• Screenwriter Steven Rogers was known in Hollywood as the go-to scribe for romantic movies, both comedies and dramas.
• He decided to reinvent himself by writing a screenplay on the life of infamous figure skater Tonya Harding. He spent a year tracking down Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly.
• Though the movie received three Oscar nominations, Rogers was snubbed for best original screenplay. 

The surprising snub of the unconventional Tonya Harding biopic, "I, Tonya," from the best original screenplay category for this year's Oscar nominations was disappointing for many. But it must have been especially painful for its scribe, Steven Rogers.   

Having spent decades working as a screenwriter in the studio system — credited on recognizable titles like “Hope Floats,” “Stepmom,” and “Kate & Leopold" — in the era where studios are through making romance movies, Rogers has reinvented himself thanks to the "I, Tonya" script. Getting that Oscar nomination would have been the icing on the cake.

Rogers was in his twenties when his first-ever screenplay was made, “Hope Floats,” the 1998 romance movie starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr. that has since become a staple on cable TV. That same year his second script hit theaters, “Stepmom,” a tearjerker starring Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon that also became a classic on paid cable.

Rogers didn’t know it yet, but he was instantly pigeon-holed as the “romance” guy in Hollywood. If a romantic drama or comedy needed to be written, Rogers was the guy. It led to years of his phone ringing off the hook matched by years of barely getting a call back from his agent. As Rogers put it: “I’ve been flavor of the month and I’ve been told I’m cold and they can’t do anything with me,” Rogers told Business Insider when "I, Tonya" opened in theaters in December.

When Rogers hit a cold spell he would just block everything out and come up with a new script. But after the horrific reviews for the 2015 holiday comedy he penned, “Love the Coopers,” he knew he couldn’t go on much longer working like this.

“I had to reinvent myself,” he said. “Even if I had wanted to go back to the studio system, the rom-coms and romantic dramas, they were rapidly not making those anymore. I had to go in a different direction.”

It was around this time when Rogers realized how he could start over after watching the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, “The Price of Gold.” Sitting with his niece, they were glued to the screen watching the story of one of sport’s most infamous people, Tonya Harding. A brilliant figure skater with Olympic hopes, in 1994 she became one of the most known names and faces on the planet when her ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, organized (with his dimwitted friends) an attack on Harding’s fellow US figure skater, Nancy Kerrigan. Footage of Kerrigan screaming “Why, why, why?” as she clutched her leg was the main story on the 24-hour news channels and evening news for weeks. And Harding became the target of every news outlet trying to figure out if she was involved in the attack.

“The perception of truth, memory, family, media, and class, I thought that all would be interesting to write about,” Rogers said looking back on watching “Price of Gold.”

Rogers looked up Tonya Harding’s website and called the contact number on it. The phone number went to the front desk of a Motel 6. Rogers was hooked.

Finding Tonya

Rogers broke every screenwriting rule he knew to write “I, Tonya” (currently playing in theaters). The movie looks at the life of Harding (played by Margot Robbie, who received a best actress Oscar nomination) from the perspectives of the disgraced figure skater, ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan), and Harding’s mother (among others). It’s hilarious and horrific at the same time. Rogers weaves a tale of Harding’s rise in figure skating, her abusive upbringing by her mother (Alison Janney, who received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination), and her abusive relationship and eventual marriage to Gillooly. (Gillooly claims most of the physical assaults Harding says happened didn’t.)

And that’s the core of Rogers’ story (brought to life by director Craig Gillespie). He lets all his characters have the floor to set the record straight. It’s up to the audience to decide if any of it is true.

The movie also delves deep into the Kerrigan attack and aftermath. Again, it’s up to you to believe who is telling the truth.

The reason why Rogers’ script is such a knockout is because of the work he put in before typing a single word — all done on spec. After realizing Harding was not at the Motel 6, Rogers continued to try and track her down. His search led him to Texas where he thought he had found Harding’s manager. It turned out the person wasn’t, but she was a friend of Harding’s and because the woman was familiar with Rogers’ writing credits she connected him with Harding.

After a few months of searching, Rogers was finally face-to-face with Harding. The two hit it off and agreed to have Rogers sit with her over two days and interview her about her life. But first Rogers had to get her life rights. It took some time, mostly because Rogers said Harding didn’t want to pay for a lawyer so she got her ex-manager to do the negotiation pro bono.

Rogers said Harding was open to talk about everything. “She did say to me at one point, ‘Now, do I have any say in this?’” Rogers said. “And I said, ‘No, I’m going to tell everybody’s point of view.’ She was okay with that.”

With the Harding interviews done he went out to find Jeff Gillooly.

After getting out of prison in 1995 on a racketeering charge for masterminding the Kerrigan attack, Gillooly tried to move on with this life. He shaved his trademark mustache and changed his last name to Stone. But it wasn’t a total disappearing act because he moved back to his hometown. So Rogers found Gillooly/Stone easier than Harding.

To Rogers' amazement, he agreed to meet with him.

“I think it was because his wife liked the movies I wrote, that was my in,” Rogers said.

Rogers was even more amazed that Stone said he didn’t want any money for the interview. The two sat down for one day and talked about Harding.

“He didn’t want to profit on it,” Rogers said. “That’s not how he was portrayed in the media. I genuinely liked him.”

Writing a screenplay that Hollywood studios would never make

Rogers was convinced the best way to write the screenplay was to tell it from the point of view of both Harding and Gillooly. (He couldn’t find Harding’s mother so Rogers created the character through research and Harding’s recollections. Shawn Eckardt, Harding’s bodyguard who was also involved in the attack on Kerrigan, died in 2007). He wanted to go beyond how the media had portrayed them but also not tell the story as a standard biopic. For a writer who only knew how to write for Hollywood, it was thrilling. He had characters talk to the screen in mid performance. There’s even one point when Harding’s mother criticizes the filmmakers for keeping her out of the story for a long stretch of time.

“All the characters were very rebellious in their own way, but also very wrong headed, and I wanted the screenplay to mirror that,” Rogers said.

That included bringing out the domestic abuse that Harding alleges her mother and Gillooly inflicted on her. “Life's not one thing, why can't you be funny and tragic?” Rogers said. “To me, you can. You don't know if you should laugh, that's what we were going for.”

For all these reasons, Rogers knew when he was done with the script at the beginning of 2016 he could not send it to the studios. He couldn’t bear seeing all the work he put in get gutted. For the first time ever in his career he went the independent film route and quickly found Brian Unkeless (the “Hunger Games” franchise) as a producing partner. But there were a few caveats before he took it out on the market: there couldn’t be rewrites without his consent, and Allison Janney had to play the role of Harding’s mother.

“I have always written parts for Allison in all my scripts,” Rogers said. He has known the actress for most of his adult life. “She’s never gotten to play a part that I’ve written for her.”

Rogers didn’t just get all his requests, but also Margot Robbie. The actress was hot off her breakout role in “The Wolf of Wall Street” and searching for movies that could be star vehicles for her when she came across Rogers’ script. She jumped on board to star as Harding and also be a producer.

They chose Craig Gillespie (“The Finest Hours”) as the director and Rogers said over the 31-day shoot very little from the script was changed. The movie was bought for around $5 million following its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

By this time Rogers had become close with both Harding and Gillooly. He invited Harding to see the movie once it was completed. He did not watch it with her.

“I let her see it on her own,” Rogers said, adding that he’s also setting up a time when Gillooly can also see it. “Tonya emailed me twice to thank me. She said she laughed, she cried, there were things she didn’t like, but she was happy.

