An anonymous reader quotes a report from Teslarati: Tesla has won permit approval for its Diner and Drive-In Movie Supercharger in Los Angeles, according to documents seen by Teslarati from the LA Department of Building and Safety. Tesla has been teasing the possibility for several years of a drive-in movie theater and diner Supercharger site that would host 32 stalls, two screens to show famous movie clips, and a restaurant with rooftop seating. Initially, it was planned to be built on a series of lots in Santa Monica. However, the location was moved East to Hollywood and will now be placed on located at 7001 W. Santa Monica Boulevard. As the project has been moving through the normal regulatory processes, Tesla has been receiving some approvals and requests for corrections on many of its filed applications to begin construction at the Diner/Supercharger.

Amazon has filed a lawsuit against a group of online stores that sell pirated DVDs of key titles such as "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power" and "The Peripheral." TorrentFreak reports: In a complaint filed at a California federal court, Amazon accuses seven websites of selling pirated discs. These sites, including dvdshelf.com.au, dvds.trade, and dvdwholesale.co.uk, are presumably operated by the same group, using a variety of companies. For the public at large, it may not be immediately obvious that these discs are pirated. However, since Amazon doesn't produce or sell DVDs for these Prime Video series, there is no doubt that they are created from illicit sources.

The piracy operation consists of at least seven websites and these all remain online today. According to Amazon, the sites ship to customers in the U.S. and abroad, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, resulting in mass copyright infringement. Before going to court, investigators conducted more than twenty test purchases of pirated DVDs. After these orders arrived, Amazon sent the discs to the Motion Picture Association which independently confirmed that they were all pirated.

The complaint lists Yangchun Zhang as a key suspect. This person presumably resides in China and obtained the 'DVD Shelf' trademark in Australia. In addition, Zhang is also listed as the registrant of several of the domain names involved. The complaint accuses Zhang and the others of both copyright and trademark infringement. Through the lawsuit (PDF), Amazon hopes to recoup damages, which can run in the millions of dollars. Another key priority is to shut the sites down and Amazon asks the court for an injunction to stop all infringing activity.

Hollywood studios have presented a new proposal to writers that includes the highest wage increase in 35 years, protections against the impact of artificial intelligence, and other provisions. CBS News reports: Writers have been picketing outside major studios for over 100 days, surpassing the 2007-2008 strike. One of the major sticking points between the two sides was their stark differences in wage increases and residuals. The proposal sent to the Writers Guild of America on Aug. 11 includes a 5% increase in the first year of the contract, then 4% the next year, and 3.5% in the third, totaling a compounded 13% increase. Before the WGA went on strike on May 2, the AMPTP offered writers 4%-3%- 2% in the respective years, or 9% over the duration of the contract. The recent offer does not match the WGA's demand of 6%-5%-5% in the respective years but does bring them from $9,888 a week to $11,371 a week for guarantees of up to 9 weeks.

They also moved to guarantee writers a minimum of 10 weeks of employment, a proposal they initially refused before the strike. AMPTP also increased the total domestic and foreign residuals for writers from $72,067 to $87,546 per episode over three years. Additionally, the union seemed to cave on the WGA's proposal to implement a viewership-based streaming residuals model. "For the first time, viewership data in the form of quarterly confidential reports is to be provided to the WGA that will include total SVOD view hours per title. This increased transparency will enable the WGA to develop proposals to restructure the current SVOD residual regime in the future," AMPTP wrote in the offer. Previously, the studios flat-out rejected the proposal and refused to make a counter, according to the WGA.

Studios also included a tenet regarding artificial intelligence protections in the proposed deal. "The Companies confirm that because [Generative Artificial Intelligence] is not a person, it is not a 'writer' or 'professional writer' as defined in this MBA and, therefore, written material produced by GAI will not be considered literary material under this or any prior MBA," the AMPTP wrote in the offer. The union continued: "The proposal provides important safeguards to prevent writers from being disadvantaged if any part of the script is based on GAI-produced material, so that the writer's compensation, credit and separated rights will not be affected by the use of GAIproduced material." Before the writers went on strike, the studios rejected the proposal and countered by "offering annual meetings to discuss advancements in technology," according to the WGA.

