The week the music stopped. For months, Hollywood held its breath, watching the high-stakes poker game between Netflix and Paramount for the prize of Warner Bros. Discovery. This week, Netflix folded. Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, reading the room and their own balance sheet, walked away from the table, leaving David Ellison's Paramount Skydance the sole suitor. The deal is done. A new, terrifyingly large media leviathan now bestrides the Hollywood landscape. Everything has changed.

This week: the merger that remade the industry overnight, the Game of Thrones spinoff that proves the franchise has life in it yet, and the first reactions to a Ryan Gosling sci-fi epic that has critics buzzing. Plus: Oscar voting is live, the MPA goes to war with TikTok's parent company over AI, and Glen Powell's new movie bombs.