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Streaming’s Biggest Show Returns…and a Buzzy Genre Struggles
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Obviously, the big news of the week (if not month) is Netflix letting go of executive Bela Bajaria, their chief content officer. I’m going to cover this in my next “Most Important Story of the Week”, but I also have a data angle that I might publish before then. (Too much news this month, am I right?) But first, I have a bonus Streaming Ratings Report issue for you. Today’s article is a bit of a grab bag of topics I’ve wanted to write about, but couldn’t squeeze into the (already very long) Streaming Ratings Report issues. The NFL drives huge viewership numbers, so I’ve got a look at that. A whole bunch of TV shows returned to the traditional broadcast channels, and I have thoughts. And I have a quick look at adult animated shows, since a couple flopped earlier this month. Plus, the Emmys aired earlier this month, and we got some fun data bout how popular those nominated shows are and why I’m not optimistic about the show’s future. That’s a lot, so let’s dive right in. Subscribe Sports - Football Remains the King of Streaming Over the last two Streaming Ratings Reports, I sorta ignored the biggest “show” each week. (I was tempted to say “piece of content” but I know that word bugs folks.) In my database, I call these “specials”, and they sure are special. I speak of the king of American TV: football!!! Streaming football is back and, unlike some other sports, it routinely dominates all viewership. Probably the best way to show this is to update one of my favorite graphics, the “40 Million Hour Club”1 since football games have joined that club each week they’ve premiered: (Yep, that’s the data through 28-Sep, the first four weeks of the season. As a reminder, I take the average minute audience provided by Nielsen, factor out a percentage of linear TV viewers in home markets, and multiply the run time by the three-hour runtime.) Again, the numbers are huge. Let’s start with Netflix. They grabbed the rights to the bonus opening week NFL Kickoff game (which was on YouTube last year) and it put up 18.5 million viewers on average. That nets out to 47.4 million hours of estimated streaming hours. That’s good! Though, notably, it’s well below Christmas Day games from previous years. Compared to other streamers/broadcasters, that’s a bit of a mixed result. On one hand, Netflix’s 18.5 million average is about what YouTube claimed last year, though Nielsen used a bespoke methodology at that time, so I trust this viewership figure more. So that’s good. (The game also shifted from a Friday to a Thursday and that could have helped the viewership as well.) And Netflix continues to best Prime Video in total viewership—as you’ll see next—though Netflix has had much higher-profile (opening week and Christmas Day) games. NBC/Peacock’s opening game the night before averaged 25.1 million average viewers, which is just much bigger than Netflix (or Prime Video). That’s the big caveat to all streaming viewership records: even in success, they can’t compete with traditional linear TV. Previously, I called this my “hierarchy of viewership”, and the data keeps supporting that thesis. The downside for NBC is that this game’s viewership was down compared to previous years, though it may be a counting issue. Here’s a great chart from Sports Media Watch: Indeed, looking at all the opening week games across all windows, Netflix still lags the other primetime windows, but does well compared to the afternoon games: I saw a few folks make the case that streamers still lag traditional broadcasters in reach, and I’d add they really lag compared to “broadcast plus streaming” options like NBC/Peacock, ESPN/Disney+ and CBS/Paramount+. The best data I saw for this came from Samba TV, who charted reach through the 2025 season, and, wow. (Samba TV’s numbers are historically lower than Nielsen’s, so don’t compare their household figures to Nielsen’s hours, but use them as a proxy for the relative reach of the streamers.) The good news is Prime Video is NOT having a down year. Their opening Thursday Night Football game reached 18.6 million viewers (about what Netflix got), but that’s a high for Prime Video on Thursdays and the biggest Thursday night game since 2015. The TNF games the weeks of 21-Sep and 28-Sep continued this streak, getting 43.1 (16.8 million average viewers) and 42.5 total hours (16.6 million average viewers), which were both up from last year. Still, that continues the (typical) season slide: (For those new-to-streaming-football-numbers folks, the viewership declines for Thursday Night Football as the year goes along.) Overall, it appears as if Prime Video is now part of the “football habit”, be it for customers at home or out at places like bars and restaurants. And its viewership is slowly catching up to broadcast. One last chart shows this. Last season, Nielsen started adding out-of-home viewership to the charts, so I try not to do season-to-season comparisons as I did for the first few years. And while Nielsen added Big Data viewing this year, I’m going to compare the last two seasons. Here’s that chart, which shows the season-over-season gains: When it comes to streaming football, we have to keep a few seemingly contradictory thoughts in our head… First, streaming doesn’t come close to matching broadcast’s reach and, thus, viewership. Second, even with that gap, football is still the biggest “thing” on streaming. It’s very, very popular. Third, while some methodology changes have likely helped Prime Video’s numbers, their viewership does appear to be growing. Lastly, yeah, the NFL started the season off poorly, with week one dragging down the numbers in year-over-year comparisons. However—and again, methodology changes may have helped this—the viewership grew compared to previous seasons over the next couple of weeks. So football is still king. On streaming and off. Television - Adult Animation Continues to NOT Make the Streaming Charts In the last two reports, two adult-animated shows whiffed: Netflix’s animated comedy, Dang! Paramount+’s Sega-video-game-inspired fantasy/comedy, Golden Axe. Neither made the charts, but that’s usually the case for animated shows. I mean, here’s literally every animated show that’s made the Nielsen Original charts since the start of 2025: And one of those shows is G_abby’s Dollhouse_! A kids show! The problem with charts like this is that they don’t give you a sense of how many shows miss the charts. Netflix had at least eleven animated flops, including comedies like Big Mouth (a show everyone assumed was popular in the pre-Streaming Ratings Era), Long Story Short, Haunted Hotel, Mating Season, Strip Law, and Alley Cats, and action shows like Blood of Zeus, Castlevania: Nocturne, Devil May Cry, Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, and Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. Prime Video had at least six animated misses, two in the same universe (Hazbin Hotel, Helluva Boss), three more comedies (#1 Happy Family USA, The Second Best Hospital in the Galaxy and Kevin) and an action show (The Mighty Nein). Disney+ had MCU and Star Wars animated misses (Eyes of Wakanda, Marvel Zombies, Star Wars: Visions, Star Wars: Maul – Shadow Lord, and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld) but I can’t tell how many of those shows were geared towards adults. HBO Max had Harley Quinn and Hulu had Solar Opposites. None of these shows made the charts! That’s a lot of misses! If I remade the chart with all those misses, here’s how it would look: Listen, I know the counter arguments. First, it’s cheaper to produce animated shows than live action. Fair enough, but with viewership this low, even that cheaper price point starts to not matter. Second, just look at the acquired charts. Hit animated comedies can generate viewership for years! Shows like The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, and Bob’s Burgers do really, really well. Fair enough, but streaming has failed to recreate the dynamic that Fox has mastered so well. That’s a problem for streaming still. Television - Emmys! The annual Emmys broadcast was a few weeks ago, and I’ve got data on how the nominees performed on streaming, plus hot takes on this year’s viewership (and the big news about the broadcast’s, er, streamcast’s future). We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… The top Emmy-nominated shows… ...why I’m worried about the future of the Emmys telecast... ...the pros of broadcast television ...and the cons... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Coming Soon! Next week, we’ve got a double issue (since the weeks of 21-Sep and 28-Sep were so light), but then I’ll be all caught up after a deluge of streaming ratings data from Nielsen in September. In the meantime, I’m going to try to take a look at Netflix’s stats to explain why Bela Bajaria is out. But even light weeks give me plenty to talk about. The Great British Baking Show returns to Netflix and Apple TV has a buzzy new star-studded comedy. And Netflix has a controversial-but-appears-to-be-popular new game show. Plus big films like Toy Story 5, Backrooms and The Breadwinner head to streaming. And is East of Eden a hit? After that, The Kardashians return to Hulu, Prime Video has a reboot of Carrie, and Netflix has a horror show, Below. Disclosure Day heads to Peacock, The Housemaid heads to HBO Max_,_ a new Ben Affleck film, Animals, lands on Netflix, and Apple TV has a new John Cena action film based on, checks notes, Hasbro’s Matchbox toys. Okay. Longterm, some interesting TV production news. HBO Max ordered How to Survive Without Me, starring Kaley Cuoco, Joshua Jackson, Ray Romano and Rita Wilson, for fifteen episodes! I love that some streamers (or, at least, HBO Max) are finally ordering TV shows with more than eight episodes. In less wise production news, Landman does not appear to be coming back this year, since it just started production. Frankly, I don’t love this (get your shows out on time) but Landman is so popular, I doubt it matters.
TV Tinsel: 'NCIS' franchise explores new territory in Big Apple
The long arm of naval law is stretching into the Big Apple as the new “NCIS: New York” premieres on CBS Tuesday and streams on Paramount+ Wednesday. The omnipresent “NCIS”
Skydance's $80 Billion Debt: Warner Bros., Paramount Owner's Reality
The combined company now has the scale to take on Netflix and Disney, but little room for error as it balances massive spending on film and TV with servicing its crushing financial obligations.
Everything Paramount will own as Skydance
What brands and IP are impacted by the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger?
FTI, Oracle and Paramount: This Week's Top Five Stories
This week's top stories include, FTI Consulting on the AI slowdown, Oracle's US$664bn backlog and further news from Paramount's Warner Bros. merger
The Best Taylor Sheridan Shows By Rotten Tomatoes Score, From ‘Tulsa King’ To ‘Mayor Of Kingstown’
Taylor Sheridan rules the roost at Paramount, and has now gotten a number of his shows on Netflix as well. Here are the best ones by Rotten Tomatoes score.
Paramount’s Warner Bros. megamerger will just be called Skydance
David Ellison doesn’t want a ‘new corporate identity’ to overshadow Warner Bros. and Paramount’s brands.
Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance
David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, speaks during CinemaCon 2026 on April 16, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (David Becker/Getty Images for CinemaCon)
Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger closes, creates combined company Skydance
David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, speaks during CinemaCon 2026 on April 16, 2026, in Las Vegas, Nevada. (David Becker/Getty Images for CinemaCon)
What to stream in November 2026: ‘The Altruists,’ ‘Blade Runner 2099’
Here's what's coming to Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, HBO Max, Prime Video, Peacock, Paramount+ and other streaming services in November.
