🎬 Settled

👋 Good morning! If it feels like your passion project keeps hitting roadblocks, take heart. George Lucas pitched a museum in 2009, got turned down by San Francisco, got sued out of Chicago, settled for a parking lot in LA, broke ground in 2018, waited out a pandemic and a supply chain, and spent about a billion dollars of his own money. Yesterday, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art finally opened in Exposition Park: a 300,000-square-foot white spaceship filled with Rockwell, Kahlo, Crumb, a Sistine Chapel reproduction, and Star Wars props taking up about 7% of the galleries. Tickets available here.

Welcome back to the The Dailies, Wednesday edition. Top off your coffee, there's news to catch up on. 👇

We're certain your feed's been flooded with this one, but in case you missed the details: Paramount settled with the 12 state attorneys general on Monday, and the WGA settled its own suit as well. That was the last major obstacle standing between CEO David Ellison and his ~$110B takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. Some of what Paramount agreed to:

What critics are saying: plenty. Bonta had spent months insisting he'd only accept structural remedies (as in, actually selling something). He got none. No cable networks, no HBO, no TV studios changed hands. The 30-movie pledge also has some wiggle room, since only half of those films have to be produced or co-produced by the company, and there's a force majeure clause that lets them off the hook for strikes, pandemics, and, notably, recessions. The settlement itself is widely being read as Bonta caving to pressure from Newsom, Bass, and Becerra once Ellison's threat to move Paramount out of California started to feel real.

The debt problem: Analysts called the terms a win for Ellison, but the combined company will carry roughly $77B in debt from day one. That's pressure that kicks in immediately, and it's why the ~$6B in "efficiencies" (read: layoffs) is coming regardless of what any settlement says.

Looking ahead… Ellison told staff he expects to close in about two weeks, so early October. The settlement takes the form of a consent decree, meaning a judge has to sign off and the court can enforce it if Paramount slips. That judge has "outstanding questions" about the deal and wants answers from both sides at a hearing tomorrow.

28 Wishes sells ice cream in Los Angeles. Below 70°F, sales fall about 20%. So the owners put about $20 a day into Kalshi weather markets, taking the cold side. The days that keep customers away now pay something back. See how other owners are doing it

See how hedging works

Ever since 'Backrooms' proved internet horror could fill theaters, studios have been in a feeding frenzy for internet-native IP. A24 thinks it found the next one: 'V/H/S: SCP,' a new entry in the found-footage anthology, releasing worldwide in 2027. One thing the announcement skipped: "worldwide rights" to SCP isn't really a thing.

For the uninitiated: SCP (short for "Secure, Contain, Protect") is a fan-written wiki born on 4chan in 2007, following a secret agency that captures and locks away paranormal anomalies. Every entry reads like a redacted government file, and thousands of anonymous writers have been adding to it for nearly two decades.

SCP is published under a Creative Commons "ShareAlike" license. Here's what that means in plain English:

A24 has three exits: Push forward and risk a lawsuit (Creative Commons licenses have held up in court, and lawyers say that'd likely kill the project). Release the film under the open license and hope people still buy tickets to something they could legally download. Or quietly drop the SCP name and go "inspired by" (most likely).

The bigger picture: Hollywood's newfound appetite for internet IP comes with a catch. Properties like 'Backrooms' and SCP were built by anonymous crowds on forums, not by a single rights holder you can option. As studios keep mining the internet for hits, this probably won't be the last rights headache.

🕸️ Destin Daniel Cretton signed a three-year overall deal with Sony Pictures after 'Spider-Man: Brand New Day' became the top domestic grosser ever. He'll develop and produce films via Hisako Films (directing's not included). Sony reportedly wants him directing a ‘Spider-Man’ sequel, but he’s committed to Lionsgate's 'Naruto' first.

🌹 Robert Eggers is adapting 'Romeo and Juliet' at Focus Features, which beat A24, Sony, and Warner Bros. with a reported high-$70M deal. The last big-screen hit version was Baz Luhrmann's in 1996. It'll follow 'Werwulf,' which comes out Christmas Day.

🎮 Xbox cut another 268 jobs and handed the next 'Halo' game to Activision in a studio reorg. It comes a month after Xbox started shopping 'Halo' and a dozen-plus titles to Hollywood. Game studios are having a rough stretch at the exact moment Hollywood can't get enough of their IP.

⚖️ CNN, MS NOW, and Politico are suing the Trump administration on First Amendment grounds after the White House banned them over what Trump called negative coverage. Major networks paused the pool (where outlets rotate covering the president and share footage) after CNN got shut out.

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