A host of major industry bodies have banded together to plead with the EU for tougher rules on pirated content available on sites like YouTube and Facebook

LISTENING to music for free on websites like YouTube might be banned one day, if creative industry giants get their way.

A host of major bodies that represent the film, TV, music and sport industries have written to the EU to ask for a crackdown on sites where users upload their own content – like Facebook and YouTube.

The industry bodies are complaining about the "Value Gap".

That's the term they used to describe a mismatch between the money that the creative industry makes, compared to the money that websites like YouTube generates through the content they host.

"User uploaded content services have become vast distributors of our creative works...all while refusing to negotiate fair or any copyright licences with us as rights holders," reads an open letter to the EU, which was signed by 23 different industry bodies.

The letter appeals directly to Boyko Borisov, the Prime Minister of Bulgaria, the country that currently holds EU Council presidency.

"We have formed an alliance to campaign for a solution to a major problem which is holding back our sector and jeopardising future sustainability," the letter continues.

"Bulgaria's EU Presidency provides the unmissable opportunity for a solution."

The alliance also blasts the EU's "safe harbour" protections, which protects big companies from being targeted if they "unknowingly" host copyrighted content.

This is important for websites like YouTube, which can avoid liability for providing pirated content to users because anyone can upload videos or music to the platform.

The letter explains that "a lack of clarity surrounding the application of copyright to certain online services, and the abuse of European copyright 'safe harbour' rules" is causing major problems for the creative industries.

It could mean that consumers are eventually forced to pay for premium content – like music or videos – on YouTube, to avoid any piracy issues.

Speaking to The Sun, GBH Insights' Daniel Ives said: "This, will continue to put more pressure on the likes of Google and YouTube given copyright and IP issues."

He said that Brits probably won't be forced to pay for music on YouTube "in the near-term", but added: "We do believe – especially in Europe – there is growing concern around this area, which is putting more heat in the kitchen for the company."

Groups that wrote to the EU in this latest plea include the International Council of Music Authors, the Association of Commercial Television, and Writers & Directors Worldwide.

To help ease the woes of these creative giants, YouTube already provides a mechanism for content creators to report any stolen videos or music.

"If your copyright-protected work was posted on YouTube without authorisation, you may submit a copyright infringement notification," YouTube explains.

"Make sure that you consider whether fair use, fair dealing or a similar exception to copyright applies before you submit.

"These requests should only be sent in by the copyright owner or an agent authorised to act on the owner's behalf."

Cloudflare should be held liable for copyright infringements committed by its customers, adult publisher ALS Scan has informed the California District Court. The company requests a partial summary judgment, claiming that the CDN provider assists pirates and doesn't qualify for safe harbor protection. "The evidence is undisputed," ALS writes.

As one of the leading CDN and DDoS protection services, Cloudflare is used by millions of websites across the globe.

This includes thousands of “pirate” sites, including the likes of The Pirate Bay, which rely on the U.S.-based company to keep server loads down.

Many rightsholders have complained about Cloudflare’s involvement with these sites and last year adult entertainment publisher ALS Scan took it a step further by dragging the company to court.

ALS accused the CDN service of various types of copyright and trademark infringement, noting that several customers used the Cloudflare’s servers to distribute pirated content. While Cloudflare managed to have several counts dismissed, the accusation of contributory copyright infringement remains.

An upcoming trial could determine whether Cloudflare is liable or not, but ALS believes that this isn’t needed. This week, the publisher filed a request for partial summary judgment, asking the court to rule over the matter in advance of a trial.

“The evidence is undisputed,” ALS writes. “Cloudflare materially assists website operators in reproduction, distribution and display of copyrighted works, including infringing copies of ALS works. Cloudflare also masks information about pirate sites and their hosts.”

ALS anticipates that Cloudflare may argue that the company or its clients are protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provision, but contests this claim. The publisher notes that none of the customers registered the required paperwork at the US Copyright Office.

“Cloudflare may say that the Cloudflare Customer Sites are themselves service providers entitled to DMCA protections, however, none have qualified for safe harbors by submitting the required notices to the US Copyright Office.”

Cloudflare itself has no safe harbor protection either, they argue, because it operates differently than a service provider as defined in the DMCA. It’s a “smart system” which also modifies content, instead of a “dumb pipe,” they claim.

In addition, the CDN provider is accused of failing to implement a reasonable policy that will terminate repeat offenders.

“Cloudflare has no available safe harbors. Even if any safe harbors apply, Cloudflare has lost such safe harbors for failure to adopt and reasonably implement a policy including termination of repeat infringers,” ALS writes.

Previously, the court clarified that under U.S. law the company can be held liable for caching content of copyright infringing websites. Cloudflare’s “infrastructure-level caching” cannot be seen as fair use, it ruled.

ALS now asks the court to issue a partial summary judgment ruling that Cloudflare is liable for contributory copyright infringement. If this motion is granted, a trial would only be needed to establish the damages amount.

The lawsuit is a crucial matter for Cloudflare, and not only because of the potential damages it faces in this case. If Cloudflare loses, other rightsholders are likely to make similar demands, forcing the company to actively police potential pirate sites.

Cloudflare will undoubtedly counter ALS’ claims in a future filing, so this case is far from over.

—

A copy of ALS Scan’s memorandum in support of the motion for partial summary judgment can be found here (pdf).

