🎬 Concerts at AMC?

👋 Good morning! David Fincher, a notorious perfectionist known for shooting 100+ takes of a single scene, looked at his finished masterpiece the way you look at a typo in an email you already sent. His new 'Fight Club' 4K remaster looks incredible, but social media is having more fun cataloging all the tiny details he quietly tweaked: straightened curtains, smoothed-out skin and a small bump on Helena Bonham Carter's face, fixed stray hairs, rewritten Xanax bottle text. And that’s just the short list. Someone hide the 'Social Network' negatives.

Welcome to The Dailies. Wednesday edition. If you're still shaking off the Cinco de Mayo margarita fog, we've got you. Let's catch you up. 👇

The race to replace Gavin Newsom has turned into an auction over who can lure production back to California. Eight candidates are competing, and most of them have landed on the same pitch: uncap the state's $750M film tax credit (itself a recent bump from $330M). At last night's CNN debate, Hollywood incentives were one of the only topics that didn't devolve into cross-talk and interruptions. Here's where the key players stand:

Hilton and Steyer are polling near the top of the field, so their positions on this stuff carry extra weight.

Above vs. below the line: The biggest policy divide is whether credits should cover above-the-line costs (actor and director fees) or stay focused on below-the-line (crew, equipment, post). Steyer, Hilton, Mahan, and Villaraigosa all support including above-the-line, and studios (via the MPA) agree, arguing it's necessary to compete with Georgia and New York. Unions want the money targeted at crew jobs, worried above-the-line inclusion dilutes what actually reaches middle-class workers.

Looking ahead… The primary is about a month out on June 2, with the top two finishers advancing to a November runoff. It's happening in parallel with the LA mayoral race, which has made production flight a central issue too.

The Impact Lounge arrives at the Cannes Film Festival on May 18 with a full-day takeover at La Muse Restaurant on the Mediterranean. Daytime conversations bring together leaders from the World Bank Group, International Finance Corporation, University of Pennsylvania, University of Southern California, Tribeca Film Festival, Gigantic Studios, Diversity & Inclusion Film Festival and others, to discuss how storytelling, data, and investment can drive measurable social impact. In the evening, join a reception with canapés, drinks, and networking. Registration is free and is first-come, first served. Programming runs 11:30AM - 6PM, followed by an evening gathering starting at 7PM. See you in Cannes!

🎤 AMC wants to turn your local multiplex into a concert venue. The exhibitor is partnering with Arena One, a new live entertainment company, to livestream concerts to hundreds of its U.S. locations starting in June. Artists will perform live on a purpose-built cinematic stage, with tech that sends crowd reactions back and forth between venues and performers. Tickets will run $40-$75, with Bebe Rexha and Maren Morris among the first acts. AMC already dabbled with the 'Eras Tour' and Beyoncé's 'Renaissance' concert films and saw the demand was there. It's part of a broader push by theaters to become all-around entertainment destinations and not live or die by studio slates, which have been thinner in recent years.

📊 Quarterly earnings may soon be optional. SEC Chairman Paul Atkins wants to let public companies (including studios and streamers) report financials twice a year instead of four. For an industry where subscriber counts, ad sales, and box office returns are inherently choppy quarter to quarter, that's a big deal. Case in point: Netflix's Q1 2022 earnings revealed a 200K subscriber loss (its first ever), sparking an industry-wide profitability panic that reshaped every major streamer's strategy practically overnight. By Q3, growth was back. Semi-annual reporting would smooth out exactly that kind of noise. The SEC says it's about encouraging long-term thinking. Critics say less reporting just means less transparency.

👾 The first OpenAI-produced feature film is heading to Cannes. It's called 'Critterz,' an animated family film adapted from a 2023 viral short made with OpenAI's tools. AGC Studios is handling sales at the Cannes market. The roughly 30-person team says its $30M budget would've been significantly higher the old-fashioned way. 'Paddington in Peru' writers James Lamont and Jon Foster wrote the script, with OpenAI creative strategist Chad Nelson producing alongside London's Vertigo Films. This lands weeks after OpenAI killed its AI video tool Sora (burning ~$1M/day) and a $1B Disney partnership died with it. OpenAI's broader Hollywood ambitions seem to have fully evaporated, and we'll see if there's any appetite for this at Cannes.

✂️ Jordan Peele's Monkeypaw Productions cut three from its development team in what's being called a "refocusing." The banner's been quiet since 'Nope' in 2022, with only the flopped 'Him' to show for it, a lost bidding war for 'Weapons,' and Peele's next directorial project stuck in script limbo for years.

📺 CBS's 'Tracker' is heading from Vancouver to LA for S4 after landing a record $48M California tax credit (topping the $42M handed to 'Fallout' S3). The move brings an estimated 250 crew jobs and 275 acting roles back to LA for broadcast's second most-watched show, behind only CBS's own 'Marshals.'

🦸‍♂️ Amazon's putting 'The Boys' series finale into 4DX theaters across the U.S. and Canada on May 19, same night it drops on Prime Video. 'The Pitt' and 'Stranger Things' have pulled similar moves recently, as streamers turn to theatrical runs to create event-level buzz around their biggest shows.

⚖️ Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni settled their 'It Ends With Us' legal war just two weeks before trial. A joint statement from both sides' lawyers called for "closure" and moving forward "constructively." Baldoni's $400M countersuit had already been tossed months ago.

Most people assume anime & manga are Japanese industries. But for the first time in history, international revenue has surpassed Japan’s. TOKYOPOP’s been preparing for this moment for nearly 30 years. They have licensing contracts with giants like Nintendo and Disney, with stories told in 50 countries and 30+ languages. That’s translated to $15M in annual revenue. And it’s just beginning.

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