Warner Bros. Discovery has quietly begun releasing dozens of its older films for free on YouTube, marking an unexpected shift in how the major studio handles its back catalog. Over the past month, the company has uploaded more than 30 full-length movies across five YouTube channels, without digital rights management or regional restrictions.

The collection includes both critically acclaimed films like "Waiting for Guffman" and "Michael Collins," as well as commercial disappointments like the 2002 Eddie Murphy film "The Adventures of Pluto Nash." Some releases have significant historical value, such as "Oh, God!" - a 1977 George Burns comedy that earned $51 million at release (equivalent to $265 million in 2024). This move represents a departure from traditional studio practices of protecting content through strict digital rights management and paid streaming services. Warner Bros. owns multiple distribution channels, including the Max streaming service and Turner Classic Movies, which makes the decision to release these films freely on YouTube particularly notable.

Disney+ lost 700,000 subscribers in the last quarter of 2024, largely due to price hikes and expiring promotions. Despite the decline, Disney's overall streaming business remained profitable, boosted by strong box office results from Moana 2 and Hulu's 1.6 million added subscribers. IndieWire reports: Not counting Disney+ Hotstar, the cheap Disney+ service in India, Disney+ now has 124.6 million subs. ESPN+ also lost 700,000 subs in the period. Hulu was the streaming highlight, adding 1.6 million subscribers; it now has 53.6 million. All told, the company's streaming business was profitable for its third-straight quarter. So it wasn't all bad -- or unexpected. "Our results this quarter demonstrate Disney's creative and financial strength as we advanced the strategic initiatives set in motion over the past two years," said Disney CEO Bob Iger. "In fiscal Q1 we saw outstanding box office performance from our studios, which had the top three movies of 2024; we further improved the profitability of our Entertainment DTC streaming businesses; we took an important step to advance ESPN's digital strategy by adding an ESPN tile on Disney+; and our Experiences segment demonstrated its enduring appeal as we continue investing strategically across the globe. Overall, this quarter proved to be a strong start to the fiscal year, and we remain confident in our strategy for continued growth."

An anonymous reader writes: Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs, forcing librarians who are already understaffed to either sort through a functionally infinite number of books to determine what is written by humans and what is generated by AI, or to spend taxpayer dollars to provide patrons with information they don't realize is AI-generated.

Public libraries primarily use two companies to manage and lend ebooks: Hoopla and OverDrive, the latter of which people may know from its borrowing app, Libby. Both companies have a variety of payment options for libraries, but generally libraries get access to the companies' catalog of books and pay for customers to be able to borrow that book, with different books having different licenses and prices. A key difference is that with OverDrive, librarians can pick and choose which books in OverDrive's catalog they want to give their customers the option of borrowing. With Hoopla, librarians have to opt into Hoopla's entire catalog, then pay for whatever their customers choose to borrow from that catalog. The only way librarians can limit what Hoopla books their customers can borrow is by setting a limit on the price of books. For example, a library can use Hoopla but make it so their customers can only borrow books that cost the library $5 per use.

On one hand, Hoopla's gigantic catalog, which includes ebooks, audio books, and movies, is a selling point because it gives librarians access to more for cheaper price. On the other hand, making librarians buy into the entire catalog means that a customer looking for a book about how to diet for a healthier liver might end up borrowing Fatty Liver Diet Cookbook: 2000 Days of Simple and Flavorful Recipes for a Revitalized Liver. The book was authored by Magda Tangy, who has no online footprint, and who has an AI-generated profile picture on Amazon, where her books are also for sale. Note the earring that is only on one ear and seems slightly deformed. A spokesperson for deepfake detection company Reality Defender said that according to their platform, the headshot is 85 percent likely to be AI-generated. [...] It is impossible to say exactly how many AI-generated books are included in Hoopla's catalog, but books that appeared to be AI-generated were not hard to find for most of the search terms I tried on the platform. "This type of low quality, AI generated content, is what we at 404 Media and others have come to call AI slop," writes Emanuel Maiberg. "Librarians, whose job it is in part to curate what books their community can access, have been dealing with similar problems in the publishing industry for years, and have a different name for it: vendor slurry."

"None of the librarians I talked to suggested the AI-generated content needed to be banned from Hoopla and libraries only because it is AI-generated. It might have its place, but it needs to be clearly labeled, and more importantly, provide borrowers with quality information."

