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
Box Office
Avengers: Endgame Encore tops the box office on 7% of its 2019 opening
Endgame Encore took $11.2m on Friday against the original's $157.5m opening day, and is heading for $26m. Avatar's entire ten-day 2022 re-release made $24.7m.
News
Mushtaq Khan made 11 films with the Khans. None came to the funeral
Mushtaq Khan spent 46 years in Hindi cinema and appeared in 11 films alongside Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. Raza Murad, who attended the funeral, says no star came. Half the obituaries could not even agree how old he was.
News
Letterboxd's $300m price is 2.6 times its listed owner's value
Tiny Ltd closed Friday at a market capitalisation of US$117m. Its 60% stake in Letterboxd is being marketed at $300m, which works out at $9.77 a member, against the $458 a head the New York Times Company paid for The Athletic.
News
Paramount's Warner decree funds indie film at $1.25m a picture
The consent decree obliges the merged Paramount-Warner to release four independent films a year and attaches $5m a year to buy them. Missing a single studio release costs $30m, six times as much.
News
Paramount is selling equity at $12 while its shares trade at $10.18
Paramount Skydance closed at $10.18 on Thursday. The equity syndicate funding the Warner Bros. Discovery takeover pays no less than $12.00, a gap of about $7.1bn across the full $46.95bn commitment. Elon Musk is one of the names discussed for it.
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.
News
The day in film and television: deals, casting, production starts and the moves that reshape a slate.
News
Mushtaq Khan made 11 films with the Khans. None came to the funeral
Mushtaq Khan spent 46 years in Hindi cinema and appeared in 11 films alongside Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan. Raza Murad, who attended the funeral, says no star came. Half the obituaries could not even agree how old he was.
News
Letterboxd's $300m price is 2.6 times its listed owner's value
Tiny Ltd closed Friday at a market capitalisation of US$117m. Its 60% stake in Letterboxd is being marketed at $300m, which works out at $9.77 a member, against the $458 a head the New York Times Company paid for The Athletic.
News
Paramount's Warner decree funds indie film at $1.25m a picture
The consent decree obliges the merged Paramount-Warner to release four independent films a year and attaches $5m a year to buy them. Missing a single studio release costs $30m, six times as much.
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
Avengers: Endgame Encore tops the box office on 7% of its 2019 opening
Endgame Encore took $11.2m on Friday against the original's $157.5m opening day, and is heading for $26m. Avatar's entire ten-day 2022 re-release made $24.7m.
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.
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.