☀️ Why a SPINCO Won’t Work for DIS, WBD, PAR
NEON gets new 💰 access / Studio 💰 rankings in Q3 / 2 new Jesus-based 🎥 offerings
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on TUESDAY, November 26, 2024.
Where I have good news for all the folks out there who have long thought that “Baby Got Back” needed more bass. 🙋♂️
The folks at NVIDIA have you covered with a new AI-powered, text-to-audio/music tool with a name that’s definitely #JerseyApproved🤌: FUGATTO (aka Foundational Generative Audio Transformer Opus 1 — yeah, good call on FUGATTO).
It allows you to do things that other AI products like SUNO and UDIO allow you to do (i.e. type in some words/descriptions and get a song that I’m sure doesn’t infringe on anyone’s copyright 🥴), but FUGATTO also allows you to put in an existing song, and add stuff to it.
So, have fun improving on the American classics out there folks — it’s about time we showed the professionals how it’s done.
THEN: The AMPTP and the Animation Guild have reached a tentative agreement for a new deal, but no real specifics on where they landed on the whole AI thing.
AND: Interesting to see NETFLIX make the big 60-second ad spend 💰 on MNF last night for one of its action pics, the Bateman-Egerton pic Carry-On 👀.
OH: Sorry Holiday-stans . . . Jude Law just ruined the entire illusion of the British cottage in that movie.
AH: If you’re among the folks joining the cavalcade over to BLUESKY — you can find me here on an account I’ll actually be posting to (my X account is . . . rather dormant).
BTW: You know you’re going somewhere when the EU starts asking questions about your compliance with disclosure rules. Nice work, BLUE SKY!
PLUS: NBCU is in talks to keep the MACY’s Thanksgiving Day parade on NBC/PEACOCK for another decade (it has aired the event since 1953).
But it’s looking at about 3x the price, with the WSJ reporting it could hit $60M a year (up from $20M currently — this is the last year in the current contract).
Last year’s parade got the largest non-sports TV audience for 2023 (sorry, Oscars), with 28.5M viewers (and this year has a 30-second ad price of $900k — some great numbers here in the WSJ link).
DISNEY just set a deal for the Grammys for ~$50M+ a year (there are other specials involved in the deal). That show reached about 17M folks earlier this year.
OH: As Q3 #EarningsSeason is over — here’s a little revenue/profit snapshot, putting the results from some other big names out there in tech and commerce against the scale that Hollywood has as we enter 2025. Ya know, just for fun 🤓:
The following are revenue / net profit numbers for each in Q3:
WALMART: $170B / $4.6B
This stock is +68% this year btw . . . with 75% of Q3 market share gains coming from households making over $100k a year.
AMAZON: $159B / $15.3B
APPLE: $95B / $14.7B
GOOGLE: $88B / $26B
META: $40.6B / $15.7B
COMCAST: $32B / $3.6B
DISNEY: $22.6B / $460M
Yes, there are a variety of actual businesses here across commerce, advertising, electronic goods, broadband and entertainment/experiences . . . but just important to keep in mind regarding how Hollywood compares to others in the larger corporate space (NBCU was about 40% of COMCAST’s total Q3 revenue).
WAKEUP BOX OFFICE POLL
Okay, here comes the big one . . . Moana 2 is hitting about 4,100 screens in the U.S. and broadly looking at a 5-day total in the $125M to $135M range.
Frozen II did $125M back in 2019 over the 5-day, but also came out the weekend before the holiday.
Wicked’s hold is certainly an X factor here too for broader audiences, but what’cha got? My apologies for the severe stretching of how Moana can sorta sound like ya wanna.
FINALLY: Just a little something for my design folks out there in the bottom right. Apparently, sometimes you can squeeze just a little too much space between the letters . . .
🎥 THE SILVER SCREEN
