🎬 Market's Resetting

👋 Good morning! Christopher Nolan shot 2M feet of film for 'The Odyssey,' which is 378 miles of celluloid. For reference, that’s enough to literally unspool from Hollywood to Phoenix. The director spent 91 shoot days burning through more film stock than most studios use in a decade. IMAX projectionists are already doing bicep curls with 70mm reels, training for what's guaranteed to be a shoulder-destroying final print.

Welcome back to The Dailies. Unlike Nolan, we believe in restraint. We’ve condensed your industry intel into one digestible email, not a 378-mile marathon. Coffee in hand? Let's roll. 👇

TOP STREAMED
📊 This week’s top-streamed originals…

How last week’s releases are stacking up…

• 🧟 Frankenstein (Netflix): Pulled in 5.4M views in its opening weekend per Luminate. Solid start, though still well behind Netflix’s 2025 heavy hitters like ‘Back In Action,’ which opened to 10.9M views in the same 3-day window. Globally, it hit 29.1M views according to Netflix’s own data.

• 🔍 All Her Fault (Peacock): A breakout for Peacock with 4.4M season views and 30.2M hours streamed in week one. The binge-drop strategy paid off, blowing past prior Peacock hits like ‘Poker Face’ S1 (3.7M week-one views). Easily a hit for the platform.

• 🌀 Pluribus (Apple TV): Vince Gilligan’s new series opened to 1.7M season views in its first weekend. That's right in Apple's sweet spot for successful launches. ‘Severance’ S2 hit 2.3M in three days while ‘Your Friends and Neighbors’ managed 2.1M, putting Pluribus in good company.

Top-streamed chart (U.S.) Nov. 7 to Nov. 13. Data provided by Luminate.

CLOSEUP
🤝 AFM’s packed, but the indie market’s resetting…

The American Film Market hit its midway point in Century City (running through Sunday), and the Fairmont Century Plaza is buzzing. 285 exhibitors showed up (down from ~400 pre-pandemic), meetings are stacked, and there's no shortage of big packages making the rounds. The question hanging over every deal: In this market, what actually works? The hot packages circulating right now:

• Mel Gibson's 'Resurrection of Christ' ($200M two-parter)

• 'Reenactment' (Benicio Del Toro, Cameron Diaz crime drama)

• 'Bad Bridgets' (Daisy Edgar-Jones)

• 'My Darling California' (Jessica Chastain, Chris Pine)

• 'Empire City' (Gerard Butler hostage thriller)

Why nobody knows what'll hit anymore: Used to be you could bank on big names. Not anymore. This past weekend, Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson pulled just $2.6M on nearly 2,000 screens with 'Die My Love.' Sydney Sweeney scraped together $1.3M with 'Christy.' Even The Rock couldn't push past $5.8M with 'The Smashing Machine.'

What buyers actually want now: Forget the maybe-it'll-find-an-audience play. Distributors want surgical precision. "Is it horror? Is it awards? Whatever it is, it needs to know exactly what it is," says one sales exec. IFC's 'Good Boy' (micro-budget, laser-focused on its demo) just crossed $6M and counting. That's the new template.

The new kids taking big swings: Everyone's watching Black Bear (who launched with 'Christy,' next up with Jason Statham's 'Shelter') and Row K Entertainment (just dropped eight figures on 'Cliffhanger'). Both are jumping in just as the economics have turned brutal. The pay-one window (those guaranteed streaming deals that used to make indies viable) has largely dried up. While established players like A24 and Neon still have their streaming output deals, these new players are betting everything on box office alone. Whether they can make that math work is the billion-dollar question hanging over AFM.

INTERMISSION: A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR
For Your Consideration - ELEANOR THE GREAT from Sony Pictures Classics

WIDESHOT
🎬 Stage adaptations, Disney+, and the guilds…

🎭 Lionsgate built an entire London theater just for 'The Hunger Games.' The live stage adaptation opens this week after seven years of development, joining a surge of Hollywood-to-stage bets including 'Death Becomes Her,' 'La La Land,' and Lionsgate's own 'Wonder' and 'Now You See Me Live.' The studio's global products president Jenefer Brown says theatrical productions now occupy a third of their division's time. Studios are chasing Gen Z and Gen Alpha's post-pandemic hunger for "shared live experiences"—younger audiences are paying premium prices to watch actors perform in person what they could stream at home. It's not a new playbook (Disney's milked it since 'The Lion King'), but studios are increasingly banking on live theater to deepen fan connections and cash in on the experiential economy.

🤖 Disney+ wants you to make your own Frozen sequel. Bob Iger dropped the news on the company's Q4 earnings call that the streaming platform's letting subscribers use AI to create and share short-form videos starring Disney characters. The CEO called it one of Disney+'s biggest changes since launching in 2019, right alongside new gaming features through Epic Games. Disney's having "productive conversations" with unnamed AI companies to pull this off while keeping its intellectual property safe. It’s worth noting that they're currently suing Midjourney for training on Disney's protected IP. It's not alone in this space: startups like Showrunner AI, the self-proclaimed "Netflix of AI," are already letting users craft their own animated shows.

