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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s… the world’s largest-ever aircraft! This week, a massive electric airship — measuring the length of three Boeing 737s — took to the air. It’s the largest aircraft to grace the sky since the Hindenburg, and it can carry (literally) tons of cargo over many hundreds of miles. The startup behind it (backed by Google co-founder Sergey Brin) hopes it’ll kickstart a new era in climate-friendly air travel. Bon voyage, and here’s hoping she won’t go the way of the Hindenburg.
In other news… the actors strike comes to an end, Zuck pushes for a WhatsApp revival, and Five Nights at Freddy’s is on a roll.
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ENTERTAINMENT
That’s curtains! // Illustration by Kate Walker
SAG-AFTRA rolls credits on the actors strike
The Future. 118 days later… the actors strike is now officially over. That’s a major sigh of relief for Hollywood and the rest of California, which suffered a $6 billion blow to the economy from this year’s contract disputes. With many analysts already pointing to how the SAG-AFTRA and WGA contracts are two of the best union contracts in Hollywood history, expect to see cross-union partnerships take a bigger role in labor relations moving forward.
And, scene
After finally sitting down to resume negotiations in October, a deal has been reached between the 160,000-strong actors union and the major Hollywood studios.
SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee accepted the AMPTP’s latest offer, which ended the strike at midnight.
The contract now goes to the membership for a ratification vote, but the union may allow members to go back to work before it’s officially approved (just as the WGA did).
While the deal points haven’t been disclosed yet, SAG-AFTRA shared the contract is valued at over a billion dollars in additional compensation.
That includes gains in consent and compensation for the use of AI (which was the major holdup), minimum compensation increases, and a streaming participation bonus.
Prepare for Hollywood to be in a tizzy tomorrow as studios and streamers rush to complete half-finished films slated for release next year, PR firms go into hyperdrive to salvage the awards season calendar, and indie productions try to decipher updates to their interim agreements.
As Thor and X-Men: First Class screenwriter Zack Stentz tweeted last night: “Thoughts and prayers to all the talent agent assistants whose phones are going to blow up first thing tomorrow morning…”
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SOCIAL MEDIA
“Look at my boy, growing up so fast.” // Illustration by Kate Walker
Zuck makes WhatsApp Meta’s crown jewel
The Future. Meta is pushing for WhatsApp to come out of Facebook and Instagram’s shadows to potentially become the future core app of the company. Although it faces competition from iMessage, Signal, and Telegram, WhatsApp could distinguish itself by becoming the go-to app for the social-media-to-private-community-messaging shakeup — making WhatsApp the Facebook of the 2020s.
Get the message out
After ten years, Meta is getting the word out about WhatsApp.
It’s become a user-growth powerhouse, with half of Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 having downloaded it (Miami, NYC, LA, and Seattle are hotspots). And it’s always been popular internationally — it has over two billion users worldwide.
It’s becoming more of a social network, with its “Status” feature allegedly being the most-used, Stories-like feature in the world and its celebrity-leaning “Channels” feature turning the platform into a Twitter clone (X, sorry, we know).
Its ad business is booming, potentially reaching $10 billion in revenue this year, with its “click-to-message” product being the company’s fast-growing format.
It’s also moving into “everything app” territory, giving over 200 million brands monetization tools and customizable apps to reach customers (Nissan reports 40% of its sales in Brazil come from apps). It hopes to roll out a payment infrastructure soon.
Considering the sudden influx of growth and revenue (Meta started to leverage the platform’s potential only in 2019), it’s no wonder Zuckerberg has called WhatsApp the “next chapter” of the company — a place where people, organizations, and brands can always be in conversation.
In other words, a very slick slide into those DMs.
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Data is something to love
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Their free visual newsletter is jam-packed with beautiful and easy-to-understand charts and insights on business, tech, and entertainment. So, you’ll get what’s up in the world and the data behind it — in just five minutes every morning.
