Team Ankler goes everywhere to bring you our industry-best reporting, and in this week’s debut of Crowd Pleaser, our new collaboration with Letterboxd, Matthew Frank really put in the miles (4,050 of them, to be exact), visiting 58 theaters in 20 states to deliver an urgent and very colorful snapshot of the state of American moviegoing today. It’s a must-read for anyone who loves movies. The takeaway? There are huge, hungry audiences in every corner of the U.S., and Hollywood needs to seize the opportunity to bring them back to the theater. It’s a warning Richard Rushfield underscored with his smackdown of indie studios, whose end-of-year awards plays are increasingly misaligned with audience demand.
Ranging even farther afield this week were Ankler CEO Janice Min, Like & Subscribe’s Natalie Jarvey and our star events director, Hanna Hensler, who jetted to Web Summit Lisbon. Highlights included Natalie’s panel about how to win Gen Z audiences with Pubity co-founder Kit Chilvers and shit you should care about CEO Lucy Blakiston (read about it Tuesday on Like & Subscribe) and Janice’s hilarious surprise onstage Q&A with Career Ladder’s TikTok superstar Max Klymenko (8.6 million followers) in the massive MEO Arena:
Janice also sat down with Eline Van der Velden, the Dutch entrepreneur who sent Hollywood into full meltdown this fall with the introduction of AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood. They explored how fast the tech behind Tilly is advancing (both scary and mind-boggling) and the strangeness of an AI performer’s “career” (Tilly is for sale, and the nudity question is still up in the air). Read all about it or watch the video here:
Van der Velden also was among the media and tech powerhouses who joined us Monday for The Ankler Media in Motion Dinner, presented by ProRata.ai. Co-hosts Janice, Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes and ProRata chief business officer Annelies Jansen welcomed guests including Time CEO Jessica Sibley; Pod Save the People’s DeRay Mckesson; massive creator-entrepreneur Josh Richards and his CrossCheck Studios’ co-founder Chris Sawtelle; Blakiston; Chilvers; Web Summit executive producer Ciara Haley; ITN CEO Rachel Corp; Fox Business News’ Susan Li; Axios’ Sara Fischer and the New York Times’ Katie Robertson. At the intimate and lively gathering, Jansen prompted guests to discuss one of the most urgent questions in media right now: “How can publishers and creators start to make money off AI, instead of the other way around?” Oof, maybe Tilly knows!
OLÀ LISBON! 1. From left, ITN’s Olivia McQueen, DeRay Mckesson and CJ Hart at The Ankler Media in Motion Dinner on Nov. 10. 2. Janice, right, with cohosts David Rhodes and Annelies Jansen. 3. Natalie with Josh Richards, right, and Chris Sawtelle. 4. Natalie with Lucy Blakiston at Web Summit on Nov. 11. (Justin Girdler) 5. Our guests at Lisbon’s Soul Kitchen. (James Veysey for The Ankler/Shutterstock)
Series Business: ‘All’s Fair’ Scoops; Disney Microdramas?!
Lesley Goldberg scoops the show’s actual budget and cast paydays and delivers behind-the-scenes dish on Ryan Murphy’s critically-savaged Kim Kardashian legal drama that’s gone “zero to hero.” Plus, Lesley debuts her new column on the week’s top small-screen stories:
DramaBox, the No. 2 player in the booming microdrama space, got a big boost from the Disney Accelerator program. Elaine Low spoke to the app’s heads of development and reveals the production budgets and fast timelines for the company’s shows, and what DramaBox execs had to unlearn from their traditional Hollywood experience:
Players like Legion M, Robert Rodriguez and Eli Roth are turning to “fan-vestors” to finance films and activate audiences. Ashley Cullins delves into why studios like Bleecker Street are betting on the model:
With affordability America’s top worry, Entertainment Strategy Guy crunches the numbers on Disney’s push toward big spenders — and why it could alienate the Mouse House’s next generation of fans:
A prison-like partition mysteriously sprung up outside the Hollywood-filled Brentwood Country Club without warning — and residents are fuming. Nicole LaPorte gets the juicy dish as the area’s wealthy residents wage war:
Katey Rich chats with June Squibb, 96, about her new Scarlett Johansson-directed film, Eleanor the Great; Katey and Christopher Rosen talk to director Gus Van Sant about his darkly funny new film Dead Man’s Wire; and the women who helped make Sinners tell all to Katey:
The Oscar Underdogs We're Rooting For, Plus Gus Van Sant on the Secret to Staying Sane on a Movie Set
In the thick of earnings season, Sean McNulty synthesizes the takeaways from David Ellison’s first Paramount report, BobIger’s startling plan to introduce AI-generated user video to Disney+, and the WBD auction:
Monday Morning QBs: After a bleak October, Richard & Sean finally get to talk about a success again: Disney’s Predator: Badlands, the eighth installment in a nearly 40-year-old sci-fi action franchise:
Rushfield Lunch: Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy join Richard to reflect on their historically hot run at the box office this year — all in the face of “surreal” criticism from the media:
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