2026-06-08 03:33:56
Sending a Sunday edition as it's WWDC Eve – more thoughts on that, tomorrow – and I've been on the road. A lot below, starting with some thoughts on the latest wave of "AI PCs" and if any consumer might actually be enticed by these...
M.G. Siegler
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
🚪 S&P 500 Holds the Door – A genuine surprise as it seemed inevitable that the index would follow the NASDAQ 100 and FTSE Russell in allowing for near-immediate inclusion of new entrants. Instead, those hoping to join the S&P 500 will still have to wait at least a year, which has always felt like a far more sane situation given how much automatic buying (and subsequent rebalancing) is tied to these indices. This obviously would have boosted SpaceX (and perhaps soon, Anthropic and OpenAI) while also dinging their Big Tech brethren (including, of course, Tesla). But the real losers would have been those companies more on the fringe of such lists, which would have been booted as a result, thus hurting their own stocks immensely. Again, it's just all mostly automated, so better to do such things in a orderly manner, no? Well, not for NASDAQ and FTSE, it seems! One more thing: there are also profitability rules around inclusion in the S&P 500 – and SpaceX would currently run afoul of those, with xAI and their new AI push putting the company in the red. Of course, they were profitable before that deal, so we'll see how long it takes to get back there. This, obviously, would be an issue for OpenAI and perhaps Anthropic as well! [Bloomberg 🔒]
💻 ‘Surface Laptop Ultra’ Hands-On — It looks nice, in that it looks pretty much exactly like a MacBook Pro, though hard to blame Microsoft too much here as it’s 2026 and laptop design pretty much is what it is at this point, and Apple set that standard long ago. Well, except for the touch-screen element, which this will have, and the MacBook Pro doesn’t — yet. That plus the big AI specs comes at a cost — quite literally, which we don’t know yet but will undoubtedly be many thousands due to the RAM (128GB) alone — “I was surprised by the weight” and “hefty” are not two things you want to hear about a late 2026 laptop. And while I would say that most such developers will probably use this machine stationary, that begs the question of why not just get the undoubtedly more powerful (thanks to the power requirements) and perhaps cheaper (thanks to no screen) ‘Surface RTX Spark Dev Box’ (rolls right off the tongue)? I’m reminded a bit of the Chromebook Pixel here, which was also nice, but hardware-wise proved to be overkill, leading to a price-point that led to it not really selling. Will the local AI capabilities be enough? Still feels early for that… Ultimately, I wouldn’t be shocked if zero MacBook Pro users switch over. If nothing else, there’s the whole Windows element this device still has to overcome. Also, how awkward for Copilot+ PCs — are these new RTX-powered machines going to be Copilot++ PCs? [Verge]
🗣️ Microsoft’s ‘Project Solara’ — Speaking of Windows… sort of wild on the surface (not Surface) that Microsoft’s AI devices initiative will be built on top of Android. But also not that surprising given that Windows is 40 years old and simply not built for such things from name on down. The focal point will clearly be the cloud, which will allow a sort of orchestra of devices to work with one-another — a concept I’ve long been a proponent of as the future of computing (i.e. no single “iPhone-killer” but many devices working together in concert). The question will be what makes Microsoft’s offering compelling enough here, as presumably Apple and Google will be aiming to build the same around their own devices. Perhaps working with third-parties to make this more “Matter-like” helps, but seemingly Amazon would take such an approach as well. Maybe the Windows install base helps, but again, these devices don’t run Windows! So it may come down to who has the best AI and Cloud — and perhaps for enterprise, Microsoft has a viable shot. But in terms of devices that consumers actually want to use, may have been nice to be able to work with OpenAI and Jony Ive on such a flagship device, no? Maybe Microsoft can partner with Meta here? [GeekWire]
⚾️ MLB Proposes Salary Cap – Impossible to see the league's hard cap proposal of $245.3M happening – the Dodgers payroll right now is around $400M. Seven of the 30 teams are currently above the threshold. The players' union, the strongest in sports, would never go for that. They would undoubtedly go for a payroll floor (trying to force "cheap" teams to spend more) but that proposal of $171.2M is nearly $100M above the Marlins' current payroll – 13 of the 30 teams are below it currently. In ways, baseball now echoes the inequality in larger society – yes, my hometown Cleveland Guardians, with the second lowest payroll, constantly punch above their weight, but big-market/big-spending teams have won the last 10 World Series in a row. And it's largely fueled by TV money – but not the national deals, rather the owned/controlled regional networks bring in massive amounts for a few teams (namely the Dodgers and Yankees) while many others get basically nothing as some collective RSNs are constantly broke. Oh yes, and Steve Cohen doesn't help matters as he's roughly 3x as wealthy as the next richest owner (beyond the Rogers Communication company that owns the Blue Jays) and has been spending as such on the Mets – humorously, to no avail. Anyway, they need to get this sorted ahead of the next national TV rights negotiations in a couple years, with MLB trying to take over more control a la the NFL (good luck with that given those few RSNs). A strike seems pretty likely next year. [ESPN]
OpenAI is on the verge of morphing ChatGPT into something new. Is that a good thing?
