Amazon is set to spend a gargantuan ~$4.5 billion on video in 2017, according to analysts at JPMorgan, a figure that would put the internet giant much closer to rival Netflix than many industry observers thought.

In July, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky said Amazon would "nearly double" its investment in video, while "tripling" its amount of original content in Prime Video, over the remainder of 2016. This new estimate from JPMorgan on the 2017 budget suggests that spending will continue to blast upward.

Even so, Amazon would still sit below Netflix’s $6 billion content budget for 2017. But $4.5 billion would make Amazon a major, major player in the market. For reference, HBO spent around $2 billion on programming in 2016, and while Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said that budget would rise a bit this year, he characterized the 2017 HBO programming budget as a “couple of billion dollars” in December.

Global domination

In December, Amazon took Prime Video global by launching in over 200 countries. At the same time, Amazon has beefed up its originals, paying a reported $250 million for “The Grand Tour,” its blockbuster car show from the “Top Gear” team. “The Grand Tour” and “The Man in the High Castle” are Amazon’s two most popular shows in most countries, Amazon Studios boss Roy Price revealed this week.

Price characterized Amazon's video focus as “the crème de la crème,” its blockbuster shows. The “actual shows people are talking about,” he said. These might cost hundreds of millions, but they are key for the business.

“It’s actually efficient and good economics,” Price said of “The Grand Tour.”

But Amazon isn’t only focused on shows. Amazon and the NFL recently struck a $50 million deal for Amazon to stream 10 Thursday night games, according to The Wall Street Journal. This is a similar deal to the one the NFL had with Twitter last year, except about five times larger for the same number of games. These games will only be available as part of Amazon Prime Video, and the general public won’t be able to watch.

“We’re focused on bringing our customers what they want to watch, Prime members want the NFL,” Amazon SVP Jeff Blackburn told the Journal.

If this NFL deal proves a success, it could embolden Amazon to further go after the cable and satellite TV industry, which has seen competition from streaming TV packages. YouTube, Hulu, AT&T, and others have recently jumped into market, and Amazon has long been rumored to be working on its own.

SEE ALSO: Only 8% of college students don't have Netflix, and that's a great sign for the company's future

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Director Walter Hill has never been shy about making fantastical material.

His New York City-set movie about conflicting gangs “The Warriors” became an instant cult hit in 1979 and then he went and jumpstarted the buddy-cop genre with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in 1982's “48 Hrs.”

But during those years of success, he had another unique story idea buried away that is only now getting its moment in the spotlight.

“The Assignment” (opening in theaters Friday and available on VOD) stars Michelle Rodriguez (of "Fast and Furious" and "Resident Evil" fame) as a male assassin who wakes to find that he's had gender-reassignment surgery and goes on the hunt for the doctor (Sigourney Weaver) who is responsible. While the setup has raised some eyebrows as the movie has made its way to release, it dates back many years.

Hill said the initial idea for "The Assignment" came in 1978 when screenwriter Denis Hamill wrote the story, then titled "Tomboy," and sent it to him.

"I was fascinated by it, it was very different," Hill recently told Business Insider. "I instantly thought it could make a movie, but I was very busy at the time."

A hot commodity in Hollywood at the time, Hill forgot about the script. But 20 years later, he went back and optioned it from Hamill. He hired another screenwriter and the two went at developing the story.

"It didn't come out very well and I abandoned it and let the option return to Denis," Hill said. "I just thought some work and some don't."

15 years passed and Hill came across Hamill's original script in his basement. Flipping through it, he finally figured out how he thought he should make it.

"That moment of insight had to do with making an episode of 'Tales from the Crypt' that I had done in the 1980s," he said. "I decided if I do it like a longer version of an episode from that show it would work, as the story had to be set it in a special world."

To add to the "Tales from the Crypt" vibe of the movie, Hill was able to get a publisher to make a graphic novel version of "The Assignment," which he said helped in finally landing the financing (under $3 million) to make the movie.

"The Assignment" has come under fire from critics who have called it transphobic for exploiting a minority identity for thrills, but Hill has defended the work, saying it isn't transphobic and isn't about a trans-identifying character.

SEE ALSO: HBO just unveiled a peek at 15 new character looks for "Game of Thrones" season 7

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NOW WATCH: 'Sesame Street' has been mocking Trump since 1988 — here are some of the best moments

AMC's "Into the Badlands" was snubbed by last year's Emmy awards – something its star has a hard time accepting.

"I question that. Especially for action choreography I was expecting a nomination," Daniel Wu, the star and executive producer on the AMC show (airing its second season on Sundays), told Business Insider recently.

"I'm still pretty sour about that, because there were shows that got nominated that definitely have lousy action," Wu continued. "I was very surprised that we didn't get nominated. I'm not sure what factors are involved in that. I know AMC definitely has the power to push something like that and I know they did, so I'm not sure why it didn't get there."

"Into the Badlands" takes place in a post-apocalyptic society where land has been divided among lords and everyone has to choose sides. Wu's Sunny is the deadliest assassin on his lord's army, but talented fighters of all ages, genders, and styles can be found among the many factions.

To bring the world's dangers to life, the show employs many fight choreography stars from the Hong Kong kung fu film industry. The actors all attend an intense five-week fighting camp between seasons in order to pull off the amazing battle moves they're asked to perform.

"We just built on what we built from last season," Wu said of the fight camp. "So we took them to the level we got them to and brought it up a notch... It's very difficult to make someone look like a martial arts expert in a short amount of time."

The results can be found in the show's eye-popping fight scenes, which really can't be found anywhere else on TV. That's another reason Wu is so perplexed by the show's lack of awards attention.

"To me nowadays awards shows, there's so much politics and all kinds of other crap going on," he said. "I don't really care that much about it anymore. Especially when you get slighted in something like this. Of course, we have great costumes and great lighting, great camerawork, and all the kind of stuff that should get nominations too. But definitely the action is something different that you've never seen on TV before. To not get nominated for that was definitely a sour point in my mind. I'm speaking for myself."

Last year, the nominees for stunt coordination in a drama were "Game of Thrones," "Gotham," "Marvel's Daredevil," "Rush Hour," and "The Blacklist." "Thrones" ended up winning, a decision Wu understands. But like anyone with a fighting spirit, he would have loved to be in the ring.

"I think 'Game of Thrones' won for the 'Battle of the Bastards' and I totally think they deserved it – that was amazing fight sequences – so grand and epic," he told us. "They should've won, but I think we should've been in contention."

SEE ALSO: 'Into the Badlands' star Daniel Wu: Why the show owes the 'epic grandness' of season 2 to Ireland

DON'T MISS: How 'Into the Badlands' pulls off its incredible martial arts fighting scenes

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NOW WATCH: We're already sold on AMC's insane-looking kung fu western 'Into the Badlands'

At one time, the strategy for getting the attention of faith-based movie audiences was pretty straightforward: Build a grassroots marketing campaign focused on certain congregations and churches, bus them to movie theaters, and let word of mouth build.

It was a model that led to numerous religious-themed movies having impressive opening weekends at the box office, most notably Mel Gibson's epic depiction of the final hours of Jesus Christ, "The Passion of the Christ," which is still the highest-grossing R-rated movie of all time.

With the rise of streaming, there have been obvious tweaks to faith-based marketing, but those who work in this part of the film industry have also seen a change since President Donald Trump started running for and then won the White House.

'There's riches in the niches'

"What's shaking out since Trump is that people don't trust institutions. They don't trust the top-down — they want stories that are real and honest," marketer and producer Erik Lokkesmoe told Business Insider. "It's a feeling of, 'Don't tell me it's simple and easy.' The audience we're serving now knows issues are complex."

Lokkesmoe says the days of just going directly to community leaders, librarians, teachers, and pastors to get the word out about a movie are over. He observes that within the Christian audience, there are now subgroups with varying beliefs and tastes. As he puts it, in today's faith-based market, "There's riches in the niches."

How to find the 'Trump audience'

One obvious niche that everyone is trying to cater to at the moment, of course, is Trump's base. Though Lokkesmoe says it's still too early to get an exact read on the president's most ardent supporters, he has seen what kind of power they can give to a project.

The documentary "Is Genesis History?" explores how the world intersects with the history recorded in the Book of Genesis. It was released as a Fathom Events one-night special in late February and earned $1.8 million on just 704 screens. It was the top-earning theatrical release that day (a Thursday), beating out "The Lego Batman Movie" and "Fifty Shades Darker" (both of which played on more than double the number of screens as "Is Genesis History?" did).

"That is clearly a Trump audience," Lokkesmoe said. "The feeling of, 'We're under siege, our beliefs are being attacked, let's get together one night and confirm our beliefs.' That's very much a Trump mentality."

But it's not just the theatrical realm seeing a Trump bump. Those who keep any eye on the burgeoning streaming market for faith-based titles have noticed more passion online.

Michael Scott is the CEO and cofounder of Pure Flix, which is considered the Netflix of the faith-based market (also the top indie faith-based studio in the world and the worldwide leader in producing and distributing faith and family-friendly entertainment). He has observed liveliness from his customers since Trump got into office.

"I feel some of the audience feels beat down a little bit by some of the media and now it's their chance to be more open and comment about the movies and talk about the movies," Scott told Business Insider. "That's the environment now. There's more openness to talk about faith-based films."

Pure Flix has more than 5,000 titles available to stream (ranging from features and TV to preaching and teaching content), and the company also produces its own titles (its latest, "The Case for Christ," stars Erika Christensen, Faye Dunaway, and Robert Forster, and it opens in theaters Friday). Though Scott says business has continued to thrive on the streaming side since his company started in 2015, that's not necessarily because of current events. As he sees it, you still have to tell a specific kind of story for the faith-based audience.

"One of the key reasons why people come to faith-based films is because of the message," he said. "You have to drive the message first and then wrap an organic story around the message. If you are leading with just a great story, then they could see a Hollywood release."

That formula worked well for releases like 2015's "War Room," which focused on a troubled family finding strength through prayer and went on to earn over $11 million to win its opening weekend. And this year's "The Shack," starring Octavia Spencer as God, took in over $16 million to come in a respectable third place its opening weekend (and it's earned close to $54 million worldwide).

Scott said that's why you shouldn't expect coming faith-based movies to revolve around political issues of the day like the Trump travel ban or other stories coming out of his administration.

"Maybe those would be dealt with in a subplot in a movie," said Scott, who noted that Pure Flix's 2014 film "God's Not Dead" did feature a Muslim family.

Making the faith-based movie bigger

It's hard to see the "message-first" formula changing. But in the Trump era, a new group is being forged out of the faith-based market: what's known as the "aspirational" audience.

These are people who want to engage in the content beyond the theatrical or TV experience. That could include buying the book that a movie or show is based on or starting community outreach.

"The aspirational audience is not the Trump voter," Lokkesmoe said. "They are more artistic, younger, and less political."

But Lokkesmoe said the aspirational audience had grown up in an era when it was inspired to make change. His company, Aspiration Studios, has recently built campaigns focused on this audience for Martin Scorsese's "Silence" and the coming TV show "Genius."

Scott noted that Pure Flix was looking to launch a separate division to focus on the aspirational market with movies budgeted at $10 million to $30 million that have A-list talent attached (its current films are made for $4 million to $7 million).

Lokkesmoe said that was the biggest takeaway so far from the Trump era: There's more interest in feeding content to a particular audience than ever before.

"We're seeing a lot more funders and people thinking beyond how to find an audience that is out there for whatever topic or issue," he said. "There's more interest in that than 'Let's make one movie that's going to change the world.'"

SEE ALSO: 54 of the most hilariously bad Amazon movie reviews

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NOW WATCH: 'Sesame Street' has been mocking Trump since 1988 — here are some of the best moments

Online advertising service Warc has released its 2017 rankings of the world's 100 most effective advertising campaigns.

Unlike the ranking from 2016, when Droga5 dominated with three of the top ten ads, 2017 had no single standout agency.

Each of the top five campaigns were characterised by the use of technology to target and reach consumers at the right moment and strong multi-platform strategies that ensured consumers got the full story.

Stunts were also a big deal: Two of the top five were event-based. Not to forget the traditional medium of TV, which was one of the driving factors in generating a strong return on investment.

The campaigns were ranked in partnership with King's College London according to a points score calculated with a "rigorous methodology" using data from ad award ceremonies around the world. The assessment included the campaign's impact, industry perception, and the level of competition it faced. For each competition a particular campaign won, its award points were multiplied by the rating of the competition.

Scroll down to see the top 10:

SEE ALSO: The 10 most valuable brands in the world

10. Tigerair – Infrequent Flyers. Warc points: 49.6

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9. SPC – #MyFamilyCan. Warc Points: 51.2

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8. Always – #LikeAGirl. Warc points: 52.2

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"Colossal," Anne Hathaway's new movie, is the type of movie that could have easily been terrible.

It's a high-concept drama about female self-empowerment and the dangers of alcoholism. Hathaway plays a woman who — after struggling with her career, boyfriend, and drinking too much — moves back to her hometown in upstate New York, only to learn that she has a mental link with a kaijū monster terrorizing Seoul.

A high-concept story is, basically, a story with a "what if" scenario that can be pitched in just a few words. It's been a popular genre for decades, usually because it turns a science fiction or fantasy conceit into a story that's easy to understand and imparts some kind of morality, like Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone."

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of the best, most thoughtful comedies were high-concept films, including "Big" (a teenager who wishing to be an adult suddenly becomes one) and "Groundhog Day" (a weatherman lives the same day on repeat). They became more ambitious, producing some of the most important movies in Hollywood, like "Jurassic Park" (what if dinosaurs were alive today?) and "Toy Story" (what if toys could talk?).

By the late 1990s and early 2000s, some of the better high-concept movies became increasingly creative, but the time period also began to produce some films that dated poorly. 1997 had "Face/Off" (what if an FBI agent swapped faces with a criminal?") and 2004 had "The Incredibles" (what goes on in a family of undercover superheros?). The same period also included creepy fare like "50 First Dates" (a man falls in love with a woman with short-term memory loss) and eye-rollers like "Snakes on a Plane" (snakes are on a plane).

By now, high-concept movies are almost entirely awful comedies. In the past decade, we've had to witness "The Tooth Fairy" (Dwayne Johnson pretends to be the tooth fairy), "Bedtime Stories" (Adam Sandler tells his kids stories that come true), and the regrettable "Jack and Jill" (Adam Sandler plays his own twin, who is a woman).

That's where "Colossal" comes in.

"Colossal" is by no means a perfect movie. The middle third, especially, is uneven, teetering in tone from absurdist dark comedy to threatening home-invasion thriller. But it is, for the most part, very good.

Anne Hathaway, once again, knocks it out of the park, and Jason Sudeikis demonstrates himself to be a shockingly effective dramatic actor. The ending, too, is a crowd-pleaser that nicely wraps the whole story together.

And more importantly, "Colossal" shows what a high-concept movie can do. Its silly-sounding premise, where a young woman has a mental link with a monster on the other side of the world that allows her to control it — it's perfect for high jinks. And it is indeed occasionally funny, in a dark, people-are-getting-stomped-on kind of way.

But at the same time, writer-director Nacho Vigalondo's film explores serious issues, like the consequences of alcoholism and the bad decisions we make. That sounds mundane if the movie didn't have a monster that destroys Seoul in it.

Hopefully, "Colossal" signals the beginning of a new stage in the high-concept genre, where it can be restored to its former glory. It's certainly time.

Watch the trailer for "Colossal" below:

SEE ALSO: Here are all 34 TV reboots and spin-offs coming out in 2017

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There are times when an author releases a book, and it seems like they've finally pinned down an idea they've been wrestling with for their entire writing career. The science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson has done that with his latest novel, "New York 2140."

Robinson's past books mostly been set in space — on interstellar starships or amid the long terraforming project of the planet Mars — but they've centered on questions of how we treat planet Earth. Is this fragile environment portable? Can we fix it if we break it? What is there left to do if we can't?

His stories are adventures first, but they keep coming back to the anxiety that, as a species, we're wrecking the planet, and we don't really have a good imagination of what the planet is going to look like afterward.

"New York 2140" is Robinson's most straightforward attempt to imagine the consequences of our environmental inaction today.

His future Earth flooded in two pulses. The first, a massive calamity caused by rising temperatures melting Antarctic ice, cause sea levels to rise ten feet in ten years. (You won't need a spoiler alert for that one if you've been following climate news.) In his story, the flood spurs a massive refugee crisis, as well as a global effort to radically slash carbon emissions and even pump sunlight-reflecting gas into the atmosphere to cool it back down.

But, at that point, it was too late. Too much heat had made it deep into the oceans, triggering faster ice flows and more melting. A second pulse followed the first, raising sea level another 40 feet, changing coastlines all over the word and smashing the emergency sea wall around New York City. All of this takes place decades before the start of the novel, but sets up the world in which the novel takes place.

In Robinson's version of 2140, Manhattan remains a thriving city. The economic centers have moved uptown, to Washington Heights and the Cloisters. But the central characters still make their lives downtown, where the streets function like wide, polluted, Venetian canals.

The thriller Robinson unspools in that flooded city is gripping on its own merits. But it's the radical imagination of the book that makes it so hard to put down.

If you've spent any time in New York City, you'll have a thousand tiny moments of recognition as Robinson tours his drenched city's neighborhood politics, frustrated public works projects, and street-by-street physical transformation. But even if you haven't, the plausibility of his transformed world is transfixing.

There are moments when the book becomes self-aware in a way that borders on grating, like when Robinson winkingly writes himself in to a bit of 22nd Century environmental history: 

People sometimes say no one saw it coming, but no, wrong: they did. Paleoclimatologists looked at the modern situation and saw CO2 levels screaming up from 280 to 450 parts per million in less than three hundred years, faster than had ever happened in the Earth's entire previous five billion years... and they said, Whoa. They said, Holy shit. People! they said. Sea level rise!... They put in in bumper sticker terms: massive sea level rise sure to follow our unprecedented release of CO2! They published their papers, and shouted and waved their arms, and few canny and deeply thoughtful sci-fi writers wrote up lurid accounts of such an eventuality, and the rest of civilization went on torching the planet like a Burning Man pyromasterpiece. Really.

But by imagining what the world might look like after the harshest impacts of climate change manifest, Robinson creates a richly detailed story out of the increasingly urgent climate science reports that have come out over the last few decades.

For all of that weight it's carrying, "New York 2140" is a surprisingly fun book. It's available now.

SEE ALSO: Trump’s environmental ideas are unpopular all over the country — here's why he's pushing them anyway

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After the dramatic events in season 6 — including some major character deaths — fans are eagerly waiting to find out what lies in store for the people of Westeros. Here are some of the big plotlines we hope to get some answers to this July, when the show returns to HBO. Season 7 is coming!

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AwesomenessTV built its $650 million teen-centric video empire primarily on YouTube, but has since spread to have shows on 31 platforms — from Netflix to go90 to Kik.

And to T.J. Marchetti, AwesomenessTV’s CMO, the most innovative of the bunch right now is Snapchat.

“YouTube was a place for us to start, fish where the fish are,” Marchetti told Business Insider.

The idea was to gain a massive following among Gen Z, particularly teen women. YouTube was perfect for that, but it doesn’t make sense to be confined to one platform, and AwesomenessTV is getting onto as many as possible.

Enter Snapchat, which is the “most innovative media platform there is right now,” according to Marchetti. He credited that to Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel and his team on the product side. “They are in LA for a reason,” he said; they are challenging what a media company looks like and chasing TV dollars.

Snapchat had its IPO in March, and has bounced around since then. One concern for investors has been competition from Facebook and its owned properties, like Instagram, which have continued to roll out features aping Snapchat. 

That doesn't bother Marchetti. "The feature convergence of Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram and messengers doesn't really matter much," he said. Why? "Snapchat is aggressively thinking forward."

There is, however, a caveat to that. "But as a marketer, it's all about who can I target, in what context and how creative we can be to tell our story," Marchetti said. "In that arena, the Facebook and Instagram platform is currently more mature." But give Snapchat time.

As to what a show for Snapchat will look like in the future, Marchetti said AwesomenessTV is looking toward its audience as the guide. “We use Snapchat just like our demo does,” he said. But they are still experimenting. “I don’t pretend to have the answer.” 

The hybrid

Marchetti said AwesomenessTV will continue breaking down the wall between marketing and production. When working as a TV and film exec, Marchetti saw that there was, in both mediums, a chasm between production and marketing and sales.

“Part of impetus [for working for AwesomenessTV] was how do I challenge the way we structure things,” he said. “How we cast a show needs to be how we market the show.” That means baking social media “influencers” into the cast, so you have a built-in audience. The social media presence of those stars — blogging, vlogging, and so on — can draw the right demographic in.

In a recent interview with Business Insider, Hannah Macpherson, the creator of the AwesomenessTV show “t@gged” that ran on Verizon’s go90, explained what that was like.

“I was a little resistant to auditioning YouTubers,” Macpherson said, but some of them ended up being great, and were cast in "t@gged." AwesomenessTV has “almost an algorithm” for determining how many YouTube stars versus traditional actors to put in a project, she said. “It is literally a percentage.” 

But relying on social media stars can have downsides, as Disney and YouTube found out earlier this year, when they cut business ties with YouTube’s biggest star, PewDiePie, after a report from The Wall Street Journal about his anti-Semitic jokes. Stars that grew up on YouTube are used to a freedom that can sometimes become a liability.

“It’s a risk we take,” Marchetti said. But at the rate AwesomenessTV produces content, there’s not much of a gap. “We have a much shorter window by which things can evolve too much [in a bad way].” Still, “they can” evolve too much, Marchetti said, and “they have” on certain occasions.

“You have to go into it eyes wide open,” he said.

SEE ALSO: How to make a new kind of hit TV show for the YouTube generation — from someone who did it

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There's something about a good car chase in a movie that's a joy for the senses.

Maybe it's the incredible talent of stunt drivers (and added visual effects in the last 30 years) that makes you feel you're in danger even though you're comfortably in your seat, or the high stakes of the moment in which the characters we're rooting for will either get out of the situation or have a gruesome finale, but an impressive car-chase scene can make even a mediocre movie a beloved classic.   

The "Fast and Furious" movies have collectively taken the car chase to the next level. To prepare you for the latest movie in the franchise, "The Fate of the Furious" (opening April 14), we decided to look back on the best car chases ever pulled off. 

See where the memorable chases from movies like "Mad Max: Fury Road," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," and "Bullitt" rank on our list:

SEE ALSO: Here are all 44 movie sequels and reboots coming out in 2017

28. “The Rock” (1996)

Before Michael Bay brought nerve gas to Alcatraz, he had a Hummer wreak havoc on the streets of San Francisco. When John Mason (Sean Connery) tries to make a run for it in the beginning of the movie, he hops into a Hummer, and let's just say he doesn't obey traffic laws. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) is honestly no better in a commandeered Ferrari.

27. “Lucy” (2014)

After taking a dangerous synthetic drug that has given her special powers, Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is on the hunt for the person responsible for making her this way. In Paris she thinks she's got a lead on one of the bad guys through sensing people's data on their devices and thus begins her insane chase to find the person through rush-hour traffic. At one point driving on the sidewalk, she never gets a scratch on her car, but she leaves destruction in her wake. 

26. “The Italian Job” (2003)

Though the original "The Italian Job" had a great chase with Mini cars, it's the 2003 reboot that really pushed the envelope. The custom-made Mini Coopers featured in the scene in which Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, and Jason Statham race through underground Los Angeles had to be built with electric motors, as combustible engines aren't allowed in the subway tunnels they shot in. And most of the actors did their own stunt driving.

Fun fact: "Fate of the Furious" director F. Gary Gray also helmed this movie.

Ian McKellen, an actor known for playing some pretty powerful magical people including Gandalf from "Lord of the Rings" and Magneto from "X-Men," recently told the BBC that he was offered the role of Albus Dumbeldore in the "Harry Potter" movies, but he turned it down.

But why did he deny a role that was clearly so perfect for him? 

During the interview, the BBC's Stephen Sackur mentioned critics of McKellen's work, citing a remark actor Richard Harris once made about McKellen and actors Derek Jacobi and Kenneth Branagh. Harris said “these guys [are] technically brilliant, but passionless.”

“Yeah,” McKellen said. “Nonsense.”

Then the British actor further explained his reasoning for turning down "Harry Potter" and what it had to do with Harris.

“When they called me up and said would I be interested in being in the ‘Harry Potter’ films, they didn’t say in what part,” he said. “I worked out what they were thinking, and I couldn’t... I couldn’t take over the part from an actor who I’d known didn’t approve of me.”

McKellen correctly assumed that he was being offered the role of Albus Dumbledore after Harris, who played the character in "The Sorcerer's Stone" and "The Chamber of Secrets," had died.  

“Well, sometimes, when I see the posters of Mike Gambon, the actor who gloriously plays Dumbledore, I think sometimes it is me,” McKellen said.

Things worked out for the best. Gambon was a great Dumbledore. And McKellen playing two iconic wizards from books might have been a little too confusing for everyone. 

SEE ALSO: Every AMC show ranked from worst to best, according to critics

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NOW WATCH: The first full 'Justice League' trailer is here and it looks incredible

Jon Hamm gained acclaim and recognition during his turn as Don Draper on AMC's "Mad Men."

But it was his job waiting tables and scrubbing dishes at a St. Louis restaurant named Sweet Rose that really taught him how to work.

"Working in a restaurant is a good life lesson for anybody," Hamm told Wealthsimple magazine. "My friend used to say that no one should be able to work in Hollywood if they haven't worked in a restaurant."

As a teenager, Hamm worked as a busboy, dishwasher, and waiter at the Greek restaurant in St. Louis. Cooking and cleaning weren't the only skills he took away from the gig.

"I learned how to be nice to people and to ask for help when I need it," he told Wealthsimple. "I learned to love work and find meaning in it. To this day, I like going to work, clocking in and clocking out, the satisfaction of a job well done."

He said that ultimately, working in the service industry sharpened his acting skills.

"It's important to know how to treat people, and to learn how to respond when someone you're working with is having a bad day," he said. "Understanding other people's problems — that's the cornerstone of the service industry, and it's essential as an actor, or whatever field you're in."

Hamm told Wealthsimple that he "worked in restaurants for a long, long time. Recently, I realized that I'd crossed an interesting threshold. I've now — just recently — been working as an actor for longer than I worked as a waiter and bartender."

Read the full story at Wealthsimple »

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Liberal talk-show host Bill Maher laid into Democrats and cable news pundits for their praise of President Trump's military strike on Syria's Shayrat airfield in response to a chemical weapons attack that killed 80 people on Tuesday. 

The Republicans' positive response to the strike was expected, Maher said. "They got their two favorite things: [Neil Gorsuch] on the Supreme Court and Trump finally blowing some s--- up." 

But Maher was angered by the reaction Trump's strike elicited from cable news pundits and journalists. "Even the liberals were all over this last night," he said Friday night. "Everybody loves this f------ thing. Cable news loves it when they show footage of destroyers firing cruise missiles at night. It’s America’s money shot."

And cable news did love it. Trump was widely lauded by television media and political commentators in the aftermath of the military strike. 

CNN's Fareed Zakaria said Friday morning that Trump "became President of the United States" when he authorized the missile launch Thursday night. 

David Ignatius, a columnist for the Washington Post, said on MSNBC Friday morning that, "In terms of the credibility of American power, I think most traditional Washington commentators would say he’s put more umph, more credibility back into it." 

MSNBC's Brian Williams said he was "guided by the beauty of our weapons, and they are beautiful pictures of fearsome armaments making what is, for them, a brief flight over to this [Syrian] airfield..." 

Multiple news networks replayed footage of the cruise missiles being launched while commentary continued in the background. 

But some took on a more measured tone, urging people to refrain from cheering on military action that could result in injury and death. 

Veteran journalist Dan Rather said in a Facebook post after the strike, "There is a tendency to rally around the flag, and a President who takes on a war footing can see a boost of support." 

He continued: "The number of members of the press who have lauded the actions last night as 'presidential' is concerning. War must never be considered a public relations operation. It is not a way for an Administration to gain a narrative. It is a step into a dangerous unknown and its full impact is impossible to predict, especially in the immediate wake of the first strike." 

Trump's strike on the Shayrat airfield disabled the base for a few hours, before Syrian warplanes again started taking off from the field. 

SEE ALSO: Syrian forces defiantly take off from airfield hit by onslaught of US cruise missiles

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Portrait photographer Chris Buck has interacted with some pretty big personalities while on set. From Barack Obama to Willie Nelson, Buck has been photographing actors, musicians, and politicians since the mid-1980s.

His images have a sense of humor that he describes as "uneasy," which, as it happens, is also the title of his new book of more than 300 portraits. Placing his subjects in what some might consider "uncomfortable" positions, Buck has collected a mass of interesting photographs, as well as some fantastic stories from being on set.

Here are our favorite behind-the-scenes stories from his latest book. All captions were provided by Buck.

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Barack Obama, 2013

Leonard Cohen, 2001

Donald Trump, 2006

"I had shot with Donald Trump before, and although he'd seemed distracted, he was cooperative and easy to deal with. This time the story was a conceptual shot that required additional people in the picture, so I recruited friends of my wife's and mine to be our extras.

Now, with an audience, Trump came to life; he was charming and funny. Direct and a little bossy to be sure, but always in a relaxed and friendly way. In fact, it was the perfect dynamic —  he had an audience to play to, but they were my people, so both his and my quips would get laughs.

Once we finished with the required setups, I brought out an 11x14-inch print from our previous shoot as a gift. He said, 'What is this?' I said, 'I'm giving you a print as a gift to buy an extra setup from you.' He shrugged and said, 'Okay,' and this is how I got the portrait that's in this book."

"The Fate of the Furious," the much-awaited eighth installment of the "Fast & Furious" franchise hits theaters on April 14. 

And the film does some serious damage. 

InsuretheGap.com took the time (13 hours) to watch every installment in the franchise in order to calculate the total amount of damage across the series, which totals to $514 million. 

They also narrowed it down to which characters caused the most damage, and more. 

Let's go to the charts. 

The villain Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) is the biggest culprit: He's singlehandedly responsible for over $150 million worth of damage. Dom (Vin Diesel) is the hero responsible for the most cost of damage:

Here's the damage to all the cars, categorized by the type of damage:

Here we have a breakdown of the damage done to buildings:

Here's a breakdown of the number of items damaged in each movie. "Tokyo Drift" appears to be the safest: 

Finally, this chart shows the cost of damage for each movie. And it doesn't look like the Furious Fam will stop destroying things that cost millions of dollars any time soon:

SEE ALSO: You can catch up with all of the 'Fast and Furious' movies in this 7-minute video

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Walter Hill is responsible for some of the most thrilling and funny movies Hollywood has ever produced, and he's still going.

He started directing in the late 1970s and right out of the gate delivered two movies that went on to become cult classics: "The Driver" and "The Warriors." Then in the '80s he seamlessly moved to comedies with "Brewster's Millions" (starring Richard Pryor and John Candy) and "48 Hrs.," which launched the movie career of Eddie Murphy and jumpstarted the buddy-cop genre.

Hill's latest, "The Assignment" (available on VOD, in theaters on Friday), stars Michelle Rodriguez (of "Fast and Furious" and "Resident Evil" fame) as a male assassin who wakes to find he's had gender-reassignment surgery and goes on the hunt for the doctor (Sigourney Weaver) who is responsible.

Clearly, Hill is still bringing provocative work to the screen that pushes the boundaries of the medium.

Hill sat down with Business Insider and looked back on his latest movie, which was first developed in 1978, and some of his other classics:

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How the 'Tales from the Crypt' TV show finally inspired Hill to make 'The Assignment'

Hill told us the initial idea for "The Assignment" came in 1978 when screenwriter Denis Hamill wrote the story, then titled "Tomboy," and sent it to him.

