The Warner Brothers/DC film Birds of Prey "is proving not to be the February box office success industry observers had hoped," according to The Wrap: After grossing $13 million on Friday from 4,236 screens, the film is now estimated to earn an opening weekend of $34 million, which would be the lowest start for a DC Comics adaptation since the $5.3 million opening of the box office bomb Jonah Hex in 2010. Heading into the weekend, trackers had been projecting an opening weekend of $55 million while Warner Bros. was more conservative with a $45 million start... Reports on the budget for "Birds of Prey" have varied but have tended to be around $85-95 million.
"Oof. That's not what was wanted or expected," writes Cinema Blend. First of all, the title probably didn't help... Second, Birds of Prey is rated R. Suicide Squad, which gave Margot Robbie's Harley her big showcase, was rated PG-13. As Deadline noted, a lot of young Harley fans -- who loved the animated series and Suicide Squad -- may have been shut out by that rating...

People are also comparing Birds of Prey to Deadpool, which opened to $132,434,639 in February 2016. It may seem like apples to oranges, but they are both R-rated comic book movies opening in February.
Here's a humorous sidenote. At one point in the film, Harley Quinn asks herself what she could've done to offend Ewan McGregor's narcissistic character -- with one possible reason appearing for a split-second on the screen: "Voted for Bernie."

"We just snuck it in there," director Cathy Yan told the Washington Post.

According to CNBC, ViacomCBS is planning the launch of a new streaming service that would expand upon the already successful CBS All Access with films from Paramount Studios and Miramax, plus TV program from networks like MTV and Comedy Central. As Ars Technica points out, both Star Trek films (Viacom) and TV series (CBS) would likely appear on this new service. From the report: The news follows a high-profile merger between Viacom and CBS. CBS had already launched its CBS All Access service before serious movement on the merger began, and Showtime (also owned by ViacomCBS) has offered streaming options for a while now. Previously, Viacom offered some streaming services of its own while also licensing its content to bigger players like Amazon Prime Video. Both CBS All Access and Viacom's existing streaming services would continue to exist alongside this new service in the company's current plans.

ViacomCBS owns such networks as MTV, VH1, CBS, BET, Showtime, Nickelodeon, and Comedy Central, as well as the major film studio Paramount Pictures. It also owns publisher Simon & Schuster and a 50 percent stake in broadcast TV network The CW. (The other half is owned by Warner Bros., now owned by AT&T.) The CNBC report says that the ViacomCBS leadership is still finalizing its plans. However, the current thinking is that there will be both ad-free and ad-supporter tiers (as is the case with CBS All Access today), with Showtime included in at least one plan. Neither a name nor pricing have been decided.

Netflix has taken down just nine pieces of content around the world in response to written government requests since it was founded 23 years ago, the company revealed for the first time. From a report: In its first-ever report on what it calls Environmental Social Governance, Netflix says it has already received one takedown request this year from the government of Singapore to remove "The Last Hangover," a Brazilian comedy. To date, Netflix has received three written requests from the government of Singapore covering five pieces of content, and one each from New Zealand, Vietnam, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. All have been since 2015. Netflix says it will only take down content if it receives a written request from the government seeking the censorship.

Netflix announced today that subscribers will now be able to disable the autoplay functionality that occurs on its homepage. The Verge reports: People can choose to disable autoplay in two different formats: one that automatically starts the next episode in a series and one that autoplays previews while browsing. Netflix rolled out an option to disable autoplay with episodes in a series way back in 2014, but this new setting specifically relates to the autoplay previews on the homepage.

Both features have amassed tons of complaints from subscribers and creators. Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Knives Out director Rian Johnson tweeted his "current favorite console game: navigating Netflix without triggering autoplay promos." There are Reddit threads, YouTube videos, and, of course, tweets from angry customers who have asked Netflix to please, for the love of all that's good in the world, stop with the annoying autoplay features. One person was so frustrated that they created an entire Twitter account just to ask Netflix to please stop. Users can visit an updated help page on Netflix's website to learn how to disable the function.