M.G. Siegler
"We’re talking about it, where the American people can benefit from the success of AI. It would be a beautiful thing. And it would make them rich."
– President Donald Trump on the notion (per below) that the US government could acquire stake in some of the leading AI companies.
🎶 Listening to "Going Shopping" by The Strokes
🍺 Enjoying a Demory Paris IPA
🇫🇷 Sent from Paris, France
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Big Tech Renewing Their IPO Vows
• Government Weighs Stakes in Big AI
• Anthropic Calls for AI Development Pause
• Google Lets Publishers Opt-Out of AI Crawl
2026-06-07 22:57:19
There's not a lot in here that we didn't already know about OpenAI's sprint towards making ChatGPT a "super app" but one quote, which I used in the title, is worth, um, chatting about perhaps.
The changes, which will give greater prominence and resources to OpenAI’s coding product Codex, reflect a growing conviction within the company that the future of AI lies not in chatbots that answer questions but in agents that perform tasks for users.
“Chat is dead,” said one senior OpenAI employee.
While the report cites "more than a dozen current and former employees" of OpenAI, the quote above is clearly from a current one. A senior one. That's interesting in so far as you can use it as a finger-on-the-pulse within the company. And it points to both an opportunity and challenge ahead for OpenAI.
First and foremost, it would be wild for the company to cede the chatbot ground. To be clear and fair, the rest of the report doesn't indicate that the 'chat' element of ChatGPT is going away, let alone dying – unlike, say, Sora – but it does indicate an effort and hope to move beyond it, and perhaps just use it as an entry point to get people in the door for the "real" services that OpenAI wants to push.
The company is embarking on the changes amid a belief that the advent of AI agents, which can perform multiple tasks for users from booking travel to organising calendars, will be a more valuable product than the chatbot.
That's obviously increasingly important as OpenAI angles towards an IPO. There was a time, perhaps a year ago, when it seemed like their top-line revenue and user growth was enough, but a lot has changed in a year. While it has long looked like Anthropic was in a better position from a bottom-line perspective, due to less spend (as, at least somewhat related, more focus), the fact that they've now surpassed OpenAI with that top-line growth is also a problem, obviously. And ahead of the would-be IPOs, the private valuations of the two companies now fully reflects that.
At the same time, at least one report suggests ChatGPT has surpassed the all-important 1B MAU mark – though the company has yet to officially announce it. While it remains record-breaking growth, a number of reports suggested that they were hoping to hit the mark by the end of last year. Doing so six months into this year suggests growth that is slowing, of course. Also not great: the fact that Google just announced the 900M MAU mark for Gemini at I/O last month.
Anthropic is attacking the business while Google is attacking the usage. So yeah, something had to change.
The overhaul, which is set to begin rolling out in coming weeks, will initially appear as changes to ChatGPT’s website and mobile apps, encouraging customers towards using coding, image-generation and apps from external partners.
Given that timetable, they'll also likely be battling their old friend Microsoft on the "super app" front. Probably Google as well, depending on how long it takes them to pull their agents and coding tools into the Gemini app.
