Welcome back to Extra Crunch’s Media Roundup, where I round up the stories that entrepreneurs in the content and advertising business should be thinking about — trends, larger platform shifts, as well as noteworthy funding rounds.
This time, we’ve got some bad news for movie theaters, the specter of antitrust regulation and a new career path for journalists. Let’s get started!
Movie studios and theaters face a bleak fall
In the last roundup, I pointed to “Tenet”’s global opening weekend as a sign that the theatrical movie business might be coming back to life — but I may have spoken too soon.
While the latest Christopher Nolan film has continued to do reasonably well outside the United States, it’s only grossed $45 million domestically for Warner Brothers. The film’s underwhelming performance could be blamed on U.S. audiences being afraid to return to theaters — but it might simply be a reflection of the fact that theaters in major moviegoing markets like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco remain closed.
Either way, Warner Brothers and other studios are clearly spooked by the results and have pushed nearly all of their theatrical releases until next year, with knock-on effects for the movies that were already scheduled for 2021. For example, Warner’s “Dune” is being delayed until October 2021, and Daniel Craig’s final Bond entry, “No Time To Die,” was pushed back from November until April. Meanwhile, “The Batman” has been delayed from 2021 to 2022.
At this point, there are few Hollywood blockbusters on the calendar until Christmas, when “Wonder Woman 1984” is due for release. To be honest, I’d be surprised if it actually hits that date. (Video-game comedy “Free Guy,” starring Ryan Reynolds, is scheduled for December 11, but the cast has already created a tongue-in-cheek video acknowledging that release dates aren’t exactly set in stone right now.)
In the meantime, at least one major theater chain said it can’t justify keeping its doors open. The United Kingdom’s Cineworld, which also operates Regal Cinemas in the U.S., announced that it’s closing its theaters indefinitely. For now, AMC and Cinemark said they aren’t going to to follow suit. (AMC noted that it’s bringing in additional revenue through a deal with Universal where the theatre chain gets a cut when Universal films are released early via video-on-demand.)
Also noteworthy: Most bigger films are being delayed for a theatrical launch, rather than simply going to streaming. The biggest exception was Disney’s “Mulan,” which the studio released as a $30 “premiere access” purchase on Disney+ last month. Disney hasn’t released any data about how the movie has performed — but the fact that it subsequently delayed the release of “Black Widow” until May 7, 2021 next year suggests that the model isn’t very promising.
Google is writing big checks to news publishers
Both Google and Facebook are facing increasing regulatory pressure around publisher payments (among other things, which I’ll get to shortly!). In some markets (Spain), Google has simply shut down the offending products, while negotiations are ongoing in other countries (Australia).
Last week, Google announced its largest effort to pay publishers so far. Unlike its $300 million news initiative, this involves direct payments for content — specifically, Google says it will pay $1 billion to license content for a new Google News format called Google News Showcase, which looks like a big story panel designed for mobile consumption. The initiative is starting in Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the U.K. and Australia.
Will this be a major windfall for newsrooms? There have been plenty of journalism-related initiatives from the major internet platforms in the past, and hopefully we’ve moved past the point where we expect any of them to singlehandedly save the business. (Apple News+, for example, has reportedly left many publishers disappointed in their share of subscription revenue.) Still, every bit of revenue helps — particularly if publishers have realistic expectations, and if it doesn’t require a major investment on their part.
Playco is already a mobile gaming unicorn
Proof that’s it’s still possible for startups — even startups in media-adjacent industries like gaming — to raise massive rounds before launching anything, at least if you’ve got famous founders. In this case, the startup in question is Playco, which has raised $100 million at a valuation “just north of $1 billion.”
How did the team convince investors like Josh Buckley and Sequoia Capital Global Equities to write big checks at such an impressive valuation? Well, the vision is exciting, if a bit vague (at least in terms of what they’re saying publicly): The goal is to leverage a variety of technologies to create “instant play” mobile games where users can share a link with friends and start playing together immediately.
Investors were likely betting on the team, including CEO Michael Carter (who previously co-founded Game Closure) and President Justin Waldron (who previously co-founded Zynga). They must be hoping that just as Zynga led the way in social gaming, Playco can do the same for the next big shift.
House committee recommends sweeping antitrust changes
The House Judiciary Committee has released a lengthy report (with plenty of TechCrunch citations!) after its investigation into antitrust issues at big tech companies. The recommendations include limiting how those companies run their online marketplaces, requiring online social networks to offer more interoperability and allowing news publishers to band together to negotiate with the platforms.
These are only recommendations for now — and they don’t even have the support of the full committee, whose Republican minority refused to endorse them. But it suggests that legislators are looking pretty skeptically at big tech. In November, if Democrats maintain control of the House while also winning the White House and a Senate majority, legislative action could seem much more likely.
Substack continues to draw top journalists
I don’t want to manufacture a trend from the example of just a few high-profile journalists, but I definitely took notice when Casey Newton announced that he would be leaving The Verge. Newton previously wrote the (very good) Interface newsletter, so he left to create a similar newsletter called Platformer for Substack. It sounds like the split is pretty amicable, with Newton taking his Interface subscribers with him while continuing to contribute occasionally to his old publication.
Other writers who have recently made the shift to full-time work for Substack include culture writer Anne Helen Petersen and political journalist Matt Taibbi. It sounds pretty appealing to make money directly from your most devoted readers, rather than chasing traffic at a larger publication. A the same time, Substack is also luring writers over by making upfront payments.
A few months ago, I scoffed at the idea that TechCrunch writers with their own Substacks might ever quit to focus on those newsletters. No one’s left yet, and I suspect that for the most part, the format will just be a way for journalists to write about more personal topics. But the idea is starting to seem a lot less far-fetched.