Hollywood Week: WBD, Barbie Sequel, Nancy Guthrie, Michael J. Fox, OpenAI, BTS/Grammys

Details

Category: Entertainment News

Published on Saturday, 01 August 2026 10:05

Written by Janet Walker

Even as David Ellison is petitioning the U.S. District Court for an early date to address the antitrust litigation which jackknifed finalizing the Warner Bros. Discovery deal, business remains full steam ahead on the WBD lot.

Barbie Sequel Evaporates

For Warner's, business as usual translates to securing a sequel to the biggest film ever in their history; the Greta Gerwig directed, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling starrer Barbie. Securing a sequel to the parade of 150 shades of bubbly pink and the perfect lifestyle of Barbie, Ken, and all their pals would be simple. However, unless a deal is made by December 2026, the rights to the wonderful world of Barbie revert back to Mattel.

Hollywood Week: "The Odyssey" Opens With IMAX Size Oscar Buzz, Brenda Fricker, Sam Neill

"The studio chiefs have been negotiating with the talent for months. The offers have included a cut of profit for the principal talent if the film reaches a certain level of box office success, and at least some upfront raises, including paying Mr. Gosling $20 million (his current asking price), two people with knowledge of the talks said. But David Zaslav, the Warner Bros. Discovery chief executive, deemed the offers, including when participation in profits would kick in, too generous and would not sign off, the people said," The New York Times reported.

Looking through the rearview of Barbie's lovely pink sports car, the profits for the first film, reached $1.5 billion worldwide, and unleased a balloon of pink happiness all around the world, as fans, young and old, rushed to the theaters to watch as Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, navigated a world of change as she ventured from the safety of her enclave of perfection to the real world, with all its limitations, and the transformation of both Barbie, and Ken, played by Ryan Gosling.

With the countdown clock ticking, and the last offer made in May, negotiations will likely begin again in September with all sides apparently willing to wait until the eleventh hour.

Hollywood Week: Ellison Pauses WBD Deal, Google Fined, Anthropic Caught, World Cup Audience

Hollywood Week: Primetime Emmys Announced, LA Production Recession, Television City Sale, LA Olympics/Warner Ranch

Nancy Guthrie Update

Nancy Guthrie, the mother of Today host Savannah Guthrie, is presumed dead, according to authorities who released two ransom notes this week. Guthrie, who was kidnapped from her home, on February 1, 2026, was reported missing when she failed to show for her Sunday morning church service.

At 83, friends grew worried the elderly woman, who had mobility issues and a heart condition that required daily medication, had passed away. It wasn't until about 12:00 PM that the worst was discovered. Ms. Guthrie had been forced out of her home, sometime in the early morning hours. Her cell phone and smart watch which monitored her heart condition remained at the bed side table, and the watch went offline at about 2:00 AM.

From the scene, it became quickly apparent that Ms. Guthrie had not left the home of her own volition, and coupled with the porch camera that was ripped from the wall, and the blood on the entryway, authorities knew she had been kidnapped.

On February 2, the Guthrie children, Savannah, Annie, and Cameron, received the first of two ransom notes. The first note presented the ransom demand followed by a timeline, which included the intent of killing Ms. Guthrie, by February 9, 2026, if the ransom demands were not met.

A second note followed indicting the elder Guthrie died unexpectedly. The notes have since been released.

"The sheriff's department released the notes without saying whether they were authentic, but said that investigators hoped someone would recognize the writer's "patterns of word choice, syntax and phraseology." "We believe these distinctive linguistic characteristics may be recognizable to someone who knows or has interacted with the notes' writer," The New York Times reported.

According to the Pima Arizona County Sheriff, the first agency involved in the investigation, all family members have been cleared of any involvement.

The remains of Nancy Guthrie have yet to be found.

Hollywood Week: Clive Davis Dies, ABC Battles FCC, Nancy Guthrie Update, Christina Ricci, Liam Payne

Michael J. Fox to Receive Humanitarian Award

Michael J. Fox, a beloved actor of film and television, is this year's honoree of the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award presented annually by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Fox, who's career spans nearly five decades, rose to stardom with his role as Alex P. Keaton, the brash republican, on "Family Ties," which ran for seven seasons, from 1982 through 1989. During this time Fox was approached by Robert Zemeckis for the role of Marty McFly, in the cult classic film, Back to the Future, which propelled Fox to stardom. He subsequently starred in each of the sequels.

