👋 Good morning. 'The Odyssey' opens this weekend, and the people will not be talked out of IMAX 70mm. One woman delayed having a second kid because the timing was "too close to 'The Odyssey.'" A Pittsburgh guy is flying to LA to see it. Others are settling for 2 a.m. showtimes. These are the same showings that started selling out a year ago. If you're planning your own odyssey to a 70mm screen this weekend, godspeed. May your journey be swift, your seat be center, and your bladder be strong.
Welcome back to The Dailies. Happy Friday. Grab your coffee and we'll get you through the week's last round of Hollywood news.
TOP STREAMED
📊 This week’s top-streamed originals…
| FILM | TV | ||||
|
| ||||
|
| ||||
|
| ||||
|
| ||||
|
| ||||
|
| ||||
|
| ||||
|
|
| LAST WEEK'S NEW RELEASES | |
 | Shipwrecked: Nightmare at Sea Netflix The doc opened to 5.8M US views in week one according to Luminate, finishing #1 across all streaming platforms. Solid, but nowhere near 'Trainwreck: Poop Cruise,' Netflix's recent doc breakout, which pulled 11.7M domestic views in the same window. |
 | Little House on the Prairie Netflix The reboot pulled 5.3M average domestic season views and 34.9M hours watched in its first week. A strong debut by Netflix standards (though maybe short of what you'd expect from IP this recognizable). |
 | The Five Star Weekend Peacock Delivered 6.3M average domestic season views and 34.5M hours watched in week one. That's one of Peacock's biggest scripted launches ever, beating last year's 'All Her Fault' (3.7M views, 25.7M hours) and this year's 'The 'Burbs' (4.0M views, 21.8M hours). Big win for Peacock. |
Top-streamed chart (U.S.) Jul. 9 to Jul. 15. Data provided by Luminate.
CLOSEUP
💸 $24M was riding on the ‘Love Island’ finale…
'Love Island USA' winners Trinity Tatum and Bryce Dettloff. (Photo: Ben Symons/Peacock)
When the 'Love Island USA' finale aired this past Sunday on Peacock, nearly $24M was riding on the winning couple over at Kalshi, a prediction market where users bet on future events. Reality TV fandoms are pouring into these markets, and Kalshi’s leaning in. Some numbers:
Kalshi's entertainment trading volume has topped $600M this year, up from $300M in 2025 and just $43M in 2024.
For scale: the most recent Best Picture race at the Oscars drew about $25M. The 'Love Island' winning-couple market basically matched it.
Reality TV is bringing Kalshi an audience it doesn’t have. Two of every three new 'Love Island' traders are women, most recruited through TikTok ads, on a platform that otherwise runs roughly 75% male.
The format is a market machine: 'Love Island' airs six nights a week and cycles contestants in and out constantly, so there's always a new market to open (who wins, who's out, who's in the top three). And viewers who watch that closely already think they know how it ends.
The unregulated part: 'Love Island' airs close to real time and partly runs on live audience voting, so traders can vote to protect their own bets. No state watchdog, no federal one, no rules about insider trading in culture markets.
A cautionary tale: 'Survivor' films months before it airs, which is a bigger problem. Kalshi's market had this season's winner at better than 80% before the premiere, when nobody watching at home could have known. And every Wednesday around 6 a.m. PT, right when critics got their screeners, the contestant getting eliminated that night jumped in the odds. Kalshi says it found no insider trading among its big traders. CBS has since added prediction market language to its contracts.
Looking ahead… Kalshi has already opened a market on who will host 'Love Island USA' S9. The House Oversight Committee has letters out to both Kalshi and Polymarket demanding documents on how they screen for insider trading. Worth watching how studios respond too, seeing as none of that $600M runs through a license or a rev share with the people who actually make the shows.
INTERMISSION: A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR
Wall Street’s New Shopping List
Big money is rotating into a select group of stocks for the second half of 2026.
MarketBeat’s analysts tracked the move and identified 10 companies attracting fresh capital right now.
The updated 10 Best Stocks to Own in 2026 report lays out the tickers, trends, and catalysts.
WIDESHOT
🎬 Lionsgate for sale, IMAX in cars, and Paramount…
Lionsgate, home to 'John Wick' and 'The Hunger Games,' is exploring a sale.
🎯 Lionsgate is testing the waters on a sale. The studio behind 'John Wick,' 'The Hunger Games,' and 'Twilight' has hired a bank to sort through incoming offers. European suitors Banijay ('Big Brother,' 'Survivor') and Mediawan (Brad Pitt's Plan B, Chernin's North Road) are circling the roughly $3.8B company, drawn to a library that's one of the last big independent catalogs in Hollywood. After spinning off Starz last year, Lionsgate got a lift from 'Michael,' the billion-dollar Michael Jackson biopic, and the stock more than doubled. Which is the problem: all that good news made Lionsgate expensive, and earlier suitors reportedly walked over price.
🚗 IMAX is getting into cars. The company is teaming with Chinese electronics giant Goer Dynamics on the first IMAX-branded in-vehicle entertainment system, a 4K HDR flip-down screen with IMAX-tuned audio. They're aiming to start production late 2026 and take it to premium automakers in China first. IMAX has been stretching past the multiplex for a while now, into live events, home entertainment, and branded merch. The bet is that as self-driving catches on, the car becomes the "third living space." Worth noting that IMAX has been shopping itself around, so if that pans out, whoever buys it gets a head start in a new distribution channel.
