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👋 Good morning! Universal spent the weekend playing whack-a-mole with 'The Odyssey' bootlegs on social media. A high-quality copy went up on X Saturday and racked up 2.1M views in about two and a half hours, right until the takedown notice hit and the account vanished. A blurrier one popped up yesterday and lasted two. None of it dented the box office though (more on that below). Still, a phone-sized rip of the first movie ever shot entirely on IMAX 70mm… most definitely not as Nolan intended.
Happy Monday and welcome back to The Dailies. Box office numbers, weekend headlines, and the rest of what you missed are all waiting below. 👇
BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
🎟️ ‘The Odyssey’ isn’t going anywhere…
Matt Damon as Odysseus in ‘The Odyssey’ (Universal Pictures)
| WEEKEND TOTAL $141.6M| VS. 2025 -26.7%| VS. LAST WKND -30.9% | |
The Odyssey WK 2 Universal Pictures · $87M domestic weekend (-30%) · Domestic total: $286.4M · Global total: $639.6M · Budget: $250M Nolan's epic accounted for roughly 60% of every dollar spent at a North American theater, and premium large formats made up 57% of its own gross, up from 53% last weekend. IMAX alone is at $140M globally, or 22% of the worldwide total. Korea, China, and Japan still haven't opened, so a billion is looking pretty likely. | |
Moana WK 3 Disney · $10.5M domestic weekend (-40%) · Domestic total: $102.5M · Global total: $228.2M · Budget: $250M | |
Toy Story 5 WK 6 Disney/Pixar · $10M domestic weekend (-27%) · Domestic total: $448.6M · Global total: $1.02B · Budget: $250M The year's highest-grossing movie, and the third to clear a billion after 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie' and 'Michael.' Pixar got the news the same week the studio handed out layoffs. | |
Hadestown: The Musical NEW Bleecker Street · $9.7M domestic weekend The Broadway capture surfed the Greek mythology wave to a top-five debut, landing within shouting distance of 'Hamilton.' | |
Minions & Monsters WK 4 Universal/Illumination · $9.6M domestic weekend (-29%) · Domestic total: $155.4M · Global total: $411M · Budget: $85M Comfortably profitable, though it's on track to be the lowest-grossing entry in a franchise that usually flirts with a billion. | |
The Invite WK 5 A24 · $2.6M domestic weekend (-25%) · Domestic total: $19.8M · Global total: $30M | |
Evil Dead Burn WK 3 Warner Bros. · $2.6M domestic weekend (-45%) · Domestic total: $29.2M · Global total: $63M · Budget: $20M | |
Young Washington WK 4 Angel Studios · $2M domestic weekend (-44%) · Domestic total: $45M · Budget: $20M | |
Motor City NEW RLJE Films · $1.6M domestic weekend · Budget: $30M Alan Ritchson's near-wordless revenge thriller landed on 1,600 screens after a long festival run. RLJE picked it up out of Venice for a reported $3-4M. | |
Obsession WK 11 Focus Features · $1.5M domestic weekend (-37%) · Domestic total: $261.4M · Global total: $440M · Budget: $750K | |
| YTD Domestic Box Office▲ +10% | ||||
| ||||
| Source: RENTRAK |
Up Next: 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' opens Friday and is expected to clear $200M domestic. Tom Holland's first two solo outings averaged about a billion apiece, and 2021's 'No Way Home' nearly doubled that. Exhibitors get two giants in a month that's usually a graveyard.
CLOSEUP
📅 Warnamount is a 2027 problem now…
Paramount just froze its own merger. Twelve states and the WGA are suing to block the Warner Bros. Discovery deal, and Paramount proposed Friday that it won't take ownership of WBD until five days after a trial ruling, or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín signed off within the hour.
It's a shortcut: Rather than fight the states over a preliminary injunction on Aug. 3, which would have frozen the deal for the length of the case anyway, Paramount volunteered to freeze it and head straight to trial. The states and WGA agreed, and now the September close Paramount was hoping for is off the table.
Paramount says it's about getting to a verdict sooner, but the less generous read is that it ducked a hearing its lawyers expected to lose. Which is a turn, because two weeks ago lead trial counsel Jeffrey Kessler said publicly that he didn't expect the states to get an injunction. He then declined to find out. Kessler's no lightweight (he won a monopoly verdict against Live Nation this spring for 33 states and D.C., some of which he's now up against), and he's working with chief legal officer Makan Delrahim, Trump's former DOJ antitrust chief.