Harding attended the premiere of the movie and also attended the Golden Globes.

The life of a Hollywood screenwriter is a thankless job. Rogers knows that better than anyone, so, despite the Oscar snub, he's taking in the fun of being on a movie with awards love. But Hollywood has taken notice of Rogers' shift. He says now instead of being offered rom-coms he’s getting scripts about every misunderstood woman from the 1990s.

“It’s like, ‘I, Lorena’ or ‘I, Monica,’ I mean really?” Rogers said with a laugh, referring to women who, like Harding, also grabbed the media spotlight in the 1990s — Lorena Bobbitt and Monica Lewinsky. “Right now, I’m just enjoying the ride.”

SEE ALSO: In a career filled with bad guy roles, Ben Mendelsohn in very thankful to show a different side in Churchill drama 'Darkest Hour'

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• Two women who accused actor James Franco of sexually "exploitative" behavior made their first televised interview with "Good Morning America" on Tuesday.
• Sarah Tither-Kaplan said in the interview that Franco "created exploitative environments" in his classes at a film school she attended, but is "absolutely not a Harvey Weinstein."
• Violet Paley, who had been in a consensual relationship with Franco, said she was "regretful" of continuing her relationship with the actor after an alleged instance of sexual misconduct.
• Franco has said the allegations are "not accurate."

Two of the women who accused James Franco of sexually "exploitative" behavior in a Los Angeles Times story earlier this month made their first televised appearance on Tuesday on "Good Morning America."

Sarah Tither-Kaplan, who has accused Franco of engaging in inappropriate behavior while teaching acting classes at the film school he founded, told ABC's Amy Robach that Franco "created exploitative environments" but is "absolutely not a Harvey Weinstein."

"He is not an unfeeling monster who has no sense of reality," Tither-Kaplan said when asked where Franco falls on the spectrum of behavior in Hollywood. "He created exploitative environments for non-celebrity women on his sets, [but] I also think James is a talented and valuable person."

"It's a pyramid, and at the top is rape and sexual violence, and at the bottom are the other abuses of power that, when they continue to happen over and over, build and build and build and create a culture that allows the most heinous examples of sexual violence and misogyny and discrimination to happen," Tither-Kaplan continued. "And so if we allow any of them, we're allowing all of them."

Violet Paley, who said she had been in a consensual relationship with Franco, also alleged that the actor pressured her into a sexual act she was unwilling to engage in.

Paley told Robach she was "regretful" of continuing a consensual relationship with Franco after the alleged incident. 

Franco said the allegations were "not accurate" in an interview with Stephen Colbert earlier this month. 

Watch the "GMA" interview below:

SEE ALSO: James Franco tells Colbert that the sexual misconduct allegations against him are 'not accurate,' as criticism lights up Twitter

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• Steve James' latest documentary looks at the only bank to be indicted in connection to the 2008 mortgage crisis.
• The movie has received an Oscar nomination in the best documentary category, the first ever nomination for James, whose landmark doc "Hoop Dreams" was famously snubbed.

On Tuesday, Steve James got the call that he gave up on years ago: one of his documentaries is finally Oscar nominated.

Over a career that has spanned three-plus decades, James has made memorable documentaries like "Stevie," "The Interrupters," and "Life Itself," but he will always be most famous for making 1994's "Hoop Dreams." His debut feature looks at the lives of two inner-city Chicago boys as they aspire to play in the NBA one day. The movie has gone one to be regarded as one of the best non-fiction works ever made. Legendary film critic Roger Ebert once called the movie "the great American documentary." 

But in one of the most famous snubs in Oscar history, "Hoop Dreams" did not get nominated for a best documentary (though it did get nominated for best editing). 

Now James finally has his nomination thanks to "Abacus: Small Enough to Jail." 

In 2012, Abacus Federal Savings Bank was indicted on charges of fraud in relation to hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of mortgages that had been sold to Fannie Mae from 2005 to 2010. It's the only bank to be indicted in connection to the 2008 mortgage crisis, which led to a $700 billion government bailout.

The case of Abacus, a reliable institution for thousands of Chinese immigrants that is run by Thomas Sung, who's considered the George Bailey of Chinatown, was a shock for many in the community, while for the rest of the country the news seemed to tell a story of a dishonest bank that was finally getting its comeuppance.

James follows the bank's surprising decision to fight the charges from the New York County District Attorney's Office, which led to a David-versus-Goliath court battle that revealed how thin the case against Abacus really was. James spent the length of the three-month trial following the Sung family as they tried to clear their name (the charges were dismissed in 2015).

"The point of view of this film is clear from the start — it's kind of clear from the title," James told Business Insider. "We think this was a miscarriage of justice."

James learned of the case through his producer Mark Mitten, who knew the Sungs. The filmmaker had an initial meeting with Sung and his daughters, Jill and Vera — who are executives at the bank — and Heather, who actually worked at the New York DA's office when the bank was charged (she left shortly after). Then James knew he wanted to tell their story. But he didn't want it to be one-sided, which started the long road to get people from the DA's office to talk on camera.

"We didn't get them to talk for the film until after the trial, though we tried throughout," said James, who felt it was crucial to have the other perspective in the movie, even if he didn't agree with it. "There are not two equal sides of the story, but that aside, it doesn't relieve us of the responsibility to really articulate the case against the Sungs, because my feeling is by really laying out the case against them you also not just hear the case — you see how weak the case against them was."

Because James wasn't allowed to film in the courtroom during the trial, he had to come up with another way not just to show what happened inside but also to make it compelling.

"We actually hired a courtroom artist to go in several days and make some baseline illustrations," James said. "Then we embellished them. There's angles in those sequences that no courtroom artist could ever get."

Showing over-the-shoulder sketches and detailed reactions of the Sungs matched the compelling testimony. Especially the DA's star witness, former Abacus loan manager Ken Yu (who was fired after bank executives learned he was committing fraud), practically admitting how he pulled off his illegal acts behind the backs of everyone at Abacus while on the stand. Yu became the figure who ultimately unraveled the prosecutors' case.

Another hurdle was simply telling a story set in the financial world that would keep audiences interested — always a challenge. James recalls a day when he and the crew were shooting in an empty courtroom and an officer with them asked which case they were doing the movie on.

"I told him Abacus, and after I explained he said, 'Oh, that's a paper trial,'" James recalled. "That was translation for a boring trial. It's not sexy. And that was the challenge. This wasn't one of the big banks being put on trial, but we felt a duty to tell the story and the ridiculousness of the DA's case."

James was attending the Sundance Film Festival when he got word that "Abacus" was an Oscar nominee. The festival is showing his latest work, "America to Me," a 10-part docuseries looking at race relations at a Chicago high school.

Here's how James reacted when he was introduced at a screening following the Oscar nominations:

"Abacus: Small Enough to Jail" is currently available on streaming services.

SEE ALSO: Robert De Niro talks about how he got inside the head of Bernie Madoff for his new movie

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• Director Dan Gilroy had only Denzel Washington in mind to star in "Roman J. Israel, Esq." If the actor had declined to be in it, Gilroy wouldn't have made the movie.
• Gilroy also had an unconventional method of letting Washington be involved in every aspect of making the movie.
• It has now led to an Oscar nomination for Washington.

There’s always been an understanding on a Hollywood movie set: the director is king.

But that thinking gets a little blurred when a superstar actor is in the mix. Whether it is Tom Cruise or Meryl Streep, the director often has their job only because the star "okay’d" it.

