Four Big Stories: Emmys ’26, Summer Box Office Pushback, Fed Tax Credit Odds, and ‘60 Minutes’ 2.0

0:28Matt Belloni:We'll see you next time. Go to Mandalorian and Grogu official podcast. Now streaming on Disney Plus or wherever you get your podcasts. and catch Star Wars The Mandalorian and Grogu now streaming on Disney+. Terms apply. It is Tuesday, September 8th. Welcome back to everyone who spent the summer in the Hamptons or on the yacht or floating in the sad little pool outside the apartment you share with three other assistants. By now, we all know that this summer set a new record for domestic box office. Theaters grossed an estimated$4.76 billion from May 1st through Labor Day, according to Rentrack.

1:26Matt Belloni:That's 9 % higher than the pre-COVID benchmark of 2019. But, and there's a big but here, when you adjust for inflation, the picture isn't quite as rosy. Adjusted, the 2019 total rises to$5.7 billion, putting this summer 17 % below that year. In fact, higher ticket prices have amassed a pretty steep decline in attendance. The New York Times reported this weekend that from January 1st through August 16th, domestic theaters sold 568.4 million tickets. That's down 30 % from the same period in 2019. They cited S &P Global Market Intelligence for that number. That's 248 million fewer butts in seats.

2:09Matt Belloni:The question I'm interested in is, does that actually matter? After all, theater ticket prices are increasing along with inflation. The average is now at$12.75 for a regular ticket in the U.S. And IMAX is charging about$20 a ticket. In fact, a big source of the revenue increases those premium large format tickets. So we're going to get into the box office question with Lucas Shaw, our Monday guy. We also touched today on the federal production tax credit issue we talked about last week. Lucas is a little less bullish than I am on that subject. The Emmys race ahead of the primetime show this week.

2:43Matt Belloni:and it's a fresh start for 60 Minutes and CBS News. But does anyone in the real world actually care? Lots going on, so it's a grab bag episode from The Ringer and Puck. I'm Matt Belony, and this is The Town.

3:00Matt Belloni:All right, we are here with Lucas Shaw from Bloomberg. Welcome back, Lucas. Excited to see you at Toronto this weekend. I think the first time I've been in a while, first time we will have seen each other there. What are your tips? Well, I'm going to see the Oscar movies. That's my whole game. Plus, go to as many after parties with the best finger foods as possible. But mostly catching up on the Oscar movies, which we're getting a better sense of. I'm doing a sit down with the head of Searchlight, Matthew Greenfield, which hopefully you'll attend. I thought I was participating. You are. Only if you're available, though.

3:36Matt Belloni:Are you available? Yeah, we've talked about this. All right. You're confirming right now. You will also be there. Get your tickets now. I don't know what time or where, but I'll be there. It's noon on Saturday at the convention center. So come and see the town live with Matthew Greenfield and Lucas. But then I'm coming back early for the Emmys on Monday. Are you going to the Emmys? I am not. I have a wedding in Rhode Island that weekend. So I sadly will miss the full weekend. The best thing about the Emmys is you just get to see like 100 people over the course of a weekend. and catch up, figure out who you want to then get lunch with or get drinks with or whatever it may be.

4:15Matt Belloni:Totally. I always come away with good story ideas, too. So it's a good one-stop shop for that kind of stuff. Interesting narratives of the Emmys this year because we had the first two nights. They do the Emmys in three nights now. There are so many categories. And after the first two nights, the scorecard is Apple TV with 19 wins, HBO Max was 16 wins. Netflix, only 13 wins, which is interesting given all of the churn and news articles about Netflix and the kind of malaise in their content over the past few months. This could be a very disappointing night for Netflix. Yeah, well, they have lost ground at the Emmys for a little while now, right?

5:04If you go back, they actually once got kind of beat HBO in terms of the number of nominations. They won Best Drama Series, I think, once. The Crown. Yeah, with The Crown. They've been pretty consistent in competing for Limited. But HBO has sort of has sustained its advantage as the big winner for the most part. Other than the one. Although last year they tied. Last year they tied. But why the creative arts is interesting is I feel like Netflix wins a lot of the awards that are not during the broadcast. Totally. They stack that number. Netflix gets a lot of nominations across a lot of different shows in a lot of different categories.

5:45And that kind of inflates the number a little bit relative to the wins during the primetime show to some extent. Although they won the third most primetime last year behind HBO and Apple. So they look HBO, Apple and Netflix are the kind of the three biggest players at this. I, I guess the question to me is less about Netflix because I, they don't have the same number of sort of high profile. Like I think their most nominated show was beef. It's, is Apple going to take one of these categories away from HBO? Because I think going in people assumed, oh, the pit and hacks will repeat. and it's looking like maybe Widow's Bay will beat Hacks this year and that will annoy Casey Bloys to no end because of the whole Apple is the new HBO narrative.

