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Will TikTok take Saltburn from bathtubs to Baftas?

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Links to Henry Jenkins and the concept of spreadable media.

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Saltburn has been a slow-burn success story of awards season, having far more impact on streaming than it did in cinemas. Gross-out scenes involving bathtubs and graveyards helped it go viral, ultimately scoring it five nominations at this Sunday's Bafta Film Awards.

Over the past few weeks, home film viewing took a spicier turn for many.

Alongside the usual festive favourites, those slumped on the sofa could also pick from director Emerald Fennell's latest feature, Saltburn.

A modern ode to Brideshead Revisited and The Talented Mr. Ripley, it sees Barry Keoghan star as Oliver, an Oxford student who becomes depravedly transfixed by his wealthy friend Felix, played by Jacob Elordi.

Despite a limited cinema release a month prior, it was only when released on streaming that Saltburn really caught fire.

According to Amazon, viewership nearly quadrupled in the month following the film's opening weekend on the streaming platform.

Social media fanned the flames, with Saltburn-themed videos racking up over 4bn views on TikTok alone by the New Year.

This online hunger, assured by Elordi bath bombs and candles hitting the internet, turned Saltburn into "a bona fide viral hit" wrote Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times.

The film has maintained an "outsized amount of attention" Wilkinson added. "People keep talking about it".

Saltburn's unconventional route to awards season reflects changing viewing habits and a film industry in flux.

No-strings convenience?

In some ways, Saltburn's gossipy mass appeal seems obvious.

Elordi, enjoying his breakthrough Hollywood year, previously captured Gen Z hearts in the envelope-pushing Euphoria. Keoghan meanwhile, is a recent Oscar nominee for The Banshees of Inisherin.

Throw in the lustful script full of shock and decadence, mixed with a shameless dollop of 00s millennial nostalgia, and all bases appear covered.

But why then did the film only truly find its audience on streaming?

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The answer lies partly in cost and convenience.

Casey Kelleher, an author and Prime subscriber from London, first came across Saltburn through the viral TikToks of shocked reactions to the controversial scenes.

She says that whilst she loves movie-going, watching from home through her Amazon subscription "did feel like the cheaper option than going to the cinema", especially given the current cost-of-living crisis.

Laura Cruise, a life coach from Bedford, faced a slightly different problem.

"My daughter and I wanted to see Saltburn at the cinema but our local only had a teeny tiny number of showings for it, all of which were fully booked," she explains.

"We ended up watching it around Boxing Day on a post-Christmas sofa day".

Laura's experience in being left little choice but to stream the film is no accident on the part of Amazon, who co-produced the project with MGM.

This investment assured that, once the film met theatre screening requirements for awards season eligibility, it would stream exclusively on Amazon Prime, making it a starry vehicle to push subscriptions.

Saltburn's shortened theatrical release window underpinned this - particularly as the film performed well in its theatre showings.

Global box office takings topped £20m according to Amazon - a respectable return given its relatively short run. It also took just over £5m domestically in the UK, out-performing recent awards season films of a similar ilk such as The Menu and Babylon, Gower Street analytics tell the BBC.

Saltburn's example also reflects increasing experimentation with traditional release strategies, upended during the pandemic.

This is especially true for streamer awards season contenders says Dade Hayes, business writer at Deadline and co-author of Binge Times.

"With awards titles like the Oscar-nominated Maestro on Netflix, the company gives films splashy premieres at festivals and pulls out a lot of promotional stops," he explains.

"But ultimately the pattern winds up being a version of Saltburn - a short stint in theaters, generally 2 to 4 weeks, followed by a high-profile arrival on streaming as 'free' titles."

And this current strategy may change further as streamers face an unsteady future.

He says the "tech-industry playbook" delivered big programme budgets but less investment in "the basics of programme making".

The knock-on effect means best practice for successfully shepherding a film towards awards season has "never seemed less certain" says Hayes.

"The industry over-corrected during the pandemic and did damage to its long-lucrative theatrical model."

Audiences 'now star and direct'

Audience habits have shifted in response, with cinema box office returns still materially down 30% compared to pre-pandemic levels, according to Tom Harrington from Enders Analysis.

Add marketing costs on top of this, he says, and there is "often very little point in studios releasing anything other than the biggest films in the traditional full theatrical sense".

This vicious circle sparks sequels and reboots, leaving little theatre space for "traditional art-house movies" like Saltburn, instead left to find an audience on streaming says media commentator Ian Whittaker.

But post-pandemic, viewers chose a different script by streaming from home. This audience power continues to grow thanks to user-generated social media, which became the nerve-centre of Saltburn's blistering virality.

