Speaker 1: Well, I think, as Amber so eloquently said at her
Speaker 1: White House Correspondence Dinner performance earlier this year. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: they didn't have any known been Collin Jones.
Speaker 2: My bad.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and
Speaker 3: analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Monday, August eighteenth, twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co
Speaker 3: editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in
Speaker 3: La He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around
Speaker 3: the world covering the business of entertainment. In today's episode,
Speaker 3: we'll talk numbers, we'll get our Monday box office lowdown
Speaker 3: from Rebecca Rubin, and we'll talk through the final upfront
Speaker 3: ad sales figures as tracked by our own Brian Steinberg.
Speaker 3: One will shift to a discussion of the truth Seekers
Speaker 3: event hosted August fifteenth by Variety in Rolling Stone in
Speaker 3: New York. It was a pack day devoted to documentary
Speaker 3: and unscripted content. You'll hear clips from sessions with Ronnie
Speaker 3: Chang and Bur Ruffin, Roywood Junior, Jake Tapper, and Moore.
Speaker 3: But before we get to that, here are a few
Speaker 3: headlines just in this morning that you need to know.
Speaker 3: MSNBC will soon be MS now that will stand for
Speaker 3: my source for news, opinion and the world. The News
Speaker 3: Cabler will change its name and give up all NBC
Speaker 3: and Peacock related iconography as part of its upcoming split
Speaker 3: from NBC Universal.
Speaker 2: Some of us.
Speaker 3: Remember the hazy days of the mid nineties when the
Speaker 3: MS stood for Microsoft. The Santiago International Film Festival is
Speaker 3: underway in Chile, lots of headlines and discussions of business
Speaker 3: in Latin America. It's a lively event, and Variety's longtime
Speaker 3: correspond Anne Marie de la Fuente is down there as
Speaker 3: we publish three digital daily editions. Rip to actor Terence
Speaker 3: stamp He died August seventeenth, at age eighty seven. He
Speaker 3: was so good in so many movies. Priscilla, Queen of
Speaker 3: the Desert is one of my faves. All of these
Speaker 3: stories and more can be found on Variety dot com.
Speaker 3: Right now. Now it's time for conversations with Variety journalists
Speaker 3: about news and trends and showbiz. If it's Monday, We're
Speaker 3: talking Box Office with Rebecca Rubin, Variety's Boss of the BOH.
Speaker 3: Week two of Weapons and the opening of Nobody Too
Speaker 3: were the big stories. Rebecca Rubin, thanks for joining me as.
Speaker 4: Ever, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: As we speak on a very hot August Sunday afternoon
Speaker 3: here in Los Angeles. How is the temperature at the
Speaker 3: box office?
Speaker 4: It was definitely a slower weekend as we head into
Speaker 4: the dog days of summer. August is known to be
Speaker 4: a quieter period at the box office, and best case
Speaker 4: there is the sleeper hitter too, and that's definitely been
Speaker 4: what is shaping up right now. As Weapons, the rated
Speaker 4: horror movie had another really great weekend at the box office.
Speaker 4: It was number one with twenty five million and its
Speaker 4: second weekend of release, and it's pretty significant because those
Speaker 4: ticket sales are down just forty three percent from its debut,
Speaker 4: and horror is known for really dropping like a rock
Speaker 4: at the box office, and so this is a really
Speaker 4: great hold and it's definitely attributed to the great reviews,
Speaker 4: but also really just the electric word of mouth. People
Speaker 4: are going to see this movie, having a really great
Speaker 4: time in the theater and then telling their friends about it.
Speaker 3: Again, not a whole lot of action, although I was
Speaker 3: happy for Bob Odenkirk Nobody Too, got really strong reviews.
Speaker 3: People were saying, this is the action comedy of our times.
Speaker 4: It didn't end up doing that notable of business. It
Speaker 4: opened with nine point two million dollars and that was
Speaker 4: enough to land in third place. It cost twenty five million,
Speaker 4: so it didn't need to make a ton to be
Speaker 4: successful in its theastrical run. But those ticket sales aren't
Speaker 4: that much stronger than the first Nobody, which came out
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one and opened to six point eight million.
Speaker 4: But the difference there is that was at a time
Speaker 4: when movie theaters were just starting to reopen after the pandemic,
Speaker 4: and they were still playing to limited capacities. So the
Speaker 4: landscape was looking a lot different than it is now.
