biteho.com

True Detective Season 3’s release date is drawing ever closer–the series returns to HBO for its Season 3 premiere on January 13. For True Detective fans, that comes with some trepidation, as the general consensus is that the show’s second season in 2015 did not live up to the high bar set by Season 1. But there’s some hope: True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto said during a recent press conference that he didn’t shy away from the backlash against Season 2.

“I understood that there was a lot of stuff in Season 2 that people hadn’t really wanted to see, based on Season 1 of True Detective, but I’m very proud of the work everybody did,” he told a room of journalists. “I just try to keep getting better at what I do, and move forward, and I think substantive criticism is a big part of that, so I try not to shut myself off from any of it, and really just try to get better.”

He added that for True Detective Season 3, he wanted to “narrow the focus” of what they’re trying to do, and he emphasized that creating the show is “a big team effort.”

True Detective Season 3 focuses on Wayne Hays, a detective played by Mahershala Ali, and a single investigation that spans three separate time periods: 1980, 1990, and 2015. Hays remains the focus in all three settings, which made for unique challenges in every aspect of this season’s creation, from the writing to Ali’s multi-faceted performance of the same character at three very different points in his life.

Pizzolatto said he started with the character, Wayne Hays, “and the desire to tell a man’s life story in the form of a detective story.” In the most recent setting, Hays is beginning to suffer from dementia, and he struggles to recall aspects of the case. “If he’s losing his life story near the end of his life, then who he is becomes a mystery to himself, in a way,” Pizzolatto said.

With those ideas and themes in place, Pizzolatto began to conceive of the case itself, in which two children go missing in the Arkansas Ozarks. “I wanted a case that it was possible could be revisited over these three separate timelines, so there would have to be an element that was unresolved in each of those timelines,” he said. “And I also wanted something that was–even though there is that murder, something that was less sensationalistically violent and perhaps more closely tied to the idea of family, because so much of the case would ultimately impact this character’s family and haunt the family in its own way…It kind of haunted me the more I thought about it.”

Comparisons with True Detective’s beloved Season 1 will be inevitable, but Pizzolatto said Season 3 is vastly different–both structurally and thematically–from the original eight episodes, which aired all the way back in 2014.

“It’s a much, much more complicated structural thing we all tried to do this year than existed in Season 1,” he said. “I feel like this one has a lot more light in it than previous seasons, and maybe reaches for hope a bit more. I’m not even sure this is properly ‘noir,’ given where it goes.”

Ali, who was also present during the press conference, added that he thinks the anthology show’s treatment of its settings provides a through line between seasons. “Your setting is always a character in the story in a very real way,” the actor said, turning to address Pizzolatto. “Even looking for the children, as the mystery unfolds, we were really with a camera crew hiking 30 minutes to start work, with gear, and finding our location, and then beginning our day’s shooting. So to really be in that space, I really can’t put words to it, but I will say that I’m confident that it feeds you with something, as an actor, to be in the environment of the real mountains or the caves in which this mystery started.”

Season 3’s structure seems inherently at odds with its genre, as a mystery is generally dependant on withholding some information from viewers until it’s time to make the reveals. With Hays revisiting the case in later time periods, how can the events of earlier ones remains mysterious? How do you keep viewers engaged when huge chunks of the show are set decades after the initial case?

“It was the most challenging thing I’d ever tried to do,” Pizzolatto admitted. “When I originally had this idea, I was like, ‘Yeah, but how would you even do that?’ It’s like some impossible math problem, how you keep a mystery going and have these reversals and revelations without cheating the audience and going, ‘Well, I could have shown you this, but I just didn’t show you.'”

He said one of his goals this season was to have “no tricks up his sleeve”–in other words, not to mislead viewers simply to keep the mystery going. “Because 2015 and 1990 are happening at the same time as 1980, you’re sort of constantly being told what is going to happen,” he said. “It’s telling you everything that’s going to happen before it happens. I wanted to be able to do that–to not play any cheap games with the viewer, to respect their attention and their time, but still reward them with revelation and reversal.”

With that goal in mind, it seems possible that True Detective Season 3 will swing too far in the other direction. But Pizzolatto said he’d love if viewers restarted Season 3 from the beginning after watching the finale, to pick up on things they missed the first time around.

“I’d love it if they did that, but I don’t know,” he said, clearly humbled: “I mean, they might get to the end and be like, ‘I never want to watch this again.'”

