Disney said Thursday it planned to crack down on password sharing [non-paywalled link] for its streaming services starting with a few countries in June before implementing a wider rollout in September. From a report: Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger unveiled the timeline to limit password sharing in a CNBC interview Thursday morning, a day after the company defeated activist Nelson Peltz in a bruising proxy fight. Iger didn't say which countries would be first.

The company for months has said a crackdown was coming as it looks to cut costs and make Disney+ and Hulu profitable. Since Iger returned as CEO in 2022, the company has trimmed its streaming losses. Iger said the company is on track to have a profitable streaming business by the fourth quarter this year. "That's a huge, huge improvement," he said on CNBC. "Now what we have to do is turn it not just into a profitable business, into a growth business."

Godzilla x Kong "stomped all over expectations," writes Deadline, "with an $80M opening, the second best start of the year so far, $2.5M behind the $82.5M opening of Legendary's other big pic this spring, Dune: Part Two...

"EntTelligence reports that GxK is expected to pull in more than 5.5M admissions this weekend, the most attended opening weekend for any movie year-to-date." No one saw this coming... International delivered $114M for a great $194M global start. The Adam Wingard directed movie, not including preview night, commanded 56% of all foot traffic and 89% of all premium format admissions. Imax and PLF drove 38% of the gross with 3D responsible for 19%... Beamed Warner Bros Domestic Distribution Boss Jeff Goldstein, "This is a huge, fun Easter movie for the whole family...." For a fifthquel to bounce back the franchise, GxK being the second best start in the Legendary Monsterverse after Godzilla's $93.1M ten years ago, is pretty remarkable.
The article speculates that the first installments (of both the Dune and Godzilla vs. Kong franchise) underperformed because of their mid-pandemic release dates, with their sequels earning more in 2024. The pure theatricality of Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire "clearly underscores the value of the IP on the big screen, and moviegoers' preference to see such monster mashing in no other place but a theater." (Deadline calls the movie "a really fun creature feature with a lot of heart; heck, it's even better than Jurassic World: Dominion. Seriously.")

It also earned "the fifth best Easter weekend opening ever," the article points out, coming in behind Batman v. Superman ($181M), Super Mario Bros Movie ($166.4M), Furious 7 ($161.2M) and The Fate of the Furious ($107.3M), according to the article. Their headline? "They Have Risen: 'Godzilla x Kong' Conquers Easter Box Office..."

In 2019 Los Angeles film/TV producer Brian Morrison painted Blockbuster's logo onto an old newspaper box — and then filled it up with used DVDs. "The Free Blockbuster movement slowly gained traction," reports the New York Times — aided at times by social media — "and eventually more than 200 other community boxes had opened from Louisiana to Canada and even Britain."

Though it's not clear how many are still operational, a 37-year-old California opened a free "Blockbuster" library outside her home earlier this year, according to the article, "and stocks it with season-specific films, subversive books and free candy." "We are social animals; we want to go out into the world and engage with each other," said Brian Morrison, who keeps a lending library outside his home. He often refills it with DVDs and VHS tapes of TV series, horror movies and, on occasion, signed independent films, and said that it had encouraged interaction with his neighbors.

Andrew Kevin Walker, a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, said he had visited secondhand stores especially to seek out films to leave in the boxes, including two sealed James Bond box sets and a copy of "Cobra," a 1986 film written by Sylvester Stallone. "It's an opportunity for people to really share their love of cinema, whether it be their favorite guilty pleasure or their favorite movie of all time," he said.

Viewers with streaming fatigue say they are tired of chasing content that moves around an ever-expanding array of platforms or even disappears altogether, and some long for the physical media that was dominant until streaming took over. "I think it's great that folks are doing this, keeping the spirit of DVDs alive, circulating film[s] in and exchanging them," said Joe Pichirallo, a film producer and professor at New York University...