Skydance Is New Name for Paramount-Warner Bros. Company
Paramount and Warner Bros. will operate under the Skydance corporate name as the companies prepare to complete their $111 billion merger.
Editorial: Company mergers are causing more harm to the entertainment industry than good
Two weeks ago, Paramount officially completed its $110 billion purchase of the historic Warner Bros.
What does the combined Skydance, now in business, mean for Hollywood?
It's been just about a week since the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal closed. In the months ahead, Hollywood will determine its future.
IP Saves the Day On Streaming
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get started, I wanted to highlight a new idea I saw from Real Good AI, proposing a ratings system for AI use. (H/T to Anthony Kaufman’s article highlighting this.) It would look something like this: In general, I think that this is a solid, middle-ground solution that should appease both the pro-AI camp (who love AI) and the anti-AI camp (who wants to know if what they’re watching didn’t come from humans). Regardless of your feelings on AI/LLMs—I’ll never use it for my writing—transparency is often the best solution to many problems. In general, I think way more media outlets need to be using way more AI disclosures. My quick “Yes and...” to this idea: what about ads? In particular, I hate it when I see or hear ads that are obviously AI-generated, but a person or voice says, “I used this product”. AI doesn’t use products! Just today, I watched a YouTube ad where a “person” said they use some sort of rain wind chime...but that’s not a real person! They didn’t use this product. (Especially since the video of the wind chime itself also appeared to be AI-generated...) I believe most traditional advertising already has standards like this anyway.1 Okay, on to this week’s issue. We’re covering the week of 14-Sep, and then next issue, I’ll be fully caught up with Nielsen’s new release schedule. In the future, I plan to put out Streaming Ratings Reports each Monday after Nielsen’s Thursday releases. Overall, we had some big new shows this week, like Prime Video’s Reacher spinoff_, Neagley_, which is off to a big, big start, and Netflix’s latest in its Monster anthology, which is their largest opening since June and the second-largest since One Piece came out in March. All that, plus Slow Horses returns, the trio of returning shows (Lioness, Reacher and Ted Lasso) continue to dominate the top tens, Paramount+’s latest crime drama, a big whiff for a Netflix original film and a precipitous drop for Netflix film charts, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of September 14th to September 20th 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - IP For the TV Win Can I use the dirty word of entertainment journalism right now? IP. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone I said it. But IP works at the box office, and we’ve seen some evidence it works in TV too. Not as well, and not all the time—no absolutes here!—but often enough. And glancing at the Nielsen top ten…it worked this week! Take Prime Video, who has a monster hit in the crime drama Reacher. Would a spinoff work for that show? Yep! They binge-released Neagley, about a detective from the original Reacher series, and its eight episodes debuted to 29.6 million hours. Here’s how it stacks up to Reacher, one of Prime Video’s biggest shows: That’s great. Nearly as strong as Reacher’s opening! (Both shows started with eight, binge-released episodes, so this comparison is apples-to-apples.) Notably, Prime Video scheduled the debut of Neagley to overlap with Reacher’s most recent season, to help drive tune-in. Obviously, I love smart release strategies like that. And even though I wrote “obviously”, it’s not really that obvious, since streamers don’t often take advantage of natural overlaps like this_._2 Other data backs how well Neagley performed. It opened at second place on Samba TV for two weeks and got 51.7 million hours on Luminate. That’s the eleventh biggest opening on Luminate since May of 2024 and tied with Bridgerton’s third season opening. That’s a huge opening! Its IMDb is solid too, a 7.7 on 24K reviews. Netflix’s latest edition in the “Monster” series—which started with Jeffrey Dahmer and comes from Ryan Murphy—did well too, opening to 24.7 million hours. That’s the biggest opening for Netflix since I Will Find You in June, and second biggest since March. Unlike the Reacher series, this franchise is trending downward, though. The first Monster show—Dahmer - Monster—was giant. More than anything, I think this reflects that Netflix running out of extremely popular—if that’s the right word?—serial killers to feature. Still, the data says this is a very good opening. It made it to third place on Samba TV for two weeks. It also opened to 40.0 million hours on Luminate. That’s not quite as elite as Neagley, but still very, very strong. I’ll be honest: my priors coming into any given week are that IP works to help drive buzz for new shows, but TV shows need to stand on their own even more than movies, so they will succeed or fail based on their quality. But these two spinoffs definitely worked. Quick Notes on TV The top show, film or special this week? Football, again. Specifically, Prime Video’s season opener of Thursday Night Football. The games run long (three hours) but mainly a lot of people watch each game. That adds up to a lot of viewership. Paramount released the second season of MobLand on an unusual day for that service, a Friday! Often, they put their new shows out on a Sunday, as they did last year with a run of shows (Lioness, Tulsa King and Landman). MobLand didn’t make Nielsen in its first week, but on Samba TV it got to eighth and seventh place. Luminate had a smaller opening too, only 5.3 million hours. MobLand missed the Nielsen charts for its first eight weeks, so this season is off to a stronger start. (Bonus note: the first season streams on both Prime Video and The Roku Channel, but I only have it as Paramount+ on those charts.) I’ve mentioned a few times that foreign-language originals do lower numbers than English-language originals on Netflix most of the time. But I don’t usually emphasize what country those originals come from, and observationally, they tend to be from Western or Northern European countries, in general. So credit to Not a Stranger, a Turkish Netflix original, for breaking through on Luminate, getting to 7.9 million hours in its first full week on those charts. As I mentioned last issue, Crew Girl ended up making the Nielsen charts in its second week. That’s still a soft performance compared to many shows, but again this, one looks affordable. And if you’re curious, here’s how it stacks up to some other sports romance shows: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… …about a new data source and how it drives streaming viewership… ...what reality show is struggling in its latest season…. ...what Netflix film bombed…. ...How Reacher, Ted Lasso, and Lioness are doing on the charts… ...what obscure sport put up great viewership numbers… …how far streaming films are falling… …all the flops, bombs and misses for the last week… …and more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue. Coming Soon! Next week, we’ve got a double issue, then we’ll be all caught up with Nielsen’s data. Yes! The goal is to have my report out on the Monday after I get Nielsen’s data. So next issue, I’m looking at East of Eden, The Great British Baking Show, a Willy Wonka game show (that people are upset uses AI, but viewers might not care), and a Cosby show spinoff reboot on Netflix, and Brothers on Apple TV (starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey). That’s about it for TV, but who’s going to win the streaming week, The Breadwinner or Backrooms on streaming? Answer: Toy Story 5. Plus Netflix has a Unabomber film and a new Tyler Perry film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma tries to repeat The Substance’s run on MUBI, and Paramount+ has Jackass: Best and Last. Long term, Netflix is remaking Lonesome Dove. I love this choice, but man, there are a lot of westerns on TV right now. And they’re making Sega TV shows, including a Crazy Taxi TV show and Sonic show with an “edge”.
'Street Fighter' is 1st, but 'You Can See Everything' stuns in 2nd
Paramount's “Street Fighter” leads the box office this weekend, earning $31 million from 3,575 theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
Mary McNamara: As David Ellison names his new empire Skydance, the message is clear: He owns Hollywood
LOS ANGELES — What a surprise. David Ellison has decided to name the Frankenstudio media company created by the merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery simply Skydance. And
Paramount-WBD deal closes; here are top quant-rated entertainment stocks
Paramount Skydance–WBD merger reshapes entertainment—see 20 top quant-rated movies & broadcasting stocks (AMC, DIS, NFLX, ROKU).
Warner Bros. and Paramount are now Skydance – What the merger means for you
Say goodbye to decades of Hollywood history and hello to the era of mega media corporations.
LIVE! Watch UFC 333 Post-Fight Presser
With UFC 333 officially a wrap after an entertaining card earlier today (Sat., Oct. 24, 2026) LIVE on Paramount+ from inside Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, fight fans can now check out the post-fight press conference video above for all the best reaction and official bonus winners. On a day that featured […]
When does ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ season 2 premiere? Everything we know about the new killers
Michael C. Hall dodges old allies and faces new killer foes in ‘Dexter: Resurrection’ season 2, premiering on Paramount+ very soon. Here’s everything you need to know, including who’s joining the cast and who’s returning.
Skydance Executive Team Set By David Ellison Ahead of Deal Close
Skydance announced the executive leadership for the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery.
Box Office: Elizabeth Holmes movie ‘You Can See Everything’ is now a hit in theaters too
Paramount's “Street Fighter” leads the box office this weekend, earning $31 million from 3,575 theaters in the U.S. and Canada | KNX News 1070 AM
Paramount+ Acquires Rights to 'Blippi' and 'CoComelon' Series
Paramount+ has acquired rights to Moonbug Entertainment shows including series from the 'Blippi' and 'CoComelon' universes.
UFC 332 preview, predictions: Worst main event in history?
UFC 332 is set for Delta Center in Salt Lake City on Sat. night (Oct. 3, 2026) with the preliminary card streaming on Paramount+, followed by the main card on the CBS network — home to this 2008 record breaker. There exists a subset of combat sports fans who remain puzzled as to why a […]
Who Won August and September: Original Films or Franchises?
(Welcome to the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a newsletter on the entertainment industry and business strategy. I write a weekly Streaming Ratings Report and a bi-weekly strategy column, along with occasional deep dives into other topics, like today’s article. Please subscribe.) I just heard someone say that if you’re reading a pundit or data analyst, and they don’t tell you that they got anything wrong, they’re not a pundit but an “influencer”. I agree with that. You have to tell your audience when you get things wrong, or they won’t (or shouldn’t) trust you as much. Today, we’ve got another edition of “What I Got Right, What I Got Wrong”. In general, I’m patting myself on the back (and patting very hard) about a few things like IP at the box office, LIV golf, horror films, crowdfunding movies, superheroes, and old people going to the theaters. That said, I also made a couple of data mistakes on the streaming bubble popping and HBO’s datecdotes, so I’m not perfect. But first, I need your feedback... Subscribe Follow-Ups: What Should We Call Mid-Budget Movies Which Aren’t Cinematic Enough for Theaters But Are Too Expensive to Make Money on Streaming? After I asked for feedback on what we should call straight-to-streaming films that are too big to pencil out on streaming but not really big enough to resonate in theaters, I got some great suggestions from you all, including... “Moldilocks” from John Aboud “Little Big Indie” from Travis Frick1 “Midflicks” from Jonathan Funke. “Extra-Medium” from Jona Nwuke. (Read the explanation in the footnote.) Between these and Brandon Katz—who suggested “Bermuda Budget Triangle”, “The Platform Gap” and “The Distribution Deadzone”—we’ve got some excellent suggestions. And they’re better than my suggestion, the “Streaming Budget Dead Zone”, so let’s take a poll! The winning entry becomes the new term. Loading... RIGHT: LIV Golf is Fully Bankrupt…Is Anyone Else Next? A few years ago, I was always a bit perplexed at all the articles I’d read praising LIV Golf and their strategy to disrupt the PGA. LIV Golf, a brand new professional golf league, offered PGA stars ten times what they made on the PGA Tour to join their new league. And folks praised this strategy for its initial “success” in that a lot of big names did indeed leave the PGA. Yeah, of course the players came over. LIV Golf paid them so, so, so much more! But LIV Golf hadn’t discovered a way to increase potential revenue. So think about this in basic business terms… They paid much more in costs… …but had no real way to increase revenue. That’s not a strategy! That’s deficit financing. It won’t work unless you bankrupt the competition (and then turn around and pay those same golfers much, much less). It’s not a sustainable strategy and only lasts as long as the company/person/nation backing it decides they’re cool with losing money. For LIV Golf, that meant Middle East oil wealth, in particular Saudi Arabian money. Clearly, the current Iran War has hurt Middle East finances, so they need to trim their more exorbitant spending. And LIV Golf was part of that trimming. This should be a major warning for others. TGL’s parent company, TMRW Sports, just got a $1 billion valuation, despite TGL’s (the indoor golf league) horrible TV viewership of less than half a million viewers per match. Unrivaled, the women’s basketball league, just secured a $650 valuation, despite its horrible TV viewership and a new rival (Project B) entering the scene next year. To relate this to streaming, Hollywood should ask which streamers may have wealthy patrons funding their losses. (Let’s be clear: Google, Amazon and Apple.) Could those patrons lose their appetite? For Amazon, probably not. But Apple has a new boss, so maybe! WRONG: My Analysis of the Streaming Bubble Was Missing a Week I’m going to be congratulating myself a lot today, but I make mistakes too, like this data goof. When I last compiled the data on the decline in TV shows, I was missing one week at the end of June. If you look at the first image, you can see that one week was mislabelled as “July”. Mainly, this image got updated to show a 27% decline, not 29%: This change doesn’t really impact the overall analysis, but it is two percent better. By the way, through the third quarter, the decline increased and it’s now a 30% decrease since 2022. (I’ll write/visualize this in an upcoming article.) But I want you to trust me and my data. Especially these days, when many people are using LLMs that I know are inserting faulty data into their charts, I want to keep earning my audience’s faith. So that’s the accurate data. RIGHT: IP Remains Very, Very Popular In July, I wrote a giant (and I mean giant) article on Backrooms, Obsession, and the box office, going over what we know, what we don’t know about what works in theaters, looking at YouTubers, IP, the horror genre, comic book movies, and a whole lot more. The month of August really tested a lot of my theses and, being honest, mostly supported my arguments. Let’s start with IP. Looking at 8-Aug (the weekend after Spider-Man: Brand New Day came out) to 18-Sep (the weekend that Resident Evil came out, which I think provides a nice bookend to this time period), there were seven films based on pre-existing IP: Resident Evil (2026) ($126 million) Practical Magic 2 ($65 million) _Insidious: Out of the Furthe_r ($65 million) Coyote Vs. Acme ($59 million) Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie ($53 million) Tony ($15 million) Super Troopers 3 ($7 million) Compare those to the notable original films from the past month—I actually could have included more movies, but here are just thirteen, bringing us to an even twenty films—including.... The End of Oak Street ($54 million) Buddy ($26 million) Mutiny ($15 million) By Any Means ($15 million) The Dog Stars ($14 million) Runner ($14 million) One Night Only ($11 million) Hope ($8 million) Spa Weekend ($7 million) The Uprising ($6 million) Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ($6 million) Onslaught ($3 million) Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man ($2.8 million) Here’s that in chart form: Five of the top six films in this time period were all based on IP. I made a big chart of films that grossed over $200 million at the box office before Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey hit theaters. Let’s update that chart! By the way, if you want to see how I categorized each film—so another bar chart—here it is: I know that many of my fellow critics/pundits/analysts dislike films based on IP and how Hollywood is making so many of them. And I’m sympathetic to this point of view. As I’ve written many, many times before, you need a balance between existing franchises, new IP, and original films. And Hollywood clearly needs to make more films like Resident Evil (a well-made film from a visionary director) and fewer Practical Magic 2’s (which didn’t get critical or customer buzz). But at some point, critics and pundits need to contend with what audiences are telling them: Movie-goers aren’t showing up to original films. Audiences are speaking with their dollars, telling you they want more IP and franchises. You can try to convince studio heads to make fewer IP-based films and franchises, but the data and numbers aren’t there. Instead, critics need to work harder to convince audiences to show up for original films. Aim your ire/concern at the average person, not studio heads.2 Because they’re just making the films that audiences are telling them to make. WRONG: Original Horror Films Didn’t Break Out I’ll be honest, even though I wrote an article casting some skepticism on the horror genre in July, if you asked me to make a prediction, I would have predicted that, in August, a new, original horror film would have blown up. No, seriously, I just assumed that Obsession and Backrooms presaged a change in audience behavior. But none of the buzzy new original horror films from August—Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, Onslaught (not an action film in spite of the ads), The End of Oak Street, Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man, or _Buddy—_broke out. To be clear, exactly one of those films (Buddy) had good “ROI”, but again—I try to be specific in my language—none were “popular” in any broad sense of the word. None of them will be “saving” movies theaters like Backrooms or _Obsession_helped save the summer. The new Insidious film and Resident Evil, both based on IP, were far and away the biggest horror films since July. (We’ll see if this changes in October/Halloween season.) RIGHT: Stay Skeptical about Crowdfunding... I’ve long been skeptical about crowd-investing platforms as one of Hollywood’s saviors, mainly because there’s so much hype/buzz. People need to stay more skeptical about more things, explaining both the potential upside but also the downsides. In particular, the media often hypes crowdfunding at the start and never checks in on the actual results after they’ve come in later. And August gave us our first update! _Ice Cream Man—_directed by Eli Roth—grossed $6 million off of a $5.5 million budget. This is a production of The Horror Section, which was one of the first “crowd investing” studios with 2,400 investors, which means that 2,400 investors probably lost money. They certainly aren’t getting as great of returns as if they had just invested their dollars in the stock market. Hopefully Stiletto (Tagline: “Someone’s Going to Make it Rain Blood!”) does better next month. WRONG: Another Data Goof Here’s another data error. When the first episode of House of the Dragon came out, HBO put out that it had 21.5 million viewers in the first three days, and I read that to mean in the US…but no, it was global. So my US-only datecdotes charts shouldn’t have included it. We never got US-only numbers for the first episode, but for the final episode, HBO put out that it had 11 million US viewers. (And that global dropped to 21 million viewers.) Here’s the updated chart (which I’ve since used in the Streaming Ratings Report): Still, this show is absolutely huge. RIGHT: Superhero Films Remain Very, Very Popular After Supergirl flopped, I read a few takes that “comic book movies are going the way of the Western”. Post-Spider-Man: Brand New Day, that take didn’t age well. To be fair, I have a very nuanced take on the superhero genre right now; it’s down right now, for a lot of reasons. But it’s not “dead”. Maybe _Spider-_Man is just a really popular character? I saw that take, and it’s a fair counter-argument. (But pundits arguing that superhero movies were dead should have mentioned this $1.5 billion counter-argument…) But is it just Spider-Man? The next Avengers film already has $50 million in pre-sales (and I was skeptical that that film would do well) and the Avengers: End Game re-release topped the box office two weekends ago (over three original films). And I wouldn’t bet against Batman or Superman. So maybe it’s just Spider-Man, Batman, Superman and the Avengers. Oh, and Deadpool, of course. And Black Panther. And Wolverine. And probably the X-Men. Plus a well-made Wonder Woman or the Hulk film could break out. But that’s it! It’s just those ten characters/teams. Oh, what’s that? Lanterns is also doing well on HBO? (See previous section…) To be fair, I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the argument that more popular characters—like Spider-Man and Batman—anchor more popular films. In fact, I made that exact argument three years ago when I first wrote about the “Marvel-cession”. In many ways, you can blame The Guardians of the Galaxy for fooling Marvel Studios (and the rest of us) into believing that any character could pop. It turns out, the list of iconic characters is probably smaller than most people think. But it’s probably too early to say that superhero films and comic book movies are dead unless “death” means a slight decline over a longtime. RIGHT: Who Killed Theaters? Old People I get frustrated whenever I see headlines or analysis about how young people are “returning” to theaters. As I’ve detailed(for years), young people have always powered the US box office, despite narratives about “kids these days” and their “phones”. Really, what’s changed post-2020/pandemic is that old people aren’t going to the movies nearly as much. This summer, I saw a movie (from an older director) in a theater near a retirement community, and multiple older people at the theater were talking about how this was their first time seeing a movie in years. I dislike personal anecdotes, so YouGov can fill in the data, best summarized by this headline: “Who killed movie theaters? Not the youths”. According to them, 64% of people aged 18-29 have seen a movie in the last year, but only 30% of 65-and-older. 20% of 18-29 have seen a movie in theaters in the last week and 42% in the last month. Here’s the polling data: Most concerning? Many Americans (17%) think theaters are a worse or much worse experience than watching films at home. Slight WRONG: Hadestown Opens Big A live theater capture of the Broadway musical, Hadestown, made $20 million at the US box office, which begs the question: was I wrong to be skeptical about musicals a few years ago? Yes and no. On the one hand, $20 million is a far cry from being “popular”, so yeah, the genre isn’t that popular overall and Hadestown is one of the more popular musicals from recent years (i.e. the “Taylor Swift Data Fallacy” in action). On the other, I doubt filming this cost all that much, and I don’t think that they spent much on marketing, so this is a good source of ancillary revenue. Smaller Updates WRONG: As I mentioned in a Streaming Ratings Report, I underestimated the budget for Enola Holmes 3. It probably cost more like $50 million, if not more. But... I’m not sure that it really matters? At sub-10 million hours, prices have to come down to make this work. WRONG: Netflix is giving Ink a 27-day in theaters! To quote the kids/YouTubers these days, let’s go! Now I might actually have a chance to see Danny Boyle’s latest in theaters. I’d complained about this in a “Coming Soon” section, but I was heartened to read that Netflix is giving multiple films longer theatrical windows this year. RIGHT: Netflix is sending 4-5 films per year to theaters. Netflix is slowly but surely sending more and more films to theaters, as I cautiously predicted earlier this year. For now, it’s just three big films and a number of awards contenders, but still, this is great news. And they’ll be releasing box office grosses! Just this week, Ted Sarandos confirmed that KPop Demon Hunters 2 will come to theaters (and my guess is it performs in the box office top ten at a minimum). WRONG: Angel has 3 million subscribers! How do I know this? Well, they told Deadline, who reported it. I marked this as “wrong”, since they’ve doubled their subscribers in one year but, you know, they don’t really have a hit film to speak of and they’re still losing money. WRONG: Furious was only renewed for one more season. I accidentally wrote “two more seasons” in my latest “Renewals, Cancellations, Un-Orders and Removals Update”. RIGHT: House of David is ending with its third season. In July, Prime Video renewed House of David for a third season, as I just wrote in my latest “Renewals and Cancellations” report. Well, now it’s ending after that third season. Why? As I’ve been writing, its viewership wasn’t great. I got feedback that this show didn’t cost very much, but it cost enough that its limited viewership didn’t save it. WRONG: Adults was a Hulu original! So I missed Adults when it first came out last year; I saw that it aired on FX and just assumed that it was a linear-first program. Turns out, it aired three episodes on FX, but binge-released the rest of its episodes the next day on Hulu. Huh. So I should have covered it last year! But I just wrote about it. 1 “When I was a kid in the 90s, if you wore a t-shirt to school that wasn’t too big and also wasn’t too small, but somehow didn’t quite fit, we’d say you were wearing an “extra-medium” shirt.” 2 As always, a huge exception is Disney, which barely makes anything original anymore.
What will Skydance do with the industry’s most complex sports rights portfolio?
With the Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger now complete, forming Skydance, many in the sports media world are watching and wondering what happens to the combined entity’s sports rights. Certainly, this seems like a good time to examine what the folks at Skydance Global Sports Group (now to be called SGSG forevermore) are, and…
'Avatar: Seven Havens' renewed for Seasons 3 and 4 on Paramount+
Get ready for a lot more Avatar.
Jesse Sisgold Exits Skydance for Role at RedBird Capital
A longtime confidant of David Ellison and the former president and COO of Skydance Media, Sisgold most recently led the company's Paramount Sports Entertainment division.
Sylvester Stallone’s Best Action Movie & Its Controversial Sequels Land on Paramount+ Today
Sylvester Stallone's action franchise hits Paramount+ today. The post Sylvester Stallone’s Best Action Movie & Its Controversial Sequels Land on Paramount+ Today appeared first on Mandatory.
Jeremy Renner’s “Mayor of Kingstown” gets final season premiere date: A first look at season 5
The Paramount+ show will return next year.
Best scary movies on Paramount+ as of October 2026
From '90s classics like "The Faculty" to recent hits like "Smile 2," this list has something for everyone.
Skydance offers voluntary buyouts to some employees
Skydance Corp. is offering some employees a one-time voluntary buyout, a move that comes nearly three weeks after Paramount Skydance closed its $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The
Why Taylor Sheridan signed with NBCUniversal after years at Paramount
Taylor Sheridan has had a long and successful stint with Paramount that included popular TV shows like "Landman," "Lioness" and "Tulsa King."
Paramount-WBD deal closes; here are top quant-rated entertainment stocks
The merger of Paramount Skydance (SKYD) and Warner Bros. Discovery NASDAQ:WBD marks a major shift in the entertainment industry after months of competing bids, lawsuits, and uncertainty.With the deal now closed, here are the top 20 Seeking Alpha's quant-rated stocks in the Movies and Entertainment…
Can Skydance CEO David Ellison Make Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Fly?
David Ellison has to prove the merged Paramount-Warner Bros., dubbed Skydance, can become a profitable Hollywood powerhouse amid its massive debt.
On cusp of merger, ‘Digger bombs for Warner Bros., ‘Verity’ takes No. 1 at box office
On the cusp of the studio’s merger with Paramount, Warner Bros.
TNT Sports head Luis Silberwasser to depart Skydance as CBS Sports chief David Berson takes over combined global sports group
TNT Sports chief Luis Silberwasser will be leaving a combined Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery company, sources tell CNBC.
UFC Fight Night: Moicano vs Nolan — Date, Time, How to Watch
Learn how to watch UFC Fight Night Moicano vs Nolan on Paramount+, check the full fight card with PT/ET times, and read an in-depth main event breakdown.
On cusp of merger, 'Digger bombs for Warner Bros., 'Verity' takes No. 1 at box office
On the cusp of the studio’s merger with Paramount, Warner Bros | NewsRadio 1080 KRLD
Taylor Sheridan’s ‘Frisco King’ sets release date
FORT WORTH, Texas — Taylor Sheridan’s “Frisco King” will release in time for the holidays. Paramount+ announced Thursday that the Samuel L. Jackson-led series will premiere two episodes on Friday,
‘Avatar: Seven Havens’ review: Beloved franchise gets vibrant expansion
The sequel to "Avatar: The Last Airbender" and "The Legend of Korra," premiering Friday on Paramount+, is a worthwhile franchise addition, writes our reviewer.
Paramount to develop Cyberpunk 2077 film, lifting CD Projekt RED's shares
Oct 9 (Reuters) - Paramount Pictures is developing a live-action film set in the universe of CD Projekt RED's video game "Cyberpunk 2077" alongside producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, entertainment
Paramount takes over Netflix’s Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades, plans reopening
Paramount Pictures is taking over the Bay Theater at Caruso’s Palisades Village, closed since the January 2025 fire, and plans to reopen it as a dine-in cinema.
Tony Gilroy Blasts Paramount Merger at ‘Behemoth!’ NYFF Premiere
Tony Gilroy says the impending merger threatens to dismantle the very “healthy and beautiful business” he has worked in for over three decades
Skydance raises Discovery+ prices, a week after Skydance merger
Discovery+ is getting more expensive just a week after Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery became Skydance. Here’s what subscribers will pay, and when.
On cusp of merger, 'Digger bombs for Warner Bros., 'Verity' takes No. 1 at box office
On the cusp of the studio’s merger with Paramount, Warner Bros | 830 WCCO
Skydance now runs two of Hollywood’s legacy film studios. A look at the new company, by the numbers
David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance has completed its $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing two of Hollywood’s most storied legacy film studios under one mammoth media and entertainment conglomerate named Skydance. Now, Skydance must decide how to make the most out of a trove of entertainment assets, including the HBO Max and Paramount+ video streaming services, a film library that includes “Star Trek,” “Barbie,” “Top Gun,” “Harry Potter,” and “Superman,” and two major news organizations, CNN and CBS News. Here’s a look at the new company, by the numbers.
New name of Paramount-Warner Bros. revealed
CEO David Ellison announced that the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. will result in Skydance ahead of the official deal closure on Oct. 6.
Sylvester Stallone discusses his role in ‘Frisco King’
FORT WORTH, Texas — At least one friendly face from “Tulsa King” will appear on “Frisco King.” The Taylor Sheridan-created and Samuel L. Jackson-led series premieres Dec. 18 on Paramount+.
Entertainment news expert discusses the Paramount Skydance, Warner Bros. Discovery merger
In brief: 'Stick' season 2 trailer and more
Bill Murray stars in the official trailer for A Course Called Ireland. The six-part documentary series premieres on Paramount+ on Oct. 25. The show follows Murray and his friends as they travel across the island to explore Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland's best fairways ...The Die Hard films are getting a brand-new home media release. All five of the movies will be released on physical media in 4K Ultra HD on Dec. 1. Bruce Willis stars as John McClane in all of the Die Hard films. The original movie finds the New York City policeman taking on terrorists after he flies to Los Angeles to be with his estranged wife and two children on Christmas ... TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-top-asset', slot: 1, fold: "above"}); The trailer for Stick season 2 is here. Owen Wilson stars as the talented golfer who strives for second chance in the sophomore season. Peter Dager, Timothy Olyphant, Rhea Seehorn, Marc Maron, John Higgins and Billy Zane also make up the cast of the new season. The Apple TV series premieres its first two episodes on Nov. 4. A new episode drops weekly every Wednesday that follows until the season finale airs on Dec. 30 ...Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. Thank you for reading kmaland.comAt KMA, we attempt to be accurate in our reporting. If you see a typo or mistake in a story, please contact us by emailing kmaradio@kmaland.com.
What the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger means for the future of film
Paramount now owns Warner Bros., CNN, and HBO Max. FSU students explain what that means for the movies you see and the jobs they want.
Skydance CEO David Ellison: AI is going to transform every part of the business
CNBC’s David Faber and David Ellison, Skydance Chairman & CEO, and Ynon Kreiz, Skydance co-CEO, join 'Squawk Box' to discuss Paramount's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, what to expect from the new combined entity, the decision to bring Ynon Kreiz on board, future of the company's linear, streaming and movie businesses, integration of AI, and more.
Warner Bros. and Paramount are now Skydance – What the merger means for you
Say goodbye to decades of Hollywood history and hello to the era of mega media corporations.
Skydance mashes proven properties of Paramount and Warner Bros. into an uncertain Hollywood hybrid
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Continuity will be the immediate emphasis for Skydance, the newly created entertainment behemoth borne of Paramount's $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery that closed on T...
Has public safety become a business issue in competitive legislative races?
At a time when economic issues are paramount in voters' minds, some legislative candidates are speaking of public safety as a business issue.
Arts & Entertainment Calendar
Ghost Walk: Farmville Community Arts Council’s annual Ghost Walk will be held today and Thursday-Saturday. Tours will leave from the Paramount Theater, 3723 N. Main St., Farmville, every 10 minutes
When 1 + 1 = 1: The Miserable Math Behind Many Media Mergers
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) The last few issues of this newsletter have circled two topics: September’s streaming viewership and all the Paramount/Skydance/Warner Bros./Discovery merger news. I’m happy to say on the Streaming Ratings Report front, we’ll be all caught up by early next week, then the SRR will come out on a tight weekly schedule. Then, after today, I’ll have slayed my PSWbD dragon. It’s such a big story, it demanded multiple issues. With the announcement of a name (just Skydance) and executive team, though, I think we can almost close the book on this story. In terms of topics, it becomes just another studio to cover. So today, I have one last set of takes on that merger. As I’ve sat with it, reading about who was staying and who was going, a big worry crystallized in my brain, and I gotta get that take out. Plus, I still owe you a host of “ugliness” that didn’t fit in my previous “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” takes. Let’s dive in! Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - As Paramount Shuffles Deck Chairs, Will They Build or Consolidate? On social media—I try to avoid most social media platforms, but sometimes I end up checking in—the best joke I saw about the announcement of the new name of Skydance was from fellow reporter Claire Atkinson who pointed out… Yeah, I laughed out loud at that one. Later, though, I saw another Twitter response (that later got deleted, so I can’t shout the person out) that did give me pause. The person noted that the Titanic film made the better analogy: a super expensive project everyone in the town doubted that went on to conquer the globe. So yeah: on one hand, the image of the Titanic recalls the actual ship and its infamous end, but that clip is from a movie which proved the doubters wrong. So for all the skepticism of the latest massive media merger, one could wonder which way this one goes. Does it crash like the Titanic or rise to glory like Titanic, the movie? Either way, this deal is “Titanic”, looking at the massive debt required to close the deal, which is not going well when it comes to borrowing costs for Paramount… …or borrowing costs for Oracle. But I’ve started to get worried about another outcome: the sum of this merger will be smaller and weaker and less profitable than its former parts. In other words, one plus one won’t equal three or two, but an even smaller number. Skydance paid to take a traditional studio off the board, but they won’t really capture the upside. Let me explain what I mean, but first, let’s look at the series of news that inspired this thought. Skydance Sets Its Leadership Team As soon as the Paramount-Skydance-Warner Bros.-Discovery merger closed, the new leadership team announced a new name—Skydance, which I’ll use going forward—and a new executive leadership team. You’ve probably read through all the executive shuffling, but if you haven’t, here’s a quick, incomplete summary, in rough order of importance: Mattel’s CEO Ynon Kreiz—who previously ran Maker Studios—joined as co-CEO with David Ellison. HBO/HBO Max’s Casey Bloys will stay and run streaming. Former head of streaming for Paramount-Skydance Cindy Holland—who was also at Netflix—will depart. The former heads of Warner Bros.—Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca—are out. The film studios will be run by Dana Goldstein and Josh Greenstein. George Cheeks of Paramount will run Skydance TV, controlling all the TV production units. In comic book news, the DC films will still be run by Peter Gunn and Peter Safran. Lastly, the head of CNN, Mark Thompson, will stay in place. Let’s quickly opine on the particulars before diving into the broad ramifications. We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Who I like and dislike in their next gigs… Why I think this consolidation will likely leave Skydance worse off… The math behind which mergers succeed and which don’t… A lot more ugliness in this merger… And a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.
Box Office: Elizabeth Holmes movie ‘You Can See Everything’ is now a hit in theaters too
Paramount's “Street Fighter” leads the box office this weekend, earning $31 million from 3,575 theaters in the U.S. and Canada | WBBM Newsradio 780 AM & 105.9 FM
Paramount-Warner Bros merger: Four ways the deal could affect you
The deal is expected to alter the entertainment and news industries but could it mean higher prices for consumers?
Why Entertainment Industry Layoffs Are Accelerating
Hollywood layoffs are mounting as streaming competition, overseas production and shifting audience habits reshape the entertainment industry.
Skydance emerges as entertainment behemoth with Top Gun and Harry Potter
Continuity will be the immediate emphasis for Skydance, the new entertainment giant created by Paramount's takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Box Office: Elizabeth Holmes movie ‘You Can See Everything’ is now a hit in theaters too
Paramount's “Street Fighter” leads the box office this weekend, earning $31 million from 3,575 theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
Why I Don’t Think Ride Or Die Should Have Been Cancelled (And What Company Should Save It...)
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) So…I recently came across a Reddit thread, talking about films on streaming, wondering why there are no reliable sources out there for streaming ratings data. Sigh. Honestly, as annoyed as I am that so many still don’t realize that we have streaming ratings, I somewhat get it. Until now, there was such a long delay between when a show or film came to streaming and when we got its viewership data; I understand why people were confused. (But, as you know, this just changed.) Also, even back in the day, how many people knew how well films did on television? Luckily, as a reader, you’re in the know. Okay, on to this week’s issue. I want to take a look at Prime Video cancelling Ride or Die and whether I agree with that decision. Overall, we didn’t have any breakout hits (no TV shows landed over 20 million hours according to Nielsen) but we have a lot of steady performers on the streaming charts. Plus, we’ll look at where $50 million in missing box office dollars went. (Spoiler: straight-to-streaming.) All that, plus new episodes of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, Supergirl heads to streaming, a new YA show does well on Netflix, the viewership for the Daily Wire’s $50 million fantasy show, what TV show hit-maker can’t make streaming hits, CD sales, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of September 7th to September 13th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Television - Ride or Die Is a Hit…But It Got Cancelled? What The Data “Says” I hate the phrase “here’s what the data says”, even though sometimes I find myself using it. If data just told us everything, we data folks would be out of a job! Data is often messy, complicated and nuanced. When it comes to strategy, many of the best decisions can’t actually use “data”, since it’s vastly too complicated to model. Anyways, I’ve been singing the praises of Prime Video’s Ride Or Die this summer, a show that did very well for them. And yet…it got cancelled. Now, usually when a show gets cancelled, a bunch of websites say “a hit show got cancelled”... Here’s the thing, though: in this case, they’re right! The data “says” that this show was a hit. Specifically, out of 522 first seasons to make a week on the Nielsen charts since 2020, it’s the 75th biggest. On Amazon, Ride or Die is eighth out of 41 first seasons: That’s top 15th percentile all time, almost exactly, which is my definition of a “hit”! I mean, outside of Reacher, Amazon needed a hit this summer! (Admittedly, Off Campus did well for Amazon in the spring, but Ride or Die performed even better.) So what happened? Why did Amazon cancel one of their rare 2026 bright spots? Well, Deadline reported a reason—which I’ll get to—but I’d break it down into three relevant questions: What is a given streamer’s reasoning? Is that reasoning sound? Could the stated reason not be the real reason? According to Deadline, Amazon felt the show “over-indexed” in middle-aged women. (This was based on leaks from within Amazon.) The logic is this: Amazon already reaches this demographic because of unlimited two-day shipping bundled with Prime, so they don’t really need more shows like this. Now, it’s my job to ask if that’s a good reason, and I’ll be honest, in this case, I don’t think it is. Sure, this show may “over-index” in middle-aged women—I’ll just assume that’s the case here—but I think folks often oversell how important over-indexing actually is. When a show is a “hit”, it isn’t a bit bigger than its rivals; it’s usually multiples bigger. For example, Elle only made the charts for two weeks at 8.3 million hours each. So Ride or Die was 80% bigger in its first two weeks, and likely had a much stronger hold, with its terrific 13 million hours in week three. Ride or Die was nearly three times bigger than Sterling Point through three weeks too. And that means that _Elle, Sterling Point a_nd other Amazon YA shows need to not just over-index a little with younger women (assuming that’s who Amazon prefers over middle-aged women), but massively over-index. Otherwise, more people in that demo (and a bunch more besides) likely watched Ride or Die. (I’ll try to explore this concept more in a future article.) And don’t get me started on how Ride or Die did compared to a certain (very, very popular, possibly the world’s most popular) YouTuber’s reality show…which didn’t make the charts after its first week and likely cost much, much more than Ride or Die. All to say, Amazon-MGM Studios/Prime Video can tell reporters that this show didn’t reach the right audience, but that excuse feels weak to me. So this leads to the third question: could other reasons have come into play? Yes! Renewal or cancellation decisions rarely (I’m tempted to say “never”) boil down to one variable. At its simplest, it’s two things: budget versus viewership. But often factors like critical acclaim, ownership and, yes, personal opinion come into play. In this case, Amazon has a new executive running things, and this show isn’t owned by Amazon-MGM Studios (unlike Elle). And yes, it may not have indexed with the right target viewers, too. Likely all of those factors came into play.1 My guess is ownership ended up mattering most. Amazon doesn’t own Ride or Die. It’s actually produced by another major studio. Fortunately/allegedly, this show is being shopped around. I can think of one brand new CEO who should consider it for one of his two major streamers…especially if he wants to rebuild goodwill in Hollywood. His name is on this list of exec producers of Ride or Die… If David Ellison needs some goodwill—and he does—rescue this female-led show tomorrow and grab some good headlines for a day. The data justifies it. Quick Notes on TV We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… How The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives latest season did on Hulu, post-controversy... Whether Supergirl soared on HBO Max... Why the box office is losing money due to the streamers... The viewership for the Daily Wire’s $50 million fantasy show... Updates on The Gentlemen, Lanterns, Outer Banks, King of the Hill and more... What former hit-maker has three streaming flops in a row... Whether The Mandalorian and Grogu popped in week two... All the flops, bombs and misses... And a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue. Coming Soon! Oh man, we’re almost caught up! We just have two more issues, then the streaming Ratings Report will be coming out just two weeks after a TV show premieres! Next issue, I’ll be looking at the first two weeks of the NFL Thursday night games on streaming, a huge new spinoff, Reacher’s Neagly on Prime Video, and the latest edition of Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story on Netflix, the return of Slow Horses on Apple and MobLand (quietly one of their biggest shows) on Paramount+, and Dancing with the Stars on both ABC and Disney+. Plus I’ll take a look at animation for adults in 2026. The week after, a ton of movies are coming to streaming: Toy Story 5 on Disney+, Backrooms on HBO Max, Jackass: Best and Last on Paramount+ and The Breadwinner on Netflix, plus a Unabomber film on Netflix and a romcom on Prime Video. Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey have a show on Apple, along with a game show inspired by Willy Wonka that everyone seems to hate. Long term, some crazy (but hopefully crazy like a fox) IP news. FX ordered a new Sons of Anarchy show from Charlie Hunnam, but it’s not about the biker gang. No, it features the show’s cast playing themselves in a new “meta-thriller”. Huh. And a lot of the cast is coming back. Next, Ryan Gosling is producing a Flintstones movie about a “grown-up Bamm-Bamm Rubble”. Also, huh. This one is in “early development” so we’ll see what happens. Both projects are based on IP, but also seem to have crazy takes on the IP, which I like.
CBS Sports Chief David Berson To Expand Portfolio As TNT Sports Chief Luis Silberwasser Exits
David Berson, who has led CBS Sports as president since 2024, will expand his portfolio after the close of the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The exec will take responsibility for sports across Skydance, the soon-to-be-umbrella over CBS and TNT Sports and their respective parents, Paramount and WBD. The $111 billion merger is due to close …
Netflix’s Leadership Shake Up…Explained
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Well, I had a simple article planned for this week. Called “Whoa, I Missed It!”, I’d take a gander at a few important-but-under-the-radar stories I didn’t cover while I wrote about all things “Skydance. (Formerly known as “the saga of Netflix trying to buy Warner Bros., but not Discovery, then Paramount-Skydance bought all of Warner Bros. Discovery”.) Alas, that article will have to wait. Netflix made news. Ironically, my “Whoa, I Missed It!” article would have mostly been about “content” strategy decisions, which is also what today’s article is about. But instead of the entire industry, this article will only cover Netflix’s decision to upend their film and TV content teams. Just that! So that’s the full topic of the day. I’m going to tackle the issue in the opposite direction of the way “stuff” flows: uphill. We’ll start at film, then move onto TV, and then onto the CEOs themselves, and the strategy questions that still remain. But we start with the numbers driving this. Let’s dive in. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Netflix Upends Their Corporate Hierarchy I’ve got a lot of thoughts, but we’ll start with the most common response to yesterday’s article. Let’s Talk Stock Price More than one person, responding to what I published two days ago, pointed out that, well, actually, the thing driving Netflix’s actions is this: In short, stock price! Even if Netflix isn’t obsessed with their own share price—they probably are, but, for the record, my strategic advice to every CEO is to absolutely ignore stock prices, which will, ironically, probably help the stock price long-term—most everyone thinks they are. By the way, I prefer market capitalization to stock prices, because it’s a more apples-to-apples way to compare companies: But there’s an even better way to look at it, and it kinda casts some doubt on the entire push here: price-to-earnings. I have a long list of articles that I wish I had written, and chief among them is an article titled, “Am I Still a Netflix ‘Bear’?” meaning someone who thinks Netflix’s stock is overvalued. As of last summer, Netflix had solved their biggest problem—which for me (circa 2019) was the lack of free cash flow—but their stock was CRAZY overvalued. That’s this chart here: Why did Netflix’s stock price increase to a price-to-earnings ratio of 50 last summer? What financial metric changed so quickly? Nothing. Given that, historically, mature entertainment companies average 10 to 20, with 16 being the average, that increase made little sense. Netflix’s stock swoon these last eight or so months wasn’t irrational; the stock price rise last year was. So if you want a really hot Netflix take, here it is: Netflix’s stock price has been going down because the financial industry recovered its senses, not because of any strategic mistake. Yes, that would imply that cleaning house may have been a mistake. That’s why the charts yesterday are so important, because they show that Netflix did have a strategic problem (a lack of hits) and that’s what they moved to address. (One could also argue the industry drastically overrated Netflix’s growth prospects, but that’s a financial industry problem, not a Netflix strategy problem per se. Some growth estimates are just crazy. *cough* AI *cough*) Now, the last time Netflix’s stock price crashed—circa 2022—it gave them an opening. I’d argue Netflix insiders knew they needed to expand post-COVID-19 crisis, adding advertising, cracking down on password sharing, and dabbling in sports. But if they had done that when their stock price was high, it would give folks a reason to second guess their strategy. (Arguably, last year, when Netflix pursued the Warner Bros. merger, it gave the industry a chance to review their business.) Instead, after the 2022 fall, they had the opening to make strategic changes. We may see Netflix pivot again following this latest slide. For example, the “binge versus weekly” conversation is alive and well again. Same for expanding into theaters even more. And adding both linear channels and streaming bundles. And maybe more either social, user-generated, vertical, or creator content. But the first shift came with who is making the content calls. A Message from Our Sponsor Last winter Pulp Fiction was on Netflix. For those same 90 days, it was also free, with ads, on Pluto TV and the Roku Channel. That is not a glitch, and it is not rare. The title has run on 20 different US streaming services since 2019, across 80 separate windows, and for more than 600 of those days it sat on a paid subscription service and a free ad-supported one at the same time. Almost nobody can see this, because when a title leaves a service, the record that it was ever there tends to leave with it. Reelgood keeps that record, dated to the day rather than the month: 4MM+ movie, show and episode titles across 300+ services globally, with timestamped arrivals, departures and moves across SVOD, AVOD, TVOD and vMVPD. Licensing teams price against every prior window. Rights teams check what a licensee actually delivered, and when. Pick a title you think you know: data.reelgood.com/title-availability Film - Dan Lin Want to know why I don’t opine on individual film or TV executives, especially new hires? Dan Lin. As I always caution, it’s really, really, really tough to predict which executives will succeed in new roles and which won’t. The successful head of co-production/finance partner, Rideback, Lin was considered for the head of DC Studios job before taking the job as the head of Netflix. By all accounts at the time, this was a smart hire. (That’s my read of the news coverage anyways.) But now that Netflix has fired Dan Lin, we got a slew of news stories about how he was doing a terrible job. In sports media, Bryan Curtis, new Substack writer/podcaster from The Ringer, calls this the “now you tell us” story, when you only hear the bad news after a star athlete leaves a sports team. In this case, now they tell us that Dan Lin was bad with talent after he got kicked out the door. So was Dan Lin a flop? It’s actually tough to say. While film moves faster than TV, even two years isn’t really enough time to evaluate a person’s output. The new head hasn’t really taken control. As Emily Horgan noted, it takes much longer than two years to produce animated films, so yeah, it’s definitely too early to judge in that domain. As for live-action films, I just published an article by Brandon Katz called “Netflix’s Summer of Bummer”, but I’d point out Netflix had a bad summer two years ago too. Arguably, their best summer came from KPop Demon Hunters last year and Happy Gilmore 2, the latter of which I saw credited to Lin. Then, the stories came out that Dan Lin clashed with talent, both Ben Affleck and Greta Gerwig, classic “now they tell us” factoids to explain his firing. This may have been true, but also should have been expected given that he was given the mandate to bring budgets back in check, especially after Rebel Moon. So if he made folks upset, well, that’s what he was hired to do! But also, he was described as “well-liked” at his hiring! In that case, I’m a bit sympathetic to Lin, since he may have been undercut by senior leadership, as often happens. Basically, a CEO hires a subordinate to be their “bad cop” and keep budgets in check, but then when talent complains, the CEO ends up undercutting them. That’s how I think you end up with a Narnia movie as expensive as any of the other flops, along with a film executive the town no longer likes. As a result, I think that Netflix is now executing a classic “hire the opposite” move by hiring Peter Rice. This phrase comes from my experience following football and basketball coaching decisions, where teams generally hire the opposite of who they just had. If you have an offense-minded head coach, hire the defensive guy. Or in college football, if you have a strong recruiter, then you pivot to an “X’s and Os” type of guy. Or in pro basketball, if you have a very analytically minded coach, you hire the player-friendly guy. I see that here. After dropping Scott Stuber—arguably a talent-friendly executive with lax budget control—Netflix hired the business guy to keep costs in check. Now Netflix is pivoting back to Peter Rice and presumably a more talent-friendly regime. (Disney, by the way, has done this twice: hiring business guys to succeed talent-friendly Bob Iger. It didn’t work out last time.) When it comes to Peter Rice…we’ll see! Maybe he works out, but maybe he doesn’t. I’d actually say the biggest problem is that Netflix still hasn’t solved its “IP Problem”, in that they don’t own much IP, so they just have a lower hit rate. The new executive won’t solve that. (Though buying Lionsgate would help.) Share “Content” - Bela Bajaria I almost published yesterday’s article after this column, but ended up flipping the order, because it told the story so well. So if you want the data for why Netflix is looking at TV to fix their problems, it’s in that article, this graph in particular: I know I just wrote that it’s often hard to judge executives, but Bajaria ran TV for six years and film for three and a half more. That’s more than enough to judge hit rates, and Netflix needs more hits. That’s the story. Since 2023, Netflix hasn’t had as many hit shows as it used to, and many of its previous power house TV shows have ended their runs (Stranger Things most of all). Also, many shows from 2020 to 2022 probably pre-dated Bajaria’s tenure. (That said, one thing may have been outside of Bajaria’s control, which I explain below.) Let’s lump some content strategy thoughts about Netflix and TV into one place: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… Why I partially blame Squid Game for Netflix’s latest troubles… What is “the football trap”... Why it might not be the TV shows or films’ fault at all… What change I don’t think Netflix will make... How Bela Bajaria evolved Netflix’s TV strategy in smart ways… Whose departure likely submarined Bajaria’s final few years… One sneaky explanation for Netflix’s content struggles... And a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.
Toy Story 5, Backrooms and The Breadwinner Vie to Become the Second Biggest Film This Year...
