☀️'IF' Continues Summer '24 Box Office Woes
NEON's big Cannes shopping spree / PAR opens books to SONY / FOCUS makes notable new purchase
Evenin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on SUNDAY, May 19, 2024.
Where we’re used to seeing NFL teams collapse as the season and playoffs go on due to injuries . . . but it’s rare to see it in the NBA — which sadly is what befell our beloved NY KNICKS, as our 2024 NHL and NBA playoff fairy tale is over (RANGERS Conference title series at least starts Wednesday night 🥅).
But hey, it’s too gorgeous of a Sunday night in NYC to end on a down note — so let’s send a congrats to Xander Schauffele who sank this putt to get a $3.25 Million payday and win the PGA Championship — his first PGA major tournament win.
OH: For all of those “Hollywood should pivot to gaming!” folks still out there — TAKE TWO (parent co. of ROCKSTAR) posted a $2.9B loss for Q1 alone, including:
$2.1B in write-offs
$304M in acquisition costs (the company bought GEARBOX/Borderlands game) in March
$93M in severance
Oddly enough — it also has a “survive til ‘25” thing going on, in that Grand Theft Auto 6 won’t be arriving until fall 2025.
This on top of word from Bloomberg earlier this month that more layoffs at MICROSOFT’s XBOX division are still to come.
THEN: Just a note on the new NFL Christmas — while NETFLIX has both games this year, the 2025 games will actually present an interesting audience “reach” face-off: NETFLIX will have one game, and AMAZON will have the other in 2025 (Christmas next year falls on a Thursday).
Still TBA who will be producing the games for NETFLIX (and which announcers will be calling them — a Tom Brady Christmas anyone?)
NOTE FOR ELAINE: ABC will air the 🎾 U.S. Open men’s final this September — the first time the match will air beyond just ESPN.
TODAY IN AI:
SONY MUSIC is sending out letters to more than 700 AI companies (let’s hope they didn’t cheap out and get the stamps you have to lick #SummerInternshipsRule), saying that SONY is opting-out of letting them use SONY music to train their AI bots.
The letter also mentions that the companies may have already violated SONY copyrights by including its songs in their bot building to date . . . so yeah, more to come here.
REDDIT is the latest company to let OpenAI harvest its data. No word on what OpenAI is paying REDDIT for the privilege 🤑. So if you and ChatGPT have increasingly similar takes on AMC THEATERS stock, you’ll know why.
GOOGLE reportedly agreed to fork over $60 Million annually to REDDIT back in February for access to its data for AI building purposes.
REDDIT’s Q1 total revenue was $243M.
Two VO artists are suing an AI company called LOVO, claiming it cloned their voices without permission (voice samples of each are in the story).
A REST IN PEACE: Goes out to Dabney Coleman, who died at his home in Santa Monica on Thursday at the age of 92. While 9 to 5 led a lot of the obits, gotta say WarGames is really up there at the top for me.
WAKEUP BOX-OFFICE POLL
So, the bears are now 2 for 3 so far this summer movie season:
IN THIS EDITION
Parse through the IF and Strangers numbers, the latest in specialty — and where things stand at the summer box office going into Memorial Day weekend.
Some lessons to note from the DISNEY Q1 numbers that loom over any PARAMOUNT deal, as SONY / APOLLO make a new move forward in their talks with PARAMOUNT — plus some upcoming dates to keep in mind overall here.
Also, a very busy weekend at Cannes — if there was any thought that the specialty film market is in an austerity pullback . . . I’m not seeing it.
📽 THE SILVER SCREEN