In the case of Saltburn, those explicit scenes became the talking point for some, while for others it was the recreation of the closing dance scene, visiting Saltburn castle or watching Felix-style rich kids having a chance to flaunt their homes.

But whilst online virality provides a thrilling publicity burst, it is not necessarily the golden bullet for the industry. Artistically there's a danger that messages within films can get lost in the buzz, commercially it generates nowhere near the security of sold out-theatres.

The online world is even beginning to seep offline into awards season. Ellis-Bextor is to open this year's Bafta ceremony with Murder on the Dancefloor. It is easy to imagine the camera cutting to Keoghan. A nudge, a wink. None of it planned by the industry.

The audience is now star and director.

The Bafta Film Awards take place on Sunday.

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Will TikTok take Saltburn from bathtubs to Baftas?

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The film, a viral streaming hit, marks a new era for audiences, viewing habits - and awards season.

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Taylor Swift Songs are Bringing Back a Vinyl Revolution That May Change the Face of $55B Music Industry Forever

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Making points around the development of music distribution methods and links to retro music forms. Also links into the Gerd Leonhard Theory which aims to make the product unique and desirable for fans.

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When we think about something Taylor Swift cannot do or achieve, absolutely nothing comes to mind. Already helmed as the trendsetter in the modern music industry, Swift has numerous achievements to her name. From being the first woman to have four albums in the Billboard Chart Top 10 simultaneously to being the female artist with the most concert attendees, Swift is riding the high tide in her career lately with no plans to slow down.

Taylor Swift Eyes a Vinyl Revival

The phase of Taylor Swift being just another singer and songwriter is long gone. The global icon and her career trajectory are an inspiration to many. Adding another feather to her cap, Swift is on her way to bringing back vinyl records to the market. Reminiscent of a golden era when people used to buy and collect valuable vinyl discs of their favorite tracks, vinyl records have not seen such a rise in sales since the 1990s.

Also Read: Taylor Swift Allegedly Got Kanye West Kicked Out of the Stadium after a Ridiculous Stunt to Defame Her in Super Bowl

To calculate inflation and deduce economic statistics, the Office for National Statistics received vinyl records this year along with other important products that help determine the intricacies of prices and demand. This itself shows how vinyl is on the revival curve and will make a comeback soon. 1989 (Taylor's Version) was the highest-selling vinyl record of 2023 with the UK's overall vinyl sales witnessing an increase after 1990.

As reported by BBC, the last time the ONS got their hands on vinyl records for the inflation check was in 1992. With the music industry burgeoning and aiming to touch about $60 billion this year, we see an intrinsic need among people to be able to interact with the music they love. Since music is intangible, and after the pandemic we have experienced, people are looking to be able to touch and feel the records and amass a considerable collection.

Also Read: Taylor Swift Can Only Dream of This Unique Record Billie Eilish Owns After She Wins Her Second Oscars

Taylor Swift's Record Vinyl Sales

With over 575,000 sales, Swift holds the record for garnering the highest vinyl album sales in the first week of the release of Midnights, with Speak Now (Taylor's Version) following not that far behind with 268,500 vinyl record sales. As reported by Forbes, the Bejeweled star had a 7% share in the total vinyl sales of last year. Being the bestselling musician and the highest-streamed singer is just the tip of the iceberg as Swift's influence on the music industry and the world in extension runs deeper than we have deduced so far.

In total, Swift sold 3.484 million vinyl albums in 2023. Her sales not only reflect her stature in the industry but also point to the bigger picture that is witnessing a resurgence in vinyl sales across the globe. Her version of the album 1989 is not just the bestselling record of 2023, but also the only record to cross the one million sales mark. We wouldn't have imagined the impact of Swift's unparalleled influence in our wildest dreams, and yet the singer continues to leave her fans enchanted.

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Taylor Swift Songs are Bringing Back a Vinyl Revolution That May Change the Face of $55B Music Industry Forever

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The phase of Taylor Swift being just another singer and songwriter is long gone. The global icon and her career trajectory are an inspiration to many.

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Two-Thirds of U.S. Adults Would Rather Wait to Watch Movies on Streaming

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An article containing stats and data pertaining to how people prefer to exhibit their film through streaming convenience rather than through theatrical release.

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Two-Thirds of U.S. Adults Would Rather Wait to Watch Movies on Streaming

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Exclusive: A new HarrisX poll finds that two-thirds of US adults would rather wait to watch a movie on streaming than go to a theater.

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'I, Daniel Blake' Producer Rebecca O'Brien Says UK Indie Film Sector Will "Die" Without "Additional Fiscal Support"

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Will funding be the tripping point for independent film makers in the UK?

