🎬 Keep Hollywood at Home

👋 Good morning! Timothée Chalamet crashed his own lookalike contest in Washington Square Park yesterday, sneaking through a sea of defined jawlines and curly mops before revealing himself to unsuspecting doppelgangers. The NYPD even got in on the action, putting one Timothée twin in cuffs—though no word on whether it was for excessive brooding.

Whether you're a seasoned subscriber or a new arrival, we're thrilled to have you here. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we'll deliver the most important industry scoops directly to your inbox.

🎞 Here’s what’s on the reel today:

• Agencies Gear Up For AI

• CA Governor’s New Tax Credit Proposals

• MLB Feels Cord-Cutting

• Last Looks: 👀 Bite-sized scoops on developing stories/projects

• Call Sheet: The week ahead

• Video Village: The latest trailers

• Martini Shot 🍸

But first, let’s take a look at what happened at the box office over the weekend!

BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
🎟️ ‘Venom’ loses its bite at home, strong abroad…

1. 🦹 Venom: The Last Dance: $51M domestic opening ($175M global), significantly below its predecessors' $80M-$90M debuts. B- CinemaScore suggests fans might be losing their appetite for Sony's Spider-Verse.

2. 😱 Smile 2: $9.4M domestic weekend (-59%), $40.7M domestic total, $83.7M global. Horror sequel showing solid legs for its $28M budget.

3. ⛪ Conclave: $6.5M domestic opening from 1,753 theaters. Ralph Fiennes-led Vatican thriller scores with critics (92% RT) and audiences (B+ CinemaScore), drawing heavily 35+ crowd.

4. 🤖 The Wild Robot: $6.5M domestic weekend (-36%), $111.3M domestic total. Universal/DreamWorks animation continues to show impressive staying power in its fifth frame.

5. ❤️ We Live in Time: $4.8M domestic weekend (+15%), $11.7M domestic total. A24's Garfield/Pugh romance expands successfully nationwide.

6. 🤡 Terrifier 3: $4.7M domestic weekend (-49%), $44.5M domestic total. Unrated slasher continues to carve up impressive numbers on minimal budget.

7. 🪲 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: $3.2M domestic weekend (-35%), $288.7M domestic total. Tim Burton's sequel becomes WB's highest domestic grosser of 2024.

8. 🎭 Anora: $867K domestic weekend (+58%), $1.6M total. Sean Baker's Palme d'Or winner impresses with $25.5K per-theater average.

9. 🎼 Piece by Piece: $720K domestic weekend (-65%), $8.8M domestic total. Pharrell doc struggling to find audience.

10. 🤖 Transformers One: $720K domestic weekend (-64%), $57.9M domestic total.

The Big Picture: Hollywood's box office party hit another speed bump this weekend, raking in $91.9M (-27.3% vs 2023). 'Venom 3' showed a tale of two markets—stumbling to a franchise-low $51M domestically while finding stronger footing overseas for a $175M global debut (including a healthy $46M bite from China). That international appetite should help ease the sting of its domestic disappointment, especially given the modest $120M budget. Theaters are now bracing for a quiet few weeks until 'Gladiator 2' and 'Wicked' swoop in to save Thanksgiving.

Speaking of box office blues, 'Joker: Folie à Deux' just hit a bittersweet milestone: $200M globally—matching its astronomical budget. With marketing costs and theater cuts factored in, Gaga and Phoenix need another $250M to break even. No one's laughing all the way to the bank on this one. The year's running tally remains stubbornly behind both 2023 (-11.4%) and pre-pandemic 2019 (-26.8%) by uncomfortable margins.

CLOSEUP
🤖 Agencies are racing to build AI defenses for clients…

As AI deepfakes get scary-good and more studios embrace artificial intelligence, Hollywood’s power players aren’t taking any chances. The industry's biggest agencies are building digital fortresses around their talent, but they're taking dramatically different approaches to keeping their stars safe from unauthorized AI copies:

• CAA's gone full Fort Knox, building "CAAvault"—a sophisticated digital archiving system in Culver City where they're capturing high-quality scans of their clients' faces and voices. Think of it as creating authorized "master copies" of their talent's likeness.

• WME’s taking the partnership route, teaming up with AI specialists Loti (the digital bounty hunters who track down unauthorized content) and Vermillio (whose Trace ID platform tracks and authenticates images), instead of building their own tech.

• Both want to make sure their A-listers don't end up starring in movies they never actually made.

Between the lines

These different game plans tell us a lot about how Hollywood's heavyweights see the AI revolution playing out. CAA's betting the house on keeping everything in-house, giving their stars direct control over their digital twins. WME? They're calling in the specialists, with their digital chief Chris Jacquemin straight-up admitting, "We're not a technology company."

