The Brief

Netflix and Paramount are in One Big Battle After Another to buy the storied Hollywood studio Warner Bros. (Yes, One Battle After Another is a Warner Bros. movie).

This isn't the first time Warner Bros. has been at the center of headline-grabbing merger or acquisition. Actually, Warner Bros. has a long history of messy corporate marriages and divorces. It could be a cautionary tale about the dangers of mergers and acquisitions. You could even call it the Warner Bros. Curse.

Over the last decade alone, the Warner Bros. Curse has shown itself at least twice. In 2018, after a two-year regulatory battle, AT&T acquired what was then called Time Warner for $85.4 billion, and renamed the company WarnerMedia. Many believed AT&T overpaid for the company, and the stock market never seemed to really love this deal. WarnerMedia struggled to find big profits in streaming, its movie business was devastated by the pandemic, and the companies' cultures never really jibed with each other.

And so — in a deal that represented tens of billions of dollars in losses for its shareholders — AT&T sold shares and ceded control of WarnerMedia to Discovery Inc. The two officially merged in 2022, forming Warner Bros. Discovery, which is still this Frankenstein of a company's name (Frankenstein is another Warner Bros. property).

Since then, the company has made a series of bizarre decisions, like rebranding its streaming service HBO as HBO Max and then Max and then back to HBO Max. There were other debacles. Like, despite the movie being nearly done — and despite the fact they had spent nearly $90 million making it — Warner Bros. Discovery shelved BatGirl (and apparently wrote the loss off on their taxes). More recently, the company bought the rights to stream the show Mad Men, and as part of its release on the streaming platform, it sought to remaster the series into a widescreen, 4K format. But the production team apparently failed to do their due diligence and make sure it all looked good before releasing it. The result: those who watched Mad Men on HBO Max saw things like the production crew in the frame, including, in one scene, a technician holding a "vomit hose" as one of their actors pretended to throw up. This whole chapter of Warner Bros. history has proven to be, um, Looney Tunes.

Economists who study mergers and acquisitions have long puzzled over why so many corporate marriages go wrong. "Study after study puts the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions somewhere between 70% and 90%," wrote the legendary Harvard Business School scholar Clayton Christensen and colleagues in Harvard Business Review back in 2011. The story of Warner Bros. is a pretty interesting case study to get an understanding of why so many mergers and acquisitions fail.

The most glaring example of the Warner Bros. Curse happened at the turn of the millennium. It's widely considered to be one of the worst — if not the worst — mergers of all time. It was so bad that it's still studied in business schools.

Today in the Planet Money newsletter, we look at that disastrous merger. And we ponder some reasons why so many mergers and acquisitions fail.

The merger of the century

In October 1999, Steve Case, the CEO of America Online (AOL), made a fateful phone call to Gerald Levin, the CEO of Time Warner.

At the time, Case was only 41 years old, but, over the previous 15 years, he had built one of the most exciting companies in America. Before AOL, the internet was largely a place for geeks and bureaucrats. Case's company had made the internet accessible to tens of millions of normal Americans. In 1998, the company's popularity even inspired a zeitgeisty rom-com, You've Got Mail (which, you guessed it, was produced and distributed by Warner Bros.) In the midst of dotcom mania in the late 1990s, AOL's share price was rocketing through the stratosphere.

But Case was also worried. He was worried about mounting competition. He was worried that the stock market was in a speculative mania that wouldn't last. And he was worried what would happen to his company if there was a crash. AOL didn't really own much when it came to hard assets and the internet was changing fast. Case wanted to leverage his company's inflated share price, buy something big and tangible, diversify his company's business model, and secure a more resilient corporate future. Time Warner had serious appeal. For one, AOL was increasingly getting into the content game, and Time Warner offered exciting intellectual property to distribute. Even more, Case coveted Time Warner's sprawling network of cable lines, which would prove valuable as consumers ditched dial-up modems and adopted high-speed internet.

Gerald Levin, on the other hand, was disgruntled with the direction of his company. Time Warner was by then a sprawling media conglomerate which, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, controlled media entities like Time magazine, Warner Bros. Pictures, a record company, HBO, CNN, TBS, and Sports Illustrated. But his company's stock price was underperforming during the dotcom stock mania. He worried his company was failing to thrive at the dawn of the digital age. He was floundering while trying to usher in Time Warner's digital future in house, and he yearned for what he called another "transforming transaction" — a merger or acquisition — to revolutionize his company and secure his legacy.