Alfonso Castillo, who co-founded a Free Blockbuster on Long Island, N.Y., with his son, said the lending library sees regular turnover with people both taking and dropping off movies, including older people. "My sense is that for them, it's less of this cool novelty sort of ironic thing and more like, finally, there's a place to get DVDs again," he said.
Award-winning filmmaker Ava DuVernay misses the commentary tracks on DVDs (along with director's cuts).

But more importantly, they told the Times that when it comes to art, "nothing beats holding it in your hand... It is a part of the experience of consuming and experiencing art."

It was March 24, 1999 that The Matrix premiered, premembers the Wall Street Journal. "To rewatch The Matrix is to be reminded of how primitive our technology was just 25 years ago. We see computers with bulky screens, cellphones with keypads and a once-ubiquitous feature of our society known as 'pay phones,' central to the plot of the film."

But the article's headline warns that "25 Years Later, We're All Trapped in 'The Matrix'". [I]n a strange way, the film has become more relevant today than it was in 1999. With the rise of the smartphone and social media, genuine human interaction has dropped precipitously. Today many people, like Cypher, would rather spend their time in the imaginary realms offered by technology than engage in a genuine relationship with other human beings.

In the film, one of the representatives of the AI, the villainous Agent Smith, played by Hugo Weaving, tells Morpheus that the false reality of the Matrix is set in 1999 because that year was "the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization." Indeed, not long after "The Matrix" premiered, humanity hooked itself up to a matrix of its own. There is no denying that our lives have become better in many ways thanks to the internet and smartphones. But the epidemic of loneliness and depression that has swept society reveals that many of us are now walled off from one another in vats of our own making...

For today's dwellers in the digital cave, the path back into the light doesn't involve taking a pill, as in "The Matrix," or being rescued by a philosopher. We ourselves have the power to resist the extremes of the digital world, even as we remain linked to it. You can find hints of an unplugged "Zion" in the Sabbath tables of observant Jews, where electronic devices are forbidden, and in university seminars where laptops are banned so that students can engage with a text and each other.

Twenty-five years ago, "The Matrix" offered us a modern twist on Plato's cave. Today we are once again asking what it will take to find our way out of the lonely darkness, into the brilliance of other human souls in the real world.

CNN looks back to when "dial-up internet (and its iconic dial tone) was 'still a thing..." "File-sharing services like Napster and LimeWire were just beginning to take off... And in sweaty dorm rooms and sparse basements across the world, people brought their desktop monitors together to set up a local area network (LAN) and play multiplayer games — "Half-Life," "Counter-Strike," "Starsiege: Tribes," "StarCraft," "WarCraft" or "Unreal Tournament," to name just a few. These were informal but high-stakes gatherings, then known as LAN parties, whether winning a box of energy drinks or just the joy of emerging victorious. The parties could last several days and nights, with gamers crowded together among heavy computers and fast food boxes, crashing underneath their desks in sleeping bags and taking breaks to pull pranks on each other or watch movies...

It's this nostalgia that prompted writer and podcaster Merritt K to document the era's gaming culture in her new photobook "LAN Party: Inside the Multiplayer Revolution." After floating the idea on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, she received an immediate — and visceral — response from old-school gamers all too keen to share memories and photos from LAN parties and gaming conventions across the world... It's strange to remember that the internet was once a place you went to spend time with other real people; a tethered space, not a cling-film-like reality enveloping the corporeal world from your own pocket....

Growing up as a teenager in this era, you could feel a sense of hope (that perhaps now feels like naivete) about the possibilities of technology, K explained. The book is full of photos featuring people smiling and posing with their desktop monitors, pride and fanfare apparent... "It felt like, 'Wow, the future is coming,'" K said. "It was this exciting time where you felt like you were just charting your own way. I don't want to romanticize it too much, because obviously it wasn't perfect, but it was a very, very different experience...."

"We've kind of lost a lot of control, I think over our relationship to technology," K said. "We have lost a lot of privacy as well. There's less of a sense of exploration because there just isn't as much out there."
One photo shows a stack of Mountain Dew cans (remembering that by 2007 the company had even released a line of soda called "Game Fuel"). "It was a little more communal," the book's author told CNN. "If you're playing games in the same room with someone, it's a different experience than doing it online. You can only be so much of a jackass to somebody who was sitting three feet away from you..."

They adds that that feeling of connecting to people in other places "was cool. It wasn't something that was taken for granted yet."

"My favorite kind of science fiction involves stories rooted in real science..." writes NPR's reviewer. "[T]here is something special about seeing characters wrestle with concepts closer to our current understanding of how the universe works."

The Verge calls it an "impressive" and "leaner" story than the book, arguing "it's a good one — and very occasionally a great one" that introduces the author's key ideas, though channelling "the book's spirit but not its brilliance."

And Slate calls it a "downright transformative" adaptation, "jettisoning most of the novel's characters and plucking scenes from all three books," while accusing it of "making the trilogy's expansive and philosophical story into something much more pedestrian and digestible."

But Reuters notes there's huge interest in China over this adaptation (by the co-creator of Mem>Game of Thrones) for the first Asian novel to win the Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. "The new series was trending on Chinese social media platform Weibo on Friday," reports Reuters, "with 21 million views so far." (The show came in first on Weibo's "top hot" trend rankings, they add, "despite Netflix being officially inaccessible in China. Chinese viewers would have had to watch the Netflix series from behind a VPN or on a pirate site.")

So what was their verdict? CNN reports Netflix's adaptation "has split opinions in China and sparked online nationalist anger over scenes depicting a violent and tumultuous period in the country's modern history." Among the country's more patriotic internet users, discussions on the adaptation turned political, with some accusing the big-budget American production of making China look bad. The show opens with a harrowing scene depicting Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution, which consumed China in bloodshed and chaos for a decade from 1966... "Netflix you don't understand 'The Three Body Problem' or Ye Wenjie at all!" read a comment on social media platform Weibo. "You only understand political correctness!"

Others came to the show's defense, saying the scene closely follows depictions in the book — and is a truthful reenactment of history. "History is far more absurd than a TV series, but you guys pretend not to see it," read one comment on Douban, a popular site for reviewing movies, books and music.

Author Liu said in an interview with the New York Times in 2019 that he had originally wanted to open the book with scenes from Mao's Cultural Revolution, but his Chinese publisher worried they would never make it past government censors and buried them in the middle of the narrative. The English version of the book, translated by Ken Liu, put the scenes at the novel's beginning, with the author's blessing... Various other aspects of the show, from its casting and visual effects to the radical changes to the story's original setting and characters, also attracted the ire of Chinese social media users. Many compared it to a Chinese television adaptation released last year — a much lengthier and closer retelling of the book that ran to 30 episodes and was highly rated on Chinese review platforms.

The Netflix adaptation featured an international cast and placed much of the action in present-day London — thus making the story a lot less Chinese.

"Dell's strict new RTO mandate excludes fully remote workers from promotion," reports Business Insider.

The site calls it "one of the most abrupt changes to remote work policies," noting that Dell "has had a hybrid working culture in place for more than a decade — long before the pandemic struck." "Dell cared about the work, not the location," a senior employee at Dell who's worked remotely for more than a decade, told Business Insider last month. "I would say 10% to 15% of every team was remote." That flexibility has enabled staff to sustain their careers in the face of major life changes, several employees told BI. It has also helped Dell to be placed on the "Best Place to Work for Disability Equality Index" since 2018. But in February Dell introduced a strict return-to-office mandate, with punitive measures for those who want to stay at home.

Under the new policy, staff were told that from May almost all will be classified as either "hybrid," or "remote." Hybrid workers will be required to come into an "approved" office at least 39 days a quarter — the equivalent of about three days a week, internal documents seen by BI show. If they want to keep working from home, staff can opt to go fully remote. But that option has a downside: fully remote workers will not be considered for promotion, or be able to change roles.
Workers have said Dell's approach might be intended to lower headcount without having to pay severance by inducing some employees to quit. But reached by Business Insider for a comment, Dell defended their approach as instead "critical to drive innovation and value differentiation."

