About That New Netflix Record…

This is an except from the June 20, 2019 issue of the Ankler. To get the complete issue and not miss a beat from the newsletter that’s got Hollywood shaking, subscribe here today. Netflix did it! They beat the record! Yes, it was its own record, and we’re not completely sure what it’s a record of, but they beat it! A bunch of Netflix viewers watched one of its things! Another ceiling smashed! Bird Box, consider yourself disrupted. Despite the almost total lack of clarity about what this Murder Mystery milestone means, the trades, as is their custom on such occasions, dutifully hyped the Netflix number in the headline and shoved the caveats somewhere down below Netflix shareholders say thanks, you guys! A few things about this: First, of course, it’s very nice to create your own metrics on some internal scale and choose when and where and what piece

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BULLETS OVER THE BOX OFFICE: WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT SEQUELITIS

We all just have to do better. I mean, not just making better movies, although that, too. But also in finding terms to describe our half-baked trend analyses. Sequelitis is the current diagnosis for why the world has turned against all film sequels, spin-offs, reboots, reworkings, and reheatings. The evidence is the five or six films that have bombed, underperformed or failed to meet expectations. A few things about this: First of all, Secret Life of Pets, for instance, will come in below its predecessor. It may (or may not) lose large or small amounts of money. But it still sold $154 million in tickets in a week, which may be unprofitable for its studio, but $150 million worth of seats filled in a week isn’t exactly evidence that the public is allergic to sequels. Second: John Wick 3, Aladdin, and um, Endgame. How with a straight face do you make an argument

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ARCHIVE DOWN!

Playful spooks have interrupted our tour.  Please remain seated in your doom buggy. The archive has hit a glitch and is undergoing a major renovation to make sure nothing like this ever happens again!  If you are a subscriber and you’d like to see the latest or any specific back issue, contact us at richard – [AT] – theankler.com. Please forgive the interruption and our growing pains!

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Getting Yelled at By Celebrities at Sundance, Parts 1 – 4

In honor of this year’s Sundance Festival, I’m reprinting here a little series I wrote circa 2006 on my Tumblr blog, now long gone.   Around that time I covered the Sundance Festival for the LA Times and I think I was fortunate enough to catch the apex of the festival Swag Suite A-hole’dom phase.   Here then are my memories of the times I was stupid in the presence of celebrities at Sundance, and they got mad about it, originally printed sometime about a decade ago. Getting Yelled at By Celebrities at Sundance Stardust Memories: Part 1. Pierce Brosnan The annual advent of Sundance brings back many wonderful memories: some unforgettable movies, nights riding the wrong shuttle bus to distant snowy reaches, the comradery with fellow reporters that can only be had when you are travelling on someone else’s dime, plates of free short ribs. But most of all when I think

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The Ankler Comes to Page Six

The NY Post this weekend picked up the Ankler’s major world exclusive find from last week of the secret Ted Sarandos House Hunters Tape. They write: The ghost of bank balances past has returned to haunt Netflix boss Ted Sarandos. Insidery Hollywood newsletter the Ankler has unearthed a few minutes of an ancient episode of HGTV cult favorite “House Hunters” — which featured the now wildly rich Sarandos searching in vain for an affordable home in LA about a year after he first moved to the city. Sarandos and his ex-wife, Michelle, had moved to the West Coast for Sarandos’ gig at the then-nascent video company. In the clip from a circa-2000 episode, a voice-over explains that “after looking at countless houses in a number of different neighborhoods, they were in shock. Sticker shock. So they decided to rent instead.” Says Sarandos, “We came from a place where half the money went

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