6:32Matt Belloni:Yes, and Apple does win a lot more per capita for the shows that they have and they are very keen to point that out. Remember, HBO didn't win last year. Studio won. That was Apple for Best Series, for Comedy Series. So Hacks hasn't won in a couple years and And I think they're all expecting to win for the final season. And if Widows Bay beats them out, which I believe I predicted on this show a couple weeks ago, that would be a big deal. So we shall see. We're not talking about the Emmys today. We're talking about other news topics, including the box office. I know we did an episode about this with Scott on Friday, but the final numbers came out this weekend.

7:13Matt Belloni:and was pretty interesting to see the coverage because yes, it is a record showing for Hollywood. Yeah, but these records are bullshit. They are. So let's talk about the bullshit nature of these records because I've been saying this for years, yet I am also part of the problem because I am too lazy to go in and put every number into the inflation meter to say, okay, if we're going to compare summer 2019 to summer 2026, you got to go to the website and type in that number and do the inflation math. Because if you do that math, it shows that box office this summer is down 17 % from 2019, not the record that everybody has been trumpeted.

8:01The records are problematic for a lot of reasons. One, to your point, is inflation, which is, yes, but for whatever reason, it may be out of laziness. We never compare to inflation. And because the industry does not want to account for inflation... Of course not! The data providers do not say, here's the number, here's the actual number, and then here's the inflation-adjusted number. But also, it struck me that they were sort of playing some games with the number of days in summer.

8:31Matt Belloni:Well, there's an extra week of summer this year because Labor Day falls later. So there you go. Right. So that's the only reason it was a record summer, which is not, you know, the concern that I have and that you're raising and that I and others have written about is that people will draw the wrong conclusion from this and say, the business is back. This is what we were telling you all about. Everything is hunky-dory. When the picture is just more complicated than that. You can both say it was a really good summer and the business is smaller than it used to be. Yeah. And people go to fewer movies than they used to.

9:09Matt Belloni:Yes. If you look at how the box office was distributed this summer, it was arguably more top-heavy than ever. Even though we had five non-franchise movies grossed more than$100 million. So we had The Odyssey, Obsession, Michael, Backrooms, and Disclosure Day, all grossed$100 million or more. yet the percentage of box office that came from two movies the odyssey and spider-man brand new day don't say it i know you have both in the box office draft we are no longer talking about the box office draft it is dead to me didn't say anything in 2027 but the box office was so top heavy on those three four big titles that it's like is it the comeback that everybody's saying it is or were there just a couple of super appealing titles but i just think that that's what the business is in a lot of ways where you either are gonna have you're gonna have movies that are massive massive hits you know among the highest grossing movies ever because once people want to be part of something it starts to get this momentum in culture where you know i was surprised i talked with my mom over the weekend and she went to see the spider man movie because i was i had told her i was like this one's actually pretty good my mom does not go to see superhero movies right um or the odyssey gets this momentum because everyone is talking about it and wants to see it in the right format or obsession with young people but there is but that means there's all these other big movies like disclosure day like mandalorian like supergirl where there is the floor for those titles is just so much lower than it used to be right they will just be dead on arrival and nobody, once they get bad reviews and bad press about how poorly they're doing commercially, the bond just falls out.

11:05And, you know, they gross 100 million, 200 million instead of being one of those that's four or five, or it's like, it's a disappointment, but, you know, it's okay.

11:14Matt Belloni:Yeah, it's so interesting how much the financial performance of films has become part of the quality narrative these days. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when And nobody knew how movies did. Literally, you had to look on page four of the LA Times on Tuesdays to see a tiny little box. Sure. Or you'd get the Entertainment Weekly box office report. And yeah, on like page 75 or whatever it was. Exactly. And now, Friday afternoon, we get those new numbers. And they're all over social media. And the movies are just DOA. Yeah. But that speaks to this kind of FOMO aspect of movie going, where if it's a thing, you kind of got to see it now and in theaters.

12:01Matt Belloni:And if it's not a thing, doesn't matter what the Rotten Tomatoes score is, you don't have to see it. Right. Or you'll watch it when it's on Netflix or HBO Max or wherever it goes. The other underrated aspect that is really pumping things up is that there were more wide releases this year. I mean, we had 40 movies that opened on at least 2000 screens this summer. Last summer, there were 34. So there you go. More movies, more box office. Yes, but you would hope that that would be sustainable. I don't know. I mean, we'll see what happens, obviously, with Paramount and all that stuff. But there's no reason people felt like there were not enough movies being released.

