Eli Lilly Joins the $1T Market Cap Club

Eli Lilly has become the first pharmaceutical company to reach a $1 trillion market capitalization, driven by soaring demand for its weight-loss and diabetes drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound. Its market value now far exceeds that of Johnson & Johnson and places it among just 10 companies, mostly tech giants, to cross the trillion-dollar mark. With strong prescription growth and plans for next-generation weight-loss treatments, analysts expect Lilly to dominate the $72 billion global market and potentially generate over $100 billion annually from these drugs by 2034.

Universal’s Wicked: For Good earned $30.8 million from Monday-Thursday previews, the highest preview total of 2025 so far, beating Fantastic Four: First Steps. Thursday accounted for $18.2 million, with the rest coming from Prime and advance screenings earlier in the week. With this strong lead-up, the film’s three-day opening in the United States and Canada is now projected at $125-$150 million.

Boardroom’s Michelai Graham breaks down the anticipated film after getting an early screening.

Paramount Skydance, Comcast, and Netflix have all reportedly submitted first-round bids for Warner Bros. Discovery ahead of the deadline. Paramount Skydance considered raising its earlier rejected bid, while Comcast and Netflix bid only for WBD’s film and streaming assets, including Warner Bros. studio and HBO Max. WBD aims to finalize the sale by late December, with more bidding rounds ahead. Its stock rose roughly 2% on Friday, continuing a climb of more than 20% since the company announced in October that it was exploring a sale.

A Frida Kahlo surrealist painting, El sueño (La cama), sold for $54.7 million, setting a new auction record for any artwork by a woman. The 1940s self-portrait, depicting Kahlo asleep beneath a skeleton wrapped in dynamite, soared to more than 1,000x its 1980 auction price after a bidding duel. The sale surpasses both the previous record for a female artist’s work ($44 million for Georgia O’Keeffe in 2014) and the earlier Kahlo auction record of $34.9 million set in 2021.

Eddie Murphy will receive the 51st American Film Institute Life Achievement Award at the Gala Tribute on April 18 at Los Angeles’ Dolby Theatre. Over four decades, Murphy has starred in multiple $100M-plus films, from Beverly Hills Cop to Daddy Day Care, and recently appeared in Netflix’s Being Eddie and Amazon’s The Pickup. He earned Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice nominations for Dolemite Is My Name, won a 2020 Emmy for Saturday Night Live, received the 2023 Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award, and earned an Oscar nomination for Dreamgirls.

TikTok has launched The TikTok Foundry, an accelerator program for VC and PE firms aimed at helping their portfolio companies better use TikTok for brand discovery, customer acquisition, and revenue growth. The program offers matched media incentives of up to $15K, hands-on strategic and creative support, early access to new features, educational resources, and opportunities for exposure and co-marketing. It’s designed to help growth-stage and consumer-focused brands more effectively harness TikTok as a business driver.

Nas and DJ Premier are set to release their long-awaited collaborative album on Dec. 12. Premier revealed the news during a show in Bristol earlier this week, but didn’t announce the album’s title. The project will serve as the final installment in Mass Appeal’s Legend Has It… series, which has featured releases from artists like Slick Rick, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, Mobb Deep, Big L, and De La Soul.

Premier League clubs have approved major changes to their financial rules starting next season, replacing the Profitability and Sustainability Rules (PSR) with new Squad-Cost Rules (SCR). Under the SCR, clubs can spend only up to 85% of their football revenue plus net transfer profit/loss, with a multi-year 30% allowance that triggers a levy and eventual sporting sanctions if exceeded. The league also passed new Sustainability and Systematic Resilience tests to assess clubs’ financial health, but rejected the proposed “top-to-bottom anchoring” model, which only seven clubs supported.

Ahead of the College Football Playoff title game, Miami Beach will host the AT&T Playoff Playlist Live! festival on Jan. 17-18 at Lummus Park. The first night will feature Calvin Harris, John Summit, and rising DJ/producer XANDRA, while the second night will see performances from Peso Pluma, Latin Mafia, and Greeicy. Doors open at 6 p.m. ET; no tickets are required.

Warner Bros. Discovery is launching the first annual “December the TwELFth” celebration on Dec. 12 to honor Jon Favreau’s classic 2003 holiday film Elf. Festivities begin with a noon performance of Elf the Musical in Times Square, along with pop-up photo stations, shopping, and Santa letter-writing. The film will also return to theaters for one day in a new “Buddy’s Sing & Cheer Along Edition” featuring on-screen lyrics, trivia, and added gags. Visitors to the Studio Tour Hollywood will also be able to see original costumes and themed displays.

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