Speaker 4: And so I don't think that Universal, which distributed the film,
Speaker 4: was expecting a huge blockbuster result. But you have to
Speaker 4: imagine if movie theaters are playing at full strength, they
Speaker 4: probably were helping for maybe a fifteen to twenty million
Speaker 4: dollar opening weekend as opposed to a nine million dollar.
Speaker 3: Debut Rebecca, Are there any other box office milestones that
Speaker 3: you're looking at, either the overall box officer for individual titles.
Speaker 4: Well, just to look at films that have been playing
Speaker 4: in theaters for a bit. Something that's kind of fun
Speaker 4: is Superman and F One are both just as stone's
Speaker 4: throw from crossing six hundred million. It'll be interesting to
Speaker 4: see which one ends up crossing the finish line first.
Speaker 4: But no matter the order, these are pretty impressive milestones
Speaker 4: for two films that didn't necessarily enter theears as guaranteed hits,
Speaker 4: but ended up really sticking around during the summer season.
Speaker 3: They had legs.
Speaker 4: Yes, this might be the last bigger weekend for a
Speaker 4: period of time, because there's definitely going to be a
Speaker 4: late summer early fall slowdown before some of the big
Speaker 4: blockbuster films start to pick up again, and so hopefully
Speaker 4: there will be other sleeper hits.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Rebecca, Thank you. Now we'll hear from Brian Steinberg,
Speaker 3: senior TV editor, on his report about the curtain coming
Speaker 3: down on this year's upfront at sales process. Everybody wants
Speaker 3: to know the big round number. Brian's got it. Brian Steinberg,
Speaker 3: thank you for putting your calculator down and joining me
Speaker 3: here for a conversation about upfront sales.
Speaker 2: Glad to be here. As usual, this has.
Speaker 3: Been a long upfront sales process, but a couple of
Speaker 3: days ago you filed your Okay, it's pretty much over headlines.
Speaker 3: What was it that told you?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: I can comfortably report a round number for this year.
Speaker 2: It's had a big quarter of earnings from our various
Speaker 2: media companies Comcast, Warner, et cetera. And they've all mentioned
Speaker 2: the upfront in some capacity. That tells me they've largely
Speaker 2: wrapped up the negotiations with the big buying agencies and
Speaker 2: they're big sponsors. And on top of that, what we
Speaker 2: get using in August is a report from a public
Speaker 2: called Media Dynamics. They tracked the nitty gritty of the upfront,
Speaker 2: who spent what and where, and they coculated with their summation.
Speaker 3: Okay, Brian, what's the round number estimate for twenty twenty five?
Speaker 3: Because this isn't yet money in the bank, these are
Speaker 3: advanced commitments. What's the estimate for the US market?
Speaker 2: We believe thirty one billion dollars for this year's upfront
Speaker 2: market at streaming, cable and broadcast. That's up about five
Speaker 2: percent from twenty nine point five billion last year. So
Speaker 2: TV and video still attractive. The flip side, Cynthia, is
Speaker 2: that primetime TV once the most expensive, most lucrative TV
Speaker 2: you could buy from if you're an advertiser, is continue
Speaker 2: to lose money. People are pulling dollars from primetime television
Speaker 2: and put it into streaming.
Speaker 3: Let me go back to that thirty one billion, so
Speaker 3: we know about nine billion of that is broadcast TV,
Speaker 3: so you can look at that two ways, like it's
Speaker 3: broadcast TV. These handful of channels are still almost a
Speaker 3: third of the tape. That's impressive, but the numbers are
Speaker 3: obviously going in the wrong direction. So let's talk about streaming,
Speaker 3: which is the new big driver. What had the most
Speaker 3: traction in terms of category advertiser? What drove streaming sale
Speaker 3: this time around?
Speaker 2: What we understand is going on at lat fast channels.
Speaker 2: Those are free ads apportan channels you might see on
Speaker 2: Amazon Prime or various places. Everyone's launching one on Both
Speaker 2: wore be going more attractive because they're not down on
Speaker 2: a paywall. They're easy to access. Some of the rates
Speaker 2: for streaming can you even come down? With Netflix and
Speaker 2: Amazon entering the market more heavily, there is more supply.
Speaker 2: That means that the rates are coming down. They can't
Speaker 2: charge as much for each one. Plus the move of
Speaker 2: a lot more sports to streaming.
Speaker 3: I ask you this every time we talk about this.
Speaker 3: I still struggle to wrap my head around a world
Speaker 3: where there is just infinite inventory. With these fast channels,
Speaker 3: there is so much more inventory. Unlike you know, NBC
Speaker 3: runs something from eight to nine, Come hell or high water,
Speaker 3: they've got those spots to fill. On a fast channel,
Speaker 3: you have inventory if somebody clicks play. If they don't
Speaker 3: click play, you don't have that inventory. Ad sales always
Speaker 3: used to be about scarcity. Now there's scarcity for hits,
Speaker 3: but there is so much inventory. How has that changed
Speaker 3: this upfront process and just add sales in general.
Speaker 2: Well, I think streaming inventory. You're seeing the rates come
Speaker 2: down more supply, there's not much of the premium attached
Speaker 2: to it. It was up at a certain level, now
Speaker 2: it's come down quite a bit in the last two years.
Speaker 2: Advertisers still want programming or content that reaches a lot
Speaker 2: of people at once. Was why sports on Netflix and
Speaker 2: Amazon are becoming more of interest.
Speaker 3: Another thing I wanted to ask you, Brian. You do
Speaker 3: cite the number crunched by Media Dynamics, and we appreciate
Speaker 3: their data support. But when you first joined Variety, you
Speaker 3: used to do your own calculations, and the fact that
Speaker 3: you don't, I think is illustrative of the world that
Speaker 3: we're in. What changed where you could no longer with
Speaker 3: confidence do your own calculations.
Speaker 2: Tracking up front, you see about tracking prime time across
Speaker 2: four or five six broadcast networks, that was their most
Speaker 2: lucrative time. You've you apples to apples. CBS's Prime Time
Speaker 2: was valued at this, CW's Prime Hi was valued at that.
Speaker 2: But in the last several years again prime time at
Speaker 2: any time, there's more kinds of other inventory being sold
Speaker 2: out about different digital types. I U see you my
Speaker 2: mom back in the envelope SOTI people will give you
Speaker 2: a high slinder no sign. I feel as now an
Speaker 2: admat of value anymore. So I've can't stopped doing my
Speaker 2: own math sadly well.
Speaker 3: Part of being a good reporter is knowing what you
Speaker 3: don't know. Credibility matters. Brian, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: We'll hear from you later in the week because you're
Speaker 3: gonna go with ten to big ESPN presentation on their
Speaker 3: standalone launch plans, and you will bring us back a
Speaker 3: full report. Looking forward to it, me too. And now
Speaker 3: we turn to truth seekers. Tatiana Siegel, Variety's executive editor
Speaker 3: of Film and Media, guides us through the full day
Speaker 3: event in New York that was packed with movers and shakers.
Speaker 3: The big topics were Trump's assault on the news media,
Speaker 3: the Sixty Minutes lawsuit, and the demid of The Late
Speaker 3: Show with Stephen Colbert next year. Tatiana sets the scene
Speaker 3: for us and will weave in some clips from some
Speaker 3: of the great conversations, including her sit down with Daily
Speaker 3: Show correspondent Ronnie Chang. Tatiana put the question straight to Ronnie.
Speaker 3: Is late night TV endangered? Here's his answer.
Speaker 5: From a macro point of view. Is it weird that
Speaker 5: American satire is under attack? Yes, it is weird. Of
Speaker 5: all the countries in the world, I think America is
Speaker 5: uniquely suited to have political satire, Like if we America
Speaker 5: has the most money and entertainment, the most talented comedy
Speaker 5: writers and performers, and the craziest politics, and, by the way,
Speaker 5: the most freedom of speech in the world. I know
Speaker 5: you guys want to boom me for that, but I've
Speaker 5: lived in places where we can't tell the president to
Speaker 5: fuck off, I believe or not. There's other countries where
Speaker 5: you can't say that. So the fact that we have
Speaker 5: all four of these things in America, like if America
Speaker 5: can do a daily political satire show that no one.
Speaker 3: Can Tatiana Siegel, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 6: Always a pleasure.
Speaker 3: You had a long day last week at the truth
Speaker 3: Seekers event that Variety hosts with Rolling Stone every year
Speaker 3: in August. It's a gathering of anybody who's everybody in
Speaker 3: the documentary unscripted news community, and it's absolutely become one
Speaker 3: of our favorite events. Set the scene for us, tell
Speaker 3: us what was the mood of the vibe at True
Speaker 3: Seekers this year?
Speaker 6: It was quite something in the sense that all of
Speaker 6: these people were booked months ago, and when you saw
Speaker 6: these panelists come, it was as though they were booked yesterday,
Speaker 6: because every one of them was so timely and could
Speaker 6: speak to some issue in the news that was so timely.