Let’s hope, when True Detective Season 3 premieres on HBO on January 13, that isn’t the case.

Disney had a monster year in 2018 at the box office. Its movies collectively made $3.092 billion in the United States and $7.325 billion globally, according to a box office roundup by Entertainment Weekly. The domestic box office performance is a new all-time record, while the global result is the second-highest ever, only behind the $7.605 billion that Disney movies collectively made in 2016.

Marvel movies helped Disney’s performance substantially in 2018. Avengers: Infinity War raked in $2.049 billion globally, while Black Panther made $1.347 billion worldwide. The Disney Pixar movie Incredibles 2 pulled in $1.24 billion globally, while Ant-Man and the Wasp took in a mighty $623.1 million. New releases Ralph Breaks the Internet and Mary Poppins Returns are also expected to be big-time money-makers.

Disney movies were not guaranteed box office smashes in 2018, however, as Solo: A Star Wars Story took in $393.6 million worldwide–the worst result in the history of the Star Wars series. The Oprah-starring A Wrinkle in Time, meanwhile, only made $132.9 million worldwide.

Disney is expected to have another massive year in 2019 thanks to major new releases like Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame from Marvel, along with new live-action versions of Aladdin, Dumbo, and The Lion King. Disney also has Toy Story 4 coming up this year from Pixar, while the long-awaited Frozen 2 hits theatres just before Thanksgiving, and it’s expected to be a huge success. On top of those, the final entry in the new Star Wars trilogy, Episode IX, comes to theaters in December 2019.

What’s more, Disney is buying many of competitor Fox’s assets, including Deadpool and X-Men, so even bigger box office returns in the future are expected.

Following the cancellation of the PlayStation Vita and Wii U versions of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, the game’s Mac and Linux versions have now been canned as well. For those counting at home, that’s now four versions of the game that have been canceled (the Wii U edition was canceled in favour of Nintendo Switch version).

In a update posted on the game’s Kickstarter page, developer Koji Igarashi said the studio made the “tough decision” to cancel the Mac and Linux editions “due to challenges of supporting middleware and online feature support and making sure we deliver on the rest of the scope for the game.”

People who backed the game looking for a Mac or Linux version will be given the opportunity to change platforms; you can send an email to request a platform change; be sure to submit the request with the email address association with your pledge.

“We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we hope for your understanding,” the developer said.

It’s unclear if refunds will be available or if the only option is to switch platforms.

Also in the blog post, Igarashi said development on Ritual of the Night has “reached its peak,” which sounds like it’s nearly finished.

“We are currently checking the performance of Bloodstained on each platform. Overall, we are done with enemy placement and entering the adjustment phase. But there are still many progression-blocking bugs that must be taken care of,” he said.

Igarashi worked at Konami for a long time, and there he worked on games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Ritual of the Night is said to be a spiritual successor to that game.

Ritual of the Night is due out sometime in 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The game raised more than $5.5 million from its crowdfunding campaign back in 2015.

2018 was a big year for streamer Ninja, whose real name is Tyler Blevins. While he was already an established name in the gaming world having competed as a professional Halo player for years, Ninja entered a new stratosphere of success in 2018 following his record-breaking Fortnite stream with rapper Drake.

He’s ridden that wave and prospered financially. He told CNN in an interview that he made nearly $10 million in 2018. He told the site that 70 percent of his revenue came from Twitch and YouTube, through ads and subscriptions, with the remainder coming from his sponsorship deals with companies like Samsung, Uber Eats, and Red Bull.

The $10 million figure cited in the CNN piece is likely pre-tax, so more than likely he did not take home that much at the end of the day. Still, it’s an eye-watering figure.

In March, Ninja said he was making around $500,000 every month from his various revenue sources.

Ninja told CNN that he spends around 12 hours each day streaming, and in 2018, he estimates he played around 4,000 hours of Fortnite; that’s about 140 days.

He’s enjoyed success among mainstream audiences this year through his appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s late night TV show and as a cover star of ESPN the Magazine.

Ninja said he thinks Fortnite still has lots of room to grow, but in the event that Fortnite loses steam, the streamer is diversifying through efforts like a Ninja-branded clothing line.

2018 wasn’t a blemish-free year for Ninja, as he stirred controversy when he told Polygon that he wouldn’t stream games with women to avoid dating rumours.