Daily Variety – Box Office Monday: ‘Weapons’ Flexes in Week 2; Lowdown on Upfront Ad Sales; Truth Seekers Highlights With Jake Tapper, Ronny Chieng, Amber Ruffin and Roy Wood Jr.

Well, I think, as Amber so eloquently said at her White House Correspondence Dinner performance earlier this year. Oh wait, they didn't have any known been Collin Jones.

My bad.

Welcome to Daily Variety, your daily dose of news and analysis for entertainment industry insiders. It's Monday, August eighteenth, twenty twenty five. I'm your host, Cynthia Littleton. I am co editor in chief of Variety alongside Ramin Setuda. I'm in La He's in New York, and Variety has reporters around

Some of us.

Remember the hazy days of the mid nineties when the MS stood for Microsoft. The Santiago International Film Festival is underway in Chile, lots of headlines and discussions of business in Latin America. It's a lively event, and Variety's longtime correspond Anne Marie de la Fuente is down there as we publish three digital daily editions. Rip to actor Terence stamp He died August seventeenth, at age eighty seven. He was so good in so many movies. Priscilla, Queen of

Ever, thanks for having me.

As we speak on a very hot August Sunday afternoon here in Los Angeles. How is the temperature at the box office?

It was definitely a slower weekend as we head into the dog days of summer. August is known to be a quieter period at the box office, and best case there is the sleeper hitter too, and that's definitely been what is shaping up right now. As Weapons, the rated horror movie had another really great weekend at the box office.

Again, not a whole lot of action, although I was happy for Bob Odenkirk Nobody Too, got really strong reviews. People were saying, this is the action comedy of our times.

It didn't end up doing that notable of business. It opened with nine point two million dollars and that was enough to land in third place. It cost twenty five million, so it didn't need to make a ton to be successful in its theastrical run. But those ticket sales aren't that much stronger than the first Nobody, which came out in twenty twenty one and opened to six point eight million.

Debut Rebecca, Are there any other box office milestones that you're looking at, either the overall box officer for individual titles.

Well, just to look at films that have been playing in theaters for a bit. Something that's kind of fun is Superman and F One are both just as stone's throw from crossing six hundred million. It'll be interesting to see which one ends up crossing the finish line first. But no matter the order, these are pretty impressive milestones for two films that didn't necessarily enter theears as guaranteed hits, but ended up really sticking around during the summer season.

They had legs.

Yes, this might be the last bigger weekend for a period of time, because there's definitely going to be a late summer early fall slowdown before some of the big blockbuster films start to pick up again, and so hopefully there will be other sleeper hits.

Thank you, Rebecca, Thank you. Now we'll hear from Brian Steinberg, senior TV editor, on his report about the curtain coming down on this year's upfront at sales process. Everybody wants to know the big round number. Brian's got it. Brian Steinberg, thank you for putting your calculator down and joining me here for a conversation about upfront sales.

Glad to be here. As usual, this has.

Been a long upfront sales process, but a couple of days ago you filed your Okay, it's pretty much over headlines. What was it that told you?

Okay?

I can comfortably report a round number for this year.

It's had a big quarter of earnings from our various media companies Comcast, Warner, et cetera. And they've all mentioned the upfront in some capacity. That tells me they've largely wrapped up the negotiations with the big buying agencies and they're big sponsors. And on top of that, what we get using in August is a report from a public called Media Dynamics. They tracked the nitty gritty of the upfront, who spent what and where, and they coculated with their summation.

Okay, Brian, what's the round number estimate for twenty twenty five? Because this isn't yet money in the bank, these are advanced commitments. What's the estimate for the US market?

We believe thirty one billion dollars for this year's upfront market at streaming, cable and broadcast. That's up about five percent from twenty nine point five billion last year. So TV and video still attractive. The flip side, Cynthia, is that primetime TV once the most expensive, most lucrative TV you could buy from if you're an advertiser, is continue to lose money. People are pulling dollars from primetime television and put it into streaming.

Let me go back to that thirty one billion, so we know about nine billion of that is broadcast TV, so you can look at that two ways, like it's broadcast TV. These handful of channels are still almost a third of the tape. That's impressive, but the numbers are obviously going in the wrong direction. So let's talk about streaming, which is the new big driver. What had the most traction in terms of category advertiser? What drove streaming sale this time around?

What we understand is going on at lat fast channels. Those are free ads apportan channels you might see on Amazon Prime or various places. Everyone's launching one on Both wore be going more attractive because they're not down on a paywall. They're easy to access. Some of the rates for streaming can you even come down? With Netflix and Amazon entering the market more heavily, there is more supply. That means that the rates are coming down. They can't

I ask you this every time we talk about this. I still struggle to wrap my head around a world where there is just infinite inventory. With these fast channels, there is so much more inventory. Unlike you know, NBC runs something from eight to nine, Come hell or high water, they've got those spots to fill. On a fast channel, you have inventory if somebody clicks play. If they don't click play, you don't have that inventory. Ad sales always used to be about scarcity. Now there's scarcity for hits,

Well, I think streaming inventory. You're seeing the rates come down more supply, there's not much of the premium attached to it. It was up at a certain level, now it's come down quite a bit in the last two years. Advertisers still want programming or content that reaches a lot of people at once. Was why sports on Netflix and Amazon are becoming more of interest.

Another thing I wanted to ask you, Brian. You do cite the number crunched by Media Dynamics, and we appreciate their data support. But when you first joined Variety, you used to do your own calculations, and the fact that you don't, I think is illustrative of the world that we're in. What changed where you could no longer with confidence do your own calculations.

