🎬 20-Year Rivalry

👋 Good morning. A good portion of this mailing list will be traveling to Cannes this weekend. The festival opens Monday. If you've already started practicing the two-cheek kiss in your bathroom mirror, the only real advice is to commit. Hesitation is how a hello becomes an HR matter.

Congrats on making it to Friday. We've got streaming numbers and a stack of stories to get you caught up before the weekend (or wheels up). Let’s get into it. 👇

Top-streamed chart (U.S.) Apr. 29 to May 6. Data provided by Luminate.

The bidding war for ‘Battlefield’ is in full swing. Video game publisher EA sent its package out to buyers last month, and five studios (Warner Bros., Amazon MGM, Sony, Universal, and Netflix) are now circling in what’s shaping up to be the biggest bidding war of the year. Even Apple has shown interest. The package dropped on the heels of Paramount dating its own 'Call of Duty' movie at CinemaCon for June 30, 2028. Who’s attached:

The two games have been the Marvel vs. DC of military shooters, launching within months of each other in 2002-2003 and competing for the same trigger fingers for over 20 years. 'Call of Duty' has long dominated, with 500M+ units sold to 'Battlefield's’ 91M. But 'Battlefield 6' outsold 'Call of Duty: Black Ops 7' domestically last year (EA's first win over Activision in nearly a decade), giving EA the momentum to push hard into Hollywood.

This isn't Hollywood's first crack at 'Call of Duty'. Activision spun up its own studio in 2015 to build a "robust cinematic universe," then attached 'Sicario 2' director Stefano Sollima in 2018. Both went nowhere. What's changed: game adaptations have shifted from coin flip to safer bet. The two 'Mario' movies have pulled a combined $2.26B, and 'A Minecraft Movie' did $960M last year. According to Ampere Analysis, 25-plus video game adaptations have been announced every half-year since late 2023.

Here's the bet: the two franchises have surprisingly distinct player bases (just 8% overlap), which means the films could complement rather than cannibalize each other. As superhero fatigue deepens, military shooters with built-in audiences in the hundreds of millions are exactly what studios are reaching for next.

Wispr Flow turns your voice into clean, professional text you can send the moment you stop talking. Not rough transcription you have to clean up. Actual polished text — ready for email, Slack, or any app.

Speak the way you think. Go on tangents. Change your mind mid-sentence. Flow strips the filler, fixes the grammar, and gives you text that reads like you spent five minutes writing it.

89% of messages sent with zero edits. Millions of professionals use Flow daily, including teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. Works on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

Start flowing free

For most of the last decade, a famous name was enough to land a multimillion-dollar Hollywood production deal. Studios and streamers picked up the overhead (office, staff, letterhead) in exchange for the access and headlines a celebrity producer was supposed to bring. Three of the highest-profile examples of that era are now downsized or gone:

Blame the Peak TV hangover. With scripted volume well off its 2022 high of 600 originals, studios that were minting deals on adrenaline a few years ago now want every dollar to come back as a show that actually airs. What studios pay for now is reliable delivery: develop quickly, deliver on schedule, hit budget. Experienced writers and showrunners are the new must-have, and the celebrity premium has collapsed in the meantime. A star-driven deal that averaged $2M a year during Peak TV is worth roughly $500K today.

A handful of actor-led shops are still thriving, though. The trend-buckers all pair a seasoned operator with a star who reliably co-stars in what they produce. Kidman's Blossom Films, the gold standard, is run by longtime Robert Redford producer Per Saari and has delivered 'Big Little Lies,' 'The Undoing,' 'Nine Perfect Strangers,' and 'Scarpetta,' with Kidman in nearly every one.

The bigger picture: With less content getting made, studios are paying for ROI and predictable outcomes. Less volatility, more certainty. They want partners who can deliver a real slate from Day 1. That's a quiet win for working writers and showrunners, who are once again Hollywood's most sought-after talent after years of competing with celebrity heat.

🏰 Josh D'Amaro got a warm Wall Street welcome as Disney's new CEO, beating Q2 expectations with $25.2B in revenue (up 7%) and shares jumping 8%+. His 3,000-word shareholder letter laid out three priorities: invest more in IP, make Disney+ the main fan hub, and embrace AI across the business.

🎤 Music biopics keep coming: Paramount inked a first-look deal with Warner Music Group (and its production partner Unigram), unlocking a catalog with Bowie, Cher, Madonna and Dua Lipa. The pact comes as 'Michael' rolls past $500M, closing in on 'Bohemian Rhapsody's' $906M genre record.

📊 Warner Bros. Discovery posted a $2.9B loss in Q1, though most of that is the $2.8B Netflix breakup fee (which Paramount Skydance reimbursed anyway). Call it a parting snapshot before Paramount takes over: $8.9B in revenue, 140M+ streaming subs, and a $30B debt tab to inherit.

🤖 Golden Globes won't auto-disqualify movies or shows that use AI, as long as “human creative direction” stays primary throughout production. Performances mostly generated by AI are out, as are works using unauthorized digital likenesses or voice replication. The eligibility committee can request more info.

_*sponsored

🎥 THEATRICAL

📺 STREAMING

🔮 BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: 'Mortal Kombat II' is set to flawless-victory its way to #1 with a projected $40-50M debut, while 'The Sheep Detectives' is tracking a softer $10-15M and the Cameron-directed 'Billie Eilish' concert film is eyeing $6-9M. Add in holdovers from 'Devil Wears Prada 2' and 'Michael' and the top five should land around $160M, about 16% ahead of the same Mother's Day frame last year.