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👋 Happy Friday. 'The Odyssey's' IMAX 70mm run just got extended a full month, through Sept. 16. New tickets dropped yesterday and went faster than toilet paper in March 2020. At one point AMC's app buckled under the demand, so some New Yorkers did the unthinkable: went to the theater and bought tickets in person.
Welcome to The Dailies. One last briefing before the weekend. Top off your coffee and let’s get into it. 👇
TOP STREAMED
📊 This week’s top-streamed originals…
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| LAST WEEK'S NEW RELEASES | |
 | 72 Hours NetflixFILM A huge debut with 8.3M US views in its opening weekend per Luminate, and 22.1M globally per Netflix. Critics hated it (17% on Rotten Tomatoes), but that didn't stop anyone from pressing play: it's Netflix's biggest comedy film opening of the year, and if the momentum holds, it's on track to finish among the streamer's top 5 films of 2026. |
 | Ransom Canyon NetflixSERIES S2 returned with 3.2M average US season views and 20M hours watched in week one, down nearly 50% from S1's premiere (6.2M views, 49M hours). That's a steeper sophomore slump than Netflix was hoping for after the show broke out as one of last year's surprise hits. |
 | The Dink Apple TVFILM Opened with 1.2M US views in its first weekend, a solid debut by Apple TV+ standards. It narrowly topped this year's best-performing straight-to-streaming film, 'Outcome' (1.0M), though it couldn't catch last year's top comedy, 'The Family Plan 2' (1.8M). A win for the platform, just not a breakout. |
Top-streamed chart (U.S.) Jul. 23 to Jul. 29. Data provided by Luminate.
CLOSEUP
🤖 An AI rumor just torched a hot new IP package…
A debut novelist had the kind of week writers dream about. Then came the AI question. The author’s crime thriller 'Call Me, I'll Hide the Body' (a Lagos crime-scene "cleaner" turned Houston chemistry PhD, basically 'Pulp Fiction's’ Winston Wolfe as a series lead) landed a reported $2.4M deal at Minotaur/Macmillan, set off international rights sales, and had UTA running a frenzied TV auction with a massive U.S. offer already in place. Then it all evaporated overnight:
On Wednesday, the book's foreign rights agent abruptly withdrew it over suspicions that AI tools helped write it, saying the team could no longer vouch for how the manuscript came together.
Nothing has been proven, and it’s unclear who even raised the flag. It's a tough thing to prove anyway: AI checkers are notoriously inaccurate and once famously flagged the U.S. Constitution as AI-generated.
The author (whom we're leaving unnamed) flatly denies using AI, saying the metadata backs him up, and thinks a disgruntled agent started the rumor.
The book deal is likely toast, and the TV auction is on ice while everyone waits to see what happens.
This appears to be the first time a mere suspicion of AI (no proof required) has killed a package of this size. Why the panic? Copyright for AI-generated text is still a legal gray area, and there's a messier problem underneath: AI writing is essentially a blend of everything the model was trained on, meaning countless other copyrighted works could be baked into the manuscript. Buyers can't be sure they'd own what they're paying for, and nobody wants to bet $2.4M on IP that might turn out to be unprotectable.
The bigger picture: That's two AI cancellations in five months, after Hachette pulled Mia Ballard's horror novel 'Shy Girl' in March. The pattern forming: fair or not, even an unproven whiff of AI can vaporize a life-changing deal overnight. Expect AI provenance to become standard homework on any manuscript headed to auction.
CLOSEUP
⚽️ FIFA wants to sell a piece of the World Cup…
FIFA president Gianni Infantino (Photo by Daniela Porcelli/Getty Images)
Fresh off a World Cup that pulled the biggest soccer audience in US TV history (62.8M viewers for the final), FIFA president Gianni Infantino wants to cash in while the iron's hot. His plan is to take everything about FIFA that makes money, put it in a new company called FIFA Forward Enterprise (FFE), and sell pieces of it to private investors.
FFE would hold the broadcast rights, sponsorships, ticketing, and licensing across men's, women's, and youth soccer.
FIFA would sell minority, non-controlling stakes in FFE to raise up to $4.2B (the whole thing would be valued around $20B), then send the proceeds back out to its 211 member associations.
Joshua Kushner's Thrive Capital is expected to lead the investor group, JPMorgan is advising, and former Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei (the exec who bought F1) is consulting.
