🎬 Godzilla Minus Hollywood

👋 Good morning. Ever wish you could watch your favorite movie for the first time again? Thirty moviegoers in the Netherlands are about to try. Today, Pathé is hypnotizing them into forgetting ‘The Matrix,’ ‘Se7en,’ ‘La La Land,’ or ‘Interstellar’ (one film, chosen by the group), then rolling the film to see what happens. Worst case, they get a free movie and a nap. And if it works, ‘Game of Thrones’ fans want a group rate on forgetting that finale.

Welcome back to The Dailies. The weekend was nice while it lasted. Pour the coffee and we’ll walk you through the box office breakdown and the latest headlines before your first meeting. 👇

Specialty Corner: A24's 'Club Kid' (Jordan Firstman's Cannes pickup) had the best per-screen average of the weekend, $390.6K from just six screens in New York and LA, or about $65K a screen. Right behind it was 'I Play Rocky,' Peter Farrelly's movie about a young Sylvester Stallone, with $345K from seven screens before it goes wide on Nov. 20. Elsewhere, Regal screened episodes of 'Heated Rivalry' in 945 theaters and pulled $1.4M, and Fathom's Jimmy Stewart biopic 'Jimmy' (KJ Apa) did $2M to land just outside the top 10.

Up next: Veterans Day is Wednesday, which should help the holdovers midweek. Friday brings Johnny Depp's 'Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol,' David Leitch's heist movie 'How to Rob a Bank' (Nicholas Hoult), and Maika Monroe's gothic horror-comedy 'Victorian Psycho.' James Gray's 'Paper Tiger' (Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Miles Teller) starts in limited release Friday and goes wide Nov. 20, same day as 'Hunger Games.'

'Godzilla Minus Zero' opened to $32M domestically this weekend ($63M global), nearly triple the 2023 original, 'Godzilla Minus One,' and the biggest opening ever for a live-action foreign-language import. Toho hasn't disclosed a budget, but every report puts it around $18M, roughly a tenth of what Hollywood spends on the same monster.

Who's behind it: Toho, the Japanese studio that created Godzilla in 1954 and still owns him, bought US indie distributor GKIDS (best known for releasing Studio Ghibli movies stateside) in 2024. GKIDS handled this release, which means one company produced, marketed, and distributed the movie, no Hollywood studio required. Godzilla Minus Hollywood, basically. Their playbook:

The elephant (lizard?) in the room: Legendary, the Hollywood studio that licenses Godzilla for its MonsterVerse movies, spends $135M-$175M per film, and its 'Godzilla x Kong: Supernova' lands in March for a very public side-by-side. To be fair, Legendary's Godzillas gross far more ($387M-$572M worldwide), so they'll keep making more money in absolute terms. But Toho's should be in the black within weeks, on a tenth of the spend. Toho also reportedly has a clause that bars Legendary from releasing a Godzilla movie in the same calendar year Toho does.

The bigger picture: a foreign film topping the US box office used to be rare. Now it's happened a handful of times since 2023. The subtitle barrier looks like it's coming down, and foreign studios might be realizing they don't need Hollywood to get their movies in front of Americans.

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🤖 CAA is getting into the AI ad business. The talent agency's CEO, Bryan Lourd, was in Ojai last week pitching ad execs on a nearly finalized partnership that would give ad agency Ogilvy access to the CAA Vault. The Vault has been around since 2023: clients get scanned, face, body, and voice, and walk away owning an official digital version of themselves they can license out on their own terms. For a client who opts in, that means Ogilvy's brands could license their digital double from the Vault and build an AI-generated spot around it. The talent would sign off and, more importantly, get paid, all without ever showing up. Nothing’s official yet.

⏸️ Netflix hasn't closed on Radford Studio Center yet. The streamer agreed in June to buy the 55-acre Studio City lot, home to 'Seinfeld' and 'Gunsmoke,' for $330M-$400M. That's about 80% below its $1.85B 2021 price, before its owner defaulted and lenders took the keys. But the due diligence window has been extended, and Hudson Pacific's CEO (Netflix's Hollywood landlord) said a decision could come "later in the year. Or not." Hesitating on a deal this cheap leaves many wondering how much LA production Netflix still sees in its future. For what it's worth, Netflix's side says it's on schedule, and insiders expect it to close.

🎙️ UTA's biggest podcast star is now CAA's. Alex Cooper, host of 'Call Her Daddy,' has signed with CAA three months after leaving UTA, landing right where the rumors said she would. Husband Matt Kaplan and their $500M media company Unwell come with her. It's a tough loss for UTA, which built her into a top podcaster with a $60M Spotify deal and a $125M SiriusXM deal. One of UTA's big edges was getting in early on digital-native creators. Now CAA wants that lane too, and it's not being subtle. It hired away the exec who built UTA's digital business (Brent Weinstein), set aside $250M this year to buy creator companies, and now Cooper is its biggest get yet.

The American Film Market kicks off tomorrow at the Fairmont Century Plaza. It's the year's last major market and the only one without a festival attached, so it's all business: hotel suites, half-hour meetings, and posters for movies that don't exist yet (at least one starring Liam Neeson, per federal law). On deck this year: some 270 sellers, buyers from 50-plus countries, screenings across the street at AMC, and the new AFM House, a side venue built with Cannes' Marché du Film and programmed for tech companies and theater owners.

The mood is cautious. The first-ever theme is "The New Global Screen Economy," which sounds like a Davos panel and basically means "how do we pay for movies now?" Buyers want movies with an obvious audience at a price that makes sense, and they’re less eager than ever to put money down on films that haven’t gone into production yet.

The bigger worry is Toronto. TIFF launched its first official market this September (1,473 buyers showed up), and sellers are wondering whether those same buyers will fund another trip to LA two months later. Somewhere, a European distributor is checking their airline miles.

Looking ahead… the market runs through Sunday.