🎃 Good morning. Tomorrow’s Halloween, and if you find yourself at a party thinking “how is it still only 1 a.m.,” you’re not losing it. The clocks fall back at 2, so this year’s Halloween comes with an extra hour baked in. It’s the least daylight saving time could do considering it’s about to make 4:45 p.m. feel like bedtime for the rest of the year. Happy Halloween from all of us at The Dailies.
Now, grab that coffee, let’s get you caught up. 👇
TOP STREAMED
📊 This week’s top-streamed originals…
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 | Nobody Wants This NetflixSERIES By Netflix’s count, S3 opened to 6.2M global views in its first four days, down 28% from S2's 8.6M and a full 40% off S1's 10.3M. In the US it's the same picture: 2.1M views in its opening weekend, down 42% from S2's 3.6M and less than half of S1's 4.8M. It's part of a bigger problem for Netflix. Over the past two years, a long list of its hit shows came back for a new season and lost half their audience or more, including 'Beef,' 'The Night Agent,' 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' and 'The Four Seasons.' Netflix says drop-offs between seasons are normal in the industry, but its own charts say the drops are big and getting more frequent. |
 | The Terminal List Prime VideoSERIES The Chris Pratt Navy SEAL thriller came back after a four-year wait (S1 dropped in July 2022) and pulled 3.1M US views and 22.9M hours watched in week 1 per Luminate. That's down nearly 50% on both counts from S1's 5.8M views and 46.7M hours. Four years is a long time to keep an audience on the hook. |
Top-streamed chart (U.S.) Oct. 22 to Oct. 28. Data provided by Luminate.
CLOSEUP
🎟️ China’s first AI movie in theaters just flopped…
'Sanxingdui: Future Past' (Bona Film Group)
China's first fully AI-generated movie to play in theaters just opened, mostly to cupholders. 'Sanxingdui: Future Past' is a sci-fi movie about an archaeologist saving a future world from AI (the irony, we assume, was intentional). It came out October 23 and has made about $181K so far. Bona Film Group, the studio behind it, is calling it an important experiment, which is what studios say instead of ouch. Some details on the release:
The budget was 10M yuan (that's about $1.5M), and it took up to 100 people two years to make.
It got a real wide release, with more than 10,000 opening-day screenings, which works out to under $20 a screen.
It started life as an AI microdrama series that pulled nearly 200M views online.
It had to pass China's content review first, a step microdramas skip, and it's the first fully AI film to get the permit.
Turns out the hard part is getting people to buy a ticket. Chinese audiences already watch a ton of AI. More than 90% of the microdramas released there this year were AI-made (outside China, it’s closer to two-thirds). So the appetite is clearly there, as long as it's free and on a phone. Charge movie-ticket money for 100 minutes of it and it seems the appetite disappears.
Looking ahead… we'll get our own version of this test on December 4, when 'Gods Don't Give Gifts,' a fully AI-generated anthology from YouTuber Gossip Goblin (Zack London) and AI studio Fable, hits fewer than 1,000 U.S. screens. London has hundreds of millions of online views and the trailer has already passed 15M. Fable even moved it from October 30 into awards season, with a Best Animated Feature campaign in mind.
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ICYMI
⚡️ Quick hits…
Curry Barker (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
🐻 Curry Barker dropped a five-minute horror short on YouTube yesterday. Like the kid who got into Harvard and kept his paper route, the 'Obsession' director wrote, directed, and edited 'Mama Bear,' which went up on his That's a Bad Idea channel. Next up is his feature 'Anything But Ghosts' with Bryce Dallas Howard and Aaron Paul.
🧊 Row K Entertainment's public unraveling continues: parent company MCT has frozen all distribution after the troubled indie distributor fell behind on payroll, rent, and health insurance this month. Its splashy TIFF 2025 launch, where it bought four films, ended with just two released after 'Dead Man's Wire' grossed under $4M.
📈 YouTube's parent company Alphabet announced its Q3 earnings Wednesday: $11.2B in YouTube ad revenue, up 9%, and more than 150M Premium and Music subscribers. Over a third of that ad revenue came from TV screens, where YouTube takes nearly 16% of US viewing, almost double Netflix.
