October 14, 2026

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Bangin’ soundtrack though: Why Led Zeppelin said yes to Netflix’s $280m Narnia nightmare.

Like Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey this past summer, Netflix is presuming that the right will go absolutely insane over the stunt casting of Meryl Streep portraying the voice of Aslan, propelling them to box office fortune – and they’re likely correct:

UPDATE: Greta Gerwig’s ‘Narnia’ Reportedly In Serious Trouble At Netflix.

A day after the first Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew trailer racked up thousands of dislikes and Marvel jokes, a new report says things are just as rough behind the scenes at Netflix.

Jeff Sneider reports in his InSneider newsletter that Greta Gerwig’s Narnia carries a $280 million budget, with some saying the real number is even higher.

One of Sneider’s sources says people at Netflix think the movie is “awful” and called it “a genuine problem.”

A second source, who attended a test screening over the summer, compared the movie to Disney’s 2018 A Wrinkle in Time, which reportedly lost close to $100 million.

Add to Narnia’s reported bad test screening more bad news for Netflix:

Belgrad won’t be alone: Biggest Layoffs in Company’s History Hit Netflix. “Netflix announced about 1,000 employee layoffs this week, or about six percent of its 16,000-person staff. Previously, Netflix’s largest layoff was half that — 450 job cuts in 2022.”

Posted at 8:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

STEPHEN MILLER: Sensing Midterm Blood in the Water, the Hibernating Woke Left Is Waking Up.

And just this past weekend, a media-driven mob has set its sights on comedian Shane Gillis (again), lashing out at his monologue as Saturday Night Live’s (SNL) guest host. Gillis performed his usual “every-man” bro-style of comedy and made comments on women’s gym attire. Gillis is usually the self-target of his own brand of self-deprecation, and this was no different. That has not stopped the BlueSkies and the media from attempting to get Gillis banned from hosting SNL for a fourth time.

Hollywood Reporter journalist Tony Maglio wrote:

“SNL attracts liberal talent and a similar audience. It films in New York City and its main target is Donald Trump. The show’s writers and cast members are generally a diverse group of Gen Z-ers that came up in improv, sketch and standup comedy. They don’t listen to Joe Rogan — Gillis’ buddy who, along with Theo Von (and Dan Soder, kind of) got a shoutout in the set — and they don’t drink the Bud Light Gillis endorses. Studio 8H is not the place for gay jokes and jokes against women.” 

That kind of blatant admission is unusual. None of this is happening in a vacuum. The media, offering their as-usual friendly assistance to Democratic Party candidates, senses blood in the water for a perceived unpopular GOP heading into a midterm election where they can claw back some kind of congressional power and cultural relevance, and if you think Woke One was crazy, we’ve gotten just a minor taste of what Woke Two is going to look like.

Ideally, there will be some punching back in response, as a wise community organizer advises his constituents:

Posted at 6:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: “F**k You!” Hollywood Civil War Erupts As Ari Emanuel Goes Nuclear On Legendary Kingmaker.

Emanuel claimed Katzenberg once offered to secure him a meeting with Biden in exchange for $1 million.

“Do you think I need to give you a million dollars so you can tell Joe Biden that I gave you a million dollars to meet with Joe Biden?” a stunned Emanuel recalled responding, pointing to his family ties to the former president through his brother, Rahm Emanuel, who served as chief of staff to President Barack Obama when Biden was vice president.

Emanuel also criticized Katzenberg’s role in Biden’s failed 2024 reelection effort, claiming he urged the influential Democrat fundraiser to help push the aging president out of the race.

“You say you got his ear, right? You’re the man. You’re talking to him all the time,” Emanuel recalled telling Katzenberg.

“You got to get him out,” Emanuel said he demanded, only to be met with silence.

“He gave us Karen Bass. He gave us this. And now he’s just moved on,” the superagent continued. “Most of the things he does are not about the situation. It’s about Jeffrey and the situation.”

“That shit I don’t like. I do not like it. And he did try to fuck us over twice. Fuck you,” he added.

Flashback to July of 2024: Hollywood donors ‘furious’ at movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg for ‘agewashing’ Biden: report.

Big-money Hollywood donors are reportedly enraged at movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg for the “agewashing” of President Joe Biden.

Katzenberg, who was named a campaign co-chair due to his prolific fundraising abilities, is being accused by his entertainment industry peers of misleading them by downplaying Biden’s age-related decline and failing to sound the alarm in time to allow the Democrats to pick a suitable replacement, The Ankler reported.

“Everyone in town is furious with him. Furious,” a top Hollywood observer told The Ankler when asked about donors’ views about Katzenberg, who has long insisted that the president is “fine” even though there were apparent signs of cognitive decline that came into full view during last week’s debate against Donald Trump.

The mass formation psychosis that led the entire institutional left to believe — or at least play act at believing — that Biden was in tip-top shape while fronting Obama’s third term will be analyzed for decades.

