2025-06-04 04:57:12
My prediction that Netflix is going to backtrack and start releasing some subset of their movies in wide theatrical releases? It's alive! It's alive!1
On Sunday, the streamer released the first teaser trailer for director Guillermo del Toro’s longtime passion project take on Frankenstein. The prospect of yet another adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel might seem wearisome, as there have been nearly 200 filmic versions of the tale already. Yet the trailer (below) looks absolutely stunning — and hugely cinematic. The film stars Oscar Isaac as the mad doctor, Jacob Elordi as his monster and Mia Goth as Victor’s fiancée and features a sumptuous visual feast of Victorian and Arctic imagery.
This has led to fans to pretty much say the same thing: The most upvoted comments on YouTube contend the film — which will have its global premiere on Netflix in November — should be given a theatrical release.
I mean, just watch the trailer. It's hard to disagree. This is clearly a movie that should be seen – and screened – in a movie theater. Not on "your fucking telephone", to quote the late, great David Lynch.2
Some samples: “Guillermo Del Toro is too good for Netflix. This needs a theater release!” and “I think we can all agree that this should be released in theaters. Guillermo’s efforts deserve it” and “Guillermo del Toro is for theaters, not for Netflix. All that man makes is art,” along with the kinder, if rather passive aggressive: “Thank you Netflix for continuing to give Del Toro a platform. He deserves far greater.”
It will obviously get a small theatrical release to qualify for awards season, just as Netflix does for all of their most potentially prestigious films, but this has the potential to be one of those must-see cinematic experiences if marketed (and released) correctly. Instead, Netflix will undoubtedly stubbornly refuse, insisting that putting Frankenstein in theaters would degrade their value proposition. At some point, I'm guessing they'll realize that it actually enhances it. Netflix is no longer the underdog upstart, they have conquered television and really, all of Hollywood. They're a $500B company well on their way to $1T. No other entertainment company is close. Literally. They're nearly triple Disney.
Anyway, it feels like the talent is starting to break them. And the talent behind Barbie, in particular, is leading the charge here. While Netflix lost out on Margot Robbie's next movie specifically because of the desire for a theatrical release, they had to cave to Greta Gerwig's demand for her upcoming Narnia adaptation, which is going full IMAX before it hits Netflix.
Now read these thoughts from Guillermo del Toro and tell me he doesn't want to see his work playing at cinemas:
“To this day, nobody has made the book, but the book became my bible, because what Mary Shelley wrote was the quintessential sense of isolation you have as a kid,” he said. “So, Frankenstein to me is the pinnacle of everything, and part of me wants to do a version of it, part of me has for more than 25 years chickened out of making it. I dream I can make the greatest Frankenstein ever, but then if you make it, you’ve made it. Whether it’s great or not, it’s done. You cannot dream about it anymore. That’s the tragedy of a filmmaker. You can dream of something, but once you’ve made it, you’ve made it.”
One more thing:
Interestingly enough, Netflix also developed Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride, which is a remake of Bride of Frankenstein, but then passed it over to Warner Bros. The studio will release it next March — in theaters.
"I had a vision. An idea took shape in my mind. Inevitable. Unavoidable. Until it became truth." Let's do this, Netflix.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 A line made famous by the 1931 James Whale version of Frankenstein, but was never actually in the book.
2 Who, of course, never made a version of Frankenstein, but instead The Elephant Man, which was close enough, thematically.
2025-06-03 20:33:44
Perplexity has long been one of the AI players in a unique, but slightly awkward position. They've had a solid product in what is shaping up to be a compelling spot in the market, but they lacked the giant Big Tech benefactor that their larger AI rivals had. Yes, they have a lot of nice, big investors – including NVIDIA and SoftBank – but not the one that could truly buoy them, like Anthropic has in Amazon (and Google) or OpenAI has (had?) in Microsoft. That may be about to change:
Samsung is nearing a wide-ranging deal to invest in Perplexity and put search technology from the artificial intelligence startup at the forefront of the South Korean company’s devices.
The two companies are in talks to preload Perplexity’s app and assistant on upcoming Samsung devices and integrate the startup’s search features into the Samsung web browser, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The firms have also discussed weaving Perplexity’s technology into Samsung’s Bixby virtual assistant, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private.
Granted, Samsung isn't one of the "Magnificent 7" these days (nor are they an American company, of course). But they are a $275B tech giant that controls a sizable portion of the Android market. So yeah, they're probably a good partner to have here.
Especially if it's as all-encompassing as this suggests. It's not just the preload on Samsung devices, it's also the integration into their web browser – which presumably could replace (or at least give an option to replace) you-know-who.
