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The Wakeup

WED 2.3.21 : "Wicked" movie gets director, more NBCU layoffs

GOLDEN GLOBE noms, SUNDANCE winners, Jeff Bezos hands over CEO title and more news to know this morning.

Sean McNulty

Feb 3, 2021

Mornin! It’s WEDNEDSAY February 3rd, 2021. Where the GOLDEN GLOBE nominations are out… and once again I’m up against Dame Judy Dench for Best Use of a Gif in a Newsletter.

Other Awards notes:

GLOBES hosts will be bi-coastal on Feb 28 - Tina in NYC & Amy in LA.

SUNDANCE Winners list is Here with full details on each at the Festival site. Spoiler alert: “CODA” won pretty much everything

SAG Noms out tomorrow AM.

🎧 MUSIC TO READ BY

New BABY QUEEN “Raw Thoughts” Apple Music / Spotify / YouTube

And 🙏 share the Newsletter on your LinkedIn. I mean… I need all the help I can get taking on Dench. Look at those eyes, she’s ruthless.

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Email me at Wakeupodcast@gmail.com to say hey or with any feedback to make this email work better for ya.

📽 THE SILVER SCREEN

UNIVERSAL “Wicked” movie gets new director: Jon M. Chu (DEADLINE)

No word on a start date. Stephen Daldry (“Billy Elliott”) was previously slated but departed last year.

Jon’s “In The Heights” comes out in June from WB, and he recently dropped out as lead diretor of the “Willow” DISNEY+ series.

ALSO IN MOVIES

Ruth Wilson joins SEARCHLIGHT Untitled murder mystery with David Oyelowo, Sam Rockwell, Saoirse Ronan shooting in the UK.
Lena Dunham directing movie in the UK this Spring produced by Working Title, called “Catherine, Called Birdy”.
”Come From Away” movie of the Broadway show being shot by eOne in May for theatrical release in Sept.
This wins Headline of the Day: “Joel Silver Paid Ron Meyer’s $1.7 Million Debt at Las Vegas Casino” 👏 VARIETY

📺 THE TV SET

50 layoffs at NBCU Entertainment Content group (DEADLINE)

Supposedly the last stage of Susan Rovner’s re-org of the group. Mostly in Programming/content, but also some in Scheduling & Marketing.

2 top level departures at PEACOCK:

Bruce Evans - EVP of Current Programming & Dan Shear - EVP of Comedy Development.

ALSO IN TV

“Jeopardy” adds more guest hosts: Anderson Cooper, Savannah Guthrie, Dr. Oz, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Airdates TBD.
“Colbert” sets post-SUPER BOWL guest lineup on Sunday night: RDJr, Tiffany Haddish and Metallica.
WARNER MEDIA sets new Head of Talent Relations, and Head of TV Awards from DISNEY & SHOWTIME respectively.
ENDEAVOR CONTENT announces bunch of Production/Development exec changes + Eric Pertilla is new VP of TV Devel/Production (from CBS All Access).

💻 THE MEDIA BIZ

Jeff Bezos to shift from AMAZON CEO to Exec Chairman (NYT)

AMAZON Head of Cloud Computing (aka AWS), Andy Jassy will be new CEO come Summer TBD. Been with AMAZON since 1997.
Jeff will work on new products/initiatives/wtf he wants. Kinda like how Bill Gates was still at MICROSOFT when Steve Ballmer took over, or how Bob Iger is still… “involved” at DISNEY after leaving CEO job a year ago.

AMAZON made $7.6 Billion in profits from Oct thru Dec 2020. No AMAZON PRIME VIDEO stats released.

AMAZON made more $$ than APPLE in 4Q ‘20, ($125 bil to $111 bil) but APPLE made more profit. Ok fine but do either of them have a daily newsletter? I think not.

YOUTUBE 4Q ‘20 advertising revenue +46% versus 4Q ‘19 - The site took in $6.9 Billion in the 3 month, Oct thru Dec 2020 period. (NYT)

Total ALPHABET revenue +23% vs same period last year. GOOG stock +7% in after hours trading.

FAANG Revenue Perspective from Oct thru Dec (what each took in, in 3 months):

AMAZON: $125 bil
APPLE: $111 bil
GOOGLE: $56 bil
FACEBOOK: $28 bil
NETFLIX: $7 bil

SPOTIFY subscriber updates - from October to end of 2020:

+12 mil paying subscribers to hit 156 mil worldwide.
+13 mil freeloader users (🙋‍♂️) to hit 189 mil Monthly Active Users (MAU).
Overall: +25 mil users from Oct thru Dec to hit 345 mil MAU Worldwide end of 2020.

+31 mil paying subs for 2020 overall. Or essentially… they added the size of HULU’s subscriber base in one year.

However… they’re Projecting little user growth in Q1 2021, stock looking down today.

🎥 TRAILER HOUSE

PEACOCK “Punky Brewster” reboot, launches Thu Feb 25th.

NETFLIX “Amend: The Fight for America” - 6 part docuseries on the 14th Amendement hosted by Will Smith. Drops Wed Feb 17th.

HBO new Original Series “The Nevers” - kind of an “X-Men” meets Victorian England thing? 🤷‍♂️ Premieres in April.

👩‍💻 NEW TO WATCH

“Firefly Lane” on NETFLIX, a new series starring Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke based on the bestselling novel about the friendship between two women through the decades… You can catch those 10 episodes today if ya like HERE.

“Modern Family” All 250 episodes drop on HULU and PEACOCK, although only the first 12 episodes of the show will be on PEACOCK Free. The rest of the library is behind their paywall.

And if there’s one thing Phil Dunphy would want you to do… it’s share this newsletter with your team. Or at least your sister.

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Have a great Wednesday ya’ll! See ya tomorrow.

-Sean McNulty

Follow THE WAKEUP on Instagram and LinkedIn to humor me.

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