Sarah Lamdan, deputy director of the American Library Association, told 404 Media: "Platforms like Hoopla should offer libraries the option to select or omit materials, including AI materials, in their collections. AI books should be well-identified in library catalogs, so it is clear to readers that the books were not written by human authors. If library visitors choose to read AI eBooks, they should do so with the knowledge that the books are AI-generated."

A recent video from retro tech YouTuber Clint "LGR" Basinger takes a deep dive into the history of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium, exploring how former Air Force pilot Jim Sachs transformed a lackluster Windows 95 screensaver into a 25-year digital phenomenon. PC Gamer reports: The story centers on Jim Sachs, a man with one of those "they don't make this type of guy anymore" life stories so common to '80s and '90s computing, one Sachs recounted to the website AmigaLove back in 2020. After a six-year career in the US Air Force flying C-141 Starlifters, Sachs taught himself programming and digital art and began creating games for Commodore 64 and Amiga computers. From his first game, Saucer Attack, to later efforts like Defender of the Crown or his large portfolio of promotional and commissioned pieces, Sach's pixel art remains gorgeous and impressive to this day, and he seems to be a bit of a legend among Commodore enthusiasts.

It's with this background in games and digital art that Sachs looked at Microsoft's simple aquarium-themed screensaver for Windows 95 and 98 and thought he could do better. "Microsoft had an aquarium that they gave away with Windows where it was just bitmaps of fish being dragged across the screen," Sachs told the Matt Chat podcast back in 2015. "And they had that for like, three or four years. And I thought, I've given them enough time, I'm taking them to market. I'm gonna do something which will just blow that away."

Using reference photographs of real aquariums -- Sachs thanked a specific pet shop that's still around in an early version of his website" -- Sachs created the 3D art by hand and programmed the screensaver in C++, releasing the initial version in July 2000. Even looking at it all these years later, the first iteration of the SereneScreen Marine Aquarium is pretty gorgeous, and it has the added charm of being such a distinctly Y2K, nostalgic throwback.

The standalone screensaver sold well, but then things came full circle with Microsoft licensing a version of the Marine Aquarium for the Windows XP Plus Pack and later standard releases of the OS. Since that time, the Marine Aquarium has continued to see new releases, and a section on the SereneScreen website keeps track of its various appearances in the background of movies and TV shows like Law and Order. Over on the SereneScreen website, you can purchase a real time, 3D-accelerated version of the Marine Aquarium for Mac, iOS, Android, and the original Windows. Echoing the Windows XP deal, Roku actually licensed this 3.0 version for its TVs, bringing it to a new generation of users.

IMDb founder Col Needham is stepping down as CEO after 35 years, transitioning to executive chair. He will be succeeded by Nikki Santoro, who has served as the chief operating officer since 2021. TechCrunch reports: Santoro's appointment is significant, as she is the first woman to become the CEO and only the second person to hold the position. Needham founded IMDb in 1990 at the age of 23, steering the company into a powerhouse within the entertainment industry. After 35 years, he'll transition to a new role as executive chair.

According to Needham, Santoro's ascension is well deserved. [...] Santoro has been with the company since 2016, leading the company in expanding its database and improving its IMDbPro membership. She previously held leadership positions at Amazon, Microsoft, and The Weather Channel. "Nikki's strategic vision, deep understanding of our customers and products, and commitment to innovation have already delivered impressive business results during her tenure as COO," said Needham in a statement. "Her track record of driving growth and enhancing our products and services makes her the ideal person to guide IMDb into a new era."

The Los Angeles Times calls it "a guns-blazingly funny documentary about two out-of-work British actors who spent a chunk of their COVID-19 lockdown staging Shakespeare's masterpiece on the mean streets of Grand Theft Auto V."

Grand Theft Hamlet won SXSW's Jury Award for best documentary, and has now opened in U.S. theatres this weekend (and begun streaming on Mubi), after opening in the U.K. and Ireland. But nearly the entire film is set in Grand Theft Auto's crime-infested version of Los Angeles, the Times reports, "where even the good guys have weapons and a nihilistic streak — the vengeful Prince of Denmark fits right in." Yet when Sam Crane, a.k.a. @Hamlet_thedane, launches into one of the Bard's monologues, he's often murdered by a fellow player within minutes. Everyone's a critic.