The "apps from external partners" element is interesting, the report goes a bit more into that further down:
To encourage users to adopt those services, OpenAI is redesigning ChatGPT’s interface, adding new prompts and features that direct users towards coding tools, image generation and applications built by partners such as Canva and Booking.com, according to people familiar with the plans.
Over time, OpenAI intends to ditch the prompts and features, betting that its models will be able to automatically understand users’ intentions when they are on the app or site.
In other words, anyone partnering with OpenAI on this launch better prepare to be relegated back into the background eventually. But for now, this new "Super" ChatGPT will seemingly try to lean on partners for all it can do out-of-the-box beyond the things Claude may already be doing for you. Yes, we're still trying to make App Stores happen, in a way.
Outlining the changes, Thibault Sottiaux, who previously ran Codex and now leads all of OpenAI’s core product and platform, told the FT: “It will transcend the actual surface...what we’re building towards is where you have your own personal agent that is capable of helping you... across everything in your life, be it personally or at work.”
He added: “You can connect through it on your mobile, desktop or web. When you’re in the car, you can talk to it.”
To reiterate, that's a current OpenAI exec speaking on-the-record about these changes. And his comments also suggest a move beyond the chatbot but also that the company believes we may yet enter a world of "one AI to rule them all" – something I've explored more recently in thinking about if the AI world might play out in a similar manner to the old "bring your own device" strategy in enterprise. Is your personal AI going to be so ingrained in your life that it's also just most convenient to use it as your work AI?
Executives believe users will increasingly interact with a single AI assistant rather than a collection of separate applications. As agents become more capable, OpenAI expects the distinction between chatbots, coding tools, search products and other software categories to blur.
“When we have [artificial general intelligence], I don’t think there will be a large number of distinct brands,” said Alex Embiricos, OpenAI’s head of enterprise product. “Probably there will be a single entity that I can talk to that can do whatever I need.”
OpenAI sure seems to think so! Of course, the opposite might be true (or so Microsoft undoubtedly hopes).
“Approximately a year ago, OpenAI’s strategy was swing for the fences, whereas Anthropic’s strategy is make money first,” said Jenny Xiao, partner at Leonis Capital and former researcher at OpenAI.
“Now the two are converging, because both of them are trying to aim for an IPO and investors care more about money than dreams.”
Yeah, two roads diverged... until they suddenly converged when it became clear which was the better road.
Speaking of, I can't help but continue to think that the real risk here for OpenAI is in morphing ChatGPT from this consumer-facing phenomenon into this more enterprise-focused business. They wouldn't frame it that way, of course – again, one AI to rule them all, and all that – but this "super app" could certainly muddle the message of what exactly ChatGPT is.
Given the killer quote above, is it reasonable to think they might now even call such an app "ChatGPT" anymore? I mean, that would be truly crazy given that it has basically become the "Kleenex" brand of AI (no matter what Microsoft may think – lol).
2026-06-03 21:28:31
In yesterday's newsletter I highlighted the following quote from Jensen Huang during his keynote address at Computex:
This reinvention of the computer is as big of a deal as the reinvention of the phone into what we now know as the smartphone. Microsoft and Nvidia are going to reinvent the PC. This is the first completely re-engineered, reinvented line of PCs that has happened in 40 years.
A few folks messaged that this is little more than marketing hogwash, echoing my own "hype" comment. Computers, of course, have been reinvented many times over many decades, not just with the smartphone. And even the PC itself has been reinvented over and over again. Will the 'RTX Spark' even lead to more profound change in the space than, say, Apple Silicon has?
2026-06-02 21:06:31
Given how much was being telegraphed ahead of Jensen Huang's Computex keynote, I wrote up some thoughts on NVIDIA jumping into PC-focused CPUs a few days ago (of course, it was a long-time coming).
With 'RTX Spark' (what is with seemingly every company using the 'Spark' branding for a different element of AI?) now unveiled, it seems... pretty much as expected. It will start as a high-end chip for high-end PCs that's undoubtedly going to be expensive (no prices were given) simply because of the memory alone. Will they take off where "Copilot+ PCs" did not as personal "AI Supercomputers"? We'll see. A lot of that will fall upon just how well they actually run Windows (and the myriad software built for Microsoft's operating system). We'll undoubtedly hear a lot more about that at the Build keynote in a few hours... Forget Qualcomm, would love to hear Intel's thoughts on this!
M.G. Siegler
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
📈 Anthropic Files to go Public – Alex Kantrowitz and I were in the middle of recording our monthly podcast when this news hit, so we channeled Bill O'Reilly and did it live. It helps that I wrote about this very prospect (twice!) a couple weeks back: how complicated the narrative would be for OpenAI if Anthropic filed first. That was because it leaked that OpenAI was about to file, perhaps to take some wind out of SpaceX's S-1 sails – and well, it looks like Anthropic quietly beat them to the punch! So yeah, that's a problem for OpenAI optically, if nothing else. But that's also nothing new for OpenAI. Their hope would be that the market can digest all of these listings, but the fact that they're all likely to be listed in indices like the NASDAQ 100 and S&P 500 in relative short order, thus causing major portfolio rebalancing, could cause chaos. No surprise that OpenAI is out there today touting Codex growth, as they need to try to turn this story around, pronto. The other thing, not mentioned with Alex, that I'd expect them to lean on heavily here: ads growth. It's the one business area Anthropic apparently isn't touching. So OpenAI has a potential greenfield there – if they can get them working – at least from an IPO narrative perspective... How long until OpenAI files? [YouTube]
📺 Streaming Bundles Prove Popular – Yeah, duh. With up to a third of sign-ups now happening with one of these partnerships, don't be surprised to see Netflix jump into the game soon too. They've dipped their toes tangentially, but an official Netflix + well, anyone, would obviously immediately be the most popular one of these offerings. The more interesting play remains if they go down the "channels" route that Amazon has pushed so effectively, and let (made) other services use their app (and UI, and recommendation engines) to serve up the content. This is obviously a dangerous path for the other streaming services – and why Netflix hasn't given such power to any of the streaming boxes. But as YouTube keeps creeping up (and backing into being the actual new cable bundle via YouTube TV), it feels like Netflix will make moves here. [NYT]
✋ Don't "Dickover" Your Readers to Death – If I stop to think how much of my life has been spent dismissing pop-ups/overs on websites (especially in Europe), I immediately get depressed. Added together, it's a meaningful amount of our time on Earth spent doing this. But on an individual site level, it's both annoying and just rude to your readership, as John Gruber colorfully illustrates. It was definitely one key aspect of going with Ghost as a publishing platform over Medium or Substack for Spyglass. I just want the content to load and render in a way that's a great reading experience. Not, you know, this. [Daring Fireball]
🔊 Where is the Google Home Speaker? – I have been wondering this myself because, frankly, I want one. The first purpose-built Gemini-powered device was long promised and promoted to be "coming Spring 2026". It's now June, and while we may technically have a couple weeks of "Spring" left, I think everyone would consider this to be Summer. The fact that I/O came and went without a mention of the device didn't seem like a great sign. But maybe there's some hope in the product pages of Canadian Best Buy (though they have since removed the "June 25" date – replacing it with "coming soon")? Given the fact that AI upgrade work continues on various Google Home products, this clearly seems to be a software/AI issue and not a hardware one. Which is interesting because that would be the same issue that has bedeviled both Amazon with the Alexa+ roll-out and Apple with the new HomePods (and newfangled Siri in general, of course). I'll just reiterate what I wrote two years ago: sometimes being early is worse than being late. That is, because Amazon, Apple, and now Google have to upgrade old systems rather than just rolling out new ones, they're paying a legacy tax, as it were. And clearly none of them were quite ready for it. [9to5Google]
In other Microsoft news ahead of Build...
M.G. Siegler
"This reinvention of the computer is as big of a deal as the reinvention of the phone into what we now know as the smartphone. Microsoft and Nvidia are going to reinvent the PC. This is the first completely re-engineered, reinvented line of PCs that has happened in 40 years."
– Jensen Huang, making the case for RTX Spark, and NVIDIA's place in the PC market. I haven't heard this much hype in at least a few months, when Jensen was telling us how OpenClaw was the most important software ever created. Now for both, we'll see...