Source: Torrentfreak.com

As the US dismantles net neutrality protections for the internet, a powerful group of Canadian telecom companies, cultural organizations, one labour union, and the national broadcaster are all lining up behind a proposal that would allow the government to block access to websites that illegally host pirated content within Canada.

The proposal has raised the ire of digital rights activists in Canada, who believe that such provisions constitute censorship, and could be used to block access to legitimate content.

The coalition, called FairPlay Canada, was unveiled on Monday. That day, the group also filed an application to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) asking the federal regulator to create an "Independent Piracy Review Agency" that will “consider applications identifying piracy sites” and recommend websites serving pirated content to the CRTC, which would then order internet service providers to block their customers’ access to those websites.

“We’re really worried about the idea that there’s inevitably going to be false positives and legitimate things are going to be caught up in that,” Lauren Tribe, executive director of nonprofit advocacy group OpenMedia, said over the phone. “As soon as we open the door for the government to decide what we can and can’t see online, I think we’re going to see a lot of lobby groups pushing to see their interests protected by this agency as well.”

Precise numbers on piracy in Canada are hard to come by, but according to CRTC data cited in The Globe and Mail, cable, IPTV, and satellite subscriptions declined by 400,000 between 2012 and 2016. As for what that’s meant for profits, the CRTC reported that broadcasting sector revenues dropped .14 percent in the same time period. FairPlay Canada cites a 2017 report from anti-piracy company MUSO that claims piracy websites received 1.88 billion visits from Canadians in 2016.

The FairPlay Canada coalition and its application come at a crucial time for net neutrality—the principle that information on the internet should flow freely and without interference from service providers. In the US, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently voted to repeal Obama-era net neutrality protections. Weeks before the vote, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he would “defend net neutrality.”

Read More: Justin Trudeau Is ‘Very Concerned’ With FCC’s Plan to Roll Back Net Neutrality

In September, telecom giant Bell, now a member of FairPlay Canada, proposed website blocking at NAFTA negotiations. Other members of the coalition include the CBC (Canada’s national broadcaster), Rogers (one of the “big three” telecom companies, which also owns numerous media properties), labour union Unifor, and the Toronto International Film Festival, among other companies and organizations.

“For us it's a question of principle,” Douglas Chow, a CBC spokesperson, wrote me in an email. “We support efforts, like FairPlay Canada, to stop piracy of copyrighted content. Groups who steal and re-sell content without permission are breaking the law and undermining financial support for culture.”

FairPlay Canada’s application resembles provisions in the US Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), proposed legislation that would have allowed internet service providers to block access to websites providing pirated content. The Act was ultimately abandoned by lawmakers in 2012 after pressure from digital rights groups and the public, but the industry continues to push for SOPA-like provisions in various forms.

When asked if the CBC’s membership in FairPlay Canada would require disclosure in future news stories around website blocking, Chow replied, “A CBC/Radio-Canada journalist independently reports on any organization, including us.”

The pressure on federal regulators now is immense as it must now review FairPlay Canada’s application. Indeed, most of Canada’s most important telecommunications and media organizations are now pushing a government-administered website blocking scheme. The internet in Canada is at a crossroads.

Source: https://motherboard.vice.com

Box office surge has Hollywood eager to entertain world's second-largest market.Actors dressed as storm troopers arrive for the China premiere of 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' at the Shanghai Disney Resort in Shanghai, China in December 2017. © Reuters
DALIAN, China After stalling hard in 2016, the Chinese box office is back in gear. Annual ticket sales returned to double-digit growth in 2017, helped by new rules purging pirated movies from the internet, leaving no other option than to pay for new releases.

"I was able to watch any movie for free online just a short while ago," said a 24-year-old corporate employee who works in Dalian. When she was in school, pirated Hollywood titles could be found easily online.

But now, all that remain are fee-based streaming sites on which the newest films are unavailable until a month after theater releases. The woman said she had little choice but to pay to see the latest films on the big screen.


Cinemas have become popular destinations for China's expanding middle class. Until 2015, box-office receipts had been climbing by 20-50% annually, according to data from EntGroup, a Chinese research company. This rapid growth had put the country's movie market on track to surpass that of the North American market -- the world's largest.

But then the boom when quiet, with ticket sales growing only 3.7% in 2016 and sales actually shrinking 7% in the first quarter of 2017, the first such decline on record. The reversal was blamed on a lack of good domestic films, cheaper tickets, diversified entertainment options -- and rampant internet piracy.


People print movie tickets from a machine at a cinema in Tianjin, China. © Reuters
The recovery in ticket sales is good news for Hollywood. China has become a major source of revenue and a safety net for U.S. studios, letting them recover their production costs even if an expensive film flops in its home market.

Michael Bay's "Transformers: Age of Extinction" (2014), for instance, was largely considered an under-performer in the U.S., selling $245 million in tickets. But it became the highest grossing movie ever in China, up to that time, taking in over $300 million. Globally, it earned $1.1 billion. The movie had a production budget of $210 million.

Hollywood's growing reliance on the foreign box office, however, brings a new set of challenges. Western movies can struggle if Chinese audiences fail to relate to the storyline. The Star Wars franchise found that out the hard way in January when "The Last Jedi" was pulled from most Chinese screens after just two weekends. Following a relatively weak opening weekend of $28.7 million, ticket sales tumbled 92% to $2.4 million in its second Friday-Sunday period.