When Case called Levin, he didn't beat around the bush. "Jerry? I've been thinking: we should put our two companies together. What do you think? Any interest?" he said, according to an excellent 2004 book by journalist Nina Munk, Fools Rush In: Steve Case, Jerry Levin, and the Unmaking of AOL Time Warner.

Levin was interested, but he also played hard to get. "I don't think so, Steve. But I'll think about it," he reportedly said.

By then, Case had grown insanely rich, had a second marriage he wanted to preserve, and he had grown tired of the intensive work of being the CEO of his company. He was now hobnobbing with bigwigs at places like White House state dinners and the World Economic Forum in Davos, and he was on his way to a more cushy life as an investor, thinkfluencer, and philanthropist. Case was prepared to step down as CEO and take a less time-intensive role as chairman of the board, and he knew exactly what to say to Levin to pique his interest: Levin would take the helm of this new corporate juggernaut.

But Levin was still wary. And he had reason to be. Before he had become Time Warner's CEO, Levin had a long career in the lower rungs of its executive team. In late 1980s and early 1990s, when Time Inc. sought to merge with Warner Bros. (then known as Warner Communications) and form what would become Time Warner, the transaction encountered serious difficulties (the Warner Bros. Curse!). A company known as Gulf & Western — which would soon be renamed Paramount Communications, and today is known as Paramount Skydance — tried to stage a hostile takeover of Time Inc. (Sound familiar?) That hostile takeover ultimately failed, but it cost Time a lot of stress and money — and time — to avoid it, and Levin worried this was the beginning of another similar story.

After some back and forth over the next few weeks, Case and Levin decided to meet. They wanted this meeting to be a secret. So they rented a suite at a hotel in Manhattan, near Time Warner's headquarters, and spent an evening together.

They ordered room service for dinner, drank fancy wine, ate chocolate mousse, and dazzled each other. Through deep philosophical conversations about business and life, they decided they were simpatico. That night, they decided they would marry their two corporations, forming the world's largest media and entertainment company.

There were still thorny details to work out. Like, what percentage of shares in this new company would each side get? AOL had a stock market capitalization that was nearly double Time Warner's, and its stock price was growing much faster. But when it came to the meat and potatoes of actual revenue, Time Warner actually made much more money. And it had valuable assets, including a sprawling array of media properties and physical cable infrastructure. Levin wanted a 50-50 split in a new merged company. Case rejected 50-50. After months of negotiations, Levin ultimately settled on Time Warner getting 45% of their new, merged entity.

On January 10, 2000, AOL announced it was acquiring Time Warner for $182 billion. It was one of the largest — if not the largest — corporate mergers in history. When they officially merged, the two companies would be worth $350 billion. It was a wedding between old and new media, creating what looked like a power couple that would dominate the 21st century. Many analysts thought it was brilliant. The new company promised astounding rates of profit growth.

America Online Chairman Steve Case (L) and Time Warner Chairman Gerald Levin (R) announce their companies' merger Jan. 10, 2000 at a New York news conference. The new company will be called AOL Time Warner.

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A star-crossed marriage

But almost immediately, the marriage between AOL and Time Warner turned rocky. Levin had negotiated this deal while keeping much of Time Warner in the dark. He had treated his executives and his board of directors like a rubber stamp. Many felt the deal was rushed and sloppy. From the outset, many executives and employees were angry about the merger.

And, as the companies began to merge, AOL and Time Warner had big culture clashes. Time Warner was old school. Its board meetings were structured and formal. AOL meetings tended to be freeflowing and chaotic. Time Warner's divisions — from HBO to CNN to Warner Bros studios to its magazines — had operated autonomously. AOL wanted them to be under more centralized control, and pursue cross-platform advertising deals. AOL was obsessed with beating expectations, stoking investor excitement, and juicing their stock price. Time Warner executives were less obsessed with metrics and chasing short-term stock gains. Each side thought the other side knew nothing about their side of the business. There was a lot of animosity as the two teams became one.

Maybe it would have all worked out in a rosier market. However, as luck would have it, the two companies negotiated their deal just three months before the peak of the dotcom bubble: March 10, 2000. After that, the bubble started to deflate. It would still be almost a year until federal regulators would approve this deal and make the proposed merger official. In the meantime, AOL's stock began sinking.