If things go right, director and star work together, tolerate one another, and maybe even enjoy the experience enough to do it all over again on another movie. The latter is almost a definite if the actor receives Oscar acclaim. 

So expect director Dan Gilroy and star Denzel Washington to work again.

The actor received a best actor Oscar nominations (his eighth Oscar nomination of his career) on Tuesday for his performance in "Roman J. Israel, Esq." It was a role in which Gilroy let Washington into every facet of the production.  

The process began when Gilroy got an idea for a movie about a lawyer who, for most of his career, has been fighting the causes of the underdog. However, when his partner (and the face of the firm) is taken ill and may not recover, the lawyer has to come out of the shadows. And then what he faces makes him question what he’s been fighting for his entire career.

But instead of pitching the idea to a studio — many of which had been knocking down Gilroy’s door to work with him after his hit directorial debut “Nightcrawler” — Gilroy took a year and a half and wrote the entire script on spec. Then he presented the completed script to the only actor he wanted for the movie: Denzel Washington.

Convinced only Washington could play the role, Gilroy promised himself that if Washington passed, he would throw the script in a drawer and move on.

Giving Washington a setting where he could comfortably create

“I've never written so specifically for an actor that if they passed on it I wouldn't have done it,” Gilroy told Business Insider. “I always had a list of people I would have followed up with. This one I did not. I felt very strongly that the character is somebody who believes deeply in things, he's someone who believes there's something bigger than him, and Denzel is a guy who in real life believes in something bigger than himself. Him welding to that character was a quality I wouldn't be able to find in another actor. I felt very strongly about that.” 

Gilroy jumped through the usual rings: Getting the script to Washington’s reps, waiting patiently for a response, and shock when he got word several months later that Washington wanted to meet. In that meeting, Gilroy was even more shocked by the outcome.

“We sat down to have lunch and an hour into it he stuck out his hand and said, ‘Let's do this movie together,’” Gilroy said.

Now Gilroy had a finished script and one of the greatest living actors packaged for his movie. Sony won the auction to make and release the movie.

A major reason for this entire journey to make the movie was because Gilroy wanted Washington to be a collaborator with him on “Roman J. Israel, Esq.” And not just in the creation of the title character, but in every facet of production.

The two broke down every part of the script and tweaked things to Washington’s suggestions. When the two took a break so Washington could go direct and star in “Fences,” Gilroy said Washington returned with an understanding about the character that had gone beyond his own. This included everything from the character’s look on screen to things he would say in the middle of a take.

“There's a scene where he goes through a metal detector and before putting his iPod through it Denzel said the line, ‘I lost the bass range on Gil-Scott Heron's ‘Winter in America’ last time I put this in there.’ That was a line Denzel came up with on the spot,” Gilroy said. “So the choice of song — that's a very heavy song — but also apropos to what the guy is doing. He would do stuff like that in many scenes. I'm not looking for him to give that to me. There’s another scene when he’s looking for a job and he starts to cry. That wasn’t in the scene, but what he’s playing becomes real to him.”

Washington checked his ego at the door

But the collaboration didn’t end when filming stopped. Gilroy wanted Washington in the edit room with him as well.

“I couldn't have really conceived before this of letting an actor come into the cutting room. Most actors are not objective,” Gilroy said. “But I knew I wanted him to come in and look at the character and in the process we started asking each other, do we need this scene? Should we trim this? Egos really got checked at the door.”

Gilroy believes he was so comfortable in welcoming Washington into all the phases of the movie because he’s been married to actress Rene Russo for 25 years. He said watching her prepare and craft parts for years has left him with a comfort with actors that many directors do not have.

However, another reason was he was only going to make “Roman J. Isreal, Esq." with Washington, why wouldn’t he utilize him to the fullest?

“There are quite a few directors who would not welcome this process,” Gilroy said. “They would want to tell the actor their vision. I feel for myself, as much as I trust my instincts, you lose a tremendous asset when you're working with a great actor and you're not listening and rethinking or realizing this can be approved upon. I wanted to create a space that Denzel felt comfortable creating in. That was my biggest thing.” 

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• Elton John is retiring from touring.
• But not before he embarks on a global tour in September, which will see him play 300 shows around the world.
• He said the decision is not due to ill health, but that his "priorities have changed" and he is now focused on his children, husband, and family.

Elton John just announced he is officially retiring from touring — but not before he embarks on a global 300-show tour starting in September.

The 70-year-old singer, known for countless hit songs like "Tiny Dancer" and "Candle in the Wind," announced his decision at a highly anticipated press conference at Gotham Hall in New York on Wednesday, which was streamed live online.

Hosted by CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, Elton said: "My priorities have changed in my life."

Speaking of husband David Furnish, he added: "We had children and it changed our lives. In 2015, David and I sat down with a school schedule and I said, 'I don't want to miss any of this.' My priorities now are my children, my husband, and my family."

The singer — who is a lifelong supporter of Premier League football team Watford — plans to continue making music, but said "mostly I will be taking my kid to soccer academy."

The global "Farewell Yellow Brick Road" tour will cover "every continent you can possibly think of" over the course of three years, according to the singer, who performed "Tiny Dancer" and "I'm Still Standing" live from New York City on the broadcast.

It will start in the US in September 2018, finally arriving in the UK in 2020.

It promises to be a big production with the outfits all being made by Gucci. 

Here's the promo photo for the tour:

Rumours began to circulate on Wednesday morning that Elton John was retiring when The Mirror reported that the star was calling quits on touring after being "dogged by ill health."

In April last year, the singer spent 12 days in hospital, including two nights in intensive care, after becoming "violently" ill over a are bacterial infection.

However, speaking on Wednesday the singer said: "If you're going to do 300 shows, you're not in ill health. I'm in great health."

On Tuesday, a pop-up event at King's Cross station also saw a self-playing piano with an augmented reality Elton sitting at it, performing "Your Song."

The event was part of the build-up to the announcement, which was teased with this video:

"If you let things happen for you, then that's the magic of life, and I will be creative hopefully up to the day I die," Elton said.

Tickets for the initial leg of the tour will go on sale on February 2.

SEE ALSO: Elton John spent two nights in intensive care with a 'potentially deadly' infection

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• Microsoft made a major move toward Netflix-style subscriptions for Xbox games this week.
• The move is the latest of several ambitious additions to the Xbox One platform.
• Business Insider spoke with Xbox lead Phil Spencer about the latest changes in a phone interview this week.
• Spencer hints that Xbox Game Pass could be the herald of a new business model in video games, beyond paying $60 for a new game or microtransactions in a free-to-play game.

Microsoft's Xbox One isn't the best-selling console on the market (that's the PlayStation 4), nor is it the hot new thing (that's the Nintendo Switch). It is, however, the most ambitious.

Here are just a few examples:

1. The Xbox One has the Game Preview program, similar to Steam's Early Access, which allows players to buy and play games that are still in development. 
2. The Xbox One X, an outrageously powerful (and, at $499, equally expensive) game console that powers 4K and HDR gaming natively.
3. The Xbox Game Pass program, a Netflix-style subscription program that offers access to a large library of games for $10/month.

And this week, the latter of those three got a major update: Starting with "Sea of Thieves" on March 20, all future Microsoft-published Xbox One games will arrive on Game Pass the same day that they're available to buy in stores. 

For example: You could buy "Sea of Thieves" in stores on March 20 for $60, or you could pay $10 for a a month of Game Pass and gain access to it and over 100 other games. Apply that same scenario to, say, the next major "Halo" game, or the next "Forza Motorsport" — it's a risky move for Microsoft, as it potentially cannibalizes its own retail sales.

