☀️ New NETFLIX Games Boss Shutters Division in Strategy Shift
DISH-DIRECTV deal hits major standoff / NETFLIX int'l pics score big / Stuber sets UA project with Scarlett
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on WEDNESDAY, October 23, 2024.
Where not all heroes wear capes, folks, although in this case I’m guessing they probably do — gonna start the day with a shout out to the Paladins of Cosplay. #realname
For those few readers who could, uh, use a little more here — the Paladins are a group of creative folks who have taken to setting up stations at Comic-Cons for folks experiencing “wardrobe malfunctions” on the convention floor to come and get hot-glued back up, or whatever repair touch-up a con attendee may need to their return their costume to looking its very best, as they . . . listen to panels (🤷♂️ I’m not sure exactly what else goes on at NY Comic-Con honestly).
So a kudos the the Paladins 🫡 for giving their time and expertise to help their fellow robot, stormtrooper, superhero . . . or perhaps just someone whose t-shirt got a tear on a raucous autograph line.
OH: Tom Holland indicated on The Tonight Show last night that the next Spider-Man pic is gearing up to shoot next summer for SONY.
THEN: DISNEY is cutting out its future owner disto partner APPLE in subscription revenues according to Business Insider, by insisting that new subscribers to DISNEY streaming apps pay directly via a DISNEY website and not in the APPLE App Store . . . thus circumventing APPLE’s 30% take of the proceeds (aka the SPOTIFY tactic).
October streaming price hikes, theme park price hikes, cutting out APPLE — DISNEY is looking for that cash yo 🤑.
MEANWHILE: APPLE is “severely” scaling back Vision Pro production according to The Information. Huh, I wonder what’s going wrong?
THEN: In classic teen romance style — Zuck wants to know where you are hanging out . . . but he doesn’t want you to know where he is. Social media accounts that track the private planes of people that, well, can afford them . . . like Zuck, Elon and Bezos have been banned from META platforms. #That’s🤌
AND: The WNBA Finals got 2.2M viewers for its game 5 finale on Sunday — the 4th biggest Finals game ever (the rest were in the '90s when the league started, and were on broadcast TV).
The game was also up against NBC Sunday Night Football and the METS vs. DODGERS game 6 on FS1.
This WNBA Finals had the highest average viewership (1.6M) since 1999, which was on NBC and not cable TV.
Four INDIANA FEVER / Caitlin Clark games did have bigger audiences this year.
Rest of the weekend sports TV audiences (NFL, F1, MLB, college football) is down below in the SPORTS MEDIA section to see how this compared.
PLUS: Just a follow up from my “sports adjacent” streaming content hype analysis from last week — the new NETFLIX NBA series Starting 5 did not chart globally in its 2nd week on NETFLIX either, nor in the U.S.
FINALLY!: A popcorn bucket not built to inspire sexual arousal! I’m tellin’ ya — the movie business momentum is coming in strong this holiday season.
OH: This one’s just for any other folks in their 40s who want to understand (and feel better about) why we’re biologically not able to bounce back from things like we used to.
REST IN PEACE: Goes out to two L.A. legends today. In the sports world, DODGERS legend Fernando Valenzuela died at the age of 63 yesterday — a pitcher that as a young METS fan, was always a worrisome sight on the mound in the '80s, and a man who did a lot for the game itself in SoCal and beyond.
And in Hollywood, to legendary film producer Lynda Obst, who died at the age of 74. No cause of death was given, but she had a long battle with COPD after several decades of smoking that she spoke about earlier this year.
Many memorable films on the CV of course, from The Fisher King and Sleepless in Seattle to Contact and Interstellar — although she also wrote one of the industry’s top memoirs, Hello, He Lied that I loved reading back when I was about to enter the industry . . . plus a follow up she did in 2014, both of which I would still recommend to any folks out there entering the business now (link here), including our new readers in The Ladder.
📽 THE SILVER SCREEN