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"There's market failure because the streamers came in, high-end TV got higher end, and Hollywood arrived. And they took a lot of our investors away," Sixteen Films producer Rebecca O'Brien concluded when quizzed on the state of the UK indie film sector during an appearance at the UK's British Film & High-End TV Inquiry.

She added: "Some additional fiscal support for the sector is essential. I think we could really die without it."

O'Brien appeared in front of the bipartisan committee this morning, where she discussed her decades-long experience producing features with Ken Loach, navigating the independent market of international co-productions and financing, and what must change for the UK indie industry to push forward.

The session began with O'Brien being asked how she and her team at Sixteen Films have managed to successfully produce and land distribution for the films of the company's founder, Ken Loach.

"When we made I, Daniel Blake, for instance, we didn't know that it would be successful in Japan. We thought we were making a little film set in the northeast, which was telling stories about certain parts of the community at that time," she said.

"We wanted to make it because we thought it was an important story to tell. So you never know what story might work. You don't know until you've done it, which is why we need the research and development to get stories up and running."

O'Brien added that the work Sixteen Films has completed has been highly dependent on their European partners, who she said have been integral in financing and selling projects across the world. The company has produced many of its recent films with Vincent Maraval's Goodfellas (formerly Wild Bunch) and the Paris-based Why Not Productions.

"Every film I have done in the last 25 years has been a European co-production," she said before adding that it has become much harder, in recent years, to source funding from the continent. O'Brien articulated her point by referring to Harvest, her latest production credit directed by Athina Rachel Tsangari and starring Caleb Landry Jones.

"I've had to go scour Europe to get the funding for the film. We were unable to raise money from the U.S.," she said.

"It stars an ensemble of British actors and one American. All new talent and it's set in a medieval Village at some point in the past, and it's a week in the life of this community where a stranger arrives and things go horribly wrong. So that's the story, but to make this film it's a UK, French, German, Greek, and U.S. co-production, with little bits of money patchworked together from all of those different countries from their public funds, pre-sales, and little tax credits here and there."

O'Brien said the production also has private investors alongside cash from Creative Scotland and BBC Film.

"It's absolutely exhausting to put something like that together. If we had an enhanced tax credit, for instance, I wouldn't have had to defer my fee. We would have been in a position where we can now finish the film with confidence. But it's been a real struggle just because we haven't quite got enough money to do it."

Cash and public funding were two prominent talking points throughout the session, alongside the development of new British talent within the film and high-end TV space.

"There is a market failure because where inward investment has been incredibly successful for this country, it's also taken away a lot of talent. It's hoovered up them, and we have to keep running behind and picking up new talent, inventing new talent to fill the gap, which we're very happy to do," O'Brien said.

"But a lower budget film can't afford to have big British stars because they're all probably scheduled within an inch of their lives working on Hollywood films at Pinewood. So that is a problem."

O'Brien added that indie UK productions simply "cannot afford to pay what the streamers pay and what the inward investors can pay their actors and crew."

The I, Daniel Blake, and Sorry We Missed You producer concluded that the British government could "show confidence" in the UK indie sector by supporting producers with an increased tax credit.

"If I had an additional 15% going into the market, that would give me more confidence," she said.

"It gives me the confidence to say to investors, 'Look here, I've got 40-45% of the budget. You're only going to have to come up with 10%.' It makes me it gives me broad shoulders. It makes me less subservient to the money. It makes me more confident with my projects and ideas, and say, I've got this great idea, and this is how we can fund it."

O'Brien added that she believes a higher incentive for producers would "bring private investment more happily to the table" because "they're taking less of a risk."

"I think that's how it works," she said.

In his last budget, UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced plans to reform the film and TV relief from a rebate of 25% to a new "expenditure credit" of 34%. The change was set from January 2024 and represents a 0.5% real-terms increase in the tax break.

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'I, Daniel Blake' Producer Rebecca O'Brien Says UK Indie Film Sector Will "Die" Without "Additional Fiscal Support"

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O'Brien appeared in front of the UK's British Film & High-End TV Inquiry.

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How to Sell Your Movie to an Audience — Film Marketing Strategies [Stages of Filmmaking Ep. 5]

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A video explaining film marketing strategies and the process that film makers go through in this process.

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How to Sell Your Movie to an Audience — Film Marketing Strategies [Stages of Filmmaking Ep. 5]

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A Guide to Funding Your Film — How Development Works in Film [Stages of Filmmaking, Ep 1]

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A video explaining how film ideas get made and how the funding structures impact the types and kinds of film put into production.