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Apple's iGlasses in 2027
• Intel's New AI GPU
• Surface Laptop Ultra
2026-06-02 17:16:32
Goodbye peach. Goodbye cloud blob. Hello "super app". At their Build conference keynote later today, Microsoft is widely expected to unveil a number of things, including new in-house AI models, Windows 11 tweaks, more about their 'Surface Laptop Ultra' NVIDIA-powered machines – but the thing I'm most interested in is their attempt at this Copilot "super app":
The software giant is working on a one-stop shop that would connect its GitHub Copilot coding assistant, Copilot chat function, Copilot Cowork tool, and a new agentic workflow capability internally named Autopilot into a single app, according to two sources familiar with the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a platform that hasn’t yet been released. The project is being spearheaded by Jacob Andreou, Microsoft’s recently appointed head of Copilot. One of Andreou’s primary tasks has been to unite the consumer and enterprise sides of Copilot into a cohesive product.
Some elements of the app, which is being developed internally with the slogan “Delivering one Copilot,” could be referenced at Microsoft’s Build developer conference next week in San Francisco, though there are no plans to showcase the app itself. The company plans to launch the super app by the end of summer. The plans for the super app could evolve and are not yet final, the sources said, but the idea is to be able to combine a user’s Copilots into one central interface, including accounts from the productivity-focused Microsoft 365 Copilot.
I'm shocked, shocked that the strategy of having 17 different versions of Copilot across 17 different surfaces (including yes, Surfaces) hasn't worked out for Microsoft. "Delivering one Copilot" is obviously the right approach and messaging. And yes, that puts Microsoft in the camp with Meta, X, Coinbase, Airbnb, Uber, Snap, Spotify – even Disney in going after the elusive (at least in the West) "super app" concept. And assuming the timeline above is right, they'll be in a footrace to get their take out the door with, who else? OpenAI.
I joked last week that it looked like Microsoft's IP rights with OpenAI may have included CSS files when a leaked image of the new Copilot looked a lot like ChatGPT. And by "a lot" I meant "exactly". Per above, gone was the peachy hues of the previous consumer-facing Copilot – seemingly derived from Pi, the first and only product from Inflection, the team Microsoft "hackquired" in the first such deal. Hardly a surprise that Mustafa Suleyman tried to make Pi happen within Microsoft, but also hardly a surprise that it didn't work. And now hardly a surprise that he's been reassigned elsewhere, to work on the frontier models he spent much of the past couple years insisting Microsoft wasn't interested in making.
Anyway, a couple days later, Alex Heath seemingly got a better leaked screenshot of the Copilot "super app". And actually, it looks less like ChatGPT and more like Claude – almost exactly like Anthropic's own "super app" right down to the toggles. Sure, they have four rather than three options, but you can chalk that up to Microsoft being Microsoft. Gotta clutter where you can. I will say kudos on the "Autopilot" naming – a clever riff to convey agentic work.
I think it's interesting how the design of all of these services has collapsed into the same basic one. While they all started trying to be a bit different, visually, clearly ChatGPT's "chatbot" paradigm won the day, at least for now. And Apple is apparently about to be included on that list too, when the new Siri app – and actually, the first Siri actual app – is unveiled at WWDC. Apple tried to keep Siri as a more nebulous system-wide thing, but again, clearly the chat app idea is what users expect right now. We'll see if that changes if/when the first true AI devices built around voice start hitting the market...
It sounds like we will indeed hear more about this new Copilot in the Build keynote, but likely just a preview as Microsoft races OpenAI to get the "super app" out the door and into the hands of consumers/developers this Summer.
Which do you prefer: ChatGPT Copilot or Claude Copilot?
Update June 3, 2026: The Build keynote came and went without a showcasing of the Copilot "super app", but as Mary Jo Foley notes for GeekWire, Satya Nadella did directly mention it in passing: "Come summer, we will be bringing coding to all knowledge work within one Copilot Super App. That’s really exciting. So you’re going to have Chat, Cowork, and Code all in Copilot".
M.G. Siegler
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2026-06-01 22:55:03
This past weekend, a movie opened with $81M at the box office. A big number. But also one that Hollywood would undoubtedly expect for a marquee film in an early summer slot. But this movie cost just $10M to make. And was directed by a 20-year-old first-time director. Based off of the short films he put out there on YouTube. In that light, this isn't just a big number, it's a holy-shit-your-pants moment for Hollywood.
