🎬 Netflix's First Grammy

☀️ Good morning! Fewer people than ever are watching local news, but folks still need to know if a blizzard is coming. Especially after weeks of winter storms battering the country. Enter "weather influencers," an increasingly popular genre on YouTube. Creators with names like “Max Velocity” post real-time storm content with headlines like 'ICE STORM APOCALYPSE.' Another one named Ryan Hall, Y'all has 3M subscribers. 20% of U.S. adults now get their weather from social media, per Pew Research. The weatherman industrial complex has been decentralized.

Welcome back to The Dailies. Another Monday, another round of box office numbers and industry news. Grab your coffee and let's get into it. 👇

Specialty corner: A24's Charli xcx mockumentary 'The Moment' pulled in $427.9K from just 4 screens. That $107K per-screen average is the third-biggest limited opening since COVID and one of A24's best ever, trailing only 'Marty Supreme' and 'Uncut Gems.'

The bigger picture: The weekend pulled in $82.6M, up 35% from last week's weather-battered numbers but down 4.3% from this frame last year. The story of the weekend, though, is Markiplier almost beating Disney's 'Send Help' with a movie that cost less than $3M to make.

The Grammys were last night, and Netflix walked away with its first-ever win. 'Golden' from 'KPop Demon Hunters' took home best song written for visual media. It caps a run that's hard to overstate: the film has racked up 480M+ views, its soundtrack was the first to top the Billboard charts since 'Encanto,' and 'Golden' spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100.

Film and music have always fed off each other. But Netflix has been pushing it further than most:

But those were revivals and reinterpretations. With 'KPop Demon Hunters,' Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation created a fictional K-pop group, cast rising artists as the voices, and watched it become real. It's part of a broader shift in how music supervisors operate. According to a UCLA music industry professor, they now "nurture artists the way record labels used to," developing talent through strategic placement rather than just finding songs to match scenes.

Huntr/x didn't exist before the film. Now they've performed on Fallon, SNL, and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and EJAE just became the first Korean-American female songwriter nominated for Grammy song of the year.

Looking ahead… 'Golden' is the Oscar frontrunner for best original song. If it wins, Netflix will have turned an animated kids' movie into a cross-platform awards sweep rivaling Disney's best.

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👑 Bob Iger is eyeing the exit early. The Disney CEO told associates he plans to step down before his contract expires on December 31, and the board is meeting this week to vote on his successor. The race has reportedly narrowed to two internal candidates: Josh D'Amaro (who runs theme parks and experiences) and Dana Walden (who co-chairs entertainment including streaming). D'Amaro is widely expected to get the nod. Streaming has burned billions while parks have delivered most of Disney's profits. The board seems to be picking accordingly. Iger is expected to stick around for a few months after the announcement to mentor his successor before fully handing over the reins.

🏒 A scripted drama is doing for hockey what 'Drive to Survive' did for F1. HBO Max's queer hockey romance 'Heated Rivalry,' adapted from Rachel Reid's bestselling novels, has become a breakout hit. And it's having real-world effects: StubHub reported a 40% spike in hockey ticket interest during the show's run, while SeatGeek saw weekly sales jump 20% and revenue climb 30%, with many first-time attendees. It's nothing new for streaming hits to convert viewers into sports fans. Netflix's 'Drive to Survive' and 'Full Swing' did it for F1 and golf. But those were docuseries. One NHL rep called 'Heated Rivalry' "the most unique driver for creating new fans" in the league's history.

📉 Sora's honeymoon phase is officially over. Remember when OpenAI's text-to-video app launched in October and the internet flooded with user-generated SpongeBob and Pikachu videos? That was thanks to a controversial IP policy where studios' content was fair game unless they explicitly opted out. It topped the App Store and hit 1M downloads faster than ChatGPT. Cut to January: installs are down 45% month-over-month, and in-app spending is down 32%. After Hollywood pushed back, OpenAI reversed course and tightened restrictions on protected IP. Hard to say if users lost interest without the pirated IP or if the hype just ran its course, but even a recent deal allowing users to generate videos with official Disney characters hasn't stopped the slide.