Explaining the Business of Entertainment
When you write thousands of words each week—which somehow I do, which still fascinates me—naturally I get some things right and some things wrong. Back at the end of Q1, I wrote an article for the Ankler calling myself out for my biggest misses and hits so far in 2022.
Another week, another boatload of Netflix shows. Sure, they release a lot of stuff, but this week felt notable even for them, with Keep Breathing, The Most Hated Man on the Internet, Car Masters: Rust to Riches (season 4!), and Uncoupled all coming out in the same week. And that’s
Today, I’m getting my “visual of the week” feature back on track. (Has this feature ever actually been weekly? No, so I should probably change the name…) When I say “visual”, I don’t necessarily mean “chart” or something numerical. This isn’t “chart of the week”, it’s a “visual”, loosely defined.
This week might be the peak of the summer streaming doldrums. Besides the usual big Netflix fare—Virgin River returning for season four and the estimated-$200-million The Grey Man debuting on streaming—no other big releases really broke through. They’re probably all waiting for Hot August Genre Wars. (Read my predictions here on
When these two release dates were announced, frankly, I was ecstatic: – On 21-August, HBO will debut House of the Dragon, their Game of Thrones prequel. – On 2-September, Prime Video will debut The Rings of Power, their Lord of the Rings prequel. What a showdown! Two of the most
Did you know that the week of this report—remember, covering the week starting Monday 11-July—was “Shark Fest” on NatGeo and Disney+? This is, of course, very similar to the Discovery Channels’s much more famous “Shark Week”, which started the week of 25-July. I’m sure National Geographic channel just happened to
Mid-way through last week, big news started dropping about Warner Bros. Discovery. First, Warner Bros. killed The Batgirl a $75-$100 million dollar picture to, allegedly, get a tax write-off worth more than the costs of finishing the special effects. Then Reddit sleuths realized that HBO Max had already removed a
This week, it felt like each streamer’s content kinda reflected their overall strategy. Netflix released it all (a YA series, a true crime doc, a kids film and more), Disney released a NatGeo documentary (and a weekly episode of an MCU/Star Wars series, Ms. Marvel), Hulu released a comedy from
Sometimes, you really need to make sure your perspective is in order. As you’ll see below, when I looked for the “most important story” for July, I had a few fun options to choose from—thank you to all the great suggestions on Twitter!— but I risked missing the forest for