u/Neo2199

>Set in the summertime in Stockholm, this new Scandi noir crime thriller series opens with an emergency call to the police about a home invasion. Two officers are dispatched to the address, a summer house in the archipelago, except they find no one there, at least not that they can see. The next day, their bodies are found, victims of a brutal crime.

>So begins a series of terrifying murders, all seemingly targeting police officers. To help crack the case, lead detective Thomas (Jakob Oftebro) turns to his father, Alfred (Peter Andersson), a retired detective. The two are estranged, but the murders force them into an uneasy alliance to hunt down and find the serial cop killer before time runs out.

>Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” exploded at the box office this weekend, boosted by enthusiasm for seeing the epic in massive Imax — especially 70mm Imax, Nolan’s preferred format. But while demand continues to be high for the format that’s only available in over 40 locations in the United States, don’t expect Imax to suddenly build a bunch of 70mm projectors to increase availability in the coming years.

>“The economics are very difficult to meet,” Imax CEO Rich Gelfond said in response to a question about doubling the number of 70mm Imax projectors on Thursday’s earnings call.

>“It’s very expensive. You need film prints, not only the projector, which costs $50,000 a piece to put in your theater. You need logistics like a forklift to lift them, so you need a very big projection booth,” he continued. “When you get through the numbers of it, there are a finite number of locations that really can support the economics of it.”

Edit: According to Variety, the actual number of Imax 70mm screens as follow: 25 theaters in the U.S. and 41 globally.

>In order to garner the approval, the European Commission said:

• Paramount agreed to divest its stake in a film distribution joint venture with United International Pictures in Europe,
• It would not enter into any film distribution deal with Universal for the next 10 years in Europe.

>Paramount’s stock rose 3% in midday trading.

>The EU’s approval marks a major regulatory milestone for the $110 billion proposed merger.

>The deal earlier won approval from the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Various other global jurisdictions have also signed off on the deal.

>However, in the U.S., a lawsuit brought forward by a group of state attorneys general last week has become a potential holdup in this deal moving forward.

>Anyone who’s followed Netflix long enough knows that the streaming giant doesn’t rest on its laurels, and it isn’t religious about anything.

>Ads? They are bad. Until they aren’t. Live sports? Not for us. Until it is. Original content? No need for it. Until there was.

>The Netflix model is to crawl, start walking, and then to sprint, not being afraid to change course quickly if things aren’t looking great.

>It’s that context that makes a few subtle experiments and tweaks by Netflix over the past few days all the more interesting.

• The streaming giant is bringing back free trials in some markets, a practice it abandoned in 2020 (What’s On Netflix, which first reported the trials, notes that it is not available in the U.S. for now).
• And in conjunction with its earnings report, it announced that it would pull back on sharing viewership data for shows twice a year, shifting to a once annual cadence. It only started sharing that data more granularly in Dec. 2023. Hiding data may not be creator or media-friendly, but it gives Netflix the wiggle room to maneuver and take risky bets without the distraction of analysts wondering about whether it’s working or not.
• And once again Netflix is running a veritable chemistry lab of content experiments: YouTube shows! Video podcasts! Live streaming broadcast channels! Cloud-based video games!
• One of those experiments is bundling France’s TF1 channels into Netflix, with one analyst wondering if the service is eyeing similar deals elsewhere. The answer is an undeniable “yes.”

>
So when Netflix brings back the trials, pulls back on the data and starts getting weird with content experiments again, it is in some ways rolling it back to the glory days, when it was a disruptor, not a juggernaut.

>Of course back then it was disrupting the traditional entertainment giants. Now it needs to disrupt itself.

>Today’s BBC Annual Report showed that license fee payers slid by 539,000 last year to around 23.3 million. This is the biggest decline since 2020-21 and likely one of the biggest of all time.

>Despite the number of people paying the annual £180 ($240) fee dropping significantly, the BBC’s license fee income rose by £36M to £3.9B, which for the second year in a row was a record figure. This was due to the license fee rising with inflation. For the previous year, the number paying the fee dipped by 300,000 and income was £3.84B.

>News of the decline in license fee payers comes with the BBC seeking some sort of revamped financial model during its crucial charter renewal negotiations with the government, which will set the model for the next decade.

>The government has ruled out several options including a household tax, advertising and subscription service, and the license fee will continue in some form, but it is the shape of the future license fee that is being hotly debated.

>Branding the current state of play “no longer sustainable,” the BBC said the “downward trend” is due to the acceleration of audiences “not consuming licensable content” and a “lighter sports year.” BBC finance boss Bérangère Michel then told press that the corporation only sees the trend “accelerating” as more and more people stop watching live TV.

>The corporation is floating several ideas to improve the situation including expanding the license fee to cover households that watch non-live content via streaming services like Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+.

Back in June, the idea was rejected by The Motion Picture Association representing U.S. streamers and studios:

Deadline: U.S. Studios Bristle At Proposals For Them To Support The BBC In Collecting Its Revenue

>The Motion Picture Association (MPA), the trade body that represents U.S. studios including Netflix and Disney, is lobbying against proposals in the UK that could require its members to support the BBC in collecting its funding.

>The MPA, which also counts Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount among its members, has said that it would “caution against” any plan for third parties to help the BBC impose the license fee on more British households.

Looking for old Sci-Fi pulp comics (30s-50s).