INDUSTRY PULSE
Spider-Man Couldn't Stop Its Own Movie From Leaking Twice
Spider-Man can't stop swinging into leak territory
Sony had every reason to expect a big weekend for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, opening across 716 UK and Ireland cinemas alone as it tries to topple Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey at the international box office. What nobody planned for was a high-quality bootleg tearing through X and racking up millions of views before anyone could take it down, as Variety and Deadline both reported within a day of each other. The kicker is that this isn't even the first time it's happened to Tom Holland this summer: a bootleg of The Odyssey leaked on the same platform just a week earlier. Two tentpoles, one actor's summer, two platform failures. It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder less about who's doing the ripping and more about why a service with X's resources apparently can't get ahead of it before the views hit seven figures. That said, the leak clearly hasn't killed appetite for the actual movie. Fans have been dissecting the post-credits stinger for what it means for Peter Parker's arc, and there's a whole separate cottage industry building around the soundtrack, which stretches from Tame Impala to Steve Lacy. A leak used to be a box office killer. Now it seems to function more like an unwanted trailer drop, generating noise that doesn't necessarily translate into empty seats.
Netflix goes looking for its own Peter Parker energy, teen-comedy edition
Nostalgia reunions are their own genre now, and Netflix just landed a good one: a reunion movie for The Inbetweeners, the late-2000s British teen comedy that already spun off two hit films, is officially in the works with the original lead cast returning. There's something almost soothing about a show this specific to a certain strand of British adolescence getting a proper adult-years reunion instead of a soulless reboot with new twentysomethings standing in. It's a reminder that streamers are increasingly betting on built-in nostalgia over fresh IP, banking on the fact that audiences who grew up with a show will show up again just to see what its characters look like now.
Paramount and a room full of state attorneys general can't agree on a court date
Buried under the blockbuster noise is a genuinely consequential legal fight: Paramount and a coalition of US states are now sparring over when their antitrust trial should even happen, with proceedings set for Oakland, according to Screen Daily. Trial-date squabbles sound procedural until you remember that every month a case like this drags on is a month of uncertainty hanging over a major studio's business decisions. Nobody's saying much publicly, which is usually the tell that both sides know exactly how much is riding on it.
Broadway tries a music festival and a Depression-era drama at the same time
Broadway's summer has been anything but sleepy. American Theatre reports on a first-of-its-kind three-day outdoor festival that will preview seven new musicals alongside starry programs of musical theatre favorites, a genuinely novel way to get people excited about shows that haven't opened yet rather than just the ones already selling out. It's the kind of format that could become an annual fixture if it lands, giving audiences a taste of what's coming before the reviews and word-of-mouth machine kicks in. Meanwhile the casting news has been stacking up. Micaela Diamond and Will Pullen are joining the Broadway revival of Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing! as Hennie and Ralph Berger, directed by Tyne Rafaeli, per Broadway News, a solid bet that a nearly century-old landmark drama still has teeth. And off-Broadway, Bobby Conte will star as the title character in Copperfield! The New Musical, a Dickens adaptation with book, music and lyrics by Jeffrey Scharf, according to TheaterMania. Add in Max Wolf Friedlich, fresh off his Broadway debut with the thriller Job, setting his next play The Holes for an off-Broadway premiere this fall with Robert Pattinson signed on as executive producer, per Variety, and you've got a stage scene that's simultaneously reviving the canon and betting on brand-new voices with Hollywood money attached.
The awards conversation gets an unexpected genre wrinkle
Vulture is flagging something worth watching in the Emmy race: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is shaping up as what they call the year's most quietly disruptive nominee, largely because of its unusual genre positioning as a dramedy muscling into categories usually dominated by straight drama or straight comedy. Awards categories have always been a little arbitrary about where shows get slotted, and a show that refuses to sit neatly in one lane tends to expose just how shaky those lines are. It's a small story next to a Spider-Man leak, but it's the kind of thing that actually shapes who wins in the spring. There's a related thread running through IndieWire's piece on rising stars taking superhero paychecks: the argument is that the moral hand-wringing over actors "selling out" to the MCU ignores that the other options for guaranteed money, brand deals and the like, are arguably just as capitalist. It's a useful corrective to a tired narrative, and it lands at a moment when the industry's relationship to franchise money versus prestige credibility is getting messier, not simpler.
The smaller stuff worth knowing about
- Indian producer Viccky Jain has launched a new production banner, VJ Frames, with an action franchise starring Tiger Shroff, directed by Remo D'Souza, as its debut title, alongside Abhishek Banerjee and Elvish Yadav, per Variety.
- British comedian Elf Lyons is bringing her solo show The Woman on the Edge to New York for a limited run at SoHo Playhouse this fall, marking her US debut, according to Variety.
- Broadway News has a smart piece on testing ad creative against real audience reactions rather than internal opinion, a small but telling shift in how shows market themselves.
- Apple TV's Silo got a fun behind-the-scenes moment, with Rebecca Ferguson and the creative team explaining how a tiny Pez dispenser became one of the show's most important storytelling breadcrumbs.