Jason P. Frank

Jason P. Frank covers the fault lines where entertainment business, pop performance, and queer culture meet for Vulture. He writes fast-turn news, trailer analysis, recaps, and features that track how corporate decisions and creative risks shape what audiences watch and talk about. His beat runs across comedy, theater, music, television, film, and queer life, with a steady focus on how power, visibility, and spectacle play out on-screen and onstage.

Disney’s B-Team Comes to Netflix

Frank’s reporting on streaming and studio maneuvering makes the mechanics of the “streaming wars” readable without losing their stakes.

In “Disney’s B-Team Comes to Netflix,” he explains how library titles like the Ice Age films and Percy Jackson and the Olympians move between services, framing them as strategic catalog shifts rather than simple content dumps. Across coverage of Disney’s latest sequel doubling as another streaming price hike and Disney fixing a notorious theme-park ride, he treats pricing, branding, and fan goodwill as parts of the same story.

His film and business pieces follow deals and disruptions, from Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy digging their way out of Skydance to the Warnermount merger gaining support from major theater chains while hitting regulatory roadblocks with California Attorney General Rob Bonta. He also tracks how streamers handle prestige acquisitions, noting Netflix’s unusually long theatrical window for the Cannes title La Bola Negra and asking what that means for the Best Picture race.

Survivor Recap: The Layup

Frank’s television work blends close episode recapping with a sense of the larger narrative and industrial context. His “Survivor Recap: The Layup” dissects self-sabotaging alliances and outlandish schemes, treating strategy and social dynamics as the engine of the episode’s chaos.

In his East of Eden recaps, he follows Zoe Kazan’s adaptation from series premiere to finale, highlighting how the show recenters Florence Pugh’s Cathy Ames and builds out character backstories beyond John Steinbeck’s original novel.

Trailer coverage like “Love Is Blind: Boston Edition Looks Wicked Dramatic” and “The One About Matthew Perry Is a Celebration of Life” pushes beyond synopsis to capture tone, stakes, and what the marketing is promising about the season or documentary. He applies a similar approach to “Saturday Night Live U.K. Gets Exciting Hosts, Innit?” and reality entries such as TFP’s decision to sit out a Hulu show, situating casting and cast exits in the ongoing churn of unscripted television.

Celebrate Christmas on Broadway With Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin

Frank’s theater and performance coverage treats Broadway and live events as living ecosystems where television, film, and celebrity cultures intersect. In “Celebrate Christmas on Broadway With Lisa Rinna and Harry Hamlin,” he details a radio-play staging of It’s a Wonderful Life, emphasizing casting choices that pull daytime and reality personalities into a holiday theater tradition. His piece on Jocelyn Bioh returning to School Girls for a Broadway revival foregrounds Bioh’s reflections on audiences becoming more educated about colorism, linking artistic decisions to shifting conversations in culture. He reports on projects like Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis’s Warriors musical and Jason Blum’s move into Broadway, treating them as extensions of creative brands testing new forms rather than isolated curios.

A profile like “Not That Kind of Mean Girl,” about Denée Benton in a thorny new play, shows how he uses a single performance to explore character types and how audiences root for complex women onstage.

The Highs, Lows, and Whoas of the 2026 Oscars

Frank is a recurring voice in Vulture’s “Highs, Lows, and Whoas” packages, which break down major ceremonies and festivals into sharp, digestible verdicts.

In the 2026 Oscars roundup, he contributes to a survey of a show that the team argues comes impressively close to what the awards should be, balancing praise and critique in quick, pointed capsules. Similar work on the VMAs, Emmys, Tonys, Coachella, actor awards, and the Winter Olympics opening ceremony frames each event as a series of moments - Dolly Parton tributes, hosting misfires, viral glitches, and unexpected artistic flourishes - rather than a monolithic broadcast. These pieces sit alongside his music and pop writing, including Lil Nas X returning with a more earnest single, Ella Langley contending with viral success, and a slog of summer pop charts that lead him to spotlight an up-and-coming Slovak “Main Pop Girl” named Adéla.

Even in global stories like “China’s Biggest Box-Office Success of 2026 Makes No Sense,” where the animated film Niu Lai earns 20,000 times its budget by being “so bad it’s good,” he foregrounds the cultural oddity and audience response over pure numbers.

La Bola Negra Introduces Itself

Frank’s coverage of queer and marginalized stories is woven through both his film and television beats. In “La Bola Negra Introduces Itself,” he presents the trailer for an intergenerational saga as the start of a sweeping gay love story set during the Spanish Civil War, highlighting scope and queer romance together.

His reporting on an Indigenous actress suing James Cameron over the use of her face in Avatar centers the claim that the films were silently exploiting a real Indigenous youth, bringing representation and consent issues into high-profile franchise coverage. Elsewhere, he writes about Dolly Parton tributes, club-kid–inflected comedy like The Club Kid trailer, and performers such as Mary Beth Barone headed into film work, sketching a landscape where queer sensibilities and camp aesthetics are part of the mainstream.

Across these pieces, and in celebrity and public-statement coverage like Olivia Wilde addressing her reputation and Pete Davidson reflecting on his famous exes, Frank treats image-making and self-defense as core parts of the entertainment story.