China's Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo and Vivo are joining forces to create a platform for developers outside China to upload apps onto all of their app stores simultaneously, in a move analysts say is meant to challenge the dominance of Google's Play store. From a report: The four companies are ironing out kinks in what is known as the Global Developer Service Alliance (GDSA). The platform aims to make it easier for developers of games, music, movies and other apps to market their apps in overseas markets, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The GDSA was initially aiming to launch in March, sources said, although it is not clear how that will be affected by the recent coronavirus outbreak. A prototype website says the platform will initially cover nine "regions" including India, Indonesia and Russia.

Netflix announced today that it's beginning to stream video using AV1 on Android. This high-performance, royalty-free codec provides 20% improved compression efficiency over VP9. 9to5Google reports: Developed by the Alliance for Open Media, founding members include Google, Netflix, and Amazon -- all large video providers. Netflix says its "goal is to roll out AV1 on all of our platforms." In starting on mobile, the service cites how "cellular networks can be unreliable" and "limited data plans." That is particularly the case for subscribers abroad, a key growth market. This results in an overall "good fit for AV1's compression efficiency."

At launch, the "Save Data" option -- More tab > App Settings > Cellular Data Usage -- must be set in the Android client. Netflix only specifies "selected titles" as being available to stream over AV1. Moving forward, Netflix's AV1 usage will expand to more use cases as "codec performance improves over time." The service is already working with "device and chipset partners to extend this into hardware."

With some help from his robot (puppet) friends, TV's Joel Hodgson will heckle the movies "Circus of Horrors" and "No Retreat, No Surrender" live in San Francisco today -- before heading out to 26 other American cities (including Austin, Denver, Boise, and Salt Lake City). It's a final farewell tour for Joel, as local media outlets try to find an appropriate appreciation for his legacy:
These days, the act of reacting is everywhere. Twitter is essentially one giant stream of people's snappy takes on current events. An entire cottage industry of YouTube reaction videos thrives. Twitch allows you to watch thousands of people around the world narrating video games. Go back in time, though, and you won't find too much in the way of reacting-as-entertainment. That, is, except for Mystery Science Theater 3000, the quirky, groundbreaking TV show that premiered on a small Minnesota TV station in 1988... It predated even DVD commentary tracks, and presaged the way we consume entertainment today.
That's San Francisco's local PBS station KQED, reminding readers that these really will be Joel's final live shows: Hodgson is calling it his last Mystery Science Theater tour -- he's been on and off the road since the show was crowdfunded to resurrection on Netflix in 2017 -- and, in a short phone conversation from the road, he says he means it. "I'm turning 60 next month," Hodgson says. "My whole job now is to work with the brand and get it ready for the next guy."

That "next guy" is new host Jonah Ray, who stars in the new Netflix episodes. ("He's just a natural, positive force, and he's amazing in that role," Hodgson says.) But fans will always be particularly attached to Hodgson, who has had three decades of understanding the nerdy cult around the show. On tour, he meets many fans face-to-face, "and they're all super-sweet," he says. "You get a few people who are a little socially awkward, but I'm awkward in my own way, so it kind of works out...."

if Hodgson is sad about this being his final tour, he doesn't show it. "I'm pretty happy, and I'm totally thinking about the end of it, for me. You kind of age out of it at a certain point. I'm not going to be one of those guys that's so attached to it that they do it until they take him out in a box."
In 2008 Hodgson answered questions from Slashdot readers.

"I've been a fan so long, I can't even remember when," posted CmdrTaco.

