By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Frank Pallotta in part one of a two-parter about the state of the entertainment industry just after the big summer box office. Recently Frank appeared in Numlock with a piece about how it’s kind of a ghost town out there. Here's what I wrote about it:

The movie slate this summer is looking pretty barren through November, with no obvious contenders for a huge box office until Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. This year has straight-up seen fewer movies than normal: By this point in 2019, there were 63 national releases in North America, but this year there have only been 39 releases to date. Ticket sales are 30 percent lower than the pre-pandemic level, meaning that the box office is making a recovery following the shock of the pandemic, but if the demand is returning the supply is actually still rather low. The reasons? The production pipeline for films is still a bit fouled up, and streaming services are poaching…