The Mail Cart: Wednesday, May. 13th

👋 Welcome to The Mail Cart. This is Warner, founder of AvA. Connect with me here + follow our IG page for daily resources.

🎥 Today on AvA LIVE at 12:30pm PT / 3:30pm ET:

The real Emily from The Devil Wears Prada?
Patrick Mahomes’ Agent (and inspiration for Jerry Maguire)
Global Head of Creators @ Snap
Music Supervisor for Beef, Love Story, Wednesday
The host of NO NOTES checking in LIVE from Cannes

📝 Netflix has pumped $350B global economic impact report. Bad Bunny dethrones The Weeknd. BuzzFeed gets bought out for $120 million, and more.

🧠 I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!!! Take the AvA 2026 survey (closing EOD Wednesday).

💼 Looking for open Entertainment jobs? Scroll to the bottom of this email.

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⭐ The next big media trend might just be people acting normal online again

Snapchat is quietly approaching 1 billion monthly active users and their resurgence makes a ton of sense since a lot of the platform still feels like talking to your friends, not performing for the internet.

Snap is closer to a group chat than the roulette wheel spin your TikTok and Reels feeds are, and consumers are exhausted by overly-produced, algorithmically optimized, performative content they are getting fed there. In stark contrast, on Snapchat watching Stories from friends and family (66%) is still a bigger daily behavior than watching Stories from creators (52%).

The next era of creators and brands will be won by people who understand:

Talking to someone > trying to reach everyone
Trust > virality
Personality > polished

So I decided to sit down with Snapchat’s head of creators today

⭐ Netflix casually pumped $350 billion into the global economy over the last decades

Netflix launched a new site called The Netflix Effect to remind everyone they are apparently a small streaming nation with a content budget.

The victory lap includes some giant claims:

$135B invested in films and series
425K jobs created, 700K extras hired
Another $20B planned for 2026.

Definitely not the kind of thing a company does right before asking the industry, regulators, or consumers to accept something annoying like a subscription increase.

⭐ 40,000 Film Professionals From 140 Countries Are at Cannes Right Now (and we talk to one today on AvA LIVE)

⭐ Bad Bunny dethrones The Weeknd as the artist with the most songs at or above 1 billion streams on Spotify with 32.

Want to go on a bit of a trip down memory lane? The streaming giant launched a Wrapped for your entire life (on their platform).

⭐ Billie Eilish and James Cameron’s 3D concert film opened to $20 million globally at the box office and it’s apparently good (93% Rotten Tomatoes rating)

🧠 Today’s Big Brain Fact: The box office is currently ahead of last year by 16% when it comes to sales, and this past weekend was 88% better off too. Things you love to see.

⭐ Byron Allen is buying BuzzFeed for $120 million and taking over as CEO

BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti is moving into a very 2026 title: President of AI.. because of course..

The plan is to launch BuzzFeed Studios, which will make basically every format the internet can throw at a wall: vertical micro-dramas, animation, digital video, podcasts, feature films, and premium studio projects.

So yes, BuzzFeed went from “Which sandwich are you?” quizzes to Byron Allen, AI, and micro-dramas. The media business remains deeply normal.

⭐ Kareem Rahma and Adam Faze (two of our favorite people) are debuting their new show ‘Keep The Meter Running’ on YouTube TODAY that you can watch here

Unreal poster design too by Ted Childish on IG

⭐ For the first time in 54 years, The Price Is Right is going live on CBS

The Christmas special will mark the first live episode in the show’s history, because apparently even game shows are entering their “must feel like an event” era.

As the internet drowns in content slop, traditional media keeps reaching for the one thing AI can’t fake yet: live, communal, slightly chaotic TV where something might actually go wrong.