But it holds obvious appeal for thrifty players. Who doesn't want to pay less for games? Games are expensive! 

Microsoft isn't the only company thinking this way, either: In 2014, Sony launched PlayStation Now, a subscription service (priced at $20/month or $99/year), giving players access to a library of over 600 titles for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. But where Xbox Game Pass titles are downloaded into your library, Sony's service streams them over the internet to your console.

On the flipside of that argument, games are expensive to make — thus the high cost at retail. And in the hit-driven video game industry, the major publishers still rely on early sales for the lion’s share of revenue they expect from their biggest titles.

Microsoft's Xbox lead, Phil Spencer, sees both sides of this argument. He has to— he's the guy in charge of making Xbox Game Pass a success, but he's also a guy who plays games himself. He wants his game development partners to be happy, but he also wants Xbox One owners to be happy.

When I spoke to him on the phone earlier this week, he explained some of the nuance behind the Xbox Game Pass program and where he sees subscription services going when it comes to gaming. The following is that conversation, lightly edited for clarity:

Ben Gilbert, Business Insider: If I'm EA or Activision or whatever — a so-called "third-party" game publisher — why would I put my games on Xbox Game Pass at launch? Is that even a goal here?

Phil Spencer, Microsoft executive VP of gaming (head of Xbox): Just like I say on the gamer's side about choice, I just look at us just giving our publishers and our developers choice as well. I'm not here to dictate the terms of how they deliver content and what avenues they choose. I think you're right that when you look at a big third-party, whether they're gonna look at shipping their games day and date in Game Pass is the option for them will be based on their business, not my business. For gamers themselves, the commitment I can make is to ship our first-party games into Game Pass.

But I will say from a discussion with third parties, I think everybody is excited about the innovation here. Because everybody has seen how subscriptions like Netflix and Spotify have brought in more listeners or more watchers or, in our case, more players. But how they will evolve their business choices will be up to them over time. Today, a majority of the games that are in Game Pass, but as you say, they're not day and date games — they're games that've been out for a longer period of time.

BG: And that of course appeals to some people — a kind of "instant library" of games. But demand for newer games is exactly what drove Microsoft to institute this new policy for first-party games going forward. What, if anything, is Microsoft doing to get third-party games on Game Pass closer to launch?

PS: We're still within the first year of launch of Game Pass. The response has been great. We're continuing to learn and listen and have conversations with our third-party partners — and our customers, frankly — about things that they would like to see. I'm bullish on Game Pass' long term potential to allow people to play the games they want on the devices they want. And I think that, as we continue to build the audience for Game Pass, our discussions with third parties will continue to grow.

Game Pass wouldn't happen today without the third-party support we have. I think it's critical. And as we make these moves our third parties are right there asking what we learned.

And that's getting to a bit of another topic, but something that's worth hitting on: As I look at our first-party and the things that we want to do, one of the things that I've really been focused on over the last couple of years is how do we make sure our first-party is doing innovative things that can help expand the market for everybody. Not necessarily just going after genres where third-parties have success today, but can we try to do new things. This obviously isn't something a first-party is doing with their game specifically — it's just how a game launches — but it's an opportunity for us to take our first party, try something that's great for consumers, learn from that, share that with third-parties, and continue to grow the business.

And I think that's a critical role for us as a first-party publisher.

BG: Given that it's been about six months since launch, how has it been so far in terms of pick-up? Are you releasing any numbers today in terms of how many people are using Game Pass?

PS: We're not releasing any numbers. I will say that this is playing to a strength that we see on our platform. We've had a really great response to Game Pass, so that the customer voice in what's going on with Game Pass from our subscribers is something that we're very tuned into right now.

We look at this opportunity as something that, one, is a strength of our console — because it's available there. But also in the longer run with things like Mixer, and putting "Minecraft" on all platforms with cross-play. We're very much about reaching the gamer where they want to play, and in this case it's letting those games reach the gamer in the way they want to be reached.

So, I apologize for not announcing a number today. I will say that we're very, very happy with the success we've had with Game Pass, and we see this as a way of further investing into something that's working.

BG: What's the long-term goal for Game Pass? Do you think it, or something like it, will replace more traditional means of getting games (buying in a store/downloading)?

PS: I think it's a good question, and it's actually a good vein of conversation, because some people will draw almost a one-to-one analogy between a PlayStation Now or a Game Pass with a Netflix or something. Forget about one being download and one being streamed, but more that subscription model.

I think that business model diversity in video games is a strength of video games. It's something we should all make sure we don't take for granted, that when customers find a great game and they love it that they're willing to continue to invest in that game. And, frankly, when they're not, they're pretty vocal about not liking the business model diversity. We've seen some of that even in the last few months.

But that diversity that we have in our space is a real strength. We're not dependent upon one business model — there are games on your phone that solely exist because of ads and advertising. There are models out there that are completely based on the day one purchase of a game, and those games can be incredibly successful. We should love that.

And then we look at free-to-play, and episodic, and things like subscriptions — we should all take it as a real strength of the video game business that we're able to support so many different business models in a healthy way. I think it really provides a strength and foundation for a craft and a business that I love, that will keep us strong for decades to come. And not all media have that opportunity.

SEE ALSO: The Xbox One's Netflix-style game program is getting a crucial update

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NOW WATCH: 5 hidden features to get the most out of your Xbox One

• John Nelson, the Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor on "Blade Runner 2049," walks through how he made a CGI version of the franchise's memorable Rachael character for the movie.
• The process took a year of trial and error, which was all done under secret shooting sessions and a code name.
• Sean Young, who played the character in the original movie, was also brought on to supervise.

With a total of 1,200 visual effects shots in “Blade Runner 2049” — that comes out to 1:45 of the movie’s total running time of 2:43 — Oscar-winning VFX supervisor John Nelson and his team logged in major hours to go a step beyond the 1982 original movie’s legendary sci-fi look.

But there was a particular scene in the movie that Nelson and director Denis Villeneuve paid special attention to — and it has led to Oscar nominations for the movie.

Toward the end of the movie when Deckard (Harrison Ford) meets Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), he is offered something very near and dear to him in exchange for information on where Wallace can find the only known child replicant. From the shadows appears Rachael, played by actress Sean Young, the beautiful replicant who is also Deckard’s love interest in the original movie. For the “2049” scene, Rachael looks like she hasn’t aged a day from when we saw her in the original movie, and that’s because Nelson and his team pulled off a flawless CGI version of Young to bring back the character for the sequel.

This is just the latest example of recent major blockbuster movies using computer graphics to de-age an actor. We’ve seen it with Kurt Russell in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” Johnny Depp in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” Robert Downey Jr. in “Captain America: Civil War,” and Michael Douglas in “Ant-Man.” That's not even counting “Rogue One,” in which a younger version of deceased actress Carrie Fisher appears in her Princess Leia role and Peter Cushing, who had been dead for 22 years at the time of the movie’s release, shows up in CGI form reprising his Governor Tarkin role from “Star Wars: A New Hope.”

Nelson and Villeneuve were aware of most of these past VFX landmarks, but felt they could go a step beyond those. Nelson was tasked to make the best CGI human ever put on screen yet.

“I looked at all the digital human work and for the most part I could see where it all falls down,” Nelson told Business Insider. “We tried to build on the shoulders of everything that had been done before us.”

What Nelson found was that it’s not enough to use motion capture to create the face you want to portray. There are small details to include that can’t be ignored to pull off the task. But it took him a year of trial and error to realize that.

Here’s how CGI Rachael was achieved:

Creating the digital skull

Rachael was given the code name “Rita” during filming, and the scene was done often with a very small crew to ensure that what was being done would not get out to the public.

Nelson and his team started by creating a digital skull of the Rachael character. They scanned Young’s head and then were able to find a life cast of her that was done a few years after the original “Blade Runner." By combining both they created a CGI skull of her. Nelson and his team than began de-aging the CGI head using footage from the original “Blade Runner” as a guide.

Shooting the scene with a body double and Sean Young’s guidance

While all of that was going on, back on set Villeneuve shot the “Rita” scene with Ford and Leto. Actress Loren Peta was brought on as the Rachael body double. With Nelson and Young also on hand, the scene was done with dots all over Peta’s face, which would be needed when the footage went through the motion-capture phase. Peta’s face would be erased, and CGI Sean Young would be inserted.

“Sean would be sitting with Denis and they’d be talking about Loren’s performance as Rachael,” Nelson said. “She would advise him on the movements and the looks of Rachael. ‘I would have done it this way or that way,’ she would tell Denis.”

Back to the drawing board

At this point Nelson took the footage shot and inserted what they had done with CGI Rachael, and showed what they had to Villeneuve and the producers. But no one was that impressed.

“They were like, ‘Well, it really looks like a woman that looks a lot like Sean Young, but it doesn’t look like Sean Young,’” Nelson recalled. “So I went back to the drawing board.”

Nelson went even deeper, and that’s where he found pay dirt.

“What I found is it's her imperfections that make her beautiful,” he said. “Her eyes are not symmetrical, her eyes actually stick out of her head a little more than most people. We studied how makeup was done when 'Blade Runner' was made. In fact, we went to every woman on the crew and asked about how makeup was done in the 1980s. We learned about the right shade of lip stick. Just subtle things from the first movie that we could put into our Rachael.”

Nelson went back to Denis and the producers with four scenes from the original “Blade Runner” and inserted CGI Rachael into a single shot in each scene. But he didn’t tell them what he did.

“The producers and Denis were like, ‘John, this is great but why are we looking at the first movie?’ and I told them what I did and they couldn’t tell, they actually got upset,” Nelson said. “They were like, ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ And I was like, ‘Isn’t that the point? It’s supposed to be like the real thing.’”

• BuzzFeed in going through a big restructuring, especially for its entertainment content.
• CEO Jonah Peretti says BuzzFeed will experiment less with mid-form content that feels "stuck in the middle."
• Former HP CEO Meg Whitman just signed on to be the CEO of a company looking to go into mid-form video.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti is over mid-length video.

In the wake of a reported revenue miss and layoffs last year, BuzzFeed has been doing some high-level company restructuring. On Wednesday, BuzzFeed revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that Ze Frank, who had previously been in charge of most of BuzzFeed's non-news content (under BuzzFeed Entertainment Group), would now be leading a team of 12 that "experiments with new video formats and emerging platforms."

Frank's drastically modified role comes as BuzzFeed seems to be rethinking its broader video strategy.

And in the midst of the announcement, Peretti gave an insightful comment about how BuzzFeed is looking at the future of video.

Here's how THR described Peretti's comments:

He told THR that BuzzFeed will experiment less with mid-form content that feels “stuck in the middle” of traditional-length projects and true, shortform social videos.

Mid-form video has long been a source of debate in the entertainment and tech worlds, with projects like Verizon's Go90 failing to capture the public's attention despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested.

Peretti's bearish stance on mid-form video is likely informed by Facebook's recent move to demote publishers in the news feed, which BuzzFeed has been vocally against. If Facebook isn't going to preference mid-form video in your feed, it's no wonder BuzzFeed would lean more into either short-form video, which is less labor intensive, or long-form, which could be licensed to traditional TV or digital outlets like Netflix.

If you're stuck in the middle, video is hard to monetize. 

But others in entertainment haven't given up on mid-form quite yet. In fact, just today DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg's new startup, NewTV, announced that it had snagged former Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman to be its CEO (and essentially first hire).

Here's how Variety described NewTV's goal:

For example, imagine a drama akin to “Grey’s Anatomy” but shrunk to 10-minute episodes made for mobile consumption. Or a five-minute talk show, or a two-minute newscast — all with high-profile talent attached.

That sounds a lot like mid-form!

Katzenberg has previously said these shows would be designed for smartphones, whose ubiquity is a big reason Katzenberg thinks there's a market for this type of show in the first place.

"We have these devices with us the entire day and an incredible amount of in-between time," he said last year.

And Katzenberg is betting big, having previously said he was looking for $2 billion to fund it.

SEE ALSO: Meg Whitman is the new CEO of NewTV, the mobile-first TV startup created by DreamWorks cofounder Jeffrey Katzenberg

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NOW WATCH: What happens to your body when you start exercising regularly

"Destiny 2" may have just launched a few months ago, but considering the dire state of that game, many players (and others) are looking ahead to the 2019 release of "Anthem," a new game from Bioware that bears many similarities to Bungie's sci-fi shooter franchise.

Take a look:

SEE ALSO: One of the best parts of 'Destiny' is now a punishing experience in 'Destiny 2'

"Destiny" is all about killing aliens in beautiful, otherworldly environments with your friends (or random people you meet online). "Anthem" seems to have a similar gist.

In "Anthem," your character is what's known as a "Freelancer." Bioware calls them "the heroes that leave the safety of the walls of Fort Tarsus, to explore the unknown and protect humanity."

This sounds similar to "Destiny": In that game, your character is known as a Guardian — a chosen warrior tasked with protecting the last city on Earth.

In "Anthem," players get an array of exosuits called Javelins, which provide superhuman abilities. They're also heavily customizable, so you can look and play how you want.

Similarly, in "Destiny," a big aspect of the game is customizing the armor and weaponry of your character, which you collect from completing missions and various activities.

• A fake Coachella poster that went viral after its publication Tuesday was generated by artificial intelligence.
• The neural network and poster came out of Botnik Studios, an Amazon Alexa Accelerator graduate which uses computer systems to make art. 
• The neural network generated the list after being fed a bunch of real band names, including the names of every band ever written about on Pitchfork. 
• The fake band names are hilarious, but it wasn't all the AI's doing. Humans at Botnik handpicked the best phrases out of a collection of generated band names ranging from realistic to gibberish. 

A sense of humor may be one of the last things that distinguishes humans from robots, but that doesn't mean that artificial intelligence can't come up with a good joke.

Botnik Studios, an art collective that uses computers "to make cool stuff," brought those capabilities to light Tuesday with the release of its AI generated Coachella poster.

The post features made up band names such as headliners Fanch, One of Pig, and Lil Hack — names which have no association with real musical acts but which all are eerily familiar enough to give a sense that they could be real.

That eerie familiarity is by design, said Jamie Brew, a former writer for parody sites The Onion and Clickhole, who now works as CEO of Botnik Studios. 

"Some people seem to have the same experience that I had when I first saw the finished thing," Brew told Business Insider. "The feeling of looking at a lineup for a festival and not recognizing any of the bands, and feeling out of touch because you must not be cool anymore.

Incubated by Amazon

Botnik Studios is a Seattle-based company that uses artificial intelligence and bots to create art. Though the company gives off the air of anarchy, it's one of the first companies to come out of the Amazon Alexa Accelerator — a startup incubator that focuses on building companies that work on bot-based voice technology. 

The company itself employees just five people, but Brew said that there are around 30 to 40 writers, editors, programmers and artists that are part of the larger Botnik community, and who use its technology for their own creations.

