Donna Langley on Landing Hollywood’s Heaviest Hitters, from Taylor Sheridan to Christopher Nolan

NBCUniversal has a reputation as one of Hollywood’s more filmmaker-friendly operations. During Bloomberg‘s Screentime conference, NBCUniversal Entertainment chairman Donna Langley spoke about how she and her team woo some of the entertainment industry’s biggest operators.

One recent addition to the Universal stable was Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan, who is leaving Paramount for the Studio City entertainment juggernaut.

“With disruption and instability, moments when companies are going through something, it’s a moment to look around the marketplace and see if there’s a competitive advantage,” Langley said. While Sheridan is best known for his work in television, with popular series like Landman, Tulsa King and Lioness, he has a background in feature films, including Sicario, Wind River and Those Who Wish Me Dead.

It is in film where Langley saw her opening, saying, “Where I started talking to Taylor was about film, because I knew that he had a film deal at Paramount, but it was a first look deal and didn’t have as many teeth to it as his television deal.” Sheridan’s film deal will kick in next year with Universal, while his TV agreement will follow in 2028.

Elsewhere in film, Langley’s Universal is in the middle of a record-breaking year at the box office thanks to the overperformance of expected heavy hitters (The Odyssey) and less expected underdogs (Obsession).

Langley lured Nolan away from his longtime home at Warner Bros. for his 2023 feature Oppenheimer. That film ended up grossing $975 million at the global box office and winning the Oscar for best picture. Nolan‘s The Odyssey became the studio’s highest-grossing film to date when it passed $1.684 billion at the global box office this September. The Odyssey currently has a $1.753 billion gross. When asked if Universal has Nolan‘s post-Odyssey film, Langley said that each of the director’s projects is able to go to market, noting, “It’s open every time. He chooses not to have a home; we’re just fine with that.”

Langley also talked about the studio’s box office misses in 2026, including the latest Minions outing and Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day.

Minions & Monsters, which followed the Minions in 1920s Hollywood, grossed $523 million at the global box office, which, while a large sum, is nearly half of what Minions 2 earned in 2022 with $940 million in ticket sales. “The easy answer is that we’re quite mature in the franchise. Minions have been around now for 17 years. We didn’t have a long gap in between the films,“ Langley said. “Perhaps another year would have helped us create some anticipation. And I also think that perhaps for kids, that inside baseball, old Hollywood story was a little over their heads.”

As for Spielberg‘s Disclosure Day, which earned $241 million globally, Langley conceded: “Obviously, there’s only so many things that you could say to somebody who is a legend, right?” But quickly added, ”We’re not in business with Steven Spielberg because we expect him to deliver us a bunch of hits as a director. We’re in business with Steven because he is an incredible producer. He is an incredible thought partner across all different types of our business.“ In addition to the films he works on as a producer, which include the ongoing Jurassic World franchise, Spielberg lends his thoughts on the company’s theme parks and news businesses.

And while Universal is already home to filmmakers like Jordan Peele and Everything Everywhere All at Once directors the Daniels, whose next feature will star Matt Damon, Langley was asked about the filmmaker she is still hoping to work with. She said, “There are so many, but I think Ryan Coogler.”