Ciao, Venice. Hey there, Toronto.
As the Lido folds its red carpet, the spotlight flips to TIFF as the runway to the awards season begins.
Summer officially wrapped with horror trying its best to soothe box office blues and Google’s Veo 3 can now make short films out of your camera roll. Meanwhile, Twitch’s Tower is tumbling, Netflix doubles down on Wednesday, and Canon’s got a mystery camera they’re not telling us about.
It’s a week that feels stitched together from mismatched parts. Fest glamour, algorithm drama, and cultural shifts happening in real-time.
Here’s what stood out as we attempted to catch up.
Headlines at a Glance
TIFF roars open with Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery premiere, while Channing Tatum nabs the festival’s Tribute Performer Award Read more
"The Conjuring: Last Rites" Possesses the Box Office: The latest installment of the horror franchise debuts to massive numbers Read more
Google's Veo 3 AI Will Animate Your Photos: A new AI model in Google Photos can now turn your still images into video, a feature that could change how we think about our camera rolls. Read more
Canon Teases a New Cinema Camera: A mysterious new teaser from Canon has the camera world buzzing about a potential new addition to their lineup. Read more
Twitch Viewership Takes a Tumble: Streaming giant saw its lowest viewership numbers since 2020 amid viewbot crackdown. Is this a sign of a larger shift in the creator landscape? Read more
"Wednesday" Returns to Netflix: The highly anticipated second part of Wednesday's second season has finally dropped on Netflix Read more
China Mandates AI-Content Labeling first major nation to legislate AI watermarks at scale. Read more
Lions, Laurels, and Letdowns: Unpacking the 82nd Venice
As the Lido rolls up its red carpet, the awards told one story, the ovations another.
Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother slipped away with the Golden Lion, a quiet family epic that blindsided many who expected more overtly political fare. The jury’s decision immediately stirred debate: Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab which earned a record-breaking 23-minute standing ovation had to settle for the Grand Jury Prize
Elsewhere, Benny Safdie claimed Best Director for The Smashing Machine, proving his pivot from Safdie Brothers co-pilot to solo helmer was more than just an experiment.
But beyond the main slate, another conversation was brewing.
Running parallel to the festival, the Reply AI Film Festival crowned Love at First Sight as its winner. It’s the kind of cross-pollination that would’ve been unthinkable even a few years ago: the world’s oldest, second-most prestigious festival, bending just enough to make space for synthetic storytellers.
For purists, it’s a warning shot. For futurists, it’s a proof of concept.
Festivals have always been barometers of what cinema means in a given era and Venice 2025 showed us that means both legacy auteurs like Jarmusch still shaping the canon, and AI-driven experiments are now sneaking onto the same waterfront.
The Twitch Tower Tumbles
August wasn’t kind to Twitch. The purple giant logged its lowest viewership since 2020, a five-year low. The drop coincided with a platform-wide viewbot crackdown, which scrubbed inflated numbers off the charts and exposed how much of Twitch’s traffic was smoke and mirrors.
Some streamers saw their metrics literally crash overnight. Others discovered their “average concurrent” was smaller than they thought, a reality check that could hurt sponsorships and CPMs.
Is this just a numbers correction, or start of a platform power shift?
More platform news
YouTube Rolls Out "Effect Maker" for Shorts: The new tool allows creators to build their own custom effects for Shorts, opening up a new world of creative possibilities. Read more
Netflix's September Slate: A look at the new and returning shows and movies hitting Netflix this month, including the return of a fan-favorite baking show. Read more
Box Office Blues (With an Asterisk)
Headlines are calling the summer box office a dud.
And yes, at $3.67 billion, the May to Labor Day haul landed just shy of the $3.68 billion earned last summer. But there’s more to it than that. Last year’s summer was blessed with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine.
You know, just two billion-dollar juggernauts that carried that season. Nothing major.
This entire year only one film, Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch, even crawled over the billion-dollar line. Which makes the near-parity with 2024 (and close to 2023, too) more impressive than it looks at first glance.
The what-ifs write themselves. Swap out Thunderbolts and Elio for Avengers: Doomsday and Toy Story 5 and we’re looking at a “summer box office that roared back,” The infrastructure is there, audiences are still showing up but we just didn’t have the tentpoles to tip the scales.
Meanwhile, mid-budget horror and thrillers proved the safest bets.
Weapons cleared $245 million worldwide on a $38 million budget, while Sinners nearly hit $280 million. Even Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters scored $19 million theatrically in just two days, despite dropping on streaming weeks earlier.
Cut of the Week: MrBeast’s “$456,000 Squid Game in Real Life!”
The Video
MrBeast recreates the iconic Netflix series Squid Game with 456 real players and a staggering cash prize of $456,000. Released on November 24, 2021, the video cost around $3.5 million to produce, allocated between stunning sets and hefty cash rewards
Performance
As MrBeast’s most-watched video (nearly double his next most watched), it has amassed over 850 million views as of September 2025.
What Worked?
Worldbuilding on a Grand Scale
By faithfully recreating Squid Game’s sets with big-ticket production value and immersive design MrBeast delivers spectacle that feels simultaneously familiar and colossalMass Participation = Mass Drama
With 456 players, the stakes feel real and unpredictable. Viewers are drawn into a collective spectacle that’s as much about human behavior as it is game mechanics.Clickbait 2.0: Substance Beneath the Shock
The title grabs you (“Squid Game in Real Life!”), but the payoff is pay-per-view-level production quality and visceral reality-driven suspense. The visual execution justifies the hype rather than undermines it.Effort as Entertainment
The sheer scale both in budget and logistics underscores that this isn’t just a stunt.. It blurred genre lines between digital content and cinematic spectacle.Strategic Timing
Released when Squid Game was still fresh in cultural consciousness, MrBeast tapped into collective zeitgeist, amplifying viral potential.
Creator Updates
Jynxzi Tops the Twitch Charts for August: The streamer was the most-watched creator on the platform last month, thanks in large part to his "99-0" challenge. Read more
Kai Cenat Announces "Mafiathon 3": The popular streamer has announced the third installment of his popular "Mafiathon" series, set to begin on September 1st. Read more
Retail Therapy
Lenovo ThinkBook VertiFlex Concept Laptop: Price TBD
A shape-shifting laptop that flips from landscape to portrait mode. Perfect if you’ve ever wanted your spreadsheet to feel like TikTok. Read more
Matic Robot Vacuum: $1,095
A self-driving vacuum with the attitude of a Tesla. Cameras, lidar, and AI mapping, all so it can bully your dust bunnies in 4K. Read more
