30 films a year in cinema. Sounds great, but how? There's no strategy.
Remember when I used to just be able to talk about TV in this newsletter?
Three years. That’s how long David Ellison’s Paramount is committing to its claims of 30 theatrical features a year if successful in its merger with Warner Bros.
Of course, all it takes is one bad year for a studio to completely dump a strategy and pivot in a new direction;. 30 films for years 1-3, then once the obligation ends, maybe that becomes 30 films, but 12 of them are direct to streaming. And then when that doesn’t work, the monthly streaming originals remain, but it becomes nine big tentpole theatrical releases. And then…
A three-year contractually enforceable commitment has been made to US cinema chains AMC Entertainment and Regal Cinemas. This is the news from Bloomberg, which reports that the deal would see Paramount commit to an exclusive 45-day theatrical windows with a further commitment to keeping the theatrical films off streaming services for at least 90 days.
There are two problems with David Ellison’s continued pitch for 30 theatrical releases a year:
A three-year commitment is practically no time at all. It’s just enough time to pay lip service and dip their toe in the water to see if a 30-film release strategy yields a Backrooms or two to prop the ‘strategy’ up.
I used the term ‘strategy,’ but that’s really my biggest issue here. Ellison and his team are talking about the commitment to 30 films, but what they aren’t actively talking about is an actual strategy around this.
It’s a big, bold promise, but with almost nothing in the way of substance to back it up. It would be like a government saying they have a plan to improve education and build x number of new schools. But voters want to know where the money is coming from, how the system will be fixed, where the schools will be built, what sort of schools they will be, etc etc.
If there is a strategy, it isn’t clearly being communicated.
Lucas Shaw, one of the journalists credited for the Bloomberg piece over the weekend, wrote in his newsletter this morning:
Ellison has made similar promises for months but has struggled to convince people. Disney assured people its acquisition of Fox’s movie studio would be good for the movie business, but it has suppressed output.
He is putting his commitments in writing to reassure the skeptics. Should he fail to fulfill his commitment, he will face penalties. The exact details are murky.
This kind of offer hasn’t appeased the attorney general of California, who said these kinds of commitments, known as behavioral remedies, aren’t enough. They are hard to enforce. Even the theater chains would admit they are unlikely to fine one of their biggest partners a bunch of money.
Yet AMC CEO Adam Aron and Regal CEO Eduardo Acuna are ultimately making a long-term bet. They think this deal will close and the lawsuits will fail. Governments all over the world have blessed the merger.
If this deal is going to happen, it’s better for it to happen now. A long, drawn-out lawsuit will only weaken both companies. And, assuming this deal does close, these theater chains want billionaire media mogul David Ellison to look upon them as allies, not adversaries.
Murky details, support from those who can’t afford to take the gamble that Ellison won’t prevail, and penalties that are unlikely to ever be enforced.
It gets us back to that strategy that Ellison and co aren’t communicating. This, from Variety, speaks well to how fraught this strategy is:
You don’t have to take my word for the fact that a bigger slate doesn’t necessarily translate into more revenue. Paramount has acknowledged it.
Paramount’s 2025 film slate nearly doubled from eight films in 2025 to 15 this year. This year, Paramount has told Wall Street it expects “significantly lower theatrical revenue year-over-year due to lower average box office revenue per film across more releases.” A big reason is a tough year-over-year comparison because of Tom Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” blockbuster in 2025, which took in almost $600 million at the global box office.
Netflix’s My Brilliant Career marketing ploy
Back in the olden days of the Internet, no new film or TV show would launch without a digital presence for it. And that presence was almost always just a website with some photo galleries, behind the scenes assets, and trailers. Sometimes the sites would be used as a content destination to further the mystery surrounding the movie/show, with case files or other nonsense that never actually furthered the experience of the film.
There was a whiff of that around an effort by Netflix’s local PR team Organic Publicity in launching a Substack for My Brilliant Career, an Australian original launching later this week based on the iconic Australian book by Miles Franklin.
But while those earlier digital platform extensions were a bit lame, this has a vibe that feels more in line with the literary vibe of the show.
