Welcome back to a slightly shorter edition of What I’m Hearing (I hear your feedback!) on this optimistic Sunday night. The SAG-AFTRA talks made progress on Friday and over this weekend, I’m told, with many of the financial issues resolved. A.I. and a few other matters are still outstanding, but—and I really hope I don’t regret saying this—I’d be surprised if the strike isn’t over by the end of the week. Ugh, I said it…

Programming note: This week on The Town, Lucas Shaw and I asked how long the good times can last at Netflix, MCU author Joanna Robinson predicted Marvel will bring back the original Avengers, and I answered listener questions and continued my one-sided feud with Martin Scorsese. Subscribe here and here.

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Discussed in this issue: Hasan Minhaj, Ari Emanuel, Jason Blum, Elton John, Taylor Swift, Adam Aron, Toby Emmerich, Emma Tammi, Tree Paine, Chris Columbus, Joe Russo, Bruce Springsteen, and… South Park’s Kathy Kennedy takedown.

But first…

Runner up: Bill Block
The executive dead cat bounce strikes again! Miramax’s recently ousted C.E.O. scored the No. 1 movie on Netflix this week with Bill Burr’s Old Dads and a strong limited release launch of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers.

A little more on this weird weekend…

• The fact that Freddy’s did such insane numbers, despite being available on Peacock, says a lot about the enthusiasm of the young fanbase for the game—and a lot about Peacock and its relatively small 28 million subscriber base. Universal probably left a little money on the table by going day-and-date, but I’ve seen some Peacock numbers for the weekend, and the Freddy’s viewership actually wasn’t that much higher than Halloween Kills, which opened to just $49.4 million in 2021. So for some reason, Freddy’s fans—even the 23 percent of them that subscribe to Peacock, per audience surveys—really wanted to see this in a theater.

• The Freddy’s haul should cause the big exhibitors to reconsider the possibilities for day-and-date releases. I don’t think this thing would have grossed anywhere near its number if it was available on Netflix. But should Netflix decide (or, more likely, a hot filmmaker force Netflix) to go day-and-date on a wide release, the major chains should probably end their blockade and see what happens.

• Different audiences, but the Freddy’s success came as Killers of the Flower Moon crashed 61 percent from its weak debut. Will this thing even get to $150 million worldwide? More importantly, how much will Apple lose in pursuit of Oscars?

• Dept. of Oops: Warner Bros. had actually picked up the Freddy’s rights in 2015 and put producers Roy Lee, Seth Grahame-Smith and David Katzenberg on it. Warners’ Toby Emmerich then got nervous and let the project go into turnaround (ouch!), allowing Jason Blum’s Blumhouse to acquire the property for Universal. At that point, Cawthon, who created the game, decided he wanted to co-write the script—usually a big yikes. That’s one reason why Blum’s first pick to direct, Chris Columbus, bailed in favor of Emma Tammi, who had made a documentary and a couple streaming movies for Blumhouse, but had only directed one previous film for theaters, The Wind (2018), which grossed less than $30,000. Tammi was paid only about $500,000 for Freddy’s, I’m told, but she’s got a backend that will end up generating much, much more. And I imagine her fee goes up a lot for the sequel. Hollywood might be burning to the ground, but this is an old-fashioned success story with a streaming twist.

Tree Paine, Swift’s PR rep, didn’t respond to my email, but I’m betting the reason is that the Eras numbers are much bigger than Pollstar has estimated. In August, it reported that Eras had hit $689 million on the initial U.S. leg, with a per-night average gross reported in June of $13.6 million. Given the current international and U.S. schedule through the end of 2024, Pollstar predicted Eras will ultimately gross about $1.5 billion. No tour has ever grossed $1 billion before, not adjusted for inflation. Elton John’s just-finished farewell tour is the current record holder with $939.1 million over 330 shows and five years. And that $1.5 billion prediction is if Swift doesn’t add more shows, as she is expected to do.

As perhaps the greatest marketer in the history of the music business, Swift understandably tends to shy away from media attention about her wealth. There aren’t any posts about her new billionaire status, of course; and her rep wanted nothing to do with the story after I reported a couple months ago about the favorable split that AMC Theaters C.E.O. Adam Aron had given her on The Eras Tour movie. (Incidentally, that crossed $200 million worldwide this weekend.)