The nostalgic references to the original series were lost among the young Chinese cinemagoers. China was just one year out of the Cultural Revolution when the first Star Wars film came out in the U.S. in 1977. It was not released in China at the time. Luke Skywalker simply isn't a childhood hero to most moviegoers in the country.

THEATER APPEAL Chinese authorities took action against piracy in March last year by putting into force the Film Industry Promotion Law, passed under the banner of safeguarding copyright. As well as punishing individuals and companies that leak movies onto the internet, the government is actively removing pirated films from the Chinese web.

Source: https://asia.nikkei.com

The clandestine reception of pay-TV signals could soon become a crime in Brazil, reports O Estado de Sao Paulo. This is what is in bill 186/2013, currently being processed by the Senate's Constitution, Justice and Citizenship Committee (CCJ). According to the draft bill, distributing or receiving pay-TV pirate signals would result in imprisonment from six months to two years and a fine of up to BRL 10.000. Those who manufacture, import or sell equipment or products for unauthorized interception or reception could get one to three years of detention, in addition to a fine of BRL 5.000.

If approved by the CCJ, the bill will go directly to the Chamber of Deputies. According to the Brazilian Association of Subscription Television (ABTA), 3.3 million Brazilian households now have pirated access to pay-TV. This generates an annual loss of BRL 6 billion.

Source: https://www.telecompaper.com

Welcome back to a new and improved UGC v2.0. We are extremely excited to be starting a new chapter and rebuilding our amazing community.

Current State


UGC is currently in what we are calling a beta stage. We have tried our best to comb over the entire site and fix any and all bugs we have come across, but sometimes fresh eyes and a different perspective can be helpful to flush out any bugs that remain. UGC staff is asking all members to please report any and all bugs to the site bug thread in the forums. While the site is in a beta stage we will be stress testing our tracker and site to make sure everything is functioning properly. All invites have been removed during this stage.

Freeleech


Freeleech was a large part of our identity and was one of the key features that stood out to a lot of people, but with new code comes new changes. Freeleech has been cut back to special occasions, events, staff picks, and anything over 15GB in size. We know this change will not settle well with some people, but changes had to be made to go inline with our HnR and bonus point system.




HnR System


The HnR system has been removed and replaced with a account required ratio. The more you download the higher your required account ratio will be. Required account ratio tops out at 0.50.



Help Restore Content


To get UGC back up and running again we are asking new and returning members to help us revive our amazing backlog of content. Those of you select few that may have old UGC torrents in your client, please add the new tracker announce and start seeding seeding seeding. Do you have gaming torrents from other sites that are fresh and clean? Don't hesitate to upload them to UGC and share your glorious seed. Uploaders and long term seeders are very valuable to the longevity and survival of UGC and it's content.



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Read the rules and help section to get a refresher, Check out the bonus point shop, Create collages, Check out the forums, and don't forget to join us in IRC and interact with the community. Any questions please don't hesitate to contact staff.


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Paul Rudd plays real-life baseballer Moe Berg in Ben Lewin's WWII adventure.


In 1944, the U.S. government asked a multilingual Jewish baseball player to travel through enemy lines in Italy, make his way to Zurich and assassinate the head of Germany's atomic-bomb program. This isn't a man-on-a-mission sequel to Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds — it's a true story. (Sorta. Important asterisks go here.) Ben Lewin's The Catcher Was a Spy casts Paul Rudd as that athlete, Moe Berg, and surrounds him with a surprisingly top-shelf supporting cast. Bad buzz out of its Sundance premiere is puzzling, as this is a very enjoyable middle-of-the-road adventure, especially for moviegoers willing to see just about anything starring Rudd. But perhaps the early naysayers picked up on questionable behind-the-scenes decisions likely to dog the pic if and when it gets a wide release.


First, the good stuff: As depicted in Catcher, Berg is a dashing athlete popularly known as "Professor" for his academic background and facility with many languages; he's popular on quiz shows, where he fares better than he does on the diamond. (The movie downplays Berg's actual rep as a mediocre player, except in a charming bit of self-deprecating dialogue later on.)


Reading several newspapers a day, Berg suspects war is brewing well before it happens. While touring Japan to play exhibition games with a group of American baseball stars, he sneaks off one day to the roof of the tallest building he can find, shooting 16mm film of what will become important military targets. And he's not even on Uncle Sam's payroll yet.


Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Berg brings this footage to the newly created OSS (forerunner of the CIA), where he is first hired for analytic desk work but eventually convinces chief William J. Donovan (Jeff Daniels) to put him in the field. Officials tell Berg about the Manhattan Project, explaining their concern that Germany might develop an atomic bomb before America. Thanks to his linguistic and other abilities, he's a good fit for a delicate job they need done: He is to travel to Italy with a physicist working for the U.S. (Paul Giamatti), interview a scientist there and go on to Zurich to meet Werner Heisenberg (Mark Strong), the man leading German nuclear research. If he has any suspicion that Heisenberg might help Germany make a bomb, Berg is to shoot him on the spot.


The movie shifts gears divertingly a couple of times from here, with some exciting battlefield action (in which Guy Pearce plays the Army man leading the two eggheads through gunfire) eventually giving way to cloak-and-dagger stuff in which Strong must be inscrutable and just smart enough to avoid easy elimination.


So far, so good, in a handsomely designed period film whose cast is more than capable. But in concocting a rousing feature out of Nicholas Dawidoff’s best-selling book of the same name, Lewin and screenwriter Robert Rodat take eyebrow-raising liberties. Not just the usual sort of biopic fudges (like giving no hint of what a sketchy freeloader Berg turned out to be in his post-war years), but the kind that build major thematic elements on extremely shaky factual ground.