Samsung is planning to announce the Perplexity integrations as early as this year, the people said, with the goal of including the service as a default assistant option in the Galaxy S26 phone line that’s slated to launch in the first half of 2026. However, the specific details haven’t been finalized and could still change.
Being both baked into Bixby and perhaps getting their own placement as the default assistant option on Galaxy phones reminds me a bit of how Amazon leverages Anthropic's technology – and of course, how Microsoft leverages OpenAI's. They're using them both up top and underneath. As for the money:
The tech giant is also expected to be one of the biggest investors in a new round of funding for Perplexity, the people said. The startup is in advanced discussions to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, Bloomberg News has reported.
In the olden days – so, a couple years ago – raising $500M would have seemed like a ungodly – or actually, godly – amount of money. Today, it's a seed round for an AI startup. And a small seed round, depending on if you're Elon Musk or not. It's just not a lot of money and firepower to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and yes, xAI – let alone you-know-who. Obviously, you'd hope that Perplexity is far more cash efficient given that they leverage the models from many of those competitors to power their products (which could be an issue down the road?). But they also do have their own "Sonar" proprietary models that they train (distilling from Meta's "open source" Llama models and more recently, DeepSeek).
They're also just doing a lot. When they're not busy trying to buy TikTok – what ever happened to that? – or Chrome – they're making AI web browsers, and potentially AI hardware. None of this comes on the cheap.
Still, without question, a Samsung tie-up would be huge for them. In fact, I can only think of one better one for the company, and this deal, if completed, may make that decidedly more awkward:
Apple has also shown interest in working with Perplexity. The iPhone maker has discussed using Perplexity as an alternative to Google Search as well as a substitute for ChatGPT integration in the Siri voice assistant, Bloomberg News has reported.
“We’ve been pretty impressed with what Perplexity has done, so we’ve started some discussions with them about what they’re doing,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president of services, said during recent testimony at a Google antitrust trial.
It’s unclear how Perplexity’s relationship with Samsung, one of Apple’s fiercest rivals, would affect that.
I've been arguing for months that acquiring Perplexity should be Apple's AI "Hail Mary". Though with more time passing, and their valuation rising, that's been looking less and less likely. And this Samsung deal may very well kill off that possibility. But would it also hurt a potential partnership between the two? This feels like one of those golden fork-in-the-road moments for Perplexity...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-06-03 07:15:00
Around the Horn debuted on November 4, 2002, which happened to be two days after my 21st birthday. It's probably a pretty good bet that I was hungover after my first weekend being legally able to drink. Also, I was in college. In Ann Arbor, Michigan.1 And it was so long ago that it pre-dates things like Google Calendar. I mean, it almost pre-dates Google! All of that is to say that I'm not entirely sure if I was watching that very first episode. But I was definitely watching some of those first episodes, as I vividly recall watching many episodes hosted by Max Kellerman.2 And he was gone by early 2004, just as I was getting ready to graduate.
Tony Reali, who I, like so many, had mainly known as "Stat Boy" on Pardon the Interruption,3 stepped in and took over the hosting role. And a little over a week ago, he stepped away, as did the show after 22 years and change.
Honestly, I almost didn't watch the last show because I didn't want it to be over. I've been known to stubbornly do this with shows that I never want to end but have for one reason or another. But most such shows are just a few seasons long. And those seasons usually just have ten or maybe a dozen episodes. Around the Horn was on for over two decades nearly every single day over that time span. It's not an exaggeration to say that I didn't just watch the show, I aged with it.
I never got into a habit of watching other long-running programming like late-night talk shows or game shows, but I watched Around the Horn for a massive percentage of my days over these past two decades. And while, yes, I watched a lot of PTI as well, which always came right after it, ATH was the show I loved the most. I watched it more than any other show I've ever seen. And I selfishly don't want it to go away.
To me, it was just the perfect way to unwind while quickly catching up on the major sports news of the day. It was less about the (famously and comically) arbitrary scoring and more about the banter between the various players. It was the ultimate "hang" podcast before those existed. I mean, ATH predated podcasting!
And I'm annoyed because ESPN is ending it just as they're gearing up to launch their new streaming service – also called ESPN, imagine that – which will undoubtedly need as much content as they can get, because unlike a linear television channel, there are no limits on content you can showcase. And actually, more is better. Around the Horn is missing the launch of that service by just a few months.
That seems silly and perhaps shortsighted. Especially since all the players involved – namely Reali – clearly want to continue.
I'm sure there are reasons why ESPN thought it couldn't work as a streaming-only show. And you have to imagine those reasons are financial. But this is also the network paying Stephen A. Smith $20M a year. And Pat McAfee something like $17M a year – for a show he fully owns. Again, they need content for the upcoming ESPN flagship streamer and relative to say, actual sports league rights, ATH has to be insanely cheap to produce. And it has a built-in fanbase built up over 20+ years.
