☀️ DISNEY Joins TV Deal Suspension Pileup
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☀️ DISNEY Joins TV Deal Suspension Pileup
Bill Maher returns to HBO sans writers / MTV VMA numbers / CHARTER sees little effect from DISNEY blackout
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect here on LINKEDIN if ya like) and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on THURSDAY Sept. 14, 2023.
Where welcome to “the olds” upper millennials! TRL launched 25 years ago today… Come on streamers - where is this high-end documentary!? I’m in already!
PLUS: If you enjoyed the process of getting Taylor Swift tickets this year for your kids - good news! You get to do it again for Olivia Rodrigo in 2024. Tour dates are up, and pre-sales start Wednesday (Sept. 20).
NYC is Apr 5 & 6, and L.A. is Aug 13 & 14.
Register for the pre-sale here at Ticketmaster.
ALTHOUGH: Be sure to book your “Swiftie Party” first in October - the country’s third largest movie theater chain, CINEMARK, is offering fans the option to rent out their own theater for an Eras Tour screening.
THEN: Sandler is going back out on the road… the man loves to work! Twenty-five dates starting Oct. 12 into mid-December. Tix on sale here tomorrow at 12 noon.
Oct 23 in Anaheim is the L.A. date.
Rochester is the closest date
anywherenowhere near NYC or the Northeast… although there is a gap in the sched from Oct. 24 to Nov. 8 👀.
ALSO: The Strike Force… Three of Colbert, Fallon and Kimmel will be doing a special IRL recording of their podcast in Vegas on Sat., Sept. 23 at Park MGM, with proceeds again going to support their late night show staffs.
OH: The NFL is giving a select group of “creators” access to their full (approved) archives to make “content” to promote the league (sorry Richard, I think the program may already be full). Now, please… no one tell them about “The Theisman Game” 🦵😣.
CORRECTION: My brain was scanning the Modern Family news items a little too fast yesterday morning, the show is from 20TH TV, not WB (which was mentioned in the coverage in reference the show’s new, additional home at TBS, not as the show’s studio).
My apologies for the error 20th TELEVISION sales group - kudos on the multi-selling! I owe you a beer 🍻. Well. One of you - I’ll let Steve Levitan handle the rest with his cut 💰 of the new TBS sales proceeds.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
DISNEYFOX continues the grand 2023 “How much do stars matter in film promotion?” experiment with A Haunting in Venice.
They definitely aren’t skimping on the ad buys to try and make up for the fact that this is a classic star-studded ensemble movie… without any stars actually out there selling it.
Tracking has it at $12 mil to $15 mil… let’s just do a straight up over/under in honor of Thursday Night Football kicking off tonight (reminder to self: sign up for AMAZON PRIME VIDEO today).
Two comp openings are:
Death on the Nile: $12.8 mil in 2022
Murder on the Orient Express: $28.6 million in 2017
IN TODAY’S EDITION:
It’s a real quick day… so let’s do a TBT and go free for all today!
AND: If you somehow missed Peter’s great piece at The Ankler yesterday going behind the “showrunner cabal” developments this week with WGA leadership & the agencies (or the many bad rumors around them) - I highly recommend checking it out here.
📺 THE SILVER TV 🎥
DISNEY is the latest to suspend more overall TV deals
These include Billy Porter, Yara Shahidi, Gina Rodriguez, Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, and many more… as they span a variety of groups (DISNEY BRANDED TV, 20TH TV, etc), and joining WBD and NBCU here in this mid-September trend.
DISNEY will however pay assistant salaries for the affected deals through the end of the year… and its development execs until early October. /Deadline
AND A FEW ITEMS
MTV VMA’s got 913k viewers on MTV, +30% from last year’s 705k. The show was not available to live-stream anywhere 🤷♂️, but we’ll see what the simulcasts across PAR’s other basic cable networks added. /THR
FOX renewed Lego Masters for a 5th season. /Variety
Rob Lowe will also host a mid-season game show called The Floor on FOX. /Deadline
Bill Maher is coming back on HBO next Friday… sans his WGA writers. Sure that’ll go over well (and yes, it’ll be picketed). /Deadline
The CA bill to give striking workers access to unemployment is now headed to the state Senate for a vote. No exact timeline indicated… but this has been moving swiftly so far. /Deadline
📝 IN OTHER WORDS…
“(Cordcutting losses) have been much less than what we initially anticipated."
“The impact on broadband has been very, very small.”
“I’ve talked more about video in the past 2 weeks than I have in some time.” 👀
- CHARTER CFO Jessica Fischer at the BofA conference yesterday on the subscriber losses they saw… or didn’t see during the 10-day DISNEY blackout.
Plus just alluding to that they really don’t focus much on the video business anymore… at the #2 Cable TV provider in the U.S.
Other studios - you’re on alert for your next CHARTER negotiation.
💻 THE MEDIA BIZ
For Your Listening Pleasure:
BofA Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference conversation highlights (times ET)
8:50 a.m Gunnar Wiedenfels, WBD CFO - listen to chat here
9:40 a.m. Steve Tomsic, FOX CFO - listen to chat here
10:30 a.m. Jennifer Witz, SIRIUSXM CEO - listen to chat here
11:20 a.m. Mark Woodbury, Head of NBCU Theme Park biz - listen to chat here
note - these links are all live-streams, but also avail to listen to afterward.
If you’d like to Share this newsletter 🤝 - here’s a handy button:
🏦 STOCK NOTES
NETFLIX -5% ($412.24)
ALTICE +5% ($2.96)
BUZZFEED +6% ($0.38)
AMC THEATERS +9% ($8.24)
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👩💻 NEW TO WATCH
HULU Theater Camp
🎥 TRAILER HOUSE
APPLE TV+ Lessons in Chemistry series trailer - Anyone else reminded of MAX’s Julia watching this? Speaking of… anyone know about Season 2 there? Nice use of Harry Styles here (uh… music. He’s not in the show). PREMIERES OCT 13
UNIVERSAL Trolls Band Together trailer 2 - With a new N’Sync song… that I think has about five seconds of it in this at the very end. IN THEATERS NOV. 17
PAR+ Mili Vanilli docu trailer - PREMIERES OCT. 24
STARZ Shining Vale season 2 trailer - PREMIERES OCT 13
🎧 PLAYING ME OFF
SPONGE always brings me back to early Fall #thanksCollege - so here’s some “Plowed” for fellow pre-TRL GenX’ers on TBT!
If you need some new tunes:
Email me anytime at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com or connect here on LINKED IN.
-SEAN MCNULTY
@theseanmac on TWITTER
@TheWakeupNews on INSTAGRAM