But Professor Cary Cooper, an organizational psychologist and cofounder of the National Forum for Health and Wellbeing at work, tells the site Dell could be following a "pack mentality" among tech companies — or reacting to a sluggish world economy. "Senior execs somehow think that people in the office are more productive than at home, even though there's no evidence to back that up."

Business Insider added that Dell's approach "differs from founder and CEO Michael Dell's previous support for remote workers," who famously said "If you are counting on forced hours spent in a traditional office to create collaboration and provide a feeling of belonging within your organization, you're doing it wrong."

Michael McWhertor reports via Polygon: Warner Bros. Discovery is telling developers it plans to start "retiring" games published by its Adult Swim Games label, game makers who worked with the publisher tell Polygon. At least three games are under threat of being removed from Steam and other digital stores, with the fate of other games published by Adult Swim unclear. The media conglomerate's planned removal of those games echoes cuts from its film and television business; Warner Bros. Discovery infamously scrapped plans to release nearly complete movies Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and removed multiple series from its streaming services. If Warner Bros. does go through with plans to delist Adult Swim's games from Steam and digital console stores, 18 or more games could be affected.

News of the Warner Bros. plan to potentially pull Adult Swim's games from Steam and the PlayStation Store was first reported by developer Owen Reedy, who released puzzle-adventure game Small Radios Big Televisions through the label in 2016. Reedy said on X Tuesday the game was being "retired" by Adult Swim Games' owner. He responded to the company's decision by making the Windows PC version of Small Radios Big Televisions available to download for free from his studio's website. Polygon reached out to other developers who had worked with Adult Swim Games as a publisher. Two studios responded to say that they'd received a similar warning from Warner Bros. Discovery, but they are still in the dark about what it means for their games. [...]

Polygon reached out to 10 studios and solo developers who had their games published by Adult Swim Games to see what they've heard. Some say they haven't been contacted by WB Discovery, but they expect to. "From what I've heard from others, I will probably be hearing from them soon," developer Andrew Morrish, who published Kingsway and Super Puzzle Platformer Deluxe through Adult Swim, told Polygon. "It's not looking good." Molinari said that if and when his game Soundodger+ is pulled from Steam, he'll republish it there "with as little downtime as possible between the two versions." The game is also available from Molinari's itch page.

Nikon, in a press statement: Nikon hereby announces its entry into an agreement to acquire 100% of the outstanding membership interests of RED.com, LLC (RED) whereby RED will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nikon, pursuant to a Membership Interest Purchase Agreement with Mr. James Jannard, its founder, and Mr. Jarred Land, its current President, subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions thereunder.

Since its establishment in 2005, RED has been at the forefront of digital cinema cameras, introducing industry-defining products such as the original RED ONE 4K to the cutting-edge V-RAPTOR [X] with its proprietary RAW compression technology. RED's contributions to the film industry have not only earned it an Academy Award but have also made it the camera of choice for numerous Hollywood productions, celebrated by directors and cinematographers worldwide for its commitment to innovation and image quality optimized for the highest levels of filmmaking and video production.

This agreement was reached as a result of the mutual desires of Nikon and RED to meet the customers' needs and offer exceptional user experiences that exceed expectations, merging the strengths of both companies. Nikon's expertise in product development, exceptional reliability, and know-how in image processing, as well as optical technology and user interface along with RED's knowledge in cinema cameras, including unique image compression technology and color science, will enable the development of distinctive products in the professional digital cinema camera market.