Amazon's latest earnings release reveals the company now has 150 million Prime members around the world, a substantial increase from the 100 million it announced back in 2018. It's also quite impressive considering the Prime membership fee increased from $99 to $119 a couple of years ago. Engadget reports: "We've made Prime delivery faster -- the number of items delivered to U.S. customers with Prime's free one-day and same-day delivery more than quadrupled this quarter compared to last year," said CEO Jeff Bezos in a statement. "Members now have free two-hour grocery delivery from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market in more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns." On top of that, Bezos said that Prime members have also watched twice as much movies and TV shows on Prime Video than last year.

Prime membership just one of the many positive news to come out of the company's earnings report. It also recorded $87.4 billion in revenue, which is a whopping 21 percent increase over the same time last year. Company profits also increased by 8 percent to $3.3 billion during the holiday quarter. Amazon's earnings beat estimates by over 50 percent, causing its price to surge by over 13 percent after closing. [...] Still, things aren't perfect. The move to one-day shipping has been costly to Amazon due to an increase in warehouse and delivery spending. Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is one of its biggest money-makers, has also slowed thanks to competition from Microsoft and Google. According to reports, AWS has an estimated growth of 32 percent, which is fairly weak in comparison to previous years.

Online subscriptions sure sound cheap, but what do a few bucks a month to watch TV shows, store photos online and stream music add up to? Quite a lot, it turns out. From a report: In 2019, we each spent $640 on digital subscriptions like streaming video and music services, cloud storage, dating apps and online productivity tools, according to an analysis for The New York Times by Mint, the online budgeting tool owned by Intuit, using data from millions of its users. That was up about 7 percent from $598 in 2017. We increased our spending the most last year on streaming TV services, paying $170 to subscribe to the likes of Netflix, Hulu and new entrants like Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus. While that was far cheaper than most traditional cable TV packages, which cost roughly $1,200 a year, it was up 30 percent from the $130 we spent on streaming TV services in 2017. Our spending on digital subscriptions is likely to only rise as more of our possessions become connected to the internet, like our television sets, home security systems and cars. At the same time, it will become harder and harder to keep track of all of the services we pay for.

The US film industry may have generated revenues somewhere in the region of $40 billion last year, but it seems Hollywood still has plenty of work to do if it wants to compete with that most hallowed of American institutions: the public library. From a report: According to a recent Gallup poll (the first such survey since 2001), visiting the local library remains by far the most common cultural activity Americans engage in. As reported earlier today by Justin McCarthy: "Visiting the library remains the most common cultural activity Americans engage in, by far. The average 10.5 trips to the library U.S. adults report taking in 2019 exceeds their participation in eight other common leisure activities. Americans attend live music or theatrical events and visit national or historic parks roughly four times a year on average and visit museums and gambling casinos 2.5 times annually. Trips to amusement or theme parks (1.5) and zoos (.9) are the least common activities among this list."

If a report from The Wall Street Journal is correct, Apple's TV Plus service that launched late last year has 10 million more subscribers than Disney Plus, which launched at a similar time but with access to almost every TV show and movie Disney owns the rights to. For comparison, Apple TV Plus launched with only 11 titles. Fast Company reports: According to the Wall Street Journal, an Ampere Analysis study found that Apple's fledgling Apple TV Plus service garnered an astounding 33.6 million subscribers in the U.S. in Q4 2019. That puts it as the third-most-popular streaming service in America. Here are the top five streaming video services according to the report: 1.) Netflix -- 61.3 million U.S. subscribers; 2.) Amazon Prime Video -- 42.2 million U.S. subscribers; 3.) Apple TV Plus -- 33.6 million U.S. subscribers; 4.) Hulu -- 31.8 million U.S. subscribers; 5.) Disney Plus -- 23.2 million U.S. subscribers.

