
Shibumi
-87North producing
Space Invaders (New Line)
– Weed Road Pictures, Safehouse Pictures producing
Them! Remake
-Michael Giacchino directing
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
Batman Brave and the Bold (DC)
Crazy Rich Asians 2
Savage Hunters aka Deathstroke & Bane Movie (DC)
Live-Action Flintstones reboot
-Ryan Gosling’s Open Invite producing
Free Willy Reimagining
-AGBO producing
Get Smart Reboot
-John Mulaney to star
– Charles Roven and Andrew Lazar producing
The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past
– Stephen Colbert, Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee writing
Prehistoria (Warner Bros. Pictures Animation)
– Vivienne Medrano writing and directing
Powerpuff Girls
Live-Action Teen Titans (DC)
Swamp Thing (DC)
Wonder Woman reboot (DC)
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