The whole deal between Time Warner and AOL was predicated on an explosive rate of growth at AOL. But as the stock market crashed and the economy turned sour, companies began cutting back on advertising. Advertising was crucial to AOL's business (and also Time Warner's). Meanwhile, AOL's new subscriber growth began to slow down. And AOL's stock descent picked up pace.

By January 11, 2001, when federal regulators officially approved of the merger, AOL Time Warner was already in serious trouble. But things got much worse after the spring of 2001, when America officially entered a recession. Then came 9/11, and the economy got even worse.

The newly formed AOL Time Warner went into panic mode as their business soured. The company began doing share buybacks, trying to signal to the market that their stock was undervalued (even as its top executives sold shares). They laid off thousands of employees and began making drastic cuts. They got super petty about employee expenses, like eliminating free soda and forcing employees to buy from vending machines. Worst of all, AOL executives resorted to cooking their books, trying to make it seem like their advertising revenue was solid when really it wasn't.

The bad news for AOL Time Warner kept mounting. Fighting over what the company should do, the bromance between Case and Levin turned to man-imosity, and Case began rallying their board against Levin.

The writing was on the wall. On December 5, 2001, Levin announced he was going to go into early retirement. "I'd never cried before," Levin told Nina Munk, when she was writing her 2004 book about this corporate fiasco. "I'd never cried. And now I cry all the time."

With Levin exiting, a civil war broke out within the company. The two sides hated each other. Levin's replacement as CEO, Richard Parsons, would later tell The New York Times, "It was beyond certainly my abilities to figure out how to blend the old media and the new media culture. They were like different species, and in fact, they were species that were inherently at war."

In the summer of 2002, The Washington Post got a scoop that — both before and after its merger with Time Warner — AOL had been essentially cooking the books, pretending that it was getting more ad and other revenue than it really was. That story inspired lawsuits and investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and AOL Time Warner's stock price went into a free fall.

By the end of this fiasco, over $200 billion in shareholder value had been wiped out (over $350 billion in today's dollars). The company was forced to pay big fines. AOL Time Warner ended up firing basically every senior AOL executive. Under pressure, Steve Case resigned as the board chairman. In 2003, AOL Time Warner dropped AOL from its name and, in 2009, officially separated from it. (AOL is still around; an Italian tech company called "Bending Spoons" recently announced it was buying it for $1.5 billion).

What is today called Warner Bros. Discovery still bears the scars — including billions of dollars in debt — from its disastrous merger a quarter century ago.

Netflix promises it will avoid the Warner Bros. Curse

Interestingly, Netflix executives, with their eyes set on acquiring Warner Bros., recently promised Wall Street that, basically, don't worry, we won't fall victim to the Warner Bros. Curse like so many have before us.

"A lot of those failures that we've seen historically is because the company that was doing the acquisition didn't understand the entertainment business," said Greg Peters, co-CEO of Netflix, on a recent call with Wall Street analysts, according to Deadline. "They didn't really understand what they were buying. We understand these assets that we're buying, the things that are critical in Warner Bros. are key businesses that we operate in, and we understand. A lot of times, the acquiring company, it was a legacy non-growth business that was looking for sort of a lifeline. That doesn't apply to us. We've got a healthy, growing business that we're super, super excited about."

But their potential merger with Warner Bros is already off to a rocky start. Paramount is attempting a hostile takeover. The two are now involved in a battle that could prove to be an intense bidding war, increasing the chances that Warner Bros. could be involved in another ill-fated merger.

What causes so many mergers and acquisitions to fail? One big reason is that the buyers tend to overpay for what they're acquiring. There are a lot of potential reasons for that. One is related to something we wrote about in a recent newsletter and covered in The Indicator. Behavioral economists have long observed that winners in auctions — or really any market where people competitively bid against each other for something — are often the ones who overpay for what they're buying. They call it "the winner's curse." In other words, the winning bidders often win precisely because they are the ones who most overestimate the value of what they're buying.

At heart, corporate leaders may overpay in mergers and acquisitions because they're bad at judging what those companies — and what those companies and their companies combined — will actually be worth. There's a well-known insight in personal finance that people, for the most part, shouldn't pick and choose individual stocks. The basic idea is that stock prices already reflect available information, and it's hard to beat the market. Maybe that extends even to many CEOs and expert executive teams buying or selling companies.

