"Warner Bros. Discovery filed a lawsuit against Paramount Friday, claiming the rival media company breached its half-billion-dollar exclusivity contract with HBO Max by airing South Park on its own streaming platform, Paramount+." - CNN
It’s easy to imagine many productive uses of the metaverse, from educational to virtual meetings to entertainment. And most of these are already underway in some form or another. The consumer opportunities are clear: “Every year, US$54 billion is spent on virtual goods.” - 3 Quarks Daily
And, from the super secret ballots revealed in their entirety here, it sure looks like Todd Field is going to win Best Director for TÁR. - Los Angeles Times
The game won't be ready for years - but by the time it is, players will have watched "content" for it on TikTok, read graphic novels, and more. "What if we try to build this IP slightly in reverse. ... What if we didn’t start with gaming?" - Los Angeles Times
It was a really good night for the cast and crew of Everything Everywhere All at Once, as the cast won four acting awards and the movie took Best Film at the Producers Guild. - The New York Times
A real surprise: "The festival’s top award is rarely given to a documentary, and in his acceptance speech, a clearly surprised asked the jury members if they were 'crazy'" - ironic, since his film is about a floating Parisian barge that treats mentally ill patients. - The New York Times
“Effective immediately Netflix is to drop monthly subscription pricing in more than 100 territories globally,” but not in North America and Western Europe where average revenue per user is higher." - The Hollywood Reporter
As Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey has shown, even if the movie isn’t a critical success, it can still make a hefty profit. Indeed, not only has a Winnie the Pooh sequel already been announced. - Fast Company
In "The New Vermeer," "two professional painters and dozens of amateur artists compete to reinvent the lost works of the 17th-century master. The results are judged by Vermeer experts from the Rijksmuseum ... and from the Mauritshuis, a collection of old masters in The Hague." - The New York Times
"Called an effort to 'protect' the integrity of Kentucky's public television broadcaster, a bill passed unanimously (in) a Senate committee Wednesday that would disband the current board for Kentucky Educational Television and require future appointments by the governor to the board be confirmed by the Republican-controlled state Senate." - Kentucky Lantern
"Less than 1 percent of movies released in 2022 feature a sex scene. ... When audiences have been conditioned to want only sexless Marvel movies, fully clothed Christopher Nolan epics, chaste action thrillers, and possibly cocaine bears, why take a chance on love?" - MSN (The Atlantic)
A report released by Digital Citizens Alliance in August 2020 found that pirated streaming subscription services are used by an estimated 30 million individuals in the U.S. alone, generating over a billion dollars in revenue annually for the criminal enterprises operating these services. - The Hill