12:42And so if you get better results from releasing more movies, wouldn't the lesson be we should release 40 movies a summer instead of 34?

12:49Matt Belloni:Yeah, that would be. But obviously you want to release the good ones, the popular ones. But my point is, we talk a lot about the top 10 grocers and the movies that are driving the box office. but in reality more swings equals more aggregate box office and even some of these movies that are quote unquote flops like Mandalorian or Supergirl or Moana that's still a few hundred million dollars that gets added to the total so it's not a great business for the studio that's releasing the movie but it's a decent number for the theaters and they will take those flops well the theaters Care about having volume And diversity of slate Right?

13:41It's very bad For them if it's too top heavy They need to have it be distributed Because that's creating a Habit and a reason for everyone to come in

13:50Matt Belloni:Yeah, I know It'll be interesting to see what happens With this standoff that A24 Is having. Did you see that A couple of the theater chains Didn't play the recent Tony movie Because A24 is demanding higher splits and they were just like, excuse me, you're not Disney. We're not going to play this game. We're okay if we don't play the, you know, the Tony movie. I mean, A24 has a strong brand, but I don't know that it's strong enough to push around a theater chain. And this was a theater chain in Arizona, Harkins. So like, it's not going to hurt them that much. It's not like it's New York City or L.A.

14:34Matt Belloni:theaters that over-index with 824 movies. But that's definitely something to watch. The other narrative from the summer box office is the whole IMAX narrative. Because on the one hand, the fact that they are basking in the glory of the Odyssey and that one movie can generate more than$200 million in domestic ticket sales from IMAX, which is like 35 % of the film's total domestic total. but and they only had about 11 of the screens according to the new york times but there were a number of movies this year that were imax kind of plugged that imax was going all in on that flopped mandalorian being one of them that was a big imax movie they got the screens and it didn't work so i feel like the odyssey sort of papered over what was potentially not a great summer for IMAX.

15:30Matt Belloni:Well, I don't know. The movie business is a business of hits and misses. I don't know that you could say. It was unequivocally a good summer for IMAX. The question would be, does that mean that IMAX is a great business, is super valuable, that someone should come and pay a lot? Or is it dependent on having those two or three movies a year that people are really excited about, right? I know. They need to sell now. Between Odyssey and Dune, now's the time this would be the moment to do it and and you know before before wandavision it's not wandavision it's called infinity vision wandavision was a show i know i know or unless you're renaming it wandavision right now that would actually rename it they should rename it wandavision nobody wants infinity vision i know infinity vision is going to come and take all their money they might as well sell now This episode is brought to you by SAP.

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18:32Matt Belloni:Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Tremphaya today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit TremfireRadio.com. Give this summer a score. If you are grading this summer, is it an A plus? Is it an A minus? Is it a B plus? I think it's a solid A. Yeah, I think it's probably an A. It's hard to be. I was debating A minus, but no, I think it's an A. But not an A plus. We're great inflation here. We're okay. We're an Ivy League school. Everybody gets an A.

19:14Matt Belloni:No, but this is solid summer. But I agree that the attendance numbers overall, still not great. Irreversible, frankly. Agreed. All right. Separate topic. I have a feeling I'm going to make a prediction here. I have a feeling you are not as bullish on the likelihood of a film production tax credit as I have been on this show. even with the Donald Trump endorsement, even with a coordinated effort here. So when you say bullish, that's because you believe it will happen. You believe it will happen by the end of the year. You believe... Timing is subject to the whim of politics. You know, the House isn't even voting very often until, or isn't even in session very often until the midterms here.

20:06Matt Belloni:So I don't know about the timing, But I do think before the new Congress is seated, we could have something that is either voted on. Well, that's before the end of the year. They're seated early next year. Yeah, we could have something that's either voted on or about to be voted on or something like that. The point is, this is now a bipartisan effort endorsed by the president. Do you think this will happen? I do with the caveat that there are still a decent number of kind of prominent industry figures that I speak with who remain skeptical. And what are their skepticisms rooted in? That there's not really a constituency for this bill.

20:46Matt Belloni:What are you talking about? The head of the NBAA said it's for all 50 states. It's going to lift all boats, employment for everybody. Yeah, I just don't, I think there's still a feeling that giving tax break to Hollywood will be hard for a lot of, I get that Trump coming out in favor makes it easier, but will be hard, not something that Republicans want to get behind. You know, it's easy to say, you know, okay, you get, you know, tax breaks to movie stars, tax breaks to Hollywood fat cats, especially when you get into the particulars of some of what is needed as you and others have written about, that it just won't be a priority.

