Welcome back to What I’m Hearing+, my weekly dispatch focused on the streaming industry and the analytics behind it all.
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Greetings from Brooklyn, and welcome back to What I’m Hearing+, my weekly dispatch focused on the streaming industry and the analytics behind it all. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe.
Tonight, some thoughts on how the ’90s nostalgia-fueled success of Disney+’s Hocus Pocus 2, which bypassed a theatrical release, has reignited the high-stakes debate over how Hollywood writ large should approach the streaming vs. theatrical riddle.
But first…
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- Disney+ sub numbers grow, but at what cost? Disney smashed Wall Street expectations by reporting 12.1 million net new Disney+ customers last quarter, and the Street… couldn’t care less. In fact, the stock dropped 7 percent in after-hours trading. The bigger story, after all, is whether Disney is making money from those subscribers. With a decrease in direct-to-consumer revenue ($4.9 billion vs $5.1 billion in the quarter prior) and an increase in operational costs...
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| Bob Chapek’s New Streaming Moneyball |
| ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ has become perhaps the quintessential title for understanding modern Hollywood’s identity crisis. If a movie this successful on streaming isn’t going to theaters, what does that mean for other films coming down the pipeline at Disney? |
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| Hocus Pocus 2 has astounded the town with its opening weekend Nielsen numbers on Disney+—in particular, more than 2.7 billion minutes watched, or the equivalent of some 26 million completed views. But this being Hollywood in 2022, analysts and executives and critics couldn’t help but simultaneously count the tens of millions of dollars in revenue that was forfeited by not sending the movie to theaters first. In many ways, Hocus Pocus 2 has become perhaps the quintessential title for understanding much of the anxiety in the industry. If a movie this successful on streaming isn’t going to theaters, what does that mean for other films in the pipeline at Disney?
Streaming versus theatrical is, of course, the debate at the center of Hollywood’s ongoing identity crisis. On one side there is... |
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| FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT |
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| The CW’s Undertaker |
| Brad Schwartz is taking over the broadcast network, which is now little more than a linear money pit. |
| MATTHEW BELLONI |
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| Elon’s Blue-Check Folly |
| Notes on Silicon Valley’s deep freeze, JayPow’s hidden message, and the WBD mess. |
| WILLIAM D. COHAN |
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| Kamala’s L.A. Battle |
| Given the high-stakes midterms, why are top Dems so infatuated with the L.A. mayoral race? |
| TARA PALMERI & PETER HAMBY |
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