Sonic the Hedgehog's latest weekend total allowed it to surpass Detective Pikachu and become the highest-grossing video game movie ever in the US. TheRichest reports: Sonic has now amassed $145.8 million domestically, while Detective Pikachu managed $144.1 million by the end of its run. Sonic has definitely taken a hit as it only brought in $2.58 million last weekend to limp past Detective Pikachu's record. As for the worldwide record, it seems as if that will belong to Detective Piakchu for the foreseeable future. That's the one element of Sonic's success that has been affected by the worldwide pandemic we are in the midst of. The movie's release has been delayed in China and as it stands as brought in $306.5 million worldwide. That's a long way off the $433 million record set by Detective Pikachu.

Tubi, a leader in the fast-growing free ad-supported streaming category, is being purchased by Fox for about $440 million. It's paying for the acquisition using cash from the sale of a minority stake in Roku. Deadline reports: Tubi brings Fox an expanded consumer offering with a sizable, younger-skewing and directly connected user base that spends over 160 million hours per month watching content on the service. Tubi is available on more than 25 digital platforms in the U.S. with some 20,000 titles and 56,000 hours of film and episodic television programming from over 250 content partners. Fox plans to continue to run Tubi as an independent service and said it will evaluate opportunities to expand its offering -- not through original content but in a "more cost-effective manner by leveraging our expertise in national and local news and sports programming." Tubi founder and CEO Farhad Massoudi will continue to lead the service. "Tubi will immediately expand our direct-to-consumer audience and capabilities and will provide our advertising partners with more opportunities to reach audiences at scale. Importantly, coupled with the combined power of Fox's existing networks, Tubi provides a substantial base from which we will drive long-term growth in the direct-to-consumer arena," said Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch.

Popcorn Time, the highly popular and extremely-easy-to-use "Netflix for piracy" service, came back Tuesday after a years-long hiatus. The move comes as people around the world are quarantined or being asked to stay in their homes during the coronavirus pandemic. Motherboard reports: Popcorn Time allows people to stream movies using BitTorrent, without actually downloading the movies or worrying about finding a tracker to use. Essentially, it removes any torrenting learning curve, allowing people to (illegally) stream movies and television shows from an easy-to-use app. Because it's so simple to use, Popcorn Time became instantly popular upon its release in 2014 and was immediately targeted by the movie industry. The service was shut down multiple times by court order, police raids, and IP blocks all over the world between 2014 and now; the open source app was forked several times and has worked intermittently, but has been largely offline over the last few years.

Within the last couple days, a new version of Popcorn Time popped up on Popcorntime.app, version 4.0. The new app works just as well as earlier versions of the app, is free, and implores people to use virtual private networks to avoid having their use of the app detected by their internet service providers. The app has been released while many around the world are quarantined, and also comes at a time when piracy is becoming more popular, generally speaking. Other versions of Popcorn Time are also currently active, but the user interface of this one and its release appear to be closely affiliated with earlier Popcorn Time projects, based on domain redirects and urls.

Comcast's Universal Pictures said it is making its movies available to watch at home while they are still in theaters, a massive change from Hollywood's long-established business model that could upend the industry if other studios follow suit. From a report: The decision comes amid widespread closures of movie theaters as the global coronavirus pandemic spreads. Authorities in New York City and Los Angeles on Sunday ordered all movie theaters to close; exhibitors had previously said they would limit attendance in theaters to 50% of their capacity. China, the world's second-largest market, has kept tens of thousands of theaters closed since late January. Major studios typically release new movies exclusively in theaters during a "window" of 75 days in a bid to maintain ticket sales, on the theory that fans are more likely to watch a new movie at home if that is an option. Keeping that strategy in place has long been a priority for theaters, and major studios generally have been reluctant to do away with such windows altogether, even as the lengths of those periods have steadily shortened over the years.