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Often, people blame “data” for ruining Hollywood, when I’d argue that hype (which can often be debunked by data) is often worse, as you can see in these two headlines. To use a common meme, here’s how it started: and how it’s going: Earlier this year, I read countless (and I mean countless) articles (in almost every mainstream media outlet) about how Heated Rivalry was a huge hit and that it “heated” interest in hockey. But Heated Rivalry wasn’t a huge viewership hit compared to the hype: [ ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/you-cant-eat-buzzdid-heated-rivalrys) [ You Can’t Eat Buzz…Did Heated Rivalry’s Buzz Translate into Actual Viewership? ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/you-cant-eat-buzzdid-heated-rivalrys) Entertainment Strategy Guy · Jan 22 [ Read full story ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/you-cant-eat-buzzdid-heated-rivalrys) In this case, the hype (Heated Rivalry is really popular) belied the data (It didn’t make the top ten charts, meaning it wasn’t a huge hit.1) Even worse, every time I write about this, I get a lot of negative feedback, hence why I only sparingly mention the show these days or add lots of caveats when I write about it, but this just further cements the hype. But companies, and the executives leading them, have to determine strategy based on reality, not media coverage. The NHL committed real marketing dollars to a campaign that didn’t work. Sure enough, the latest NHL season opened to under a million viewers. At some point, you have to focus on what the data says, because real dollars are at stake. And that’s why we have the Streaming Ratings Report! To provide and analyze cold, hard data. Luckily, this week, I can be positive and take a look at a huge opening on streaming, along with a very buzzy horror film that customers kind of like, but don’t really love. And a comedy that tried to rebound on streaming. Today, I’m covering two weeks—21-Sep and 28-Sep—so we have a lot to discuss (nearly 5,000 words worth), including a series of film misses for Netflix, another argument for weekly-released TV shows on streaming, another sitcom tries to avoid the comedy curse, Netflix has two new game shows (one powered by AI), Reacher falling off the charts after a huge run, Prime Video tries its hands at the romcom game**,** a look at the WNBA’s big season, a big night for the VMAs on CBS and MTV, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of September 14th to October 4th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - Two Hits and a Miss Come to Streaming… Three very interesting films came to streaming in one week, and I like comparing them since they show the range of theatrical films. One was a huge blockbuster, one was popular, and one was neither. One is a horror film, a buzzy genre; one is a comedy, a struggling genre; and one is an animated family film, the king of the box office. One went to a tiny streamer (HBO Max), one went to a second-tier streamer (Disney+), and one went to the biggest (Netflix). So… If you just went by box office, you’d expect Backrooms—the $197 million grosser, and partner of Obsession for “YouTube Horror Summer”—to dominate on streaming. If you read this report, though, you know that horror films don’t do great on streaming, and that’s the case again. Backrooms opened at 3.8 million hours according to Nielsen, and had 3.9 million hours in its second week. Here’s how that stacks up to other HBO Max films: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… ...why I don’t buy Backrooms budget… …two new games shows arrive on streaming… …another sitcom struggles… ...another argument for putting out shows weekly on Netflix... ...and a whole lot more, nearly 5,000 words more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue. Coming Soon! Next week, I’ll be taking a look at the eighth season of Hulu’s The Kardashians, answering the question: will this show ever make the charts? If Mormon wives can make it, surely one of social media’s most popular families can as well. Also, Prime Video has a new horror show based on popular IP, Carrie, Netflix has a horror show starring Josh Hartnett, Below, and Apple TV has a UK import, Small Prophets. Plus a bunch of movies like Disclosure Day heading to Peacock, The Housemaid coming to HBO Max, Ben Affleck’s latest on Apple TV, Animals, and Matchbox the Movie on Apple TV, a John Cena action comedy inspired by Hasbro’s toy cars. The week after is even busier! I’ll look at another IP-based horror show, Crystal Lake, a new MCU show on Disney+, VisionQuest, season two of The Lowdown on FX/Hulu, the fourth seasons of The Diplomat on Netflix and Tulsa King on Paramount+, another season of Love is Blind, and four straight-to-streaming films: Netflix’s Sacrifice (starring Chris Evens, Anya-Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, John Malkovich, Salma Hayek. Charlie XCX), Apple TV’s Tenzing (starring Tom Hiddleston and Willem Defoe), Prime Video’s Love of Your Life (Margaret Qualley) and Masterplan (Stanley Tucci) and a whole lot more, somehow. Long term, here’s some huge IP news: a Game of Thrones movie is coming to theaters, Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest in 2029, while Jon Watts (who helmed three of the most recent Spider-Man movies) is directing the next Star Wars trilogy, to be written by Simon Kinberg. I’m cautiously optimistic for both. It feels obvious to say that making good movies matters, but for bets this big (Star Wars is on a swoon, Game of Thrones hasn’t been to theaters yet), the quality has to be there.
When does ‘Tulsa King’ season 4 premiere? All about Dwight’s next big score
Dwight Manfredi’s empire is growing — and so are his enemies. Here’s everything we know about Sylvester Stallone’s ‘Tulsa King’ season 4, premiering this month on Paramount+.
'Dexter: Resurrection' star Uma Thurman talks 'relationship issues' in Season 2
Uma Thurman is alive, well and returning for Season 2 of the Paramount+ series "Dexter: Resurrection" (premiering Friday, Oct. 30), raising some killer questions.
Animals Starves while the Kardashians Miss the Charts Again
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get going, I’d like to offer congratulations to Jonathan Funke, whose suggestion “midflicks” won the poll for what I should call straight-to-streaming films which aren’t big or cinematic enough to go to theaters but seem too expensive for a TV movie. It’s so useful a term, I just used it last week! Now I just need to add this term to my data dictionary! Okay, on to this week’s issue. We’re starting out looking at Netflix/Ben Affleck’s latest crime thriller, Animals. I’ll also look at Disclosure Day heading to Peacock (it did better than you’d remember in theaters...) and a new movie based on toys. Plus, a long-time streaming flop returns for its eighth season...will it finally chart? (No.) Will anyone at Disney care? Probably not. All that, plus another look at new shows landing on streaming on 1-Oct from Reelgood, what streamer hasn’t had a film make the Luminate charts since August, Reacher’s long run on the charts, M_onster: The Lizzie Borden Story’s_ short run, the top shows in 2026 according to Samba TV, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. And I mean that last part: putting this week’s issue together, I assembled OVER 25 images, most of which are bespoke looks I made just for this report. Really, publishing articles like this takes the work of writing two articles: one is the narrative and the other is making charts/graphs. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the week of October 5th to October 11th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - Netflix’s Latest Star-Studded Thriller Goes For Glory The tempting angle for anyone writing about streaming film this month, like yours truly, is to ask, “Is this why Dan Lin lost his job at Netflix?” Take Animals, the Ben Affleck-starring-and-directing, Artists Equity-produced crime thriller that opened on 9-Oct. (Kerry Washington and Gillian Anderson are also in it.) If it did really well, then one could argue that Lin has another success on his resume. If it underperformed, then it’s another example of a Netflix underperformance this year. So where did Animals fall? Kinda in the middle, but that means it’s more “not a hit” than “big hit”. On Nielsen, it opened to 12.0 million hours, and here’s how that stacks up for 2026 films so far this year: Obviously, that’s not great. It’s both under my 15 million opening bar for “fine” for a Netflix film and 20 million bar for “great” opening. It did a bit better on Samba TV, getting to first place. That’s very, very good, though again, looking at the Nielsen data, it probably means that it was a light week overall. Luminate’s data is a bit closer to Samba TV’s, tied for 17th all time for single weeks since May of 2024: To top it off, no one seemed to like it. It has a 33 on Metacritic and only a 5.7 on IMDb. Both of these numbers could have been impacted by the stories about Affleck’s comments about using AI to make the film. Given the controversy, the film might not have been as bad as the ratings suggest, but it’s also not a bullish sign. All to say…yeah, on net this film isn’t a point in Dan Lin’s favor. At this point, Netflix’s slide has been long enough—going on since February—that I’m almost tempted to lower the bar for what a “hit” is on streaming. Post-February of 2026 or so, it seems like straight-to-streaming films just haven’t hit the same heights as they did from 2022 to 2025. Before we head onto the “Quick Hits” for film, I want to shout out a fellow newsletter whose articles I’ve been loving this year, LA Material, a new LA-based news outlet. For just a highlight of my favorite articles since July... I loved this article on Ghost Town, a group on Venice that clears homeless encampments. As a Los Angeleno, obviously I adore their articles on LA parking issues. Their article on illegal parking tickets got the City Council to address the issue! Also check out their article on people parking in medians. Check out their deep dive on what went wrong with the LA Jazz Festival and how it fell apart, or what’s wrong with USC’s finances. Finally, they wrote up a voter guide on voter guides for the LA General Election. So meta! In search of a city? L.A. Material is an independent news outlet covering the people, politics, culture and glorious chaos shaping Los Angeles. L.A. Material brings you intel on the city you can’t get anywhere else. From exploring how Reddit short stories became Hollywood’s hottest commodity to reporting on the survival jobs keeping entertainment workers afloat. And answering, once and for all, why the AMC Burbank escalator is always broken. Through their newsletters, podcast, videos, events, and member community, L.A. Material is designed to help Angelenos connect to Los Angeles and each other. Sign up now for the free weekday newsletter. Quick Notes on Film Steven Spielberg’s latest film, Disclosure Day, came to Peacock on 9-Oct, and I’ll admit that, after pulling its stats, I did a pinch of a double take. As I wrote throughout my deep, deep, deep dive on summer box office/Obsession/Backrooms/IP/superheroes, oftentimes the film media discusses films as “flops” or “misses” or “hits” without clarifying what they specifically mean. Since Disclosure Day didn’t make $250 million in the US or $500 million globally, it was definitely a disappointment by Spielbergian standards, who is the highest-grossing director of all time, and arguably even more ahead in adjusted grosses. But it did make $245 million globally on a $115 million budget, so it isn’t as big of a miss as I remember. That’s still probably not enough to break even in the theatrical window, when you factor in marketing costs…but it’s close. And it grossed a lot more even in the US than some titles with about ten times more coverage. Anyways, lots of preamble to say this one only did 4.5 million hours according to Nielsen, so it did make the charts, but on the low end. Here’s how it stacks up to other Peacock titles: Apple TV (née +) followed up their “success for them” Mayday with Matchbox The Movie. This one doesn’t look like a success even for them, but at least it’s not a miss. Apple/Skydance clearly tried to take advantage of the success of Barbie at the box office—let’s greenlight all the toy properties!!!