Tracking up front, you see about tracking prime time across four or five six broadcast networks, that was their most lucrative time. You've you apples to apples. CBS's Prime Time was valued at this, CW's Prime Hi was valued at that. But in the last several years again prime time at any time, there's more kinds of other inventory being sold out about different digital types. I U see you my mom back in the envelope SOTI people will give you a high slinder no sign. I feel as now an

Part of being a good reporter is knowing what you don't know. Credibility matters. Brian, thank you for joining us. We'll hear from you later in the week because you're gonna go with ten to big ESPN presentation on their standalone launch plans, and you will bring us back a full report. Looking forward to it, me too. And now

From a macro point of view. Is it weird that American satire is under attack? Yes, it is weird. Of all the countries in the world, I think America is uniquely suited to have political satire, Like if we America has the most money and entertainment, the most talented comedy writers and performers, and the craziest politics, and, by the way, the most freedom of speech in the world. I know you guys want to boom me for that, but I've lived in places where we can't tell the president to

Can Tatiana Siegel, thank you so much for joining me.

Always a pleasure.

You had a long day last week at the truth Seekers event that Variety hosts with Rolling Stone every year in August. It's a gathering of anybody who's everybody in the documentary unscripted news community, and it's absolutely become one of our favorite events. Set the scene for us, tell us what was the mood of the vibe at True Seekers this year?

It was quite something in the sense that all of these people were booked months ago, and when you saw these panelists come, it was as though they were booked yesterday, because every one of them was so timely and could speak to some issue in the news that was so timely.

I'd want to shout out Susanne Alt, who is our fantastic head of editorial programming for our live events. She has her finger on the pulse. We were excited to have Ronnie join us. It's not sensationalistic to say, is the era of late night TV as you and I grew up with it is that over.

So he's in a unique situation in that he works for the same parent company that Stephen Colbert does.

So right, Comedy Central is partner Amount Sky Dance Now.

But he did talk about how it's incredibly problematic that any politician is even referencing South Park or any of these comed like they should be worried about more important things.

One of the other highlights of the day was Ramin Setuta, our colleague, Variety's Coeice sat down with CNN's Jake Tapper. That was early in the day. I think to accommodate Tapper's reporting schedule, that must have been a lively way to get started.

Yes, Jake was heading off to Anchorage, Alaska for the Trump Putin Summit.

You moderated the presidential debate that changed in American history. Can you take us back to last summer and what it was like?

This where I'm going to take it. You guys want to hear what it was like to be there in the debate room that night. It was, it was, It was I saw what you saw, except it was fifteen feet in front of me, and it was shocking. And I thought, oh my god, it's much worse than I thought. And yes, President Trump, then former and future President Trump. But Donald Trump was there doing what Donald Trump does.

Let me ask you about the crowd in general our fifth year. I remember the first year we did it. On that day, we all kind of held our breath because we weren't entirely sure we were going to fill a room in New York City in mid August. From year one, it was packed, literally sorrow and people could not be more excited to be together in the documentary community. That's one of the things I love about our events is that we bring together these discrete communities that really

Yes, there was clearly a lot of people trying to get in early and get better seats.

I love it.

Thank you for setting the scene. I'm going to cueue up a few other clips from some of the panels, and now here's a clip from the State of the Documentary Business session, moderated by my colleague Brent Lane. The conversation focused on the loss of federal funding under the Trump administration. We'll hear first from Carrie Lazano, President and CEO of ITVS. She explains what ITVS is in terms

This is going to seem totally inconceivable right now, but in the late eighties we were a piece of legislation that Congress passed that said the Corporation for Public Broadcasting must start an independent television service. Thus the name that works entirely with independence, so that we can provide innovation, diversity, and underserved storytelling to the American public. And that's what we've been doing for thirty five years.

Making money is not easy, and it usually starts with an audience. So one of the things that we always tell filmmakers when they come to it, the first question that we ask do you have an audience or do you have support organizations? Because that is going to be the key to getting people to come out to the theater.

Counterintuitively, documentaries, you know, have been the victim of their own success in the sense that they proliferated so much they became ubiquitous. They're being watched now more by more people, more widely than ever before. And yet you know that created an you know, ah, there was a there was a moment where they were rare, and there was a

And we'll close with some quips and some hard truth from Amber Ruffin and Roy Wood, Junior, host of the CNN series Have I Got News for You? The two did not hold back on the chill in the culture with Trump's attacks on comedians and the club that he has wielded against anything related to DEI that was Roy Wood, you heard in the cold open making the point that Ruffin's gig as the comic for the White House Correspondence Association Dinner was yanked earlier this year.

You can come on our show and literally try to joke about anything, and if you can make it funny, great, If not, we're going to roast your ass to your face. So I think maintaining that balance, I think our version of the show has a different sense of responsibility to the American voter than our British predecessor.

So well, I'm sorry that I was so shocked by Target, but it did break my little heart. I'm not going there, but I want to.

I'm never going back.

I'm never going to get to go in there again.

What boycott has given you the most withdrawals? Like, of all of all the stuff black people have had, the boycott over.

The decades, didn't care about Chick fil A, never well that was black thing, or that a gay thing. But I will it has to be Target because Target's right there is Christmas I need lights or the bottom of the tree because my one hundred foot ran out. It is right there, but I can't go there. I have to go to Walgreens and get fifty foot and it's a yellow gold, not the gold Golds. And I gotta have a bitch tree for all of Christmas because Target can't get their shit together.

As we close out today's episode, here are a few things we're watching for. As we discussed with Brian Steinberg, it's going to be a big week for ESPN with the August twenty first launch of their streaming app. Looking forward to learning more about their plans at the preview event later this week. Here's good news for Chip and Joe fans. The latest edition of Magnolia Table at the

Well, I will say this proudly underneath the paramount plus banner, which is that loss. It was bullshit against sixty minutes. It's editing is something that is done all the time.