Warner Bros. Discovery said a password crackdown for its Max streaming service is coming later this year, joining competitors Netflix and Disney. TheWrap reports: JB Perrette, WBD's CEO and president of global streaming and games, said the initiative would launch later this year with a broader rollout in 2025. "We think, relative to the scale of our business, it's a meaningful opportunity," Perrette said during Morgan Stanley's 2024 Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in San Francisco on Monday. The push to crack down on password sharing comes as Warner Bros. Discovery narrowed its streaming loss to $55 million during its fourth quarter of 2023, down from a loss of $217 million a year ago. For the full year, it swung to a profit of $103 million, compared to a loss of $1.59 billion in 2022.

Looking ahead, WBD said its DTC business would have "modestly negative" EBITDA in the first half of 2024 before turning profitable in the second half. WBD is targeting $1 billion of direct-to-consumer EBITDA in 2025. In its fourth quarter, Warner Bros. Discovery added 1.8 million subscribers in its direct-to-consumer division for a total of 97.7 million. The DTC segment's results include Max, Discovery+ and traditional HBO cable subscriptions. Parrette also discussed interest in transactional ads, notes Ars Technica. Per Perrette: "On the ad format size, we've made lots of improvements from where we were, but we still have a lot of ad format enhancements that will give us more things that we can go to marketers with, [like] shoppable ads [and] other elements of the ad format side of the house that we can improve."

Piracy was traditionally seen as something that predominantly young males were interested in. This is a largely outdated representation of reality, as girls and women began to catch up a long time ago. In some countries, including Indonesia, more women pirate music, movies, and TV-shows than their male counterparts. TorrentFreak reports: [N]ew findings published by researchers from Northumbria University Newcastle, which include gender, are worth highlighting. The survey data, looking at piracy trends in Thailand and Indonesia, was released by Marketing professor Dr. Xuemei Bian and Ms. Humaira Farid. The results were presented to WIPO's Advisory Committee on Enforcement recently and the associated presentation (PDF) was published online. Through an online survey and in-person interviews, the research aims to map consumer attitudes and behaviors in Indonesia and Thailand, particularly in connection with online copyright infringement.

One of the overall conclusions is that piracy remains a common activity in both Asian countries. Pirates are present in all age groups but and music, movies en TV-shows tend to be in highest demand and younger people. Those under 40, are more likely to pirate than their older counterparts. These findings are not out of the ordinary and the same trends are visible in other countries too. Interestingly, however, some notable differences between the two countries appear when gender is added to the mix. The tables below show that women are more likely to pirate than men in Indonesia. This is true for all content categories, except for software, where men are slightly in the lead. In Thailand, however, men are more likely to pirate across all categories. The researchers do not attempt to explain these differences. However, they show once again that 'dated' gender stereotypes don't always match with reality. And when they have little explanatory value, one can question whether gender is even relevant in a piracy context.

Looking at other differences between Thai and Indonesian consumers there are some other notable findings. For example, in Indonesia, 64% of the respondents say they're aware of the availability of pirated movies and TV-shows on YouTube, compared to 'just' 32% in Thailand. Indonesian consumers are also more familiar with music piracy sites and pirate much more frequently than Thai consumers, as the table below shows. Finally, the researchers also looked at various attitudes toward piracy. This shows that Thai pirates would be most likely to stop if legal services were more convenient, while Indonesian pirates see cheaper legal services as the largest discouraging factor.

"The Mandalorian & Grogu and Daisy Ridley's untitled Star Wars movie have received working titles ahead of their respective production starts," reports CBR: According to The Cosmic Circus, The Mandalorian and Grogu will be filmed under the working title "Thunder Alley", while Ridley's Star Wars movie will be known as "New Jedi Order..." The Mandalorian & Grogu will be the first Star Wars movie to enter production since 2019's The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth and final installment in The Skywalker Saga...