Europe's answer was a hard no. UEFA (European soccer's governing body) and its 55 member associations voted unanimously yesterday to boycott every FIFA competition, World Cup included, as long as the plan is on the table. FIFA was founded in 1904 as a nonprofit caretaker of the sport, and critics say selling stakes in its crown jewel betrays the whole point. Or as UEFA put it, "the World Cup is not for sale." The Asian and North American confederations have piled on too.
The bigger picture: Fox and Telemundo's rights deals expired with this tournament, and bidding for 2030 opens soon. If FFE happens, networks and streamers would be bidding on the priciest live rights on Earth against a seller that answers to investors, and investors expect returns. That means aggressive auctions, not friendly extensions like the one Fox got for 2026. And if the boycott holds, they'd be bidding on a World Cup without Spain, France, or England. Either way, the price of the pitch just changed.
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ICYMI
⚡️ Quick hits…
🍿 Theater owners are split on Warnamount. Cinema United chief Michael O'Leary says the merger means "fewer movies, higher costs" and fewer theaters, backing the AGs' lawsuit. AMC CEO Adam Aron argues in an op-ed that the suit "gets the economics of our business backwards."
🧟 Netflix is paying $500M to keep 'The Walking Dead.' The five-year AMC Global Media deal covers the flagship and all six spinoffs (371 episodes) starting in 2027, with AMC+ also streaming everything, including the original for the first time ever. Some IP refuses to die.
👗 'Clueless' is getting a sequel series at Paramount+, with Alicia Silverstone returning as Cher Horowitz, who's now raising a teenager of her own. Peacock passed last year (as if!), so the 1995 movie's IP heads home to Paramount and films in LA, naturally.
⛰️ Sundance is going bigger for its Boulder debut this January, bumping all four competition categories from 10 films to 12 and sprucing up theaters all over town. Premieres move to CU Boulder's historic Macky Auditorium, retrofitted with 240 Dolby speakers and Sundance's biggest-ever screen.
LAST LOOKS
Film Development 🗒️
Netflix has acquired Ron Howard’s Richard Avedon documentary 'Avedon' for a 2026 release and awards campaign. (more)
Christopher Landon will write and direct Paramount’s adaptation of 'The Final Girl Support Group.' (more)
Sony has set Josh Boone to direct its adaptation of Lynn Painter’s bestselling hockey romance 'Fake Skating.' (more)
Sony Pictures Classics has acquired worldwide rights to Andy Garcia’s Cannes-premiering crime drama 'Diamond.' (more)
TV Development 📺
Claire Foy and Matthew Macfadyen will star in Starz and BBC’s TV adaptation of 'You Are Here.' (more)
Bill Lawrence and Emily Kapnek are taking their comedy adaptation of 'Alan Opts Out' to HBO, which picked up the project for development. (more)
Disney+ has canceled 'Wonder Man,' reversing its earlier S2 renewal. (more)
Business 🤝
Netflix is keeping unscripted vet Mike Darnell in the family with a multi-year overall deal that has him helping steer the streamer's entire reality slate. (more)
Disney is selling its 50% stake in A+E Global Media to Hearst in an all-cash deal worth more than $1B. (more)
Netflix is paying about $200M for the U.S. and Canada broadcast rights to the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup. (more)
Netflix is facing a $105M lawsuit after an unreleased copy of Nicolas Cage’s WWII thriller 'Fortitude' was allegedly stolen from its Los Angeles office. (more)
AI is moving fast. Most people are already behind. Superhuman AI is the easiest way to catch up — a free newsletter that breaks down what matters and how to actually use it. (more)*
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RELEASE RADAR
📅 This week’s new releases…
🎥 THEATRICAL
Spider-Man: Brand New Day: Fourth MCU Spidey film starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, with Jon Bernthal, Mark Ruffalo, and Sadie Sink.
📺 STREAMING
Furious: (Hulu) Serial killer drama starring Emmy Rossum and Lola Petticrew, created by Elizabeth Meriwether.
🔮 BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' is tracking huge: officially $195M domestic, but estimates keep climbing toward $260-280M, and some think $300M is in play. For context, only nine movies have ever crossed $200M in a weekend. And Spidey's doing it without IMAX screens, which 'The Odyssey' still has on lockdown. Either way, the biggest opening of 2026 is coming.
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VIDEO VILLAGE
📺 Latest trailers
MARTINI SHOT
🍸 Latest viral moments
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Have an incredible weekend. See you Monday.
-The Dailies Team
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