It was also just a weird move to cancel it in the middle of the NBA (and NHL) playoffs. Maybe wait for a week with no major sporting events, like in the doldrums of the summer? I mean they were 47 shows away from 5,000. That's like two months of programming. Maybe call it a day after that?
Anyway, I did end up watching the final show tonight, and I'm glad I did because it was nice. A fine tribute and call back to the history of the program. And it triggered some of my own memories of watching it over the past 20+ years. Because I did go from a kid in college watching it, to a young person who had driven to Los Angeles alone without knowing anyone there watching it, to a web developer in San Diego watching it, to a tech reporter in San Francisco watching it, to an investor with a wife and two kids traveling all around the world watching it. And now I can't watch it any longer and I'm sad about it.
A creature of habit had one of his core habits taken from him.
Still, what a wild run for that show. It pre-dated the iPhone by about five years. I remember what a big deal it was when it got "upgraded" to HD – that was 15 years ago. I mean, it started as a program to highlight sports reporters at newspapers around the country. By the end, almost none of the panelists worked for newspapers – some of those newspapers no longer exist!
One thing that still exists, my very first tweet sent on January 17, 2007: Watching Around the Horn. And the next day. And the next week. And so on. Until now.
1 The night of my birthday – again, my 21st birthday – the Michigan Wolverines beat their rival Michigan State Spartans at Michigan Stadium. I'm sorry, did I say beat? We won that game 49-3 -- Michigan scored 49 unanswered. I was there alongside 111,541 others. That was a great birthday.
2 I was a bit surprised not to see Kellerman back on the final show. I would guess that Reali would have wanted that too -- that just seems like the kind of guy he is -- but Kellerman probably would not, especially after his most recent parting with ESPN. I was less surprised not to see Jay Mariotti return for obvious reasons -- which again, Reali undoubtedly would have pushed to make happen.
3 A show which, incidentally, started about a year earlier than ATH -- just about a month after 9/11. That's wild to think about/back to.
2025-06-03 02:30:25
For a lot of people, the way they're first interacting with AI may be a technology as old as time – well, internet time: email. Between Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and a bunch of other players, AI's tentacles are creeping into our inboxes. You don't need to use a chatbot, it's right there, perhaps summarizing long emails, or at the very least, prompting you to let their bots complete that sentence you're typing. Even the company sort of comically behind in AI at the moment, Apple, now has all of this stuff.
We're not going back. Which got me thinking about how this actually plays out...
2025-06-02 21:56:29
Nine years ago, just after it launched, I immediately fell in love with Stranger Things. But I also noted that for the first time in the Netflix era, I wondered if they were making a slight mistake in the way they were launching it:
That’s a long-winded way of saying that recent discussions I’ve had with friends about Stranger Things always seem to lead back to the question of whether or not it would be better to release it in installments (be it weekly or something else). I know this sounds antithetical in the age of Netflix — and certainly for a Netflix show! — but again, because everyone binges through such shows in their own time and at their own pace, it makes real discourse about the shows much more complicated.
Yes, we can still have a broad discussion about Stranger Things, assuming we’ve all watched all of it. But missing are the discussions about individual elements of individual episodes. And the aforementioned build-up. Because some of the mystery that may have been left hanging is likely going to be resolved by the time you’re through (though not with everything in this particular show, of course). And, frankly, who can remember every little thing that happened in the middle of an eight-hour content binge?
Clearly, Netflix didn't need to take my advice – this time – as a few years later, Stranger Things was still going strong binge-wise and bigger than ever. Still, that thought lingered in my head, so I wrote up a new idea:
Well, here’s a slightly new idea: what if a show like Stranger Things started as a binge show, but then morphed into weekly, appointment viewing as it proved its popularity? So, once Stranger Things became a sensation after season 1, and people were nice and hooked, season 2 would go to the installment-model, with a new episode coming out at the same time each week. Or, if Netflix wasn’t confident enough in a show after just one season, they could wait to switch to the new model for season 3 (two season “trials” seem to be the norm for Netflix).
Or, if Netflix wanted to benefit from a long, holiday weekend (as they did with Stranger Things season 3 which was released on the 4th of July), they could release say, half the season all at once, binge-ready, and then stagger the rest of the episodes over several weeks to get the same effect. There’s actually a lot you could do here, once folks are hooked!
Again, I know this is antithetical to Netflix’s model. But I think this blend has potentially huge benefits. Both for us, as viewers, for the shows themselves, and for Netflix! Also, while this idea eight years ago proved to be a good one, I’m still waiting on that Firefly reboot, Netflix. Thanks.