If you're a company seeking to buy another company, "[y]ou are almost always going to pay more – often significantly more – than the firm is currently worth," writes Melissa Schilling, a scholar at the NYU Stern School of Business. "If you didn't, the target's current owners wouldn't sell. Their outside option is always to hold or sell to another bidder at a higher price. That means your acquisition is only going to pay off if you know something the market doesn't know, or you can do something significantly better with that firm's assets than its current owners are doing."

Apparently, that is really hard to do. But cocky executives often think they know something that the market doesn't, and they may overestimate the actual 'synergies' that can be found when two companies become one. Ultimately, they may overvalue what they're buying or merging to create.

Or maybe company leaders sometimes do foresee the real value, but it's for themselves, and not necessarily for their employees or shareholders. In a 2022 book, titled The Merger Mystery, scholars Geoff Meeks and J. Gay Meeks, both of the University of Cambridge, argue that "misaligned incentives" between executives and their companies is one common reason why, despite a high failure rate, so many corporate leaders are so gung-ho to do mergers and acquisitions. Basically, company leaders and advisors can often make huge sums of money from M&A transactions — kind of like Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has in the transactions he's been involved with — even if those transactions ultimately fail to boost their company's profits and serve their shareholders and employees.

The benefits for corporate bigwigs pushing for mergers and acquisitions goes beyond just money. For example, it can also be quite an ego boost to suddenly be in charge of a much bigger company or control something that gets lots of public attention.

Meanwhile, dealmaking like this is often hindered by what economists call asymmetric information. When different parties in a deal have unequal information about the thing that is being bought or sold, it can lead to mispricing and market failures. For instance, maybe the troubles at AOL were more apparent to insiders with intimate knowledge about their company's performance. Had Time Warner gotten better information about the company they were forming a relationship with — and not rushed through their due diligence in prodding and poking the deal — maybe they would have killed the deal or structured it differently.

There are many other potential reasons why mergers and acquisitions can go wrong. But the story of AOL and Time Warner's disastrous merger really highlights how the actual work of making two companies into one can be really messy. Culture clashes, personal animosities, and the headaches of implementing new processes, structures, and strategies can be demoralizing to employees and hurt a newly merged company's performance, detracting from the synergies that the companies were originally hoping for.

We look forward to seeing how this new sequel to the decades-old franchise of Warner Bros. mergers and acquisitions turns out. Sure, it could prove to be like The Dark Knight, a commercial and critical success. However, there is a big risk it could be more like Joker: Folie à Deux, another Warner Bros. flop.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The Los Angeles County fires last year drove up insurance costs for many Californians. Now, a proposed settlement means some State Farm policyholders whose premiums rose won’t see additional increases, and others should even get refunds.

State Farm, the largest insurer in the state with about 20% market share, received approval for unprecedented emergency insurance rate increases in California last May. The company told the state that the billions of dollars it expected to pay out after the deadly fires placed it in financial peril.

The proposed deal among the state Insurance Department, consumer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and State Farm, disclosed late last week, comes after months of public hearings convened by the insurance department and settlement talks.

Consumer Watchdog, which questioned the rate increases State Farm asked for, says the settlement saves the company’s California policyholders a total of $530 million. From the proposed settlement:

• Homeowners’ rate hikes will stay at the previously approved interim rate of 17% instead of the 30% the company sought.
• Condo owners who saw interim rate hikes of 15% will see their rates drop to an increase of 5.8%, and get refunds with interest dating back to June 1, 2025.
• Rental unit owners with interim rate hikes of 38% will see those increases drop to 32.8%, and receive refunds with interest. 
• Renter policyholders will see an increase of 15.65% vs. the interim rate hike of 15%.

In addition, State Farm has agreed not to cancel any new policies this year, and it won’t be canceling some policies it had planned not to renew in wildfire-affected areas. The insurance department characterized those provisions as important to the continued stability of the state’s insurance market, which has been beset with availability and affordability issues.

“When consumer advocates are able to challenge the data and present their own analysis, excessive requests are reduced and consumers are protected,” said Harvey Rosenfield in a statement. Rosenfield founded Consumer Watchdog and wrote Proposition 103, the voter-approved law that governs insurance in California.

State Farm has paid out more than $5 billion in claims from the L.A.-area fires so far, said spokesperson Tom Hartmann.

After consumer complaints and lawsuits, the insurance department is investigating the company’s handling of claims from the fires and expects results from that examination later this spring.

