Mornin! This is Sean McNulty and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on WEDNESDAY August 10, 2022.
Happy DISNEY+ numbers day (after 4p)! Where apparently WALMART has been reading all of these “Streaming business metrics making no sense” pieces this Summer and said “Wait – where do we sign up??” 🤯
Yes, according to The NY Times – WALMART has been having exploratory conversations with many studios about launching a streaming component to their own “WALMART+” streaming service to go along with their free shipping & gas discount subscription.
Remember WALMART was actually already in the streaming business until Spring 2020 with what was essentially an iTunes store competitor called VUDU that they sold to FANDANGO.
So granted – this will probably end up being WALMART just offering loss-leading, discounted subscriptions to some streaming services (a DIS+ etc), but I mean sometimes an Onion story just comes to you 🤷♂️.
PLUS: Keenan Thompson, EMMYS host. Yup that works 👍.
AND: The NYFF set its 32 film lineup for Sept 30 – Oct 16.
ALSO: The GOLDEN GLOBES are looking to return to NBC this January on Tues Jan 10, but nothing is finalized as of yet.
IN THIS EDITION:
The WWE finds even more multi-million dollar payments that Vince McMahon personally made while CEO.
Why “hours watched” is not the be-all metric for success on NETFLIX Films.
Barry Diller’s IAC and BUZZFEED are the latest to join the front of the Ad spending cutback chorus.
FOX reports their reliance on Sports & News programming, plus being in the Broadcast biz is insulating them from any Ad cutbacks.
Ethan Coen sets leads for solo directorial debut at FOCUS and more
📽 THE SILVER SCREEN
Ethan Coen sets leads for first solo directing effort at FOCUS
Margaret Qualley (“Maid”) and Geraldine Viswanathan (“Blockers”, “Hala”) will co-star in the untitled pic written by Ethan & his wife Tricia Cooke.
WORKING TITLE is producing and earlier reports had it as a road trip movie of sorts but no official details avail. /Deadline
Latest NETFLIX Top 10 Movies insights show the ‘connundrum of success’ for NETFLIX Films
While the back-to-back releases of action pic “The Gray Man” and romance “Purple Hearts” on NETFLIX is coincidental – it really provides a great, real-time test case for executives trying to determine what success is for NETFLIX Films… especially as they embark on deciding how to scale down output and spends, and where they should allocate $$ resources in their next era.
Mainly – for a company that publicly touts “hours watched” as the pinnacle goal for all films: is this really the most useful metric of success for a NETFLIX Film?
Let’s take a look at the first 10 days (2 weekends) numbers for these two films:
This has been a preview of today’s Ankler. To read the full article, we invite you to become a paid subscriber to The Ankler and don’t miss a single beat of our analysis, stories or podcasts.
