Cordkillers 588: What’s The Tilly Tax?
ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 kicked up a Hollywood copyright-and-likeness firestorm, while SAG-AFTRA floats a “Tilly tax” aimed at fully synthetic performers. Meanwhile, big audiences still show up for tentpoles (Super Bowl, Puppy Bowl, Muppets) as streamers keep chasing bundles, rights, and consolidation chess moves.
This week on The FULL Experience: Lost (101 - "Pilot: Part 1")
Next week: Lost (405 - "The Constant")
YouTube: https://youtu.be/dG_MVNHvtbA
Supply Run
Seedance goes viral, Hollywood goes legal. A filmmaker used ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 with a tiny prompt to generate a short “Brad Pitt vs. Tom Cruise” style fight clip, triggering cease-and-desist letters and louder calls for real safeguards against IP and likeness misuse.
What is “The Tilly tax”? SAG-AFTRA is reportedly negotiating the idea of a fee paid to the union when a production uses a wholly AI-generated performer instead of hiring a human (this is not about using a real actor’s likeness, which is a separate issue).
Reality check: the tools still aren’t “press button, get movie.” One source told Ars it took weeks to get minutes of usable footage on an AI docudrama project.
DATA POINT: Roger Avary says AI production is getting his projects moving again after traditional routes stalled out.
Search Party
Super Bowl still enormous, but down YoY. The game averaged 124.9M viewers; halftime averaged 128.2M; Telemundo set Spanish-language Super Bowl records.
Puppy Bowl bounce. 5.3M viewers across multiple networks/streamers, best since 2018.
The Muppet Show pops. 7.58M multiplatform viewers across Disney+ and ABC in the first 8 days.
MST3K + RiffTrax team-up Kickstarter. A new campaign aims to bring back a big chunk of the classic crew for four episodes.
Scrubs reboot trailer is out. Season premiere: Wednesday, Feb. 25 on ABC, next day on Hulu.
Apple buys the Severance IP. Apple reportedly acquired the IP and rights from Fifth Season (which produced the first two seasons), while keeping Fifth Season folks on as exec producers.
White Lotus Season 4 cast adds Sandra Bernhard.
Helldivers movie set with Jason Momoa; Justin Lin directing. Release date: Nov. 10, 2027.
BTS concerts stream to theaters in April. Live cinema streams planned for Apr. 11 (Goyang) and Apr. 18 (Tokyo), with more dates later.
Prime Video bragging rights: “Young Sherlock” trailer allegedly hit 223M views in 7 days (per Wavemetrix via Deadline).
Netflix goes live MMA: Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano, May 16, at Intuit Dome (LA).
Buried Treasure
Brian: The Olympics, 11.22.63
Tom: Gold Zone
Scanning the Horizon
WBD deal drama gets an activist investor antagonist. Ancora backs Paramount Skydance’s hostile bid over the Netflix deal, as WBD keeps papering the record for fiduciary-duty lawsuits ahead of a March 20 shareholder vote.
AMC Networks: streaming now beats cable revenue. Streaming subs across AMC+, Shudder, Acorn TV, etc. totaled 10.4M at end of 2025.
Roku beats earnings expectations. Big quarter for net adds to premium subs via Roku’s single-login subscription flow.
Wheel of Time owner iwot + Framestore launch AI-enabled asset platform.
Fire TV redesign rolling out. Amazon’s CES-announced Fire TV OS update is now hitting compatible devices in the U.S.
Chatter
Cable bundling nostalgia, but make it streaming apps. A listener in Ireland is thrilled Sky is rolling HBO Max, Disney+, and HayU into their TV sub (alongside Netflix, Paramount+, Discovery+), calling bundling a feature not a bug.
Microdramas vs. Mike Rowe dramas. A longtime listener had a moment of confusion, then relief, and then immediately pitched an entire new genre anyway.
AI talk fatigue, but also: keep it grounded. One email wonders if the show is implicitly “not anti-AI,” another argues the best AI conversations stay anchored to what the tools can actually do right now—and the human cost when “inevitable” gets used as a handwave.
Got something we should be on the lookout for? Email cordkillers@gmail.com