To create the Coachella post, Brew said that members of Botnik taught an artificial neutral network to guess what letter is most likely to follow another letter. The bot lives on the AWS cloud, and is a variant of a public AI model designed by Andrej Karpathy, who now runs AI for Tesla. 

To generate the poster, the network was fed thousands of band names, including a complete list of every band written about on Pitchfork, which trained it to come up with words that follow similar letter patterns. 

While AI came up with the names, Brew said it was ultimately humans that curated the final list out of a lot of unworthy candidates. 

"We think of it like farming," Brew said. "There are acres and acres of mostly total gibberish."

The Coachella poster is the second project Botnik has created using the neutral network. The first was a "Hashtag Forecast" that generated a list of the "hottest upcoming web trends," such as #figfam and #tanglife. 

The group also made a name for itself with fake Seinfeld and Harry Potter scripts generated by a predictive keyboard app, which gives word suggestions based on the source text you feed it. 

Here's the full poster: 

SEE ALSO: A startup from Phil Libin's 'studio' thinks its artificial intelligence will make employees happier at work

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NOW WATCH: We talked to Sophia — the first-ever robot citizen that once said it would 'destroy humans'

• Snapchat head of product Tom Conrad will leave the company in March, Snap Inc. confirmed.
• Conrad, who joined Snapchat in early 2016, told TechCrunch that he plans to leave the tech industry entirely to focus on "music, food, photography" and art. 
• Conrad's departure follows a round of layoffs at the struggling company. 
• Snap has lost some influential early employees in recent months. 

Just months after a dramatic redesign intended to put the company back on a path to growth, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. has lost its head of product.

Snap VP of Product Tom Conrad told TechCrunch that when he leaves the ephemeral picture-chat company in March, he'll actually be leaving the tech industry altogether. The Verge earlier reported that Conrad was a key deputy for Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, playing a key role in the continued development of the Snapchat app.

Snap confirmed Conrad's move to Business Insider.

“It’s time for me to put my energy outside of tech, into music, food, photography and things closer to art than entrepreneurship,” Conrad told TechCrunch. “It’s easy to put these things off forever but I didn’t want to wake up 10 years from now and not have explored these other passions of mine.”

Conrad will be replaced by Jacob Andreou, who currently works as director of growth, according to the company.

While Conrad may be looking to spread his wings, his departure comes at a difficult time for Snap Inc. Last week, the company reportedly laid off around 24 employees across eight different teams in an effort to overhaul its product to recapture an increasingly disengaged audience. 

“Having a scalable business model isn’t enough,” Spiegel said in a memo obtained by Cheddar. “We also need to have an organization that scales internally. This means that we must become exponentially more productive as we add additional resources and team members.”

Conrad is just the latest high-profile departure from Snap, Inc.: Back in November, two of Snapchat's first 20 employees left within weeks of each other, including engineering head Tim Sehn and influential "Our Stories" feature designer Chloe Drimal. 

Staff changes come amid a disappointing financial year for the company, which went public in March 2017 with a value of $24 billion. Its last earnings report in November was a disaster, resulting in a dip to its share price of 17%. While its stock recovered since then, it's raised larger questions about the future of the business. At the time of publication, Snap Inc. had a market cap of $17.39 billion, according to Yahoo Finance.  

SEE ALSO: Snap is reportedly laying off around 2 dozen employees

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NOW WATCH: I quit social media for a month — and it was the best choice I've ever made

If you set aside the actual movies and TV shows they offer, Netflix, Amazon's Prime video service, and Hulu may seem largely interchangeable. The three streaming video services are all targeted at cord cutters, they all charge around the same amount per month, they all work similarly, and they all offer a mix of movies, TV shows they've developed themselves, and shows previously aired on other networks. But there are some distinct differences in how their subscribers use the three services.

As we can see in this chart from Statista, which is based on data from Hub Entertainment Research, consumers turn to Hulu largely to watch TV shows that aired previously on broadcast or cable networks, while they spend time on Amazon watching movies more than anything else. Those differences could be important selling points for the companies. Netflix is still far and away the leader in the streaming video market, and many of its customers have yet to be convinced that they need a Hulu and an Amazon account too.

SEE ALSO: The good times are rolling for Netflix — even with the looming threat from Disney

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NOW WATCH: We talked to Sophia — the first-ever robot citizen that once said it would 'destroy humans'

• Light Field Lab is making a display that can show computer graphics, or "holograms," in the real world without a headset. 
• The company was founded by ex-Lytro engineers.
• It just raised a $7 million seed round from Sherpa Capital and Kholsa Ventures. 

The biggest sensation at Coachella in 2012 wasn't a performer: it was a life-sized projection of Tupac Shakur that drew a ton of attention and that the media called a "hologram." 

But it wasn't really a true hologram, says Jon Karafin, CEO and founder of Light Field Lab, who previously worked at the company that produced the Tupac projection. It was a "Pepper's Ghost," a centuries-old visual trick. For example, it wasn't three-dimensional, Karafin says. 

Still, it showed the impact that a so-called "hologram" can have in a live setting. Now Karafin wants to hold concerts with real "holograms" — images with volume that the entire audience can see from different angles at the same time which have real three-dimensional shapes. 

The technology to hold this kind of concert doesn't exist yet. But if Light Field Lab can commercialize and refine its technology, concerts featuring holographic performers may be possible by 2020, Karafin said. 

Light Field Lab is working on a new kind of display that is said to be able to show 3D objects in the real world. "Light Field Lab's display technologies allow you to project the same reflected rays back into space," the company's pitch deck says. "As if it is really there." 

The company calls its technology a "full paralax holographic display." 

For now, the device, which will be demoed behind closed doors this year, looks a lot like a little TV or screen that projects the holograms in front of it. Karafin says that eventually you could stack many of these screens up into a huge wall that projects high-resolution holograms, like the company's concept image: 

For now, Light Field Lab is focused on perfecting a smaller prototype — think less live concert, and more Princess Leia from "Star Wars," or a shark emerging from the screen.  

"There are certain trends in science fiction that were always promised but never actually been delivered and one of those main ones is the holographic display," he said. 

Building a prototype 

Light Field Lab's vision just got a huge shot in the arm, as the company announced on Wednesday that it raised a $7 million seed fund round led by Sherpa Ventures and Kholsa Ventures. 

The seed round was oversubscribed, Karafin said, and the company got to choose its investors based on which ones they believed could guide a nascent technology the best as the company finishes its first prototype.

There are a couple of reasons why such an early-stage company has attracted attention from big-name investors. First, Karafin and his two co-founders, CTO Brendan Bevensee and VP of Engineering Ed Ibe, previously worked at Lytro, a camera company that builds "light field' cameras, or cameras that can capture an entire scene, not just a 2D approximation of the scene. They have the technical pedigree. 

"Lytro's technology is all about capturing the photons, capturing the rays of lights, and everything that we are doing now is completing the ecosystem so you can you see every ray simultaneously on a full, true holographic display," Karafin said. 

But another reason is that what Light Field Lab is doing is related to augmented reality, a trendy technology that's been talked up by huge companies such as Microsoft, with its Hololens headset.

Whereas Microsoft's holograms can only be seen through a small window in its headset's display, Light Field Lab's technology promises a headset-free experience. If it can be commercialized, it could supercede uses for headsets like Magic Leap One or other AR headsets in favor of a screen-style form factor. 

"Light Field Labs’ founding team of experts in optics and holographic technologies is unmatched in the industry, positioning them to enable a landscape of eye-popping visual experiences without the headsets," Sherpa Capital managing director Scott Stanford told Business Insider in a statement. 

Light Field Labs plans to use that money to optomize its prototype this year. For now, the five-employee company is perfecting a smaller panel, about four by six inches. By 2019, it wants to make two-foot by two-foot panels that can be stacked into a big wall. 

"We closed the seed round to optomize the prototype and be able to share that in order to raise the Series A as we go into large scale manufacturing," Karafin said. 

Of course, the company's big-picture vision means that you won't be able to buy a holographic TV for your house anytime soon. Light Field Labs is focusing on big installations for now — think movie theatres, concerts, and sports venues. There's also the issue of having quality holographic content for the display. "The ultimate goal is to make sure we don't launch into the consumer market before it's ready,"  Karafin said. 

SEE ALSO: After 6 years and $1.9 billion, secretive startup Magic Leap unveils its smart glasses for first time

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• A heartbreaking accident on NBC's 'This Is US' resulted in viewers threatening to throw away their Crock-Pots. 
• The creators of the show were forced to defend Crock-Pots on Twitter after the episode aired. 
• Crock-Pot defended itself, saying that the incident on the show was "nearly impossible" and nothing similar had ever occurred in real life. 

A heart-breaking plot development on NBC's 'This Is Us' had fans of the TV show threatening to throw away their Crock-Pots. 

In the most recent episode, which aired on Tuesday, a faulty Crock-Pot slow cooker left unattended leads to a dish towel catching on fire. With the knowledge that the death of Jack — the Pearson family patriarch — is inevitable and fast approaching, viewers were left terrified by what the next episode would bring, as the kitchen was engulfed in flames at the end of the episode. 

Many fans of the hit show blamed the Crock-Pot for the tragedy — and said that they would take action against the slow cookers in their own lives. 

On Wednesday, 'This Is Us' creator Dan Fogelman took to Twitter to defend Crock-Pots. 

However, the appliance was ultimately forced to take matters into its own hands. A Crock-Pot representative released an extensive statement that states "we have never received any consumer complaints similar to the fictional events portrayed in last night’s episode."  

"Our hope is that the team at NBC’s 'This Is Us' will help us spread factual information regarding our product’s safety," the statement reads. "While we know their primary mission is to entertain – something they have continued to excel in – we also feel they have a responsibility to inform."

Here is Crock-Pot's full statement in response to the devastating 'This Is Us' plot development: 

Crock-Pot understands the concerns brought up by the recent episode of ‘This Is Us,’ and we too are heartbroken by the latest development in Jack’s storyline. However, it is important that our consumers understand and have confidence that all Crock-Pot slow cookers exceed all internal testing protocols and all applicable industry safety standards and regulations as verified by independent third-party testing labs. For nearly 50 years, with over 100 million Crock-Pots sold, we have never received any consumer complaints similar to the fictional events portrayed in last night’s episode. In fact, the safety and design of our product renders this type of event nearly impossible.

In addition, and most relevant to the concerns consumers are having after watching the recent ‘This Is Us’ episode, our Crock-Pot slow cookers are low current, low wattage (typically no more than 200 or 300 watts) appliances with self-regulating, heating elements. The product is designed to cook foods over a longer period of time at low temperatures and the switches connect to only 1 side of the power line voltage, so there is never a high voltage applied directly across our switches. The switches within our slow cookers are subjected to additional internal testing, which includes a Rotary Knob Endurance test, Rotary Knob Force Test and Flame Burning Test and constructed of self-extinguishing, flame resistant material.

Our hope is that the team at NBC’s ‘This Is Us’ will help us spread factual information regarding our product’s safety. While we know their primary mission is to entertain – something they have continued to excel in – we also feel they have a responsibility to inform. Just like many fans, we will be watching next week’s episode to see how Jack’s story progresses and, regardless of the outcome, we want consumers first and foremost to know they are safe when using their Crock-Pot.

SEE ALSO: The maker of Huggies and Kleenex is firing up to 5,500 workers — and it's using Trump tax cuts to pay for the layoffs

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NOW WATCH: Take a look inside Amazon's grocery store of the future — there are no cashiers, registers or lines

• Rap mogul Russell Simmons is facing a civil lawsuit for allegedly raping filmmaker Jennifer Jarosik in August 2016.
• Jarosik, who is seeking $5 million in damages, is the sixth woman to accuse Simmons of sexual assault or misconduct.
• Simmons has denied all allegations. 

A woman accused rap mogul Russell Simmons of rape in a civil lawsuit filed Wednesday, according to NBC News.

In the suit filed in a U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Jarosik alleges that Simmons sexually assaulted her in August 2016 when she met Simmons at his home to discuss a film he had agreed to finance.

Jarosik, who is seeking $5 million in damages, said in the suit that Simmons allegedly got aggressive after she refused to have sex with him. She said he pushed her onto his bed, causing her to hit her head. She claims Simmons then "pounced on her while she was still in shock and fear, and proceeded to rape her."

Jarosik is now the sixth woman to accuse Simmons, the cofounder of Def Jam Recordings, of sexual assault or misconduct.

Simmons stepped down from his companies in November after allegations of sexual assault from the screenwriter Jenny Lumet and model Keri Claussen Khalighi. In December, three other women accused Simmons of rape in a New York Times story.

Simmons has denied all allegations and told NBC in a statement on Wednesday that he looks forward to the court case "to make use of fair processes that ensure that justice will be done and that the full truth will be known."

Jarosik's attorney, Perry C. Wander, said in a statement to Billboard that the case against Simmons is emblematic of a systemic problem in the music industry:

"It's time that the hip hop industry face the music and recognize that the deep rooted history of misogyny and discrimination against women in the music industry has to come to an end. #TimesUp. It's not enough to apologize and step away from your business, convert a yoga studio to a nonprofit and still draw a salary and be worth $500 million and do nothing but apologize. As James Franco said, 'if I need to make restitution I’ll do that. Mr. Simmons practices meditation, yoga and is a long time vegan practicing non violence against animals. So basically he treats animals better than women. The hypocrisy has to stop now."

SEE ALSO: Russell Simmons has stepped down from his companies and been dropped by HBO after a new sexual assault allegation

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NOW WATCH: Here's how the map of the United States has changed in 200 years

• Oprah Winfrey has shut down the rumors that she might run for president in 2020. 
• Winfrey said in a new profile with In Style that "it's not something that interests" her.

Oprah Winfrey has shut down the rumors that she might run for president in 2020, weeks after her stirring speech at the Golden Globe Awards sparked speculation that the former talk-show host would run for office. 

In a new profile with In Style, Winfrey addressed the "Oprah 2020" rumors publicly for the first time, following two of her "closest friends" telling CNN earlier this month that Winfrey was "actively" thinking about a presidential bid.

"I've always felt very secure and confident with myself in knowing what I could do and what I could not," Winfrey told In Style of a potential bid. "And so it's not something that interests me. I don't have the DNA for it."

Winfrey said that her friend and "CBS This Morning" host Gayle King had been "calling me regularly and texting me things, like a woman in the airport saying, 'When's Oprah going to run?'"

"So Gayle sends me these things, and then she'll go, 'I know, I know, I know! It wouldn't be good for you—it would be good for everyone else,'" she continued.

Winfrey added, "I met with someone the other day who said that they would help me with a campaign. That's not for me."

Read the full profile over at In Style.

