🎬 One Giant Leap

👋 Good morning! With 'Project Hail Mary' dominating this weekend's box office, here's some Andy Weir lore for your Monday: Before he was a bestselling sci-fi author behind ‘Project Hail Mary,’ Weir was a software engineer posting free chapters of his first novel on a personal blog for a handful of space nerds. Fans wanted an easier format, so he threw it on Kindle for 99 cents (Amazon wouldn't let him go lower). That book, 'The Martian,' sold 35,000 copies on vibes alone, which caught a literary agent's eye, which led to a six-figure book deal, which put Matt Damon on Mars for $630M worldwide. The blog-to-blockbuster pipeline is real.

Welcome back to The Dailies. Hope your weekend was solid. We've got fresh box office data, and all the industry intel to kickstart your week. Let’s get into it. 👇

The bigger picture: The box office had its best weekend of 2026, with nearly half of the $141.8M domestic haul coming from 'Project Hail Mary' alone. It's a huge win for Amazon MGM, a studio that's been desperately needing a bona fide theatrical hit after a rough stretch ('Red One,' 'Crime 101,' 'Mercy'). The film still needs to reach $500M global territory to justify its $200M production budget (after tax credits), but word-of-mouth is extremely strong. Year-to-date domestic grosses sit at $1.6B, up 21% from the same point in 2025 ($1.3B). Next weekend's only wide release is WB's 'They Will Kill You,' so 'Project Hail Mary' should have clear skies for at least one more frame before 'Super Mario Galaxy Movie' arrives April 1.

Last summer, Row K Entertainment didn't exist. Then it crashed TIFF in September, outspending every established distributor and picking up four films including an eight-figure 'Cliffhanger' reboot. The pitch made sense: studios had largely shifted toward tentpoles, streamers had pulled back, and mid-budget movies were left without a distributor. That’s where Row K would step in.

Now the whole thing is unraveling. Row K is reportedly drowning in unpaid bills, stalled releases, and internal chaos less than eight months after launch:

The short version: Row K bought the slate before it built the company. Cash flow has reportedly been an issue since inception, and the founders have openly questioned the viability of the very films they acquired.

Row K isn't alone in chasing this opportunity. Sumerian Pictures, Black Bear, 101 Studios, Magenta Light Studios, and several others have all launched in the past two years betting on the same mid-budget gap. But as Row K's troubles suggest, showing up with a checkbook isn't enough. You still have to build a company that can actually release movies profitably.

Looking ahead... Row K says it's still in the game. It just picked up 'Mister' with Walton Goggins and plans to attend CinemaCon and Cannes. The mid-budget space still needs someone to crack it, and Row K clearly still wants to be that company.

Bear with us, it's more 'KPop Demon Hunters.' To nobody's surprise, the sequel to Netflix's biggest movie ever was officially announced earlier this month. Now the deal details have surfaced, and they say a lot about how Netflix plans to keep its franchise creators happy:

In other words, Netflix is running the franchise playbook. Kang and Appelhans consult on merch and spinoffs, a branded concert tour is reportedly in the works, and the company is hiring a dedicated exec just to manage the property.

The bigger picture: Netflix has spent years chasing the kind of superfandom that Disney has with Mickey Mouse, Marvel, and its theme park empire. The challenge has been that Netflix built its brand on variety and volume, not beloved characters. They've never really had a franchise that moves merch, sells out concerts, and lives in the culture the way Disney properties do. Now they finally have one. And with the Duffer brothers recently jumping to Paramount for their next chapter after wrapping ‘Stranger Things,’ there's extra incentive to keep your franchise creators close.

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🇺🇸 Hollywood’s asking Congress for a federal film tax credit. Sen. Adam Schiff held a hearing in Burbank on Friday to make the case for a new bipartisan federal production incentive. He says that California's state-level credits (while helpful) can't single-handedly stop productions from packing up and shooting overseas. 'The Pitt' star Noah Wyle showed up as proof of concept: his show took full advantage of California's tax program, saved over $11M across season one, and pumped an estimated $125M into the state's economy. IATSE chief Matthew Loeb put a finer point on it, noting that Paramount's promise to shoot 15 Paramount and 15 WB films if the merger goes through means nothing unless those productions actually stay in the U.S. Friday's event was more public pressure campaign than legislative milestone, but Schiff says a bipartisan federal proposal is in the works.

🚮 Disney scrapped an entire season of 'The Bachelorette.' The move came last week after a graphic domestic violence video surfaced involving its lead, 'Secret Lives of Mormon Wives' star Taylor Frankie Paul. Production on 'Mormon Wives' is also paused. Paul's history wasn't a surprise (she pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in 2023), but in reality TV, controversy is a feature, not a bug, and Disney rolled the dice anyway. It's an expensive mess: The 10-episode season cost ABC roughly $50M in licensing fees alone, plus an estimated $35M in ad revenue that now needs to go somewhere else. The fallout extends beyond one show. Disney has been building a Bravo-style reality universe across Hulu and ABC, importing social media personalities and having them cross over between properties. Paul was a centerpiece of that strategy, and her implosion has put multiple projects in limbo at once.

🇬🇧 Saturday Night Live finally crossed the pond. The iconic sketch show launched its UK version on Sky One (a major British cable network) this weekend, with original creator Lorne Michaels executive producing and SNL alum Tina Fey hosting the debut. The format is basically a copy-paste of the American original (cold open, monologue, live and pre-recorded sketches, musical guest), but the cast is entirely homegrown up-and-comers rather than established names. Critics were warm but not sold, and Weekend Update (the satirical news desk segment) seemed to land best across the board. Overnight ratings were a modest 226,000 viewers, but Fey's monologue clip racked up 1.4M YouTube views by last night, which is really how SNL builds its audience these days anyway.