But touring grosses necessarily come from the artist—they’re self-reported, usually via a tour manager, and sometimes the numbers are, uh, dubious. There’s still no definitive reporting from Ticketmaster or the others, in part because the secondary market is such a wild west of brokers and other shady third parties. So if Pollstar went out with an “official” $1.5 billion or even $2 billion number, it would be clear to Swifties (and the media) that it came from Taylor, and that’s not on-brand. So she’ll probably put out a “biggest tour ever” boast or something similarly vague. She just manipulated the Billboard Hot 100 chart with a new remix of Cruel Summer, a four year old song, to land it at No. 1, which got a cute post on her socials. And I’m sure she will brag when her re-released version of 1989 tops the charts next week. Good for her.

It’s obvious that Swift is by far the biggest draw this year, and Eras will almost certainly become the highest-grossing tour ever. The year-end Pollstar and Billboard lists are either gonna look weird without her, or they will need to estimate her receipts. Meanwhile, this Billboard Top 10 tours of all time list from a couple weeks ago already looks silly because it’s missing Swift. Just using the Pollstar estimate of the first U.S. leg, Taylor would have ranked No. 4 all time, but she’s not there because she won’t tell us she deserves to be there. Champagne problems, for sure.

AppleTV+ jacked its price to $10 a month, part of across-the-board hikes among Apple services. Julia Alexander will analyze the streamer’s pricing strategy in Tuesday’s What I’m Hearing+, but the short answer: it’s all about pushing customers to the bundle. [Verge]

Hard to pick the most ridiculous detail in Megan Twohey’s account of the tortured Kanye-Adidas partnership: Swastika drawings, the $100 million slush fund, a 15 percent royalty on all net sales, the “Yzy hotline” text chain, and ultimately, the predictable implosion. [NY Times]

On the occasion of Taylor Swift’s release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), good stats on just how much the re-recordings are hurting the original versions of her songs. [NY Times]

Related: Turns out that all those music catalogues (Springsteen, Bob Dylan, etc) that sold for billions of dollars were probably way overvalued, and the investment fund Hipgnosis has become a flashpoint. [Bloomberg]
Scott Galloway further connects the SAG-AFTRA strike to Netflix’s recent strong earnings. [No Mercy/No Malice]

Netflix is re-opening L.A.’s famed Egyptian Theater with David Fincher’s The Killer. Am I the only one who sees this, along with Netflix taking over the Bay Theater in the Palisades and the Paris in New York, as the equivalent of ExxonMobil restoring a small coral reef in an ocean it has befouled? [IndieWire]

Did you (or your legal department) know there’s a website based in the Polynesian Kingdom of Tonga that just streams the live feeds of American cable TV networks? There is! [The TV App]

Should reality TV stars have a union? At this point, given the performative nature of the medium, the question is probably, why shouldn’t they? [LA Times]

Man, South Park really went after Lucasfilm’s Kathy Kennedy. [TV Line]

“Interesting that you never mention how these agencies treat THEIR ACTUAL CLIENTS. It’s all about how rich they are and who’s selling to who, but none of this matters without us. You make Gersh and Paradigm look very attractive.”—A filmmaker

“Ari [Emanuel] can try to stunt stunt stunt, but Endeavor has never answered the only question that matters: Why does this company exist?”—A rival agent

“It’s curious why you say the WME agents will blindly follow Ari as he takes them on this journey that only seems to benefit Ari.”—A lawyer

“As an investor, it was very odd to see the Endeavor strategic alternatives press release minutes before Silver Lake’s ‘working toward making a proposal to take Endeavor private’ release. Are they on the same page? What triggered the Endeavor press release? Did they know an offer was coming? You don’t normally preempt an offer by launching a strategic alternatives process. Weird on all fronts. Also, does Ari really want to run Endeavor as a private company? Makes it harder for Endeavor to grow via M&A if you’re private. It’s very doable to unlock shareholder value by continuing the strategy as a public company…you just need to execute and be transparent with shareholders. To quote Warren Buffett: ‘In large part, companies obtain the shareholder constituency that they seek and deserve. If they focus their thinking and communications on short-term results or short-term stock market consequences they will, in large part, attract shareholders who focus on the same factors. And if they are cynical in their treatment of investors, eventually that cynicism is highly likely to be returned by the investment community.’”—An investor

“EDR is a great company, this business just shouldn’t have gone public. As CAA [and its $7 billion valuation] shows, these assets will be valued privately much more than they will publicly.” —An analyst

More: My Puck partner Bill Cohan explains here how conflicts will need to be managed in taking Endeavor private, and why Ari will ultimately be the big winner.

Got a question, comment, complaint, or your best industry Halloween costume ideas that AREN’T Carol Lombardini? Email me at Matt@puck.news or call/text me at 310-804-3198.