Crane co-directed the movie with his wife, Pinny Grylls, a first-time gamer who functions as the film's camera of sorts. What her character sees, where she chooses to stand and look, makes up much of the film, although the editing team does phenomenal work splicing in other characters' points of view. (We're never outside of the game until the last 30 seconds; only then do we see anyone's real face....) The Bard's story is only half the point. Really, this is a classic let's-put-on-a-pixilated-show tale about the need to create beauty in the world — even this violent world — especially when stage productions in England have shuttered, forcing Crane, a husband and father, and Mark Oosterveen, single and lonely, to kill time speeding around the digital desert...

To our surprise (and theirs), the play's tussles with depression and anguish and inertia become increasingly resonant as the production and the pandemic limps toward their conclusions. When Crane and Oosterveen's "Grand Theft Auto" avatars hop into a van with an anonymous gamer and ask this online stranger for his thoughts on Hamlet's suicidal soliloquy, the man, a real-life delivery driver stuck at home with a broken leg, admits, "I don't think I'm in the right place to be replying to this right now...."
In 2014 Hamlet was also staged in Guild Wars 2, the article points out. "This is, however, the first attempt I'm aware of that attempts to do the whole thing live in one go, no matter if one of the virtual actors falls to their doom from a blimp.

"As Grylls says, 'You can't stop production just because somebody dies.'"

David Lynch, a four-time Oscar-nominated filmmaker known for the 1984 sci-fi epic Dune and the Showtime drama Twin Peaks, has died. "In January 2025, Lynch evacuated his Los Angeles home due to the Southern California wildfires," writes longtime Slashdot reader Z00L00K. "According to Deadline, these events preceded a terminal decline in his health, and on January 16, 2025, Lynch's family announced that he had died at the age of 78." Deadline reports: Lynch had been diagnosed with emphysema. Sources told Deadline that he was forced to relocate from his house due to the Sunset Fire and then took a turn for the worse. In an interview with Sight & Sound magazine last year, Lynch revealed that due to Covid fears and his emphysema diagnosis, he could no longer could leave the house, which meant if he directed again, it would be remote. He then followed up the interview with a post on social that he "will never retire" despite his physical challenges.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As music sales and streaming revenue reaches a high of $3 billion -- the highest since 2001, not accounting for significant inflation -- the UK video game market, which has grown almost continually for decades, has shrunk by 4.4%. The most significant decline was in boxed video game sales, down 35%.

Data from Digital Entertainment and Retail Association (ERA) puts the total worth of the UK video game market in 2024 at $5.7 billion, double the music market and behind TV and movies at $6.2 billion. The numbers show a shift in players' purchasing habits that has been ongoing for years, from physical games to digital downloads and in-game purchases in popular, established games such as Fortnite and Roblox. Boxed games now account for 27.7% of new game sales in the UK, according to ERA data.

Former MoviePass CEO Theodore Farnsworth has pleaded guilty to securities fraud and conspiracy charges for misleading investors about the movie subscription service's "unlimited plan" and its parent company's capabilities, U.S. prosecutors said.

Farnsworth falsely claimed the $9.95 monthly unlimited movie plan was sustainable and that Helios & Matheson Analytics could monetize subscriber data through artificial intelligence, knowing both statements were untrue. He faces up to 20 years in prison for MoviePass-related fraud and five years for a separate conspiracy charge involving Vinco Ventures.

It "felt like a Disneyland ride," reports CBS News. A man took a Waymo takes to the airport — only to discover the car "wouldn't stop driving around a parking lot in circles." And because the car was in motion, he also couldn't get out.

Still stuck in the car, Michael Johns — a tech-industry worker — then phoned Waymo for help. ("Has this been hacked? What's going on? I feel like I'm in the movies. Is somebody playing a joke on me?") But he also filmed the incident... "Why is this thing going in a circle? I'm getting dizzy," Johns said in a video posted on social media that has since gone viral, garnering more than two million views and interactions....

The Waymo representative was finally able to get the car under control after a few minutes, allowing him to get to the airport just in time to catch his flight back to LA. He says that the lack of empathy from the representative who attempted to help him, on top of the point that he's unsure if he was talking to a human or AI, are major concerns. "Where's the empathy? Where's the human connection to this?" Johns said while speaking with CBS News Los Angeles. "It's just, again, a case of today's digital world. A half-baked product and nobody meeting the customer, the consumers, in the middle."

Johns, who ironically works in the tech industry himself, says he would love to see services like Waymo succeed, but he has no plans to hop in for a ride until he's sure that the kinks have been fixed. In the meantime, he's still waiting for someone from Waymo to contact him in regards to his concerns, which hasn't yet happened despite how much attention his video has attracted since last week.
"My Monday was fine till i got into one of Waymo 's 'humanless' cars," he posted on LinkedIn . "I get in, buckle up ( safety first) and the saga begins.... [T]he car just went around in circles, eight circles at that..."

A Waymo spokesperson admitted they'd added about five minutes to his travel time, but then "said the software glitch had since been resolved," reports the Los Angeles Times, "and that Johns was not charged for the ride."

One final irony? According to his LinkedIn profile, Johns is a CES Innovations Awards judge.

Box office returns have started to stabilize. But nine of the top 10 box office hits this year were sequels [non-paywalled link]. And the 10th was "Wicked." From a report: A year ago, Hollywood's creative community was celebrating the apparent decline of corporate, paint-by-numbers sequels and remakes. Blockbuster ticket sales for movies like "Oppenheimer," "Sound of Freedom" and "Barbie" had shown -- or so it seemed -- that audiences were finally hungry for fresh stories.

You could almost hear the relief emanating from franchise-fatigued writers, directors and producers. "Everything Everywhere All at Once," the wildly inventive Oscar-winning art film that broke out in cinemas in 2022, had not been a fluke! Alas. Mass moviegoing swung squarely back to the predictable this past year, with sequels filling nine of the top 10 slots at the North American box office. The ennead consisted of "Inside Out 2," "Despicable Me 4," "Deadpool & Wolverine," "Moana 2," "Dune: Part Two," "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," "Kung Fu Panda 4," "Twisters" and the 38th Godzilla movie, "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire."

"Wicked," a song-by-song adaptation of the first half of the long-running Broadway musical, was the only top-10 outlier, counting as original, if only by a witchy whisker. (In the alternative reality of Hollywood, a movie can be "original" even if it is derivative of something else. What matters is whether the source material has previously been used for a stand-alone theatrical movie.)

"Every single one of the top ten box office hits of 2024 was a sequel, a remake... or a prequel," writes The Hollywood Reporter.

Here's the list of 2024's top-grossing films published by the movie blog SlashFilm:

10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
9. Venom: The Last Dance
8. Kung Fu Panda 4
7. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
6. Wicked
5. Dune: Part Two
4. Moana 2
3. Despicable Me 4
2. Deadpool & Wolverine
1. Inside Out 2


2024 was the year Godzilla celebrated its 70th year as a franchise — but it wasn't the only long-running franchise. "When the Marvel Cinematic Universe went R-rated with Deadpool & Wolverine... it was literally more successful than any other R-rated movie in history," SlashFilm points out, while Venom: The Last Dance was the year's 9th highest-earner. (But several other big superhero movies flopped and "the misses outweighed the hits this year, while DC sat it out entirely as the world waits for Superman to usher in James Gunn's new DC Universe.")

They also marvel that Wicked earned $572 million after opening on the same day as Ridley Scott's Gladiator II....

But in the end SlashFilm describes 2024 as "a banner year for animation," with computer-animated movies filling four of the top ten spots (Kung Fu Panda 4, Moana 2, Despicable Me 4, and Inside Out 2). And another interesting trend? Though the world flocked to Tim Burton's first sequel to Beetlejuice after 36 years, Warner Bros. was, "at one point, pushing for Beetlejuice 2 to go directly to streaming on Max." And Disney original had the same idea for Moana 2, leading SlashFilm to conclude that 2024's box office "should be the death of the big direct-to-streaming movie." SlashFilm notes that Disney also sent several Pixar originals to Disney+ between 2020 and 2022, which "did immeasurable damage to the brand, something that even CEO Bob Iger has acknowledged." And then after a theatrical debut Pixar's Inside Out 2 became "the eighth biggest movie ever at the box office, with $1.698 billion to its name" — and the highest-grossing animated film ever made.