"I was fascinated by it, it was very different," Hill said. "I instantly thought it could make a movie, but I was very busy at the time."

In the midst of developing "The Warriors" and then jumping on back-to-back projects, Hill quickly forgot about Hamill's script. But 20 years later, he went back and optioned the script from Hamill. He hired another screenwriter and the two went at developing the story.

"It didn't come out very well and I abandoned it and let the option return to Denis," Hill said.

Then another 15 years passed and Hill came across Hamill's original script in his basement. Flipping through it, he finally figured out how he thought he should make it.

"That moment of insight had to do with making an episode of 'Tales from the Crypt' that I had done in the 1980s," he said. "I decided if I do it like a longer version of an episode from that show, it would work, as the story had to be set it in a special world."

To add to the "Tales from the Crypt" vibe of the movie, Hill was able to get a publisher to make a graphic-novel version of "The Assignment," which he said helped in finally landing the financing to make the movie.

Why 'The Driver' car chases still hold up in the era of 'Fast and Furious'

In just his second feature film, Hill created something that still inspires genre filmmakers to this day. "The Driver" (1978), starring Ryan O'Neal as a nameless getaway driver who becomes the obsession of a detective (Bruce Dern), pushed the car-chase trend of the time ("Bullitt," "The French Connection") and dazzled audiences with incredible stunts and extremely clever tricks.

"It's a different field now," Hill said when asked to compare "The Driver" to newer chase movies, like the "Fast and the Furious" franchise. "I was trying to tell the tale of these chases through the character and through his mental process. We're now in an age where the stunts become a kind of waterfall of events. One topping the other. And technically there are other things that are available now — the use of CGI and various photographers. A very different thing."

Hill also sees another glaring difference between making a car-chase movie in the 1970s and doing so now.

"We went out and shot a movie," he said. "When you look at 'Bullitt' or 'The French Connection' or my movie, they were all done as part of the movie and there was no second unit. We have a story to tell and here it is. Nowadays these big action movies are broken into action units with separate directors. It's a very different kind of filmmaking. It is probably, given what they are trying to do, the most efficient way to approach it, but it diminishes in a sense the old idea of what a director did. The movie was your movie."

What's still most memorable about making 'The Warriors'

Hill followed "The Driver" with the movie that would make him a legend in his own right, 1979's "The Warriors." 

The movie follows the New York City gang The Warriors, who must battle their way through the city back to their home turf of Coney Island after being framed for the murder of the leader of the city's most powerful gang.

When asked what first comes to mind when he thinks of making "The Warriors," Hill blurted out, "Night shoots."

Not because of any danger but because that's all the movie consisted of.

"I had a wonderful camera man, Andy Laszlo, who accepted all the difficulties of going out into the streets night after night after night," Hill said. "And I had a cast that never complained. They were delighted to just be in a movie. It was an odd movie. We knew it was going to be a far-out thing."

That far-out thing has since become a staple in pop culture, referenced in everything from video games to "The Simpsons."

Ever dream of quitting your job and making your living as a famous YouTube or Instagram star?

If so, meet Greg Baroth.

It's his full-time job to make people famous on social media.

He's the one you call if you think up an insane prank — say you want to swim with snakes in your Beverly Hills pool —  and you need someone to find the snakes and bring them to your house. 

Or maybe your stunt needs a drone, pronto. Or maybe you want to do your stunt with Denver Broncos football star Von Miller. Or with Vine/YouTube star Logan Paul. Or rap star Wiz Khalifa.

Baroth's your man.

It all started with a love of reptiles

Baroth grew up in Los Angeles, but as a kid he seemed about as far from the celeb set as possible. He loved snakes and turtles and spent his teens working at a reptile store dreaming of becoming a marine biologist. He was, in a word, a geek. "There was a reason why I was a virgin until college," he jokes today.

But while in college he took a fancy to marketing and opted to explore it by doing an internship at famous music talent agency Bill Silva Management, which led to a paid job for a social media startup backed by CAA, another big talent agency.

That's where he met his first client Randy Jackson from American Idol. Jackson hired him for a moonlighting gig to do things like man Jackson's Twitter account (back before Twitter was a part of the show). Baroth helped Jackson get into live tweetstorms during the show with Ryan Seacrest.

Jackson introduced Baroth to other clients, like Carlos Santana's son Salvador Santana, and the comic Louie Anderson. Soon, he was making more money moonlighting than at his day job.

So Baroth quit his job, and dropped out of college, too, and started doing social media full-time. He was 21.

"My first year, I made $75,000. After that, it's always been six figures," he says, and a healthy enough six figures to let him to buy a house in L.A., where the median home price is over $700,000.

But his life really changed when a PR friend introduced him to womanizing party animal Dan Bilzerian, who was looking to hire a social media person. Baroth realized that this dude was "the guy's guy" and came up with ideas that got noticed by bro media sites like BroBible and turned Bilzerian into a bigger Instagram sensation. "He really does live that lifestyle," Baroth says of Bilzerian.

Baroth no longer works with Bilzerian (although he says they remain friendly). Today he's probably best known as the guy helping "Mini-Me" Verne Troyer's become a social media hit.

But with or without Bilzerian, Baroth's life is still certifiably insane. Take a look.

Greg Baroth became known as the guy that helped make party-animal socialite Dan Bilzerian Insta-famous. Baroth no longer works with Bilzerian but he helped capture (and sometimes thought up) some of Bilzerian's most popular stunts.