Nearly seven decades after he died, James Dean "has been cast as the star in a new, upcoming movie," reports the BBC: A digital clone of the actor — created using artificial intelligence technology similar to that used to generate deepfakes — will walk, talk and interact on screen with other actors in the film...

This is the second time Dean's digital clone has been lined up for a film. In 2019, it was announced he would be resurrected in CGI for a film called Finding Jack, but it was later cancelled. Travis Cloyd, chief executive of immersive media agency WorldwideXR (WXR), confirmed to BBC, however, that Dean will instead star in Back to Eden, a science fiction film in which "an out of this world visit to find truth leads to a journey across America with the legend James Dean". The digital cloning of Dean also represents a significant shift in what is possible. Not only will his AI avatar be able to play a flat-screen role in Back to Eden and a series of subsequent films, but also to engage with audiences in interactive platforms including augmented reality, virtual reality and gaming.

The technology goes far beyond passive digital reconstruction or deepfake technology that overlays one person's face over someone else's body. It raises the prospect of actors — or anyone else for that matter — achieving a kind of immortality that would have been otherwise impossible, with careers that go on long after their lives have ended. But it also raises some uncomfortable questions. Who owns the rights to someone's face, voice and persona after they die? What control can they have over the direction of their career after death — could an actor who made their name starring in gritty dramas suddenly be made to appear in a goofball comedy or even pornography? What if they could be used for gratuitous brand promotions in adverts...? Dean's image is one of hundreds represented by WRX and its sister licensing company CMG Worldwide — including Amelia Earhart, Bettie Page, Malcolm X and Rosa Parks...

Voice actors, in particular, have been leading the conversation and working across acting guilds to form a unified front in protecting the rights and careers of actors... Cloyd acknowledges the potential for fewer acting opportunities but offers a "glass-half-full" perspective toward employing dead actors. "At the end of the day, it creates lots of jobs," he says, referring to the other technical and film industry jobs the technology could generate. "So even though it could be jeopardising one person's role or job, at the same time, it's creating hundreds of jobs in regards to what it takes to do this at a high level."

If the dead — or rather, their digital clones — are damned to an eternity of work, who benefits financially? And do the dead have any rights? Simply put, the rules are murky and, in some regions of the world, non-existent.
In June Rolling Stone published this advice from Samuel L. Jackson. "Future actors should do what I always do when I get a contract and it has the words 'in perpetuity' and 'known and unknown' on it: I cross that shit out. It's my way of saying, 'No, I do not approve of this.'"

Netflix's 25-year-old delivery service for DVDs (in red envelopes) will go dark on September 29th. But that delivery service's final remaining customers can opt-in "to potentially receive up to 10 extra discs," reports NPR. "Let's have some fun for our finale!" says an email from the company. (Though Business Insider points out that "Customers won't know what movies they'll get; the films will be chosen from what's in their queue.")

NPR notes there's an even bigger mystery: Netflix's promotional email doesn't explicitly tell customers what to do with those discs. This is causing confusion among customers, and debate among the members of online communities like Reddit... A Netflix spokesperson told NPR the company is indeed expecting to get those discs back, and plans to release more specifics about winding down its DVD business in a month or so.

Attorney Lindsay Spiller of the San Francisco entertainment and business law firm Spiller Law said Netflix couldn't give the DVDs away even if it wanted to. "The filmmakers and property rights owners give Netflix a license, and then they can sub-license it to their subscribers," Spiller said. "But they can't give anybody ownership. They don't have it themselves."
At its peak, the service had 40 million subscribers, reports Today. (They add that the first DVD Netflix ever shipped was Beetlejuice — and the most-shipped DVD ever was The Blind Side.)

A quarter of a century later, Netflix "has sent out more than 5 billion DVDs to customers since launching in 1998," NPR notes. "The discs are not easily recyclable. Most of them end up in landfill."

At the Washington Post, David Betancourt's title is "reporter focusing on comic book culture."

Saturday he wrote that the Blue Beetle movie "isn't just a good superhero movie, it's the best film from DC in its modern era, this past decade marked by their struggle to catch up to Marvel Studios..." "Blue Beetle" has heart. "Blue Beetle" has soul... There's a feeling that those of us who love superhero cinema get when we know we've seen something special. The feeling that compelled us to buy a ticket for a midnight screening back in the day. That feeling that makes you see a superhero flick four to five times in theaters because you want to see it again and can't wait for it to arrive on home video. "Blue Beetle" will leave you feeling that way when you walk out of the theater. It certainly made me feel that way...

Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes (the kid under the Blue Beetle armor) gives a performance that I can only describe as Downey-esque. Yes, I have no qualms in saying "Blue Beetle" gave me "Iron Man"-in-2008 vibes. Not just in the individual performance of the lead actor or the high-tech suit of armor, but also in the feeling that this is the start of something big. The second "Blue Beetle's" credits started rolling I knew I had seen the best DC movie of the last decade. The movie had heart. Humor. Multiple complex villains...
The DC movie has a 91% audience score and a 75% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes, notes this analysis from Forbes: The DC movie is projected to make between $25 million to $32 million through Sunday, Variety reported, though Deadline puts it at $25 million, making it DC's latest underperforming film as it struggles to compete with rival Marvel... By comparison, Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 pulled in $118.4 million in its opening weekend in May, while Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania grossed $106.2 million in its opening weekend in February and Sony's Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse grossed $120.7 million in its first weekend.
"Warner Bros. has experienced underperformance with recent superhero films like Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and The Flash," writes Collider: Originally designed as a direct-to-streaming title, Blue Beetle now serves as the second-last installment of a bygone era of the DC Extended Universe, which will be rebooted under the supervision of James Gunn and Peter Safran with Superman: Legacy in 2025. The current DCEU era will officially come to a close with Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom later this year, which has a larger overall connection with the series, while Blue Beetle is a mostly standalone story. The movie's opening is in the same range as Birds of Prey some years ago. That film is generally considered to have underperformed at the box office, finishing with less than $100 million domestically and just around $200 million worldwide...

Barbie will take second place with an estimated $20 million fifth weekend, after grossing $6 million on Friday. By Sunday, the film's running domestic box office haul should hit $566 million. A few days after that, it'll overtake The Super Mario Bros. Movie's $574 million lifetime haul to become the year's biggest film...

[Oppenheimer] is also passing $700 million as we speak.

Microsoft will close its Xbox 360 digital store next July, though anything purchased will still be accessible. From a report: On 29th July 2024, Xbox 360 users will no longer be able to purchase new games, DLC, or other entertainment content from either the console store or the web-based marketplace. In addition, the Microsoft Movies & TV app on the Xbox 360 will no longer function. Of course, the store will continue as normal until that date next July. After that time, any games purchased will still remain playable and deleted purchases can still be re-downloaded. Online multiplayer will also remain accessible for games already purchased (digitally or physically), as long as the publisher supports the servers. Further, users will still be able to play Xbox 360 games on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S consoles via backward compatibility, and hundreds of games will remain available to purchase on those consoles.

Netflix is officially bringing its games to more devices. So far, the company's impressive library of games has only been available on iOS and Android. Now, though, Netflix is starting to use its streaming tech to publicly test its titles on TVs and computers. From a report: "Our goal has always been to have a game for everyone, and we are working hard to meet members where they are with an accessible, smooth and ubiquitous service," Mike Verdu, Netflix's vice-president of games, wrote in a blog post. "Today, we're taking the first step in making games playable on every device where our members enjoy Netflix." The test appears to be very limited for now. Just two games will be available at the outset: Oxenfree. The beta is only open to a small number of Netflix subscribers in the UK and Canada on Amazon Fire TV streaming media players, Chromecast with Google TV, LG TVs, NVIDIA Shield TV, Roku devices and TVs, Samsung smart TVs and Walmart ONN. The company will add support for more devices later.

Disney is raising prices on almost all of its streaming offerings as it looks to accelerate profitability for the business. CNBC reports: Commercial-free Disney+ will cost $13.99 per month, a 27% increase, beginning Oct. 12. Disney+ with ads will remain $7.99 per month. Disney will also expand its ad-tier offering to select markets in Europe and in Canada beginning Nov. 1. Disney is increasing the price of Hulu without ads to $17.99 per month, a 20% price hike. Hulu with ads will also stay the same price, at $7.99 per month. The decision to price Disney+ nearly as high as commercial-free Netflix and Max, and charge even more for Hulu, signals Disney believes its content library can compete with both of those services.

