👋 Morning. Since 2021, a mysterious rapper named Frankie Pulitzer has been collaborating with hip-hop collective Czarface, and the internet's leading suspect was always actor Tom Hardy. Case closed: Hardy dropped a 15-track debut going into the weekend featuring Busta Rhymes, Method Man, and El-P. It’s packed with references to Marvel, Stephen King, and Shakespeare. And yes, he does the Bane voice.
Welcome back. Hope you had a great weekend. Labor Day's in sight, summer's in its final stretch, and the box office had itself a weekend. Let's catch you up. 👇
BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
🎟️ The movie Warner shelved just opened at #2…
Lana Condor, Wile E. Coyote, and Will Forte in 'Coyote vs. Acme' (Ketchup Entertainment)
| WEEKEND TOTAL $99.4M| VS. 2025 +42.7%| VS. LAST WKND -26.5% | |
Spider-Man: Brand New Day WK 5 Sony/Marvel Studios · $22.2M domestic weekend (-44%) · Domestic total: $891.5M · Global total: $2.332B · Budget: $225M Five straight weekends at #1 (first to do that since 'Avatar: Fire and Ash') and now the 4th biggest movie ever worldwide. Oh, and Tom Holland just became the third highest-grossing actor in history (behind Zoe Saldaña and Scarlett Johansson), making him the biggest male box office draw ever at 30. | |
Coyote vs. Acme NEW Ketchup Entertainment · $15.4M domestic weekend · Budget: $70M · 🍅: 96% Three years after Warner Bros. shelved it, the little Looney Tunes movie beat its own tracking and handed Ketchup its biggest opening ever. Great scores across the board (96% RT, 94% audience, A CinemaScore) and just a $10M marketing spend. International rolls out slowly, starting with Latin America and the UK. | |
The Odyssey WK 7 Universal · $14.3M domestic weekend (-27%) · Domestic total: $563.8M · Global total: $1.55B · Budget: $250M Nolan's epic nearly out-grossed Spidey worldwide this weekend ($62.9M to $66.2M) and just pushed Universal past $3B overseas, the first studio to get there this year. | |
Insidious: Out of the Further WK 2 Sony/Blumhouse · $10.1M domestic weekend (-60%) · Domestic total: $43.6M · Global total: $110.2M · Budget: $18M Dropped hard like every horror movie does, but the receipts are already well past the budget. | |
The Dog Stars NEW 20th Century Studios · $8M domestic weekend · Global total: $19.3M · Budget: $75M · 🍅: 40% Audiences skipped Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic Jacob Elordi drama, and the numbers put it among his worst openings ever (it's basically 'The Counselor' territory). Seems like everyone's had enough apocalypse for a while. | |
Buddy NEW Roadside Attractions · $5.4M domestic weekend · 🍅: 88% This one's a Sundance pickup about a Barney-style children's TV character with a dark side (Keegan-Michael Key voices him). It snuck into the top 10 on only 1,258 screens, and critics like it, so it might hold better than most indies. | |
The End of Oak Street WK 3 Warner Bros./Bad Robot · $5M domestic weekend (-43%) · Domestic total: $46M · Global total: $105M · Budget: $80M Another rough drop for David Robert Mitchell's dino thriller. At this rate, Warner Bros. can pretty much forget about turning a profit in theaters. | |
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie WK 3 Paramount · $4.9M domestic weekend · Domestic total: $43.3M · Global total: $124.6M · Budget: $40M | |
Mutiny WK 2 Lionsgate · $2.75M domestic weekend · Domestic total: $13.2M · Budget: $40M | |
Tony WK 4 A24 · $2.2M domestic weekend · Domestic total: $11.1M | |
| YTD Domestic Box Office▲ +21% | ||||
| ||||
| Source: RENTRAK |
The bigger picture: The summer box office (first Friday of May through Labor Day) is at $4.598B and needs $158M in eight days to beat 2013's all-time record. Projections have it falling about $20M short. $20M! Somebody re-release something! Worst case, it's still the second-biggest summer ever.
Up next: Paramount rolls out 'By Any Means,' a Civil Rights-era thriller starring Mark Wahlberg and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. And Adam Wingard, fresh off 'Godzilla x Kong,' goes small with 'Onslaught,' an A24 horror-actioner led by Adria Arjona.
INTERMISSION: A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR
Studio 0, fans $15.4M…
Three years ago, Warner Bros ran the numbers and decided 'Coyote vs. Acme' was worth more as a $30M tax write-off than as a movie.
This weekend it opened at No. 2 with $15.4M, ahead of a $75M Ridley Scott movie that opened the same day. It also out-opened most of Warner's own 2026 slate, including 'Evil Dead Burn,' 'The Mummy,' and 'The Bride!'. Somewhere in Burbank, an accountant is rechecking the math.
Here's what the box office trackers missed: this audience had skin in the game. Part of the reported $10M marketing budget came from fans themselves, through Legion M.
That's Legion M's whole thesis. When fans hold a stake, they don't just watch. They pull.1
CLOSEUP
🍂 The fall festival season is officially upon us…
A scene from a past edition of the Venice Film Festival. (Source: La Biennale di Venezia)
And just like that, festival season is here. Venice gets things going Wednesday, and from there it's six straight weeks of premieres, standing ovations with suspiciously precise timekeeping, Oscar campaigns picking their lanes, and publicists aging in dog years.
