The Hollywood Reporter’s 25 Best Stories of 2025
Even by Hollywood standards, this was a year bookended by tragedy, from the devastating L.A. wildfires to the brutal murder of Rob and Michelle Reiner. In between, moguls battled over their studio kingdoms while late night hosts fought D.C. to keep their jobs (and freedom of speech), even as powerful tech platforms continued to gobble up entertainment and AI began to to show off its true disruptive potential. And yet, as ever, the industry found ways to shape culture and produce great art — provocative, political, puerile (sometimes all three). It was, certainly, a year that demanded exceptional journalism, and the writers and reporters at The Hollywood Reporter heeded that call. From an investigation into the billion-dollar celebrity impersonation scam to a look at Kevin Costner’s hard run, from a revealing piece about the struggles Hollywood deadest dead-end job to a fun, wildly candid oral history of the very entitled vacationers at The White Lotus, here are 25 of THR’s most compelling reads of the year.
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Rise of the Machines: Inside Hollywood’s AI Civil War
Image Credit: Illustrated by Tael Gomes The technology is already transforming the industry — and could forever change the entertainment we consume. But the battle to contain it has just begun.
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YouTube Just Ate TV. It’s Only Getting Started
Image Credit: Photographed by Jake Chessum In two decades, the app has grown from a user-generated circus into the most powerful platform on earth. CEO Neal Mohan on his $100 billion vision for YouTube’s future and the disruption it’s left in its wake.
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How Ben Shapiro Conquered the MAGA-verse
Image Credit: Mark Peterson/Redux A visit to AmericaFest with the Harvard-educated, show tunes-loving Orthodox Jew from deep blue L.A. who harnessed anti-woke fervor to become a right-wing rock star and build conservative media’s fastest-growing empire.
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The Righteous Fury of Spencer Pratt
Image Credit: Photographed by Mark Griffin Champion The vintage reality villain has remade himself into a crusading advocate with a national following. His target? The Democratic politicians he blames for the Palisades Fire.
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Inside ‘Elio’s’ “Catastrophic” Path: America Ferrera’s Exit, Director Change and Erasure of Queer Themes
Image Credit: Disney/Pixar Creatives at Pixar who saw the original director’s previous cut of ‘Elio’ tell THR about the movie’s challenging production process: “‘Elio’ just [became] about totally nothing.”
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How Sam Altman Played Hollywood
Image Credit: Miguel Davilla OpenAI’s CEO brazenly regurgitated major studios’ characters to allow video app Sora 2 to spit out clips tailor-made for users. Insiders at the major agencies are alarmed — and some wonder whether the studios are doing enough.
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‘Severance’ Secret Weapon Britt Lower Reveals Her Wild Side
Image Credit: Photographed by AB+DM She’s the beating heart of this year’s most thrilling — and Emmy-nominated — TV show. But there’s no telling when she might decamp for the circus (like, literally).
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‘The White Lotus’ Uncensored Oral History: Mike White and Cast Spill Season 3’s Secrets
Image Credit: Photographed by Guy Aroch; Artistic + Fashion Editor: Alison Edmond The creator and dozens of cast and crew reveal all the inside gossip, incestuous drama and behind-the-scenes mischief of TV’s most sensational hit.
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Nate Bargatze: “Big Dumb” Mogul
Image Credit: Photographed by Beau Grealy; Fashion Assistant: Elliott Pearson. Hair: Eric Miller. Makeup: Katie Barr. Tailor: Mariana Vasiltsova. Forget the Porsche, the sold-out arenas, the theme park. The world’s most successful stand-up — and this year’s Emmy host — swears he’s still just a regular guy.
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How Kevin Costner Lost Hollywood
Image Credit: Photo-illustration by Neil Jamieson On-set brawls. Courtroom battles. Epic bombs. Why the world’s most bankable cowboy is suddenly shooting blanks.
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This Is Not Keanu: Inside the Billion-Dollar Celebrity Impersonation Bitcoin Scam
Image Credit: illustration by Taylor Callery Victims think they’re talking to Keanu Reeves. Or Kevin Costner. Then come the pleas for cash. The brazen AI-fueled con that fleeces lovestruck fans and has Hollywood finally fighting back.
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The Deadest Dead-End Job in Hollywood?
Image Credit: Photographed by Jen Rosenstein; Grooming: Chechel Joson Production assistants have long endured brutal hours, low salaries and abuse in the hope of moving up the food chain. But contracting budgets and blatant nepotism have turned a job that was supposed to be a doorway into a holding cell. Now they’re finally pushing back.
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Diller Speaks: Hollywood’s Most Fearsome Legend Bares His Soul
Image Credit: Photo by Annie Leibovitz Enigmatic power player Barry Diller comes out (swinging) on moguldum, marriage, the movie business and the backlash to his brutally honest new memoir: “All I ever wanted was to matter.”
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Trump’s Media Pit Bull Is “Off the Leash”
Image Credit: Illustration by Javier Muñoz FCC chair Brendan Carr has already inspired widespread fear (and loathing) among media elites and free press advocates. And he’s only been in the job for two months.
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Paramount Never Made Taylor Sheridan an Offer to Stay: How TV’s Biggest Partnership Fell Apart
Image Credit: Emerson Miller How TV’s Biggest Partnership Fell Apart
David Ellison has the deepest pockets in Hollywood. Sheridan has the best track record in streaming. Why the most obvious deal in TV didn’t happen.
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Justin Baldoni’s Leap of Faith
Image Credit: Illustration by The Sporting Press What role did the controversial director’s Baha’i religion play on the set of ‘It Ends With Us’? Did Wayfarer’s missionary miscues help set the stage for Hollywood’s uncivil war?
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That’s It, The F-Word Is Officially Boring
Image Credit: Courtesy Just go ahead and say it, nobody minds anymore. Trump cursing during an interview is merely the last gasp of our media culture depleting the f-word of it’s former power.
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Inside Hollywood Succession Wars
Image Credit: Illustration by Neil Davies It’s too soon to know how the region — and the industry — might recover. But nothing will be as it was, and solidarity is the only defense against the next disaster.
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Move Over Angelyne: Meet the Sisters Battling to Become L.A.’s New Billboard Queen
Image Credit: Photographed by Jen Rosenstein With her rags-to-riches rise from undocumented immigrant to insurance mogul — and her ubiquitous billboards — Adriana Gallardo has caught Hollywood’s attention. It’s a one-of-a-kind story, unless you count her sister and rival, Veronica.
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Postcard From the Edge: L.A. in the Line of Fire
Image Credit: Photographed by Jay L. Clendenin It’s too soon to know how the region — and the industry — might recover. But nothing will be as it was, and solidarity is the only defense against the next disaster.
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Jonathan Majors’ Moment of Truth
Image Credit: Photographed by Frank Ockenfels 3
Speaking exclusively for the first time since his domestic violence sentencing, the embattled ‘Magazine Dreams’ star opens up about his childhood abuse, Marvel firing and fight for Hollywood redemption: “It’s harder to find a way when you are trapped in notoriety.”Read the story.
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The ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Uncensored Oral History of a Revolution
Image Credit: Illustrated by Valerie Chiang; Courtesy of Hulu (9) Margaret Atwood, creator Bruce Miller, Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd and 20-plus producers, castmembers and execs reveal how a classic novel became the Emmy-winning emblem of anti-Trump resistance.
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Cancellation, Conspiracies, Cocaine: Jamie Foxx, Sarah Silverman, Seth Meyers Let Loose on THR’s Stand-Up Comedy Roundtable
Image Credit: Photographed by Beau Grealy Six top comics — including Hasan Minhaj, Chelsea Handler and Roy Wood Jr. — on finding the funny in tragedy, death and losing ‘The Daily Show.’
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The Rage of ‘Adolescence’: Inside the Single-Shot Sensation Blowing Up the Manosphere
Image Credit: Photographed by Simon Emmett In their first group interview, THR cover stars Stephen Graham, Owen Cooper, Ashley Walters and Erin Doherty open up about Netflix’s most popular U.K. title of all time: “This is an examination of male rage.”
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Shia LaBeouf and David Mamet Just Might Save Each Other
Image Credit: Pam Susemiehl Two legendary Hollywood outcasts open up about joining forces for ‘Henry Johnson’ — a film so indie, they’re distributing it themselves — and somehow winding up with some of the best work of their careers.
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