Meanwhile, the meter’s running…
The $7M-per-day ticking fee owed to WBD shareholders kicks in Sept. 30 and is now unavoidable. That's roughly $650M a quarter, or about $1.7B if this runs to June.
Paramount can't integrate operations in the meantime, so WBD keeps buying as an independent studio.
PSKY closed Friday at $8.21, down 3.3% after touching a 52-week low.
WBD closed at $25.77, more than 20% below the $31 a share Paramount agreed to pay.
Just about every other regulator has signed off, including the DOJ, the EU and China. The UK is the last one out, and its competition watchdog decides by Aug. 7.
Looking ahead… both sides owe the judge a proposed trial schedule by July 31. Delrahim wants November. Rob Bonta, who's leading the states, wants 2027. Either way, CNN, HBO and the Warner library get another year of not knowing.
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COMIC-CON
🦸♂️ Comic-Con wrapped its 2026 run…
Ryan Gosling and Marvel president Kevin Feige at Comic-Con. (Jesse Grant/Getty Images)
San Diego Comic-Con closed last night after four sold-out days that pulled in more than 135,000 people and a projected $160M economic impact for the region. Organizers also confirmed it'll stay in San Diego through at least 2030. As usual, Hall H was the main event, the 6,500-seat room where studios make their biggest plays.
Marvel’s first panel since 2024 came with news…
Ryan Gosling is Johnny Blaze in 'Ghost Rider,' with Shawn Levy directing and a 2028 release.
David Jonsson is the new Black Panther, playing T'Challa's son, with Ryan Coogler back to direct for Dec. 15, 2028.
The 'Doomsday' trailer is Disney's biggest ever, with 503M views in its first 24 hours. Marvel followed it up with new footage and 17-plus cast members onstage ahead of the Dec. 18 release.
Marvel is putting 'Endgame' back in theaters on Sept. 25, seven years later, with new footage tacked on to set up 'Doomsday.'
The streamers took the rest: Apple TV got Hall H for the first time ever, with 'Neuromancer' landing its first teaser and a Jan. 22, 2027 date alongside 'Matchbox,' 'Silo' S3, 'Dark Matter' S2 and 'Mayday' (which its directors pitched as 'Misery' if it were a comedy). Prime Video brought two trailers: 'The Rings of Power' S3 (Nov. 11) and 'Blade Runner 2099' (Nov. 25) with Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer.
Traditional studios mostly stayed home: DC skipped Hall H for the third year running, with the Paramount merger pause landing mid-con to sharpen the question of who'll be running DC. James Gunn turned up only in a pre-taped video, and the 'Clayface' team had to crash a DC Comics panel to promote their own movie. Sony, Netflix and Lionsgate were all much quieter than usual, while Universal and A24 sat it out.
The bigger picture: The audience is as strong as ever, with every badge sold. What's changed is who's turning up to sell to them. Hall H used to be where studios launched the summer and holiday slate. This year Marvel was the only traditional studio to make a real play for it, while Apple and Amazon came with television and took the biggest room in the building.
LAST LOOKS
Development 🗒️
Sky Yang and Sean Kaufman have joined Paramount’s adaptation of 'Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow,' starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. (more)
Jacques Audiard is reuniting with Netflix to direct a French-language horror film based on the novel 'La Nuit ravagée.' (more)
AMC has renewed 'Interview With the Vampire' for S4, which will be rebranded as 'Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned.’ (more)
Business 🤝
Kalshi has threatened to sue Netflix over the trailer for 'Instadocs: The Prediction Market Games,' alleging defamation. (more)
Warner Bros. Discovery is suing Amazon, accusing the studio of poaching HBO Max marketing executive Pia Barlow while under contract. (more)
Charter Communications lost just 21,000 TV subscribers last quarter, while adding more than 400,000 mobile lines ahead of its merger with Cox. (more)
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The updated 10 Best Stocks to Own in 2026 report lays out the tickers, trends, and catalysts.
VIDEO VILLAGE
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MARTINI SHOT
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Back Wednesday!
-The Dailies Team