Venice (Sept 2-12) opens with Danny Boyle's 'Ink,' a Rupert Murdoch drama starring Guy Pearce (Netflix already grabbed U.S. rights). Also on the Lido: Martin McDonagh's 'Wild Horse Nine,' Florian Zeller's 'Bunker,' Werner Herzog's 'Bucking Fastard,' and Alex Gibney's four-hour Elon Musk doc, 'Musk.'
Telluride (Sept 4-7) follows Friday for its usual Labor Day weekend run. The lineup drops the day before, as always, but expect plenty of Venice premieres to show up in Colorado days later for their North American debuts, plus a few surprises.
Also upcoming this month:
TIFF (Sept 10-20): Opens with Apple's 'Being Heumann,' and debuts TIFF: The Market, the festival's first official industry market, backed by C$23M from the Canadian government.
San Sebastián (Sept 18-26): Fatih Akin's 'Ghost Song' opens.
NYFF (Sept 25-Oct 12): James Gray's 'Paper Tiger' opens, Tony Gilroy's 'Behemoth!' is the centerpiece.
The elephant not in the room: The major studios are basically sitting this one out. Outside their specialty arms, none of them is bringing an awards play to the circuit. Iñárritu's Tom Cruise pic 'Digger,' Fincher's 'The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth,' 'Dune: Part Three,' and Aaron Sorkin's 'The Social Reckoning' are all skipping straight to theaters. Blame the cost of flying talent around, viral-review risk, and the fact that 'One Battle After Another' skipped festivals last year and won Best Picture anyway.
On the dealmaking front: Buyers are cautious and packages are thin, so the acquisition market may be quieter than the red carpets. TIFF's new market is the big bet to change that.
WIDESHOT
🎬 M. Night Shyamalan, Sunny Hostin, and tax creds…
M. Night Shyamalan
📺 M. Night Shyamalan is a YouTuber now. What a twist. The 'Sixth Sense' and 'Trap' director launched a personal channel last week, promising to share the "messiness" of his creative process. After 'Backrooms' and 'Obsession' turned YouTube creators into the summer's biggest hitmakers, Shyamalan is one of the first A-listers to run the pipeline in reverse. He's betting the same thing they proved: a direct line to your audience is worth a lot. Factor in the Oscars' move to YouTube in 2029 and, in recent months, YouTube and Netflix fighting over the same talent, and the line between creators and Hollywood is basically vanishing.
🤖 Sunny Hostin just licensed her face to an AI studio. The 'View' co-host signed with Fountain 0, the AI studio behind 'Dreams of Violets,' a $2,000 film that got into Tribeca. The deal adapts her beach-read 'Summer' novels with her likeness in the productions, reportedly under her control. Hostin spent years trying to get those books on screen with no luck. She's in growing company: Michael Caine licensed his voice, Val Kilmer's estate licensed his image, and SAG-AFTRA's June contract locked in consent and pay rules for digital replicas. For a growing number of stars, the possibility of backlash is a risk they're willing to take.
💸 Hollywood's tax credit fix gets a vote tonight. Quick backstory: CA boosted its film and TV incentive to $750M last year, then a June budget bill capped what any one company can claim at $5M a year, which gutted much of the program's value. The industry, understandably, pushed back hard. The fix, AB 186, hits the floor tonight, the last possible night to pass it this year. Studios are still stuck with the cap, but there are consolation prizes: indies are exempt entirely, studios get their refund money in two years instead of five, and older credits get more time before they expire. Not the full fix everyone wanted, but the studios, unions, and producers all signed on anyway.
LAST LOOKS
Film Development 🗒️
Stephen Curry is getting the IMAX treatment: 'Portrait of an Artist: Stephen Curry' hits screens Oct. 9, built around his record 4,000th three-pointer. (more)
Anne Hathaway is joining Tom Cruise in 'Days of Thunder 2,' which Paramount has penciled in for June 2028. (more)
Hooters (yes, that Hooters) is getting a movie based on the chain's real-life origin story. (more)
TV Development 📺
Ellen Pompeo is set to star in 'Not a Sound,' a mystery drama Hulu is developing with David E. Kelley Productions. (more)
Pokémon is coming to Disney+ in a global distro deal, and it includes a new stop-motion series from Aardman (the 'Wallace & Gromit' folks). (more)
'Manifest' is getting a spinoff: Netflix has ordered 'Arrivals: A New Manifest Mystery.' (more)
Business & Other News 🚨
Apple TV is hiking prices again, and with no ad tier to fall back on, it's a real test of what subscribers will pay. The streamflation is real. (more)
The Duffer Brothers have tapped Josh Stern as president of their Paramount-based production company Upside Down Pictures. (more)
There’s a lot happening in AI. Here’s what matters. Superhuman AI is a free newsletter covering the developments worth knowing and what they mean in the real world. (more)*
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VIDEO VILLAGE
📺 Latest trailers
MARTINI SHOT
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That's it for today. Enjoy the last gasps of summer. We'll see you Wednesday.
— The Dailies Team
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1 Legion M's Reg CF offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC. This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment.