☀️Heartland Launches ‘Twisters’ At The Box Office Stratosphere

Even in! This is Sean McNulty (Contact me on LinkedIn if you want), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know about SUNDAY, July 21, 2024.

Where yes, the Second Presidential Debate Just Got a Rescheduling Notice . . . but let’s start by sending a big 👏 to the WNBA this weekendto show every other professional sports league how an All-Star game has been done – especially the NBA, whose All-Star game has degenerated into a bad joke (and whose NBA Olympic Team hardly Defeat South Sudan in an exhibition last weekend 🤦‍♂️).

Saturday night’s WNBA game featured players who actually, you know, cared about the game they were playing… an astonishingly fun, on 🔥, record-breaking “34 points in one half” performance by Arike Ogunbowale (get to know that name by the way — also a former DWTS participant #funfact) . . . and a surprising end result Startup!

Tribute to Jason Sudeikis, Ty Dolla $ign And Aubrey Plein for making the trip to Phoenix to increase the celebrity value… who could still use more support Hollywood, ahem 🧐 (even if Aubrey tore her anterior cruciate ligament again (played a game of “Knockout” earlier on Saturday).

So I hope it’s profitable for ABC when the ratings come in.

PLUS: A feather for Xander Schauffle for winning the ~~British Open~~ Open Championshiphis 2nd win in the 4 golf majors this year. Enjoy that $3.1M payday.

It also marks the first year since 1982 that American golfers have won all four major golf tournaments in a single season.
The next challenge for Xander is that he will participate in the Olympic Games next week.

OH: Just a message to everyone Bob Nieuwhart fans — CBS broadcasts a Bob Newhart: A Legacy of Laughter special tomorrow evening (Monday) at 8pm (also available to stream on PAR+).

AND: A big thank you to the reader (who also has the best name in the world, Sean) who took the time to greet me at STARBUCKS on my last day in LA — I told Richard an Ankler tattoo on your neck would be worth it… your move Rushfield (okay, fine, I was wearing my Ankler hat).

NOTE FOR DOMESTIC INSTALLATION: Tuesday edition of The awakening will mainly be a #medianerd🤓 dive into the COMCAST numbers (and if there’s any NBA/WBD stuff going on of course), and regularly Waking I’ll be back on Wednesday.

A great weekend for my fellow- Whirlwinds optimists . . . although I can rest assured that no one expected the results this weekend.

Okay, May box office haters / “Americans don’t like going to the movies anymore” crowd — how are all those #HotTakes from back in the day? Back in the day of course… about 6 weeks ago.

Add Whirlwinds to the list of films that show that the audience is more out there than you think, especially when a studio goes beyond (the coasts, ahem) to reach an audience like UNI did in this film, which certainly has echoes of Elvis in 2022, but on a much larger scale.

Summer also proves it’s the movies, idiot.

Movies That Most People Don’t Consider Good (Horizon, Fly me to the moon, The guardians, Furiosa) fall like stones in week 2 and beyond — free fall of the -50% to -70% type.

Movies that people, you know, like… have consistently held up extremely well this summer, with week-to-week drops that rarely reach -45% or so. And there have been quite a few of those! Long legs even surprisingly ended up in this category, despite it being in the horror genre.

So check out the latest numbers to see what they mean for moviegoers as we await what could be the biggest opening weekend of the summer for a movie – again from DISNEY, which is currently the poster child for how a “good product” can change everything in a year.