🎬 Finally Sitting Down

👋 Good morning! The Declaration of Independence just felt a chill run down its parchment: 'National Treasure 3' is finally, actually happening. Director Jon Turteltaub confirmed the news at a live fan podcast taping in Philadelphia, saying he and Disney have a script they both like and he hopes to bring back the original cast. Big win for millennial fans, who've been asking for this movie since flip phones. No plot details yet, but the National Archives might want to beef up security just in case.

Hope you had a good weekend. It's late August and the news is moving at a leisurely stroll. Still, there's plenty to cover, and the box office numbers are up first. 👇

Up next: Summer closes out with Ridley Scott's post-apocalyptic 'The Dog Stars' (early reactions invoke 'Mad Max: Fury Road') and 'Coyote vs. Acme,' the once-shelved Looney Tunes movie that's sitting at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Earlier this month, Paramount screened an early cut of 'Ebenezer' (Ti West's gothic 'Christmas Carol,' with Johnny Depp as Scrooge) for a test audience in New Jersey. The film scored an 80 (the norm is 72), and Depp scored an 86 as lead, way above the 67 norm. Women over 35, the demo you'd expect to be most turned off, liked him most at 90.

Why it matters: Depp hasn't led a studio movie since Warner Bros. cut him from 'Fantastic Beasts' in 2020 and the Amber Heard trials aired years of ugly detail. Paramount is the first major to go all in, with a $40M swing and a trailer where Depp tells the camera "It's good to be back." (The movie-star version of switching your LinkedIn to Open to Work.)

It’s a referendum, basically: Hollywood is treating this as a test of whether audiences will pay to see a star who's spent years in the penalty box. One recent precedent says yes. Every major passed on 'Michael.' Lionsgate didn't, and it cleared $1B. The results will ripple downstream:

Meanwhile, the fall slate is full of traditional stars from the same era, most of them now in their 60s. Tom Cruise in 'Digger.' Brad Pitt in two movies. Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman in 'Practical Magic 2,' and Robert Downey Jr. front and center on 'Avengers: Doomsday.' The bet is that moviegoers will pay to see the stars they grew up with. Depp's the same bet with more baggage.

Looking ahead… 'Ebenezer' opens November 13.

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🤝 Disney just struck a content deal with one of YouTube's biggest creators. Dhar Mann Studios, the Burbank-based outfit known for scripted morality plays aimed at young audiences, has racked up 170M+ followers and nearly 300M weekly views, and will start with a 20-episode order for Disney. For Disney, it's all part of the plan to bring creators into the fold and make Disney+ what it calls "a comprehensive membership ecosystem." And it's yet another sign the creator economy has graduated from Hollywood curiosity to full-blown supply chain.

⚖️ Paramount and California's AG are sitting down today. Studio reps are heading to Rob Bonta's office to discuss settling the antitrust suit that's blocking Paramount's Warner Bros. Discovery takeover. Technically the judge is making them do it, but it comes as pressure on Bonta to make a deal keeps building. Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass have joined the DGA, IATSE, and Cinema United in pushing for a settlement. Bonta says he's open, but he wants structural fixes like divestments, not behavioral promises he argues are too hard to enforce.

🏛️ 'The Odyssey' won't hit VOD until November. Christopher Nolan's Homeric epic lands on digital and 4K Blu-ray on Nov. 17, a 120-day theatrical window, and the same length Universal gave 'Oppenheimer.' That's rare these days, with most studios settling into 30 to 45 days since the pandemic (fellow $1B+ summer hit 'Toy Story 5' went digital in about two months). Nolan's grosses owe plenty to the IMAX and 70mm event factor, but at $1.44B worldwide, the film is a hefty data point for exhibitors, who have been pushing for longer windows since Covid.

US audiences racked up 1.17B minutes watching 'Masters of the Universe' in its first week on Prime Video, making it the most-watched title in all of streaming (movies and shows included) for the week of July 20-26, per new Nielsen numbers. In terms of views, Luminate puts it at 6.8M in the US for that window. Wild, considering its theatrical run:

Amazon says this is exactly the plan: a theatrical run, even a soft one, doubles as a giant paid ad campaign for the Prime Video debut. See 2024's 'Red One,' which opened to a modest $32M domestically, then became Prime Video's most-watched film debut ever (50M global viewers in four days, by Amazon's own count).

That said, there's some “I meant to do that” energy here. Nobody spends $170M hoping to make it back on the couch, and Amazon's own behavior gives it away: after a run of movies that flopped in theaters and thrived on Prime, 'Project Hail Mary' finally gave the studio a real theatrical hit earlier this year (roughly $678M worldwide). Amazon was so thrilled it extended the movie's window and basically did donuts in the parking lot.

The bigger point: box office isn't the only scoreboard anymore. When a movie can find a second life on streaming, "hit" and "flop" get a lot blurrier. A theatrical run, even a weak one, seems to make a movie more valuable once it lands on a streamer.

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