The movie has plenty of reason to view Berg as an enigmatic man whose personal history made him both suited for spy work and eager to help America win the war: He was, after all, a Jew — something of an outsider in sports, and a natural enemy of the Third Reich. But the film seizes on scraps of gossip in Dawidoff's book (it amounts to about a page, much of it laughable) to assert that he was a closeted gay man whose relationships with women (like Sienna Miller's Estella Huni, in this story) were, even if genuinely loving, mostly a disguise.


In the film's more than 13,000 words of press notes, the words "gay," "homosexual" and "sexuality" are completely absent, despite this being a central theme explaining the character's gift for keeping secrets. Asked through a publicist if his team had evidence beyond the book to justify this characterization, Lewin said "yes...we have used primary historical sources to inform our depiction of Moe Berg's sexuality." Pressed for details, the director was vague before saying, "We have not tried to depict Moe as gay. He is shown as a man who genuinely loved women, and who may have engaged with other men. We have reflected the innuendo that followed Moe, and not tried to prove anything."


That's a poor reflection of what made it to the screen. Lewin's Moe Berg hangs out in gay bars, beats up a sneaky teammate who hopes to out him and holds hands with a man in an all-male geisha bar after he is asked, "Do you like to hide, Mr. Berg?" When William Donovan, assessing his vulnerability to blackmail, asks nonjudgmentally, "Are you queer?," Moe replies only, "I'm good at keeping secrets."


All this played great for a viewer who believed he was seeing a newly exposed, stranger-than-fiction episode in American history. But after learning that these scenes are extrapolated largely from the homophobic remarks of some 1940s jocks, The Catcher Was a Spy feels both like a disservice to Berg and an insult to historical figures like Alan Turing, who paid a tremendous price for their sexuality after giving everything they had to the war effort. For decades, big-screen biographies glossed over the private lives of even flamboyant gay men. Taking a very private figure and inventing a sex life that moviegoers will assume is true is hardly a step forward.

roduction companies: Animus Films, Serena Films, PalmStar Media
Cast: Paul Rudd, Mark Strong, Guy Pearce, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, Sienna Miller, Tom Wilkinson, Shea Whigham, Connie Nielsen, Hiroyuki Sanada, Giancarlo Giannini
Director: Ben Lewin
Screenwriter: Robert Rodat
Producers: Kevin Frakes, Tatiana Kelly, Buddy Patrick, Jim Young
Executive producers: Vaclav Mottl, Jonathan Gardner, Paul Rudd
Director of photography: Andrij Parekh
Production designer: Luciana Arrighi
Costume designer: Joan Bergin
Editor: Mark Yoshikawa
Composer: Howard Shore
Casting director: Reg Poerscout-Edgerton
Venue: Sundance Film Festival (SidebarOrSection)
Sales: UTA

94 minutes

An angry group of DC fans plan to sabotage Black Panther‘s Rotten Tomatoes audience score in an effort to diminish the film’s success. After years of waiting, the age of better representation in superhero movies is finally here. Wonder Woman had a massive societal impact for what it did for women across the world last year. Now, Marvel Studios is in the final stages of promoting a film that could be just as impactful for the African-American population, Black Panther.

The film has been highly praised for the representation factor, but also has had stellar marketing in the lead up to its debut. Everything appears to have come together for Marvel based on the extremely positive early reactions. Unfortunately, the continued success of Marvel Studios (and its parent company Disney overall) isn’t viewed by everyone as a good thing.

Marvelous Realm shared a rather disappointing post made on Facebook by a group who want to do everything they can to lower Black Panther‘s success. The group – that consists of 2,000 members so far – plans to “strike back” against their alleged unfair treatment of DC’s films by pledging to give Black Panther a rotten audience review once the movie hits theaters. Not only that, but they plan on spreading spoilers to Marvel fans of their choosing to further take away from the film’s enjoyment.
 

HahahahahahahaImagine being so ridiculous. Smh pic.twitter.com/d8dq2kwM1f
— Marvelous Realm (@MarvelousRealm) February 1, 2018

The idea of a mass group of fans targeting a competing franchise in an attempt to hurt the film from succeeding in every way possible is sad on its own, but the fact that it comes with Black Panther is even more unsettling. Black Panther should be a time of celebration for the way it highlights people of color, but instead this group intends to use it as an avenue to express some level of hatred. Further creating a divide between DC and Marvel fans, this group plans to do similar events for all upcoming Marvel films – and claims to be behind Star Wars: The Last Jedi‘s low RT score too.

As disappointing as this is, it is important to note that this is just a select group of DC fans and is by no means an accurate representation of how all DC fans view the MCU. Hopefully the larger portion of fans will rally behind Black Panther and show additional support to combat the attempts of negativity this group wants to promote.

Even with this mindset, it doesn’t appear that anything will be able to stop Black Panther. The film is currently tracking to open over $120 million in its opening weekend. Those figures are a bit old now, with the latest update on Black Panther‘s ticket sales revealed it broke Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice‘s pre-sales record. Once the positive reviews from critics start to come in next week, the groundswell of support will hopefully only continue to boost Black Panther‘s success.

Filming is currently underway on Game of Thrones season 8 and invariably that means spoilers are leaking from the set. This spoiler, however, is a real doozy. Those who wish to remain in the dark about what may happen in Game of Thrones’ final season should stop reading now. Seriously. The following information contains a HUGE SPOILER for upcoming events so do proceed with caution.

Today, Game of Thrones fansite, Watchers on The Wall, shared a video taken from outside the Winterfell set in Northern Ireland. Recent weeks have seen this set grow bigger, with more ramparts and towers getting physically constructed rather than being left for post-production CGI. It’s been assumed this is because more action will take place at Winterfell in season 8 – specifically, a battle once the Night King and his army reach the castle – but thanks to this video we may now know why they really needed to beef up their Winterfell set – so it could be burned to the ground.

The video is short and not of the best quality, but what it depicts couldn’t be any clearer – off in the distance is the very distinct silhouette Winterfell and its is engulfed in massive flames. This video is captured from a long way away, which means this is an incredibly large (and hopefully well-controlled) fire. A fire of this magnitude is not something that any structure – even a fortress as mighty as Winterfell – could be expected to withstand. So while it’s impossible to ever fully confirm a spoiler until the episode actually airs, it sure appears as if Winterfell won’t survive Game of Thrones season 8.

Of course, with any major spoiler comes only more questions. Who’s burning Winterfell? What happened to those still inside? And when exactly does this occur? To the first question, there are really only two possibilities – it’s either the Night King and wight-Viserion or Daenerys and/or Jon with Drogon and/or Rhaegal. Some serious fuel is needed to light a fire that big, so unless someone smuggled wildfire up north (which isn’t really out the realm of possibility) then Winterfell is almost certainly burning with dragonfire.

The Night King reaching Winterfell and razing it with Viserion’s blue flames (an effect added in post) seems to be the most likely scenario since his army is already marching south and Winterfell is sure to be one of his first stops. But then again, since fire is one of the only ways The Night King’s army of the dead can be stopped, perhaps the Starks and their allies choose to sacrifice their ancestral home as a last ditch effort to destroy the White Walkers’ forces.

If this bonfire is a result of The Night King’s army reaching Winterfell, then it would seem that this happens early on in season 8; perhaps even the second or third episode. Then again, maybe humanity manages to make their final stand against the White Walkers at Winterfell, and this is then the result of that climactic battle, placing these events in the fifth or sixth episode. Either way, this castle is almost certainly done for, leaving those who called it home – most recently, Sansa, Arya, and Bran – to either die in its flames or escape and live to fight another day.

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A new rumor suggests Microsoft is looking into acquiring Electronic Arts (EA) to bolster its slate of exclusive games for the Xbox One. It’s no secret that Microsoft has been struggling with developing and publishing a steady stream of Xbox exclusive games, especially compared to Sony’s catalog for the PlayStation 4, which includes titles such as God of War, Spider-Man, and The Last of Us: Part II. That doesn’t mean, however, that Microsoft doesn’t have their own exciting titles on the horizon.

Xbox players can look forward to games such as Sea of Thieves and State of Decay 2 releasing this year. While those games may sell exceptionally well, they don’t pose much of a threat to the competition. The lack of exclusive games is certainly an issue, but publishing first-party titles may not actually be Microsoft’s fundamental goal anymore. With the release of the Xbox One X, and the talking points about giving consumers the best hardware to play their games on, it seems that Microsoft is shifting away from a content-based strategy and more towards a technology-first strategy. Still, they need exclusive games to keep their consumers interested in titles that aren’t available everywhere else – and acquiring a major third-party studio could be their answer to that predicament.

A recent article from Polygon indicates Microsoft’s interest in acquiring a major third-party studio to prop up its exclusive games. Among the names listed are Valve, Electronic Arts, and PUBG Corp. While Microsoft has toyed with acquiring Valve and PUBG Corp in the past, EA is the most recent company that’s landed on their radar.
 

Although it wouldn’t be their first major acquisition, purchasing EA would be a departure from their strategy of rounding up major franchises under their belt and establishing new studios to develop those properties. For instance, Microsoft has procured Halo, Minecraft, and Gears of War in recent years, and they have entire studios dedicated to developing those titles through Microsoft Studios. But the notion of acquiring EA means the console manufacturer may be looking into purchasing an entire archive of games – such as Anthem, Battlefront, and all the EA sports titles – to quickly expand their console exclusive slate. It’s also possible that Microsoft could employ a similar initiative to the one they have with Minecraft and publish EA’s games for multiple platforms, but reap the benefits of doing so. They could, then, maintain their tech-first strategy.

Of course, making a bid for PUBG Corp might be in their best interest, seeing as the Xbox One is the only console at the moment that supports PUBG. By acquiring the company (and the game), they can prevent PUBG from releasing on the PS4, and possibly even speed up production on new maps and features for the PC version. But we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

The record-setting sales rate of Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One make the current console generation the fastest-selling in modern gaming history. A few years ago, it was believed that console gaming was withering away in the face of rising opposition from mobile titles, specifically in the age of smartphones. That all changed when the “next-gen” systems were revealed and subsequently released in 2013 – the first time that both a PlayStation and Xbox system were released not only in the same year but in the same month as well.

PS4 and Xbox One both hit store shelves in November 2013, and while Sony went on to top Nintendo on the sales charts for the first time in eight years, Microsoft struggled in large part due to their conflicting policies and “sub-par” components. However, the Xbox One started to catch up in the sales in recent years following the release of the Xbox One S and the Xbox One X (formerly known as Project Scorpio), which is heralded as “the world’s most powerful console.” And now, the combined sales for both systems have set a new record.

