Rap Beef Settled & A No-Marvel Summer

Good days.

Rap quarrels update: Kendrick won. Drake got exposed. And Macklemore shut the whole beef down with “Hind’s Hall” in support of Palestine.

All of its proceeds will be donated to UNRWA for humanitarian relief in Gaza. Watch the new drop here:

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

But first, please take a few minutes to fill out this feedback form so I can fight off my sleepless nights and gut health issues (yes, they are so correlated).

Here’s the itinerary for today:

• Recent Transactions: Paramount is finally rescued?

• No-Marvel Summer: thank goodness for that.

• Music & Film Shopping: retail therapy but make it art.

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

Recent Transaction

• Sony and Apollo to offer Paramount Global a $26-billion deal, in which:

  • Sony will take over over Paramount's debt and become the majority stakeholder; Apollo will take a minority stake.

    • Well, that’s the plan if the deal follows through. Is it just me or this messy M&A talk is somehow the catalyst for Paramount’s villain story?

• MadRiver Pictures to fully finance films with $25 million - $75 million budget in overseas markets across the globe.

  • It partnered with multiple several major international distribution companies.

    • Massive W for their equity financing!

• New Jersey Economic Development Authority designates 1888 Studios in Bayonne as the first Film-Lease Partner Facility in a +$1 billion studio complex development deal.

  • This includes 3 sound stages and span 55 acres.

  • Aimed to boost the local economy with a competitive 30%-35% production tax credit!

    • It’s about time tax filing is put into actual good use.

• Iconic Arts, a global transmedia company, is recently valued at $20 million in its pre-seed stage and promised to make waves in the IP and entertainment industries.

  • Supporters of its financing includes Will.i.am, Sony Pictures Entertainment and JP Morgan.

  • It uses AI tools to help creators make worlds for games, film and live experiences without needing to know how to code, cutting costs by up to 90%.

    • But again, it boils down to the AI-interference debate to gauge its significance.

My First Summer without Marvel: Thank Goodness.

Every year since 2009, excluding the pandemic years, Marvel has hit the big screen with a summer blockbuster. But not this year - their endless, repetitive franchisement is busted.

Amidst the ongoing proxy war at Disney, CEO Bob Iger says the company is sizing down the MCU universe: there will be no more than two TV series and three Marvel movies per year.

Perhap, this volume reduction aims to refine its quality and gauge a changing climate in film viewing, where slice-of-life films are growing to reign the big screen gradually.

Or perhaps, it serves to reassess the way audiences response to the conventional world-building narratives that we have been seeing for more than a decade.

What are your thoughts on this?

Retail Therapy

I look forward to writing this section every week - because it’s hard to always be the one with the best music taste in my family and no one knows about it! But now you know.

For me, “Where is The Love?” will forever be the most enduring and transnational songs of all time, unrelentlessly mobilizing solidarity every time. So dig deep into to the lyrics and it will help you form a thesis for that social science essay, as well as your stance in our world today.

Bretman Rock has famously said:

The most intellectual thing one can do is to use their privileges to learn, get educated and be informed. As for this week’s film recommendations, I will compile a list of films on Palestine readily available on your streaming platforms on Instagram, so let’s stay connected!

And that’s it for today, folks.

What are your thoughts? Let me know through this form here.

Stay safe, give love, and support the causes in whatever capacity that you can.