MEDIA

There's no research; it's just the bus stop thing. "A producer I used to work with would constantly tell me: 'If I’m driving down the street at 40mph and it’s raining, I want to see a bus shelter poster that has impact. I want to see it from eight blocks away.'" - The Guardian (UK)

"The most many reviewers could bring themselves to call it was 'horror-adjacent,' 'horror-inspired' or as containing 'horror elements.' Even the CBC's own Eli Glasner suggests it's 'merely the veneer of horror.'" Cue the side-eye emoji. - CBC

Ncuti Gatwa will be the first Black man to play the Doctor, taking over from the first woman to play the popular and culturally powerful alien hero. - BBC

And not just on Duolingo, but on film. - Irish Times

There's a reason the Tony-winning actor Renée Elise Goldsberry gave Hamilton's Angelica such a punch - she's ambitious and brilliant, and depicts someone even more so in Girls 5eva. "I don’t know that women know that they’re allowed to be ambitious as they get older," she says. - Time

The main issue? Streamers are starting to realize that "continuing to try to go get new customers by spending a lot of money on original content is going to run out of steam." What's next? Probably (gulp!) advertising. - Los Angeles Times

It's a murky science, but "with brutal scenes of people getting cut in half, shocking jump scares, and a sequence that is a terrifying (albeit terrific) ode to Jack Nicholson in The Shining, we can safely classify this entry as the most 'adult' MCU outing yet." - Variety

Only with the biggest names in romantic comedy attached, though - Meg Ryan, Sandra Bullock, and Julia Roberts, to name three. - The Guardian (UK)

Take a page from Comic-Con, D23, Apple and everyone else who has turned to fan events for big reveals and announcements. Make the Emmys the must-see event it should be by having the networks, studios and streamers save some goodies to break the Internet. - Variety

Even as the number of shows fell 36% to 2,691 in the 2020-2021 season from the year before, the number of TV episodes led by directors of color increased by 5% to 34%, up from 29% the prior season, according to the union’s report released Thursday. - Los Angeles Times

Take, for instance, the hit French series Call My Agent: "(The French) argue stylishly, they fall in love stylishly. It's all said, they tell each other exactly what they think," says adapter John Morton. "British people aren't like that at all. ... We are very poor at saying what we mean." - BBC

Why are people in the art world being hacked? Criminals are not just looking for accounts with thousands of followers and the signature blue tick (confirming authenticity) but also those with high engagement, which is often the case with creatives. - The Art Newspaper

In a guest column, the 84-year-old actor gives his account of the on-camera move that led to his firing from the lead role in the Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher. - Deadline

One pervasive concern: that the streaming-fueled content bubble has finally burst, with more consolidation on the way. - Variety

"Culture is not linear cause and effect, ... (but) film and television portrayals of abortion ... do offer an imperfect mirror to a culture in flux – one that, contrary to the courts and state legislatures, has generally made slow progress toward depicting the reality of abortion." - The Guardian