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❄️ Good morning! For weeks, the internet has been gripped by a delicious conspiracy theory: Is Timothée Chalamet secretly moonlighting as EsDeeKid, a masked Liverpool rapper with a suspiciously familiar eyes? Last week, Chalamet dropped a full verse on EsDeeKid's '4 Raws Remix,' rapping about his Oscar-adjacent lifestyle and billionaire girlfriend while the still-masked rapper stands beside him. So they're definitely two different people. Unless, of course, they're not. Either way, the stunt is part of his press tour for A24's 'Marty Supreme,' which is out this week.

Welcome to The Dailies. Grab your coffee—we've got box office numbers and one last big briefing before we wind down for the holidays. Let's get into it. 👇

The big picture: The pre-Christmas frame delivered a robust $178.7M, up 20.4% from this weekend last year, pushing Disney toward $6B global for 2025 (the best post-Covid annual haul for any Hollywood studio). The year-to-date domestic haul sits at $8.38B, just 1.3% ahead of 2024 but still 22.4% behind 2019's pace. Hollywood's banking on 'Anaconda,' 'Song Sung Blue,' and 'Marty Supreme's' wide expansion to push the industry past $9B.

Internationally speaking: 'Avatar: Fire and Ash' pulled 75% of its $345M global opening from overseas, with China's $57.6M debut actually topping 'The Way of Water's' launch there. That's a welcome sign in a year where Hollywood tentpoles have struggled abroad and Chinese audiences have cooled on American blockbusters. Cameron's spectacle-first approach remains one of the few formulas that still travels.

The whole "Gen Z killed movie theaters" narrative might have been premature. Cinema United, the exhibition industry's largest trade group, just dropped its annual "Strength of Theatrical Exhibition" report, and the headline number is a doozy: Gen Z moviegoing frequency jumped 25% year-over-year. That’s the biggest increase of any age group. Some data points:

Worth noting: Cinema United has publicly opposed Netflix's Warner Bros. acquisition, and this data bolsters their argument that theatrical has a future worth protecting. Agenda aside, the Gen Z numbers are genuinely surprising. UCLA data in the report shows 10-24 year-olds rank opening weekend moviegoing as their #1 preferred activity, coming in above concerts and sporting events.

Looking ahead… The optimism isn't just backward-looking. Gower Street Analytics projects global box office will hit $35B in 2026, up 5% from 2025 and the highest since pre-pandemic 2019. Domestic is pegged at $9.9B—still below the $11B+ pre-pandemic years, but the trajectory's pointing up. The firm cites a franchise-stacked slate including new 'Avengers,' 'Spider-Man,' 'Toy Story,' 'Dune,' and 'Star Wars' installments, plus potential breakouts like Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey' and Spielberg's 'Disclosure Day.'

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🔫 Amazon is lending James Bond to Netflix. Amazon MGM Studios struck a deal to license four 007 films (plus select 'Rocky,' 'Creed,' and 'Legally Blonde' titles) to the rival streamer for three months starting January 15, covering the US, parts of Europe, and Latin America. It's a rare streaming crossover in an era otherwise defined by exclusivity, but there's a strategic logic: Denis Villeneuve's Bond 26 is still in development with no new 007 cast yet, which means a lengthy wait before the franchise's next chapter. Amazon is using Netflix's 300M+ subscribers to monetize its library, maintain cultural relevance, and build global demand ahead of the next installment. Think of it as Netflix keeping Bond warm until someone new gets fitted for the tux.

🇯🇵 Japan's Toho is buying up Western distributors to ride the global anime boom. The country's largest entertainment company is acquiring UK distributor Anime Limited and setting up a European headquarters in London, on the heels of its 2024 purchase of US distributor GKIDS. Toho is clearly betting big on anime's global moment, and it's easy to see why: 'Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle' has made over $700M globally, with 'Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc' topping $175M. The genre has broken out well beyond its core fandoms. Europe's anime market alone is worth $4.8B and projected to nearly double by decade's end. Rather than license their IP to Western distributors, Japanese companies are becoming the distributors.

💋 UTA has dropped intimacy coordinators from its roster. The agency, the only Big Three shop to rep ICs, notified clients in October it would no longer represent intimacy coordinators, choreographers, or dancers. Interesting timing: SAG-AFTRA ratified the profession's first-ever collective bargaining agreement last week. But work has been slow. ICs say they've watched scenes written with real intimacy get reduced to a hug by the time they shoot. UCLA data shows 48% of Gen Z thinks there's too much sex on screen. ICs who work only a few days per project are tough to justify for a major agency, but the profession is finding steadier footing in vertical dramas, where ICs have become standard on set.

Find out how to manage and monetize your content library on January 14th as industry pioneers from Forrester Research and media executives formerly of ESPN, Disney, and Comcast reveal how to get on the cutting edge of content operations with the help of AI.

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