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A Guide to Funding Your Film — How Development Works in Film [Stages of Filmmaking, Ep 1]

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Film Production Explained — Each Step of the Production Process [Stages of Filmmaking, Ep 3]

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A video which takes you through the process of making and creating film in the production stages.

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Film Production Explained — Each Step of the Production Process [Stages of Filmmaking, Ep 3]

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What impact could the new tax credit have for the future of independent film making?

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Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100+ industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget. https://t.co/OUrNrmHhEh

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BFI and film industry welcome landmark move with increased expenditure credit to support UK film

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Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100 industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget.

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Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100+ industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget. https://t.co/OUrNrmHhEh

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Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100+ industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget. https://t.co/OUrNrmHhEh
— BFI (@BFI) March 6, 2024

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BFI and film industry welcome landmark move with increased expenditure credit to support UK film

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.entities.urls[].description
Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100 industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100+ industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget. https://t.co/OUrNrmHhEh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100+ industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget. https://t.co/OUrNrmHhEh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100+ industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget. https://t.co/OUrNrmHhEh

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].title
BFI and film industry welcome landmark move with increased expenditure credit to support UK film

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.entities.urls[].description
Christopher Nolan, Barbara Broccoli, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton and over 100 industry heavyweights welcome the increased tax credit for UK independent film announced today in the Spring Budget.

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Barbie 2? Warner Bros boss says she would 'love' to make sequel

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Following the success of Barbie film, does the industry have space and time for a follow up movie and potentially a franchise. This concept based around Curran and Seatons theory developing ways of generating money and interest.

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Warner Bros boss Pam Abdy has said the film studio would "love" to make Barbie 2, after director Greta Gerwig's movie "ignited audiences around the world."

The film took $1.4bn (£1.1bn) at the box office globally, making it the most successful movie of 2023.

Abdy, the co-chair and CEO of Warner Bros Motion Picture Group, said the film had "smashed so many records".

She added both parties were "always talking" about a follow-up, but that it would ultimately be Gerwig's decision.

Earlier this week, Gerwig said she is open to the idea, if she can find an "undertow" for the film.

With the Oscars on Sunday, Abdy said "of course" it hurt that Margot Robbie missed out on a nomination for best actress, and Gerwig for best director. She's a "visionary" and "one of the best filmmakers working today", Abdy said.

When it comes to Academy voters, Abdy told me: "I don't want to say that they are sexist".

But she does worry that not enough of them actually watched the movie.

The Academy has worked to diversify its 10,000-strong membership in recent years. But it's still a predominantly white, male organisation.

Abdy and I were talking at the Warner Bros. backlot in Burbank, Los Angeles - 110 acres of sound stages, painted facades and recognisable streets where some of cinema's best loved movies have been shot.

This studio celebrated its centenary last year and every inch of the lot feels familiar. We all really have seen it before.

The café in Casablanca where Humphrey Bogart's Rick and Ingrid Bergman's Ilsa kindled their Parisian romance sits around the corner from the stately courthouse used in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo.

My Fair Lady's Covent Garden was created in a nearby soundstage.

We pass a building adorned with a zigzag of metal fire escape steps where Tom Cruise was chased in Steven Spielberg's Minority Report.

Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling walked along these backlot streets in La La Land.

And Christopher Nolan filled a vast soundstage with water for Dunkirk.

The Oppenheimer director spent most of his career with Warner Bros, shooting the Dark Knight Trilogy, Inception, Dunkirk, Interstellar and other classics.

But in 2020 Nolan walked away, furious about the company's decision to put a year's worth of new movies onto its streaming platform.

Nolan then made his Bafta-winning and heavily tipped Oscar favourite about the theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer with Universal, a bitter blow for the rival studio and one they seem to have learned from.

Abdy says she "can't judge what they were doing" - it was before her time - but thinks Warner Bros. was trying to adapt "in the middle of a pandemic". However, she accepts it lost one of its biggest stars and "of course" would like to woo Nolan back.

Pam Abdy began her career at Jersey Films, the company behind Pulp Fiction, first as a receptionist and then Danny DeVito's assistant. The director and actor picked her, she thinks, because he liked her strong New Jersey accent.

She drove DeVito to work each day and "when he was off studying lines, I would go sneak around" on the sets, hanging out "to absorb every single thing I could and understand how each department worked and what they needed to do in a day".

"I learned everything there, I really did," she says.

Abdy rose to become president and has since worked in many top roles including at Paramount Pictures, MGM and now Warner Bros. It makes her one of the most powerful women in Hollywood.

She and her co-chair Michael De Luca were hired by Warner Bros less than two years ago, with a mission to restore the studio to its past glories.