Universal said that by Friday recently released films like "The Invisible Man," "The Hunt" and "Emma" will be available for digital rental for $19.99 in the U.S., or the equivalent value in overseas markets. Paying the rental fee will allow customers 48 hours to watch the movie. In an even bolder move, Universal also said "Trolls World Tour" will open simultaneously in theaters and at home on April 10. Universal released "The Hunt" in theaters over the weekend while "The Invisible Man" and "Emma" both came out late last month. Costing just $7 million to make, "The Invisible Man" has already had a successful run in theaters, grossing $122.4 million globally in three weekends.

In a conference yesterday, Elon Musk said SpaceX's Starlink satellite broadband will have latency below 20 milliseconds -- low enough to support competitive online gaming. "Despite that, the SpaceX CEO argued that Starlink won't be a major threat to telcos because the satellite service won't be good enough for high-population areas and will mostly be used by rural customers without access to fast broadband," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Latency of less than 20ms would make Starlink comparable to wired broadband service. When SpaceX first began talking about its satellite plans in late 2016, it said latency would be 25ms to 35ms. But Musk has been predicting sub-20ms latency since at least May 2019, with the potential for sub-10ms latency sometime in the future. The amount of bandwidth available will be enough to support typical Internet usage, at least in rural areas, Musk said. "The bandwidth is a very complex question. But let's just say somebody will be able to watch high-def movies, play video games, and do all the things they want to do without noticing speed," he said.

So will Starlink be a good option for anyone in the United States? Not necessarily. Musk said there will be plenty of bandwidth in areas with low population densities and that there will be some customers in big cities. But he cautioned against expecting that everyone in a big city would be able to use Starlink. "The challenge for anything that is space-based is that the size of the cell is gigantic... it's not good for high-density situations," Musk said. "We'll have some small number of customers in LA. But we can't do a lot of customers in LA because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough." [...] On the ground, Starlink's future customers will rely on user terminals that "look like a UFO on a stick," Musk said. The devices will have actuators that let them point themselves in the right direction as long as they're pointed at the sky. "It's very important that you don't need a specialist to install it," Musk said. "The goal is that... there's just two instructions and they can be done in either order: point at sky, plug in." As for the cost, the company previously pointed out that many U.S. residents pay $80 per month for "crappy service," perhaps indicating that Starlink will cost less than that.

Musk also addressed concerns from astronomers who say Starlink's satellites will interfere with astronomical observations. "I am confident that we will not cause any impact whatsoever in astronomical discoveries. Zero. That's my prediction. We'll take corrective action if it's above zero," Musk said, adding that SpaceX has worked with astronomers "to minimize the potential for reflection of the satellites."

An anonymous reader shares a report: For those who don't want to dive fully into torrents, Plex is a great alternative for streaming television shows and movies for free. Officially, Plex is a "neutral" media player, and it first became popular with people looking to stream content between devices at home, like from their desktop in the study to their laptop in their bedroom. But, with Plex Media Server, users can also share media with other users to stream, creating a virtual free-for-all, and a serious problem from a copyright perspective. CreativeFuture, a pro-copyright coalition boasting more than 560 members, has taken notice and is calling out the platform, along with rival service Kodi.

"Thanks to a rapidly growing media application called Plex, torrent-based piracy is back in vogue, and better than ever (for criminals who have no problem with profiting from content that doesn't belong to them, that is)," the coalition writes in a blog post. Those who pay $4.99 per month for Plex Pass are able to share their libraries with up to 100 users. As Creative Future points out, this isn't always done for the sake of altruism, or so family's can share their legally procured copies of Frozen. Some Plex users actually charge for access to their content -- a more nefarious (though, granted, enterprising) evolution from the totally free world of torrenting. For extra sass, the shared content can be pirated to begin with.

Quibi, a streaming service that has already raised more than $1.6 billion, is finally almost here, and in an effort to entice people who are probably already spending too much on content every month, the short form video streaming service is giving people a 90-day free trial for a limited time. From a report: The company is also planning to pump an impressive amount of content into the app within that time. Quibi is set to launch on April 6th with 50 shows and movies, half of which consists of "daily essential" programming that's constantly being updated. More will be released throughout the first month and beyond. After the 90-day trial, Quibi will cost $4.99 with ads, and $7.99 without. That's more expensive than Apple TV Plus and Disney Plus, both of which run ad-free.