Posted at 6:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED:

Posted at 6:21 pm by Ed Driscoll

ALEX BERENSON: A funny thing’s happening now that (almost) nobody gets mRNA jabs anymore. “Because so many Covid deaths occurred in people who were very old and sick and would likely have died in a year or two from their underlying illnesses, epidemiologists predicted as Covid began in 2020 that deaths would fall below normal when it ended. They called that potential future mortality lull the ‘pull-forward effect.'”

Posted at 6:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

HE’S BEEN BUSY:

Posted at 5:18 pm by Stephen Green

CHEATER: Runner Switches to Girls’ Track Midseason — School Says the Real Problem Is the Parent Who Noticed. “On September 5, the cross-country athlete finished 76th in a boys’ JV cross-country race, but on September 29, he magically finished first in a varsity girls’ meet against Union High. This could be the moment that this whole drama officially jumped the shark, because it’s almost impossible to argue that ‘changing genders’ right smack in the middle of the season is normal or reasonable.”

Posted at 4:52 pm by Stephen Green

CAPTAIN SLOW VERSUS THE SERIES 3 LAND ROVER (Video):

Posted at 4:45 pm by Ed Driscoll

ABE GREENWALD: The Joke’s on Everyone.

The left knows only how to take offense, and Shane Gillis doesn’t owe anyone an apology. But it’s hard to say that a joke is “just a joke,” if it’s also something else: a deliberate taunt. This kind of dual-use comedy is standard on the left—and it’s ruined many great talents. Why look to make the problem total?  I don’t want to wind up with a comedy culture that forces me to choose between Bill Burrs and anti-Bill Burrs.

Anyway, what can the left possibly accomplish with its social media finger-wagging these days? We are post–cancel culture (except, of course, when it comes to Jews and Israel, which is its own category). A few years ago, Gillis’s joke and the reaction to it would have sidelined him for quite a while. In fact, that already happened to him. SNL fired Gillis in 2019 after discovering that he had previously made gay and ethnic jokes on his own podcast. His appearance on SNL last Saturday—the third time he’s hosted the show since then—demonstrates how thoroughly the culture has shifted since peak woke.

Donald Trump is back in the White House, and AOC is distancing herself from “woke 1” because she knows how most Americans feel about identity-driven leftism. A lot of conservatives don’t want to admit it, but the right came through Woke War I (mostly) triumphant. You don’t have to lob grenades from the stage. It’s safe just to do comedy again.

Okay, Gillis’ joke wasn’t a home run. But it was definitely a triple:

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll

IT’S AMAZING HOW MANY PEOPLE DON’T REALIZE THIS IS SATIRE: “I know it was about me, because everything is.”

Related:

Jenna Bush is a weird spokesperson for propriety.

Posted at 4:02 pm by Glenn Reynolds

AFTER ALL, THEY DID NAME IT PERSEVERANCE: NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover breaks interplanetary driving record — and it’s far from done.

In a milestone achievement, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has broken the record for most miles driven on a world beyond Earth.

On Oct. 11, Perseverance hit 28.10 miles (45.22 kilometers) traveled on Mars, breaking the record previously held by NASA’s Opportunity rover which went 28.06 miles (45.16 km). It took Oppy 14 years to cover all that ground; Perseverance, by contrast, has been on Mars for just 5.5 years.

The new record is far from the end of Perseverance’s journey, however; the mission team thinks the rover could eventually more than double the distance it’s already traveled.

“Our original design was only planned to last for [about] 20 kilometers of driving,” Mark Maimone, a rover driver at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, told Space.com.

Impressive.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

HIS SUPERVILLAIN POWERS INCLUDE THE ABILITY TO BE IN TWO PLACES AT ONCE:

Posted at 3:33 pm by Stephen Green

HMM: Tesla’s ‘Security Protocols’ Stopped DHS From Installing a Tracking Device.

“Case agents believed that Stair is using the Tesla to assist with drug trafficking and traveling to locations associated with the DTO [drug trafficking organization] and DTO members,” the application said. “Case agents are still attempting to identify other locations used by the DTO, other members of the DTO, and the source of supply for narcotics and believe that the court order would be beneficial for the investigation.”

A judge issued the warrant the same day the application was filed, but agents never got the tracking device on the car. “Search warrant not executed due to security protocols active on Tesla,” the agent said in a court filing about the warrant.

The court documents don’t elaborate on the specific “security protocols” that stopped them from placing a tracking device on the car, but the Tesla may have been in “Sentry Mode.” Teslas have eight external cameras that provide a 360 degree view of the car’s surroundings. This makes the car’s self-driving features possible but also allows owners to keep track of what’s going on around the car.

If a stranger approaches a Tesla while it’s in Sentry Mode, the car will flash its lights, sound an alarm, and start recording through its exterior cameras.

Not a big fan of police being unable to execute a warrant, but that’s a great ad for anyone concerned about stalkers.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

DEAR BLACK AMERICANS…:

…today’s Dems just aren’t that into you.

Posted at 2:32 pm by Stephen Green