New guidelines bar employees from betting on casting, release dates and earnings, after a suspicious surge in the James Bond market.
Hollywood has always run on secrets: who got the part, when the trailer drops, which film is moving dates. Prediction markets have turned those secrets into something you can trade, and the studios have noticed. According to an exclusive report from The Hollywood Reporter, studios and production companies have been quietly issuing new guidelines warning employees not to bet on prediction markets tied to their work.
The rules prohibit staff from placing bets on casting decisions, studio earnings and release dates, and from tipping off friends or family so they can bet instead. At least one company has set up an anonymous hotline for employees to report colleagues suspected of placing wagers. Penske Media Corporation, which owns THR, Variety, Deadline and Dick Clark Productions, has also updated its handbook to ban betting on “award nominations, casting decisions, production timelines and release dates.”
The concern is not theoretical. Kalshi disclosed in February that a video editor at MrBeast’s company made about $5,000 using confidential information to bet on MrBeast content; the employee was fired and fined $20,000. In April, Puck reported that a worker on a CBS competition show had been profiting from prediction markets. And this week, offshore sportsbook BetOnline briefly pulled its next James Bond market after what a representative called “sharp money” suddenly pushed Callum Turner past longtime favorite Jack Lowden, raising fears of a leak from the final screen tests.
That Bond swing is a useful case study. When we looked at the next James Bond odds last month, the boards at bookmakers and prediction markets alike tended to chase headlines rather than predict them, with the top contenders adding up to well over 100 percent. A sudden, unexplained surge for one name is exactly the pattern that worries compliance teams: either the market knows something, or someone inside does.
“There’s a high degree of asymmetric information,” Columbia Law School professor Joshua Mitts told THR, arguing there is “very little social utility” in correctly pricing a casting announcement or a reality show winner. Mitts, who co-authored a study estimating $143 million in anomalous profits on Polymarket over two years, also warned that blockchain-based trading can make insider bets nearly impossible to trace.
The regulatory picture is still taking shape. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which oversees U.S. prediction markets, asked the industry this summer to weigh in on which event contracts should be allowed. It signaled that award shows like the Oscars and Emmys count as contests rather than gaming, but left open questions about game shows, reality competitions and talent shows, where outcomes are often known to crews and audiences weeks before they air.
There is one bet that is already off the table, and it is the one Hollywood cares about most. Federal law bans futures contracts on motion picture box office receipts. The prohibition sits in the Onion Futures Act of 1958, but the box office clause was added in 2010, when the Dodd-Frank Act amended the law after the CFTC briefly approved two box office futures exchanges and studios lobbied hard to shut them down. The result is a strange gap: you can trade on who will play Bond, which film will win best picture or what a guest will say on Saturday Night Live, but not on how much a movie makes on opening weekend.
For studios, policing the rest may prove even harder than winning that fight. Many talk shows tape in advance in front of public audiences, and anyone in the seats is free to bet. Insider trading laws may already cover some of the most blatant cases, but as Mitts noted, the bigger challenge now is simply teaching employees what they are and are not allowed to do.
Disclosure: The Cinema Group previously had a paid sponsorship with Kalshi, which ended in October 2026. TCG editorial staff do not trade on prediction markets tied to subjects we cover.
