Heading to the Toronto Film Festival? As the iconic event marks its 50th edition, Team Ankler is heading north with a Prestige Junkie interview, portrait and podcast studio helmed by Katey Rich and Christopher Rosen; daily newsletter dispatches featuring on-the-ground reporting from RichardRushfield; and a by-invitation-only party on Sept. 7 thrown by Janice Min and Letterboxd CEO Matthew Buchanan. Reach out to TiffEvents@theankler.com with questions, comments and all that…
Meanwhile, closer to home here in L.A., we celebrated 20 of the most ambitious digital creators shaping media and entertainment. Dhar Mann, Josh Richards, Hasan Piker and Ben Meiselas were among the top voices who joined our exclusive summer soirée on Tuesday — hosted by Janice, Web Summit’s Ciara Haley and Bitmoji co-founder Ba Blackstock — at a stunning home high in the Hollywood Hills. Check out what other huge creators (and which reps) were there too (and what they talked about) at our must-read Like & Subscribe by Natalie Jarvey.
GUEST STARS 1. The Ankler and Web Summit’s Summer Soirée. 2. Janice with Ben Meiselas, left, and Hasan Piker. 3. From left: Jordan Howlett, Catherine Goetze, Natalie, Adrian Per, Hanna Goefft, Day Sulan and Michael Le. 4. Ba Blackstock with The Ankler’s London Sanders, left, and Mythical Entertainment’s Jawhara Tariq. 5. Josh Richards and Ciara Haley. 6. Dhar Mann and TikTok’s Leah Linder. (Todd Williamson)
And finally, congratulations to Janice, who’ll be honored in November with a LEA Award from The WICT Network of SoCal alongside other heavy hitters including Disney’s Simran Sethi and Apple TV+’s Shannon Willett. Good company for our head honcho as Ankler Media heads into another season of big plans.
Now, without further ado, ICYMI, even more of our best of the week:
Series Business: Netflix’s Wish List; Sony’s TV Swing
Elaine Low delivered the goods in her Summer Sellers’ Guides, telling you what Apple TV+, Amazon, HBO & HBO Max, Peacock, ABC, Hulu, FX, Disney+ and Disney Channel are looking for — this week, she closes with the Big Kahuna: Netflix. Elaine reveals who has greenlight power; per-episode budgets; and genres in demand at the dominant streamer now:
Sony TV is a true independent, allowing Katherine Pope, the division’s chief, to oversee platform-defining series for Amazon (The Boys), Starz (Outlander) and HBO (The Last of Us). But Pope’s not done taking big swings. She breaks news with Lesley Goldberg about three new overall deals her studio signed; her ambitions for comedy; and the one change she says could fix TV’s broken system:
Paramount-Skydancemayhave gobbled up all the headlines, but plenty of other big deals turned heads in Q2. Ashley Cullins canvases Hollywood’s top dealmakers, revealing the company “everyone thinks” will sell next; investors’ risk-reward calculus for getting in bed with Hollywood rep firms; and ripple effects of Hailey Bieber’s $1B Rhode sale:
Richard Rushfield: Shari’s Trainwreck; H’Wood Syllabus
Speaking of Paramount… Shari Redstone gave her version of events to the NYT last week, and Richard has sharp words for her, the media and our compliance in allowing Trump to run rampage over our institutions. Plus: Top industry minds’ essential curricula for Hollywood:
Romcoms are back — but does the data bear out Amazon and Neftlix’s new buying spree? Entertainment Strategy Guy takes a hard look at the performance of romcoms at the box office, on streaming, which platform dominates, and the top-performing hits — plus the kind of show streamers should be making more of:
The song of summer isn’t just one track, it’s a whole album: the original soundtrack for Netflix megahit KPop Demon Hunters. Ian Eisendrath, the film’s executive music producer, tells Rob LeDonne how he came to the project, the ins and outs of crafting a K-pop hit, his takeaways for creatives and how it all came together:
Katey Richranks her 30 favorite nominations, from Pop Culture Jeopardy to Colbert. Plus: Her trio of juicy interviews with Walton Goggins, an all-star Traitors lineup, and first-time Emmys host Nate Bargatze:
Alan Cumming's Tales From the 'Truman Show-y' Set of 'The Traitors'
Prestige Junkie
25:11
Does A24 Have an Awards Season Surprise in Store? Plus Walton Goggins on Wanderlust, Envy and Friendship
After last week’s buying frenzy, David Ellison isn’t done yet. Sean McNulty analyzes the talks between Paramount and Legendary for a theatrical distribution deal, the status of the company’s pact with Warner Bros. and where it all leaves the Legendary-Lionsgate purchase talks:
Monday Morning QBs: This week, on our live show about box office, Chris and Sean weigh whether Netflix would make theatrical releases a habit after putting a sing-along of KPop Demon Hunters in multiplexes:
This week, Andy Lewis brings you a plethora of juicy IP, featuring a ‘Dept. Q’-like procedural set in the rural Midwest, a slasher thriller that updates ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ for the age of social media and a true-crime thriller about a former Olympian-turned-drug-dealer…
As an Ankler subscriber, you are automatically subscribed to all of our newsletters and podcasts by default. Not interested in all of them? Customize which ones would like to receive notifications for. It’s easy to do.
Log into your Substack account from a desktop or laptop, select “Settings” from the drop-down menu.
Under Subscriptions, click on The Ankler to review the sections you’d like to subscribe to/unsubscribe from.
On the next page, click on the toggles next to each newsletter and podcast you want to receive emails for. A gray toggle indicates notifications are off.
Alternatively, when you get an email newsletter, select “Unsubscribe” in the footer of the email and click on “Turn off emails” next to each section you’d like to unsubscribe from.
