🎬 Merger Complete ✅

👋 Good morning. It took David Ellison about a year to buy our friends down the street at Warner Bros. The merger finally closed yesterday, and within hours the water tower on the lot had been repainted to read "A Skydance Corporation" (naturally, we walked over to see for ourselves). So far, the most efficient department at the new company is the sign painters. Thoughts are with Yakko, Wakko, and Dot, who woke up to new management and a rent increase to $80B. More on this below.

Welcome back to The Dailies, midweek edition. Pour yourself a coffee and settle in while we catch you up. 👇

✅ The Paramount-Warner Bros. merger has officially closed. The $111B deal wrapped up yesterday, putting two century-old studios under one roof as Skydance. The new company starts out about $80B in debt, and Wall Street is already nervous: Fitch downgraded its credit rating the same day. CEO David Ellison introduced his leadership team, the group tasked with keeping this from becoming another AOL-Time Warner (for the under-30 crowd, that one did not go well). A day-one staff memo also warned of “difficult decisions” ahead (read: layoffs). Meanwhile, former Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's farewell video is making the rounds, and his reported payout of up to $800M has plenty of critics.

🏆 And the Emmys go to… Amazon. The Television Academy signed a six-year deal that makes Prime Video the exclusive global home of the Primetime Emmys starting next year, which ends a roughly 30-year run of ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC taking turns airing it. The deal is reportedly worth $20M-$25M a year (more than double what the networks were paying), and you won't need a Prime subscription to watch. The show has always had to fight NFL games for viewers in September, but Amazon has 'Thursday Night Football' too, so it can plan one around the other. Between this and the Oscars moving to YouTube in 2029, the big live nights that used to belong to broadcast are steadily ending up on streaming.

🍿 Letterboxd's fans want to buy Letterboxd. The beloved movie review app is up for sale at a reported $300M+ valuation, and Sony, A24, and The New York Times are interested. Now a grassroots campaign called Letterboxd4All wants users to chip in ($100 minimum) on a community-owned bid. Its organizers say they’re backed by deep-pocketed investors and indie film veterans (two groups rarely seen in the same sentence), and argue the site's 30M+ members made it valuable, so they should own it. Like regulars trying to buy their favorite dive bar before it becomes a Sweetgreen, they hope to prevent "enshittification" (the technical term for more ads, more paywalls, and less fun as a new owner tries to recoup its investment).

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The New York Film Festival is almost done, and it saved some of its biggest premieres for the back half. As the last stop on the fall circuit, it's also adding a few names to the Oscar conversation. Some of the big screenings lately:

Looking ahead… Jesse Eisenberg's 'The Debut' screens tonight and tomorrow with Julianne Moore and Paul Giamatti on hand. Closing night is Friday, when Ava DuVernay's '14th,' her Netflix follow-up to '13th,' makes its world premiere. Encores run through Oct. 12.

🌍 Hollywood now spends more than half its film budgets outside the US. Only 42% stayed home in 2024, and that's down from 74% in 1999. TV slipped too, from 94% to 64%. The numbers come from a union-backed report, landing right as the industry pushes Congress for a federal tax incentive. Read the full report here.

🕰️ Warner Bros.' Clockwork label is reportedly sticking around under Skydance. The studio launched it recently as its answer to A24 and Neon, and some doubted it would survive the merger. First up is a 4K restoration of Ken Russell's 'The Devils,' out October 16, with films from Sean Baker and Park Chan-wook to follow.

🦇 'The Batman Part II' has paused production while director Matt Reeves steps away for a family matter. DC Studios says he has its full support and expects filming to resume soon. The release has already been pushed several times, but it's sticking to its February 2028 date for now.

🤖 Steven Spielberg is reportedly steering the next 'Transformers.' He's taking the creative lead on the eighth live-action film, much like he did on the first two. Michael Bay is in early talks to direct, with a script from Jason Fuchs. It's one of the first big swings from the newly merged Skydance.

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