You can breathe in harmful chemicals from tobacco use even in non-smoking venues because they are carried on smokers' bodies and clothes. From a report: Third-hand smoke -- the residue from cigarette fumes that sticks to surfaces and then wafts back into the air -- has previously been found indoors in places where smoking is allowed. To find out if third-hand smoke also pollutes non-smoking venues, Drew Gentner at Yale University and his colleagues monitored the air quality in a non-smoking cinema in Germany for four days, after first flushing it with clean air. Smoking is banned inside cinemas and other public places in Germany. They observed spikes of tobacco chemicals in the air just after audiences arrived, which decreased over time but didn't go away completely.

The polluting substances were probably brought in on the bodies and clothes of people who had recently smoked cigarettes or been near smokers, says Gentner. They observed larger spikes during movies rated for those aged 16 and above, most likely because the audiences were older and had greater tobacco exposure than those attending movies suitable for younger people, says Gentner. The amount of tobacco chemicals that people watching the films aimed at older teens and adults were exposed to per hour was equivalent to that inhaled while sitting directly next to someone as they smoke up to 10 cigarettes.

One of the hottest movies in the Warner Bros. library is a nine-year-old drama that kills off Gwyneth Paltrow in its first 15 minutes. From a report: Fears of the coronavirus have prompted movie fans to re-examine Steven Soderbergh's star-studded 2011 thriller, "Contagion," a fictional account of a pandemic that kills 26 million people worldwide. According to Warner Bros., the film was listed as No. 270 among its catalog titles at the end of December. Since the start of 2020, it has jumped to second, bested only by Harry Potter movies. "Contagion" is also trending on Amazon Prime Video and has flirted with the iTunes top 10. Barry Jenkins, the writer and director of "Moonlight," the best picture winner at the 2017 Oscars, was one of the people who found himself interested in the film in recent days. He said he had watched "Contagion" with his girlfriend, Lulu Wang, the writer and director of the acclaimed 2020 indie hit "The Farewell," while on location in Atlanta -- the city, he was quick to point out, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has its headquarters. The two film aficionados bought a download of "Contagion" from Comcast's Xfinity on-demand service. "I paid $12.99 to watch a 10-year-old movie," Mr. Jenkins said. "I've never done that before."

The PlayStation 2 is celebrating its 20th anniversary as it launched in Japan on March 4, 2000. "It was released in the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world a year later and would go on to become the best-selling console of all time," reports GiveMeSport. From the report: To put this into context, its main rivals at the time, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's GameCube, would sell 25 million and 22 million consoles worldwide respectively on their first release versus Sony PS2's 155 million! It certainly helped that the PS2 was able to release such memorable games like RockStar Games 'Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas', which sold 17.3 million copies. Other games included 'Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater', which was part of PlayStation's iconic series that was set in the 1960s during the Cold War. Not to mention there was zombie filled 'Resident Evil' franchise and the terrifying 'Silent Hill'.

The success of the PS2 was widely due to Ken Kutaragi. His big idea in the latest round of console battles at the time was to add in a DVD player compatibility with the PS2. DVDs were the latest new format to view movies on at the time and an entry-level price for a DVD Player was $700. The other unique selling point was the backward compatibility; with some exceptions you could play your favorite PlayStation games on the new PS2. Kris Naudus from Engadget writes about how the PlayStation 2 was the first game console she ever bought -- "a big deal at a time when I was only making $135 a week," she. says. Her favorite feature? It could play DVDs.

The release of upcoming James Bond film "No Time To Die" has been pushed back from April To November due to coronavirus fears. "The 25th installment in the storied spy franchise will commence its run on Nov. 12 in the U.K., followed by the U.S. on Nov. 25," reports The Hollywood Reporter. "It was scheduled to open in North America on April 10." From the report: Relocating a tentpole and restarting a marketing campaign that was in full swing is a Herculean task but insiders say hundreds of millions of dollars hung in the balance decision of the ongoing cinema blackout in China and a downturn in moviegoing in markets where COVID-19 is a major issue, including South Korea, Italy and Japan. And there's concern that by early April, other markets could be impacted. "MGM, Universal and Bond producers, Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, announced today that after careful consideration and thorough evaluation of the global theatrical marketplace, the release of No Time to Die will be postponed until November 2020," read a statement issued by the three parties.

In its new date, No Time to Die has the advantage of going out over the lucrative Thanksgiving holiday in North America (many previous Bond movies also opened in November). The other major 2020 Thanksgiving tentpole is Godzilla vs. Kong, which debuts domestically on Nov. 20. As the coronavirus first began to spread, publicity tours for the movie in China, South Korea and Japan were canceled, and No Time To Die's release in Hong Kong was pushed back until April 30. Aside for the concerns over audience members, the letter said the ongoing coronavirus outbreak could seriously impact the film's box office, noting that the countries to have banned or restricted large public gatherings -- including China, Italy, France, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea -- contributed some 38 percent of the total global earnings for the last Bond movie, 2015's Spectre.

After years of development and hype, Google's long-rumored push into video games arrived last November, with the launch of Google Stadia. Google Stadia isn't a game console, nor is it a game platform, really -- it's a digital storefront run by Google where you can buy individual games. It's a hugely ambitious new platform, and it aimed to be the Netflix of gaming. What makes Stadia so ambitious? Rather than downloading games or playing them off a Blu-ray disc, Stadia streams games to you wherever you are, like Netflix streams movies and TV shows. However, four months after Stadia's launch, the service is still extremely light on games: Just 28 titles are available as of this week. From a report: We spoke with game developers and publishers who said there are two main reasons their games aren't on Stadia: Google didn't offer them enough money, and they don't trust the mercurial company to stick with gaming in the long term. "We were approached by the Stadia team," one prominent indie developer told me. "Usually with that kind of thing, they lead with some kind of offer that would give you an incentive to go with them." But the incentive "was kind of non-existent," they said. "That's the short of it." It's a statement we heard echoed by several prominent indie developers and two publishing executives we spoke with for this piece. "It's that there isn't enough money there," one of the publishing executives we spoke with said. The offer was apparently "so low that it wasn't even part of the conversation." The "incentive" isn't solely financial, but it's the main part of the equation. "When we're looking at these types of deals," another prominent indie developer said, "We're looking at 'Is this enough money where we have the resources to make what we want, or is this an exclusivity deal that gives us security?'" they said.

"It's only been a few months since we learned that The Matrix 4 was actually a real movie that was going to actually happen, and was actually going to star Keanu Reeves, and now the movie is actually filming in San Francisco..." writes Cinema Blend. "However, making things real is apparently causing real damage in the city by the bay."

NBC Bay Area reports: Filming of "The Matrix 4" brought helicopters, explosions and cars flipping in the air to San Francisco over the weekend, but it also resulted in some damage. The heat from the explosions was so intense it melted the covers of a couple building lamps and melted the plastic cover of an advertising street sign. Workers who replaced the plastic said it cost about $2,000...

Filming of "The Matrix 4" in San Francisco wraps up on Sunday.
BGR reports that a few locals shared their own videos of the filming online, including one Twitch social media analyst who found prop cars at the old Transbay terminal that "smelled freshly burnt."

One YouTube user also shared footage of what they describe as "Keanu Reeves or Stunt Double Jumping off building in San Francisco."

