(Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images) |
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Sometimes you just don’t know how they do it: ever meet someone who seems to get in miles of running before the crack of dawn and cram in more before the opening bell than seems possible? Some people are just built differently. A physicist wanted to get at the heart of how a housemate was getting so much exercise before the sun comes up, so he found a clever way to get their exercise data uploaded to exercise tracking app Strava: by rigging a bike computer to her hamster wheel. Oh, right, the housemate is a 10-month-old hamster named Mollie. She’s easily averaging ten kilometers a night. Markets finished slightly lower yesterday as Big Tech dipped, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 each down 0.3%. |
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What exactly is a movie studio for anyway? |
It’s been a barnburner of a summer at the box office, with the 2026 exhibition returns now tracking 18% above last year’s and doing business not seen since pre-pandemic times. Surely this moment has offered a clarity of purpose for the long-troubled film business and the major corporations that are behind the entertainment industrial complex, right? No, of course not. The July box office sends a decisive message, sure, but it belies inconsistencies across the entire business that have been articulated fairly directly over the past several weeks of quarterly earnings reports from the major players. What is a movie good for? Depends who you ask: |
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“You mean the 95-minute ads for the parks?” says Disney. The Mouse has had a rocky time at the cinema — “Toy Story 5” was a hit, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” and “Moana” each expensive misses — but come on, profit was up 20% at parks and cruises. This is a theme park and toy licensing business that incidentally produces films to sell theme park tickets and toys.
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“Good for?” asks Paramount under David Ellison. “The studio’s an albatross!” it may say, as the would-be acquisition of Warner Bros. has invited an interstate antitrust team-up trying to prevent the merger of the companies. Not helping matters is that Ellison’s on the hook for $650 million in fees every quarter the deal isn’t done, and faces a trial that isn’t until next year. It’s enough to make you want to leave Hollywood, which, incidentally, Paramount may!
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“Movies are good for AI,” says Lionsgate, nervously looking at its activist investors who insist that the company either has to start using its library to make more money from AI labs or sell to someone who will.
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“We prefer television — it takes more minutes to watch it,” frets Netflix, down 18% year to date, which is in a post-”Stranger Things” slump that no number of high-performing geezer teasers will shoot its way out of.
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“Wait, we own a movie studio? Since when? Don’t we sell phones?” says Apple, which brought up its film business only once in their earnings call, a single mention of the “F1” movie.
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“Oh, this one’s easy,” says Sony, where “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” made more money than its entire (non-Crunchyroll) 2025 and 2026 theatrical slate combined. “A movie studio exists to maintain the rights to Spider-Man by hiring Disney to make Spider-Man movies. That way we can prevent the Spider-Man rights from reverting to Disney.”
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So if none of the companies that actually make movies seem to have their hearts in the movie business, who does? Imax, that’s for sure.
Just take a look at this chart from Goldman. At first glance at this chart that spikes dramatically, you may assume the y-axis refers to the Ithacan body count on the return home from Troy, but in fact, it is the domestic box office at Imax cinemas attributable to “The Odyssey”: |
Sound the sirens, thanks to the steady hand of Odysseus, while the whole rest of the industry feels like it’s between a rock and a Charybdis, it’s smooth sailing ahead for Imax into the rosy fingers of dawn. |
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Jollibee just cut store expansion and spending targets for 2026; its growth streak still looks hot |
Jollibee Group, the company behind the eponymous Filipino fast-food chain famed for its sweet spaghetti and spicy fried chicken, yesterday announced that it would be revising down its store opening targets, capex outlook, and income growth outlook for 2026, as a “dynamic cost environment” continues to weigh on the company.
With other international names like Smashburger and Tim Ho Wan in its expansive brand stable, as well as franchise rights in the Philippines for Burger King and Panda Express, the group expects to add a further 1,000 to 1,100 outlets in 2026. That’s only down slightly from its previous annual forecast (1,200-1,300) and builds on an impressive couple of decades for the fast-food giant.
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Including its title and subtitle (“The Future is for Everyone: The Path to a Positive AI Future”), that’s exactly how many words long aspiring writer Mark Zuckerberg’s new essay is. If you can’t spare the ~50 minutes that Words To Time estimates it’d take to read the whole thing, there’s a relatively even-handed analysis of the Meta boss’ manifesto here.
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On Monday, Riot Platforms announced that it had signed a 20-year deal worth $9.1 billion to supply compute to a “leading frontier AI lab.” Hours later, Bloomberg reported that the mystery company in question was Anthropic, sending RIOT up ~20%.
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Bumble yesterday rolled out a new feature allowing men to send the first message, signaling quite the turnaround for an app that once marketed itself as a place where “women make the first move.”
- OpenAI has reportedly bought back $7 billion worth of shares from its employees, providing liquidity for workers and valuing the company at $852 billion.
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Exciting times in the Persian Gulf are turning all sorts of unlikely parties into oil traders, as NASCAR’s COO is reportedly keeping a close eye on the price of gas. Not for the races, though: it takes 250 semi-trucks to move the race promotion around the country.
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Sherwood Media, LLC produces fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and is a fully owned subsidiary of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate... |
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