Numlock Sunday: Frank Pallotta on the tenuous return of the box office

By Walt Hickey

Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.

This week, I spoke to Frank Pallotta who writes about the entertainment industry for CNN Business. Here's a recent story of his I covered in the newsletter:

South Park show-runners Matt Stone and Trey Parker have inked what’s reported to be a $900 million deal with ViacomCBS to keep the show on Comedy Central through 2027, in addition to producing 14 original South Park films. ViacomCBS has had a rough patch in the new era of streaming, having had to rebrand their CBS All Access to Paramount+ to keep up with the cool kids. Between Showtime and Paramount+, the company has 42 million streaming subscribers. Congrats to Stone and Parker as they get another 14 attempts at EGOTing.

Frank and I spoke about the revised expectations that have come with this summer, what’s happening at cinemas, and how the streaming experiment has been going.

He can be found at @FrankPallotta and at CNN.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

Frank Pallot…