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Tuesday’s here, TFP. If you’re planning to see Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II this weekend, you may want to go to a Cinemark… because they’ve officially won the battle for best popcorn bucket. The theater chain is debuting the Colosseum-shaped “Popcorn AR-ENA Bucket,” which allows snackers to scan their phone to see a gladiator battle take place inside the bucket. No notes.

DAILY TOP TRENDS

TikTok Picks Up Where Quibi Left Off

TikTok is planning to bring short-form series to its app in order to capture the attention of its aging audience.

The Little-Big Picture: Short-form series have spiked in popularity for ByteDance’s Chinese TikTok counterpart, Douyin. The company now wants to remake that revenue magic for the rest of the world, especially in the US. The only problem is that Facebook, YouTube, and Quibi have all tried and failed at making premium short-form content happen here.

Behind the Algo: TikTok wants to take on Hollywood.

• The company is exploring introducing short-form series, dubbed “minidramas,”to attract new users.

• It could finance original shows, license content from popular minidrama platforms like ReelShort and Inkitt, and may even look to partner with Hollywood studios on content.

• TikTok’s minidramas could have a similar business model as Douyin, such as offering the first few episodes for free and then putting the rest behind a paywall.

Next Season: Over the summer, TikTok published a minidrama white paper on minidrama showing that the market outside of China would eclipse $10 billion in the near future, with demand the highest in the US. That’s hard for ByteDance to ignore, especially while it controls the short-form sphere of influence. If TikTok decides to pull the trigger on the feature, expect the company to tap popular creators on its platform for its initial slate.

Go Deeper: TikTok already allows creators to paywall their own shows on the app via a feature called “Series.”

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SNL Lends Comedy to Ads

Saturday Night Live kicked off its slate of corporate partnerships for its 50th anniversary with a surprising Allstate ad that featured the Please Don’t Destroy trio of Ben Marshall, John Higgins, and Martin Herlihy.

Why It Hits: SNL’s wide-ranging sponsorships this season could pave the way for ongoing deals that give the comedy show a bump in production value while also rewriting the rules of “brand safety” for marketing campaigns.

Between the Lines: Please Don’t Destroy didn’t have a short during SNL’s broadcast over the weekend, but they did have an Allstate ad co-starring the brand’s “Mayhem” character.

• The very-funny commercial, which SNL had creative control over and felt like an actual Please Don’t Destroy short, played during the show’s opening credits, ensuring a prime spotlight.

• It’s just one of the many high-profile sponsorships for SNL this season, which includes a Maybelline ad starring former castmember Vanessa Bayer and a series of Volkswagen commercials with various still-unnamed cast members.

• It’s a culmination of creator Lorne Michaels’ outreach to advertisers in 2017 to work with them on developing commercials that could be tied to the show — most of which never made it to air, other than a Google one in 2018 and an Old Navy one in 2021.

The Future: While SNL has historically resisted letting current castmembers appear in ads to not muddy the waters between the show and commercial breaks (including SNL’s many fake ads)… but muddying is exactly what the show, NBCUniversal, and advertisers now want. It’s becoming increasingly harder for any show to convince audiences to watch shows live, as opposed to clips on YouTube and TikTok the next day to avoid ads. By making the ads extensions for the shows themselves, more people may be willing to tune in during the broadcast.

DEEP DIVES

• Explore: The Atlantic has a tool to check which Hollywood movies and shows have been used by AI companies for training their systems.

• Listen: The Future of Everything discusses how AI is upending the visual effects industry and may lead to a reduction of thousands of jobs.

• Read: Twitter’s former head of content strategy, Gordon MacMillan, details to Insider how Bluesky is edging Threads in the war to be the new Twitter… X… whichever.

QUICK HITS

→ Entertainment / Media

🥊 Netflix’s Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight was watched by over 60 million households worldwide — a major win for the streamer.

🏈 Speaking of Netflix, it has booked Beyoncé to play the halftime show during its Christmas NFL broadcast.

💰 LeBron James’ The SpringHill Company and Fulwell 73 have confirmed their merger and raised another $40 million to kickstart the partnership.

→ Technology

🤖 OpenAI’s CEO is co-chairing San Francisco’s incoming mayor, Daniel Lurie’s transition team. It’s truly the age of Silicon Valley-politics partnerships, huh?

🎉 Google named event-organizing platform Partiful as its app of the year.

🍕 Pizza Hut is rolling out a pizza warmer that is meant to sit on top of a PS5 console for its heat. Genius.

→ Fashion / E-commerce

👕 Kering C-suite moves: it tapped Cédric Charbit as the new CEO of Yves Saint Laurent and Gianfranco Gianangeli as the new head of Balenciaga.

🧢 Tyler, the Creator and Lewis Hamilton’s +44 are collabing on a capsule inspired by the neon glow of the Vegas strip.

🍸 Smirnoff named artist Troye Sivan its first-ever Chief Vibes OFFicer.