[I got a bit sidetracked not long after I started this newsletter, obviously. I intend to reboot it in earnest, starting with a weekly post of links to stuff I thought was worth paying attention to.]
Can’t quite get my head around Universal’s decision to put SHE SAID on 2000 screens this weekend. They’re spending roughly $16m in marketing on top of a reported $32m production budget, which models out to upwards of $70m worldwide gross to break even (assuming a 50/50 domestic/international split). Given the fictional version of this story grossed less than $1.5m worldwide in January 2020, I would have voted to save the $15m, try to lay it off on another streamer, and worst case send it straight to Peacock.
Here’s Deadline’s box office reporting: https://deadline.com/2022/11/box-office-black-panther-wakanda-forever-the-menu-anya-taylor-joy-she-said-1235176102/
Lex Fridman’s conversation with Chamath Palihapitiya is a solid Recommend if you like listening to in-depth conversations between very smart people:
Matt Levine had a tour de force take on FTX’s bad balance sheet a few days after it declared bankruptcy: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-11-14/ftx-s-balance-sheet-was-bad
Milky Eggs did yeoman’s work on the Alameda side of the FTX debacle: https://milkyeggs.com/?p=175
Totally agree with Mike Solana’s take on “Surviving and Thriving in Tech’s New Winter:”
Totally disagree with Ryan Broderick’s take on Twitter’s future (I think it’s not going anywhere).
The latest Jack Reacher is a return to form:
42 is well and truly behind me at this point, which means I can attest that there are a lot of gems in this thread: