EW reports: Felix Silla's friend and former Buck Rogers in the 25th Century costar Gil Gerard reported on Twitter that Silla died Friday after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Coming in at just under 4 feet tall and only 70 pounds, Silla was the perfect choice for the mumbling Cousin Itt on The Addams Family. For years, audiences didn't see his face, the character covered in a full-length hairpiece, sporting sunglasses and a bowler hat... Silla did not provide the distinct mumbling voice of Cousin Itt. That was added by sound engineer Tony Magro in production...

He first came to the United States in 1955 and began his career touring with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus for seven years. He worked as a trapeze artist, tumbler, and bareback horse rider. Eventually, he settled in Hollywood in 1962, where he became a stuntman. He went on to work in movies like A Ticklish Fair, TV shows like Bonanza, and appeared in the first pilot for Star Trek, "The Cage." His small stature often helped him find work, including as Cousin Itt, robot sidekick Twiki on the NBC series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and even as a hang-gliding Ewok in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi...

He also excelled as a stand in, double, and stuntman working on projects such as Planet of the Apes, Demon Seed, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The Towering Inferno, The Hindenburg, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Poltergeist, The Golden Child, Howard the Duck, and Batman Returns.
In 2018 one Las Vegas blog spotted Silla with Gil Gerard, posting a picture of the two side by side -- just as they'd posed decades earlier on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

While for that show Mel Blanc had provided the voice for Twiki the robot, the blog notes that Silla himself supplied the voice of Mortimer Goth in the Sims 2 videogame.

The lion's share of U.S. consumers say the streamer has the best original programming, according to a new Morgan Stanley survey. Variety reports: Netflix remains the most frequently cited as offering the best original programming -- with 38% of survey respondents picking it as No. 1, per the Wall Street analyst firm's 2021 streaming survey. That's roughly in line with Morgan Stanley's previous surveys. On the 2021 survey, 12% of respondents said Amazon Prime Video offers the best original programming, followed by Disney Plus, Hulu and HBO Max which each scored 6%-7% of total responses.

Among Netflix customers, the top reasons cited for subscribing to Netflix were "broad selection of content" (55%), "good original programming" (51%), "adds content I like" (49%) and "no commercials" (46%). In 2021, Netflix is projected to spend about $19 billion on content according to a forecast by financial research firm Bankr, up about 10% from last year. Netflix retains the No. 1 spot as the most widely used streaming service with 58% of respondents saying they use the service. Amazon Prime Video came in at 45% (up 400 basis points year over year), Disney Plus was at 31% (up 650 basis points), and HBO/HBO Max was 20% (up 500 basis points).

Google has announced that the Google Play Movies and TV app will no longer be available on any Roku set-top box or any Samsung, LG, Vizio or Roku smart TV starting July 15th. The Verge reports: If you have movies or TV shows purchased or rented through the service, you'll still be able to access them through the "Your movies and shows" section of the YouTube app on those devices. This change will also affect you if if you used the Movies and TV app to access Movies Anywhere, the service that allows you to redeem codes from DVDs and Blu-rays so you can access your media digitally. Google has confirmed to The Verge that users who relied on Play Movies and TV to access that content will be able to do so through YouTube.

There are a few other caveats to note in the transition to YouTube. Your Watchlist will no longer be viewable in the app (though it can still be seen on the web by Googling "my watchlist"), and while your family can still share the content you bought from the Movie and TV store, any purchases made in the YouTube app won't be shared with your family. [The Verge's article breaks down all the various ways you can access the content you purchased through the Play Store after July 15th.]

Zachary Horwitz never made it big on the Sunset Strip -- there was the uncredited part in Brad Pitt's "Fury" and a host of roles in low-budget thrillers and horror flicks. But federal charges suggest he had acting talent, duping several financial firms out of hundreds of millions of dollars and enabling him to live the Hollywood dream after all. From a report: That meant chartered flights and a $6 million mansion -- replete with wine cellar and home gym. Horwitz even included a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label, which retails for more than $200, as a gift to investors along with his company's "annual report."

