The 11th Hour Dispatch — Monday, October 29, 2018
YOUNG MONEY
IBM is acquiring the open-source tech company Red Hat for a gargantuan $34 billion in cash money. This deal is IBM’s biggest deal ever and the third-largest in tech history. IBM is set to buy all Red Hat shares at $190 a pop. Prior to the deal announcement, Red Hat shares were trading around $117. Today, they closed at $169.15, a 45.3% intra-day increase. Red Hat will become a part of IBM’s Hybrid Cloud arm, and Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst will join IBM’s senior management team. I’m not going to lie to you, I know next to nothing about this space. But I do know two things.
- Wow. $34 billion is such a large amount of money it’s funny to me.
- I saw a lot of snark around the internet about IBM having the opportunity to actually make something innovative out of this past just something cool to brag about at a party with your boys (*cough* Watson *cough*)
So do with that what you will.
BINGE WATCH
Netflix dropped the trailer for your next emotional breakdown aka the docuseries Dogs. The six-episode series celebrates “the deep emotional bonds between people and their beloved four-legged friends.” Each episode will feature a story of a dog owner and their fur baby. The series will follow dog/people pairs in Syria, Japan, Costa Rica, Italy, and the U.S. The premiere episode — and get a tissue for this — revolves around an 11-year-old girl and her therapy dog Rory who helps her cope with traumatic seizures. The series drops November 16, and you can find me there sobbing.
BIG BUSINESS
The indie horror remake of the film with the same name, Suspiria, has earned the honor of the best screen average of the year so far. The movie pulled in just shy of $189K this weekend despite only opening in two locations (New York City’s Regal Union Square and Los Angeles’ Arclight Hollywood), which averages out to an insane ~$90K per venue. Amazon Studios will now roll out the flick to 250 locations around the country, and following the success of its very limited opening, is exploring a third expansion past that.
Before Suspiria, which stars Dakota Johnson (Anastasia from Fifty Shades for all you basics) as an American dancer who enrolls in a “prestigious and mysterious dance academy,” the best screen average belonged to National Geographic’s Free Solo documentary, which averaged out to about $75K for each of its four screens. Behind that was Bo Burnham’s coming of age favorite Eighth Grade with $63K per screen and Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs at $60K per theater.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
Amazon has reportedly donated over $100 million to charities over the last five years through its AmazonSmile program.
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