Here's a funny pic of Bilzerian and a group of women at Battlefield Las Vegas, a place in Las Vegas where you can drive tanks over cars.  What you can't see: they are standing on top of a crushed BMW. That's Baroth in the far left, looking at his cell phone.

Turns out, Baroth's love and experience with reptiles is a great asset for his chosen career. Here he is with Finnish prank star Jukka Hildén. They are hanging with a 16-foot 150-pound reticulated python. Baroth is perfectly happy having a massive snake draped around his neck.

The python is one of several huge snakes visiting Hildén's house. "Jukka wanted to swim with snakes. He has a nice house in Beverly Hills with a pool," Baroth says. So Baroth contacted famous reptile man Brian Barczyk who brought the snakes.

Here's the video of Hildén and Jake Paul (Logan Paul's brother) swimming with multiple giant snakes.

Alec Baldwin did double duty on the April 8th episode of "Saturday Night Live," impersonating both President Donald Trump and embattled Fox News host Bill O'Reilly.

Several dozen prominent sponsors have pulled ads from O'Reilly's primetime program in the wake of a New York Times report that five women have received $13 million in settlements following allegations of sexual harassment against O'Reilly.

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Microsoft subsidiary Mojang, the developer of the global phenomenon Minecraft, says it has what you might call a good problem: People want new Minecraft levels and items faster than they can build them. 

So to close that gap, Mojang is launching the Minecraft Marketplace — a store where players can buy Minecraft customizations made by independent developers. It's coming to Minecraft for smartphones and Windows 10 this Spring, alongside the big "1.1 Discovery Update." 

Once the Marketplace launches, players will be able to buy virtual Minecraft Coins for real money. Those coins can be spent in the Minecraft Marketplace on new levels, characters, textures, and other ways to customize the game. These items will be optional, and Mojang will still support the game with free content, says Minecraft Realms Executive Producer John Thornton. 

These are no mere surface-level customizations. At launch, custom levels will include pirate adventures, a time travel trip to historic London, and a quest across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Marketplace items will start at the equivalent of $1.99, Thornton says, and the selection will be "epic." 

But the best news is for independent developers, says Thornton, as Mojang plans to give developers "more than 50%" of each purchase, he says, with Apple, Google, or Microsoft's app stores getting their usual 30% cut and Mojang taking the rest. 

In other words, for the first time in the game's history, there's a clear path to becoming a Minecraft entrepreneur. You may scoff, but the competing Roblox has become a massive player-run economy in its own right.

The new opportunity

James Delaney, the founder of well-established Minecraft modification ("mod," in gaming parlance) and film studio (really) Blockworks, says the Minecraft Marketplace opens up "a new audience for us."

While the PC and Mac version of the game have supported modifications since launch, it's tough to build a business that way: Mods are tricky for most players to install, and Mojang itself institutes strict legal guidelines on how you can (and can't) make money using Minecraft in an effort to preserve the quality of the game.

Now, Blockworks can offer premium Minecraft creations like "Automation Dreams" and "Scorching Sands" through a Mojang-approved store, directly to players, in a way that makes it easy for them to load up and play. Delaney calls it "a big step forward" for developers building businesses in Minecraft. 

There are some caveats: Mojang is seeking a higher caliber of Marketplace content, and so developers will have to submit a business license before their Minecraft add-ons will even be reviewed for listing. That means that it's going to be harder, but not impossible, for the 12-year-old Minecraft fan in your life to begin a burgeoning career as a Minecraft Marketplace superstar.

"There's certainly a level of professionalism and dedication [we expect]," says Thornton. "There's nothing to say that a 12 year old couldn't have that." 

Thornton also wants Minecraft's 55 million monthly active players to know that while the Minecraft Marketplace and Minecraft's smartphone version are major focuses for Mojang, the PC and Mac version isn't going away: He says that Mojang currently has more developers working on the original game now than it did when the Microsoft acquisition closed in 2014.  

SEE ALSO: A video game that has turned players into $50,000-a-month entrepreneurs just raised $92 million to turn them into media moguls

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Fnatic, one of the biggest teams in competitive gaming, is raising $7 million from a number of investors including the owners of traditional sports franchises the Boston Celtics, AS Roma, and the Houston Astros.

Also investing in the team is Jim Pallotta’s Raptor Group and the head of MIT's Media Lab Joi Ito.

Esports is a growing market and is expected to breach the $1 billion revenue mark in 2017, according to research firm SuperData.

Esports' growth has attracted a number of traditional media partners such as ESPN and sports leagues like the NBA.

Sam Matthews, founder of Fnatic said in a statement: "There has been strong growth in esports, which has accelerated in recent years, but the major shift has been in the acceptance and inclusion by sports franchises, media companies and high profile individuals who have entered and advanced the industry rapidly."

Both the Toronto Raptors and Boston Celtics have expressed their interest in the NBA's new esports league and said they would have their owns teams in it. Boston Celtics player Jonas Jerebko even went bought his own franchise in August 2016. In February 2017 Italian soccer team AS Roma partnered with Fnatic for a Fifa-specific team.

A spokesperson for the team told Business Insider that Fnatic would use the investment to primarily grow its training staff, which includes coaches, analysts, and sports psychologists as well as its facilities. Red Bull, which is one of the most active brands in esports, built its own training facility in Santa Monica for its players.

The investment will also be used to grow its branded equipment lines, which Fnatic sells at events and through its own esports store, which launched as a pop-up in London in December.

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