Disney is now betting consumers will pay more for its streaming services even as the Hollywood writers and actors strikes threaten its content pipeline in the coming months. For consumers who want both Disney+ and Hulu without commercials, they can pay $19.99 per month in a new "premium duo" offering -- a $12 per month savings. The Disney+ and Hulu bundle with ads will not change from its $9.99 per month price. Disney also increased the price of its bundle of Disney+ (no ads), Hulu (no ads) and ESPN+ (with ads) to $24.99 per month from $19.99 per month. The bundle of all three products with commercials will be $14.99 per month, an increase of $2 per month. Disney is also increasing the price of Hulu + Live TV with ads to $76.99 from $69.99 per month. The commercial-free Hulu + Live TV will jump to $89.99 per month from $82.99 per month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Gizmodo editor-in-chief Daniel Ackerman has sued Apple and other parties over the 2023 Apple TV Plus film Tetris, alleging it rips off his 2016 book The Tetris Effect. Ackerman claims Apple, Tetris rightsholder the Tetris Company, the Tetris film's producers, and screenwriter Noah Pink copied "the exact same feel, tone, approach, and scenes" from The Tetris Effect -- particularly its framing of the game's release as a "Cold War spy thriller." Initially reported by Reuters, Ackerman's lawsuit (PDF) outlines a yearslong correspondence with the Tetris Company as he wrote The Tetris Effect. He claims that the Tetris Company was aware of his work and threatened him with legal action for trying to pursue film and TV adaptations of his own book, only to draw heavily from his framing of the Tetris story. "The film liberally borrowed numerous specific sections and events of the book," claims Ackerman.

Apple and the Tetris Company did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Verge. But Ackerman's case may be difficult given the fact that Tetris and The Tetris Effect both draw on real historical facts, which are not generally protected by copyright law. As a result, the suit relies heavily on arguing that Tetris copies the feel of The Tetris Effect. (He also argues that some potential inventions of the film -- like a guide who turns out to be a secret KGB agent -- are based on speculations in his narrative.) "Ackerman's book took a unique approach to writing about the real history of Tetris, as it not only applied the historical record, but also layered his own original research and ingenuity to create a compelling narrative non-fiction book in the style of a Cold War spy thriller," the suit says. "Mr. Ackerman's literary masterpiece, unlike other articles and writings, dispelled of the emphasis on the actual gameplay and fans, and instead concentrated on the surrounding narrative, action sequences, and adversarial relationship between the players ... This was the identical approach Defendants adopted for the Tetris Film, without notable material distinction."

Ackerman says that he reached out after the Tetris trailer's release and unsuccessfully requested Apple and the other defendants address legal issues before the film's release. His suit alleges copyright infringement and unfair competition, among other offenses.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Rex Heuermann, the meticulous architectural consultant who the authorities say murdered three women and buried them on a Long Island beach more than a decade ago, may have been among the last of the dying breed of American serial killers. Even as serial killers came to inhabit a central place in the nation's imagination -- inspiring hit movies, television shows, books, podcasts and more -- their actual number was dwindling dramatically. There were once hundreds at large, and a spike in the 1970s and '80s terrified the country. Now only a handful at most are known to be active, researchers say. The techniques that led to the arrest of Mr. Heuermann, who has pleaded not guilty to the crimes, help explain the waning of serial killing, which the F.B.I. defines as the same person killing two or more victims in separate events at different times.

It is harder to hide. Rapid advances in investigative technology, video and other digital surveillance tools, as well as the ability to analyze mountains of information, quickly allow the authorities to find killers who before would have gone undetected. At the same time, Americans have adopted more cautious habits in their everyday lives -- hitchhiking, for example, is less common, and children are driven to and from school. That reduces easy targets. And, some theorize, those bent on killing now opt for spectacular mass murders. "The 'perfect crime' concept is more of a concept than it ever has been before," said Adam Scott Wandt, an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. More than a decade ago, prosecutors said, Mr. Heuermann tried to cover his digital tracks by communicating with victims using so-called burner phones, prepaid units purchased anonymously for temporary use. But thanks to exponential progress in technology since 2010, investigators were able not only to chart Mr. Heuermann's decade-old movements; they could also monitor exactly what he was searching online in recent months. They saw that he was using an anonymous account for internet queries like "Why could law enforcement not trace the calls made by the long island serial killer," prosecutors said. He had also been visiting massage parlors and contacting women working as escorts, they said.

