☀️MARVEL Can't Keep a 'Blade' Director
SONY buys a movie chain / Decoding PAR's message to the troops / USA NET's scripted return
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, June 13, 2024.
Where who had NATHAN’S Hot Dogs on the list of companies that NETFLIX would come for in the 2020s?
Unlike the notoriously overpriced hot dog giant, NETFLIX has no problem with Joey Chestnut’s endorsement of a plant-based food company and is bringing the Chestnut Vs. Kobayashi: Unfinished Beef hot dog eating contest to you on Labor Day, Sept. 2. So, cross off “eating contests” on the NETFLIX Live Events white board (hope they got global rights🤞).
No word if the guys will do so 🌭 while being driven around by F1 drivers competing against each other . . . but we still have some time to workshop this.
AND: It’s gettin’ real in late-night TV . . . as Late Night with Seth Meyers is losing its 8G Band when the new season starts this fall due to budget cuts.
PLUS: DISNEY’s plans for $17B worth of expansion around WALT DISNEY WORLD got a major Florida board approval yesterday, giving the company permission to build a 5th theme park, 3 additional small parks, expanded retail & office space and 14,000 new hotel rooms. Oh hi, UNIVERSAL. 👋
THEN: APPLE is not paying OPENAI for the (optional) use of ChatGPT in iOS18 — apparently the deal is largely “promotional” — i.e. do you know how many people we’ll organically be introducing your product to?
OPENAI is now making about $280M a month from subscriptions to its chatbots, plus fees from software developers accessing its models and its cut of revenue from MICROSOFT utilizing it with its cloud customers, according to The Information.
The company was last valued at $80B in February, or about 25x its current $3.4B annual revenue run rate.
Meanwhile — PERPLEXITY AI, which cites its sources in its results, is planning a revenue share model with media partners, according to Semafor. But, not a lotta details here yet.
ALSO: While the MAVERICKS didn’t show up to play 🏀 last night — Hollywood certainly did (and as no NBA team has won a Finals after going down 3-0, well, it’s been real) .
I didn’t do a full count of ads, but:
SONY is still going very hard on the Bad Boys full court press.
UNI also still showing up with Despicable 4, plus a surprise, really nicely done spot for The Wild Robot, which isn’t until September.
PAR (Quiet Place 3), WB (Horizon) and AMAZON (The Boys) also said hey again.
DISNEY of course had plenty of Inside Out 2 and even a dash of Deadpool.
My apologies if I missed any other buys.
UH: Gotta think Iger and Pitaro will definitely be rooting hard for the OILERS tonight so the NBA and NHL series don’t both go 3-0 🤦♂️.
GOTTA SAY: This Daily Show montage swapping in Trump visuals to the FOX NEWS reaction to the Hunter Biden verdict this week was rather 🤌.
A REST IN PEACE: Goes out to “The Logo,” NBA and LAKER legend Jerry West, who died at the age of 86 yesterday (Note for Janice: He is the player whose image was literally used to create the NBA logo).
While I’d love to go with a gif of Jason Clarke’s memorable portrayal of West in HBO’s Winning Time, ya gotta go with the genuine article himself . . . while not a movie/TV biz presence obviously, he meant so much to L.A. and the sport over many decades.
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
The savior has arrived! Or at least as good as we’re gonna get . . . Inside Out 2 is tracking at an $85M-ish U.S. opening, and let’s hope the tracking is better here than it was for Lightyear in 2022 (tracking: $70M+, actual: $50M).
But uh, who had . . . Deadline being the downer review of the 3 PENSKE trades? 🤯 (THR and Variety were both high on it.)
Anyway, the movie to beat in 2024 is Dune Part 2 at $82M, but frankly anything over $80M is probably a win here given the tops so far this summer is $58M.
Your Inside Out comp from the first movie was $90M in 2015 on the same June weekend.
TONYS WEEK CONTINUES 🎵
Gonna go with a song from something that may not be on a lot of radars out there, a show called Lempicka . . . whose two leads (Amber Iman and Eden Espinosa) are both nominated for awards this Sunday, despite the show not having the prominence of others out there.
IN TODAY’S EDITION
The Blade movie seems to be turning into one of those movies where the backstory to the screen is going to be longer than the movie.
PAR’s Office of the CEO sends a message to the employee base after the tumult of the week — decode a few of the top directives ahead, plus thoughts on what the trio needs to lay out for Wall Street long term.
The Saudis set their eye on a new sport . . . since golf is going so well, plus the latest sports TV ratings roundup to show what America is watching (and just how many of them), and much more.
📽 THE SILVER SCREEN
