🎬 Netflix Buying Radford?

👋 Good morning! A new trailer just dropped for 'Hungry,' a horror movie about a killer hippo terrorizing a Louisiana bayou boat tour… and it feels a lot like Hungry Hungry Hippos reimagined as a horror movie. Technically unrelated, legally unaffiliated, but to any kid who spent a childhood slapping that plastic lever, it'll feel familiar. Just scarier, and with the marbles recast as tourists. Add it to the growing club of beloved childhood IP turned slasher (see: 'Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey'), only this time no one had to wait for the copyright to expire.

Welcome back to The Dailies. You've made it to the midweek stretch. We've rounded up what's worth knowing before the weekend comes into view. Let's get into it. 👇

After 15 years running Apple, Tim Cook (or Tim Apple, as some know him) is stepping down as CEO on Sept. 1, with John Ternus taking over. Cook grew Apple from $350B to a $4T market cap. Ternus, who oversaw hardware on the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, and the Vision Pro (call it his 'Napoleon'), becomes the company's eighth CEO.

Cook was Apple TV's biggest believer. A Steve Jobs protégé (Jobs was Pixar's chairman and majority shareholder before selling it to Disney in 2006), Cook launched the service himself in 2019 and spent the next six years personally championing it with services chief Eddy Cue. It's now part of a broader services business that grew from $46B to $109B in that span. The content side has been more of a mixed bag:

Looking ahead… Ternus hasn't weighed in on content. Content deals still go through Cue, but the budgets now go through a guy whose career is in iPhones. Cook's Apple was known for aggressive bidding and creative freedom, the two things agents worry could go. Some relief: Ternus attended the 'F1' premiere and, per one Apple insider, "wants to make [Apple TV] more competitive." Worth noting: Tim Apple isn't going anywhere. He'll be down the hall as executive chairman.

If your mental image of microdrama production is still "TikTok models doing their own makeup in a Burbank Airbnb," it's time for an update. The format has quietly built itself a real Hollywood-style casting apparatus: agents, managers, casting directors, repeat-business rosters, the works. A formalized ecosystem around an $11B business, assembled mostly while Hollywood wasn't looking.

The platforms increasingly prefer reps who've made verticals their specific beat. Some legacy agencies have gone further and spun up dedicated vertical departments. The move was polarizing internally at first ("this will water down our agency" was the standard objection). At one such agency, the initial holdouts have reportedly come around and are already angling to expand.

Meanwhile, verticals have grown their own famous talent, as fast-growing ecosystems tend to do. These actors drive subscriptions and traffic to the platforms the way traditional stars do for networks, and casting increasingly revolves around them rather than open calls. Some are already crossing over: Noah Fearnley, a microdrama lead with 300K followers, booked a role on Ryan Murphy's 'American Love Story.'

The arrows now run in both directions. Taye Diggs signed on to a project at CandyJar (a U.S.-based microdrama platform), and Issa Rae's Hoorae produced a series with TikTok's PineDrama.

Where the infrastructure hasn't caught up: SAG-AFTRA rolled out a vertical agreement this year, but the major platforms haven't adopted it. At 30+ productions a month on tight turnarounds, union rates and compliance overhead would blow up the speed-and-volume math the whole business runs on. A handful of SAG actors have even let their cards lapse because steady nonunion vertical work pays better than the guest-star auditions they catch in a year.

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🏢 Netflix is in talks to buy Radford Studio Center, the historic LA lot where 'Seinfeld' and 'Gilligan's Island' were shot, for a fraction of its $1.85B price tag from 2021. Previous owner Hackman Capital defaulted on $1.1B in debt and handed the keys to Goldman-led lenders. One man's default is another streamer's bargain.

🤖 YouTube wants to help Hollywood play AI whack-a-mole. The platform is opening its deepfake detection tool to all actors, athletes, musicians, and creators, who can upload their likeness to flag and request takedowns of AI-generated replicas. It's free, opt-in, and works even for public figures who don't have a YouTube channel.

💰 Sean Baker scored a $22M deal with Clockwork (Warner Bros.' new indie label) for his 'Anora' follow-up 'Ti Amo!' The number covers the $10M+ budget (financed by FilmNation) plus a multimillion payday for Baker. He shopped the pitch to Neon, A24, and Searchlight before Clockwork won out.

🪚 A24 tapped Curry Barker to direct its 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' reimagining, part of a bigger play that includes a TV series from Glen Powell's Barnstorm. Another product of the YouTube-to-Hollywood pipeline, Barker's $800 debut 'Milk & Serial' lived on YouTube before follow-up 'Obsession' sold out of Toronto for $14M.

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