🎬 Untapped Indie Streaming

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🎞 Here’s what’s on the reel today:

• Nielsen Adapts to Streaming

• Untapped Indie Streaming Market

• AI Resurrection

• Last Looks: 👀 Bite-sized scoops on developing stories/projects

• Video Village: The latest trailers

• Call Sheet: The week ahead

• Martini Shot 🍸

But first, let’s take a look at what happened at the box office this past weekend!

BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
🎟️ Big weekend for small films…

1. 🦹‍♂️ Venom: The Last Dance: $26.1M domestic weekend (-49%), $90M domestic total, $317.1M global. Better second-weekend hold than previous Venom films, with China's $70.6M helping power global performance.

2. 🤖 The Wild Robot: $7.55M domestic weekend (+11%), $121.4M domestic total, $269M global. Remarkable legs for Universal's animated hit, even with PVOD availability.

3. 😈 Smile 2: $6.8M domestic weekend (-29%), $52.6M domestic total, $109.7M global. Halloween boost helps horror sequel cross $100M worldwide on $28M budget.

4. ⛪ Conclave: $5.3M domestic weekend (-20%), $15.2M domestic total. Strong hold for Focus Features' religious drama.

5. 🏠 Here: $5M domestic opening, $5M global. Zemeckis-Hanks reunion stumbles with poor reviews (36% RT) despite $50M budget.

6. ⌛ We Live in Time: $3.47M domestic weekend (-28%), $17.69M domestic total.

7. 🤡 Terrifier 3: $3.22M domestic weekend (-32%), $50.54M domestic total. Horror breakout becomes highest-grossing unrated/NC-17 film ever domestically.

8. 👻 Beetlejuice Beetlejuice: $2.08M domestic weekend (-33%), $292.09M domestic total.

9. 🎭 Anora: $1.89M domestic weekend (+109%), $3.94M domestic total. Strong expansion with $7,500 per-theater average.

10. 🔫 Absolution: $1.42M domestic opening. Latest Liam Neeson action film struggles with $927 per-theater average.

The big picture: This pre-election/post-Halloween frame hit $71.6M, up from $63M last year, with indie films stealing the spotlight. Searchlight's 'A Real Pain' crushed it with a $60K per-theater average in 4 locations, while Neon's 'Anora' flexed with $7.5K per theater across 253 screens. Meanwhile, WB pulled a real head-scratcher with Clint Eastwood's 'Juror #2'—after initially planning just a quiet 31-theater release with no awards push, the studio has suddenly reversed course and greenlit an awards campaign following its killer 96% Rotten Tomatoes score.

On the horror front, the genre keeps crushing it, with both 'Smile 2' and 'Terrifier 3' breaking $50M domestic—landing them spots as the 4th and 5th highest-grossing horror flicks of 2024.

WIDESHOT
📽️ Nielsen adapts, indie streaming, and AI podcasts…

📊🔄 TV's longtime measurement authority, Nielsen, is finally modernizing for the streaming era. For years, they've been guesstimating TV viewership by tracking a handful of households, while streaming platforms have been sitting on a goldmine of precise viewer data. Now, Nielsen has received approval to mesh these two worlds together—combining their traditional sampling with streamers' exact numbers for a more complete picture. Early results show why this matters: when they tested this hybrid approach on Amazon's Thursday Night Football, they uncovered about 1M viewers they'd missed (an 8% bump) compared to their old-school counting method. While it’s a big step for Nielsen, they've already lost one major player: Paramount Global ditched them in October over high costs, switching to rival measurement firm VideoAmp, which has been tracking streaming audiences more aggressively. In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, networks are demanding more comprehensive viewer data—and they're willing to shop around to get it.

📽️👀 Indie films are leaving a whopping 40M viewers on the table. A mind-blowing study from former Sundance CEO Keri Putnam shows that while just 36.7M Americans currently watch indie films, the potential audience is nearly double that—77M people would actually pay for a dedicated indie streaming service. The 118-page Harvard Kennedy School deep dive, backed by Nielsen and Parrot Analytics, shows how badly streaming platforms are failing indie content: viewership has plummeted from 30M in 2020 to 18M in 2022, mainly because major platforms' algorithms bury indies under mainstream hits and there's no centralized way to discover these films. Coupled with a severe lack of viewership data that makes it impossible to track performance, the indie market is operating blind—yet could potentially double with the right distribution strategy. Putnam's pushing to combine platforms like Criterion and MUBI into one mega indie streaming service, plus creating a trade organization where platforms could safely share anonymous viewing stats. The findings offer a potential lifeline for indie films, which have struggled since theatrical releases peaked in 2017.