And Dune: Part Two? Denis Villeneuve accomplished nothing shy of a miracle with 2021's "Dune," an adaptation of Frank Herbert's cherished sci-fi novel that was faithful to the material, massive in scale, but still felt like an auteur film... The only downside? 2021 was a terrible time to release a movie, particularly a Warner Bros. movie, as all of the studio's films were going to HBO Max the same day they hit theaters. Yet, "Dune" made $400 million in its original run, which was enough to justify a sequel. Evidently, the audience for this franchise grew exponentially in the years before "Dune: Part Two" hit theaters in early March... All told, Villeneuve's sweeping, epic sequel pulled in $714.4 million worldwide, all while garnering tons of acclaim once again. Also, not for nothing, Villeneuve got it made for less than $200 million...

Without "Dune: Part Two" making what it made, the box office might have been in truly dire shape. As a relatively dead April and very weak May followed, this overperformance helped keep theaters afloat until greener pastures arrived in the back half of the year. The Spice must flow, as it were.
The Hollywood Reporter offers another take on the significance of 2024: Total domestic box office revenue appears to be heading toward around $8 billion, down from 2023's exhilarating post-COVID turnaround of $9 billion, but the National Association of Theatre Owners prefers to accentuate the positive, attributing the dip to a shortage of product due to the labor strikes and taking encouragement from the renewal of the movie habit...

Interestingly, or thankfully, the cinematic universes of Marvel, DC, and Star Wars failed to expand: except for Deadpool & Wolverine, not one of the huge hits came from a comic book franchise or a galaxy far, far away.
The article then complains about people using their phones during the movie for texting, talking, and photographing the movie itself. (Though it applauds a PSA against the practice in which Deadpool and Wolverine "delivered the message in laudably blunt terms.")

And on Wikipedia, Deadpool & Wolverine and Dune: Part Two were the eighth and 23rd most popular articles of 2024.

Apple's $3,499 Vision Pro headset has failed to gain widespread adoption despite advanced technology, with consumers preferring discreet wearables like smartwatches. The Verge: Nearly a year from launch, though, Apple hasn't done enough to demonstrate why the Vision Pro should be a potential showcase of the future of computing. It's taking a long time to put together its immersive content library, and while those are great demonstrations of what's possible, the videos have been short and isolating. There aren't many great games, either.

Yes, Apple keeps adding cool new software features. The wide and ultra widescreen settings for using a Mac display seem exceptionally useful. But those are pretty specific options for pretty specific use cases. There still isn't an immediate, obvious reason to buy a Vision Pro the way there usually is with the company's newest iPhones and Macs. If I bought a Vision Pro today, I wouldn't know what to do with it besides give myself a bigger Mac screen or watch movies, and I don't think either of those are worth the exorbitant price.

An anonymous reader writes: James Bond has dodged more than 4,000 bullets. He has jumped from an airplane, skied off a cliff and escaped castration by laser beam.

Now, 007 is in a new kind of peril. Nearly three years after Amazon acquired the right to release Bond movies through its $6.5 billion purchase of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studio, the relationship between the family that oversees the franchise and the ecommerce giant has all but collapsed, WSJ reports.

Peter Jackson is co-executive producer of a new animated Lord of the Rings prequel called The War of the Rohirrim. "Set in an epic world 183 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the King of Rohan is forced into a last stand in ancient Hornburg after a sudden attack..." explains The Hollywood Reporter.

But Variety writes that the movie "fizzled" in its overseas debut this weekend: "Moana 2" has notched $600 million in global ticket sales, standing as the sixth-biggest movie of the year after just two weeks of release. Disney's animated sequel, which was developed as a TV series before pivoting to theaters, has generated $300 million overseas and $300 million domestically... Among new offerings, the Warner Bros. anime fantasy film "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim," faltered with $2 million from 3,410 screens in 31 territories... [The movie] opens in North America and an additional 42 offshore markets on Dec. 13. Top earning territories were Spain with $347,000 followed by Mexico with $239,000 and Thailand with $146,000...

Meanwhile, Paramount's "Gladiator II" collected $17 million in its fourth frame at the international box office, boosting its tally to $235 million overseas and $368.4 million globally. The quarter-century-in-the-making sequel Ridley Scott's Oscar-winning 2000 epic "Gladiator" has been far bigger in offshore markets... There's also "Red One," a Christmas-set action comedy starring the Rock as Santa's head of security, which collected $3.5 million from 4,000 screens in 75 overseas markets. The film, from Amazon MGM, has generated a soft $78.2 million from offshore territories and $164 million globally. "Red One" was originally destined for streaming before the studio opted for a theatrical release, so any coinage from the big screen could be viewed as a win for movie theaters, Amazon MGM and Warner Bros. (which has international rights on Amazon MGM releases). From a strictly theatrical standpoint, though, "Red One" carries a $250 million budget before marketing and stands as one of the year's biggest misfires.

"OpenAI is partnering with defense tech company Anduril," wrote the Verge this week, noting that OpenAI "used to describe its mission as saving the world." It was Anduril founder Palmer Luckey who advocated for a "warrior class" and autonomous weapons during a talk at Pepperdine University, saying society's need people "excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims." The Verge notes it's OpenAI's first partnership with a defense contractor "and a significant reversal of its earlier stance towards the military." OpenAI's terms of service once banned "military and warfare" use of its technology, but it softened its position on military use earlier this year, changing its terms of service in January to remove the proscription.
Hours after the announcement, some OpenAI employees "raised ethical concerns about the prospect of AI technology they helped develop being put to military use," reports the Washington Post. "On an internal company discussion forum, employees pushed back on the deal and asked for more transparency from leaders, messages viewed by The Washington Post show." OpenAI has said its work with Anduril will be limited to using AI to enhance systems the defense company sells the Pentagon to defend U.S. soldiers from drone attacks. Employees at the AI developer asked in internal messages how OpenAI could ensure Anduril systems aided by its technology wouldn't also be directed against human-piloted aircraft, or stop the U.S. military from deploying them in other ways. One OpenAI worker said the company appeared to be trying to downplay the clear implications of doing business with a weapons manufacturer, the messages showed. Another said that they were concerned the deal would hurt OpenAI's reputation, according to the messages...

OpenAI executives quickly acknowledged the concerns, messages seen by The Post show, while also writing that the company's work with Anduril is limited to defensive systems intended to save American lives. Other OpenAI employees in the forum said that they supported the deal and were thankful the company supported internal discussion on the topic. "We are proud to help keep safe the people who risk their lives to keep our families and our country safe," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a statement...

[OpenAI] has invested heavily in safety testing, and said that the Anduril project was vetted by its policy team. OpenAI has held feedback sessions with employees on its national security work in the past few months, and plans to hold more, Liz Bourgeois, an OpenAI spokesperson said. In the internal discussions seen by The Post, the executives stated that it was important for OpenAI to provide the best technology available to militaries run by democratically-elected governments, and that authoritarian governments would not hold back from using AI for military uses. Some workers countered that the United States has sold weapons to authoritarian allies. By taking on military projects, OpenAI could help the U.S. government understand AI technology better and prepare to defend against its use by potential adversaries, executives also said.
"The debate inside OpenAI comes after the ChatGPT maker and other leading AI developers including Anthropic and Meta changed their policies to allow military use of their technology," the article points out. And it also notes another concern raised in OpenAI's internal discussion forum.

The comment said "that defensive use cases still represented militarization of AI, and noted that the fictional AI system Skynet, which turns on humanity in the Terminator movies, was also originally designed to defend against aerial attacks on North America.

The new movie Y2K is either a comedy or a disaster/horror film, according to Wikipedia. The film "imagines a turn of the century where the machines don't just glitch or stop working," writes the Hollywood Reporter. "They go full homicidal." With a cast that includes 1990s icons like Alicia Silverstone and the lead singer for the Napster-loving 1990s metal band Limp Bizkit, the movie "gives the '90s the ending it deserved," according to the article.

They interviewed the film's director (and co-writer and co-star) Kyle Mooney, best-known for SNL, starting by complimenting his fidelity to the tech of its day. "The film opens with a high schooler getting home and logging into AOL Instant Messenger, which is not a scene I think I've ever seen in another movie..." Mooney: All of my relationships, between 17 and 22 years old, were short-lived and spawned because I was most confident flirting on Instant Messager....

Q: The tech here is such a huge part of the story. Were there any logos or brands you had a tough time getting on camera?