Warner Bros hasn't won a best picture Oscar since Argo in 2013.

The company is part of Warner Bros Discovery, owner of amongst other media titles CNN, the Discovery channel and HBO. The TV side of the business has been struggling with a sharp decline in advertising revenue.

The movie side has also had its own problems.

It didn't just squander the relationship with Nolan, it laid off staff and made some embarrassing, high profile decisions, including cancelling Batgirl, a movie which had reportedly cost $90m (£70m) to make.

The new regime has set about luring big names, the biggest so far being Tom Cruise who's formed a new partnership with Warner Bros.

Abdy wouldn't tell me what Cruise is making for her with director Alejandro González Iñárritu - it's still top secret - except to say it "deserves to be seen on the biggest screens possible all around the world".

She seems to be signalling that the studio has listened to Nolan.

He previously told me he makes his films for the big screen and that, when streaming happens too immediately, "it's not good for the health of cinemas".

Abdy agrees, although she doesn't think "one size fits all". She says they've made "a shift" when it comes to the window between when a movie is released in cinemas and when it appears on the streamers.

The studio is now telling filmmakers "we all believe in the theatrical experience" (American movie-speak for films shown on the big screen).

"You're in a room, it's dark, you're with an audience, you're laughing, you're crying, you're getting scared together, you're experiencing something together."

Abdy has a good track record, including overseeing Oscar-winning films The Revenant, The Big Short and Birdman. Her tip to best picture glory is "picking the best director".

But according to a new UCLA Hollywood diversity report, only three female directors were at the helm of movies with budgets of $100m (£78m) or more, compared with 25 men. Directors of colour are slowly getting more opportunities on bigger projects, but women of colour continually get left out.

Abdy calls the slow progress for women in film "frustrating". She says it's all about educating younger people that they have "an entry way" into the business and believes that is happening.

But she also concedes: "We have a lot of work to do."

For now, she and De Luca are riding high on the commercial success of Barbie and have locked Margot Robbie and her production company LuckyChap in for future movies.

"We feel like their collision of art and commerce is just magical."

And Abdy and De Luca have reintroduced one of the traditions devised by the company's co-founder Jack Warner who would present a key to the lot to his star talent - including Marilyn Monroe - to welcome them to the studio.

They recently presented Robbie with her own key. De Luca had found some of the originals for sale on eBay.

"Margot's is actually Marilyn Monroe's key."

As she looks ahead to Sunday's Oscars ceremony, Abdy optimistically says there's "always a chance" that Barbie could win best picture.

The smart money is on Nolan's Oppenheimer. She says audiences have a relationship with Nolan's "complex" storytelling and they "show up" for his films - this one "felt like an event".

She believes the film industry had previously fallen into a rut - "everything had to be a superhero movie" - but says that isn't what people actually want.

If Barbie and Oppenheimer prove anything, it's that there are big audiences for different types of stories, if the filmmakers get them right.

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Barbie 2? Warner Bros boss says she would 'love' to make sequel

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Pam Abdy tells the BBC the studio would be keen to make a sequel to the hugely successful Barbie film.

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Five Nights At Freddy's Has Already Made More Than Its $25 Million Budget

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https://www.thegamer.com/five-nights-at-freddys-made-more-than-budget-already-25-million-streaming-rights/

Interesting to do with regulation and streaming. The company making the Five Nights At Freddy’s movie knew that it would likely end up with a 15 certificate in U.K. (and similar in other countries) which would exclude a lot of the kids that wanted to see the film because they’d watched the game related stuff on You Tube. So they focused on selling the Streaming Rights instead and made their $25m budget back before the film had even been released. Because streaming sites  knew that kids would pester their parents to find it on streaming as they couldn’t go to the cinema to see it.

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Blumhouse's founder and CEO, Jason Blum, has revealed that the Five Nights at Freddy's movie has already made back its $25 million budget, despite not even being out for another few weeks.

Considering how rabid the Five Nights at Freddy's fandom can be and how well the horror industry is doing in cinemas right now, it seems likely that Blumhouse is going to have a hit on its hands with the upcoming Five Nights at Freddy's movie. As it turns out, though, it doesn't really matter how many people go to see it, as it's already earned back its production costs thanks to the sale of its streaming and theatrical distribution rights.

Fortune recently interviewed Jason Blum about his work on the new Exorcist film, The Exorcist: Believer, and how his studio has been making "the most profitable movies in Hollywood" despite their lower-than-average budgets. Although the interview mainly focuses on The Exorcist and some of Blumhouse's previous films, Five Nights at Freddy's is mentioned towards the end, with a rather interesting tidbit that suggests it's going to be a success no matter what.