The claims are outlined in legal documents that U.S. prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission released this week alleging Horwitz, 34, was running a massive Ponzi scheme. His scam: a made-up story that he had exclusive deals to sell films to Netflix and HBO. Dating back to 2014, the SEC said he raised a shocking $690 million in fraudulent funds. On Tuesday, Horwitz was arrested. Horwitz, who went by the screen name "Zach Avery," used fabricated contracts and fake emails to swindle at least five firms, according to the government. Investors were issued promissory notes through his firm 1inMM Capital to acquire the rights to movies that would be sold to Netflix and HBO for distribution in Latin America, Australia, New Zealand and other locations.

The file-sharing blog TorrentFreak reports: Google was asked to remove a TorrentFreak article from its search results this week. The article in question reported that "The Mandalorian" was the most pirated TV show of 2020.

This notice claims to identify several problematic URLs that allegedly infringe the copyrights of Disney's hit series The Mandalorian. This is not unexpected, as The Mandalorian was the most pirated TV show of last year, as we reported in late December. However, we didn't expect to see our article as one of the targeted links in the notice. Apparently, the news that The Mandalorian is widely pirated — which was repeated by dozens of other publications — is seen as copyright infringement?

Needless to say, we wholeheartedly disagree. This is not the way.
TorrentFreak specifies that the article in question "didn't host or link to any infringing content." (TorrentFreak's article was even linked to by major sites including CNET, Forbes, Variety, and even Slashdot.)

TorrentFreak also reports that it wasn't Disney who filed the takedown request, but GFM Films... At first, we thought that the German camera company GFM could have something to do with it, as they worked on The Mandalorian. However, earlier takedown notices from the same sender protected the film "The Last Witness," which is linked to the UK company GFM Film Sales. Since we obviously don't want to falsely accuse anyone, we're not pointing fingers.
So what happens next? We will certainly put up a fight if Google decides to remove the page. At the time of writing, this has yet to happen. The search engine currently lists the takedown request as 'pending,' which likely means that there will be a manual review. The good news is that Google is usually pretty good at catching overbroad takedown requests. This is also true for TorrentFreak articles that were targeted previously, including our coverage on the Green Book screener leak.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Following the dismantling of several private trackers in 2020, a man has been sentenced for sharing thousands of TV shows and movies via now-defunct torrent site DanishBits. In a separate case, another man has been convicted of sharing 9,440 movies with a relatively small circle of family and friends using the popular Plex media server.

According to Deadline, Warner Bros. will return to releasing its theatrical films exclusively in theaters next year, ending the studio's 2021 experiment of releasing major films simultaneously on its HBO Max streaming service and in theaters for the first 30 days they're released. The Verge reports: The news comes as part of an announcement from Warner Bros. of a new deal with Regal cinemas owner Cineworld, the second largest theater chain in the world. After over six months of shutdowns, Regal's theaters will reopen in April, and they'll begin showing Warner Bros. films like Kong vs. Godzilla and Mortal Kombat alongside their HBO Max debuts. When Warner Bros. films come back to theaters in 2022, Regal theaters will once again have full exclusivity (with no HBO Max or paid streaming rental competition). But that exclusivity window will be for a much shorter amount of time: Regal will only have a 45-day theatrical exclusivity window, half of the 90-day standard that existed in years past.

When the Star Trek franchise was awarded a special Emmy in 2018, it was William "Captain Kirk" Shatner who'd co-delivered its acceptance speech, remembers ComicBook.com. "Thank you so much. 52 years. What a gift. We're grateful... Star Trek has endured because it represents an idea — one that's greater than the sum of our parts... we watch and we reach to see the best version of ourselves..."

And now three years later, they report that Shatner "will celebrate his 90th birthday back on the bridge of the USS Enterprise." Sort of... Shatner will partake in a two-day event at the Star Trek: The Original Series Set Tour site in Ticonderoga, New York. The exhibit is famed among fans for its replica of the bridge set where Shatner gave orders as Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek: The Original Series.