The ubiquity of technology has made it harder to get away with murder, Mr. Wandt said. The amount of data people create in their daily lives is more than many can conceptualize, he said. Just by walking outside, people are now tracked by ever-present cameras, from Amazon's Ring units outside homes to surveillance at banks and retail stores, he said. Every use of a phone or computer creates streams of data that are collected directly on devices or immortalized on servers, he said. A concerted effort by the federal government to ensure that even the smallest police departments can use technology to their benefit has also helped give investigators an upper hand, Mr. Wandt said. In 1987, there were 198 known active serial killers -- people connected to at least two murders -- and 404 known victims across the United States, according to a report published three years ago by researchers who run Radford University and Florida Gulf Coast University's Serial Killer Database. By 2018, there were only 12 known serial killers and 44 victims, according to the report. "The big question is: Are they going underground and finding other techniques?â said Terence Leary, an associate professor in the psychology department at Florida Gulf Coast University and the team leader for the database.

He said that some serial murderers have killed for discrete periods before taking prolonged breaks: "Maybe they decided to give it up. Who knows?"

An anonymous reader shares a report: Production companies are scanning the faces and bodies of actors and actresses, who fear their likeness will be used to create fake AI doubles for TV shows and films in the future. Some workers spoke to NPR last week about being subjected to the scans, and feeling like they couldn't say no. Alexandria Rubalcaba, who was working as a background actor, described being called into a trailer and asked to stand in front of cameras.

"Have your hands out. Have your hands in. Look this way. Look that way. Let us see your scared face. Let us see your surprised face," she said. What was most concerning, however, was that she didn't know what or how her images were going to be used. "My first thought leaving the trailer was, 'Oh this might just be the future," Lubsey said. "We might just lose our jobs," Dom Lubsey, an actor from Los Angeles, added. Studios already use computational techniques to create synthetic images of people to create fake crowds for backgrounds in films.

It's not too far-fetched to think that extras can also be generated too. Andrew Susskind, an associate professor at Drexel University's film and TV department, explained how AI-made background actors would slash production budgets. "Imagine ballroom scenes, party scenes, any scenes that need tons of extras," Susskind said. "Imagine the amounts of money they would be saving. Not paying $180 a day. Plus meals. Plus costuming," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Film companies lost another attempt to force Reddit to identify anonymous users who discussed piracy. A federal court on Saturday quashed a subpoena (PDF) demanding users' names and other identifying details, agreeing with Reddit's argument that the film companies' demands violate the First Amendment. The plaintiffs are 20 producers of popular movies who are trying to prove that Internet service provider Grande is liable for its subscribers' copyright infringement because the ISP allegedly ignores piracy on its network. Reddit isn't directly involved in the copyright case. But the film companies filed a motion to compel Reddit to respond to a subpoena demanding "basic account information including IP address registration and logs from 1/1/2016 to present, name, email address and other account registration information" for six users who wrote comments on Reddit threads in 2011 and 2018.

"The issue is whether that discovery is permissible despite the users' right to speak anonymously under the First Amendment," US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler wrote in her ruling against the film copyright holders. "The court denies the motion because the plaintiffs have not demonstrated a compelling need for the discovery that outweighs the users' First Amendment right to anonymous speech." The film companies seeking Reddit users' identities include After II Movie LLC, Bodyguard Productions, Hitman 2 Productions, Millennium Funding, Nikola Productions, Rambo V Productions, and Dallas Buyers Club LLC. As Beeler's ruling on Saturday noted, they sought the identities of two users who wrote about torrenting on Grande's network in 2018 [...]. The companies also sought identities of four users who commented in a 2011 thread. "I have grande. No issues with torrent or bandwidth caps," one user comment said. Another Reddit user wrote, "I have torrented like a motherfucker all over grande and have never seen anything." Reddit's filing (PDF) pointed out that the statute of limitations for copyright infringement is three years. The film companies said (PDF) the statute of limitations is irrelevant to whether the comments can provide evidence in the case against Grande.

