Analysis of the weekend box office results, the upfront ad sales haul and highlights from Variety’s annual Truth Seekers documentary event in New York are on deck for today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast.
“Weapons” showed its strength in its second weekend, hanging on to the No. 1 spot with just a 43% drop from its week-ago opening. Rebecca Rubin, Variety‘s senior film and media reporter, noted that “Weapons” has been a pleasant surprise for distributor Warner Bros. from the start.
“Horror is known for really dropping like a rock at the box office and so this is a really great hold. It’s definitely attributed to the great reviews but also really just the electric word of mouth people are going to see this movie, having a really great time in the theater and then telling their friends about it,” Rubin says.
Brian Steinberg, senior TV editor, reports on this year’s upfront advertising sales process. It took most of the summer, but the largest platforms are essentially done book advance commitments for ad sports to rollout during the 2025-26 television season. Upfront sales are always a bellwether for the health of media and the broader economy. This year, the round number for upfront commitments in the U.S. is $31 billion. This year more than ever, streaming was the focus. Steinberg notes that the fast-proliferating world of FAST channels were a factor.
“Those are free ads-supported streaming channels. Everyone’s launching one. Those are becoming more attractive because they’re not behind a paywall. They’re easy to access,” Steinberg says. “Some of the [ad] rates for streaming are continuing to come down with Netflix and Amazon entering the market more heavily. There’s more supply. They can’t charge as much for each one.”
Tatiana Siegel, Variety‘s executive editor of film and media, sets the scene at the Aug. 14 Truth Seekers event hosted by Variety and Rolling Stone. The daylong summit brings together movers and shakers in documentary, unscripted and broadcast news arena. This year, there was much to discuss amid the Trump administration’s attacks on the news media and other effects to reshape American culture in a MAGA mold.
Ramin Setoodeh, Variety’s co-Editor in Chief, interviewed CNN’s Jake Tapper in a lively session held just before Tapper headed out to Alaska to cover Trump’s summit with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Setoodeh drew Tapper back to that night in June last year when he and CNN’s Dana Bash moderated the presidential debate between then-candidate Donald Trump and President Joe Biden. As Setoodeh noted, it was a disastrous performance from the aging commander in chief that changed the course of the election, and as a result, American history.
“I saw what you saw, except it was 15 feet in front of me, and it was shocking,” Tapper tells Setoodeh. “And I thought, Oh, my God, it’s much worse than I thought. And yes, President Trump, then former and future President Trump, but Donald Trump was there doing what Donald Trump does, lot of bluster, a lot of lies, lots of stuff. Although, given what was going on to his left, he was fairly restrained about what was going on to his left. I’m not saying he deserves credit for it. I’m just saying like in terms of his savviness, when your enemy is blowing himself up, get out of the way,” Tapper says.
“I do think to this day, the Democratic Party needs to reckon with the fact that, because they were so convinced that Donald Trump was an existential threat to the country and that Joe Biden had convinced the party that he was the only one that could beat him. The party was going along with somebody who was not capable of certainly not capable of being president for another four years,” Tapper says.
(Pictured: Variety co-Editor in Chief Ramin Setoodeh interviews CNN anchor Jake Tapper at Variety and Rolling Stone’s Truth Seekers summit in New York.)
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