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It’s Monday again, FutureParty people. How many of you watched the Oscars last night? After the Academy added thousands of members from all over the world over the past few years, there’s definitely been a bigger number of international winners — The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, and even Godzilla Minus One all took home surprise wins last night. It looks like Oscar season is now a global phenomenon.
In other news… Hollywood actresses love a good book, Sicily sells homes for the price of a candy bar, and Fortnite prepares to return to European iPhones.
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LATEST PODCAST EPISODE
Mar. 7, 2024
Today we get into Tarte's annual influencer marketing drama, how Karat Financial is aiming to make payment around content creators more transparent, and New Balance's new representation.
🤖 OpenAI has reinstalled CEO Sam Altman to the company’s board of directors (and added three others), making him more powerful at the company than before his mysterious firing last year. Read More → theinformation
🎵 A new bill introduced in Congress, the “Living Wage for Musicians Act,” would require that the artist revenue for a song stream be increased to a whole cent. Read More → thr
🎮 Apple, after facing major backlash in the EU, has reversed its ban of Epic Game’s developer account… paving the way for the Fortnite-maker to launch a third-party app store. Read More → theverge
👩🏼 Soul Machines debuted an estate-approved AI chatbot of Marilyn Monroe that allegedly speaks “in Marilyn’s signature voice and style” — the first of the firm’s “Biological AI.” Read More → variety
✈️ The TSA is bringing self-checkout vibes to airport security, with a self-screening pilot program starting at Las Vegas’ Harry Reid International Airport. Read More → axios
45.2% of you voted for Credit card in Friday’s poll: How do you like to pay?
“AMEX all the way (if accepted at the establishment). The protection features are the reason for AMEX.”
“A few years ago I started using a cash-back credit card through my credit union for all of my purchases and always pay it off each month. I get back over $1,000 each year.”
“Safer to carry than cash. Helps me track spending, amount, category.”
.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT RITUAL.
What’s going on with your gut?
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All Ritual multivitamins are vegan, Non-GMO Project Verified, gluten and major allergen-free, and made traceable®.
.ENTERTAINMENT.
Hollywood actresses open a book club trend
The Future. Some of the biggest young actresses in Hollywood are pulling an Oprah and launching book clubs that define their taste, keep them engaged with fans, and act as a sly way to look for roles. While most of these exist on Instagram, the popularity of BookTok could make them migrate over to TikTok and spark the social platform version of the NYT Bestsellers List — the definitive guide of what books culture is paying attention to.
Reading R&D
Hollywood’s obsession with IP has sprouted a lot of bookworms.
Dakota Johnson has TeaTime, Emma Roberts has Belletrist, Emma Watson has Our Shared Shelf, Kaia Gerber has Library Science, and Dua Lipa has Service95.
Some are little more than a dedicated IG profile featuring recs and interviews, while others are full-on production arms — like Robert’s Belletrist, which adapted books First Kill and Tell Me Lies into shows for Netflix and Hulu, respectively.
Of course, the granddaddy of them all is Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine, which acts as a film and TV development funnel for the star and was a major asset in selling her company to Candle Media for $900 million.
While not every book club will achieve the reach, influence, and revenue of Hello Sunshine, they do provide a path for these actresses to control their destiny and create their own tailor-made projects.
With so much A-list attention, expect a lot of new authors to go viral.
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Read: Bloomberg spoke with several top investors about the hardest lessons they’ve learned when it comes to financial strategy.
Listen: Puck’s Matthew Belloni spoke with Straterchery’s Ben Thompson about how OpenAI’s Sora could change the entertainment industry.
Watch: Forbes explores how Stanely’s marketing genius sparked a viral sensation for the company’s water bottles.
.HOUSING.
A Sicilian town gave away homes for an economic revival
The Future. After Mussomeli, a small town in Sicily, Italy, offered people the chance to buy homes for a single euro, foreigners came running. The experiment has been a major economic win for Mussomeli and may lead to more expat communities in small towns all over Europe as remote work becomes normalized.
Population investment
Want to get people’s attention? Make housing cheap… like really cheap. That’s what Mussomeli did after its population shrunk to about 10,000 people after World War II, leaving 40,000 homes vacant.
In a Hail Mary to revitalize the town, the mayor’s office launched a website to attract foreigners by offering some homes for literally one euro.
And people responded in droves — within five years, 300 homes were sold, which is about 95% of the homes that were available.
Also, tourism surged tenfold, reports Insider, and digital nomads flocked to the area, leading the city to open a co-working space.
All of those stats have put the little Sicilian city back on the map — both the EU and Italian government have invested tens of millions of euros into Mussomeli, which the city plans on using for new roads and refurbishing its Old Town’s central square.
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Courtesy of ABC
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Boye Akolade.
Copy edited & published by Kait Cunniff.