⚖️ Now Paramount's own investors want in on the lawsuit pile. A shareholder sued David Ellison, his father Larry, and Paramount's board in Delaware Chancery Court this week, alleging they promised President Trump "illegal private benefits" (including firing CNN anchors he dislikes) to grease the ~$110B Warner Bros. Discovery deal and clear regulatory hurdles. Paramount says it never made any promises about CNN. That's three suits in a week now, after the state AGs and the WGA, but this is the first one aimed at the Ellisons rather than the merger itself, and the first that could pull their private messages into open court.
EARNINGS SEASON
📉 Netflix is hitting its slow-growth era…
Netflix dropped its Q2 earnings yesterday, and revenue hit $12.56B, up 13%, right in line with guidance. The problem is the trend: year-over-year revenue growth has gone 17.6% → 16.2% → 13.4% over the last three quarters, with Q3 forecast at 11.7%. Some details:
Netflix went months without a hit. The first half of 2026 came and went with nothing breaking through until Harlan Coben's 'I Will Find You' (87M views) landed as the year's biggest new original series debut.
Engagement is fine, not great. View hours grew 2% in H1'26, barely up from 1.5% in 2025. Returning shows keep losing the audiences they built, and Netflix is reportedly digging through its own data to find out why.
The transparency dial is getting turned down. 'What We Watched,' the report where Netflix lists how many hours people spent on each title, goes from twice a year to once a year starting in 2027. Netflix says the point is to keep attention on revenue and operating profit.
Netflix is leaning harder into AI. GenAI workflows ran on roughly 300 titles this year, mostly in post. The streamer says it delivers higher quality faster and cheaper than traditional methods, and plans to lean on it more going forward.
The bigger picture: The streaming wars are over, Netflix won, and now it's growing like a mature company. So it's pivoting to being a general-purpose attention business (adding NFL games, video podcasts with Kate Hudson and Jay Shetty, cloud games, YouTube creators, a $3B ads arm). Investors have been restless since Netflix chased Warner Bros. Discovery and walked away, and the question now is whether they read the pivot as expansion or as running out of runway.
LAST LOOKS
Film Development 🗒️
‘The Batman: Part II’ has been delayed again to February 2028. (more)
J.J. Abrams' 'The Great Beyond' has been pushed to October 2027, almost a year later, in a Warner Bros. slate shuffle. (more)
Rose Byrne is set to star opposite Jenna Ortega in Mary Bronstein’s new Warner Bros. drama ’Nasty.’ (more)
Jimmy Tatro has officially joined the planned ‘Superman’ spinoff centered on Jimmy Olsen, playing Gorilla Grodd. (more)
Hannah Waddingham has joined Jason Statham in David Leitch’s action-comedy ‘Jason Statham Stole My Bike.’ (more)
Danny McBride will write and direct Paramount’s new ’G.I. Joe’ movie. (more)
Julius Avery will direct 20th Century Studios’ python survival thriller ‘Crush,’ about a hiker trapped by a giant snake in the Everglades. (more)
TV Development 📺
Gabriel Luna has joined S2 of ’Dexter: Resurrection’ as a guest star. (more)
Sophie Nélisse (of ‘Yellowjackets’ fame) will lead Netflix’s adaptation of Carley Fortune’s romance novel ‘This Summer Will Be Different.’ (more)
Riley Keough has joined Netflix’s ‘Enigma Variations,’ alongside Devon Terrell, Carl Clemons-Hopkins, and Nicholas Podany. (more)
Business 🤝
Brendan Carr is facing ethics questions after a report said he accepted Paramount-funded gifts while the FCC reviewed the studio’s deals. (more)
Marvel Comics is leaving New York for Burbank next year as Disney relocates more than 100 staffers and names Stephen Wacker editor-in-chief. (more)
Brian Tyler has sold the rights to his film and TV scores, including ‘The Fast and the Furious’ and ‘Yellowstone,’ to Cutting Edge Group. (more)
Ava DuVernay is reuniting with Netflix for ‘14th,’ a new documentary exploring the history and modern impact of the 14th Amendment. (more)
Other News 🚨
Danny Boyle’s ‘Ink’ will open the 2026 Venice Film Festival with its world premiere in competition. (more)
James Gray’s ‘Paper Tiger’ will open the 2026 New York Film Festival ahead of its November theatrical release. (more)
Australia has pledged stronger copyright protections to prevent AI companies from using creatives’ work without permission or payment. (more)
RELEASE RADAR
📅 This week’s new releases…
🎥 THEATRICAL
The Odyssey: Christopher Nolan's Homer adaptation, shot entirely on IMAX film, starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson.
📺 STREAMING
Ride or Die: (Prime Video) Action-comedy series starring Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham, created by Tessa Coates with Matt Miller showrunning.
Lucky: (Apple TV+) Crime thriller limited series starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Annette Bening, and Timothy Olyphant. Based on the Marissa Stapley novel.
The Hawk: (Netflix) Golf comedy series and Will Ferrell's first TV comedy, with co-stars Molly Shannon and Jimmy Tatro.
Descendants: Wicked Wonderland: (Disney+) Fifth installment in the musical franchise.
🔮 BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: 'The Odyssey' is tracking for a $90-100M domestic debut across 3,900 theaters (a few outlets are going higher, up into the $118M range), which would be Nolan's biggest opening since 'The Dark Knight Rises' and a $200M+ global start. IMAX is all-in with a three-week exclusive run.
VIDEO VILLAGE
📺 Latest trailers
MARTINI SHOT
🍸 Latest viral moments
That's all we’ve got. Go enjoy your weekend, and we’ll reconvene Monday for those ‘Odyssey’ box office numbers.
-The Dailies Team