Speaker 6: So my panel was with The Daily Show senior correspondent
Speaker 6: Randi Chang, and it was an interesting time to be
Speaker 6: talking to him, given that Colbert was just bounced from
Speaker 6: CBS and all of these sort of questions about is
Speaker 6: comedy the last bastion for truth telling and is it
Speaker 6: under fire because of President Trump. So I found our
Speaker 6: conversation to be great, and the audience, which was like
Speaker 6: a really packed room of people who were very engaged,
Speaker 6: seem to love every minute of it.
Speaker 3: I'd want to shout out Susanne Alt, who is our
Speaker 3: fantastic head of editorial programming for our live events. She
Speaker 3: has her finger on the pulse. We were excited to
Speaker 3: have Ronnie join us. It's not sensationalistic to say, is
Speaker 3: the era of late night TV as you and I
Speaker 3: grew up with it is that over.
Speaker 6: So he's in a unique situation in that he works
Speaker 6: for the same parent company that Stephen Colbert does.
Speaker 3: So right, Comedy Central is partner Amount Sky Dance Now.
Speaker 6: But he did talk about how it's incredibly problematic that
Speaker 6: any politician is even referencing South Park or any of
Speaker 6: these comed like they should be worried about more important things.
Speaker 3: One of the other highlights of the day was Ramin Setuta,
Speaker 3: our colleague, Variety's Coeice sat down with CNN's Jake Tapper.
Speaker 3: That was early in the day. I think to accommodate
Speaker 3: Tapper's reporting schedule, that must have been a lively way
Speaker 3: to get started.
Speaker 6: Yes, Jake was heading off to Anchorage, Alaska for the
Speaker 6: Trump Putin Summit.
Speaker 2: You moderated the presidential debate that changed in American history.
Speaker 2: Can you take us back to last summer and what
Speaker 2: it was like?
Speaker 7: This where I'm going to take it. You guys want
Speaker 7: to hear what it was like to be there in
Speaker 7: the debate room that night. It was, it was, It
Speaker 7: was I saw what you saw, except it was fifteen
Speaker 7: feet in front of me, and it was shocking. And
Speaker 7: I thought, oh my god, it's much worse than I thought.
Speaker 7: And yes, President Trump, then former and future President Trump.
Speaker 7: But Donald Trump was there doing what Donald Trump does.
Speaker 7: A lot of bluster, a lot of eyes, lots of stuff,
Speaker 7: although given what was going on to his left, he
Speaker 7: was fairly restrained about what was going on to his left.
Speaker 7: I'm not saying he deserves credit for it him, just saying, like,
Speaker 7: in terms of his savviness, when your enemy is blowing
Speaker 7: himself up, get out of the way. I mean, it
Speaker 7: was shocking, and I do think to this day the
Speaker 7: Democratic Party needs to reckon with the fact that because
Speaker 7: they were so convinced that Donald Trump was an existential
Speaker 7: threat to the country and that Joe Biden had convinced
Speaker 7: the party that he was it. He was the only
Speaker 7: one that could beat him. The party was going along
Speaker 7: with somebody who was not capable of certainly not capable
Speaker 7: of being president for another four years.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you about the crowd in general our
Speaker 3: fifth year. I remember the first year we did it.
Speaker 3: On that day, we all kind of held our breath
Speaker 3: because we weren't entirely sure we were going to fill
Speaker 3: a room in New York City in mid August. From
Speaker 3: year one, it was packed, literally sorrow and people could
Speaker 3: not be more excited to be together in the documentary community.
Speaker 3: That's one of the things I love about our events
Speaker 3: is that we bring together these discrete communities that really
Speaker 3: love to be together. Did you get that vibe this time?
Speaker 6: Yes, there was clearly a lot of people trying to
Speaker 6: get in early and get better seats.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: Thank you for setting the scene. I'm going to cueue
Speaker 3: up a few other clips from some of the panels,
Speaker 3: and now here's a clip from the State of the
Speaker 3: Documentary Business session, moderated by my colleague Brent Lane. The
Speaker 3: conversation focused on the loss of federal funding under the
Speaker 3: Trump administration. We'll hear first from Carrie Lazano, President and
Speaker 3: CEO of ITVS. She explains what ITVS is in terms
Speaker 3: that illuminate where we are. After Carrie, we hear from
Speaker 3: Dan O'Mara, executive VP of Nonfiction for indie distributor Neon,
Speaker 3: and then from Carol Martzeko Fenster, CEO and President of
Speaker 3: abram Arama.