The agreement, which must be approved by an administrative law judge, also requires State Farm to undergo additional review of its rates in 2027. The company will be required to make a one time 2.5% premium discount available to renewing policyholders if its ratio of premiums to available cash reaches a certain level; Consumer Watchdog litigation director Will Pletcher said the deal will give the group more timely access to the company’s annual financial statements to help keep it accountable.

The insurance department expects the judge to decide on the settlement by April 7. Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara will then review the judge’s decision and have the final say.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Iran's state media issued what it said was a statement by Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, vowing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and keep up attacks on U.S. bases in the region, as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran entered its 13th day.

It was purported to be the new leader's first statement since he succeeded his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli strike on the first day of the war.

The statement said Iran will avenge the blood of its "martyrs," including the victims of a March 1 attack on a girls school in the city of Minab, which Iranian officials say killed at least 165 people, many of them children. NPR has confirmed the U.S. military is investigating how it could have targeted the school.

The Iranian statement said the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for a fifth of the world's oil supply, should remain closed. It said Iran continues to believe in friendship with its neighbors but will continue targeting U.S. bases in the region.

"The lever of blocking the Strait of Hormuz must undoubtedly continue to be used.," the statement said, according to an English version published by Tasnim News Agency, run by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

It's unclear if the statement was from Mojtaba Khamenei himself. Another person was heard reading out the remarks on Iranian state media, with a photo of Khamenei posted on the TV screen, as it was broadcast around the world.

There's been speculation about the leader's current condition and whereabouts. An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly, told NPR that Khamenei was lightly injured early in the war.

This is a developing story that will be updated.

Here are other major updates about the conflict.

To jump to specific areas of coverage, use the links below:

Attacks on vessels | Oil stockpiles | Strikes across the Gulf | Israel-Hezbollah escalation | Iranian school attack

Two oil tankers hit in Iraqi waters

Two oil tankers were hit in Iraqi territorial waters near the southern port area of Basra, Iraqi officials said Thursday. It is the first oil-related strike reported in Iraq's waters during more than a week of war, in another sign of the conflict's escalation.

Iran, a critical ally of Iraq, took responsibility for attacking one of the tankers, which it said was owned by the U.S.

A port official said the attack targeted vessels near Basra's port approaches, and Iraq's security spokesman described it as sabotage.

Iraqi officials said one person was killed, and 38 crew members were rescued, with search operations continuing.

Iran has stepped up attacks on energy infrastructure and commercial shipping in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes, warning that the world should brace for oil prices to double.

— Jane Arraf

U.S. and allies to release record oil stockpiles  

The U.S. confirmed it will release 172 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a coordinated International Energy Agency (IEA) release of 400 million barrels from emergency stockpiles.

The U.S. contribution amounts to roughly 40% of the total, to be released gradually over about four months.

The IEA's executive director, Fatih Birol, said the goal is to keep the supply of oil flowing as the conflict disrupts shipping routes and energy infrastructure. But analysts warn stockpile releases can only partially offset prolonged disruption in the Gulf, where roughly a fifth of global oil consumption normally transits the Strait of Hormuz.

On Wednesday, President Trump said the price spike is temporary and said the reserve release would push prices down.

According to the popular app Gas Buddy, the current average cost of regular unleaded is now up to $3.61 a gallon.

- Camila Domonoske

Iran continues attacks on Gulf States

Countries in the Gulf reported new incoming threats and interceptions Thursday, as Iran continued firing drones and missiles across the region – including at U.S. military bases.

The UAE's defense ministry said air defenses were responding to Iranian missile and drone attacks, and that sounds heard in parts of the country were from intercepts.

Kuwait's defense ministry said its air defenses intercepted ballistic missiles and drones that penetrated the northern and southern parts of the country's airspace.

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted and destroyed drones headed toward the Shaybah oil field.

The United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution on Wednesday condemning Iran for recent attacks across the Persian Gulf region, calling them a "breach of international law" and "a serious threat to international peace and security."

- Rebecca Rosman

Israel launches large strikes on Hezbollah sites in Beirut after rocket fire into Israel

People inspect homes damaged by a projectile launched from Lebanon, in Haniel central Israel, on Thursday.

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The militant group Hezbollah launched its biggest rocket attack against Israel since the start of the war with Iran. The Israeli military said the Iranian-backed group fired heavy volleys toward northern Israel overnight into Thursday, triggering interceptions and sending residents repeatedly into shelters.

The Israeli military responded by launching more attacks against what it said were Hezbollah launch sites and command infrastructure.

