Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on THURSDAY, May 23, 2024.

Where BLACKSTONE is the latest PE firm to announce that going forward, it’ll be giving stock/equity to the employees of the companies in which it buys a controlling stake.

This mirrors a tactic KKR has been employing (recently with SIMON & SCHUSTER) to get better returns on its investments. Which hey — could be the silver lining for employees of the cable networks spun out of the studios! Err, the ones that are left.

Turns out — when employees are properly motivated, they tend to do better work, as recently documented in a good 60 Minutes profile on KKR’s purchase of a garage door manufacturer. Who knew, amirite?

Then again — RED LOBSTER just entered bankruptcy due to PE tactics involving charging high rents, and free shrimp offers pushed by a major shrimp company investor in the chain . . . so let’s not buy into the new PE branding campaign just yet.

And if you need just a 🤌 analogy to round things out here — the printing press location of the now PE-backed Chicago Tribune is literally being turned into a casino in Chicago.

But hey, I’m sure the Hollywood compensation handbook of giving tens of millions of stock options to just the top 3 executives at companies is a great employee motivational policy too.

OH: Ari had quite a night . . . getting both applauded and booed for his speech accepting the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Humanitarian Award last night, with “dozens” leaving the room as Ari again slammed Benjamin Netanyahu for his handling of the Israel-Gaza war and again called for his resignation. (Recall that he also did this at the Bloomberg Screentime conference last fall.) Ari also said Israel should be “negotiating a political two-state solution that delivers peace, security and dignity for all.”

• Richard was in the room at the event, and will be diving into this shortly.

AND: The NFL can — and I’d #ESPNBet will — up its overseas games from 5 to 8 next season. The league is floating ideas on a lot of new markets . . . but uh, not too sure about that Australia idea included in these conversations 🫤.

• The NFL also punted, ahem, on making a decision on allowing some PE 💰 into team ownership.

PLUS: Well, this is new — former NETFLIX CMO Bozoma St. John is joining season 14 of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

TODAY IN AI:

• AMAZON is planning to “upgrade” ALEXA using AI, and begin charging a fee to use it, according to CNBC. No price or timeline indicated, other than this will not be included in a PRIME membership.

• Add NEWS CORP to the list of publishers cutting a deal with OPENAI to let it harvest the archives, in a 5-year deal worth about $50M a year.

  • PERSPECTIVE: NEWS CORP’s WSJ, Barron’s, NY Post and its U.K. and Australian publications, which are all included in the deal here, bring in well over $4 Billion a year in revenues. Uh, for now.

    • SO: Describing the OPENAI check to NEWS CORP for giving all of their work to AI as a drop in the revenue bucket . . . is probably giving it too much weight.

  • REDDIT’s deal with GOOGLE for the same purpose is $60M a year.

  • DOTDASH MEREDITH also recently cut an OPENAI deal, but no price was disclosed.

  • OPENAI was valued by investors at more than $80 Billion earlier this year, so I think they’re good for the $50M annual check.

• $14.7B of 💰 profit on $26B of income — not a bad Q1 at NVIDIA. In addition to APPLE here on this chart, MICROSOFT and GOOGLE were the only companies to make more profit in Q1.

  • What’s that? Pay news organizations for use of their work? No I’m sorry, that’s too expensive for our business model.

    

  • HOLLYWOOD COMPS — Q1 NET PROFIT:

    • NETFLIX: $2.3 Billion

    • DISNEY: $216 Million (or -$20 Million if you count non-controlling interests in some businesses)

    • PARAMOUNT: -$554 Million

    • WBD: -$966 Million

    • COMCAST: $3.8 Billion (net profit for NBCU is not specifically broken out . . . but assume this net profit is mostly broadband / mobile / cable bundle $$)

    • SONY is primarily a gaming & electronics company, so it is what it is.

PLUS: Deadpool & Wolverine sold about $8M worth of tickets on the day they became available, the most in one day for an R-rated pic at AMC THEATERS.

• Deadpool opening weekend: $132M in 2016 ($782M total)

• Deadpool 2 opening weekend: $125M in 2018 ($786M total)

WAKEUP BOX-OFFICE POLL — TWOFER!

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is tracking around $40M+ for the 4-day . . . the last one did $45M on a typical 3-day weekend in 2015.

AND: Garfield is tracking around $30M+ for the 4-day

BIGGER PICTURE: Even if these films over-perform and do $80M combined, that’s still below The Little Mermaid alone last Memorial Day weekend at $96M, and of course Top Gun: Maverick at $126M the year before..

📽 THE SILVER SCREEN

AMAZON keeps buying things