🎬 Final Four

👋 Good morning! Halloween’s only eight days away, and today happens to be National Horror Movie Day, so it’s a good time to check in on that spooky season watch list. If you’re behind, tonight’s the night: make the popcorn, turn off the lights, turn on the fog machine, turn off the fog machine because you can’t find the remote, and press play. And if you’re watching with friends, one house rule: any friend who calls ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ a Christmas movie is wrong, and you can show them this newsletter as proof.

Anyway, welcome back to The Dailies. We’ll keep this quick so you can get to the weekend. Here’s what you need to know, starting with streaming numbers. 👇

Top-streamed chart (U.S.) Oct. 15 to Oct. 21. Data provided by Luminate.

Laika's 'Wildwood' opens today with a PG-13, a rating you almost never see on an animated movie. It's a quiet test case for whether a darker animated movie can find an audience. Laika didn’t set out to make an adult movie. It made the story it wanted, the rating came back PG-13, and the studio left it alone rather than cut the darker parts out.

Why the majors stay PG: the big animation studios build their movies to be safe for the youngest kid in the room, which in practice means PG (all six animated films in this year's domestic top 20 are). PG-13 projects have made it through development at the majors, scripts done and directors attached. But they stall at the green light, because the rating threatens to cut into the toy and merch money that has typically made animated movies so profitable.

Laika’s independently owned, no board and no toy division, so it can take a risk the majors can’t. It's also betting that the kids who grew up on its own 2009 hit 'Coraline' are adults now and still buying tickets (the 2024 re-release pulled $52M worldwide). With 'Wildwood,' it's swinging big:

Looking ahead… tracking says $5M to $10M, so don't expect fireworks this weekend. The better question is whether it holds. Reviews are raves (100% on Rotten Tomatoes so far), it's a real Oscar contender, and Laika's movies tend to stick around.

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🍸 The next James Bond is down to four guys, and screen tests start today. Callum Turner, Jack Lowden, and Josh O’Connor are reportedly three of them, with a fourth still under wraps. Jacob Elordi and Jack O’Connell are out. Tests cover stunts, camera presence, and dialogue for Denis Villeneuve’s Amazon MGM film.

💸 Elon Musk reportedly put about $1B into debt-laden Skydance. Call it a favor returned: Larry Ellison put $1B into Musk's Twitter buyout back in 2022. (Billionaires, they're just like us, paying each other back on Venmo.) The report landed a day after John Malone predicted SpaceX would invest $8-10B in Skydance.

⚽ FIFA's taking bids for the 2030 World Cup U.S. rights, with an option on 2034. After this summer's record ratings, Netflix, YouTube, Amazon, and ESPN are expected to bid alongside Fox and Telemundo. Estimates run $1.5B to $2B, so the $485M Fox paid last time looks like a Groupon.

🏒 ‘Heated Rivalry’ is coming to theaters, nearly a year after the queer hockey romance premiered on HBO Max. Regal's running all six episodes in 650+ theaters Nov. 6-30, two per screening. The bet is that all that fan energy needs somewhere to go before S2 arrives in 2027. Letterboxd is going to have to decide whether it counts.

August's Gauge numbers are in. That's Nielsen's monthly report on where all US TV time goes, broadcast vs. cable vs. streaming, and which companies own the biggest slice. You read the headline, so you know where this is going. The big ones:

Markets move. Headlines catastrophize. But somewhere inside the noise is the story that matters — the opportunity, not the fear. 

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🎥 THEATRICAL

📺 STREAMING

🔮 BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: 'Clayface' should take No. 1 with $25-30M, though it's got real competition from A24's Nathan Fielder/Elizabeth Holmes doc 'You Can See Everything,' which is expanding from 855 to 2,500+ theaters. ‘Street Fighter' drops to $8-13M (same freshly merged Paramount/WB roof as 'Clayface,' so Skydance wins either way), and Laika's 'Wildwood' looks like $5-10M.