Fortune notes that Five Nights at Freddy's is an expensive project for Blumhouse at an estimated budget of around $25 million, a lot of which was apparently due to the cost of the animatronics, which were made by Jim Henson Studios. Although this higher-than-normal budget might seem worrying, Blum shrugged it off by revealing that the movie had already made back its production costs, despite not being out until October 27.

Blum didn't share any specific figures with Fortune, but he confirmed that the studio had "more than" made back its production costs from the sale of Five Nights at Freddy's streaming and theatrical distribution rights. It's not clear if the film's marketing was included in that estimate, but even if it is then it looks like FNAF doesn't need to do much at all to be considered a success for Blumhouse.

Even if it's not much of a worry for Blumhouse, it looks like Five Nights at Freddy's is going to be a big hit, with some sites even projecting between $33 and $44 million in domestic earnings on opening weekend, which would have earned Blumhouse more than the film's budget in a matter of days. When you also factor in the earnings from merchandise (which the Five Nights at Freddy's movie already has tons of), it seems almost inevitable that it's going to do well at the box office. We just have to hope that the quality of the movie stands tall next to its sales.

Next: Video Game Preservation Feels Impossible In Our Online World

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Five Nights At Freddy's Has Already Made More Than Its $25 Million Budget

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Looks like Five Nights at Freddy's is on its way to being a hit.

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The Invention of "the Male Gaze" - The New Yorker

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The Invention of "the Male Gaze" - The New Yorker

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In 1973, the film theorist Laura Mulvey used concepts from psychoanalysis to forge a feminist polemic and a lasting shorthand for gender dynamics onscreen.

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First 5 Minutes of "We Are Lady Parts" | Peacock Original

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Synopsis: "We Are Lady Parts" is an anarchic and irreverent music comedy following a Muslim female punk band – called Lady Parts – who are on a mission to find a lead guitarist and maybe, just maybe, get a proper gig. The music comedy series shows the highs and lows of the band as seen through the eyes of Amina Hussein – a geeky microbiology PhD student, who is recruited to be their unlikely lead guitarist. Amina has never, ever met girls like this before, and soon gets swept up in their joyful, anarchic energy and punk spirit. Will she be the key to the band’s success? And – will she finally find a husband?

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First 5 Minutes of "We Are Lady Parts" | Peacock Original

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Making of The Gentlemen | Guy Ritchie | Netflix

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Watch the opening sequence of this new TV series by Guy Richie. British male soldiers dealing with Turkish locals on Syrian border. Followed by Upper Class English Mansion with rich family discussing the impending death of their father.

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Making of The Gentlemen | Guy Ritchie | Netflix

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Box Office: 'Civil War' Earns Highest Opening Weekend for A24 - Rotten Tomatoes

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A24’s first venture into bigger budget films with an estimated £50 million budget and established names. Does this go against the A24 principles? Or are they seeing another opportunity and gap in the current climate of filmmaking.

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Box Office: 'Civil War' Earns Highest Opening Weekend for A24 - Rotten Tomatoes

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Alex Garland's unsettling thriller dethrones Godzilla x Kong, but can it surpass Everything Everywhere All at Once as A24's highest-grossing film overall?

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Mr Bates vs Post Office drama lost £1m, ITV boss says

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ITV made a loss of about £1m on its agenda-setting drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office, despite it being the UK's most-watched TV show of the year so far, the broadcaster has revealed.
The four-part drama, which aired in January, showed the human toll on hundreds of sub-postmasters who were wrongly prosecuted for false accounting and theft due to faulty software.

It sparked an outcry and led to plans for new legislation to clear their names.

The series has been watched by 13.5 million people to date.

But Kevin Lygo, ITV's managing director of media and entertainment, said: "Mr Bates has made a loss of something like £1m and we can't continually do this."

Broadcasters are facing big financial pressures, and often rely on overseas channels or streamers buying the rights to show a programme to help recoup its budget.

Last month, ITV said 12 foreign broadcasters had bought the Mr Bates drama. But Mr Lygo said it wasn't sufficiently appealing to foreign viewers to break even.

"Of course, some things are very profitable on the channel, and some things aren't," he told the Voice of the Listener & Viewer spring conference on Wednesday, according to PA Media.

"But it's a challenge to be able to fund some of the things that aren't, obviously, of international appeal.

"We're hoping this may be, because it caused such a furore here that maybe sales will pick up, but there's no evidence of it yet.

"If you're in Lithuania, four hours on the British Post Office? Not really, thank you very much. So you can see the challenges here."