My Brilliant Career: My Way is an essay series inspired by My Brilliant Career, the Netflix adaptation of Miles Franklin’s timeless novel and her heroine Sybylla, who would have loved Substack.
You bought the product and are the product
One of those obnoxious phrases I got pretty tired of hearing in the mid 2010s would involve a finger wave at social media users with the advice that with a free platform, users are the product. I don’t think there were many users who didn’t understand that without the need for the finger wave.
These same lame-o’s these days rabbit on about the ‘enshittification’ of things. We get it. You read an essay on Wired and have such insight.
More interesting to me right now is the products being sold to consumers where the customer is still being commoditised.
Here’s Elias Vistontay writing for the SMH about TV platforms selling user behaviour data. This isn’t a new issue, but it is good reading articles like this in mainstream publications.
According to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data prepared for this masthead, TV prices have dropped steeply over the past decade, down 73 per cent between June 2016 and June 2026 - interrupted only by a 2022 Covid supply-chain blip – despite steady economy-wide inflation of 32 per cent over the same period.
This means a $2000 TV in 2016 now costs just $537, despite $2000 in 2016 terms having a purchasing power of about $2632 in today’s money. Some of that is due to advances in manufacturing.
However, this affordability relies on secret operating system technology that Swinburne University digital media professor Ramon Lobato calls “basically a form of spyware.”
“We expect our viewing to be private, but TV is now becoming part of a larger digital ad-tech system,” Lobato said.
What I like about this article is that it addresses the idea that people probably feel that if they are spending $500 plus to buy a TV, there is an assumption that they aren’t going to be squeezed for more profit by the TV manufacturer. After all, electronics goods over time just get cheaper. Right…?
Beyond disguised ads, TVs now come equipped with Automated Content Recognition (ACR) technology to harvest and sell user data. Enabled by default during set-up, ACR takes a screenshot every second of whatever is displayed – including web browsing, streaming apps, gaming, DVDs or mirrored laptops – matching it to content databases.
“The major manufacturers have invested significantly in ACR tech over the last decade,” Lobato said of the technology that can recognise specific series, live sports and gaming titles being played.
News Desk
Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick confirmed Grand Theft Auto VI has made the case against shipping on a disc, arguing discs “don’t really make sense” when most players connect online to register anyway. Read: Polygon
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said Mindhunter ended not because of its budget but because David Fincher got too busy to make a third season, adding he “would have loved” to see one. Read: Collider
Jake T. Austin said he was disappointed to be left out of the Wizards of Waverly Place revival, a claim co-star David Henrie and the showrunner disputed, insisting Austin turned down repeated offers to return. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
Disney has greenlit Hidden Heroes: A Descendants Story for Disney Channel and Disney+, a musical spin-off. Read: thefutoncritic
Justice Smith and Charlie Gillespie have joined Heated Rivalry season two, set to get hot and heavy when the HBO Max hockey romance returns in Q2 2027. Read: thefutoncritic
Will Estes will reprise his Blue Bloods role as Jamie Reagan in the second season of CBS spin-off Boston Blue. Read: Deadline
Letterboxd apologised after a Sunday outage logged users out and locked them from their accounts for roughly six hours before service was restored. My followers needed to know I was watching that 1934 Barbara Stanwyck picture. Read: The Hollywood Reporter
Trailer Park
Outer Banks returns for its fifth and final season on Netflix August 20.
City of God: The Fight Rages On returns for season 2 on HBO Max (in the US) this November. ABW notes that we are yet to see season one outside of the US, which is hugely disappointing.
The Secret Woman debuts on Netflix August 28.
A woman with memory loss discovers she has a family and a shipping empire. She returns to a seemingly perfect past to uncover the truth about why she left.
Gravesend, an indie crime series that streams on Prime Video, returns for season 3 in the US fall. The show is notable for just how many actors from the Sopranos have been cast in it, notably the very recently departed Vincent Pastore.
Joining the cast for season three: Shaquille O’Neal, Tony Danza, Talia Shire, Dominic Chianese, and Vincent Curatola. They join existing cast members: William DeMeo, Chazz Palminteri, Armand Assante, Pastore, Mario Cantone, Tony Darrow, and Chuck Zito.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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