☀️Which Studios Won the Summer, Fall Box Office Preview
Summer Box Office ends with whimper / COMCAST drops another sports net / APPLE TV+ sets new India distro deal
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, September 1, 2024.
Where if PGA golfer Scottie Scheffler owes you money, now’s the time to send that VENMO request as he is now $25M richer for winning the Tour Championship /FEDEX cup today.
Although, that’s not exactly Steph Curry money . . . he’ll be getting $62.5M to play one season of NBA basketball in 2026. #ThanksNBCU
Really hope one of the NBA’s rising stars reaches this level (and LeBron’s) by 2027 to keep those TV audiences coming in at similar numbers — I hear the games will cost a lot more then. 🤫
ALSO: A kudos to Justin Theroux and Nicole Brydon Bloom on their wedding engagement.
AH: DISNEY crossed out CHARTER and wrote DIRECTV at the top of the note it put out tonight from the Comms group, as all DISNEY cable networks have now been pulled from the 3rd largest TV carrier in the U.S.
Essentially, DIRECTV is positioning DISNEY as greedy, and DISNEY is positioning DIRECTV as being cheap . . . so we’ll see how this fun plays out by the start of NFL season on Thursday, and the final rounds of the U.S. Open this weekend.
OH: Add One Tree Hill to Hollywood’s 2024 Redux Reflux — NETFLIX is developing a follow-up from WBTV with Sophia Bush, Hilarie Burton and Danneel Ackles already on the list of folks set to return. Series creator Mark Schwahn is . . . uh, not returning for obvious reasons.
PLUS: It wasn’t just Vietnamese pirate streaming site F-MOVIES that was shut down in August — according to The Verge, ANIWAVE and ANIMEFLIX also pulled the plug, and posted a similar “contrition” message to support legal streaming, y’all, on their sites.
THEN: TV Everywhere . . . it’s been real — DISNEY is shutting down its individual network apps like FXNOW and the ABC app later this month, where you had to authenticate each one with your cable TV subscription.
FKA: The studios’ big plan in the 2010s to maintain TV bundle dominance, until people started, ya know, trying to use these apps.
AND: As streaming 💰 comprises 84% of U.S. recorded music revenue, this chart certainly lends itself to showing that the music and video streaming businesses certainly have some things in common in 2024 around business growth:
AND: While there is still revenue growth . . . that growth is slowing too:
FINALLY: Physical media makes up 11% of revenue (more than 75% of that is from vinyl) and digital downloads are just 2% . . . no matter how hard I try to personally add to that number. #iTunes4Life #OldAF
📽 THE SILVER SCREEN
Summer, it’s been real. Here are the things to know from this weekend’s numbers (The Equalizer 3 a year ago is sadly a faint Labor Day memory), and a ranking of each studio’s summer box office performance.
A summer which many wrote off for dead at the end of May, including quite a few folks here, ahem 😏 — my Wakeup poll from that time:
THEN: Let’s take a look at what’s ahead for the fall and end of 2024, the comps that lie ahead — and the prospects of the #SummerSurge continuing into a #FallFever (er, the good kind).