Can We Possibly Not Talk About Dune?

Good days. How are you getting on with your week? Busy, chill? Either way, we hope us knocking on your email inbox gives you a quick escape.

This is Roll the Tape, our weekly market recap of recent transactions and updates in the industry.

If you’re new here, welcome to The Produced. Check out our previous deep-dive issues:

• B-Roll #2: An Incubated Dragon of Asia’s Film Industry: Vietnam

• B-Roll #2: The Rise and Rise of A24

• B-Roll #1: Deep Dive into Streaming Services vs. Movie Theatres

Recent Transactions

• Goated U.K. Government’s move: they recently announced a production budget up to £15 million for UK film productions.

  • This includes 53% expenditure credits, relieving 40% of tax payment

  • And Christopher Nolan approves of this, so why argue?

• Ottawa pushes for its first major studio facility in the capital as it generates CAD $120 million per year for Canada’s film industry.

• Finland-based management company IPR.VC recently closed a €100 million funding deal for film and television production.

  • Their past partnerships include: A24, Netflix, Gigglebug and XYZ Films

• Apple listens, y’all, as they recently reports on spending $700 million last year on only 3 films: “Killers of the Flower Moon” “Napoleon” and “Argylle”

  • Seems like Apple is listening to Wall Street to pump out blockbusters, but is it worth it?

“Dune: Part 2” Dethrones Barbenheimer

First Impressions

Just like the Barbenheimer heat last summer, you can’t go anywhere without being asked: “Why does Austin Butler sound like that?”

Just kidding. Featured in “Dune: Part 2” is a long list of star-studded cast: Zendaya, Timotheé Chalamet, Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, Anya Taylor-Joy, and more. So far, the film has received positive critical reviews from the public, especially from our trustee buddy, Rotten Tomatoes:

• 94% critics' score

• 95% audience score

Breaking Projections with Actuals

As of March 4th after its first opening weekend, the movie has reached $182.5 million, outperforming the first dune movie by a whopping 81% in overseas markets.

Indeed, “Dune: Part 2” is not here to warm the 2024 movie bench, but to dominante the stat sheets:

• The top five markets for the weekend were the UK, France, Germany, Korea, and Australia.

• Set records for IMAX, grossing $32.2 million globally

• Opened in 71 overseas markets and secured the top spot in all of them, making it the top opening for Timothée Chalamet.

  

Hold Up, but Should WBD Stocks be Skyrocketing ?

"Dune: Part Two" is distributed Warner Bros Discovery and Legendary Entertainment and is one of the top 2024 film debuts.

However, despite this successful head start, WBD’s stock dropped by 5% today.

Up until this month, the studio conglomerate has been struggling, falling 15% last month and 42% in the past year. This setback initiated merging talks with Paramount, but WBD said nah, not right now brodie.

And it has good reasons to delay this potential synergy:

• According to Tip Rank, analysts think it's a decent time to buy WBD stock, predicting a potential 57% increase with an average price target of $13.61.

• Currently, Warner Bros Discovery shares are valued at an enterprise value-to-EBITDA multiple of 2.9, showing how the market views the company's financial situation.

Music Shopping

I told my sibling to give me a random word as the starting point to curating a playlist: “Hey, give me whatever sentence/word that comes to mind.”

Genuinely, I was expecting some sort of “eating chicken nuggets and watching snow storms are bomb asf.” But my sibling just replied: “perplexity.” 

Okay, got real deep right there. So here is a playlist curated by The Produced for when you feel a rush of uncertain uncertainty creeping through your body.

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Did you know that you can now directly comment on our posts now? Leave your thoughts below and let us know what you think. I’d be the happiest to hear your impressions of the playlist as well!

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Anyway, stay safe and drink water.