Sales Of Friends On DVD And Digital Spike After The Show Leaves Netflix
Friends, one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, left Netflix at the end of 2019, and until it reappears on HBO Max in May it’s currently unavailable on any streaming services in the US. Because of this, fans are turning to DVD, Blu-Ray, and digital releases to get their hands on the show, and sales have gone way up.
According to a report on Variety, sale of Friends on disc and digital have “roughly tripled” since the show disappeared from Netflix. According to Rosemary Markson, senior vice president of TV marketing at Warner Bros. Home Entertainment, it has been the “top-selling catalog-TV franchise in home entertainment” since the beginning of 2020.
The show’s portal on the Warner Bros website directs potential customers towards stores where they can potentially buy the series, which debuted almost 26 years ago. Friends: The Complete Series on Blu-Ray sells for $115 on Amazon.
The report also notes that disc sales were down 20% in revenue overall in 2019, but that some TV shows, like Game of Thrones, did very well, and that digital sales were up 5% on 2018 numbers.
A Friends reunion, while not officially confirmed, is looking more and more likely, with an apparent budget of $20 million having been set to get the show’s six stars back together.
2020 will be the final year that The Office will be available on Netflix, too. It will transition onto NBC’s streaming platform, Peacock, in 2021.
League Of Legends Dev May Need To Pay Much More To Settle Gender Discrimination Lawsuit
In December, it was reported that League of Legends developer Riot Games would pay $10 million to settle a gender discrimination lawsuit. However, this settlement total was later thought to be many millions lower than what it should have been, and now it’s been withdrawn by the legal team representing the staffers who filed the lawsuit in the first place.
A new team of lawyers hired by the former female employees of Riot Games withdrew the proposed settlement of $10 million, saying it was the result of “alleged mistakes and improprieties by prior class counsel,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The members of the class action group have now hired women’s rights attorney Genie Harrison and employment lawyer Joseph Lovretovich to take over for the previous counsel.
The new legal team will fight for a much larger payout for the class group. The California Department of Fair Employment and House and the Department of Labor Standards and Enforcement said in January that the initial $10 million settlement was “rushed.”
The groups maintain that Riot Games should actually be on the hook for a further $390 million in damages, bringing the total settlement to $400 million.
All of the approximately 1,000 female employees who worked at Riot from November 2014 until the settlement is complete are set to receive a share of the payout. If it does come out to $400 million, and if it is divided equally, it would work out to $400,000 each–but that won’t be how it works. The Los Angeles Times reports that the payouts will depend on the length of their employment and their status as full-time versus contractor.
“These brave women spoke out against gender inequality and sexism, and I want to make sure they are fairly compensated,” Harrison said. “Our well-qualified statisticians are already analyzing pay data. We intend to recover the compensation due to the women of Riot Games and achieve institutional reform, in order to level the playing field for women.”
Lovretovich added: “We don’t step into these types of cases lightly, but where questions of fairness and justice are at stake, we want to ensure these class representatives are getting the justice they seek.”
An August 2018 expose from Kotaku’s Cecilia D’Anastasio contained numerous serious and dramatic accusations about the “bro culture” within Riot. Among the details was that managers were said to have had lists where they ranked women by attractiveness.
In August 2019, when the initial settlement was first announced, Riot maintained that it doesn’t have systemic issues related to gender discrimination, though it did acknowledge that the workplace environment was less than ideal.
“After extensively reviewing these issues, we can confidently state that gender discrimination (in pay or promotion), sexual harassment, and retaliation are not systemic issues at Riot,” the company said. “But, what we also learned during this process was that some Rioters have had experiences that did not live up to our values or culture. In addition, we’ve encountered considerable fatigue among Rioters, who have been drained by constant engagement with the internal and external dialogues emerging from these lawsuits and recurring media cycles.”
Riot Games is yet to comment on the withdrawal of this $10 million settlement.
Riot is owned by Chinese internet giant Tencent. The free-to-play MOBA reportedly brings in billions of dollars in revenue every year.
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See How Star Wars: The Mandalorian Used Fortnite Engine’s Tech To Film The TV Show
The new Star Wars TV show, The Mandalorian, makes use of a variety of special effects that Lucasfilm created in partnership with iconic effects studio Industrial Light and Magic and Fortnite studio Epic Games. A new behind-the-scenes video showcases the fascinating technology that was used to bring The Mandalorian’s sets to life.
The Mandalorian creator Jon Favreau says the technology, which uses Epic’s Unreal Engine to project scenes onto LED screens surrounding the physical set, will impact and influence how TV shows and movies are made in the future. In the video, it’s not hard to see why.
With LED screens in the background projecting anything imaginable, the actors on set can physically point at things and actually see what they’re looking it. Not only that, but this technology allowed the producers to have sunrises and sunsets that could last all day. They could also literally move mountains in the background because they’re digital. This opens up incredible new possibilities for digital filmmaking.”
Take a look at the full video to learn more about the new LED tech that was used in the making of The Mandalorian. Presumably this will continue for Season 2, which is due out in October 2020.
Like Season 1, the sophomore outing of The Mandalorian will stream exclusively on Disney+. Recently, Disney announced that the service had reached 28.6 million paying subscribers.
Dragon Ball FighterZ Showcases Upcoming DLC Fighter Kefla’s Moves In New Video
The third Fighters Pass for Dragon Ball FighterZ was recently announced, and will begin on February 28 with the release of Kefla. She’ll be the first of five new characters coming to the game, with Ultra Instinct Goku and three unannounced warriors also joining the battle.
Bandai Namco has released video of a fight featuring Kefla, showing off her fast kicks and red ki blast attacks. It looks like she’ll move fast, and the video shows off some of her longer potential combos as she cuts through Frieza, Goku, and Vegeta.
Kefla, who debuted in Dragon Ball Super during the Tournament of Power, is a fusion character–she’s Universe 6 Saiyans Kale and Caulifla fused together. She joins Vegito, Gogeta, and Gotenks, the other fused Saiyan fighters in the game.
Her super move is pulled from her iconic battle against Ultra Instinct Goku–it’s a giant ki wave fired from both hands.
Dragon Ball FighterZ will feature in the Evo 2020 line-up in July, where we could potentially see combatants fighting using Kefla and any new fighters added to the game by then.
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Westworld Season 3 Trailer: 33 Things You Missed
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HBO’s critically acclaimed sci-fi series is coming back and bringing even more mystery in the war between hosts and huma
Westworld Season 3, is just around the corner. The final trailer dropped this morning, promising even more extravagant mysteries and brutal stunts as the war between the hosts–robots programmed to believe they’re human who previously only existed to be used by humans in torturous games–and the rest of humanity ramps up. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) is officially taking her fight to “our world”–or, well, that’s certainly how it seems. Given Westworld’s obsession with multiple timelines and deliberately befuddling nonlinear storytelling, it’s pretty much impossible to tell what is happening and when, especially in something like a trailer. But we still intend to try.
Team GameSpot has combed through every frame of the new trailer for every possible clue, hint, or reference to the past two seasons that may be hidden in the madness. There’s a World War 2 game of some sort, Aaron Paul is here now playing a new character named Caleb, and Bernard, Stubbs, and some other hosts who didn’t make it to the Sublime are still around and hanging out with Dolores. Oh, and Maeve’s still here too, somehow, despite the fact that we thought she entered the Sublime at the end of last season.
And we still don’t know who’s inside the host body designed to look like Hale.
Don’t worry, if you feel like your brain is starting to melt just thinking about this, you’re not alone. Let’s break down the new trailer and spin up some new theories before Season 3 arrives on March 18.
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1. Knitting an eyeball
The trailer’s opening shot of a synthetic eyeball being stitched together is a great reminder of the show’s themes of humanity and identity, not to mention the body horror that occasionally plays a part. It’s pretty, but also disturbing. Notably, although the eyeball close-up leads directly into a shot of Dolores shortly after waking up in the real world, actress Evan Rachel Wood’s eyes are blue, not brown–so this isn’t her eye we’re looking at.
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2. “I was born into this world”
It’s unclear when this scene takes place. At the end of Season 2, Dolores spoke with Bernard after finding a host “printer” in the real world. Hale and Dolores were both present, and it was unclear who was in Hale’s body. This trailer’s opening scene may be showing Dolores waking up in her new/old body before that conversation with Bernard at the end of Season 2, which makes Caleb’s presence particularly intriguing.
Caleb is the new character played by Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul. “You’ll see very early on that Caleb has a complicated past. He’s a little bit white hat, he’s a little bit black hat,” Paul said about the character during San Diego Comic Con last year. “He’s just trying to survive in the world and sometimes he has to do bad things.”
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3. Returning to the church
Our first shot of Bernard features him in a very familiar place–the white church from Escalante in ruins. It’s likely that this scene is in the past, considering Bernard’s post-resurrection status outside of the park.
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4. Is that you, Maeve?
This shot of someone–possibly Maeve?–walking through what looks like part of the park’s Mesa Hub is intriguing. She seems disoriented, like perhaps she’s just woken up, but beyond that there isn’t much to glean.
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5. Hale talking to Dolores
This shot appears to show Tessa Thompson’s character, Hale, talking to possibly Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), with tears in her eyes. Recall that, at the end of Season 2, Dolores had killed the real Hale and taken her place in a copy of her body, then created a new Dolores body for herself outside the park. At the end of Season 2, we no longer knew who was inhabiting the host version of Hale’s body.
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6. Putting some skin on
This is one of the few shots of the trailer that occurs in obvious sequence with something else. Dolores is putting her skin on after that moment with Caleb at the very beginning. Of course, this doesn’t tell us anything about when, where, or why this is happening in the context of the show–but, hey, at least it’s some continuity.
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7. George the robot
Caleb has a robot pal named George, which Aaron Paul spoke about at San Diego Comic-Con last year. “I have a robot. His name is George. He’s a very helpful robot and I love him. He’s red.” Thanks, Aaron.
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8. “They put you in a cage and decided what your life would be”
Dolores’s dialogue here seems to imply that Caleb may not be entirely human. This would jive with some of the winking-and-nudging that went on during the HBO panel at SDCC, where Aaron Paul described his character as a “construction worker” with heavy air quotes. Perhaps he’s a new kind of host, or maybe some other kind of synthetic life?
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9. “You’ve been watching me?” “Not me, but someone–something has”
Ominously, Dolores seems to know a lot about Caleb and when he asks her how, she says that something has been watching him. Not someone, something.
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10. GLaDOS?
The “something” line is cut pointedly over a shot of what looks like some sort of super computer–or maybe just an extremely fancy light fixture. It’s giving us some real GLaDOS vibes.
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11. “Who is it we’re going after?”
Caleb has some sort of squad supporting him, and they look like they stepped right out of Ghost In The Shell, which is pretty appropriate all things considered.
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12. “The person who took your future.”
Dolores tells Caleb that they’re going after “the person who took your future” while we see a shot of a man (played by Vincent Cassel) standing in what looks like a luxurious private jet. It seems like we’re supposed to believe that he’s the man who took Caleb’s future, which makes the next moment extremely interesting.
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13. Maeve gets a mission
We may not know who Vincent Cassel is playing, but we do learn that he’s got a mission for Maeve. What brings them together and what his possible vendetta against Dolores is, however, is still a mystery.
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14. Sweet Child Of Mine
Westworld sure does love a good piano cover. Here we get Guns ‘n’ Roses’ Sweet Child Of Mine. Pretty pointed as we’re seeing the hosts, which could be considered humanity’s children, gearing up to kill their creators.
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15. “Welcome to the end of the game”
We don’t really know what’s going on with the Man in Black (AKA William) here, but it seems likely that he’s a host and Dolores is delighting in, uh, torturing him maybe? “Welcome to the end of the game” certainly sounds like a threat, even though finding the end of the game was his central goal through Season 1.