The two-day event begins on July 23rd (a belated celebration coming a few months after his actual birthday in March), with the COVID-19 mask and social distancing rules still in effect... The limited $1500 all-inclusive packages will let fans participate in Shatner's 90th Birthday Dinner Celebration, take a set tour with Shatner, plus a Bridge Chat, a photo, and an autograph. Regular admission is $80 for a standard tour with a la carte photos and autographs available... The replica set is likely the closest fans will ever come to seeing Shatner return to a Starfleet bridge.
So what is William Shatner doing on Monday, the actual date of his 90th birthday? The New York Daily News reports: He's got a series airing on the History channel, he's heading overseas to shoot an episode of a television show, and is in the middle of promoting his latest feature film, a romantic comedy called "Senior Moment..."

The indie film features Shatner as Victor, a former test pilot who dates younger women and loves burning rubber behind the wheel of his beautiful 1955 Porsche.
The movie also stars Watchmen actress Jean Smart, along with Christopher Lloyd (who memorably played a Klingon in the 1984 movie Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.)

And meanwhile Priceline.com plans a special series of deals this week to honor Shatner's years as their spokesperson (as well as his singing in their earliest dotcom-era commercials, which revived Shatner's spoken-word singing career).

In Captain Kirk's final appearance in 1994's Star Trek: Generations, one of the last things he says is "It was fun." But it looks like in real life, William Shatner is living long and prospering.

Here's that great moment in Slashdot history when Shatner actually answered questions from Slashdot's readers. Have your own favorite William Shatner memory? Share it in the comments to help celebrate his 90th birthday!

From a report: On Saturday, Zack Snyder himself will head to Twitch to unveil the first look at Justice League: Justice Is Gray... the grayscale version that will soon arrive on HBO Max. The "pre-show" for the event kicks off at 2:30 p.m. Pacific Time on the MANvsGAME channel, with the Snyder and and Justice League star Joe Manganiello joining the broadcast for the big reveal at 4:00 p.m. Pacific. StreamElements designed audience tools to use during the stream, including an engaging donation functionality that will benefit the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
The Chicago Tribune argues all you needed to know about Joss Whedon's original 2017 version is encapsulated in the 68-second YouTube video "Sad Affleck." (An SFGate columnist calls the new version "vastly better.") But the Tribune calls Snyder's four-hour director's cut "a 14-year-old's idea of gravitas. Epic, violent, full of naughty words, told with the lyricism of a pharmaceutical ad about bloating. And more importantly, for now, it's complete."

Yahoo Entertainment's Insider has compiled "The 45 biggest differences between 'Zack Snyder's Justice League' and the 2017 theatrical version." But Variety just specifically asked Zack Snyder, "Why is Justice League so violent?" [T]he violence in "Justice League" is bloodier and more violent than audiences are typically accustomed to with superhero movies, which are almost always rated PG-13 — and therefore largely bloodless. Snyder wanted to push the envelope. "It's a pure exercise in creative freedom," the director told Variety this week... Snyder says knowing his film would be streaming on HBO Max freed him from having to make his "Justice League" work for a PG-13 rating.

"Let's just do it the exact way we would if there was no ratings board," he said of his team's thinking. "Let's not use any second guessing. Let's just do it the way we think is the coolest. That was the philosophical approach." Part of the reason that "Justice League" is so violent is to realistically demonstrate what it would be like to actually face off against god-like superheroes.
ComicBook.com reports that Snyder is now also planning "a multi-day SnyderVerse movie marathon later in 2021, where showings of Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice will culminate in a theatrical IMAX screening of Zack Snyder's Justice League. The filmmaker is a "huge admirer" of the Justice Is Gray Edition in IMAX, calling it the "ultimate version" of Justice League that is "sort of the penultimate ridiculous movie that shouldn't exist at its highest most fetishistic level."
Snyder tells Esquire his four-hour re-edit was "a labor of love and I would do it again in a second. I wouldn't hesitate. And look, we were doing it for free. I really didn't care. I just wanted to get it, fix it."

