On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, in our Box Office segment, Variety’s Rebecca Rubin breaks down the weekend that roared with the opening of Paramount’s “Scream 7.” And Reilly Steel, associate professor at Columbia Law School, discusses how the fight between Netflix and Paramount Skydance over Warner Bros. Discovery reflects the collision of troubling business, legal and political trends.
Rubin explains that the absence of franchise star Neve Campbell from the “Scream 6” over a salary dispute set the stage for a great marketing campaign for her return in the seventh installment. Another factor that boosted receipts was Paramount’s decision to make “Scream 7” available on Imax and other premium large format screens.
“It’s not really that popular for horror as a genre. [PLF screens] tends to fare better with big action epics and things in that genre. This is the first ‘Scream; movie that has ever played in premium large formats, from Imax to screen X to Dolby 3D. Those formats contributed 40% of the global grosses,” Rubin says. “So it’s just a really a testament to the fact that people are willing to pay more for these premium screens. They cost more than the average auditorium [ticket]. But when it’s something that audiences want to see, they are willing to spend the extra money. And I think it’s really interesting to note, because so much of the conversation around box office is people saying that tickets are too expensive, but it really just depends on the the property. And when there’s something that audiences want to see, they’re willing to spend the money.”
Reilly Steel, associate professor at Columbia Law School, offers perspective on the high drama that has enveloped Warner Bros. Discovery in recent months as the media conglomerate has been in a tug-of-war between Paramount Skydance and Netflix. Paramount Skydance, as of last week, was the victor. Steel’s work focuses on the intersection of business, law and politics — and the WBD saga has provided a wealth of material for him to study.
“What this saga crystallizes for me most is the stark political nature of enforcement today in the antitrust arena, but also in other arenas,” Steel says. “I spent a lot of my time in grad school on my dissertation trying to crunch all the numbers to figure out how this kind of stuff happens behind the scenes. Trying to read the tea leaves to see how do businesses try to use politics to influence enforcement of the law? But right now it’s all out in the open. You don’t have to crunch the numbers to see. You can just look at what what the next post on Truth Social is or the next tweet or post on X. And you see this quite starkly now, how these political considerations that are not contained in the letter of the law are creating a big push and pull on the shape of enforcement.”
(Pictured: “Scream 7”)
Listen to Daily Variety on iHeartPodcasts, Apple Podcasts, Variety’s YouTube Podcast channel, Amazon Music, Spotify and other podcast platforms.