Morning Brew Daily - Waymos Stall During SF Blackout & Avatar Fizzles at the Box Office

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

Episode 740: Neal and Toby discuss Waymo cars stalling during a San Francisco blackout over the weekend. Then, why the new Avatar movie didn’t impress at the box office and Blue Origin is making history. Next up the ‘Peanuts’ franchise has a new home with Sony and everything you need to know about the week ahead.  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Send us your questions for our special Mailbag episode!  Email: [e-mail]  IG: @MBDailyShow Visit public.com/morningbrew to learn more Paid endorsement. Brokerage services provided by Open to the Public Investing Inc, member FINRA & SIPC. Investing involves risk. Not investment advice. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool by Public Advisors. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. See disclosures at public.com/disclosures/ga. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and investment values may rise or fall. See terms of match program at https://public.com/disclosures/matchprogram. Matched funds must remain in your account for at least 5 years. Match rate and other terms are subject to change at any time. Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And I'm Toby Howell. Today, when the going gets tough, Waymo stops working. Then the third Avatar movie made a lot of money, but not as much money as expected. It's Monday, December 22nd. Let's ride. Good morning and happy Monday. Give yourself a pat on the back because you've made it through the darkest timeline. Yesterday in the Northern Hemisphere was the winter solstice,

marking the astronomical start of winter and the shortest day of the year in terms of daylight. There will now be a little more sunshine every single day until June, so that's something to look forward to. And one of these years, I got to make it to Stonehenge for the solstice celebration. Thousands of people dressed as pagans and druids make the pilgrimage to the stone circle every summer and winter since the monument was built to align with the movement of the sun on the solstices. I think you could pull off being a druid, Neil, or a pagan, either or. We are so back, though. I look this up. Amongst the middleist latitudes, aka not near the poles, we are getting an extra 20 to 30 seconds of daylight now that the solstice has passed,

which is plenty of time for activities. I'm talking one additional golf swing depending on your pre-shot, maybe two points in pickleball if you have a good serve. And I think you could get an entire ski run in if you don't turn. I don't recommend that though. So make sure you budget that additional time effectively. We've made it through the darkest timeline. And now a word from our sponsor, Public.

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with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at Windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th, terms at AKA.m.m.S.c. College PC. Was a scene from a dystopian novel, large swaths of a major American city suffering of power blackout. Traffic lights were down.

Hundreds of self-driving robot cars malfunction in the middle of the street, creating gridlock. But this wasn't science fiction. It was San Francisco on Saturday. A power blackout hit around 125,000 homes in businesses in SF, impacting about a third of the city due to a fire at a substation at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. But this being 2025 in the most tech forward U.S. metropolis, the blackout had some bizarre knock-on effects like rendering Waymo's self-driving cars inoperable. On Saturday, people shared tons of viral videos of Waymo's stalled. out at busy intersections, one after another, causing major traffic jams behind them.

As of last night, Waymo had resumed its Robotaxy Service, but the reputational damage was done. The company said that its problems stemmed from all the traffic lights going down. The spokesperson said, while the Waymo driver is designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops, the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remain stationary longer than usual to confirm the state of the affected intersections. This contributed to traffic friction during the height of the congestion. It's not a good look for a startup that was just starting to win hearts and minds in San Francisco and beyond after working hard to overcome initial skepticism from human drivers.

Toby, this debacle will only fuel the critics who say robotaxis aren't ready for prime time. The debacle is even more confusing because Waymo vehicles are explicitly designed to handle situations like this. They are supposed to continue functioning even if they lose access to wireless networks. They are not supposed to depend on real-time communications linked to function properly. They have batteries. They have their own self-contained power systems. So it begs the question.

