THB #345: Creed 4: Masters By TKO

My wife and child are on Spring Break. Makes it hard to work, but also makes for a pleasant, easy-going feeling. I was working on a look at the remarkable load of April Emmy chasers that are also dominated by women, in leads and leadership.

And then…

Haven’t read it?

Can’t believe you are reading me before reading it… but take a few minutes and read… I can wait…

Ready?

How does Jennifer Salke get up off the ground after reading that piece? How do you face your staff? Or worse, accept their efforts to tell you it shouldn’t hurt. At least Kim could have run it on a Friday and allowed Salke a couple relatively quiet days to regroup.

And she didn’t even need steroids to punch this hard.

Good lord… that stings.

I have nothing at all against Jen Salke. When she got the job, I was assured by smart, thoughtful friends that she was a good, smart person… even if she knew truly nothing about the film business.

Ted Hope was at Amazon, which was focused on an indie slate, when she landed. He lasted 2 years by press release… less long in reality.

But whatever she was looking for, she has not found it.

Now, the television side was her thing… her superpower. Roy Price had things going along pretty well when she took over. His exit was not about his success with shows. But the expectation was that she would run with the ball pretty effectively.

Hard to measure.

I really like a lot of what has come through there in what I think is her era. A League of Our Own, Fairfax, Invincible, Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Girls, Riches, the ongoing Savage X Fenty experiment with Rhianna, The Kids in the Hall reunion series, The Outlaws, Them, The Underground Railroad, A Very English Scandal I, Catastrophe… and a slightly lower level, Outer Range, The Wilds, Upload, The Consultant, Reacher, Jack Ryan, and the 2nd season of Hunters.

And in the hopper right now, Citadel, Daisy Jones and the Six (already started), Dead Ringers, the final season of The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, and Swarm.

Meanwhile, Air is about to hit movie theaters.

You may have noticed that I didn’t include Lord of the Rings. They never convinced me it was worth starting. Watched every second of House of the Dragons.

The Terminal List may have done well for Prime… but it is absolute junk. Crap.

I liked The Peripheral for a few of its $22 million episodes, but as soon as it became a digital thriller, it stopped thrilling me.

I love the talent on The English and The Devil’s Hour and found the shows hard to get into. Perhaps they would become more satisfying further into their seasons.

Since we are adjacent, I should also note that I watched more Thursday Night Football than in previous seasons and liked many of Amazon’s new ideas that they brought to the games.

But…

Masters cites Daisy Jones and The Six as one of Salke’s first greenlights So it took her 4 years to get her first greenlight to air, spending $14 million an episode without the biggest star in the series being Timothy Olyphant in a supporting role? $14 million an hour is not unheard of these days… and I really liked the show. But as well made as the series is, you don’t see that money on the screen. Moreover, it’s not an extendable franchise.

On the other hand, Tiny Beautiful Things - which is unlikely to be quite as popular as Daisy (no music) but will have a strong female following and also probably cost about half as much per episode - is also from Hello Sunshine and can have additional seasons. It’s at Hulu. If Amazon had both shows, they would balance things out financially and help define Prime. What happened?