To be sure, Apple TV Plus is the video streaming service with the lowest monthly cost at just $4.99, but with only 11 series or movies available at launch in Q4 2019, how on earth did it leapfrog Disney Plus with its catalog of Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar offerings (not to mention Baby Yoda)? The answer probably lies in the fact that Apple began giving away free subscriptions to its Apple TV Plus service to anyone who bought an iPhone, iPad, Mac, or Apple TV from mid-September onwards. Given that Apple sells tens of millions of those devices a month, it's no wonder Apple TV Plus has accumulated so many subscribers already. However, the real test for Apple will be how many of those subscribers stay on once their year-long free subscription of Apple TV Plus comes to an end.

Streaming service touts its large collection of titles, but a majority are uploads -- and questionable films are in the mix [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; an alternative source wasn't immediately available.]. From a report: When Walter Wilson, a construction worker from North Carolina, sat down to watch the blockbuster "Avengers: Endgame" on Amazon Prime Video, he ended up seeing something very different: a 2007 documentary, also titled "Endgame," directed by far-right talk show host Alex Jones. Mr. Jones's videos have been banned from many mainstream sites like Apple's iTunes and Facebook for promoting outlandish conspiracy theories. "Endgame" purported to document a clandestine organization of bankers and politicians bent on establishing a "blueprint for global enslavement." Its availability on Amazon.com's streaming service highlighted a fact not widely known among subscribers: The e-commerce giant accepts nonprofessional and questionable content to offer a video library that in Amazon's style can dominate the competition through sheer volume.

While the video service is known for original movies and shows that have won Oscars and Emmys -- such as "Manchester By the Sea" and "Transparent" -- the site also carries thousands of conspiracy-theory videos, amateur productions and short instructional clips. Similar to Alphabet's YouTube, some videos are uploaded by individuals who made them or by others owning the rights to the content. Others Amazon bought in bulk as part of vast libraries of amateur content. An Amazon spokeswoman says the company has sought a broad selection of content, including videos from award winners and independent producers.

"During its Q4 earnings call, Netflix shot down the idea of an ad-supported option for its service," writes Slashdot reader saccade.com. TechCrunch reports: "Google and Facebook and Amazon are tremendously powerful at online advertising because they're integrating so much data from so many sources. There's a business cost to that, but that makes the advertising more targeted and effective. So I think those three are going to get most of the online advertising business," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said. To grow a $5 billion to $10 billion advertising business, you'd need to "rip that away" from the existing providers [such as Facebook, Amazon Google], he continued. And stealing online advertising business from [them] is "quite challenging," Hastings added, saying "there's not easy money there."

"We've got a much simpler business model, which is just focused on streaming and customer pleasure," he said. The CEO also noted that Netflix's strategic decision to not enter the ad business has its upsides, in terms of the controversies that surround companies that collect personal data on their users. To compete, Netflix would have to track more data on its subscribers, including things like their location -- that's not something it's interested in doing, he said, calling it "exploiting users." "We don't collect anything. We're really focused on just making our members happy," Hastings stated. "We think with our model that we'll actually get to larger revenue, larger profits, larger market cap because we don't have the exposure to something that we're strategically disadvantaged at -- which is online advertising against those big three," he said. TechCrunch points out that Netflix does track viewership data, overall viewing trends, and users' own interactions with its service. It also recently introduced a new "chose to watch" viewership metric.

"However, none of this viewership tracking is on the scale of big tech's data collection practices, which is what Hastings meant by his comment," the report says.

The iconic animated features of Japan's Studio Ghibli will be available in territories outside the U.S., Canada and Japan on Netflix starting in February. From a report: The move is a further change of position for the studio which has repeatedly resisted the idea that its beloved cartoons would be released on digital platforms. Netflix, sales agent Wild Bunch, and Studio Ghibli, which counts Hayao Miyazaki as one of its leading lights, will upload 21 Ghibli features including Academy Award-winner "Spirited Away," "Princess Mononoke," "Arrietty," "Kiki's Delivery Service," "My Neighbor Totoro," and "The Tale of The Princess Kaguya." They will be screened in their native Japanese, with sub-titles, and be available globally on Netflix except in the U.S., Canada, and Japan.