Mooney: Definitely. This isn't really a spoiler, but Jaeden Martell's character's computer — the one that we open up with him logging into AOL — eventually turns into a robot. That was supposed to be an iMac. But I don't think Apple wanted their machines strangling people or whatever the robot does — so we had to change the look of it by, like, 30 percent. There were a few instances like that, where we couldn't get the exact thing, but we were allowed to get as close as possible.
Deadline's article includes a spoiler about the film, but also this interesting note about two of its young actors, Julian Dennison and Jaeden Martell: [A]lthough Dennison and Martell were both born after 2000, they enjoyed slipping into the "lack of convenience and the lack of technology" that came with the era.

"I wish I got to experience that. I wish I didn't live in the age of everything being so accessible," said Martell.
And apparently the movie also includes a quick shout-out to Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson.

Tuesday the Wikimedia Foundation released its annual list of the most-visited Wikipedia pages. (Scroll down to where it says "The full top 25"...)

But while the top subjects seem to be politics and pop culture, CNN reports that in the end "a list of deaths in 2024 was the most visited page, garnering over 44 million views." A page about deaths in a given year has ranked at the top of the list five times since 2015, when the Wikimedia Foundation began releasing the data. The topic has never fallen below third place on the list.

People also searched for U.S. political figures... [The #2, #3, #5, #7, and #9 most-visited pages were, respectively, for Kamala Harris, the 2024 United States presidential election, Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Project 2025.] While U.S. politics was a notable search subject, popular culture had the largest share of the top 25. The fourth most-visited page was about Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who were sentenced to life in prison for the 1989 murder of their parents and are now facing a resentencing trial. The case received renewed public attention after a Netflix documentary was published this year. The Wikipedia page about the brothers received over 26 million views in 2024.

The "Deadpool & Wolverine" and "Dune: Part Two" movies were eighth and 23rd, respectively... [Other high-ranking pop-culture pages included Taylor Swift (#11)and the 2024 Summer Olympics (#14).]

"Wikipedia readers in India continue to make a big impact on the list, a trend we saw in 2023 as well," Wikimedia Foundation's Alikhan said. The Indian Premier League, a cricket league in India, garnered over 24.5 million views this year as the site's sixth most visited page... [The 2024 Indian general election came in at #10]
Wikipedia's entry on ChatGPT came in at #12, while Elon Musk came in at #17.

"When people want to learn about our world — the good, bad, weird, and wild alike — they turn to Wikipedia," explains the blog post from the Wikimedia Foundation, calling Wikipedia "the largest knowledge resource ever assembled in the history of the world" and "a reflection of all the people who live on our planet. its story is your story, your interests, your questions, and your curiosity."

Other statistics about Wikipedia in 2024:

• Nearly 3.5 billion bytes of information were added this year via over 31 million edits.

• People spent an estimated 2.4 billion hours — nearly 275,000 years! — reading English Wikipedia in 2024, according to data from the Wikimedia Foundation.

U.S. movie theaters are struggling to attract casual moviegoers, who once made up a significant portion of box office revenues, as shorter theatrical runs and changing consumer habits reshape the industry. The domestic box office, which regularly exceeded $10 billion in annual ticket sales before COVID-19, is expected to reach only $8.5 billion this year.

Films now average 32 days in theaters compared to 80 days pre-pandemic, limiting opportunities for audiences to discover movies spontaneously. Midtier films generating $50-100 million at the box office have become scarcer, particularly in genres like drama and romantic comedy. Theater chains are responding with enhanced experiences and loyalty programs to draw audiences back.

"It's fair to say there is a missing billion dollars that, if we had the right movies, people would be going to see them," said Bruce Nash, founder of movie business site the Numbers, told LA Times. Frequent moviegoers comprise only 12-15% of box office revenue, according to Patrick Corcoran of theater consulting firm Fithian Group.

Brazilian antitrust regulator Cade said this week that Apple must lift restrictions on payment methods for in-app purchases, among other things, as the watchdog moved to proceed with an investigation into a complaint filed by Latin America e-commerce giant MercadoLibre. From a report: MercadoLibre's complaint, filed in 2022 in Brazil and Mexico, accused Apple of imposing a series of restrictions on the distribution of digital goods and in-app purchases, including banning apps from distributing third-party digital goods and services such as movies, music, video games, books and written content.

In the complaint, MercadoLibre criticized the California tech giant for requiring developers that offer digital goods or services within apps to use Apple's own payment system and stopping them from redirecting buyers to their websites. Cade ruled that Apple must allow app developers to add tools so customers can buy their services or products outside the app, such as through the use of hyperlinks to external websites.