🎬 Netflix’s Next Era

👋 Good morning. Every actor has a price. For Robert Pattinson it’s 200 cans of Zyn (the nicotine pouches). Pattinson had agreed to produce Lance Oppenheim’s ‘Primetime,’ the Chris Hansen movie, but not to play Hansen. He was also, by Oppenheim’s account, deep in a Zyn habit during a US shortage back in 2024. So Oppenheim had a friend in Canada ship the cans to Pattinson’s house, then dropped off the rewrite with a note that opened “Dear Chris Han-Zyn.” Pattinson called to say he was in. There’s negotiating, and then there’s finding a man in withdrawal and making your move.

Welcome back to Wednesday’s edition of The Dailies. We can’t ship you 200 cans of anything, but we can catch you up on Hollywood’s latest. Let’s get into it. 👇

Here's the last six days at Netflix: about 1,000 layoffs, content chief Bela Bajaria pushed out, film chief Dan Lin fired over the weekend, Peter Rice hired to run everything starting Monday, and, oh right, earnings. Those came out yesterday:

The thing is, the money's actually fine. $3.7B in profit last quarter. The problem is that people are barely watching more than they did a year ago, and Wall Street has noticed: the stock is down about 40%. And the failed Warner Bros. bid didn't help, since chasing its library signaled to Wall Street that Netflix didn't think it could grow on its own anymore.

Ted Sarandos, the other co-CEO, took a swing at it on the call. He thanked Bajaria for "a lot of great hits on the board" (including 'East of Eden,' which everyone has already penciled in for next year’s Emmys, so that could get awkward), then said "we could do better." Nothing changes about the strategy, he said. The U.S. just needs "better execution," meaning hits big enough to travel to the rest of the world.

Which explains the Rice hire. The thing Sarandos kept coming back to was talent relations: "creative talent have choices of where they want to work," and Rice has spent his career being the exec those people want to work with. Dan Lin, by most accounts, was not. He was hired to rein in spending and reportedly made enemies in the process.

Looking ahead… the popular read is that this is a theatrical story. The filmmakers Rice is close to want theaters, and Netflix has been loosening up on theatrical all year. His first call is picking Lin's replacement as head of film, and ousted WB chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy are reportedly already talking to Sarandos.

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A big buyer has finally stepped up for Lionsgate. Legendary Entertainment, the studio behind 'Dune' and 'A Minecraft Movie,' has put in a formal bid for all of Lionsgate Studios. Legendary, which is owned by private equity giant Apollo, first approached Lionsgate last July and the two have been circling each other since. Lionsgate stock reacted yesterday like a Labrador hearing the doorbell, jumping as much as 16%. Nothing’s signed yet, and Lionsgate isn't commenting. Here’s what’s in it for Legendary:

Why it's up for grabs: Lionsgate has looked like a takeover target ever since it split off Starz, its cable network, in May 2025. Earlier buyers didn't want to inherit a shrinking cable business, and now they don't have to. Since then it's been trying to convince Wall Street it won't get steamrolled by AI, hiring its first chief AI officer in February and taking an equity stake in Runway in June, even though its first Runway partnership back in 2024 mostly fizzled.

That wasn't enough for Anson Funds, a Lionsgate shareholder with a habit of writing the board strongly worded letters. In July, Anson sent a letter laying out two options: get serious about AI or sell. European production giants Banijay and Mediawan have also kicked the tires, and Netflix was rumored to be interested back in June before flatly denying it.

The bigger picture: The Paramount and Warner Bros. deal just closed, and now the last independent studio of real size might end up with a private equity owner. That typically means a tighter slate, more library deals, and a sale down the road.

🎤 Jay-Z's reportedly booked himself for February's Super Bowl halftime show. He's picked every act since 2019 through his company Roc Nation's $5M-a-year deal with the NFL. Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber were in the mix, but lost to the guy doing the picking. He could make the official announcement this weekend at SoFi Stadium.

📈 'You Can See Everything' is a rising tide for all things Elizabeth Holmes. Hulu's 'The Dropout' saw viewership jump 186% in September after A24 revealed the secret doc, and the 2022 Amanda Seyfried series has logged 2.2M hours since. Even ‘Bad Blood,’ the 2018 Theranos exposé, is back on the NYT bestseller list.

📱 Two-thirds of microdramas released outside China last quarter were AI-generated, up from 3% in Q1. AI titles dominated paid apps by minutes watched, with just one live-action show in the top five. China hit this wall months ago (over 95% AI in Q1) and is drifting back toward live action, which holds viewers longer.

✍️ WGA East found a way to make scripts AI-proof. The guild is partnering with Cloak, a startup whose tool makes files unreadable to AI but readable by humans, and giving members free access to keep their work out of training data. Cloak claims it holds up against ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude, plus the auto-summaries in Gmail.

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