📹 The guilds are knocking on YouTube's door. The Editors Guild and Writers Guild West are trying to unionize over two dozen workers at Theorist Media, the company behind YouTube channels like Game Theorists and Film Theorists. It’s the first time either union has attempted to organize a YouTube content company, which is a pretty big deal for institutions that once dismissed the platform as amateur hour. With YouTube now the most-watched platform on TVs and traditional Hollywood contracting, unions are finally treating creator studios as legitimate entertainment infrastructure. The workers want industry-standard wages and protections, basically showing that the creator economy has graduated from passion projects to professional production.

LAST LOOKS
Film Development 🗒️

• Adele’s making her acting debut in Tom Ford’s film ‘Cry to Heaven,’ joining Nicholas Hoult and Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the Anne Rice adaptation. (more)

• Colin Farrell just signed on for action-thriller ‘Ordained,’ produced by the Russo Bros.’ AGBO with Derek Kolstad adapting the upcoming comic. (more)

• Kiefer Sutherland is in advanced talks to lead the revenge thriller ‘Hour of Reckoning’ for Thunder Road, with Vaughn Stein directing. (more)

• Gavin O’Connor (‘The Accountant’) will direct ‘Running’ for Apple Original Films, a drama about a prodigy using his talent to outrun his past. (more)

• Ansel Elgort and Shirley MacLaine will star in Howard Deutch’s road-trip comedy ‘Lucy Boomer,’ which begins filming in February. (more)

• Anthony Hopkins will star in Dylan Thomas adaptation ‘A Visit to Grandpa’s,’ which has secured early pre-sales across Europe, Australia, and more. (more)

• Gabriel Basso will direct and star in the thriller ‘Iconoclast,’ joined by Courtney Eaton, Noah Centineo, Rain Spencer, and Dasha Nekrasova. (more)

Acquisitions 💰

• Vertical has acquired U.S. rights to horror-thriller ‘The Cure,’ starring David Dastmalchian and Ashley Greene. (more)

• Magnolia Pictures has acquired U.S. rights to Jan Komasa’s kidnap horror ‘Good Boy.’ (more)

• Neon has acquired U.S., U.K., and Australian rights to Hirokazu Kore-eda’s sci-fi drama ‘Sheep in the Box,’ marking AFM’s first major deal. (more)

TV Development 📺

• Peacock canceled 'Poker Face,' but Rian Johnson is shopping the mystery series elsewhere with Peter Dinklage replacing Natasha Lyonne. (more)

• Disney+ is developing ‘Death Stranding Isolations,’ a new animated series from Hideo Kojima set to debut in 2027. (more)

• Kenan Thompson and Kevin Hart are launching ‘Good Sports,’ a weekly 12-episode sports-talk show debuting Nov. 25 on Prime Video. (more)

• Apple TV+ is developing outlaw-biker drama ‘Nomad,’ with Jason Momoa set to star and Kurt Sutter and Chris Collins co-creating the series. (more)

• Tubi has announced its first slate of digital-first series from creators like Joey Graceffa, KevOnStage, Rock Squad, TheOneShu, and Dan & Riya. (more)

• Michelle Monaghan will lead Netflix’s untitled hockey drama from Shawn Levy’s 21 Laps. (more)

Business 🤝

• Comcast, Netflix, and Paramount are preparing competing bids to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery ahead of a Nov. 20 deadline. (more)

• Disney beat streaming expectations with 12.4M new Disney+/Hulu subscribers, offsetting weaker film and ad revenue in an otherwise mixed quarter. (more)

RELEASE RADAR
📅 What to watch this weekend?

🎥 THEATRICAL

• Now You See Me: Now You Don’t: Heist thriller sequel starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, and Rosamund Pike.

• The Running Man: Sci-fi thriller starring Glen Powell, directed by Edgar Wright.

• Keeper: Horror thriller from director Osgood Perkins, starring Tatiana Maslany.

📺 STREAMING

• Landman: (Paramount+) S2 of Taylor Sheridan's oil industry drama starring Billy Bob Thornton.

• The Beast in Me: (Netflix) Thriller miniseries starring Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys.

• Palm Royale: (Apple TV+) S2 of the period comedy-drama starring Kristen Wiig and Carol Burnett.

• Playdate: (Prime Video) Action comedy with Kevin James and Alan Ritchson, directed by Luke Greenfield.

🔮 BOX OFFICE PREVIEW: 'Now You See Me: Now You Don't' looks set to narrowly edge out Glen Powell's 'The Running Man' remake this weekend, with both eyeing $18-25M debuts. 'Predator: Badlands' should hold decently in third with $15-22M after last week's franchise-best opening. Expect a photo finish in one of the year's most competitive frames, with any of these three potentially taking the crown.

VIDEO VILLAGE
📺 Latest trailers

MARTINI SHOT
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