In 1991, at the height of his career, the 29 year-old developed a tremor in his pinky finger, and after a consultation with a neurologist, it was discovered he has early onset Parkinson's disease. It was a devasting blow to the young Canadian actor.

Fox continued to act, keeping his medical condition private, until the symptoms became too difficult to hide. He stepped back from acting to spend time with his wife, actress Tracy Pollen, and children. Eventually he decided to return to acting with one caveat that his condition was written into the characters.

In the fall of 2022, Michael J. Fox was presented with an honorary Oscar, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Michael is the recipient of several lifetime achievement awards for accomplishments in acting. In total, he has received 19 Emmy nominations and five wins; four Golden Globe Awards; one Grammy Award; two Screen Actors Guild Awards; and the People's Choice Award.  

The National Television Arts & Sciences explains, "The Bob Hope Humanitarian Award was established in 2002 to honor a member of the telecommunications industry whose philanthropic efforts exemplify Bob Hope's own decades-long altruism and positive impact on society. The award is given by the Television Academy and the Bob & Dolores Hope Foundation to an individual in the television industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry and whose deeds and actions have had a lasting impact on society."

Hollywood Week: James Burrows, Penske Buying Spree, Nick Reiner, Knicks Parade

OpenAI Gains Users

OpenAI, owned by the OpenAI Group, has reached a pinnacle in users interacting with the Microsoft backed platform receiving more than 1 billion users weekly.

OpenAI, which has polarized the artistic communities with one camp claiming creative infringement and the other actively embracing its end-to-end drafting options, has scaled itself around three distinct programs, ChatGPT, Dall-E, an AI system that generates digital images from text prompts, and Whisper & Codex, an enhancement tool for automatic speech recognition and translation and computer code generation.

The genesis of OpenAI began in 2015, as a Think Tank, that included the roundtable of expected tech entrepreneurs. The notion of replacing humans was not the task, it was advancing machine learning much like IBM did in the 1960s, at NASA.

While Machine Learning is seen as encroaching on society, and lifting, pinching, or stealing creative works used to train AI models, Machine Learning is critical for the United States to remain ahead of nations like China, who has invested billions, as well as infiltrated American think tanks, universities, and tech companies, to advance its own Machine Learning programs. The arms race of the Cold War as become the Technology Race of modern history, and China remains the number one threat to America security.

As recently as July 2026, creatives have won class-action Intellectual Property Infringement cases against billion-dollar companies, with courts actively, and surprisingly favoring the creative and not the corporation. For the creative it is a much heralded victory for the multi-billionaire dollar company who is forced to pay out, it is a small price to pay. The creatives received a gallon of water from the ocean, did it at all effect the oceans sea level?

OpenAI, and each of the subsequent AI programs, whether they represent the genie in the bottle or pandora's box is hard to say, however, it is clear that machine learning will continue to advance and regulation of its use in industries are completely the responsibility of the companies.

Hollywood Week: Paramount-WBD, CBS-Bari Weiss, Nick Reiner, Gene Shalit, David Hockney

BTS Protests Grammy Decision

The boy band, BTS, a Korean pop sensation has decided they will not submit to the 68th annual Grammy Awards over, what appears to be a discrimination move by the academy, creating an Asian Pop Music category, which appears to marginalize the global accomplishments of the group.  

""We have decided not to submit an entry for Grammy consideration this year," the group's seven members said in a statement written in Korean and shared across their individual social media accounts on Wednesday. "We hope music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided into region or language," The New York Times reported.

The Academy of Recording Artists stated that the category did not "preclude" the group from submitting in other categories.

Hollywood Week: CBS Bari Weiss, 60 Minutes Overhaul, Matthew Perry Assistant Sentenced, Sonny Rollins

Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade.  A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five award-winning screenplays "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She has also published "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," a non-fiction narrative, "Days, Times, Seasons, and Events: A Collection of Poetry & Prose," and "Songs of Freedom: A Collection of Biblical Teachings," which can be purchased here. She is a member of the Authors Guild, the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a member of the International Federation of Journalists.