An anonymous reader shares a report: As Hollywood executives insist it is "just not realistic" to pay actors -- 87 percent of whom earn less than $26,000 -- more, they are spending lavishly on AI programs. While entertainment firms like Disney have declined to go into specifics about the nature of their investments in artificial intelligence, job postings and financial disclosures reviewed by The Intercept reveal new details about the extent of these companies' embrace of the technology. In one case, Netflix is offering as much as $900,000 for a single AI product manager.

[...] Netflix's posting for a $900,000-a-year AI product manager job makes clear that the AI goes beyond just the algorithms that determine what shows are recommended to users. The listing points to AI's uses for content creation: "Artificial Intelligence is powering innovation in all areas of the business," including by helping them to "create great content." Netflix's AI product manager posting alludes to a sprawling effort by the business to embrace AI, referring to its "Machine Learning Platform" involving AI specialists "across Netflix."

A research section on Netflix's website describes its machine learning platform, noting that while it was historically used for things like recommendations, it is now being applied to content creation. "Historically, personalization has been the most well-known area, where machine learning powers our recommendation algorithms. We're also using machine learning to help shape our catalog of movies and TV shows by learning characteristics that make content successful. We use it to optimize the production of original movies and TV shows in Netflix's rapidly growing studio."

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: The number one movie in North America is Warner Bros. Discovery's Barbie, which Deadline reports has teamed up with Oppenheimer to fuel a mind-blowing $300M+ box office weekend. ["Oppenheimer Shatters Expectations with $80 Million Debut," read the headline at Variety.]

Now it seems everybody is trying to tap into Barbie buzz, including Microsoft's Xbox [which added Barbie and Ken's cars to Forza Horizon 5] and even Microsoft-backed education nonprofit Code.org. ("Are your students excited about Barbie The Movie? Have them try an HourOfCode [programming game] with Barbie herself!").
The idea is to inspire young students to become coders. But as Code.org shares Instagram images of a software developer Barbie, Slashdot reader theodp remembers when, nine years ago, Code.org's CEO "took to Twitter to blast Barbie and urge for her replacement." They'd joined a viral 2014 Computer Engineer Barbie protest that arose in response to the publication of Barbie F***s It Up Again, a scathing and widely reported-on blog post that prompted Mattel to pull the book Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer immediately from Amazon. This may have helped lead to Barbie's loss of her crown as the most popular girls' toy in the ensuing 2014 holiday season to Disney's Frozen princesses Elsa and Anna, and got the Mattel exec who had to apologize for Computer Engineer Barbie called to the White House for a sit down a few months later. (Barbie got a brainy makeover soon thereafter)...

The following year, Disney-owned Lucasfilm and Code.org teamed up on Star Wars: Building a Galaxy with Code, a signature tutorial for the 2015 Hour of Code. Returning to a Disney princess theme in 2016, Disney and Code.org revealed a new Hour of Code tutorial featuring characters from the animated film Moana just a day ahead of its theatrical release. It was later noted that Moana's screenwriters included Pamela Ribon, who penned the 2014 Barbie-blasting blog post that ended Barbie's short reign as the Hour of Code role model of choice for girls.

Interestingly, Ribon seems to bear no Barbie grudges either, tweeting on the day of the Barbie movie release, "I was like holy s*** can't wait to see it."
To be fair, the movie's trailer promises "If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you," in a deconstruction where Barbie is played by D.C. movies' "Harley Quinn" actress Margot Robbie (Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey), whose other roles include Tonya Harding and the home-wrecking second wife in The Wolf of Wall Street.

For a taste of Comic-Con, one San Diego newspaper is sharing photos of the 30 buildings in San Diego that had their exteriors covered this week with promotional "building wraps" for "the latest TV shows, movies and even a National Geographic special."

Some of the stranger announcements this year:

• Jamie Lee Curtis has co-authored a horror graphic novel with an environmentalist theme called Mother Nature.

• It was also announced that season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds would include a musical episode.

