🎬 Tilly's First Film

👋 Good morning! The Emmys have named a host: NBC gave the 78th Emmy Awards to 'Law & Order: SVU' star Mariska Hargitay, the first host since 1993 who isn't a comedian or TV personality. She's spent 27 seasons keeping a straight face through wild testimony, so the acceptance speeches should be manageable. And if the show doesn't open on a dun-dun, what are we even doing here. Nominations go live later this morning at 8:30 a.m. PT. Tune in here.

Welcome back to The Dailies, Wednesday edition. Let’s get you caught up. 👇

Somewhere in a Netflix conference room, an executive is asking why nobody finished 'The Four Seasons.' A string of once-buzzy shows have posted brutal viewership drops for their return seasons, and the streamer is now reportedly digging through its own data trying to figure out why.

Take 'Avatar: The Last Airbender,' one of Netflix's most-watched titles of 2024. Its second-season premiere last month pulled nearly 60% fewer views than its first-season debut did. It's got plenty of company:

Return seasons almost always dip. Netflix is bleeding more than usual, though, and quality doesn't seem to be the issue. Most of these second seasons actually scored higher on Rotten Tomatoes than their firsts.

The likely culprits are multi-year gaps between seasons, short episode orders, and a binge model that front-loads an audience instead of building one. Broadcast shows used to peak mid-run as word of mouth kicked in. Netflix shows tend to peak on day one and slide from there.

Investors are getting antsy about engagement, too. Time spent on Netflix grew less than 2% last year, and the stock has been shaky since the company chased, then walked away from, Warner Bros. Discovery. Weekly-release rivals like 'The Pitt' (HBO Max) and 'Severance' (Apple) are actually growing in season two, which points to the problem being baked into how Netflix releases things.

Everyone is watching SpaceX.

But Wall Street’s top-rated analysts are pointing to 5 different stocks right now.

MarketBeat’s Top 5 Stocks to Buy Now report reveals the names getting some of the strongest analyst support before the broader market catches on.

View The 5 Stocks

🇬🇧 Comcast is buying one of the UK's biggest broadcasters. Comcast-owned Sky agreed to buy ITV's networks and streaming arm for up to $2.13B, a deal that brings together two of Britain's best-known media brands under a single American owner. The wildcard here is ITV Studios, the arm behind 'Love Island' and 'Britain's Got Talent.' Sky didn't buy it, so it becomes its own independent company, and it's already tipped as a takeover target for buyers like Banijay. The deal’s another domino in the media consolidation wave, right behind Paramount-WBD and Banijay/All3Media, as the old guard keeps merging to keep pace with platforms like YouTube and Netflix.

🤖 Tilly Norwood just booked her first feature film. The AI "actor" that ruffled Hollywood’s feathers last year will headline 'Misaligned,' a comedy-drama from Particle 6 (the London studio behind her). The plot follows an AI who breaks free of her guardrails and turns "terrifyingly human," set inside the "Tilly-verse," a digital world somewhere up in the cloud. Particle 6 calls it a "hybrid production," with real directors, writers, and editors working alongside AI specialists. SAG-AFTRA, unmoved, has already ruled Tilly "not an actor," but a character trained on the work of countless performers "without permission or compensation."

🎮 Sony's discontinuing physical game discs. The company will retire the format for all new PlayStation games starting January 2028, sending new releases digital-only (retail boxes will just carry download codes), a move some are calling the death knell for physical media. The shift, which Sony chalks up to consumer preference, follows 'Grand Theft Auto VI' going discless and lands amid loud backlash over the erosion of true ownership. Just last month, Sony deleted 550+ digitally purchased movies (including 'Terminator 2') from European buyers' accounts over a licensing lapse, a reminder that a digital "purchase" is really a revocable license to stream.

🇨🇦 TIFF picked its opener: 'Being Heumann,' from 'CODA' director Sian Heder, will kick off the fest. The Apple drama follows disability rights activist Judy Heumann through a 28-day 1977 protest occupation. Toronto also lined up premieres for 'Prima Facie' and 'The Assassin(s).' The festival runs Sept. 10 to 20.

🎨 Animation is grabbing a huge chunk of California's tax credits: The category didn't qualify until last year, and now it's pulling 59% of the latest round. Four films from Disney, DreamWorks, and Pixar took $71M of the $122M for major studios, led by 'Shrek' prequel 'Donkey' ($19.2M) and Disney's 'Hexed' ($18.5M).

📺 Netflix is stocking up on snackable video: Starting in August, short-form video content from BuzzFeed, Condé Nast, Hearst, People and Penske Media brands (THR, Billboard, Variety) will hit the streamer’s homepage. The clips run three to 20 minutes, and it’s another Netflix jab at YouTube's short-form dominance.

🤝 The details on Neon's 'Artificial' deal are in: Amazon dropped the Luca Guadagnino film about OpenAI, apparently wary of releasing it after its own $50B OpenAI partnership. Neon swooped in, and is paying nothing upfront but committing $15M to marketing and release. It cost about $46M, and a fall release is expected.

*sponsored

Know someone who should be reading The Dailies? Send them our way. Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win.

Your referral count: {{rp_num_referrals}} (Only {{rp_num_referrals_until_next_milestone}} away from unlocking {{rp_next_milestone_name}})

Or copy your personal referral link here: {{rp_refer_url}}