According to NPD analyst Mat Piscatella, the combined sales for the PS4 and Xbox One in the U.S. have surpassed the consolidated sales for PlayStation 2 and Xbox by 4 percent to become the fastest-selling console generation in gaming history. Moreover, the current generation exceeds last-gen (PS3 and Xbox 360) sales by 18 percent. Both percentages were determined by looking at sales for the respective systems within their first 50 months of release.

At the moment, up-to-date hardware sales for the PS4 and Xbox One aren’t known to the public, but Sony did recently mention that they’ve sold through (to retail stores) at least 73.6 million PS4 units globally as of the end of 2017.

This news comes on the heels of the Nintendo Switch becoming the fastest-selling console in U.S. history by selling more than 4.8 million units within its first 10 months of release. While those numbers weren’t factored into the NPD’s calculations, it only further proves that the current generation of video game consoles has exceeded past generations, even topping the Nintendo Wii, which set numerous records when it first hit store shelves in 2006.

Considering that console gaming was supposedly on the verge of collapse in 2012/2013, the new sales record goes to show that as long as there are quality games being released on platforms that can continue to push boundaries, there will always be a consumer base for console gaming.

The Super Bowl trailer for Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has released early and with quite a bang. It’s five more days until sports fans get to watch the Eagles and the Patriots challenge each other in the biggest football game of the year. But fans of intrigue, action, and Tom Clancy’s popular CIA Agent Jack Ryan don’t have to wait until the Super Bowl to watch the newest Jack Ryan trailer – it can be seen online right now.

Based on the popular series of novels, the upcoming Amazon show goes back to the beginning for Ryan, examining his transition from an analyst who pushes papers to a field agent who dodges bullets and saves lives. Played by John Krasinski, an earlier teaser trailer looked at Ryan as an analyst and showed the first moment he had to leave the safety of his office and head out to learn exactly how much of a badass he is. And a later preview revealed Ryan asking the man he abducted how he was doing as a kidnapper, since it was his first time. For the Super Bowl trailer, a new kind of story is being told.

The trailer, released earlier today on Prime Video, shows a montage of moments in the field for Ryan. Whether he is on a series of missions or simply one very intense adventure, it is clear that gunfire and explosions are in Jack Ryan’s near future. The explosive trailer also shows that while Ryan is a hero, he does not escape unscathed every time. Ryan never speaks during the trailer, instead a series of quotes spoken by several United States Presidents during their tenures plays in the background.
 

Krasinski joins the ranks of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck, and Chris Pine as actors who have played Ryan before. Amazon’s series will retcon the latest film – Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – which told an original version of Ryan’s early days as an operative. Jack Ryan will follow the character’s story in the books much more closely, with Ryan going into the field the first time after learning of some suspicious activity in his role as an analyst, and presumably learning that he is good enough at it to make a career of hunting down the bad guys himself.

It makes sense for the Super Bowl commercial to be more explosive than the previous trailers have been. Arguably one of the few days of the year when audiences watch the commercials as intently and with as much interest as the main event, Super Bowl commercials and trailers do what they can to stand out from the crowd and catch our eye. While there are plenty of explosions and gun fights doing so in this trailer, the compassion in Ryan’s face as he sees the human side of his work is just as compelling.

Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan will be available on Amazon in August 2018

Source: Prime Video

Netflix is in talks with Luc Besson and EuropaCorp to have the French filmmaker and his company produce and/or direct original movies for the streaming giant over the next few years. The Besson negotiations are part of Netflix’s larger bid to substantially increase the amount of original movies and TV shows that the service provides, in order to stay competitive in the increasingly crowded field of content streaming. Netflix plans to spend upwards of $8 billion on original content development in 2018 alone, which is actually up from the $6 billion that the company spent making films and TV series in 2017.

Among the storytellers that Netflix is either actively courting or has already recruited to the streaming side are Kick-Ass and Kingsman comic book series creator Mark Millar, Shondaland founder and master TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes, and Cloverfield and War for the Planet of the Apes filmmaker Matt Reeves. While most of these creatives have been successfully tempted into signing deals with Netflix thanks to the greater artistic freedom that the streaming giant offers (compared to longstanding film studios and TV networks), EuropaCorp is also mulling a deal as a way of addressing the heavy debt that it currently finds itself burdened with.

According to Variety, the deal would see Besson and EuropaCorp produce movies in the $30 million range under the Netflix original label. That also means that, unless Besson does some extreme cost cutting, the filmmaker would have to look elsewhere to make a sequel to his big-budgeted cosmic comic book adaptation (and commercial dud), Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. In addition, the Netflix deal could ultimately give the company the rights to EuropaCorp’s established library of content, which is estimated to be worth some $186 million and includes such action/thriller properties as Taken and The Transporter.
 

Assuming that the deal closes, Besson will join the growing list of high-profile filmmakers now hanging their hat at Netflix. The roster already includes Martin Scorsese, as well as Nightcrawler and Roman J. Israel, Esq. director Dan Gilroy, Whiplash and La La Land director Damien Chazelle, and Selma and 13th director Ava DuVernay, among others. The content they’re developing for Netflix is as varied as these storytellers themselves, ranging from Scorsese’s passion project gangster drama The Irishman to Chazelle’s Parisian musical series The Eddy, and DuVernay’s docudrama series about the Central Park Five.