Well, it took almost a decade, but:
Netflix has finally revealed when the long-awaited and fifth and final season of Stranger Things will debut.
The streamer announced the final season of the coming-of-age sci-fi hit will air in three parts late this year. The first will premiere Nov. 26, followed by part two on Christmas and the series finale on New Year’s Eve.
That's right, in the end, Netflix finally landed on:
1) A staggered release schedule
2) Tied to holidays for maximum communal reach
To be clear and fair, they actually started doing this the last go-around with Stranger Things, which was, checks calendar, three years ago. That "season" was broken into two parts, with the first released around Memorial Day in 2022 and the second around the 4th of July. Now we're getting Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Eve to end it.
The final season looks great, even if the kids look like they've aged a decade over the four years that has passed within the show – because they have.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
2025-06-02 21:01:26
I'm not entirely sure what to make of this joint interview, other than perhaps Ive wanted to ensure Powell Jobs also got her credit in the sale of io (which I'll continue to style as 'IO') to OpenAI. Also to ensure they get their own "Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel"-style portrait, as the FT describes it, citing "online wits". Still, a few tidbits worth calling out:
Ive and Altman have been tight-lipped about the AI-enabled device they are developing, and I wonder if it will invent a whole new category in the way the iPhone did for smartphones (speculation has swirled around some kind of screenless device). Ive deftly dodges my attempts to get him to tell me what it is but hints he was motivated by a disillusionment with how our relationship with devices has evolved. “Many of us would say we have an uneasy relationship with technology at the moment,” he says. I’m guessing this includes screen addiction and the harms caused by social media. Whatever the device is, driving its design is “a sense of: we deserve better. Humanity deserves better.”
It's also sort of curious that Ive keeps agreeing to all these interviews of late while refusing to talk about the device they're working on (yes, I know there's likely more than one, but there's also clearly one that's in the lead to come out first). So that naturally leads to speculation about what it is, which is fine, but it better be damn good to live up to the hype that he is now naturally building! (This approach is still infinitely better than doing a TED Talk to preview it though.)
Powell Jobs agrees Silicon Valley has changed — and not necessarily for the better. “Thirty-five years ago we were still in the semiconductor era. There was the promise of making personal what had been available only to industry.” Apple played its part in that democratisation of technology, making beautiful, powerful computers for consumers. In recent years, however, there has been more public questioning of the role of Big Tech in our lives. She believes “people are still animated” by the idea that technology can be a force for good but adds a caveat. “We now know, unambiguously, that there are dark uses for certain types of technology. You can only look at the studies being done on teenage girls and on anxiety in young people, and the rise of mental health needs, to understand that we’ve gone sideways. Certainly, technology wasn’t designed to have that result. But that is the sideways result.”
This, of course, echoes Ive's own talking points (as well as Altman's). And, of course, that points back to the company and product created by Powell Jobs late husband – which is undoubtedly why they're quick to caveat the current issues with the notion that these were unintended side effects of the iPhone:
Ive agrees. “If you make something new, if you innovate, there will be consequences unforeseen, and some will be wonderful and some will be harmful.” He acknowledges his own role in the products that have changed our relationship with technology. “While some of the less positive consequences were unintentional, I still feel responsibility. And the manifestation of that is a determination to try and be useful.”
"Unforeseen." "Unintentional." Two more caveats in three sentences.
It also sounds like Powell Jobs has seen whatever product Ive and team have been working on – or at least earlier prototypes of it. Which is more than, say, some key executives at OpenAI can say? As for that device...
Surely this new device will compete with those made by Apple? She demurs. “I’m still very close to the leadership team in Apple. They’re really good people and I want them to succeed also.”
Notably, you haven't heard Ive say something along those lines in all these interviews...
One more thing: on a entirely different topic...
I ask about “Signalgate”, The Atlantic’s recent scoop, when a member of the Trump administration mistakenly added the magazine’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a group chat on the Signal messaging platform about an imminent US strike in Yemen. “I’ll include you in a thread sometime,” Ive says. Great, I think: hopefully one where you spill the beans about the new AI device.
The Signalgate story prompted a furious response from the US president, who called Goldberg a “sleazebag” before inviting him in for an interview weeks later. “It’s very important to emphasise that, despite having the majority ownership stake in The Atlantic, I’m involved in the business side and not the editorial side,” Powell Jobs says. “We feel very strongly that freedom of the press means they are free to write the truth as they find it, and follow a story as they find it. It’s not up to us to approve or disapprove.”
Now that is a great answer from an owner of a news org. Notably, you haven't heard Jeff Bezos say something along those lines – at least not recently.
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