ENTERTAINMENT
Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Five Nights at Freddy’s scared away fears of day-and-date releases
The Future. Five Nights at Freddy’s is a major success story at the box office and on streaming, buoyed by the rabid fanbase of the game’s franchise. While the strategy won’t work (and hasn’t worked) for every movie, FNAF may prove to be the blueprint for how to eventize a movie with a simultaneous release… and inspire other studios to experiment with fresher, younger-skewing IP.
All-screen success
Five Nights at Freddy’s is a pinball machine of broken records after only two weeks of release.
As of yesterday, the $20 million Blumhouse film racked up $219 million worldwide — making it the biggest horror film of the year so far.
More impressively, the movie has made over $100 million of that in the US and Canada alone, where the movie was available in theaters and on Peacock.
Speaking of Peacock, Universal didn’t give specific metrics but touted the movie as the biggest debut on the service to date… which drove more signups for the streamer.
Universal knew the mostly-teenage fans would be both open to seeing the scary movie with a crowd and okay checking it out at home if they couldn’t make it to theaters. So, the studio marketed both releases hard, especially on social media — maximizing the potential of each type of release, instead of cannibalizing it.
But, some analysts say the cannibalization did occur in its second week, noting how ticket sales dropped drastically domestically but were less pronounced internationally (where Peacock isn’t available).
Essentially, some are calling FNAF’s day-and-date success a flash in the pan. But, boy, did it burn bright… and that’s good enough.
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Your car, your way
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Edmunds is the place to kick off your search. They have millions of new and used listings, so you just know your perfect ride is there.
Use their filters to narrow it down: choose your color, features, and more. And once you’ve found your new love, you can check a deal rating to make sure the offer is fair.
Don’t settle! Go to Edmunds to get exactly what you’re looking for.
Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
Disney is launching a merged Disney+/Hulu super app next month to “prepare parents” for the not-so-kid-friendly content… despite having yet to close the deal with Comcast to purchase the rest of Hulu. Read more → variety
The Beatles’ last single, “Now And Then,” topped Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart after being released half a day left in the week’s ranking. Incredible stuff. Read more → forbes
Snoop Dogg and his son, Cordell Braudus, are launching Death Row Games to help minority developers build games for Fortnite. Read more → hypebeast
Fashion & E-Commerce
Fashion app Croissant gives users a way to check the resale value of products and a platform to sell those products — letting people see how much they can sell a bag for after using it for only a month. Read more → bof
After taking the reins at Reebok, Shaq said he wants to give kids free sneakers for getting good grades. Read more → complex
eBay is shifting gears from competing with Walmart and Amazon to catering to the “enthusiast buyers” who spend the most time (and money) on the site. Read more → forbes
Tech, Web3, & AI
OpenAI is preparing to launch the app store for chatbots, potentially ushering in a new era of app development… so you better start making some space on your smartphone. Read more → theverge
Speaking of chatbots, Amazon is developing its own, dubbed “Olympus.” Read more → theinformation
Cruise issued a recall of all 950 of its autonomous vehicles after dragging a pedestrian and losing its California license — an investigation also found the cars had trouble detecting children. Read more → techcrunch
Creator Economy
YouTube is letting its Premium subscribers test two new AI features — a conversational chatbot and AI-generated summaries of entire comment sections. Read more → tubefilter
As TikTok becomes a news source for Gen Z, some creators are going viral by literally reading newspapers. Read more → fastcompany
Ensemble Digital Studios and 2 Social Co. have merged to form a new influencer agency called Creator Society that’ll give creators both full-service representation and the tools to get into affiliate marketing. Read more → tubefilter
JOBS OF THE WEEK
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Principal Software Engineer (Cyber)
Boeing Intelligence & Analytics
Annapolis Junction, MD
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DataAnnotation
Remote
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23andMe
Sunnyvale, CA
Senior Data Scientist
Vive Financial
Draper, UT
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Melody Song. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.