Comcast's NBCUniversal is launching a new streaming service in April called Peacock. With three pricing tiers from free to $10 per month, Comcast wants Peacock "to be an ad delivery system to destroy all others in its path," writes Ryan Waniata via Digital Trends. From the report: In a shockingly long investor call, NBC revealed its big new strategy for delivering its many intellectual property spoils online, which will be offered in a multi-tiered plan (with both ad-based and ad-free versions) rolling up a content hodge-podge, including NBCUniversal TV classics and films on-demand, a handful of new exclusive shows, and live content, from NBC News to the Tokyo Olympics. Peacock's ad-based service -- which rolls out first to the company's Xfinity and Flex cable customers from within their cable box -- will arrive in at least some form for zero dollars per month. A $5 monthly charge will get you more content (but still carry ads), while a $10 fee will get you ad-free viewing and the whole kit-and-caboodle. But here's the thing: The execs at Comcast don't even want you to buy that service. It's an also-ran. A red herring.

NBCUniversal Chairman of Advertising & Partnerships Linda Yaccarino spoke vociferously to the crowd of investors, saying, "Peacock will define the future of advertising. The future of free." To hook viewers into their ad-loaded trap, NBC execs have leveraged Peacock to offer "the lightest ad load in the industry," with just 5 minutes of ads per hour. To be fair, that ad-to-content ratio would be quite light these days in TV talk. But, Yaccarino continued, these would be revolutionary new ad innovations for Peacock, including ads that won't be as repeated over and over. Ads that will look "as good as the content" they accompany (whatever that means). Solo ads where "brands become the hero" and offer a TV show brought to you by a single advertiser. Ads. Ads. And more ads.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: In a move at once unsurprising and highly symbolic, the Walt Disney Company is dropping the "Fox" brand from the 21st Century Fox assets it acquired last March, Variety has learned. The 20th Century Fox film studio will become 20th Century Studios, and Fox Searchlight Pictures will become simply Searchlight Pictures. On the TV side, however, no final decisions have been made about adjusting the monikers of production units 20th Century Fox Television and Fox 21 Television Studios. Discussions about a possible name change are underway, but no consensus has emerged, according to a source close to the situation.

Disney has already started the process to phase out the Fox name: Email addresses have changed for Searchlight staffers, with the fox.com address replaced with a searchlightpictures.com address. On the poster for Searchlight's next film "Downhill," with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell, the credits begin with "Searchlight Pictures Presents." The film will be the first Searchlight release to debut with the new logo. "Call of the Wild," an upcoming family film, will be released under the 20th Century banner, sans Fox. Those logos won't be dramatically altered, just updated. The most notable change is that the word "Fox" has been removed from the logo marks. Otherwise, the signature elements -- swirling klieg lights, monolith, triumphal fanfare -- will remain the same.

In 2019, companies lost about $9.1 billion to password piracy and sharing. From a report: On Dec. 9, Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge took aim at the "content companies" entering the direct-to-consumer streaming business. The cable executive told a roomful of investment bankers in Manhattan that these new streamers are "creating havoc in the ecosystem." Rutledge wasn't talking about the proliferation of content or the fight to secure exclusive deals with talent. He was targeting the lax security and rampant password sharing that's prevalent across the streaming landscape. "Half the people in the country live in houses with two or less people in them, and yet these services have five streams," Rutledge added. "There are more streams available than there are homes to use them." Password sharing has serious economic consequences. In 2019, companies lost about $9.1 billion to password piracy and sharing, and that will rise to $12.5 billion in 2024, according to data released by research firm Parks Associates.

For now, many streamers -- including Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Amazon Prime -- seem content to allow the practice to continue, even while they crack down on illicit password sales. But as services mature, priorities will likely change. "When the growth starts to flatten and you start to look at the balance sheet, you are going to be looking for revenue," says Jean-Marc Racine, chief product officer of video delivery and security firm Synamedia. The company (which counts Disney, Comcast and AT&T among its clients) conducted a study of two anonymous video providers and said Jan. 6 that it found they were losing more than $70 million annually from password sharing.

