🎬 Dam, Pixar

👋 Good morning! Quentin Tarantino has spent years publicly agonizing over his tenth and final film (he long ago declared he'd make exactly ten and then retire), so of course he found a way around it. After scrapping 'The Movie Critic' as his would-be swan song, the 'Pulp Fiction' director is now targeting a January 2027 West End debut for his first-ever stage production, a physical farce reportedly in the spirit of Michael Frayn's 'Noises Off.' He'll write and direct. No casting yet, and crucially, no films counting against the sacred ten.

Welcome back to The Dailies. The weekend is over, daylight savings took an hour from all of us, the box office numbers are in, and we’ve got everything you need to know. Let’s get into it. 👇

'Hoppers' opened this weekend to $46M domestically and $88M worldwide, the best debut for a Pixar original since 'Coco' in 2017. Here’s how it landed:

They needed the win. During the pandemic, Pixar sent 'Soul,' 'Luca,' and 'Turning Red' straight to Disney+ instead of theaters, and originals that did make it to cinemas mostly struggled. 'Elio' flopped at $20.8M domestic last summer against a $150M budget. Post-pandemic Pixar originals that got wide theatrical releases averaged around $29.9M domestically, roughly 52% below the pre-pandemic average. The sequel department has had no such problems, and the upcoming slate reflects it: 'Toy Story 5,' 'Incredibles 3,' 'Coco 2,' and 'Monsters Inc. 3' are all confirmed. The originals pipeline narrowed.

For Pixar, the film represents a reset on two fronts. Visually, it ditches the studio's signature hyperrealism for something softer and more impressionistic. 'Gatto' (2027) pushes even further, going fully hand-painted in a style unlike anything Pixar has released before. Creatively, Pete Docter, Pixar's chief creative officer, has been pushing the studio back toward universally relatable concepts after a run of more personal, inward-looking films that didn't always connect with wide audiences.

Looking ahead… This win bodes well for what Pixar has lined up next: 'Gatto' (2027), about a feline thief in Venice, done in hand-painted animation; 'Ono Ghost Market,' a supernatural bazaar where the living and dead mingle, inspired by Asian myths about the afterlife; and an untitled musical from 'Turning Red' director Domee Shi.

What began as a local experiment in cinematic curiosity has grown into one of the world’s most respected film festivals. Cleveland International Film Festival has been ranked among USA Today’s 10 Best Film Festivals, named one of 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee by MovieMaker, and listed among indieWIRE’s 50 Leading Film Festivals Globally. But the real measure of CIFF’s influence isn’t found in accolades—it’s found in the filmmakers who return and audiences who pack theaters each year.
Join us for our 50th Festival April 9-18, 2026! Tickets go on sale to the public on March 18.

🎥 Hollywood's legendary studio lots have a future... sort of. Paramount Skydance's $111B Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition came with a hefty bill: $79B in debt, and executives are already looking at ways to slim down. The two studios' historic lots are high on that list. The plan, per people close to CEO David Ellison, is to shift most production to the Warner Bros. Burbank lot while repurposing Paramount's 65-acre Melrose Avenue campus for outside productions, commercial tenants, and possibly retail. Both lots are staying (no condo developments or fire sales), but one idea being kicked around internally is turning one into a more expansive, theme park-style tourist destination, building on the studio tours both already offer. Nothing's been made official yet, so take it with a grain of salt.

✍️ The WGA Awards were handed out last night. The ceremony was New York-only this year, after WGA West staff went on strike and the Los Angeles event was canceled. 'Sinners' took Original Screenplay and 'One Battle After Another' took Adapted Screenplay, the two biggest film prizes of the night. The WGA's adapted category is identical to the Oscars', so that win gives 'One Battle' a clean momentum boost heading into next Sunday. The original category is a little bit murkier: eligibility rules knocked out three of the five Oscar nominees, leaving 'Sinners' and 'Marty Supreme' as the only qualifying contenders, so the win carries a slight asterisk. On the TV side, 'The Pitt' was the big winner with three awards, including drama series. See the full list of winners here.

🏔️ Megan Ellison is relaunching Annapurna. The sibling of Skydance/Paramount chief David Ellison, Megan built Annapurna into one of the best indie labels of the 2010s, backing films from Kathryn Bigelow, Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Jonze before the company overextended into distribution and pulled back. Now she's rebuilding: two company veterans, Chelsea Barnard and Matthew Budman, are back as co-heads of film, more hires are coming, and their Olivia Wilde-produced film 'The Invite' just landed as the biggest sale out of this year's Sundance. The focus is on producing and filmmaker relationships, with leaner budgets than before. For an indie film space that's lost major players like Participant Media and Bron Studios in recent years, a reinvigorated Annapurna would be a welcome shot of oxygen.

MarketBeat's analysts just released their five highest-rated stocks for March 2026, and none of the usual suspects made the cut. Not Apple. Not Nvidia. See which companies earned a spot on this month's list.

View the 5 Stocks Now