⚖️ 'Luca' screenwriter Simon Stephenson is suing Alexander Payne, claiming 'The Holdovers' was built on his Black List script 'Frisco,' which Payne allegedly read in 2013. He went to the WGA before the 2024 Oscars, where the film had five noms, but the guild said copyright wasn't its lane. So, federal court.
STATISTIC
📈 Entertainment is now the world’s No. 2 industry…
Somehow, in a year defined by budget cuts and layoffs, the entertainment business just got more valuable. Interbrand's annual Best Global Brands report, out this week, puts the combined brand value of entertainment companies at $332.5B, up 12.4% from last year. The category is generous, with Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify in the basket next to Disney and Netflix, plus LEGO and, apparently, LinkedIn.
That's enough to make entertainment the world's second most valuable sector, behind only tech. Automotive, the previous No. 2, had the roughest year of any category and slid out of the way. Here's where the big entertainment names landed in the overall top 100:
Instagram (#7) and YouTube (#10) are the only entertainment brands in the top 10, and neither of them makes movies.
Netflix (#23) jumped 22%, which Interbrand credits to live events, sports, and ads.
Disney (#21) slipped 2%, and Sony (#35) dropped 5%.
Spotify (#39) was the sector's biggest riser, up 38%.
The bigger picture: owning the screen beat making the stuff. Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify grew, Netflix grew by branching into live, sports, and ads, and Disney and Sony slipped. Per Interbrand CEO Gonzalo Brujó, with this much content out there, the winners are the brands people open out of habit.
LAST LOOKS
Film Development 🗒️
James McAvoy, Alicia Vikander, and Taron Egerton will star in an untitled conspiracy thriller written and directed by Armando Iannucci. (more)
Kay Cannon will rewrite and direct New Line Cinema’s romantic comedy 'Single at the Wedding.' (more)
David Bruckner will direct Paramount’s 'Smile 3,' with Nick Antosca writing and franchise creator Parker Finn returning as producer. (more)
Sony Pictures is turning the horror video game 'Mouthwashing' into a movie, with Karyn Kusama directing and Scott Derrickson producing. (more)
Renée Zellweger, Dominic Sessa, and Peter Dinklage will star in Sacha Gervasi’s comedy-drama 'Darlington,' which shoots next spring. (more)
TV Development 📺
Donald Glover will star in, write, and direct Netflix’s 'PUBG' series adaptation, which he’s developing alongside his brother Stephen Glover. (more)
Amazon is developing 'Whiskey Matriarch,' a drama series starring Taraji P. Henson, created by Alesia Dangerfield and directed by Malcolm D. Lee. (more)
Business 🤝
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RELEASE RADAR
📅 This week’s new releases…
🎥 THEATRICAL
Christmas at the Kringles: R-rated horror comedy starring Ron Livingston.
The Only Living Pickpocket in New York: Noah Segan's John Turturro crime thriller.
The Mongoose: Liam Neeson car-chase thriller directed by his longtime stunt double Mark Vanselow, with Marisa Tomei and Ving Rhames.
The Mosquito Bowl: Peter Berg's WWII football drama gets a select AMC run ahead of its Nov. 25 Netflix debut.
📺 STREAMING
Nocturne: (Apple TV) Crime drama adapting Lars Kepler's novels, starring Liev Schreiber, Zazie Beetz, and Stephen Graham.
Dexter: Resurrection: (Paramount+) S2 of the Michael C. Hall revival.
The Gilded Age: (HBO) S4 of Julian Fellowes' period drama.
🔮 BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: Halloween falls on Saturday this year, so the studios mostly sat this one out. It's a coin flip at the top between DC's 'Clayface' ($10-15M) and A24's Elizabeth Holmes doc 'You Can See Everything' ($12-17M), with Laika's 'Wildwood' ($6-8M) in third. 'Christmas at the Kringles' is the only wide newcomer and should land somewhere around $2-3M.
VIDEO VILLAGE
📺 Latest trailers
MARTINI SHOT
🍸 Latest viral moments
That’s all for today. Enjoy Halloween, and if you wake up Sunday next to a bowl of leftover candy, we fully support eating it for breakfast.
Be safe out there and see you Monday.
—The Dailies Team
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