Another challenge for mainstream broadcasters is "getting enough audiences to turn up on the night" to watch a show, he said.

Five or six years ago, a programme like Mr Bates would have been expected to attract a live audience around six or seven million. The first episode of Mr Bates was watched by four million on the night, which is as "good as you get" now, he said.

It went on to gather steam and viewers. ITV followed the ratings success by announcing in February a drama about what it calls the "biggest health scandal" in British history, the contaminated blood scandal.

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Mr Bates vs Post Office drama lost £1m, ITV boss says

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The agenda-setting drama made a loss despite being the UK's most-watched TV show of the year so far.

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TikTok and Universal settle dispute over music royalties

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Two of the biggest stars returning to the platform are Drake and The Weeknd, who found themselves in the middle of a row over artificial intelligence (AI) in 2023.

A song that used the tech to clone their voices went viral on TikTok, picking up 15 million views before it was removed.

At the time, Universal Music Group said it violated copyright law.

The deal that will see the two acts return will also build in what the companies are calling "industry-leading protections" around AI on TikTok.

TikTok and Universal said in a statement that they would work together to "protect human artistry" in the face of the tech.

"TikTok is also committed to working with [Universal] to remove unauthorized AI-generated music from the platform, as well as tools to improve artist and songwriter attribution," they said.

Sir Lucian said the deal meant "fake artist" AI songs could be removed.

"TikTok has now addressed the primary concern we expressed in our open letter that AI generated content would massively dilute the royalty pool for human artists," he said.

The platform had also made commitments over the training of AI on music without consent, he said, and he thanked musicians for supporting Universal's action.

"We will work together to make sure that AI tools are developed responsibly to enable a new era of musical creativity and fan engagement while protecting human creativity," said TikTok head of music business development Ole Obermann.

Previously, artists including Eilish and Nicki Minaj have called on tech firms to agree to not develop tools that can generate music using AI.

It remains to be seen whether the commitments the two firms have made will fully address those concerns.

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TikTok and Universal settle dispute over music royalties

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The deal means songs from artists including Ariana Grande and Drake can be used on the platform again.

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Disney and Warner bundle streaming services to rival Netflix

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Walt Disney and Warner Bros Discovery say they will start to offer a bundle of the Disney+, Hulu and Max streaming services to customers in the US this summer.
The new package will be available to customers on all three streaming platforms.

The media giants said they will offer plans with and without adverts but did not reveal how much they will charge customers.

The move comes as Disney and Warner Bros face competition from rivals, including Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

"This new offering... will help drive incremental subscribers and much stronger retention," Warner Bros Discovery executive JB Perrette said in a statement.

The two media companies said they will reveal more details about the plans in the coming weeks.

As audiences move away from traditional TV, companies like Disney and Warner Bros are under pressure to attract more subscribers to their streaming services.

The companies will be hoping that their combined offering will complement each other.

Disney+ is best known for its family-friendly shows and films, while Warner's Max is home to HBO and its more adult-focussed content.

In recent years, streaming companies have been joining forces and offering combinations of their services.

In February, Walt Disney's ESPN, Fox Corp and Warner Bros Discovery announced a new sports platform to be launched in the autumn.

Between them they own a wide range of portfolios of sports rights including those for the FIFA World Cup, Formula 1, NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball.

In its quarterly financial results released on Tuesday, Disney said that Disney+ had gained more than six million subscribers globally between January and March, excluding India. The streaming service now has more than 117 million subscribers.

The increase is important for a service that has seen growth flag in recent months but is viewed as critical to Disney's future.

Disney also told investors that a planned password crackdown, which will start in the summer, should help drive up subscriber numbers.

The increasingly crowded streaming market has put off some customers who have complained about having to sign up to multiple services.

Bundles can address this issue by simplifying payment and potentially lowering the cost to users.

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Disney and Warner bundle streaming services to rival Netflix

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The media giants are under pressure to attract more subscribers to their streaming services.

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Bridgerton has totally obliterated the traditional costume drama

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Bridgerton has totally obliterated the traditional costume drama

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Netflix’s Regency romance has changed the rules of the fusty period genre entirely. Katie Rosseinsky asks whether that might be a mixed blessing

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A useful perspective on the career of Taylor Swift and how this has fed into her success in the music industry.

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At the top of lead curator Jarrad Rawlins' wish list for the exhibition was this album.

"If I'm completely honest it started as a fantasy... we were in a meeting and I just said, 'We should get that Wu-Tang CD', and everyone went 'Yeah. Lol'," he says.

After years of negotiation, fans from all over the globe have now flocked to Mona to hear a 36-minute sample of the album, curated especially by Wu-Tang Clan producer Cilvaringz.

