🎬 California Taketh Away

👋 Good morning! In the least surprising set leak of the year, Sam Mendes' Beatles biopic contains the Abbey Road walk. Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Joseph Quinn and Barry Keoghan were spotted recreating the iconic album cover over the weekend, 57 years almost to the week after the original shoot. Sony releases all four films (yes, four, one per Beatle) in April 2028. Somewhere, an Abbey Road webcam watcher just got their Super Bowl.

Welcome back from the weekend. Quick PSA for the Emmy voters in the room: final-round voting opens today at 9 a.m. and closes Aug. 26. Consider this your ten-day warning to finish those screeners. Now, let's catch you up on the weekend's box office numbers. 👇

The bigger picture: The summer box office usually goes out quietly. Instead, Spidey and 'The Odyssey' just keep selling tickets, and both new wide releases opened north of $20M. Quite the way to close out a season. The year now stands at $6.86B domestically, according to Rentrak, 19% ahead of this point last year.

Up next: 'Insidious: Out of the Further,' the sixth chapter in Blumhouse's $740M+ horror franchise, opens Friday alongside the Jason Statham actioner 'Mutiny' and the Andrew Garfield-led kids' fantasy 'The Magic Faraway Tree.' Don't expect any of them to knock off Spidey.

Remember last year's big tax credit victory? After years of watching productions flee the state, Hollywood fought hard for (and won) a boost to California's film and TV incentive program, more than doubling it to $750M a year. It was celebrated as a turning point, and everyone's been waiting to see the money do its thing.

Well, about that. A budget bill signed in June, SB 122, basically kneecaps the program before it gets going. The bill caps the tax credits any single company can claim at $5M per year through 2029 (permanent starting 2030), which guts the value of the credits studios were promised.

Why'd they do it? Because California needs the cash. The cap applies to all business credits statewide (not just Hollywood's), and extending it helps keep California's deficit in check. It also came from Newsom's own budget proposal, so the governor who signed the expansion proposed the thing now defusing it. Lawmakers say they never meant to sweep in the film program. They thought Hollywood was exempt. It wasn't.

The response has been huge. Union members have fired off roughly 350,000 letters to Sacramento, 39 legislators have signed on demanding a fix, and Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (who co-wrote last year's expansion) is pushing for a full exemption.

Looking ahead… A fix is reportedly in the works, but the legislative session adjourns August 31. If it lands in time, crisis averted and everyone pretends this never happened. If it doesn't, the math on shooting in California gets a lot worse, and location scouts in Atlanta and London start refreshing their inboxes.

For Your Awards Consideration, HBO Max presents The Pitt. Nominated for 26 Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series, the staff of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center juggle personal crises, workplace politics, and high emotions. Don't miss the series USA Today calls "The Absolute Best Show on TV." Now streaming on HBO Max.

One of podcasting's biggest stars is on the move. Alex Cooper, host of 'Call Her Daddy,' is leaving UTA and is expected to land at CAA (nothing's signed yet, but the moving boxes are packed). That's a brutal loss for UTA, which built her into a top five US podcaster with a $60M Spotify deal and a $100M+ SiriusXM deal in 2024.

So why jump ship now? Cooper just raised money from legendary agent Patrick Whitesell at a $500M valuation and wants to turn her company Unwell into a full media empire: podcasts, film and TV, live events, products, even an ad agency.

About that: Unwell's had a rough year. The beverage line is shutting down, she fell out publicly with influencer Alix Earle (a fellow UTA client, awkward), and reports have swirled about staff turnover tied to her husband and company president Matt Kaplan. Big money, messy company, and she's hoping a new team can fix the second part before investors run out of patience.

Hollywood's two biggest agencies, CAA and WME, have been raiding UTA's client list for years (Kevin Hart, Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller, and Nikki Glaser all walked). But UTA always had an edge the big two couldn't match, and that edge was digital talent. It got into podcasts and creators early, while CAA and WME were still busy fighting over movie stars.

Now CAA wants that lane too. It hired away the exec who built UTA's digital division and launched a $250M fund for YouTube talent. Cooper would be the biggest trophy of that push so far.

D23 took place in Anaheim this weekend, and for the first time in the event's history, the CEO on stage wasn't named Bob. Josh D'Amaro just hosted his first as chief executive, at the convention where thousands of superfans pay for tickets to watch a weekend-long Disney commercial and love every second of it. The D23 stage is old turf for the ex-parks chief, but this weekend offered the fullest picture yet of what the D'Amaro era will look like.

What he's building, mostly, is sequels. D'Amaro pledged "new stories," and then spent the night handing out sequels: 'Frozen 3,' 'Incredibles 3,' 'Coco 2,' 'Zootopia 3,' 'Lilo & Stitch 2,' and a live-action 'Tangled.' The originals ('Hexed,''Ghost Market,' 'Clay') were there too, just badly outnumbered.

Looking ahead… Disney walked out of the weekend with tentpoles dated into the prime Thanksgiving and Christmas moviegoing slots every year through 2029. That's predictability for exhibitors and prime holiday real estate denied to rivals.