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 min2.2K reads
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News
David Zaslav's $606m Warner exit takes 2026's cash-out past $800m
Zaslav received $606.1m when Paramount's $31-a-share takeover closed: $224.4m for shares and $381.7m for options that vested at the close. Add the $114m, $59m and $21.7m sales made while the deal was pending and the year's total reaches about $801m.
Streaming
HBO Max has been renamed twice in six years. Now comes a merger
Skydance closed its $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery takeover on Tuesday and spent Wednesday declining to name, date or price the single app it says is coming. The Max name lasted 778 days. The restored HBO Max name is 455 days old.
Awards
Elsinore opens the London Film Festival slot that Oscar forgot
The Imitation Game opened the London Film Festival in 2014 and took eight Oscar nominations. The eleven opening films since have taken none. Elsinore, with Andrew Scott tipped for Best Actor, is the first real frontrunner in the slot in twelve years.
Awards
Emmys go to Prime Video at $15m a year, a seventh of the Oscars' fee
Amazon will pay about $15m a year for the Emmys from 2027. YouTube committed nine figures for the Oscars. The awards rights market, and the three-year exodus from broadcast, in numbers.
Box Office
Drishyam 3 made in five days what Drishyam 2 made in its whole run
Drishyam 2 took 56 days to gross ₹342.31 crore worldwide. Drishyam 3: The Conclusion reached ₹341.90 crore by Tuesday, its fifth day, passing the Malayalam original's entire run on the way.
News
Skydance's Warner debt costs six times what its studios earn
Skydance closed its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery on 6 October and filed the bond schedule the same day. Multiply each principal by its coupon and the fixed-rate notes cost $3.22bn a year. Warner's and Paramount's film studios earned $132m between them in the most recent quarter either reported.
News
The Batman Part II has slipped 868 days. Now filming has stopped
The Batman Part II is booked for 18 February 2028, which is 2,177 days after the first film opened. No Batman film has made its direct sequel wait that long, and the schedule has now moved three times before a camera stopped rolling.
News
De Luca and Abdy exit Warner with one earner from six auteur bets
Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy handed six famous directors a budget and no franchise to hide behind. Those six films cost between $653m and $733m to produce and have grossed $959.7m worldwide. Only Sinners made money.
News
The day in film and television: deals, casting, production starts and the moves that reshape a slate.
News
David Zaslav's $606m Warner exit takes 2026's cash-out past $800m
Zaslav received $606.1m when Paramount's $31-a-share takeover closed: $224.4m for shares and $381.7m for options that vested at the close. Add the $114m, $59m and $21.7m sales made while the deal was pending and the year's total reaches about $801m.
News
Skydance's Warner debt costs six times what its studios earn
Skydance closed its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery on 6 October and filed the bond schedule the same day. Multiply each principal by its coupon and the fixed-rate notes cost $3.22bn a year. Warner's and Paramount's film studios earned $132m between them in the most recent quarter either reported.
News
The Batman Part II has slipped 868 days. Now filming has stopped
The Batman Part II is booked for 18 February 2028, which is 2,177 days after the first film opened. No Batman film has made its direct sequel wait that long, and the schedule has now moved three times before a camera stopped rolling.
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
Drishyam 3 made in five days what Drishyam 2 made in its whole run
Drishyam 2 took 56 days to gross ₹342.31 crore worldwide. Drishyam 3: The Conclusion reached ₹341.90 crore by Tuesday, its fifth day, passing the Malayalam original's entire run on the way.
Box Office
Avengers: Endgame is $38.2m from a record built on five re-releases
Avatar's $2,923,710,708 contains $180,133,121 its original release did not earn. Avengers Endgame: Encore has taken $86,106,643 back in three days, and needs $38,164,965 more.
Box Office
La Bola Negra outsold Avengers: Endgame 3.6 to 1 in Spanish cinemas
La Bola Negra sold 613,240 tickets in Spain for €4,673,201, an average of €7.62 a head against a market average of €7.75. Avengers: Endgame Encore, second in the same chart, averaged €8.60.
Streaming
What is landing on the services, what is quietly disappearing, and how the platforms are changing their bets.
Streaming
HBO Max has been renamed twice in six years. Now comes a merger
Skydance closed its $110bn Warner Bros. Discovery takeover on Tuesday and spent Wednesday declining to name, date or price the single app it says is coming. The Max name lasted 778 days. The restored HBO Max name is 455 days old.
Streaming
Cindy Holland lasted 418 days at Paramount. HBO's Bloys inherits it
Holland ran Paramount's direct-to-consumer business for 418 days. Casey Bloys has run HBO's programming for roughly 3,800, which is longer than Paramount+ has existed. A judge cleared the merger on Wednesday.
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.