What can the few dozen people who scored tickets to the uber-exclusive listening parties expect? Mr Rawlins teases a Cher cameo - his favourite bit - but otherwise is tight-lipped.

"The more we know about this album, and the more people out there know, the less magical it becomes," he insists.

"I think the fans are as excited about not being able to hear it... as they are about being able to hear it."

But somewhat ironically, the week that Namedropping opens, news breaks that the company loaning the album is suing its previous owner - disgraced "pharma bro" Martin Shkreli - for allegedly making digital copies.

He was forced to hand over the album to US prosecutors in 2018 - three years after purchasing it - after being convicted of defrauding investors.

It was bought by digital art collective Pleasr for a rumoured $4m (A$6m; £3.2m), value they're trying to preserve by making Shkreli destroy his bootleg files.

Since 2015, fans have heard snippets of the mysterious music - from potential buyers treated to a 13-minute segment when it was first released, to the handful of times Shkreli streamed scraps on YouTube, and now a five-minute clip which the public can buy for a single dollar.

But never this much of it.

As I queue up for my listening session, a contract demanding that I don't record it is thrust into my hands.

"Your obligations under this agreement start on your entry to Once Upon a Time in Shaolin and continue for the remainder of your life or until 2103, whichever occurs first," it reads.

And when we reach Mona's Frying Pan Studio itself, I realise the jokes I've been hearing about metal detectors are not jokes at all.

One by one, we're asked to take off our coats, ditch our bags, and empty our pockets, before we are diligently scanned.

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Wu-Tang Clan: What does the world's rarest album sound like?

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The BBC joins a prized (and odd) listening session in Australia, for tracks that exist only on a single CD.

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The Amazing Story of the Guardian’s Reader Revenue: A Conversation with Steve Sachs

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One key: more comes from web pages than email

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Cannes Palme D’Or Winner & Awards Contender ‘Anora’ Debuts In Limited Release Kicking Off Season – Specialty Preview

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Sean Baker’s ‘Anora’, Neon’s awards contender and top winner at Cannes is a top indie film opening in a lively weekend with ‘Goodrich’, ‘Rumours’, more.

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Christopher Nolan’s New Movie Landed at Universal Despite Warner Bros.’ Attempt to Lure Him Back With Seven-Figure ‘Tenet’ Check

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Christopher Nolan’s new movie with Matt Damon landed at Universal after the director rejected Warner Bros.′ offer to return to the studio.

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Unemployment in film and TV in the United States was at 12.5% in August, but many think those numbers are actually much higher, because many film workers either do not file for unemployment benefits because they're not eligible or they've exhausted those benefits after months of not working.

As a whole, the number of US productions during the second quarter of 2024 was down about 40% compared to the same period in 2022. Globally, there was a 20% decline over that period, according to ProdPro, which tracks TV and film productions.

That means fewer new movies and binge-worthy shows for us.

But experts say the streaming boom wasn't sustainable. And studios are trying to figure out how to be profitable in a new world when people don't pay for cable TV funded by commercials.

"The air has come out of the content bubble," says Matthew Belloni, the founder of Puck News, which covers the entertainment industry. "Crisis is a good word. I try not to be alarmist, but crisis is what people are feeling."

Part of the boom was fuelled by Wall Street, where tech giants like Netflix saw record growth and studios, like Paramount, saw their share prices soar for adding their own streaming service offers.

"It caused an overheating of the content market. There were 600 scripted live action series airing just a few years ago and then the stock market stopped rewarding that," Mr Belloni says. "Netflix crashed - all the other companies crashed. Netflix has since recovered - but the others are really struggling to get to profitability."

And along with the streaming bubble bursting, some productions are also being lured away from California by attractive tax incentives in other states and countries. Los Angeles leaders are so concerned about the slowdown that Mayor Karen Bass created a task force last month to consider new incentives for film production in Hollywood.

"The entertainment industry is critical to the economic vitality of the Los Angeles region," Bass said announcing the plan, explaining it is a "cornerstone" of the city's economy and supplies hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Recent data shows the entertainment industry contributes over $115bn (£86bn) annually to the region's economy, with an employment base of over 681,000 people, the mayor said.

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Hollywood industry in crisis after strikes, streaming wars

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Productions are down by about 40% and entertainment industry employees say they can't find work.

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Spotify CEO Becomes Richer Than ANY Musician Ever While Shutting Down Site Exposing Artist Payouts

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Kate Nash talks to Matt Everett about the hardships of the live music scene

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James Bond: What could the Amazon deal mean for 007’s future?

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Long-serving masterminds Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson give creative control to Amazon.