Esquire adds that "Even if you decide not to dive into a four hour super hero movie, at least take away a lesson from the making of the Snyder Cut: in a time when so much of us have experienced wrongs and tragedy, sometimes wrongs can be righted, and sometimes your biggest visions find a way to get out into the world."

After a year in which most people were stuck indoors, it should come as little surprise that streaming platforms skyrocketed in popularity over the past 12 months. For the first time ever, subscriptions to streaming services surpassed one billion, reaching 1.1 billion globally. From a report: At the same time, box office receipts plummeted because movie theaters across the world were closed for a significant part of 2020. Global ticket sales tapped out at $12 billion, with North America accounting for $2.2 billion of that haul. Though the circumstances aren't comparable, worldwide box office receipts totaled $42.5 billion in 2019, with $11.4 billion coming from domestic theaters. Still, it marks a 72% year-over-year decline. These statistics come from the Motion Pictures Association's annual theme report, which is conducted by the entertainment industry trade group and intends to analyze how film, television and streaming content performs yearly.

The 2020 study covers a year that was overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic, making some of the data understandably skewed and difficult to compare box office totals between countries. In Asian countries, particularly in China, the box office has already returned to pre-pandemic levels. That hasn't been the case in the U.S. and Canada, where new movies are few and far between and audiences are returning to theaters at a glacial pace. Outside of North America, the top three box office markets were China ($3 billion), Japan ($1.3 billion), and France ($500 million). Combined, the global theatrical business and home and mobile entertainment market totaled $80.8 billion in revenues in 2020, shrinking by 18% from the $98.3 billion amassed last year. The success of digital home entertainment, which grew 23% to $68.8 billion, helped offset the depleted theatrical box office numbers. In the U.S., subscriptions reached 308.6 million, representing a 32% increase from 2019.

ComicBook.com reports: Back in 2019, Avengers: Endgame hit theatres and after a couple of months, it ended up knocking Avatar out of the highest-grossing film spot. The James Cameron movie was number one for an entire decade before the Marvel film came along, but thanks to a recent re-release in China, Avatar is back on top...

When the news broke yesterday, many people took to social media to point out that the "real" winner was actually Zoe Saldana, who plays Gamora in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Neytiri in Avatar. No matter which movie ultimately wins the box office wars, Saldana can't lose... Saldana is expected to return for both Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Avatar 2.
Deadline reports the directors of Marvel's Avengers: Endgame, Joe and Anthony Russo, "have graciously saluted James Cameron's film Avatar for edging past them in the all-time worldwide box office totals," by tweeting a custom piece of artwork merging the Avatar and Avengers logos. James Cameron himself shared the tweet he'd received from Marvel Studios congratulating "ALL of Na'vi Nation for reclaiming the box office crown" (which also included a memorable line from Avengers: Endgame).

Deadline says it's part of a long-standing Hollywood tradition: A practice of taking out ads to pat each other on the back began in 1977 when Steven Spielberg congratulated buddy George Lucas after Star Wars overtook Jaws at the domestic box office. It carried on from there including when Lucas later gave a shout-out to Cameron as Titanic unseated Star Wars in 1998.

In 2015, Disney/Marvel and The Avengers paid tribute to Universal's Jurassic World and its record-smashing opening weekend. Later that year, Uni returned the hat tip as Disney/Lucasfilm's The Force Awakens rode past the dinosaurs, moving to social media for the first time. Then in 2019, Cameron saluted Endgame for overtaking Titanic and in July that year Cameron again said bravo when Endgame crossed Avatar.

Netflix is testing a new feature that could signal the start of an effort to crack down on password sharing. Hollywood Reporter reports: Spotted by GammaWire, some viewers attempting to use somebody else's account are now being stopped by a screen that says, "If you don't live with the owner of this account, you need your own account to keep watching." Netflix confirmed the new feature, which is getting a limited rollout at this time. "This test is designed to help ensure that people using Netflix accounts are authorized to do so," a Netflix spokesperson said.