21:27And certainly when, you know, after the election and you have kind of a new Congress next year, And I think most people assume that the Democrats will flip one of the houses, if not both. It gets even more complicated. I don't know that I don't even know that all the all the Democrats are behind it.

21:45Matt Belloni:No, I think they're like, you know, some of the Bernie Sanders millionaires and billionaires crowd might not be into this. But I do think that something will pass. The question I have is what I wrote about in my puck newsletter last week is that there are certain things that this bill does need to have to be effective. And those include having full refundability, stacking on top of, so the 20%, if it's 20%, is now on top of whatever is provided, the above the line credit, because that's the reason that all of these productions go to the UK. is that star salaries are subsidized. And that is the toughest sell to any of these jurisdictions and why credits in places like California don't have above-the-line subsidies because they don't want to explain to their constituents why they're subsidizing Tom Cruise.

22:41Matt Belloni:But you got to have it to be effective. When you say you're confident, are you personally whipping votes? Are you getting... Have you spoken to people to get a sense of, like, where the votes lie? Or is it more just a sense if the president is voicing support and sort of shielding Republicans, that there will be enough people on both sides to want to make it happen because it is seen as a job creation bill? Yes, I think it's both. And I talked to Laura Friedman, who is the congresswoman from Los Angeles that has been spearheading this. And she's been doing this work for a year now, trying to get consensus.

23:18Matt Belloni:I know all the organizations have as well, the MPA, the Film USA people that were on the show last week. A lot of people have been doing the unions. So this has been a process. And I do think that there are enough Republicans in some of these key areas like Georgia and Louisiana and New Jersey and places like that that would benefit significantly, New Mexico, that I do think that they at least feel they have this coalition. But again, I'm more worried about the contours of what it says, because as we know in legislation, you make compromises. And if you have to make so many compromises to get this deal through Congress, it ultimately becomes meaningless because it has no teeth.

24:03Matt Belloni:It's something that will be nice maybe to save a few productions, but it's not going to save the Marvel productions. It's not going to save Harry Potter. It's not going to save any of these other productions that are getting above the line costs from the UK. They are the enemy. The UK is the enemy here and Canada. What about Eastern Europe? Eastern Europe. Exactly. And we know that they're taking this seriously because according to my reporting, these jurisdictions are calling their US consultants and lawyers asking about what's going on here and fearful and anxious about what could get passed because they know the UK film industry is thriving right now, not because the UK is producing more great movies.

24:46Matt Belloni:It's because something like 80-something percent of the investment in the UK production community right now is coming from America. And they know that that is a false hope because that could be taken away in a second if the US gets its act together. You are going to get your drink poisoned at the next BAFTA brunch. You just declared the UK the enemy. You're about to go to Canada. You declared them the enemy. Someone's going to punch you at this taping on Saturday. I know. We need to have a tea party at Leavesden. It's so hard to know what will pass in contemporary DC. It just does not feel like a bill that would be a top priority for most of these folks who are up for election.

25:24But obviously, it'd be great for the industry if they got their act together.

25:28Matt Belloni:Last topic, big 60 Minutes premiere this Sunday. I know you are counting down the days until you can watch the new revamped Trump billionaire approved 60 Minutes. They put out a statement this morning about the new season. They did an interview with the New York Times talking about how they're making big changes. Nick Bilton, the executive producer, they're getting rid of the book. You're no longer going to be seeing the book flip open to reveal the stories, which I kind of liked. It was a nice little throwback. But no Anderson Cooper, no Scott Pelley, a bunch of people we have never seen before.

26:06Matt Belloni:What do you think? The whole pitch from Barry Weiss and Nick Bilton had little to do with the broadcast that you see on CBS. My understanding was a lot of it is we need to modernize it and make it bigger, make it more, I mean, maybe a little bit making the core show appealing to young people, but also like leveraging online marketing and distribution in a way to build the audience there and so the goal with the primary show should be like make it a little better but don't fuck it up and like find ways to you know clip effectively leverage leverage youtube instagram etc and none of which is what i see them talking about right now these sort of like modest tweaks to the show itself like fine well they don't say modest they say nick bilton says that every aspect of the show is going to be different they're not doing walk-in talks anymore they're not like the presentation of 60 minutes will be different and from my perspective like take out the politics stuff that has caused everybody to go nuts this is a prime example of screwing around with something that was working in the tv landscape 60 minutes is still the number one broadcast even though it was down slightly last year, it's still by far the number one broadcast.