• Star Trek: the Next Generation star Jonathan Frakes has directed a Star Trek: Lower Decks episode in which the animated characters crossover into the live-action world of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

And the A.V. Club offers a slideshow with its choices for this year's hottest trailers. Some of the highlights:

• The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live and The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
• Wheel of Time (Season 2)
• The Marvels (a new movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe)
• Agatha Christie's A Haunting In Venice (starring Kenneth Branagh as Hercule Poirot)
• Anne Rice's Interview With The Vampire (Season 2)
• Harley Quinn (Season 4)

Ahead of the Oppenheimer release, IMAX's TikTok showed the massive 70mm film print and special IMAX extensions. The video interestingly featured an emulated Palm m130, commonly known as a Palm Pilot, a 2002 device running on a Motorola 33MHz DragonBall VZ processor and Palm OS 4.1. From a report: In an IMAX theater, the m130's job is to control the quick turn reel unit, or QTRU for short. (For many years, it appears, a non-emulated m130 sat holstered in most theaters.) The QTRU's job is to control the platters, which are those large horizontal shelves where all of a film's many reels are stitched together, stored, and then quickly spun out to and from the projector. The IMAX 1570 projector moves film at a little under six feet per second, so it's all happening really fast.

The m130 is apparently crucial to keeping the thing humming -- "PALM PILOT MUST BE ON ALL THE TIME," reads a notice above an image of a different m130 that has since been passed around the internet -- but doesn't often need to be used. "I've never had to interact with the Palm Pilot," says one person familiar with the technology. "It's really just a status screen." Its job is to keep the QTRU moving at a consistent speed and to help keep the film's video in sync with its audio.

sciencehabit shares a report from Science: This week, the much anticipated movie Oppenheimer hits theaters, giving famed filmmaker Christopher Nolan's take on the theoretical physicist who during World War II led the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who died in 1967, is known as a charismatic leader, eloquent public intellectual, and Red Scare victim who in 1954 lost his security clearance in part because of his earlier associations with suspected Communists. To learn about Oppenheimer the scientist, Science spoke with David C. Cassidy, a physicist and historian emeritus at Hofstra University. Cassidy has authored or edited 10 books, including J. Robert Oppenheimer and the American Century. How did Oppenheimer compare to Einstein? Did he actually make any substantiative contributions to THE Bomb? And why did he eventually lose his security clearance?

A year after its largest quarterly loss and a significant drop in subscribers, Netflix has made a remarkable recovery by adding 5.9 million global subscribers in the second quarter of 2023, surpassing analyst expectations. TechCrunch reports: The subscriber addition far exceeds industry guidance; analysts forecasted an increase of 1.7 million subs. Netflix ended Q1 with 232.5 million users. Netflix's quarterly earnings results arrive a few hours after news broke out that the streamer dropped its basic plan in the U.S. and the U.K.

Netflix's significant subscriber gain this quarter reflects the impact of its paid sharing rules. Netflix wrote in its letter to shareholders, "In May, we successfully launched paid sharing in 100+ countries, representing more than 80% of our revenue base." The company added that today it's rolling out paid sharing to "almost all the remaining countries," including Croatia, Kenya, Indonesia and India. Netflix reported $8.2 billion in revenue and a net income of $1.5 billion.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: During today's press conference in which Hollywood actors confirmed that they were going on strike, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, SAG-AFTRA's chief negotiator, revealed a proposal from Hollywood studios that sounds ripped right out of a Black Mirror episode. In a statement about the strike, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) said that its proposal included "a groundbreaking AI proposal that protects actors' digital likenesses for SAG-AFTRA members."

When asked about the proposal during the press conference, Crabtree-Ireland said that "This 'groundbreaking' AI proposal that they gave us yesterday, they proposed that our background performers should be able to be scanned, get one day's pay, and their companies should own that scan, their image, their likeness and should be able to use it for the rest of eternity on any project they want, with no consent and no compensation. So if you think that's a groundbreaking proposal, I suggest you think again."

The use of generative AI has been one of the major sticking points in negotiations between the two sides (it's also a major issue behind the writers strike), and in her opening statement of the press conference, SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher said that "If we don't stand tall right now, we are all going to be in trouble, we are all going to be in jeopardy of being replaced by machines." The SAG-AFTRA strike will officially commence at midnight tonight.