🎤🤖 British TV's legendary interviewer is getting a digital resurrection. Michael Parkinson's estate has greenlit ‘Virtually Parkinson,’ an 8-part podcast series where an AI-powered Parky will chat with a new generation of stars. Created by Deep Fusion Films using hundreds of archived interviews, the tech perfectly mimics not just his voice but his legendary interviewing rhythm—so authentic it gives his own family chills. The unscripted series will kick off each episode by acknowledging its AI host before diving into conversations with A-list guests (still under wraps), wrapping with a meta-moment where stars reflect on their AI interview experience. As studios and unions hash out AI guidelines, this carefully managed project could shape entertainment's future. Deep Fusion's founders Ben Field and Jamie Anderson are already approaching top talent, promising the same relaxed, probing style that made Parkinson must-watch TV for decades. Mike Parkinson, Sir Michael's son, says his father "would have loved it"—though the industry's still debating whether that's cause for excitement or concern.

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LAST LOOKS
Development 🗒️

• ‘Smile’ producers Temple Hill and Protagonist Pictures are teaming up for the horror film ‘Monitor.’ (more)

• Jared Leto, John Mulaney, and Lupita Nyong’o will star in ‘Lunik Heist,’ a Kemp Powers-directed thriller for Searchlight Pictures. (more)

• Constance Wu, Mark O’Brien, and William Fichtner have wrapped filming on sci-fi thriller ‘The Embers And The Stars.’ (more)

• Chris Rock will direct and star in ‘Misty Green,’ a drama produced by Macro and Confluential, with rights launching at AFM. (more)

• Will Ferrell will produce and star in ‘Street Justice,’ a 20th Century Studios comedy where he plays a rogue, Dirty Harry-style character, directed by Peter Atencio. (more)

• Dev Patel will star in ‘The Journeyman,’ a crime thriller about a struggling tennis pro trapped in a violent match-fixing ring. (more)

• Jason Bateman and David Harbour will star in and executive produce HBO’s limited series ‘DTF St. Louis.’ (more)

• Disney Branded Television has greenlit two new music-driven, live-action comedies, ‘How We Became the Biggest Band in the World’ and ‘Vampirina,’ both premiering next year on Disney Channel and Disney+. (more)

• Taika Waititi is in early talks to star in ‘FING!,’ a fantasy adaptation of David Walliams’ popular children’s book. (more)

• James Gray’s next film, ‘Paper Tiger,’ will star Adam Driver, Jeremy Strong, and Anne Hathaway. (more)

• Camila Morrone and Adam DiMarco are in talks to lead ‘Something Very Bad Is Going To Happen,’ a Duffer Brothers-produced Netflix horror drama. (more)

• Takashi Yamazaki, the Oscar-winning writer and director of ‘Godzilla Minus One,’ is set to return for a new ‘Godzilla’ movie. (more)

• William H. Macy is set to star in the crime comedy ‘Too Many Crooks.’ (more)

• Eddie Murphy will star as funk legend George Clinton in an Amazon MGM biopic directed by ‘Dreamgirls’ collaborator Bill Condon. (more)

• Amazon MGM Studios has won the auction for ‘American Speed,’ a true-crime racing drama starring Tom Holland and Austin Butler. (more)

• Lionsgate has acquired ‘Three Hitmen and a Baby,’ an action-comedy spec by Dave Matalon and Matt Altman, produced by 87North. (more)

• Tom Cruise is in early discussions with Paramount for a potential sequel to his 1990 NASCAR film ‘Days of Thunder,’ reprising his role as Cole Trickle. (more)

• Danny Ramirez is set to direct and star in ‘Baton,’ a soccer drama produced by Victoria Alonso and David Beckham. (more)

• Wagner Moura is set to direct and star alongside Sofia Carson, Brian Tyree Henry, and Elisabeth Moss in ‘Last Night at the Lobster.’ (more)

Renewed & Canceled ✅ ❌

• ‘Days of Our Lives’ is renewed for S61 by Peacock. (more)

Business 🤝

• Charter plans to launch a major streaming bundle by mid-2025, offering TV Select customers ad-supported streaming options like Max, Disney+, and Paramount+ at no extra cost in a bid to boost cable value and retention. (more)

• Disney launches an Office of Technology Enablement to explore AI and emerging tech across its divisions, led by CTO Jamie Voris. (more)

• Paramount faces a class action lawsuit alleging it shared subscribers’ viewing data with Meta and TikTok without consent. (more)

CALL SHEET
📅 The week ahead

• TUESDAY: AFM kicks off in Las Vegas. ✨

• THURSDAY: WBD earnings call. 📊

• FRIDAY: Sony and Paramount earnings calls. 📊

VIDEO VILLAGE
📺 Latest trailers

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MARTINI SHOT
🍸 Latest trends & viral moments