Happy Sunday and hope you’re staying cool. The New York editorial contingent of our merry band of Ankler pirates braved the East Coast heat dome — as my daughter notes, chill out, it’s just a high-pressure system — for a confab with visiting dignitary and fearless leader Janice Min. Always great to spend time with Janice and Sean McNulty in person, and our social media whiz, Abigail Barr; with whom we debated, over sushi in Soho, the greatest years for a twentysomething to have lived and worked in NYC. (Abigail pegged the VC-fueled mid-2010s, where parties abounded and deeply discounted ride-share apps made getting around cheaper). As for today, she mentioned how hard it is for her entertainment industry peer group, just starting out, to get a job or advance — a topic Richard Rushfield dove into this week (see more below).
Our Friday lunch followed, of course, by ice cream, was a great capstone on a week of kick-ass stories and podcasts, so in case you missed it, let’s go:
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Hit series Geek Girl is a case study in navigating the streamer’s daunting bureaucracy — and quiet strategy shift. Its EP, Jeff Norton, tells Manori Ravindran in detail about his three rejections from Netflix until they found the right team there — a department that straddles acquisitions and originals you’ve probably never heard of — and what financing had to do with it:
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Most showrunners don’t look like influencers — more script rewrites, fewer skin-care routines. But as Elaine Low reports in Series Business (paid subscribers only), to be a showrunner in 2024 means being a “brand”:
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When Katey Rich wasn’t digging deep into the Emmy ballots, she had several amazing conversations this week, with Prentice Penny about Black Twitter and social media; with Team Downey’s Susan Downey and Amanda Burrell (and featuring a pop-in via email from RDJ); and delightful Abbott Elementary stars Lisa Ann Walter and Sheryl Lee Ralph:
The C-suite can’t wait for Sean’s deep dives, nor should you. This week, in addition to all the deal news, he tracked the descent of several cable bundle-tied stocks (AMC: yikes!) and Disney’s big move in the streaming ads market:
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This week, we announced the debut of an exciting new video series called Breaking Through, where artists talk about the moments that shaped their creative process on particular projects. Up first: Expats creator Lulu Wang and star Ji-young Yoo, then Fallout scene-stealer Aaron Moten:
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