A lot of experts are looking at it and saying, what the heck went on here? Because this is not a marginal, you know, fringe use case that they just stumbled upon. They say that traffic lights do tend to go out in San Francisco because of, you know, weather conditions. So it is programmed into Waymos to deal with them. As you said, I think it was just this sheer. scale of the fact that you reach an intersection. There's no stoplights up. They're all doing the Spider-Man pointing meme. Like, are you going? Are you going? It was just too many cars not knowing

what to do at the same time. Now, this isn't going to help matters when it comes to broader skepticism around self-driving cars. There's a survey by AAA in early 2025 that showed that 66% of drivers in the United States felt fearful and 25% felt uncertain about autonomous vehicles. I do feel like Waymo had earned a little more respect from San Francisco and several other of the cities that it's operating in because it's published these safety statistics showing that it's so much safer than human drivers. And the rollout of robotaxies could lead to tens of thousands of live saves. Waymo's own data says that it's 80 to 90 percent safer than human drivers. And I feel like it had built up a little credibility. But this incident, along with another

incident in San Francisco, when it killed one of the Waymo's actually killed. a bodega cat that was beloved around the city. It's kind of backsliding a little bit. And who was there to capitalize on Waymo's misfortune, none other than Elon Musk. He posted on X during the blackout that Tesla robotaxies were unaffected by the SF power outage. Of course, they're not operating any robotaxies in San Francisco, so it was a little tongue-in-cheek. But it does beg the question because remember, Waymo and Robotaxies rely on different technologies to function. Robotaxies use cameras in AI. to find their way around. Waymo uses a suite of sensors, radar cameras, and detailed maps that are

uploaded and regularly updated. Remember, Elon Musk thinks his approach is far superior. He thinks that Waymo's approach is too static and over the long term it's not going to scale effectively. Maybe this adds fuel to that argument saying that when certain, you know, environmental cases change, Waymos don't operate as effectively as maybe an AI-powered camera-based system. would, again, take it with a grain of salt because clearly he has a vested interest in Waymo failing and Robotaxies succeeding. And this might be the final time we talk about Robotaxies this year. It is a blemish, but overall, I think this was a banner year for self-driving cars. Waymo rolled out a bunch of new services. We had Tesla rolling out its Robotaxy service in

Austin as well as in the Bay Area of San Francisco. So I think you have to say, overall, this was you know, maybe an A-a-minus year for robotaxies exceeded all expectations in terms of how fast and how safe they were on the streets of the United States. I think next year is going to be even more of an explosion in people as far as Boston, New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles, places that don't necessarily see robotaxies. Right now we're going to see them in 2026. Moving on, well, it's almost time for another winter tradition involving the whole family, sort of reluctantly coming together for an evening that is expensive and just not as fun as when you

were a kid. I'm talking about going to see the new Avatar movie. James Cameron is back with the third installment in his Avatar franchise with Fire and Ash hitting theaters over the weekend. He went bigger and bluer than ever this time with Disney spending and estimated $500 million making and advertising the film that comes in at a whopping three hours in 15 minutes, the longest in the franchise so far. The question is, did Cameron pull an Aaron judge and finally strike? out after taking three massive, massive swings. As of right now, the jury is still out. Fire and Ash brought in $88 million at the domestic box office over its first weekend, trailing behind the 134 million box office hall of the previous Avatar movie Way of Water. That 34% drop is cause for concern,

but not overly so because the movies debuting the week before Christmas tend to have more staying power, so Jake Soli should have some legs. Also, Avatar seems to be very popular overseas where it opened as the number one movie in every major market, save for Japan, bringing in $345 million globally. Neil, even so, that week domestic opening begs the question, have we reached peak avatar? And if so, what does that mean for the box office as a whole? And when you look at the number of people who actually saw this movie, the gap was even greater than the dollar amount suggest around 5.2 million domestic moviegoers went to see Fire and Ash this past weekend. That is a huge decline from the 8.7 million that went to Way of the Water three years ago.

And I think the thing with Avatar is it relies a lot on just casual fans. And you can't even call them casual fans. Because let's look at the actual fans of Avatar. And for that, you can go to Reddit and subreddits because that's where the hardcore people live for these kinds of movies. The Avatar subreddit has about 200,000 members who post about 6,000 times a week. Okay, let's go to the Star Wars subreddit. Almost 1.5 million users with 33,000 weekly posts. The Marvel subreddit has 771,000 users who post 12,000 times a week. Avatar's account on X has barely any people for this kind of franchise.

