Hollywood Studios Bar Staff From Betting on Kalshi and Polymarket With Insider Knowledge

Major Hollywood studios and production companies have issued new guidelines barring employees from using insider knowledge of casting news, release dates and studio earnings to bet on the prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The rules also bar employees from sharing such tips with friends and family who might place bets. PMC, the parent company of The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and Deadline, has updated its employee handbook to explicitly ban prediction market betting, and one company reportedly set up an anonymous hotline for reporting rule-breakers. The examples cited include bets on the next Dancing With the Stars winner, the next James Bond and the full cast of Avengers: Doomsday. The Hollywood Reporter noted that connecting an employee to a particular bet can be tricky.

The Atlantic, a left-leaning outlet, ran a piece titled Prediction Markets Are Calling It Early, framing the week as a test of whether Polymarket and Kalshi could be taken seriously. Its available excerpt does not mention the studio guidelines, so no direct comparison on those facts can be drawn from it. The A.V. Club, an alternative outlet relaying The Hollywood Reporter's reporting, leads with the crackdown itself, features the named examples, the hotline and the handbook change, and adds background on a Grammys joke about betting on Polymarket and a Kalshi ad starring Timothée Chalamet. Breitbart, a right-leaning outlet, runs a column by Nolte with a playful headline built on the James Bond example, and it leads with the contrast to Congress's own insider trading, offering little detail on the studio rules. All three sides treat the studio warnings as the same underlying development, but the left excerpt centers on platform credibility, the alternative coverage on enforcement details, and the right coverage on comparison with Congress.