News
Paramount's Warner bid has a deadline nobody is discussing
The $31-a-share offer has been reported everywhere. The clock attached to it, which starts running on 30 September, has not.
Marcus Dey2 min
Latest
News
A24's extra 10 points are worth $19.75m on Backrooms alone
A24 used to take 40 to 45 per cent of the ticket. It now asks for the low to mid 50s. On the $197.5m Backrooms took in America, those ten points come to $19.75m, nearly twice what the film cost to make.
Streaming
Bob Chapek defends his price rises as Disney+ hits $21.49 a month
The last Disney+ price rise Chapek approved took effect eighteen days after the board sacked him. It put the ad-free tier at $10.99. On Wednesday it reached $21.49, and the gap between the ad-free and ad-supported plans has tripled to exactly $9.00.
Box Office
Digger must out-gross all but one Iñárritu film to break even
Alejandro G. Iñárritu's six theatrically reported features have grossed $878.6m worldwide between them. Digger, which premiered in London on Tuesday as this year's Royal Film Performance, needs around $310m on its own just to get level.
Awards
Red Sea Film Festival skips a year, and $597,500 of prizes with it
Add up the cash on the festival's own 2025 prize lists and it comes to $597,500, decided in a single week in Al-Balad. The Red Sea Film Foundation has cancelled this December's edition and will not return until Q4 2027.
News
Lucas Museum charges $25, and the $1.3bn Getty is still free
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens in Exposition Park on Tuesday at $25 a head. The Getty cost more and is free. The Broad cost $140m and is free. At The Broad's first-year attendance, the Lucas gate would take 49 years to cover the build.
Awards
La Bola Negra wins TIFF, where 16 of 18 winners made best picture
Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi's Spanish-language epic took the People's Choice Award on Sunday. The award has picked five eventual best picture winners since 2008 and missed twice, once on the only non-English film it has ever chosen. Netflix has twelve best picture nominations and no wins.
News
Paramount's Warner settlement needs 11 more films a year than 2025
Warner Bros. released 11 films in 2025 and Paramount eight. The commitment being written into a settlement with California and 11 other states is 30 a year for three years, which is 33 films more than the current rate produces.
The Grapevine
Higgsfield's 4-star Trustpilot score rests on reviews it asked for
We counted the 200 most recent Trustpilot reviews of Higgsfield and sorted them by who asked for them. Invited reviewers give the AI video company 4.4 stars. Unprompted ones give it 3.5, and 31% give it one. Archived snapshots show the score climbing from 2.8 to 4.0 in nine months, and when the turn came.
News
The day in film and television: deals, casting, production starts and the moves that reshape a slate.
News
A24's extra 10 points are worth $19.75m on Backrooms alone
A24 used to take 40 to 45 per cent of the ticket. It now asks for the low to mid 50s. On the $197.5m Backrooms took in America, those ten points come to $19.75m, nearly twice what the film cost to make.
News
Lucas Museum charges $25, and the $1.3bn Getty is still free
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art opens in Exposition Park on Tuesday at $25 a head. The Getty cost more and is free. The Broad cost $140m and is free. At The Broad's first-year attendance, the Lucas gate would take 49 years to cover the build.
News
Paramount's Warner settlement needs 11 more films a year than 2025
Warner Bros. released 11 films in 2025 and Paramount eight. The commitment being written into a settlement with California and 11 other states is 30 a year for three years, which is 33 films more than the current rate produces.
The Grapevine
What the industry is whispering about — feuds, rewrites, walkouts and the stories behind the official statement.
The Grapevine
Higgsfield's 4-star Trustpilot score rests on reviews it asked for
We counted the 200 most recent Trustpilot reviews of Higgsfield and sorted them by who asked for them. Invited reviewers give the AI video company 4.4 stars. Unprompted ones give it 3.5, and 31% give it one. Archived snapshots show the score climbing from 2.8 to 4.0 in nine months, and when the turn came.
The Grapevine
Higgsfield faces scam claims as 'unlimited' AI renders take hours
Higgsfield launched a 33-day 'unlimited' offer on 7 August with a published average render time under five minutes. Within eleven days paying users were reporting waits of two hours and more. The refund window had already closed. Here is the timeline, the small print and the complaints on file.
The Grapevine
Coyote vs. Acme went from tax write-off to a $15.4m opening
The Looney Tunes film Warner buried for a tax break opened in second place and held third over Labor Day. The numbers are ordinary, which is exactly the embarrassing part.
Box Office
Weekend numbers, breakevens and what a result actually means for the people who greenlit it.
Box Office
Digger must out-gross all but one Iñárritu film to break even
Alejandro G. Iñárritu's six theatrically reported features have grossed $878.6m worldwide between them. Digger, which premiered in London on Tuesday as this year's Royal Film Performance, needs around $310m on its own just to get level.
Box Office
Resident Evil opens to $50m, and nearly half of it came on day one
Resident Evil took $24m on Friday including previews and is heading for about $50m. That is 48% of the weekend on day one, against 41.8% for Weapons, which is why forecasts of $58m to $68m, ours included, were too high.
Box Office
Resident Evil's Thursday previews beat the last reboot's whole weekend
Resident Evil's $8m-$9m in previews is more than Welcome to Raccoon City took in its entire opening weekend. Applying the preview multiples of Weapons and Mortal Kombat II gives a $59m-$68m opening; the tracking says $40m-$50m. Here is the arithmetic, and why it may still be wrong.
Streaming
What is landing on the services, what is quietly disappearing, and how the platforms are changing their bets.
Streaming
Bob Chapek defends his price rises as Disney+ hits $21.49 a month
The last Disney+ price rise Chapek approved took effect eighteen days after the board sacked him. It put the ad-free tier at $10.99. On Wednesday it reached $21.49, and the gap between the ad-free and ad-supported plans has tripled to exactly $9.00.
Streaming
Spider-Noir cancelled at Prime Video in Spider-Man's record week
Amazon has now retired both series announced under its Sony Marvel television pact, and it dropped the second one in the week the Spider-Man film franchise set domestic box office records.