360,000 followers. Star Wars has 6.4 million and Marvel over twice that. So in terms of true fans, Avatar doesn't. seem to have that many. And commercially, it always punches above its weight. It has two of the top five highest grossing movies of all time. So it really relies on those recreational fans who are coming out over Christmas. And we'll see so far, it doesn't feel like it's happening for this third movie. Yeah, the knock against Avatar is that it never leaves any cultural trace. And the argument I saw for why that is the case is that a person I follow on Twitter, Trunk fans said, it is a fully

embodied experience in the theater. It's like a theme park ride. Could you describe what it feels like going on a roller coaster or someone? No, you could not. It's a kind of thing that you have to be there in experience. It doesn't really spawn a lot of memes. Part of that is because the dialogue is a little lacking sometimes. Some of the character arcs are a little forgettable, but the visuals are what bring people out. And it's what James Cameron is after. He wants it to be the sort of thing that you bring the whole family out. You have this three-hour experience where you feel like you're getting bang for your buck as movies get more expensive. So it is just a weird,

liminal space that Avatar exists in where it has a lot of haters and the detractors, and yet it is brought in over $5 billion over the course of its franchise, and this probably is on its way to becoming another billion dollar movie. One final note about Avatar or fun

fact is that Una Chaplin, who is kind of the star, I won't reveal too much, but she's kind of the main villain in the movie. She is Charlie Chaplin's granddaughter and a lot of people said you can see this kind of through line through filmmaking where it's another franchise that you know pushing the boundaries but also she has this very physical performance charlie chaplain is very famous for you know his you know physicality on screen so

it is cool to have a through line from a grandfather all the way through to granddaughter still kind of carrying on this tradition of physical filmmaking moving on welcome to our winners of the weekend the segment where Neil and I pick two things that had a better weekend than the person in charge of taste testing the batter while Christmas cookies are being made. I won the pre-show game of golf, carding an even par 72 over the weekend. So I'm up first, and my winner of the weekend is Michaela Benthouse, because the 33-year-old aerospace engineer just became the first wheelchair user to ever travel to space. She hits a ride on a Blue Origin rocket for a short 10-minute flight, experiencing several minutes of weightlessness after crossing the Carmen line, the internationally recognized boundary of space.

The flight itself was unique not just for its passengers, but because of its crew or lack thereof. There was no pilot in charge of the craft. It was fully automated, which Blue Origin thinks is the future of space tourism. As for how Benthouse said the ride was, she told the New York Times, she laughed during the ascent, and called it the coolest experience she's ever had, and joins Gail King, Katie Perry, and Jeff Bezos as fellow passengers on Blue Origin's New Shepard program. Neil, I was surprised by this. Blue Origin has sort of quietly flowing in 92 people total to space across 16 missions. It generated a lot of headlines when Katie Perry got out of her capsule and kissed the ground.

But as Benthouse's trip shows, the program is expanding to include a lot more people and people beyond the rich and famous. Yeah, I thought this was pretty cool that they didn't actually have to make a lot of a job. adjustments to the spacecraft to accommodate her, according to the company. And that's because they said they designed the capsule with accessibility in mind. They also mentioned that they've taken other maybe non-traditional astronauts to space through this particular program. They took two 90-year-olds becoming the oldest people to ever go to space and others with limited mobility and impaired sight or hearing.

So pretty interesting to see that they didn't have to make so many tweaks or accommodations to fit this. wheelchair user. And as for Michaela, she said her goal was not only to make space accessible to disabled people, but to improve accessibility on Earth to, you know, putting her spaceflight side by side with Katie Perry's. And first of all, it's crazy that Katie Perry's was this year, because that seems like an eternity ago seems like Blue Origin has a little bit of a PR win with this. And they've kind of kicked up their entire organization into high gear. They were always known as a very slow and deliberate culture,

you know, very by the book engineering process. But now a new CEO has come in and say, hey, we've got to iterate a little bit faster here. And they want to go toe to toe with SpaceX. Specifically when it comes to the moon, they think that obviously SpaceX dominates in launch cadence. It dominates in space transfer. It's been dominating in crude missions so far.

But the one area where they think they can weasel their way into NASA's plans going forward is the moon. So they're saying that, hey, we have a blue moon test, blue moon mark one, which is a near-term test to reach the moon in 2026. They want to land a small lunar cargo lander there. And they also want to invest in technology that will lead to a longer-term presence on the moon where they've been developing solar cells. They've been developing power transmission wires that do well on the lunar surface saying like, hey, we're your moon guy. SpaceX can do everything else, but, you know, look to us when it comes to, you know, the lunar surface. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Neil's winner of the weekend.

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When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. My winner is Charlie Brown, Lucy Linus in that dog named Snoopy because this gang is now a billion dollar business. The Japanese entertainment conglomerate Sony announced it was paying $450 million to take control of the Peanuts franchise, doubling its existing stake from 39% to 80%

and valuing the franchise at over $1 billion. They better be a good parent because there aren't many characters more beloved than the Peanuts Kids and Canine. First published in comic strips in 1947 by cartoonist Charles Schultz. Peanuts appeared in newspapers daily until his death in 2000. Over that period, the Peanuts Empire expanded all over the globe. The comic grew to appear in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries, delighting more than 350 million readers. But that was just the start. The comics spawn, movies, TV shows, toys, games, rides, and other experiences.

You can't imagine Thanksgiving or Christmas without the Charlie Brown holiday special or the music. And Snoopy, that pop has taken on a life of his own, even appearing as the face of the insurance company MetLife for three decades. Toby, 78 years in and the Peanuts franchise has arguably been never more popular, Sony's got a lot to play with. They have such cross-generational brand trust. It is not a ordinary circumstance for one mascot to serve as, you know, the spokesperson, the representative of an insurance company for three decades. And that he's not even associated with MetLife, but at this point, you know, since they've been licensing the character of Snoopy for so long, it evokes feelings of trust. That is exactly what they want to do as an insurance company. So in terms of durable IP, Snoopy and Co can go toe to toe with anyone out there.

For Sony, why are they buying this? Why are they investing in this? They want to spin up a little bit of an entertainment flywheel a la Disney. They want games to feed into TV, to film into movies, to film into merch, to go into experiences. That is the flywheel that they want to build. And they recently just got a taste of it, too. They proved this playbook with The Last of Us. That is a video game that they own that moved into the Presti's TV world, which turned into this big cultural event.

So they're saying like, huh, what else could we do this with? Let's go shopping. Peanut Seams up for grabs. So Peanuts did have a movie back in 2015. It made $200 million. It did well. But we got to get another one because we're so close to EGOT status in terms of the Peanuts franchise. They've won two Grammys, four Emmys and two Tonys.

They've only got one Oscar nomination, though, a boy named Charlie Brown in 19. 69. So Sony, let's get a, you know, an epic Peanuts movie out there so we can get this EGOT for Snoopy and Co. If you are looking for Peanuts TV, though, it's not, this doesn't have to do with Tony with Sony. Peanuts struck a licensing deal with actually Apple TV. Plus, that was renewed through 2030. They're going to make original Peanuts content over there on Apple. So a little bit of bifurcation in this franchise, but I hope Sony puts a lot of money and interest in behind Peanuts because they have. have been successful with a bunch of these other franchises,

and we'll see what they do with Peanuts. And Peanuts is interesting because even though you said we need a new movie coming out, you don't actually need a blockbuster or a hit to make money off of Peanuts because it's just so consistent. It has great licensing revenue streams. Again, I go back to this MetLife deal that they had for over 30 years. It always becomes relevant again during the holiday. So it has, it's almost like the Mariah Carey effect where every time Christmas rolls around,

you know, Charlie Brown Christmas comes into people's minds again. So you don't necessarily need to have a blockbuster movie come out every single year in order to make your money back. It kind of is this self-turning mechanism at this point. And let's just admire how prolific Schultz was, right? So it came out in 1947. It was called Lil Folks. It wasn't even called Peanuts. Apparently, he hated the name Peanuts, but they had to change it three years later.