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16. The second World War
Even the earliest Season 3 trailer featured scenes of what looks like a World War 2 version of the park, and we see one here as well–but without context, it’s impossible to tell if it’s real or some sort of simulation like the Sublime. Hector, a familiar host, is definitely there, though–and is that Maeve with him?
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17. Futuristic car chase
Westworld has never been short on action but this feels dramatically different from what we’ve seen in Season 1 and 2.
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18. We count five
Someone is creating a host as Hale (or, importantly, whoever it is in the host body that looks like Hale) explains the stakes: There are five of them–likely the five hosts that Dolores smuggled out of the park and that were not uploaded into the Sublime. Whoever the five are, they’re up against “an entire world of them,” as Host Hale says.
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19. Farm Bernard
Bernard apparently took up farming? Or maybe one of his past incarnations was programmed to be a farmer? We’re not sure why.
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20. Take me to the riot
Of course a world with technology advanced enough to make hosts would also have super cool Alien-flavored mechs. The one being presented to Hale here is labeled “riot control.” It looks like an ED-209 robot from RoboCop.
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21. “To save the f***ing world”
The voiceover here is a bit tricky–the shot is of a bloodied William inside a ruined mansion, saying he’s going to “save the f***ing world,” but the scene actually starts with another voice: Akecheta, the Ghost Nation host, saying that he finally knows his purpose. What could it be? As far as William is concerned, though, this moment seems to suggest he’ll be working against the hosts on behalf of humanity.
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22. It’s just a flesh wound
It seems like Dolores’s gambit doesn’t go completely according to plan. It even costs her an arm at some point. This moment is an interesting contrast to the trailer’s earlier shot of her pulling on her forearm skin.
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23. Who is shooting at her?
These action sequences are pretty intense–who is that with the submachine gun? Maybe Stubbs? It’s difficult to tell.
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24. Bernard and Stubbs have a plan
Dolores resurrected Bernard at the end of Season 2 despite suspecting that he won’t be her ally. That may have changed since then, though, because Bernard and Stubbs seem to be in on the plan.
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25. This is why you should learn CPR
Something horrible apparently happened on the beach. We’re not completely sure who these two characters are, but it looks like Caleb and possibly Lawrence (Clifton Collins Jr.). We haven’t seen Lawrence since he was killed back in Season 2, but given his status as a host, that doesn’t mean much.
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26. Car explosions galore
In keeping with the wild action in the rest of the trailer, we see a full-on car explosion here that looks straight out of a movie like The Dark Knight.
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27. No lifeguard on duty
There’s someone dead in a pool here, but the camera is too far away for us to see who it is.
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28. Dolores’s old fashioned way
In a conversation with Caleb, Dolores makes a pretty dark joke: Things either go according to plan, or she can do things the old fashioned way–murdering everyone. Given the tone of the trailer, we’re guessing it’s going to end up being the old fashioned way.
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29. Getting the band back together
Dolores is leading a full-on death squad in this scene, including Caleb (Aaron Paul’s character) and someone who might be Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth). The sign in the corner, with references to the Bonaventure Hotel and Figueroa St., reveals that they’re in Los Angeles.
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30. “You’re not the only predator here”
It’s unclear who Hale is talking to in this close-up. Recall, however, that we don’t actually know who’s inhabiting this body–unless this is a flashback, it’s likely one of the unidentified hosts who Dolores smuggled out of the park at the end of Season 2.
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31. Open wide
This shot of old William–the Man in Black–doesn’t reveal much, but it’s interesting to think about whether this is the “present day” version of the character, or the host version far in the future who we met in the final scene of Season 2.
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32. “The old gods are coming”
The graffiti on the wall here suggests that there may be a protest movement against Delos for creating the hosts. One tag reads “code this!” while the large symbol in red represents the maze.
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33. Maeve vs. Dolores
At the end of Season 2, Maeve went to the Sublime (robot heaven, essentially) to live “in peace” with the consciousnesses of the other hosts–but there was a very pointed suggestion that her body would be recovered by Delos technicians Felix and Sylvester. In Season 3, someone appears to have pulled her from that existence back into the real world, and set her against Dolores. Actress Thandie Newton is looking extremely badass here with her samurai sword.
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