New submitter wolff000 writes: A group of researchers at the University of Minnesota have shown that cuttlefish see in 3D. They did this by making 3D glasses and then showing the cuttlefish movies of prey. "While cuttlefish wearing glasses is an unexpected sight, a University of Minnesota-led research team built an underwater theater and equipped the cephalopods with specialized 3D glasses to investigate how cuttlefish determine the best distance to strike moving prey," a report says. "The initial act of getting cuttlefish to willingly wear the glasses without trying to take them off and actually watch the screen was tough enough," reports Popular Science. "This process required gluing velcro to the top of its mucus-covered body, placing the glasses on their heads, and keeping the creatures happy and distracted enough to not mess with them (or ink all over the experiment). But when the animals finally focused on the screen, creating an illusion of depth that can only be seen when using binocular vision, they accurately 'hunted' the shrimp on screen."

"This illusion of depth is created by using two different colored images that are seen through the two different lenses, which the brain then calculates the distance between," the report adds. "Even though cuttlefish are colorblind, the colored filters in the glasses send the accurate color from the monitor to the right eye. They only see the image in each eye as a variety of greyscale intensities."

The study has been published in the journal Scientific Advances.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Jeffrey Katzenberg insists that his new video-streaming service Quibi isn't competing against Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, or any of the other streaming services that have launched or are launching soon. Katzenberg and Quibi CEO Meg Whitman, who is best known as the CEO of HP and eBay, are publicly announcing Quibi at CES -- but not quite unveiling it -- after having raised $1 billion on the promise of a roster of Hollywood stars and supposedly revolutionary video-streaming technology that delivers portrait and landscape video at the same time. Everything on Quibi is designed for viewing on a phone, on the go, in 10 minutes or less. These chunks of video are called "quick bites" -- hence, "Quibi."

When Quibi arrives on April 6th of this year, it'll cost $5 a month for an ad-supported version or $8 a month for an ad-free experience. Katzenberg and Whitman formulated this idea nearly two years ago and have been relentlessly signing up the biggest names in Hollywood to be a part of it. And while there have been bumps along the road, including a raft of executive departures, everyone working with Quibi at CES talks about it as though it has already created the future of video -- like it already has millions of users. Training Day director Antoine Fuqua, who is executive producing a show called #Freerayshawn, says Quibi, before it has even launched, has created a "new language of cinema." It's like that.

Warner Bros. is has made a pact with Cinelytic to use its AI-driven project management system that was launched last year. From The Hollywood Reporter: Under the new deal, Warners will leverage the system's comprehensive data and predictive analytics to guide decision-making at the greenlight stage. The integrated online platform can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams. Founded four years ago by Tobias Queisser, Cinelytic has been building and beta testing the platform for three years. In 2018, the company raised $2.25 million from T&B Media Global and signed deals with Ingenious Media (Wind River) and Productivity Media (The Little Hours). STX, which endured a number of flops in 2019, including Playmobil and Uglydolls, became a Cinelytic client in September.

While the platform won't necessarily predict what will be the next $1 billion surprise, like Warners' hit Joker, it will reduce the amount of time executives spend on low-value, repetitive tasks and instead give them better dollar-figure parameters for packaging, marketing and distribution decisions, including release dates. The platform is particularly helpful in the festival setting, where studios get caught in bidding wars and plunk down massive sums after only hours of assessment. "The system can calculate in seconds what used to take days to assess by a human when it comes to general film package evaluation or a star's worth," says Queisser. "Artificial intelligence sounds scary. But right now, an AI cannot make any creative decisions. What it is good at is crunching numbers and breaking down huge data sets and showing patterns that would not be visible to humans. But for creative decision-making, you still need experience and gut instinct."