And while you might be tempted to write off Backrooms as a one-off box office blip a la The Blair Witch Project almost 30 years ago, there are a few reasons to believe this may actually be a sea-change moment for the entire industry.1
First and foremost, the movie that came in the number two spot wasn't the latest Star Wars epic, The Mandalorian and Grogu, in its second weekend. It was Curry Barker's Obsession in its third weekend. Yes, a movie with a $750k budget by yet another first-time director beat a movie that cost a reported $400M for Disney to make and market.
What is going on out there?
Well, YouTube, for one thing. Beyond Kane Parsons using the platform to perfect his craft and story for Backrooms, Barker also cut his teeth on the service. I wrote a blurb about this in a newsletter last week, but that was when there was some inkling that Backrooms might earn a "mere" $50M this weekend. The $80M+ opening plus the fact that Obsession has now risen at the box office each week – something that hasn't happened (outside of a few Christmas weekends) in 40+ years – all but ensures this movement draws Hollywood's attention much like the Eye of Sauron when Frodo Baggins puts on the Ring of Power.2
And, if history is any guide, the industry may smother this fire before it spreads. Barker is apparently getting eight-figure offers for his next project sight unseen. Parsons may just get a literal blank check after this weekend. Not that they don't deserve the paydays and bigger budgets, but this has always been the delicate balance and not-so-fine line in Hollywood. If something is working, money is thrown at it and everyone sets out to copy it. But this movement could be just as much about the "grassroots" nature of building an audience and fandom on YouTube – and using the platform to stress test your ideas.
And trying to sincerely engage there would be incredibly awkward for a Hollywood apparatus which has spent the past couple of decades first trying to sue such platforms out of existence, and later just generally dismissing the notion of "UGC" as any kind of competitive threat.
This has long been a simmering misunderstanding of the fundamental notion of attention. Hollywood assumed their content commanded it above all else. No one seemed to realize that the relative scarcity of entertainment options leading into the 1950s was not just a factor of their "Golden Age" but was the factor. The box office data over the past 80 years would have very clearly showed this to anyone willing to take an honest look. Per-capita spending first started to plummet, then overall attendance did. Instead, such data was sprinkled with ticket price increases and inflation pixie dust. As a result Box Office "records" continued unabated.
COVID punctured that dream, but rather than wake-up, the industry has been busy trying to figure out ways to go back to sleep.
Anyway, attention continued to shift. To television. To videogames. To smartphones. To streaming. It's not that people are consuming less content – they're consuming far more of it! – but where they're interacting with it has changed. These days, YouTube is king. That misunderstanding is now boiling over in the form of $80M+ opening weekends at the box office.
Which seems like a good thing for Hollywood, right? A legitimate record again, finally. But not one Hollywood controls the narrative around. It will undoubtedly be spun by some as "see, to really succeed, you must 'graduate' to movie theaters" – boy would that be a misreading of what's really going on here.
This weekend portends the end of the "traditional" model for Hollywood. The big studio gatekeepers have been eroding for years, and now it is being swept out to sea. Tidal waves are forming. YouTube is just the first.
Can Hollywood ride such a wave? They will try! But obviously it has to be about more than simply releasing movie trailers to their channels. There will be a rush to try and cultivate talent who are able to leverage the platform natively. But it must be paired with the realization that this is all part of an attention continuum. In 2026, the model cannot only be releasing a big budget movie into thousands of theaters (many of which sit completely empty while the content plays depending on the movie, city, time of day, etc) and keeping it there for a set number of days so as to unnaturally protect a distribution model that was created a hundred years ago.
Again, in a very different world.
That is not to say that movie theaters should die! If anything, this weekend proves their value. They should be utilized in new and interesting ways. Leveraging content that built an audience elsewhere, such as, yes, YouTube. But also television.3 Obviously, that model is nothing new, but what used to be thought of as shows "graduating" into being movies, should be far more fluid. Maybe something starts as a show but builds towards a finale in theaters. Or vice versa. Maybe a movie starts on streaming then builds towards an "event" showing in theaters, a la KPop Demon Hunters – which worked, by the way, because it aired on Netflix first, not in spite of it. Maybe a sequel goes directly to theaters. Maybe a movie opens in theaters for only one week – the horror! – for the super fans, then quickly spreads elsewhere. There are so many different ideas and experiments to try...