In order to continue watching, the viewer is given the option of either verifying their identity (with a texted or emailed code to the account's owner), or opting to "verify later," which gives the viewer an unspecified additional amount of time to continue watching and later confirm they are a valid account user. A source familiar with the tests said the extent of the rollout varies from country to country, but noted that one reason for the feature is a desire to help protect subscribers from security concerns that can arise from unauthorized use of their account.

Netflix is officially dropping a documentary about the last ever Blockbuster video store. Titled, The Last Blockbuster, the film gives a nostalgic glimpse of the video store, featuring bevy of interviews from previous employees, fans and business people. From a report: The documentary focuses on the last-ever remaining Blockbuster in the world in Bend, Oregon. A recent statement on the documentary's official Facebook page reads, "A lot of people know that Blockbuster had the chance to buy Netflix early on and they passed on the opportunity. In an ironic twist of fate, our movie The Last Blockbuster is coming to Netflix one week from today. We are beyond excited for people to get to see this tribute to era of home video on the world's largest streaming service. Just don't forget to rewind it when you're done watching it and bring it back by noon on Wednesday."

After almost 100 years and more than half a dozen real live, roaring lions, MGM is replacing its iconic mascot for a near-identical computer-generated duplicate. CNET reports: This change has been in the works for a while. MGM originally planned to debut its new CG mascot in the latest James Bond film, but when No Time to Die was delayed from 2019 to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic, so was Leo's first roar from the uncanny valley. Instead, MGM revealed the logo on YouTube Monday and in a sizzle reel shared with Adweek, which said MGM worked with Culver City, Calif.-based Baked Studios on the new look.

Netflix today launched Fast Laughs, a new feature for its mobile apps that presents a string of comedy clips from its stand-up specials, TV series and movies. From a report: Netflix's Fast Laughs displays full-screen vertical video in an auto-playing feed, borrowing a page from apps likes TikTok, and lets users share their favorite bits with friends and social media. The company says the section will provide up to 100 curated clips per day. The main goal, obviously, is to nail up yet another entry point for Netflix subs to find new content to binge on.

Fast Laughs lets you add specific titles to your Netflix watch list or click to start watching a program immediately. But Netflix also built Fast Laughs as a destination unto itself to watch entertaining moments on-the-go, calling to mind a key idea of now-defunct startup Quibi. You can just lean back and watch the jokes fly in a scrolling montage. The length of each video segment will vary, as short as around 15 seconds and up to 45 seconds or even longer.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Have you ever bought a movie or TV show through the PlayStation Store? Me neither. As a result, Sony announced today it will remove them, starting August 31, 2021. "We've seen tremendous growth from PlayStation fans using subscription-based and ad-based entertainment streaming services on our consoles," Sony wrote in a post over on the PlayStation Blog. "With this shift in customer behavior, we have decided to no longer offer movie and TV purchases and rentals through PlayStation Store." As a multimedia company producing movies and TV alongside music and games, it made sense for Sony to sell all of it through various iterations of the PlayStation's digital storefront, in theory at least. In practice, it seems like console owners were mostly just interested in buying games, especially following the rise of Netflix and Amazon Prime.

As Disney prepares to release "Raya and the Last Dragon" in theaters and as a premium on-demand title this Friday, CEO Bob Chapek says that he thinks the experimentation his studio and others in Hollywood are doing with releasing movies during the pandemic will permanently change the movie business. From a report "The consumer is probably more impatient than they've ever been before," Chapek said during a Q&A at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference, "particularly since now they've had the luxury of an entire year of getting titles at home pretty much when they want them. So, I'm not sure there's going back. But we certainly don't want to do anything like cut the legs off a theatrical exhibition run." Disney previously released its remake of "Mulan," initially a March 2020 theatrical release, as a premium title for $29.99 for Disney+ subscribers while Pixar's "Soul" went from being a theatrical June 2020 release to a Christmas Day release on Disney+ at no extra cost.