Speaker 8: This is going to seem totally inconceivable right now, but
Speaker 8: in the late eighties we were a piece of legislation
Speaker 8: that Congress passed that said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Speaker 8: must start an independent television service. Thus the name that
Speaker 8: works entirely with independence, so that we can provide innovation, diversity,
Speaker 8: and underserved storytelling to the American public. And that's what
Speaker 8: we've been doing for thirty five years.
Speaker 9: Making money is not easy, and it usually starts with
Speaker 9: an audience. So one of the things that we always
Speaker 9: tell filmmakers when they come to it, the first question
Speaker 9: that we ask do you have an audience or do
Speaker 9: you have support organizations? Because that is going to be
Speaker 9: the key to getting people to come out to the theater.
Speaker 10: Counterintuitively, documentaries, you know, have been the victim of their
Speaker 10: own success in the sense that they proliferated so much
Speaker 10: they became ubiquitous. They're being watched now more by more people,
Speaker 10: more widely than ever before. And yet you know that
Speaker 10: created an you know, ah, there was a there was
Speaker 10: a moment where they were rare, and there was a
Speaker 10: moment where there was a greater demand for them. And
Speaker 10: now these streaming services have realized that these individual films
Speaker 10: are not valuable to them the way that they once were.
Speaker 3: And we'll close with some quips and some hard truth
Speaker 3: from Amber Ruffin and Roy Wood, Junior, host of the
Speaker 3: CNN series Have I Got News for You? The two
Speaker 3: did not hold back on the chill in the culture
Speaker 3: with Trump's attacks on comedians and the club that he
Speaker 3: has wielded against anything related to DEI that was Roy Wood,
Speaker 3: you heard in the cold open making the point that
Speaker 3: Ruffin's gig as the comic for the White House Correspondence
Speaker 3: Association Dinner was yanked earlier this year.
Speaker 1: You can come on our show and literally try to
Speaker 1: joke about anything, and if you can make it funny, great,
Speaker 1: If not, we're going to roast your ass to your face.
Speaker 1: So I think maintaining that balance, I think our version
Speaker 1: of the show has a different sense of responsibility to
Speaker 1: the American voter than our British predecessor.
Speaker 11: So well, I'm sorry that I was so shocked by Target,
Speaker 11: but it did break my little heart. I'm not going there,
Speaker 11: but I want to.
Speaker 2: I'm never going back.
Speaker 11: I'm never going to get to go in there again.
Speaker 1: What boycott has given you the most withdrawals? Like, of
Speaker 1: all of all the stuff black people have had, the
Speaker 1: boycott over.
Speaker 11: The decades, didn't care about Chick fil A, never well
Speaker 11: that was black thing, or that a gay thing. But
Speaker 11: I will it has to be Target because Target's right
Speaker 11: there is Christmas I need lights or the bottom of
Speaker 11: the tree because my one hundred foot ran out. It
Speaker 11: is right there, but I can't go there. I have
Speaker 11: to go to Walgreens and get fifty foot and it's
Speaker 11: a yellow gold, not the gold Golds. And I gotta
Speaker 11: have a bitch tree for all of Christmas because Target
Speaker 11: can't get their shit together.
Speaker 3: As we close out today's episode, here are a few
Speaker 3: things we're watching for. As we discussed with Brian Steinberg,
Speaker 3: it's going to be a big week for ESPN with
Speaker 3: the August twenty first launch of their streaming app. Looking
Speaker 3: forward to learning more about their plans at the preview
Speaker 3: event later this week. Here's good news for Chip and
Speaker 3: Joe fans. The latest edition of Magnolia Table at the
Speaker 3: Farm abowt September seventh, on Magnolia Network. Whatever you do,
Speaker 3: don't skip Alison Herman's review of the new adult swim
Speaker 3: series Women Wearing Shoulder Pads. It's a great read. Before
Speaker 3: we go. Congrats to Jessica Easton and Dante Smith, who
Speaker 3: been promoted to senior VPS for Capital Music Group. The
Speaker 3: pair will work with Justin Grant to lead the group's
Speaker 3: urban marketing department. Thanks for listening. This episode was written
Speaker 3: and reported by me Cynthia Littleton, with contributions from Rebecca Rubin,
Speaker 3: Brian Steinberg, and Tatiana Siegel. It was edited by Aaron
Speaker 3: Greenwald sticks Nick's hick picks. Please leave us a review
Speaker 3: at the podcast platform of your choice, and please tune
Speaker 3: in tomorrow for another episode of Daily Variety.
Speaker 7: Well, I will say this proudly underneath the paramount plus banner,
Speaker 7: which is that loss. It was bullshit against sixty minutes.
Speaker 7: It's editing is something that is done all the time.