Welcome back. Today, Brandy Melville sells affordable clothes for skinny shoppers; a new MonsterVerse movie pulls audiences to theaters; and luxury shoppers turn to under-the-radar brands.

Brandy Melville makes clothes for thin girls, Suzanne Kapner writes—and it isn’t sorry.

The retailer, run by a secretive Italian family, produces stylish and affordable basics that are sold mainly in one size. Skinny, mostly blonde girls fill its social-media feeds and often staff its stores.

It is a formula that has made Brandy Melville extremely popular with a subset of teens and young adults. “If you wear Brandy Melville you have good style and are popular, and people want to be your friend,” said Rachelle Fradkin, a sixth-grader in Edgewater, N.J.

It has also courted controversy, including allegations of discrimination by an employee and retail partners, and inspired debates on social media among the brand’s lovers and haters.

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” roared at the box office, notching the second-biggest domestic weekend opening of a movie so far this year, behind “Dune: Part Two,” Katherine Sayre reports.

The debut of the monster adventure generated an estimated $80 million in domestic ticket sales, surpassing expectations of between $50 million and $55 million over the weekend, according to box-office tracker Comscore.

“Godzilla x Kong,” from Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., brings together Godzilla and Kong to confront a new threat to the world.

“For audiences, it was an essential part of the experience to see these characters on the big screen, or the biggest screen possible,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst. “You don’t want to confine Godzilla and Kong to a small screen.”

More Hollywood: Movie studios mining videogame characters are vetting their work with gamers to avoid fatal mistakes. [WSJ]

Some wealthy shoppers are balking at the skyrocketing prices of their beloved designer staples and turning to less-extravagantly priced independent labels instead, Faran Krentcil writes.

Surging prices aren’t hurting leading brands’ fortunes because “the number of wealthy people is growing so fast” thanks to booming industries like technology, said Fflur Roberts, head of luxury goods at market-research firm Euromonitor. Enough people, she said, “will pay an astronomically high price for what they want.”

But once-loyal shoppers are now seeking out smaller, more reasonably priced labels whose designs still feel luxurious and look elegant but are less likely to provoke sticker shock.

It’s not “out of necessity,” said Allison Ball, 41, a private equity partner in Austin whose past purchases included many off-the-runway pieces. “It’s out of principle.”

Why Stellantis’s CEO remains all-in on EVs as others retrench. [WSJ] 

Commercial production executives and creators are cautiously optimistic that generative AI will prove useful without matching the “spark” of traditional work. [Ad Age] 

OpenAI showcased technology that can recreate a human voice from a 15-second clip, but said it would not release it publicly until it knows more about potential risks for misuse. [WSJ]

Snapchat’s friend-ranking feature is adding to teen anxiety. [WSJ] 

Landlords and developers are embracing street art as a selling point. [NYT] 

Meet Ariel, the 24-year-old content creator who unexpectedly starred in an AI-generated ad for cleaning wipes. [NYMag]