Huge booms were heard across the capital and large black smoke billowed from the Dahieh neighborhood in south Beirut, while an attack in central Beirut – where thousands of people are displaced – killed 8 people and injured 31, according to Lebanese officials.

Wide evacuation orders for south Lebanon and Beirut's southern suburbs have displaced at least 800,000 people so far, according to the Lebanese government.

Lebanon, which does not have diplomatic ties with Israel, has unusually called for direct talks with Israel to end the escalating fighting with Hezbollah. Israel has not officially responded.

Israeli strikes on Iran have continued, with Iran firing missiles at Israel intermittently, including overnight.

Israeli military officials say about half of the missiles Iran has launched at Israel have carried cluster warheads, which spread out into smaller bombs over a wider area – increasing the risk to civilians.

- Daniel Estrin, Hadeel Al-Shalchi and Rebecca Rosman

Pentagon: Preliminary assessment suggests U.S. likely responsible for strike on Iranian school

The Pentagon has opened a formal investigation into the missile strike on an Iranian girls school that killed at least 165 civilians, many of them children, after a preliminary assessment suggested the U.S. was at fault, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly. The investigation is expected to take months and will include interviews with all those involved, from planners and commanders to those who carried out the strike.

If a U.S. role in the attack is confirmed, it would rank among the military's most deadly incidents involving civilians in decades. Congress created a special Pentagon office to prevent the accidental targeting of civilians but it was dramatically scaled back by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth soon after he took office last year.

"This investigation is ongoing. As we have said, unlike the terrorist Iranian regime, the United States does not target civilians," said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly.

The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.

NPR previously reported — based on commercial satellite imagery and independent expert analysis — that the strike was more extensive than initially reported and appeared consistent with a precision strike on a nearby military complex, raising questions about whether outdated targeting information contributed to the tragedy.

- Tom Bowman, Kat Lonsdorf, Geoff Brumfiel

Rebecca Rosman contributed to this report from Paris, Jane Arraf from Erbil, Iraq, Hadeel Al-Shalchi from Beirut, Daniel Estrin from Tel Aviv and Camila Domonoske, Tom Bowman, Kat Lonsdorf and Geoff Brumfiel from Washington.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The story first appeared on The LA Local.

If you’re a soccer fan — or just a fan of South Korean phenom Son Heung-min — you may have heard that the Los Angeles Football Club planned to put up a larger-than-life mural of the footballer in Koreatown last month. But the mural has yet to appear. 

LAFC planned to reveal the mural during the launch of their 2026/2027 jersey at The LINE Hotel. Now the reveal has been pushed back to sometime in June. 

The delay stems from issues with the city’s mural approval process, at least according to city officials. 

Gabriel Cifarelli, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, said they received a mural registration application for the site. But the department said it could not issue a notice to proceed because the application was “ineligible and incomplete” under the city’s mural ordinance and administrative rules.

“DCA staff offered the applicant advice and further guidance, and remains available for questions,” Cifarelli said. 

If a mural includes a team logo it is considered an advertisement and not original artwork, according to the city department. In that case, the permit must be issued through the city’s Building and Safety Department.

A new application has not been submitted through the mural program, Cifarelli said, and it was not immediately clear whether LAFC applied for a permit through the Building and Safety Department. 

LAFC spokesperson Danny Sanchez didn’t confirm if a new permit has been submitted.

“The mural unveil was rescheduled to June to better align with World Cup festivities,” Sanchez said. 

Dave Young Kim was commissioned to paint the mural and previously painted a Son mural on the side of the Crosby building in Koreatown in October, but that was only up for a few weeks.

He still plans to paint the mural on The LINE Hotel in June.

“I’m assuming at this point, LAFC is likely trying to line it up for a more opportune time,” said Kim. “The mural was originally supposed to line up with the launch of the new jersey so something similar.”

Leo Hernandez, 35, said he hopes the mural goes up before the World Cup.

“I didn’t know it was pushed back all the way to June,” he said. “I’ll be in Mexico for the World Cup.”

Hernandez, who goes by “El Soccer Guy” on Instagram and has nearly 50,000 followers, has been attending LAFC games since 2018. He said Son’s arrival to L.A. has brought a new wave of fans to the club.

“I’ve never seen so many Koreans,” he said. “He’s bringing a whole new community to LAFC. I don’t know if they love soccer or they love Son or both, but it’s amazing to see.”