Apple is trying really, really hard to always come off as the good guys. From a report: According to Rian Johnson, director of Knives Out, Apple won't let villains use iPhones on-screen. Apple is so obsessed with how the public conceptualizes its products that the company has taken steps to ensure none of the bad guys ever use its phones in movies. Johnson told Vanity Fair in an interview, "Also another funny thing, I don't know if I should say this or not... Not cause it's like lascivious or something, but because it's going to screw me on the next mystery movie that I write, but forget it, I'll say it. It's very interesting. Apple... they let you use iPhones in movies but -- and this is very pivotal if you're ever watching a mystery movie - bad guys cannot have iPhones on camera."

Disney CEO Bob Iger stepped down as CEO today, effective immediately. "Iger -- who spent his entire career at the company and will leave with Disney's titanic transition to streaming with Disney Plus as the legacy capping his tenure -- will remain chairman of the Walt Disney Company until the end of next year, and Disney's head of parks, Bob Chapek, is now CEO," reports CNET. From the report: "With the successful launch of Disney's direct-to-consumer businesses and the integration of 21st Century Fox well under way, I believe this is the optimal time to transition to a new CEO," Iger said in a statement. "I have the utmost confidence in Bob [Chapek] and look forward to working closely with him over the next 22 months."

During his 15-year tenure as Disney CEO, Iger secured the $7.4 billion acquisition of Pixar from Apple CEO Steve Jobs in 2006, as well as the $4 billion acquisition of Marvel in 2009 and the $4 billion purchase of Star Wars studio Lucasfilm in 2012. He oversaw the launch of streaming service Disney Plus at the end of last year, which signed up 28.6 million subscribers in less than three months. Disney also owns streaming services Hulu and ESPN Plus as part of its direct-to-consumer business. Iger was named Time's business person of the year for 2019.

Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content on Netflix? Now you can jump on the bandwagon and check out the streaming service's most popular options. Netflix has added a Top 10 feature, the company said Monday. From a report: "Starting today you'll notice something new when you go on Netflix: The Top 10 row," the company said in a tweet. "The lists update daily to show what's popular in your country and are broken into three categories: Netflix overall, shows & films." The most popular Netflix offerings in your country should show up in their own row once you log in to your Netflix account, the company said. "The list is rolling out globally now and should be on your homepage by the end of the day at the latest."

Redbox has entered the ad-supported streaming market with the launch of Redbox Free Live TV. "But despite its name, Redbox's new streaming service isn't offering 'live TV' similar to what you'd get on a TV streaming service like YouTube TV or Hulu with Live TV," reports TechCrunch. "Instead, the new service offers a curated set of ad-supported movies and TV shows, similar to The Roku Channel, IMDb TV or TiVo Plus, for example." The news was first reported by Cord Cutters News. From the report: The service, which began rolling out last week, expands on Redbox's earlier efforts in streaming, known as Redbox on Demand. Launched publicly in 2017, Redbox on Demand is the company's online marketplace for movies and TV for rental and purchase. Those titles can then be saved in your Redbox On Demand library and watched on a compatible smart TV, media streaming device, PC, tablet or phone. They also can be cast to a TV by way of AirPlay, Chromecast, Miracast or Screencast. Redbox Free Live TV, meanwhile, is currently available on iPhone, iPad and Android devices, in addition to the web. However, the company says the service is "only available to a select audience" at this time, but will soon be offered nationwide. (Perhaps as soon as this week.)

Like other free, ad-supported streaming services on the market, Redbox Free Live TV doesn't require users to subscribe, but instead runs commercial breaks as a means of generating revenue. On top of that, the content on Redbox Free Live TV is fairly niche -- news and entertainment, but limited to older shows and movies, for the most part, along with content from digital brands.

An anonymous reader quotes The Wrap: "Sonic the Hedgehog" is giving Paramount its best box office news in over a year, with a currently 3-day opening weekend of $55 million to become the best opening weekend ever for a video game adaptation... The delayed release of this film prompted by an intense rejection of Sonic's initial design is turning out to be a bit of a blessing in disguise. Moved from last November to this extended Presidents' Day weekend, "Sonic" is standing out in the movie marketplace as a popular family offering with no major competition currently in theaters and none coming until Pixar's "Onward" arrives in three weeks.

