Ben Fritz
@benfritz
Entertainment industry reporter @wsj. Formerly AI editor. My podcast: "With Great Power." My book: "The Big Picture." My email: [email protected]
I'm back! After 6.5 fulfilling years of editing, today I'm returning to what I did for most of my career: Reporting on the entertainment industry. I've always loved covering Hollywood and I'm psyched to be doing it again for @WSJ.
Start listening to hear me discuss the past, present and future of the struggling DC business and the stakes for the new "Superman." Finish to hear a cameo from my cat (who is unfortunately not named Streaky)
🎧 Listen: In today's episode of The Journal podcast, WSJ's @benfritz on whether Superman can be the savior that DC Studios and its newly slimmed-down parent company, Warner Bros., are hoping for on.wsj.com/4lUguHr
Very fun to chat with @MattBelloni on "The Town" today about Fantastic Four, Marvel, and the state of superhero movies. Listen to the end for our vicious debate over whether Comic-Con is fun and how much it smells. open.spotify.com/episode/73DdXH…
xAI is trying to raise another $12 billion. It isn’t profitable and generates a very small amount of revenue. wsj.com/tech/ai/elon-m…
You should learn how to write before you use an LLM just like you should learn math before you use a calculator
Yes. Writing is not a second thing that happens after thinking. The act of writing is an act of thinking. Writing *is* thinking. Students, academics, and anyone else who outsources their writing to LLMs will find their screens full of words and their minds emptied of thought.
YouTube is the biggest provider of entertainment on TVs. It's not even close. This has more profound implications for entertainment and tech than I think most people have absorbed. So I took a big swing at reporting how it happened and what it means. wsj.com/business/media…
I couldn't agree more or put it better
I am so proud of my brave, brilliant colleagues @khadeeja_safdar and @joe_palazzolo, proud to live in a country where the founders put freedom of speech in the very first amendment, and proud to work at The Wall Street Journal. wsj.com/politics/trump… via @WSJ
Wow. The end of late night TV on CBS has arrived. That's what "We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable" means in plain English. variety.com/2025/tv/news/c…
At a "Naked Gun" screening on the Paramount lot last night, producer Seth McFarlane explained to the audience that a comedy is a type of movie you are allowed and even encouraged to laugh at in a theater. He said he understood that we might not remember.
Lois Lane's car in "Superman" has a Delaware license plate. So is that now canonically where Metropolis is? Unless she got a rental car for some reason, I suppose.
Final opening weekend gross for "Superman" is $125 million domestic. Slightly above yesterday's estimate and the rare movie that exactly matched tracking.
The most James Gunn thing in Superman is that Lois Lane likes punk music and Clark Kent likes pop punk (which he insists is punk)
"Superman" has an 82 on Rotten Tomatoes but a 68 on Metacritic, which means it's getting a lot of pretty good reviews.
RTing for anyone who missed it yesterday. While I don't quite think it'll be submitted for a Pulitzer, this story might just be my personal magnum opus.
I love comic books and I love the movie business. So “Superman” was my chance to do a deeply reported story on what's gone wrong at DC Comics and whether @JamesGunn and @Peterrsafran can get it right. Here’s a free link and a 🧵with some juicy scoops: wsj.com/business/media…