Hollywood Dying, DC Hires Writer Who Wishes Death On Trump, Hollywood Making Up Elves - Fandom Pulse Daily Briefing
I haven’t had time to do the daily briefing in a few days. Went on a little family trip over the weekend and it’s all I can do to catch back up and try to keep the content flowing!
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Hollywood Is Dying as a Production Hub, But Should Anyone Outside Los Angeles Mourn?
Variety published a long piece today on the collapse of Los Angeles as the center of American film and television production. The numbers are real. Since the streaming bubble burst in 2022, the U.S. has lost 73,000 production jobs, two-thirds of them in Los Angeles. Filming permits are down. Restaurants that fed crews are closing. A florist who supplies…
Jon Sable, Freelance: The Most Underrated Comic of the 1980s Finally Gets Its Due
Jon Sable, Freelance hit newsstands in June 1983 with no superheroes, no cosmic powers, and no publisher backing from either of the Big Two. What it had was Mike Grell, a razor-sharp Bond-and-Hammer concept, and 56 issues of some of the most mature, character-driven storytelling the direct market had seen up to that point. Four decades later, the series…
Before You Miss the Finale: Widow’s Bay Is the Best Show on Television Right Now
The Season 1 finale of Widow’s Bay drops tomorrow on Apple TV+. The show was renewed for Season 2 before the first season finished airing. If you have not started it yet, tonight is the night to fix that.
DC Signs Deniz Camp to an Exclusive Deal. Last Month He Posted “Missed Again” After Someone Shot at Trump.
Deniz Camp signed an exclusive writing deal with DC Comics this week. Bleeding Cool confirmed it today. Camp’s Absolute Martian Manhunter concludes July 1, and DC is bringing him back with full exclusivity ahead of San Diego Comic-Con and the Eisner Awards, where he has six nominations this year.
Anya Taylor-Joy Is Playing a Lord of the Rings Character Tolkien Never Created
Anya Taylor-Joy is confirmed as Seren in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, joining Andy Serkis as Gollum, Ian McKellen as Gandalf, Elijah Wood as Frodo, Jamie Dornan as Strider, Lee Pace as King Thranduil, Kate Winslet as Marigol, and Leo Woodall as Halvard. The film opens December 17, 2027.
Joseph Mallozzi Calls Out Corporate Contempt for Fans as #SaveStargate Floods Amazon for Two Weeks Straight
Joseph Mallozzi posted something this week that every fan of a canceled franchise should read. Not because it is new information, but because it is being said by someone who has watched it happen from inside the room, across thirty years of television.
Mandalorian Actor Calls Fans “Toxic” While Box Office Collapses
Brendan Wayne, one of the stunt performers who physically portrays Din Djarin inside the Mandalorian suit, gave an interview to MovieWeb this week and used the opportunity to call a portion of the Star Wars fanbase toxic. His film, The Mandalorian and Grogu, has now grossed $155.8 million domestically on a $165 million production budget, making it the l…
Disney’s Live-Action Moana Has a Problem No Final Trailer Can Fix
Disney released the final trailer for its live-action Moana remake on June 10, simultaneously opening ticket sales ahead of the July 10 theatrical debut. The trailer did not reverse the audience sentiment that has been building since November 2025. It confirmed it.
Steven Spielberg Says Aliens Are Here, And He Has a Question for God
Steven Spielberg opened his mouth on CBS this week and said something no major filmmaker has said quite so directly in a mainstream interview.
Dorian Vane Is a Magic-School Debut That Wins on Charm Over Surprise
The book opens on an eleven-year-old boy sitting on a tree stump at the bottom of a garden, watching a beetle climb a blade of grass and deciding it has a clearer sense of direction than most people he knows. Dorian Vane has a voice, dry and warm and English, the kind that can call a stretch of moorland mostly rocks and rain and sheep with firm opinions…
The Man Who Helped Shape the Cold War From His Living Room: A Jerry Pournelle Retrospective
When Ronald Reagan gave the 1983 speech announcing what became the Strategic Defense Initiative, much of the policy framework behind it had been worked out at a science fiction writer’s house in Studio City, California. The man hosting those meetings was Jerry Pournelle. The Citizens’ Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which he chaired from 1980…
Russell T Davies Says Doctor Who Wasn’t Cancelled
Russell T Davies went on Gaydio this week to set the record straight. The show has not been cancelled, he said. Anyone calling it cancelled is wrong.
Review: Higashino Keigo, Journey Under the Midnight Sun Translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith
The humidity in Tokyo at the end of May is the kind that sits on your skin and does not move. I had the windows open and the fan going and a glass of mugicha sweating onto the table beside me, and I could not sleep, so I picked up the Japanese edition of 白夜行 that had been on my shelf for three years, daring me to open it.
Star Trek And Doctor Who Abandoned Their Audiences And We Can Replace Them
Star Trek and Doctor Who once owned the same piece of storytelling real estate. Both franchises built decades of loyalty on a simple premise: take a crew or a traveler, send them into the unknown, and let the audience discover something about humanity along the way. Both franchises have spent the last several years squandering that loyalty by replacing …