Not just playing defense: While protection is the priority, agencies are also exploring AI's creative potential. WME is already helping writers and directors use AI as a "co-pilot" for creative tasks, from building pitch materials to outlining new projects. Meanwhile, CAA's vault could be a goldmine for safely licensing digital likenesses. They're even working on tracking "contributory data"—when an AI uses just a piece of an actor's likeness to create a new character.

Looking ahead…While agencies are backing Washington's No Fakes Act (which would slap companies with damages for unauthorized AI copies), they're not sitting around waiting for legislation to catch up with AI's breakneck pace of development. With deepfakes getting harder to spot by the day and no industry standards in sight, Hollywood's biggest agencies are taking matters into their own hands—they're just choosing different tools for the job.

WIDESHOT
🎬 New tax credit proposals, and MLB’s crisis…

🎬💰 California Gov. Gavin Newsom is aiming to keep Hollywood at home with a massive tax credit boost. Newsom’s proposing a massive expansion of film tax credits from $330M to $750 annually. The state’s been bleeding productions to more financially attractive locations, while L.A. filming has hit a historic low. Newsom’s proposed $3.75B five-year plan would put California right behind Georgia in terms of incentive generosity. At the moment, California’s current setup has been so maxed out, the state rejects many qualified productions, losing around $1.6B in potential spending since 2020. Plus, while rivals like Canada and the UK cover 30%+ of costs and include star salaries in their calculations, California reimburses just 20% and doesn’t include above-the-line costs like star salaries and director fees. Meanwhile, L.A.'s crew members are feeling the squeeze, with many veterans forced to leave the industry they love—making this tax credit expansion more crucial than ever.

🎯⚾️ The Yankees-Dodgers World Series looks like a TV home run. But MLB's real drama? Cord-cutting is killing local game broadcasts. While the rare matchup of America’s most storied teams will be a TV ratings home run for Fox, MLB's facing a crisis in how fans watch their hometown teams. For example, if you live in New York, you want to watch the Yankees' regular 162-game season—these are your "local games." For decades, fans have watched these games through Regional Sports Networks (RSNs)—think of them as local ESPN channels just for your area's teams. But as viewers trade $100+ cable bills for Netflix, these RSNs are going bankrupt. The biggest, Bally Sports, which runs about 20 of these channels, just struck out financially. Now MLB's caught in a tough spot: They've had to take over broadcasting games themselves in some cities and are considering launching their own streaming service. But here's the catch—while streaming might seem like the future, it typically draws way smaller audiences than traditional TV. Just ask the NFL, whose games on Amazon pull in fewer viewers than on Fox. So while Judge and Ohtani battle it out on prime-time TV, MLB's fighting a bigger battle: how to reach cord-cutting fans without losing the massive audiences that only old-school TV can deliver.

INTERMISSION: A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR
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LAST LOOKS
Development 🗒️

• Studiocanal secures European TV and streaming rights for Coppola’s ‘Megalopolis’ in a seven-year deal. (more)

• Scott Mescudi joins the star-studded cast of ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ alongside Adam Sandler, Julie Bowen, and Christopher McDonald. (more)

• Sony schedules an untitled ‘Spider-Man’ film starring Tom Holland for July 2026, with Destin Daniel Cretton set to direct. (more)

• Martin Lawrence and Sony are developing a sequel to the 1999 comedy ‘Blue Streak’, bringing the comedian back to another fan-favorite franchise. (more)

• Caitlin Stasey and Damon Herriman will star in the survival thriller ‘Killing Breed.’ (more)

• Netflix is developing ‘Pain & Suffering’, a crime procedural from Don Todd. (more)

• Apple is developing an action-comedy ‘Oregon Trail’ movie, with Benj Pasek and Justin Paul producing, based on the iconic video game. (more)

• Michael Cera and Emilia Jones join Glen Powell in Edgar Wright’s adaptation of ‘The Running Man.’ (more)

Other News 🚨

• The Academy reverses its previous decision, making Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s documentary ‘Kiss the Future’ eligible for an Oscar. (more)

• SAG-AFTRA remains on strike against major video game developers as negotiations stall, with further talks yet to be scheduled. (more)

CALL SHEET
📅 The week ahead

• MONDAY: The Animation Guild and AMPTP jump back into negotiations.

• THURSDAY: Comcast/NBCU, Amazon, and Apple earnings calls.

• FRIDAY: Charter and FUBO reveal their earnings. Plus, it’s the deadline for the Animation Guild and AMPTP to reach a new contract.

VIDEO VILLAGE
📺 Latest trailers

MARTINI SHOT
🍸 Latest trends & viral moments