Besson’s Netflix deal, as indicated earlier, would move the filmmaker away from the big-budget spectacle of films like Valerian and keep him focused on churning out mid-range fare. The director has never been inclined to stick with one genre, having shifted gears from historical melodrama (The Lady) to gangster action/comedy (The Family), and back to science-fiction with Lucy and Valerian over the past ten years alone. Pure action genre movies aren’t off the table either, meaning the Netflix deal could also see Besson return to his roots in lone assassin movies like Léon: The Professional and La Femme Nikita.

Luc Besson is currently filming the original action movie Anna, starring Helen Mirren and Luke Evans.

Source: Variety

Progress is continuing on HBO’s Watchmen television adaptation, with Nicole Kassell set to direct the pilot episode. Originally a seminal 1980s graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, Watchmen was first brought to the realm of live-action by Zack Snyder, who would later take his superhero experience into the DCEU. Snyder’s Watchmen attracted vastly mixed responses. While some loved the movie’s visual style, action and mature tone, others were disappointed that Snyder didn’t always stick completely to the source material, although this was perhaps unsurprising given that the Watchmen comic has often been considered impossible to put on screen.

Interestingly then, another attempt is being made to put Watchmen on screen. This new effort comes courtesy of HBO and will be a television series, rather than a feature length movie. Damon Lindelof, perhaps best known for his work on Lost, has been confirmed as showrunner and it was previously reported that filming would begin this March. Other than that, little else is known about the forthcoming Watchmen series, however Patrick Wilson has expressed an interest in reprising his character of Nite Owl from the 2009 movie and none other than notoriously hard to spot WWE Superstar, John Cena, has hinted at some involvement.

As reported by THR, Watchmen has now found its new director, at least for the pilot episode. Behind the camera will be Nicole Kassell, who will also act as an executive producer on the series. This isn’t the first time that Kassell and Lindelof have teamed up, as the director worked on two episodes of The Leftovers in 2015 and 2017: “No Room At The Inn” and “It’s A Matt, Matt, Matt, Matt World.” Kassell has also directed for series such as The Killing, Better Call Saul and The Following.
 

Kassell’s work on The Leftovers was very well received and therefore a reunion with Damon Lindelof on Watchmen can only be a positive sign for the new adaptation. The director also has a track record of working on critically acclaimed series that have a somewhat challenging or esoteric element. Given its origins, Watchmen is likely to fall into this category and Kassell’s résumé should prove useful as a result.

While the addition of Nicole Kassell is undoubtedly good news for Watchmen fans, the fact remains that the new series will be incredibly difficult to execute successfully and is almost certain to disappoint at least a section of the original graphic novel’s fanbase. In these situations, sticking closely to the source material is often the wisest move but it has already been suggested by HBO that this will not be the case.

Watchmen is currently without a premiere date. More news as we get it.

Source: THR

This week’s episode of Supergirl promised the return to the storyline of fan-favorite characters Lena Luthor and James Olsen (and their not-necessarily-fan-favorite budding relationship) after a string of episodes focused overwhelmingly on Kara and her fellow aliens taking on prospective world-ending threats, along with the return of Lena’s corporate foe Morgan Edge. But the episode also featured a comeback that most didn’t see coming (at least not at this juncture): Lillian Luthor, Lena’s supervillain mother, who reinserted herself into a game of assassination cat-and-mouse between her daughter and Edge that also functioned as a none too subtle metaphor for Lena’s inner battle with her own duality (she wants to be one of the good guys, but Luthors are just so good at being bad…)

The whole shebang came together in a mostly satisfying way, dovetailing with a B-story about Sam (aka Reign) admitting to suffering from unexplained blackouts (when she doesn’t remember being Reign) to her friends and getting tested but mainly spinning off into a clever four-way game of motive and opportunity: Morgan Edge is trying to kill Lena, Lillian tries to kill Edge “for Lena” (and also to nudge her toward her own dark side), James suits up as Guardian (remember that?) to protect her and investigate/threaten Edge, Lena tries to thwart her mother and also finish things with Edge without necessarily killing him. Alex, Kara and the DEO are also involved – though more in a “support” capacity right up to the point where they can’t be anymore.

Obviously, since this is Supergirl, there needs to be a mid-story cliffhanger for some tension (Lena gets poisoned, which is negated by use of Kara’s freeze-breath which makes scientific sense because shut up) and eventually things need to get blown-off with a big super brawl – this one featuring a big DC fan treat in Lillian paying off that tease of Lex’s strength-enhancing warsuit from the Silver Age comics (which Supergirl has opted to christen “The Lexosuit”) from way back in mid-season 2. Even with all that going on, this is still ultimately a “breather” episode from the running main plot of Kara versus Reign, though, so we wrap with things mostly on hold. Lillian Luthor is off to jail, but she’ll be back. That’s another potential semi-regular bad guy for season 3’s roster, not even counting the three other Worldkillers who’ve not officially joined the main story yet… is that too many?

Fans of superhero media spend a potentially inordinate amount of time on the question of how many villains is too many. Whereas at one point it might have been assumed that afficionados of the genre would enjoy seeing heroes taking on whole legions of familiar foes (once upon a time famously-unfilmed screenplays for projects as diverse as Dazzler or early drafts of Spider-Man often featured whole caches of costumed enemies), the box-office disappointment of Batman & Robin instilled a supposedly common nugget of wisdom in the minds of the viewing public that “too many villains” was a sure sign of a comic-based property about to make a serious misstep. Many would also point to the divisive Spider-Man 3, which featured three nemeses after the first two films had centered on one apiece, as further proof of the calculus.