So I don't know how the history would have changed if this thing was still called Lil Folks. But over those decades, he produced 17,890s. peanut strips, 15,000 daily ones and 2,500 Sunday ones until his death in 2000. He died the day before the final comic strip came out. All right, it's Monday, so here's what you need to know to stay ahead in the week ahead. It's here, the culmination of the winter holiday season, Festivus. Tomorrow, as introduced in an iconic episode of Seinfeld, families will gather around the aluminum pole and tell them all the ways they have disappointed each other over the past year. That erring of grievances is of course followed by the feats of strength,

and I really hope you put up a better fight than Jake Paul. Toby, let it out. What problems do you have with me? Neil, if we're the trust tree here, I never knew what Festivus was. I always hear it mentioned, and I've heard it mentioned by you, but before literally today, I did not know that Festivus involved, you know, an aluminum pole and all these rituals around it. So if it's about airing grievances, though, I do have one.

I'm just kidding. I'm not going to put that on the air. We'll wait for tomorrow for that. And I hope you are SVP to my Festivist dinner. It's a very quiet week on Wall Street with the stock exchanges closing early on the 24th and staying shut for Christmas. Trading is expected to be thin until investors return from their deer park vacations in the new year. We came off a hot Friday in the last full trading week of the year. The AI trade kind of got some wind back in its sales. And a lot of peripheral AI companies did really well. Now it's kind of the holiday season. Nothing really happens on these shortened trading days. So yeah, expect a little bit more quiet. Of course, as soon as I said that, something crazy

is going to happen. And it doesn't feel like it, but the S&P 500 is up 16% this year. That's three straight years of double-digit, very healthy gains. Federal government workers are also going to have a chill week. Last week, President Trump issued an executive order naming Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas federal holidays giving employees those days off this year. That doesn't mean, your company will necessarily do the same. Private firms often follow the federal holiday calendar, but they aren't legally obligated to. Overall, about 11% of employers granted staff the full week off

between Christmas and New Year's in 2024. And if you are trying to plan ahead to next year and have a bigger vacation around this time, you can't necessarily do that because this does not mean that they are designated as a federal holiday in perpetuity. To do that, legislation must pass through Congress and then be signed into law.

by the president. So this is just a temporary one-year thing for now, although maybe next year he'll do the same exact thing. And next year, I just looked it up. Christmas is on a Friday. So that means people are going to be working like Monday through Wednesday, whereas this year it's right. It's more in the middle of the week. Yeah, you want like a Wednesday or Thursday Christmas because that's kind of a two-week thing if your employer is feeling generous. Christmas on a Friday, you know, you're working the 20th and the 21st. All right, the sports world this week will be anything but quiet with the NBA and NFL hosting games. on Christmas. The NBA used to own this holiday, but the NFL is encroaching on its turf with three matchups on December 25th. You know, the only thing Christmas Day sporting site is missing. Jake Paul falling all over and rolling around in the ring with a professional fighter. I could really use a little more Jake Paul in my life this Christmas. I think we could all use more Jake Paul in our life this Christmas. All right. If sports isn't your thing and you're more of a

Christmas and the movies kind of family, there is a good one hitting theaters. Oscar contender, Marty Supreme opens starring Timothy Shalome as an aspiring ping pong player in the 1950s. I think I'm going to go Marty Supreme Max this holiday season, just play a lot of ping pong. Like an uncomfortable amount of ping pong. Sounds like a good lady to spend the holidays to me. That is all the time we have.

Thanks so much for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Monday. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send a note to Morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at MB Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our executive producer. Raymond Lou is our producer.

Our associate producers are Olivia Graham and Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup, whenever do you dirty, Charlie Brown. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brough. Great. Show to Daniel. Let's run it back tomorrow. Aw. Pay off your home. Travel for life. Drive a Ferrari.

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