[...] Disney has yet to show an exact number of days it would like to shorten the theatrical window to, but Chapek's remarks suggest that the hybrid release strategy Disney is using for "Raya" may be a model it continues to explore while it waits for the box office to return to normal. Once it does, Disney has a very good reason not to leave movie theaters behind, as the studio grossed a record $11.1 billion worldwide in 2019 off of films like "Avengers: Endgame," "Frozen II," and a CGI remake of "The Lion King." "This is a fluid situation and it's fluid for two reasons: The short term impact of COVID on the number of screens open and on consumers' willingness to go back, but also the fundamental changes of consumer behavior, which might be more profound," Chapek said. "We are watching very carefully... to see how long term those preferences are going to shift. and that's why we talk about flexibility so often."

Variety magazine reports that Netflix has ordered Terminator anime series: "'Terminator' is one of the most iconic sci-fi stories ever created -- and has only grown more relevant to our world over time," said John Derderian, Netflix's vice president of Japan and anime. "The new animated series will explore this universe in a way that has never been done before. We can't wait for fans to experience this amazing new chapter in the epic battle between machines and humans."

Mattson Tomlin will serve as showrunner and executive producer on the series. Tomlin most recently wrote the Netflix original film "Project Power" and worked on the screenplay for Matt Reeves' upcoming film "The Batman...."

"Anyone who knows my writing knows I believe in taking big swings and going for the heart," Tomlin said. "I'm honored that Netflix and Skydance have given me the opportunity to approach 'Terminator' in a way that breaks conventions, subverts expectations and has real guts."

An anonymous reader writes: NASA's Perseverence rover, which is currently exploring Mars, has as it's CPU a BAE Systems RAD 750 running at a 200 Mhz and featuring 256 Megabytes of RAM with 2 Gigabytes of storage. This is a radiation hardened version of the PowerPC G3, with specs roughly equivalent to the Clamshell Ibook that Reese Witherspoon used in Legally Blond back in 2001. This follows a tradition of old tech on space rovers — the Sojourner rover which explored Mars in 1997 used an Intel 80C85 running at 2 Mhz, similar to what could have been found in the classic Radio Shack TRS-80 model 100 portable from 1983.
In a comment on the original submission, long-time Slashdot reader Mal-2 argues "There's not as much distance between the actual capabilities of a CPU now and twenty years ago as there would be if you made the same comparison a decade ago." In the last 12 years or so, the CPUs have gotten more efficient and cooler-running (thus suitable for portable devices) to a much greater degree than they've actually gained new functionality. Retro computing is either going to stay stuck in the 1990s, or it's not going to be very interesting in the future.

118 episodes of Jim Henson's classic TV series The Muppet Show are now streaming on Disney+, writes the AV Club — but 18 episodes now begin with a content disclaimer... The text of the disclaimers, which cannot be skipped past and include little 12-second timers so you know that you have to sit through them, explain that the episodes feature "negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures," and while "these stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now," Disney has decided to leave them in order to "acknowledge the [content's] harmful impact, learn from it, and spark conversation to create a more inclusive future together..."

The disclaimer-worthy stuff includes Johnny Cash performing in front of a confederate flag in his episode and the brief appearance of a puppet dressed as a stereotypical Native American (referred to as an "Indian") in the Jim Nabors episode.
MovieWeb adds: Putting a disclaimer on the show is not a new practice at Disney+. The streamer had previously put disclaimers at the start of several classic animated movies, warning viewers about "outdated cultural depictions." Last month, Disney+ took it a step further by pulling many of these movies from kids' profiles, such as Dumbo, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, and The Jungle Book. The titles are still available to watch on adult profiles with a disclaimer.
To celebrate their arrival on Disney+ the Muppets spliced themselves into posters parodying other TV shows, including The Mandalorian.

But MovieWeb also notes reports that two Muppet Show episodes from season 5 also had to be removed — and another episode heavily edited — due to trouble securing the music rights, "something that also prevented most of the series from getting released on home video for years."