Like many such cultural memes, there’s a semblance of logic to the idea of “villain overload.” Superheroes originated as static characters whose origin stories were pre-set and whose issue-to-issue adventures were defined by the challenges set up by their enemies, who were different every issue in order to give readers an easily visible confirmation that this new story was different from the one they may have bought and read previously. That tradition carried over into animated cartoons that brought superhero characters to a wider audience, and also to the Adam West version of Batman, which typically pitted the Caped Crusaders against a different foe from caper to caper (adaptations of Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man typically featured more mundane enemies or figures made up for television, instead).

Modern superhero series and movies, on the other hand, have trended toward more serialized forms of storytelling and routinely feature multiple villains – though often organized into heirarchies. Batman Begins has at least four (a mobster, The Scarecrow and two incarnations of Ra’s Al Ghul), Iron Man and Captain America tend to take on entire organizations (or each other) and on television one often finds “season arc” villains, interspersed with one-off foes dropped in along the way. That’s the model Supergirl has thus far followed, though season 2 pulled something of a fast-fake by swapping out apparent main villainess Lillian Luthor with Mon-El’s evil mom as the “real” big bad for the big finale. Season 3 is all about Kara versus Reign (and her mysterious handlers) with minor deviations along the way… or at least it was.

As of now, Supergirl season 3 can now count Reign, her master(s), The Worldkillers (unless one or more turn out to be “good”), the evil Rao-appropriating cult leader, Morgan Edge and now Lillian Luthor as significant main-story threats with the episode-order not even half completed – meaning it’s likely that there are more to come if the first two seasons were any indication. That’s an awful lot of bad guys for one series to juggle, and that’s before one remembers that Supergirl is often primarily focused on dramatic storylines about character relationships that don’t involve the villains primarily or even at all (though it feels fairly likely that the time-travel storyline that’s caused the love-triangle between Kara, Mon-El and Imra will eventually prove to be tied to Reign etc before the season is out.)

On the other hand, Supergirl has deftly juggled multiple tones and story points before, so a plurality of villainy shouldn’t necessarily be any more difficult to manuever around than the multitude of romantic pairings that dominated season 2’s B-stories. Season 3’s running theme has focused overwhelmingly on building up Kara’s ability to withstand a breaking-point of personal and professional obligations piling up all at once, so the abundance of seemingly major threats is clearly part of an intentional extension of that theme. But intentions can still backfire, and fans will no doubt be on the lookout for whether or not Supergirl can grapple with this conundrum that’s scuttled so many super-properties before it.

As HBO’s Game of Thrones slowly winds toward its conclusion in 2019, one of the show’s former stars is predicting a massive Bran Stark twist.

Featuring as one of the few surviving Starks out there in the Seven Kingdoms, Isaac Hempstead-Wright’s floppy-haired tower climber has gone from forgotten cripple to one of the show’s most influential characters. Even with Bran sitting out the entirety of season 5, he returned for season 6 to give us one of the best episodes ever with ‘The Door.’ Not only featuring the tragic demises of Hodor and the Three-Eyed Raven, ‘The Door’ also honed in on Bran’s ability to alter the past (and possibly) the future of Game of Thrones.

With various theories floating around – and maybe that Bran himself could be the villainous Night King – Thrones actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster is supporting the Bran = Three-Eyed Raven plot twist. Isaac Hempstead-Wright has already said he would love to see it play out, but speaking to Huffington Post, Brodie-Sangster is fully supporting that theory:

“Yeah, I kind of went with that one. I like the theory of multiverses and different parallel universes working together in time. I just quite like that theory. I went with that and like the idea of that.”

However, keeping up with Game of Thrones, who’s marrying who, and who’s still alive in Westeros can be a full-time job. Brodie-Sangster also said that the wild theories that keep the show alive can also be a double-edged sword:

“You got to be careful you don’t lose people ― what people love about a certain show [speaking about time travel]. But, like I said, I like all that.”
 

For those who don’t remember who Brodie-Sangster played, he was the creepy Jojen Reed in season 3 and 4. Along with his sister Meera, Jojen traveled with Bran, Hodor, Osha, and Rickon. As the boy who had some sort of connection to the Three-Eyed Raven, Jojen perished to save Bran’s life; however, remembering Jojen’s very first appearance, he said that the Raven is “you” to Bran. The clues have been littered across the board that Bran will become Max von Sydow’s aged Raven, with Bran already seeming to have taken his powers. Von Sydow’s character also said that it was time for Bran to “become” him, but taking it in a literal sense, this could be one hell of a twist for the show’s swansong.

As for what Bran is up to next? Well, season 7 saw him adopt a much colder persona, seemingly lost in being able to see the past, present, and future at once. Seemingly casting Meera aside, Bran then helped unravel the nefarious schemes of Petyr Baelish which ended in his execution. As the remaining Starks band together with Jon Snow and Queen Daenerys under the banners of Winterfell, Bran should prove to be a major player in the war against Cersei Lannister and the incoming threat of White Walkers. However, will we ever get to see Bran go “full Raven” and take his place in the cave of the Three-Eyed Raven, or will this turn out to be yet more smoke and mirrors from the mind-bending show?

Source: Huffington Post