—but of course, this didn’t make it to theaters. And it stars John Cena, who, as I argued earlier this summer, NEEDS to get his movies back in theaters. Anyways, this one has mixed-to-bad numbers. It missed the Samba TV and Nielsen charts in its first week, but did make Luminate with 7.1 million hours. That’s just enough to not be an outright miss, and about half what Mayday did earlier this summer. Speaking of Apple Studio’s Mayday, it ended up lasting five weeks on Luminate, which isn’t bad for Apple TV. On Nielsen, it had a three-week run, racking up 13.5 million hours total. Again, like Matchbox, the issue is the budget; I doubt that this viewership earned enough to justify that budget. Also, to be clear, neither of these films are “midflicks”; both should have gone to theaters. Toy Story 5 is not hanging around on the streaming charts on Disney+, so it’s not as leggy as either Zootopia 2 or Moana 2, and definitely not in the same class as Encanto. (It did make all the money at the box office, so Disney is going to be fine…) The Breadwinner on Netflix (from Sony) is down to 3.9 million hours in its third week. It only lasted for one week on the Samba TV charts. Netflix’s Doing Life had a smaller-than-normal binge release curve bounce, only going to 7.1 million hours from 6.0 to start, but it made Samba TV at fifth place in its second week. The Netflix documentary, The Widower: Til’ Death Do Us Part, also had a small binge release curve bounce to 6.5 million hours, but did make a second week on Samba TV. Meanwhile, Netflix’s Unabomber fell off after two weeks on Nielsen—which is not great at all—and Demon Slayer fell off after just one week. Over on Luminate, the two smaller titles The Swan: Behind the Mirror and Kill. Bury. Print both fell out of the Luminate top ten charts. The story of library film at the first of the month is the arrival of the Ice Age films on Netflix. Now, here’s a small example of optimizing your library that even Netflix could do better. Say you want to rent/license a new film series from Disney**.** A streamer could pay a big paycheck and then drop each Ice Age film on the exact same day of the month, the fourth of October. That’s one choice. In contrast, the streamer could have released each film one week apart, and make each one a mini-event for folks watching Ice Age films. Or even roll them out monthly. Netflix opted for the former strategy, and as a result, only three of the films made the Nielsen charts this week. The “Miss of the Week” goes to Tubi’s YA-ish horror film_, R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead 2_, which didn’t even make the Luminate charts like Tubi films usually do, or, should I say, “used to”? Tubi films, most of which are straight-to-streaming, used to reliably make the Luminate film charts (which only covers straight-to-streaming films), but a Tubi film hasn’t made it since August. The first Pumpkinhead got 1.4 million hours last year according to Luminate. As I wrote about this film before, it seems to be a bit muddled in terms of age: too scary for young kids but probably not scary enough for older kids. Speaking of Luminate, Netflix’s latest doc about a comic (expect more docs about comedians all month), Who Is Martin Mull?, flopped, getting just 200K and 700K hours according to Luminate. Three other film/special misses belonged to Hulu, including a standup special, Jamie Foxx: Take Care of Yourself, Neon’s latest horror film, Hokum, which made $17 million in the US, and a Family Guy Halloween special. (That last one was only 22 minutes, so it’s not a surprise it missed.) Finally, another Netflix standup special missed the charts, Mojo Brookzz: I Know You Lying missed too. I can confirm last week’s misses, most notably Paramount+’s Jackass: Best and Last, MUBI’s Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and HBO Max’s Evil Dead Burn. Television - I Can’t Visualize Nothing: The Kardashians Story Normally, in the mini-dive essays that open the Streaming Ratings Report, I focus on shows that do well or, at the very least, make the charts. Why? Because as I’ve said time and again, I can’t visualize nothing like, say, the Kardashians’ TV shows. Here’s the TV debuts chart for this week with a missing spot for The Kardashians, whose eighth season just landed on Hulu:
David Arquette brings ‘Scream’ milestone to Cedar Rapids
Wes Craven was almost fired, the first kiss wasn't easy, and “Scream 8” is on the way. David Arquette looks back on 30 years of Ghostface before his Oct. 25 Q&A at the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids.
Paramount takes over Netflix's Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades, plans reopening
LOS ANGELES — Skydance-owned Paramount Pictures has taken over the lease for the Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades and intends to reopen the cinema, which has been closed since the
Samuel L. Jackson's 'Tulsa King' spinoff 'Frisco King' gets premiere date — and Sylvester Stallone is back
Taylor Sheridan's new Paramount+ crime drama premieres Dec. 18, with Jackson reprising his role as hitman Russell Lee Washington Jr.
On cusp of merger, 'Digger bombs for Warner Bros., 'Verity' takes No. 1 at box office
On the cusp of the studio’s merger with Paramount, Warner Bros.
PARAMOUNT COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY, CREATING A NEW GLOBAL ENTERTAINMENT LEADER, SKYDANCE
Skydance Corporation (f/k/a Paramount Skydance Corporation) (NYSE: SKYD) ("Paramount") today announced the completion of its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (NASDAQ: WBD) ("WBD"), creating a combined company, named "Skydance." The company brings together two major film studios, two global streaming services, a premier television portfolio including CBS, HBO, and Paramount's and WBD's cable networks, two of the industry's most recognized news networks, CBS News and CNN, and a portfoli
Luis Silberwasser out at TNT Sports as CBS’s David Berson takes over Skydance’s combined sports group
The long-anticipated marriage of CBS Sports and TNT Sports now has a clear head of household, and it won’t be Luis Silberwasser. According to CNBC’s Alex Sherman, Silberwasser, chairman and CEO of TNT Sports, is exiting the soon-to-be combined Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, he told his staff in an email on Monday. CBS…
Read the memo Skydance product chief sent after Paramount-WBD merger
The product chief at Skydance said in a memo to staff after the Paramount and WBD merger that they will "move at a pace that matches our ambition.'
What does the combined Skydance, now in business, mean for Hollywood?
It's been just about a week since the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal closed. In the months ahead, Hollywood will determine its future.
Avatar Kuruk gets his own animated TV series in “Wave of Chaos” first look
Paramount+ revealed imagery of young Kuruk and his animal companion, Nikik.
David Ellison expects CBS to be in business with NFL for ‘foreseeable future’
Skydance CEO David Ellison is full speed ahead on a press tour to promote his freshly combined media company, which formally brought together Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery after a lengthy process earlier this week. Since the company’s formal combination, Ellison has fielded questions during a press conference and given a handful of interviews. Most…
Tony Gilroy Says Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger Will ‘Destroy’ a ‘Healthy and Beautiful Business’ in ‘The Name of Venture Capital’: ‘It’s Tragic’
Tony Gilroy blasted the “tragic” nature of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger at the world premiere of his new film, “Behemoth!” Produced on a $36 million budget, “Behemoth!” is representative of the m...
Paramount and Warner Bros. to become one Hollywood giant: Skydance. Here's how we got here
Skydance-owned Paramount is expected to close its $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday. The new Hollywood giant will have a shorter nametag: “Skydance.” But it marks one of...
Paramount-Warners Mega Deal Closes Creating Skydance Hollywood Giant
The combined company, Skydance, will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange this week.
European Leaders Mostly Optimistic About Paramount-WB's Future
European industry leaders are cautiously optimistic now that Paramount is about to complete its takeover of Warner Bros., but there are many unknowns.
Box Office: Elizabeth Holmes movie ‘You Can See Everything’ is now a hit in theaters too
Paramount's “Street Fighter” leads the box office this weekend, earning $31 million from 3,575 theaters in the U.S. and Canada. However, the spotlight is on the Elizabeth Holmes documentary “You
'Street Fighter' wins N. America box office, buzzy doc stuns in 2nd
Paramount's action film "Street Fighter" karate-chopped the competition this weekend with a $31 million debut at the North American box...
Why Taylor Sheridan signed with NBCUniversal after years at Paramount
Taylor Sheridan has had a long and successful stint with Paramount that included popular TV shows like "Landman," "Lioness" and "Tulsa King."
Paramount, Warner Bros. will be named Skydance after merger
David Ellison said the merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will be called Skydance — the moniker he picked nearly two decades ago when the tech scion began building his
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David Ellison names Skydance team that includes prominent Warner executives
Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison has rolled out his Skydance executive team, which includes several senior Warner Bros. executives who will segue into new roles at the soon-to-be merged
Entertainment: Paramount closes deal with Warner Bros.
Paramount has closed its $81 billion dollar purchase of Warner Brothers Discovery, forming a new Hollywood giant now called "Skydance".
CD Projekt Red Says Paramount Cyberpunk Film Will Not Retell the Game
CD Projekt Red's joint-CEO says the Paramount live-action Cyberpunk film will tell a new story in Night City, not a one-to-one retelling…
Skydance Offers Buyouts Amid Paramount Merger Layoff Fears
Skydance offers employee buyouts and mandates five-day office work as the $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. merger raises layoff fears.
Paramount+ Acquires Rights to Moonbug Series From the ‘Blippi’ and ‘CoComelon’ Universes (EXCLUSIVE)
Paramount+ has acquired non-exclusive rights to several kids franchises from Moonbug Entertainment, including series from the “CoComelon” and “Blippi” universes. Under the new deal, some Moonbug serie...
Weekend Watchlist: What's new in theaters, on streaming
Ready, set, binge! Here's a look at some of the new movies and TV shows coming to theaters and streaming services this weekend:Netflix TNCMS.AdManager.render({region: 'fixed-big-ad-top-asset', slot: 1, fold: "above"}); The One About Matthew Perry: This docuseries follows the life of the Friends actor Matthew Perry.SCTV: The Greatest Show You've Never Heard Of: Watch this new documentary about the classic Canadian comedy series.HBOThe Gilded Age: Season 4 of the New York-set drama series makes its premiere. Paramount+ Dexter: Resurrection: The second season of the Dexter sequel series stars Michael C. Hall as the titular serial killer.Apple TVNocturne: Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz star in this new crime drama series about a town under attack by an imprisoned serial killer. Movie theatersThe Only Living Pickpocket in New York: John Turturro leads this film where he plays a pickpocket who supports his wife in New York City. That’s all for this week’s Weekend Watchlist – happy streaming!Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved. Thank you for reading kmaland.comAt KMA, we attempt to be accurate in our reporting. If you see a typo or mistake in a story, please contact us by emailing kmaradio@kmaland.com.
Skydance offers voluntary buyouts to some employees
Skydance is offering a one-time voluntary buyout offer to certain employees, as Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merge operations.
Glen Powell Says He Doesn't Talk Politics: 'My Calling Is Elsewhere'
The actor told Esquire that engaging in political conversations was "not presently possible" and that Paramount "let go of an entire marketing department a month before ['The Running Man'] came out in the middle of a merger."
CBS Sports Adds U.S. Spanish-Language Rights For Concacaf Champions Cup on Paramount+
CBS Sports Adds U.S. Spanish-Language Rights For Champions Cup
Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery Officially Merge Into Skydance
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery complete their $110 billion merger, creating Skydance, a new global media and entertainment giant.