Audience reception, driven by both families and hardcore Sonic fans, has been very strong with an A on CinemaScore, 4/5 on Postrak, and 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Even critics have been fairly positive with a 65% Rotten Tomatoes score... If this weekend's estimates hold, "Sonic" will have an opening weekend that's more than double any of Paramount's 2019 films, including the $29 million opening of "Terminator: Dark Fate." In fact, it has the highest opening weekend for the studio since "Mission: Impossible — Fallout," which opened to $61.2 million in July 2018.
The Wrap's article also includes a list ranking "all 46 videogame movies" from best to worst. They rank 2001's "Tomb Raider" just ahead of 2018's "Tomb Raider" (at #14 and #15, respectively), and also remember several forgotten early-1990s films based on videogames (including "Street Fighter," "Mortal Kombat" and "Super Mario Bros.")

On Tuesday, Netflix lost a bid to escape a lawsuit brought by the trademark owner of "Choose Your Own Adventure" over the 2018 immersive film Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. The series' original publisher, Chooseco, sued the company early last year for $25 million in damages, as the company says that Netflix's new movie benefits from association with the Choose Your Own Adventure series, without the company ever receiving the trademark. From Hollywood Reporter: According to the plaintiff, it has been using the mark since the 1980s and has sold more than 265 million copies of its Choose Your Own Adventure books. 20th Century Fox holds options for movie versions, and Chooseco alleges that Netflix actively pursued a license. Instead of getting one, Netflix released Bandersnatch, which allows audiences to select the direction of the plot. Claiming $25 million in damages, Chooseco suggested that Bandersnatch viewers have been confused about association with its famous brand, particularly because of marketing around the movie as well as a scene where the main character -- a video game developer -- tells his father that the work he's developing is based on a Choose Your Own Adventure book.

In reaction to the lawsuit, Netflix raised a First Amendment defense, particularly the balancing test in Rogers v. Grimaldi, whereby unless a work has no artistic relevance, the use of a mark must be misleading for it to be actionable. U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions agrees that Bandersnatch is an artistic work even if Netflix derived profit from exploiting the Charlie Brooker film. And the judge says that use of the trademark has artistic relevance. Thus, the final question is whether Netflix's film is explicitly misleading. Judge Sessions doesn't believe it's appropriate to dismiss the case prematurely without exploring factual issues in discovery. Netflix also attempted to defend its use of "Choose Your Own Adventure" as descriptive fair use. Here, too, the judge believes that factual exploration is appropriate. You can read the full decision here.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Around Thanksgiving, it looked like this could have been Netflix's year to win it all at the Oscars. Critics were heaping praise on the epic scale of Martin Scorsese's mob movie "The Irishman," which felt destined to be the streaming giant's best shot at the elusive best picture trophy. The Los Gatos-based tech company put its weight behind the $159-million film, with its big stars and intricate age-altering effects, and pushed it hard through awards season with billboards along Sunset Boulevard. And yet, on Sunday at the Dolby Theatre, Netflix came up short. In total, Netflix's movies had 24 Oscar nominations, the most of any studio. [...]

Still, Netflix ended up winning just two awards, including supporting actress for Laura Dern's turn as a divorce lawyer in "Marriage Story." Netflix also won for documentary feature "American Factory," which was supported by Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground Productions. It wasn't for lack of trying. Hollywood executives estimate that Netflix spent at least $70 million (WSJ pegs $100 million) to promote its eight awards contenders to academy voters. For most studios, an awards season budget of $15 million is considered an ample war chest for a best-picture contender. Netflix was hoping to succeed this year where it ultimately failed in 2019 in its quest to take home the big prize for Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma." Instead, best picture went to "Parasite," Bong Joon Ho's South Korean satirical thriller, which was released by the scrappy upstart New York distributor Neon and cost about $11 to make. "Parasite" also won for director, original screenplay and international film and became the first foreign-language film to win the academy's top honor.