🎬 9 Conditions

👋 Good morning! For anyone who's ever said "I could live at the movies," Neon is calling the bluff. The distributor's "Endless Screening" challenge will loop Alex Ullom's SXSW horror breakout 'It Ends' for 36 straight hours at NYC's Metro Private Cinema Aug. 21. Four-person teams will earn $0.25 for every minute they hold out, topping out at $540 each, plus a $500 bonus if the whole squad goes the distance. Oh, and a $250 concession credit, which at current concession prices covers roughly one large popcorn and a water. Serious competitors are already in training: 'The Brutalist' twice a day, no intermission.

It's Friday, which means The Dailies comes bearing gifts: the week's last batch of industry news and a fresh set of streaming numbers. Let’s get into it. 👇

Top-streamed chart (U.S.) Aug. 6 to Aug. 12. Data provided by Luminate.

Quick, what do David Fincher, Greta Gerwig, and Willy Wonka have in common? All three are getting Netflix movies into actual theaters. The latest is 'Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory,' the streamer's animated Roald Dahl sequel, which opens worldwide Nov. 5, 2027, and won't hit the platform until Dec. 22, a 47-day window any legacy studio would recognize.

The premise: Taika Waititi voices a Willy Wonka who's just finished a prison stint for turning a child into a blueberry (#justiceforViolet), while Kit Connor plays a new Charlie leading a crew of eviction-threatened teens plotting a heist on the factory. Some other details on the rollout:

About that pattern: that makes three Netflix tentpoles with real studio windows in the past 12 months, after Fincher's 'The Adventures of Cliff Booth' and Greta Gerwig's 'Narnia: The Magician's Nephew.' Film chief Dan Lin insists this isn't the new normal: in June he called 'Narnia' the "exception" and said filmmakers who insist on theatrical are ones Netflix has "accepted we just won't work with." Two months and two exceptions later, here we are.

And that window comes with some history: it's roughly what Netflix promised during last winter's failed $83B bid for Warner Bros., when it told stakeholders it was "100% committed" to industry-standard theatrical runs for WB movies. The deal died, but it seems like Netflix kept the windows for itself. The timing makes sense too. With subscriber growth slowing and price hikes doing much of the earnings work, it's not hard to see why box office revenue might start looking appealing.

Looking ahead… The "exceptions" now have a calendar: 'The Adventures of Cliff Booth' hits theaters Nov. 25, 'Narnia' opens wide Feb. 12, 2027, and 'Charlie' lands Nov. 5, 2027. Somehow, Netflix feels good in a place like this.

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🤝 The DGA and IATSE want the Paramount merger lawsuit settled, now. The two unions, representing nearly 200,000 industry workers, sent a joint letter urging California AG Rob Bonta and Paramount CEO David Ellison to settle the suit blocking Paramount's merger with WBD. It reads less like a blessing than an intervention: the unions say mergers rarely help workers, but productions stalling until a March trial is worse. Their support hinges on nine conditions, including a promise not to fold the studios into one, 45-day theatrical windows, and Paramount staying in LA.

💅 The 'Barbie 2' talks have gone from stalled to nearly dead. New details reveal Warner Bros. has reportedly made six-plus sequel offers to Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and Noah Baumbach, all rejected, and CAA hasn't countered. The asks are steep (Gosling reportedly wants $20M to play Ken again), but WB's record offer, described by one source as "life-changing money," isn't Kenough. CEO David Zaslav is reportedly refusing to go higher, and if no deal is reached by December, the rights to WB's highest-grossing movie ever go back to Mattel.

📱 James Franco does microdramas now. He's the first Oscar nominee (and one of the first A-listers) to headline a vertical series with 'Love, Lies & Frank,' a 50-episode drama now streaming on Shortical. Franco aside, the bigger milestone is that it's one of the first productions covered by SAG-AFTRA's Verticals Agreement, the contract the union rolled out last fall for mobile-first shoots budgeted under $300K, giving a format that’s been running largely non-union an official on-ramp. Microdramas are on pace to pull in $3.8B by 2030, so the "verticals are beneath us" era may be on its way out.

🎥 THEATRICAL

📺 STREAMING

🔮 BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' is projected to take a third straight #1 with $67-77M. The real race is below it, where WB's 'The End of Oak Street' ($18-23M) opens against 'PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie' and a still-holding 'The Odyssey' in a fight for second.