[In Ridley's untitled Star Wars movie], Ridley will reprise her role from the Star Wars sequel trilogy as Rey, with the new movie set to follow the fan-favorite Jedi as she rebuilds the Jedi Order roughly 15 years after the events of The Rise of Skywalker... Other Star Wars movies in the works include James Mangold's upcoming feature about the origins of The Force, set during the Dawn of the Jedi era; and Dave Filoni's feature-length film set in the New Republic era that will conclude post-Return of the Jedi storylines that began in The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka and the upcoming Skeleton Crew.
"California's Film Commission announced in a news release Monday that Lucasfilm's upcoming feature film The Mandalorian & Grogu will be produced entirely in the state," reports the Press Democrat, "one of 15 movie productions coming to fruition thanks to California's Film and TV Tax Credit Program." Based on the popular Disney+ series and directed by "The Mandalorian" creator Jon Favreau, "The Mandalorian & Grogu" is set to be the first film in the franchise's 46-year history to be shot entirely in the state and the biggest blockbuster in the history of the commission's tax credit program, bringing approximately $166 million to the state's economy through wages and expenditures, the release said. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film will get $21.8 million in tax credits.

The Mandalorian & Grogu, which is due to begin filming later this year and is currently expected to be released sometime in 2026, will continue the story of the titular lone bounty hunter and his alien baby companion that began in the three-season series, Lucasfilm announced last month.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In recent months, Movie-Web has quickly gained popularity among a particular group of movie aficionados. The open source software, which is still available on GitHub, allows anyone to set up a movie search engine capable of streaming content from third-party sources. These external sources tend to have large libraries of pirated entertainment. Movie-web's developers are not oblivious to the legal ramifications but since they don't host any files, they hoped to avoid legal trouble. The software just provides a search engine for third-party content, they argued. [...]

Yesterday, the movie-web.app domain was suddenly taken down. According to a message posted on the official Discord server, this is the result of a "court action" from several movie companies including Warner Bros. Netflix, Paramount, Universal, and Disney. [I]t appears that action was taken against the movie-web.app domain. It seems likely that registrar Namecheap suspended the domain after receiving a legal complaint from the aforementioned Hollywood companies. [Update: After publishing the article we learned that there is a legal action that requires registrars to take action against several 'pirate' domains. We're looking into the matter and will follow this up later.]

Namecheap updated the domain's status to clientHold, which effectively rendered the domain inaccessible. The measure is often used to suspend pirate site domains following copyright holder complaints. The surprise takedown only affects movie-web's publicly hosted 'demo' instance. On Discord, the movie-web team says that it has no plans to bring this website back in any shape or form. "As a team, we always said that if we were taken down, we would go down without a fight and we have decided to stick to that. We have zero interest in getting involved with legal matters, and so we will not be trying to circumvent this takedown in any way," developer 'BinaryOverload' writes.

Netflix's new sci-fi drama Spaceman centers on Czech astronaut Jakub Procházk, described by Polygon as "painfully introverted, emotionally repressed, and above all, quiet... so muted and compressed, he seems like a trauma victim." The film, adapted from the 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia written by Czech author Jaroslav KalfaÅ(TM), is a solemn drama in the mold of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris, or to some degree, Christopher Nolan's Interstellar. The story revolves around Jakub's disintegrating frame of mind after eight months alone in space as he investigates a glowing cosmic phenomenon that's become visible from Earth. Meanwhile, his wife Lenka (Carey Mulligan), heavily pregnant and going through her own breakdown back home, decides to leave Jakub, and his handlers (Isabella Rossellini among them) work to keep him from finding out. And then the giant spider appears, and Jakub worries that he's losing his mind.
CNN says Sandler's deal with Netflix "means pretty much doing whatever he wants, which, in the case of Spaceman, means traveling to the furthest reaches of space as the near-solitary star of a pretentious, message-heavy drama."

You can watch a trailer here. The movie enjoys a "limited theatrical release" this weekend, and will stream on Netflix starting March 1.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: India's plan to let a moratorium on imposing customs duties on cross-border digital e-commerce transactions expire may end up hurting India's more ambitious plans to become a global chip leader in the next five years, Reuters reported. It could also worsen the global chip shortage by spiking semiconductor industry costs at a time when many governments worldwide are investing heavily in expanding domestic chip supplies in efforts to keep up with rapidly advancing technologies.

Early next week, world leaders will convene at a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting, just before the deadline to extend the moratorium hits in March. In place since 1998, the moratorium has been renewed every two years since -- but India has grown concerned that it's losing significant revenues from not imposing taxes as demand rises for its digital goods, like movies, e-books, or games. Hoping to change India's mind, a global consortium of semiconductor industry associations known as the World Semiconductor Council (WSC) sent a letter to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday. Reuters reviewed the letter, reporting that the WSC warned Modi that ending the moratorium "would mean tariffs on digital e-commerce and an innumerable number of transfers of chip design data across countries, raising costs and worsening chip shortages."

Pointing to Modi's $10 billion semiconductor incentive package -- which Modi has said is designed to advance India's industry through "giant leaps" in its mission to become a technology superpower -- the WSC cautioned Modi that pushing for customs duties may dash those global chip leader dreams. Studies suggest that India should be offering tax incentives, not potentially threatening to impose duties on chip design data. That includes a study from earlier this year, released after the Semiconductor Industry Association and the India Electronics and Semiconductor Association commissioned a report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). [...] It's possible that India and other developing nations may seek to narrow the moratorium rather than end it. An Indian government official told Reuters that "these issues need to be discussed and settled" before India can make a decision on whether to extend the moratorium.

Amazon is pushing back against reports that its Freevee service is shuttering. The Wrap: AdWeek reported the news, which it said is part of an effort by the tech giant to shift its focus to Prime Video. Sources familiar with the matter told the outlet that sunsetting Freevee could happen sometime within the second quarter. However, a spokesperson for Amazon said there are "no changes" coming to Freevee.

"Amazon Freevee remains an important streaming offering providing both Prime and non-Prime customers thousands of hit movies, shows and originals, all for free," they added. Freevee, which was formerly known as IMDb TV until a rebrand in 2022, offers thousands of premium movies and TV shows, including originals such as "Bosch: Legacy," "Judy Justice" and "Jury Duty" and over 150 free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels.

Disney is outsourcing its DVD and Blu-ray disc business to Sony Pictures Entertainment. Variety reports: As part of the deal, Sony will market, sell and distribute all Disney's new releases and catalog titles on physical media to consumers through retailers and distributors in the U.S. and Canada. Disney will continue to manage its own digital media, like premium video-on-demand. It's unclear if this will result in layoffs at Disney. However, the studio is expected to conduct an internal assessment across all business functions that support physical entertainment amid the transition to Sony, according to sources familiar with the agreement.

According to Disney, the licensing model allows the studio to continue to offer films and TV shows through physical retailers and to respond to consumer demand more efficiently. The company said the shift is consistent with strategies it's implemented companywide, as well as transitions in other markets.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: We already know thatOpenAI's chatbots can pass the bar exam without going to law school. Now, just in time for the Oscars, a new OpenAI app called Sora hopes to master cinema without going to film school. For now a research product, Sora is going out to a few select creators and a number of security experts who will red-team it for safety vulnerabilities. OpenAI plans to make it available to all wannabe auteurs at some unspecified date, but it decided to preview it in advance. Other companies, from giants like Google to startups likeRunway, have already revealed text-to-video AI projects. But OpenAI says that Sora is distinguished by its striking photorealism -- something I haven't seen in its competitors -- and its ability to produce longer clips than the brief snippets other models typically do, up to one minute. The researchers I spoke to won't say how long it takes to render all that video, but when pressed, they described it as more in the "going out for a burrito" ballpark than "taking a few days off." If the hand-picked examples I saw are to be believed, the effort is worth it.

OpenAI didn't let me enter my own prompts, but it shared four instances of Sora's power. (None approached the purported one-minute limit; the longest was 17 seconds.) The first came from a detailed prompt that sounded like an obsessive screenwriter's setup: "Beautiful, snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls. Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes." The result is a convincing view of what is unmistakably Tokyo, in that magic moment when snowflakes and cherry blossoms coexist. The virtual camera, as if affixed to a drone, follows a couple as they slowly stroll through a streetscape. One of the passersby is wearing a mask. Cars rumble by on a riverside roadway to their left, and to the right shoppers flit in and out of a row of tiny shops.