“Son is starting to be my favorite on the team,” he added. “He’s so good. He wants the team to shine. And I love his positivity and energy.” 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is all about people with superpowers living in a world very much like our own.

And there’s a lot of real Los Angeles mixed into the recent MCU series “Wonder Man,” now on Disney+, which makes for a version of the MCU that feels a little more grounded in reality, especially for Angelenos.

It's an action-comedy about two struggling actors also dealing with superhuman forces and secret government agencies. Think The Studio meets Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Sir Ben Kingsley reprises his Iron Man 3 character Trevor Slattery, the messy British actor hired to play a bad guy called The Mandarin. And Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Simon Williams, aka Wonder Man.

Through their adventures trying to book the gig-of-a-lifetime while surviving the perils of the MCU, L.A. landmarks and cultural references abound, and ground the series in a relatability for many Angelenos, including lots of inside jokes for those working in the entertainment industry.

3 cultural references that make Wonder Man feel like real Los Angeles

Historic places, some we’ve had to part with

There’s a series of roughly 100-year-old small, independent movie houses used as locations in Wonder Man — the Eagle Theatre now home to Vidiots, Westwood's Village Theater now operated by American Cinematheque (with views of The Bruin Theater across the street), and the Highland Theatre which closed in 2024.

A scene from 'Wonder Man' on Disney +.

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Speaking of iconic L.A. spots breaking local hearts, the vintage bar within Echo Park’s Taix French Restaurant was used as an interior location for the series. Taix is closing at the end of the month to make way for new development.

“Taix, the Highland Park Theatre — these places that it was only three years ago were there,” Wonder Man showrunner Andrew Guest told LAist, “a lot of these establishments sadly, are not surviving. And this town is in a rough, rough place.”

(Though actor/director Kristen Stewart recently said in an interview with Architectural Digest that she bought The Highland Theatre and is restoring the building.)

L.A. traffic (especially around the Hollywood Bowl on a performance night)

Traffic is part of life in Los Angeles and with so many scenes shot in Hollywood, even the main characters of Wonder Man must experience that bumper-to-bumper frustration.

Though, because it is a TV show, they were able to indulge in the fantasy of beating that traffic in a way that in reality would be highly dangerous (and illegal).

“We got to shut down Sunset Boulevard for a little while to shoot a car going onto the sidewalk in front of the Palladium,” said Guest. And surprisingly, he explained, they didn’t have to shoot in the middle of the night to make the shot happen: “That was Friday night…. We didn't close all lanes of traffic. The street was open. We were shooting while Los Angeles was still going strong.”

The scene also references the frequent traffic back up during big shows at the Hollywood Bowl, even earning the show a social media repost of the scene from Chaka Khan.

Having family and friends 45 minutes away, who you rarely visit

Wonder Man includes an episode titled Pacoima where the main character visits his family and childhood home.

“My wife grew up in Chatsworth, and one of the things I found fascinating about her experience growing up there was that many of her friends and their families never went to Los Angeles,” said Guest.

“The idea that Simon grew up close to, but far enough away that Hollywood and Los Angeles did not feel like they were part of his life…so when he moved to the city, Pacoima is not a place he goes to a lot. And I feel like that's a part of L.A. that is true to this city. That doesn't get explored a lot and felt like it was another detail that we got to sort of throw into the show.”

There’s lots of other Southern California. references to enjoy from the Talmadge Apartments, an historic renaissance revival building on Wilshire Blvd., a mural of Danny Trejo, and even a cameo from Gisellle Fernandes, real-life L.A. broadcaster for Spectrum 1 News.

Should you get lost in the multi-verse, at least this L.A will be pretty familiar.

BONUS: Could there be a Season 2 of Wonder Man? And would it still be set in L.A.?

Guest couldn’t confirm anything about a possible Season 2, but told LAist, “It’s still on the table as an option, potentially."

As for whether a potential Season 2 would also film in Los Angeles and continue to highlight the city in new ways, Guest said it’s occurred to him that one of the best ways to write about Hollywood could be “ to send our show somewhere else because everybody in this town who's working has to move — whether it be Budapest or London or Ireland or Vancouver — very little is actually happening in this town. And that’s a story that I don’t think is being told right now about L.A.”

Season 1 of ‘Wonder Man’ is now streaming on Disney+.

Watch Julia Paskin's interview with actor/comedian X Mayo, who plays Simon Williams' agent in 'Wonder Man':