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It’s Friday and if Google Search was worried about TikTok, it better buckle up for OpenAI’s latest reveal. Watch out, Alphabet: SearchGPT is on the way.
🗞️ Today’s News 🗞️
Michael Bay is bringing Skibidi Toilet to Hollywood
TikTok creators can (finally) upload their own custom thumbnails
Inside the NBA and WNBA’s $20 billion deal with Amazon Prime
Call Her Daddy takes fans to Love Island
THAT SKIBIDI RIZZ
Prepare yourself for Michael Bay’s Skibidi Toilet film adaptation
The phenomenon: Skibidi Toilet is the moment. Since skyrocketing to popularity last summer, the lo-fi online series has won the title of YouTube‘s #1 trending topic of 2023 and climbed to a total of 65 billion views across platforms.
Now, Transformers director Michael Bay is ready to turn Alexey Gerasimov’s world of warring toilets-with-heads and tech-faced soldiers into both a TV series and a major motion picture.
How it started: Gerasimov—aka the animator behind Skibidi’s home channel, DaFuq!?Boom!—first joined forces with Bay in May, when creator/producer matchmaker Invisible Narratives partnered with Bonkers Toys to develop Skibidi Toilet merch. By then, Bay (who serves as Invisible Narratives’ Chief Creative Advisor) had already been tracking Gerasimov’s work for some time. In fact, the director says he’s followed the Skibidi creator “since his early days when he was uploading fan-made Transformers videos.”
Fast forward to July, and Invisible Narratives execs say multiple product lines are now in the works—not to mention a movie/TV franchise “similar to the Marvel universe or Transformers.”
The big picture: It’s hard to overstate the enormity of that development. Over the last few years, major streaming services and studios (including A24) have picked up creator properties like VivziePop‘s Hazbin Hotel, RackaRacka‘s hit Talk to Me, and Chris Stuckmann‘s upcoming Shelby Oaks. A project spearheaded by a director with Bay’s prominence, however, stands to lend creator IPs more legitimacy in the public eye than ever before:
“This is as real as any franchise that we’ve ever been involved with. It’s still storytelling. It’s still character development, it’s still jokes and action and drama and intrigue. It’s just a different delivery mechanism.”
🔆SPONSORED 🔆
VidSummit is the insiders-only creator economy event you’ve been waiting for
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This year’s conference is no exception. Reserve your spot to mingle with industry leaders at an invite-only kickoff party, learn the secrets to maximizing viewership with EYstreem, and dig into algorithms with YouTube’s own Creator Liaison, Rene Richie.
At VidSummit, the world’s foremost creator economy experts are only one conversation away. What could that kind of access do for your career?
HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰
For the first time ever, TikTok will allow creators to upload their own custom thumbnails. Thumbnail designers gotta be happy about the added job security. (Tubefilter)
The U.S. Senate has officially passed its first piece of AI legislation. The new law—called the DEFIANCE Act for short—will empower victims to sue creators, distributors, and collectors of nonconsensual deepfake pornography. (Gizmodo)
As the U.S. presidential election approaches, X’s AI chatbot, Grok, has reportedly begun spreading misinformation related to ballot deadlines. (Engadget)
WhatsApp just hit 100 million monthly active U.S. users, with a full 10% hailing from Texas. (Engadget)
BALLIN’ ON A BUDGET
Amazon Prime Video just signed a $20 billion deal with the NBA and WNBA
The billion-dollar deals: The NBA and WNBA just dropped a $76 billion announcement. On July 24, the leagues revealed rights deals with Disney (which will pay $2.6 billion per year), NBC ($2.5 billion), and Amazon ($1.8 billion).
According to the Washington Post, Amazon will air Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night games, while NBCUniversal’s Peacock will broadcast Monday night games and NBC will offer Sunday/Tuesday night games and the All-Star Game.
The NBA and WNBA already have a relationship with Disney (which owns ESPN and ABC). Its partnerships with NBC and Amazon, however, are new—and TNT isn’t happy about it. The network had exclusive air deals with the NBA since 1989, but wasn’t able to extend its contract beyond 2025.
TNT’s parent company, Warner Bros, believes it should have been given a chance to match Amazon’s deal, and is reportedly considering filing a lawsuit to argue its case.
Industry context: As Warner Bros’ potential suit demonstrates, Amazon is the big winner here. Alongside weekly regular season games, the streamer has claimed global rights to air NBA playoff games, NBA conference finals, the WNBA postseason and finals, and a hodgepodge of other cups, championships, and games.
There’s a reason Amazon entered the bidding war for that sweeping deal, which includes rights to sell the NBA and WNBA League Passes—an offering similar to the NFL Sunday Ticket that YouTube snagged rights to in 2021: Professional sports still gets views.
The 2023 NBA Playoffs averaged 5.47 million viewers per game, making it the most-watched playoffs in five years.
Digital sports media has become an increasingly lucrative field over the past few years, with streamers like Netflix vying to fill the power vacuum created by cable’s decline. Amazon itself has been broadcasting NFL games since 2017, and secured a $1 billion/season deal to create the league’s first digital package in 2021.
WATCH THIS 📺
Call Her Daddy is taking fans back to Love Island (whether Rob likes it or not)
The interview: Consider this our official petition to send Alex Cooper to Love Island—not as a contestant, but as an emotional sherpa.
The Call Her Daddy host demonstrated her therapeutic chops in a recent interview with Love Island star Rob Rausch, who showed up wearing cowboy boots, overalls, and no shirt—probably because he thought the conversation “was going to be more fun.” (His words, not ours).
Instead, Cooper guided Rausch through a cathartic session that dug deep into his childhood, emotional boundaries, and mental health. By the end of the episode, the Love Island star had reached an epiphany all dating-weary singles eventually wrestle with:
“I think I need therapy.”
Is it any wonder Call Her Daddy is the most-listened to podcast by women?
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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.