It's not perfect. Only when you watch the clip a few times do you realize that the main characters -- a couple strolling down the snow-covered sidewalk -- would have faced a dilemma had the virtual camera kept running. The sidewalk they occupy seems to dead-end; they would have had to step over a small guardrail to a weird parallel walkway on their right. Despite this mild glitch, the Tokyo example is a mind-blowing exercise in world-building. Down the road, production designers will debate whether it's a powerful collaborator or a job killer. Also, the people in this video -- who are entirely generated by a digital neural network -- aren't shown in close-up, and they don't do any emoting. But the Sora team says that in other instances they've had fake actors showing real emotions. "It will be a very long time, if ever, before text-to-video threatens actual filmmaking," concludes Wired. "No, you can't make coherent movies by stitching together 120 of the minute-long Sora clips, since the model won't respond to prompts in the exact same way -- continuity isn't possible. But the time limit is no barrier for Sora and programs like it to transform TikTok, Reels, and other social platforms."

"In order to make a professional movie, you need so much expensive equipment," says Bill Peebles, another researcher on the project. "This model is going to empower the average person making videos on social media to make very high-quality content."

Further reading: OpenAI Develops Web Search Product in Challenge To Google

Amazon faces a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of false advertising and deceptive practices because Prime Video now serves commercials by default. Variety reports: "For years, people purchased and renewed their Amazon Prime subscriptions believing that they would include ad-free streaming," the lawsuit says. "But last month, Amazon changed the deal. To stream movies and TV shows without ads, Amazon customers must now pay an additional $2.99 per month ... This is not fair, because these subscribers already paid for the ad-free version; these subscribers should not have to pay an additional $2.99/month for something that they already paid for."

The case was filed on behalf of Wilbert Napoleon, a resident of Eastvale, Calif., who says he's a Prime member. "Plaintiff brings this case for himself and for other Amazon Prime customers," the suit said. The complain alleged that Amazon violates Washington State and California state consumer protection laws that prohibit unfair competition and deceptive business acts and practices. Amazon's conduct, as alleged, "was immoral, unethical, oppressive, unscrupulous and substantially injurious to consumers,â according to the lawsuit. The suit seeks unspecific monetary damages, including punitive damages, as well as an injunction to block Amazon's alleged deceptive conduct.

The suit was filed Feb. 9, after Amazon starting on Jan. 29 began running ads in Prime Video content in major markets including the United States unless users opt to pay extra ($2.99/month in the U.S.) to have an ad-free experience. Some analysts have forecast Prime Video ads generating more than $3 billion in revenue in 2024.

After climbing the charts of Apple's App Store, the trendy Kimi app, with its collection of bootlegged movies, has disappeared. From a report: Pretending to be a spot-the-difference vision-testing game, the widely downloaded app ranked above Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video in Apple's charts this week for free entertainment apps before it was removed. Without having to pay for anything or log in to any kind of account, iPhone owners could previously use Kimi to browse a wide selection of bootlegs for popular movies and TV shows. Many of the movies up for Best Picture at this year's Oscars were on Kimi, at varying levels of quality.

Poor Things was included in a grainy, pixelated state, but a high-quality version of Killers of the Flower Moon was on Kimi to stream, although an intrusive ad for online casinos was splashed across the top. That definitely isn't the viewing experience Martin Scorsese imagined for audiences. Not just limited to movies, viewers were also able to access episodes of currently airing TV shows, like RuPaul's Drag Race, through the Kimi app. Who was behind this piracy app? It remains a mystery. The developer was listed as "Marcus Evans" in the app store before Kimi was taken down, and this was the only app listed under that name, likely a pseudonym.