Also, they don't really have to be full-on experiments. You can track such things. We can build it, we have the technology.
Speaking of, perhaps the most fascinating meta layer here is that while Hollywood has been busy panicking and bracing for the onslaught of AI, it's YouTube which has come around to truly disrupt the system. This has been a long time coming, of course. But Hollywood was blinded to it because just as with the box office trends, they simply didn't want to see it. They convinced themselves they were looking at easy-to-dismiss "UGC", when they should have been focusing on attention.
In particular, amongst young people. Current tracking suggests that half of the audience for Backrooms was under 25. Half! And 86% may have been below 35. Eighty-six percent! These are not numbers that marketing drove. There's something else going on here, clearly!
Of course, there are smart players that already realized this. A24 is rightfully getting a lot of plaudits for Backrooms opening today. And Focus Features has continued to keep their eye on things like Obsession despite being a part of the OG Universal studio, itself long-since under the Comcast conglomerate. Jason Blum is out there being quoted left and right, which makes sense given the success he's long seen with his Blumhouse banner. The fact that all of this is tied to the horror genre doesn't seem like an accident. It's the one area of filmmaking where smaller budgets are not just tolerated, but are a part of the model. Again, that's not to say you can't do interesting art with big budgets, it just means that the big budget alone is obviously not enough and conversely, smaller budgets may lead to more creativity in the same way that any kind of constraint tends to...
As Brooks Barnes points out in The New York Times, the films of the 1970s that "reset" the industry were in part a response to the big-budget spectacles of the 1960s when Hollywood tried to grow simply by puffing out its chest – with its war chest. It feels like there are similarities here, but also the world is far, far different.
The streamers are at the gate. Hollywood was seemingly proud of themselves having fought off the Netflix "threat", only to wake up to the reality of the Paramount Skydance "synergies". Big Tech increasingly encroaching on this turf is inevitable. Amazon owns James Bond, he will not be the last. We'll see what Google does with news of now two massive movies having effectively started on their platform. Are they okay for YouTube to remain a "farm system" as it were, or do they start to flex? Unlike Hollywood, they do understand the modern attention economy. They've got Netflix and Prime Video and TikTok to fight.
Finally, Hollywood, as with pretty much every industry, seems to be standing on the beach screaming at the ocean as the AI tidal wave approaches. Maybe this YouTube jolt is a wake-up call, but probably not. And I fear that's really because of a broader situation brewing: attention aside, what both the YouTube model and AI may ultimately showcase is the true "democratization" of filmmaking.
For decades, kids have dreamed of growing up to "make it in Hollywood". For almost everyone, it was just that, a dream. Because even if you had the best idea in the world, the odds that someone was going to give you tens of millions – let alone hundreds of millions – to do it was well, impossible. And, as Hollywood well knew, that exclusivity continued to fuel some of the allure. But this weekend may have just showcased those gates shifting. And AI may throw them open for good. Because in order to make a movie, you'll no longer have to make it in Hollywood. Quite literally, you won't!
One more thing: one of the production units that co-produced Backrooms was 21 Laps. That's the group set up by filmmaker Shawn Levy – whose next film is next summer's next Star Wars: Starfighter.
M.G. Siegler
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1 I was tempted to call it a 'DeepSeek Moment' but well, that moment ended up being complicated – less 'Sputnik' more 'Spendthrift'. In that way, this may be sort of similar! ↩
2 For context, The Mandalorian and Grogu fell nearly 70% in its second weekend. Yes, big drops are normal for blockbusters, but 70% is a very big drop. ↩
3 Yes, this is sort of ironic given that The Mandalorian started by streaming on Disney+ and they clearly thought that would give it more legs in theaters. But Star Wars is a whole other can of worms, dating in part to its long history, starting as a lower-budget genre-defining project by a renegade filmmaker in Northern California... ↩