SEE ALSO: The 20 actors who have made the most money at the U.S. box office

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NOW WATCH: Here's how easy it is for the US president to launch a nuclear weapon

• EA, the game publisher behind "Madden" and "FIFA" and "Mass Effect," is hard at work on its next big franchise: "Anthem."
• According to a new report on Kotaku, the game is facing development issues, and it has a new launch window: Early 2019.
• The game was revealed in June 2017; it was given a "fall 2018" release window at the time.

The next major game franchise from one of the world's largest game publishers, EA, is reportedly in trouble. 

The game, which is named "Anthem," is reportedly being pushed from its scheduled fall 2018 launch window to some point in early 2019. The report comes from a new piece in Kotaku, which details a pressure-filled culture at EA's BioWare studios in Austin and Edmonton. 

"There's a sense among BioWare employees that the company's future is inextricably tied to this game," Kotaku's Jason Schreier reports.

"Anthem" is a major game for EA, doubly so for the BioWare group. The last BioWare game was a failure of such large scale that the entire "Mass Effect" franchise — a beloved series that's sold tens of millions of copies — was hurt in the process.

That game was 2017's "Mass Effect Andromeda," a game intended to start a whole new story arc in the futuristic, science fiction "Mass Effect" series. But "Andromeda" was a major flop, critically and commercially, which led to the outright closure of one major BioWare office in Montreal. Moreover, the entire "Mass Effect" franchise was reportedly put on "hiatus" following the failure of "Andromeda."

Given that misstep, it makes sense that current BioWare staffers working on the studio's next big game are feeling serious pressure to succeed with "Anthem." For its part, BioWare owner EA didn't respond to a request for comment as of publishing.

Read the full piece on Kotaku right here, and check out the first gameplay trailer for "Anthem" below:

SEE ALSO: 'Anthem' could be the next 'Destiny' — here's what it's all about

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NOW WATCH: 7 science-backed ways for a happier and healthier 2018 — this is what you do the very first week

• The YouTube star Casey Neistat is leaving CNN a little over a year after the company bought his app, Beme, for about $25 million.
• Neistat was supposed to develop a new millennial-focused outlet for CNN through the Beme app.
• CNN said that it would try to find new jobs for Beme employees within the company but that some would be laid off.

CNN is losing the YouTube star Casey Neistat and shutting down Beme, his app that the news network acquired for about $25 million in 2016, BuzzFeed News reported Thursday.

Neistat was brought to CNN to turn Beme into a new outlet for digital storytelling. CNN had hoped to leverage Neistat's popularity on YouTube to reach a new generation of viewers. But Neistat told BuzzFeed he didn't think CNN was a good fit.

He also addressed his departure from CNN in a YouTube video on Thursday.

Neistat appeared on the cover of The Hollywood reporter last year. In the cover story, CNN's president, Jeff Zucker, said he became interested in Neistat after learning about him from his teenage son.

BuzzFeed reports that CNN plans to find new jobs within the company for the 22 employees who worked with Neistat on Beme but that some will be laid off.

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• The rapper 50 Cent on Wednesday confirmed a TMZ report that he had made millions by accepting bitcoin for his 2014 album, "Animal Ambition."
• He said in an Instagram post that he "forgot" about the cryptocurrency payments, which sat in his account for four years and, according to TMZ, are now worth between $7 million and $8.5 million.

The rapper 50 Cent on Wednesday confirmed a TMZ report that he had made about $8 million by accepting bitcoin as payment for his 2014 album, "Animal Ambition."

TMZ calculated that the 700 bitcoins 50 Cent received for the album in 2014 and sat untouched in his account for four years would be worth between $7 million and $8.5 million today.

The rapper confirmed the report by posting a screenshot of the TMZ article on Instagram with the caption: "Not bad for a kid from South Side, I'm so proud of me."

The Verge notes that he later commented on the post, which has since been deleted, "Ima keep it real, I forgot I did that shit lol."

He also posted the TMZ article on Twitter, adding a hashtag promoting his new film, "Den of Thieves."

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• Reece Thompson appeared in "Titanic" at the age of 5.
• He landed a small speaking role as a character the movie database IMDB lists as "Irish little boy."
• Thompson still receives residuals from the film, but the amount sometimes fluctuates from year to year.
• Film and television actors — and their heirs — can earn money through residuals for years if a project is successful enough.

You've probably seen Reece Thompson's face before, but you most likely wouldn't recognize him on the street.

At the age of 5, Thompson made his film debut in the 1997 megahit "Titanic." He played the part of the "Irish little boy," a young third-class passenger who tragically dies with his mother and sister when the famous passenger liner sinks.

In the movie, Thompson appears in three scenes and has a line of dialogue.

Today, Thompson, 25, is the digital marketing director at Brian Head Resort, a skiing and snowboarding resort in Utah. He doesn't remember much of his time on the set of "Titanic," which has grossed over $2.2 billion worldwide in its lifetime — the second-highest of all time, according to Box Office Mojo.

But each year, Thompson still receives a few checks for his performance in the film.

Thompson got his start as a child model and acquired a talent agent after he won a contest. When he was 5, his agent offered his mother two potential projects: an appearance in a gas station commercial, or a shot at a role in "a major motion picture."

Though the commercial was a surer bet — a tidy sum for a few hours of work — Thompson's mother opted for the riskier latter option, he told Business Insider.

"It turned out to be one of the highest-grossing films in history, so it's pretty bizarre in retrospect," Thompson told Business Insider. "My mom was like: 'Let's just do it. It'll be cool. Even if the movie sucks, we'll see it.' Obviously, it ended up exploding, so that wasn't a bad decision on her part, that's for sure."

Thompson said he didn't remember much about the audition or the filming, but he does recall struggling with an Irish accent. At such a young age, he had a hard time changing his pronunciation of the words — or even fully grasping what an accent was.

"If you listen to it, it doesn't sound very Irish," he said. "It just sounds soft-spoken. I remember trying to mimic what the speech coach was trying to do. That's as close as I got."

Thompson said he was paid at a certain rate for his time on set. When the film came out on December 19, 1997, it was a massive hit, raking in $28.6 million in its opening weekend in the US, according to Box Office Mojo.

Thompson ended up earning about $30,000, which was invested and put into bank accounts. Much of that money has since gone toward his education, car, and living expenses, he said.

He continues to receive residuals on a quarterly basis, however.

In the years after the movie's debut, the checks were in the "low thousands," he said. The amount would sometimes spike, like when the VHS and DVD versions came out in 1998 and 1999, respectively. There was also a DVD rerelease in 2005, a Blu-ray release in 2012, and a theatrical rerelease from AMC Theatres last December to celebrate the film's 20th anniversary.

Thompson said the residuals didn't get much of a boost after the 2012 theatrical release of "Titanic" in 3D, though.

The website of the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists says that for films, "residuals begin once the movie appears on video/DVD, basic cable and free or pay television, or new media." How much a performer earns varies based on their contract and the enduring success of the film. Extras — whom the SAG calls "background actors" — can't receive residuals.

Now, Thompson says he tends to earn about $200 to $300 a year in residuals.

"It's weird because it's not present in my mind anymore," he said. "It's not like, 'Oh, when am I going to get a new "Titanic" check?' When it happens, it's like, 'Oh, cool, an extra $100.'"

SAG-AFTRA estimates it processes 1.5 million to 1.6 million residuals checks a year.

For Thompson and other "Titanic" actors, those residuals will keep coming in every year as the film continues to make a splash with theatrical and TV audiences. And their heirs can even collect residuals checks years down the line.

"There have been a couple of times where it's been like: 'Oh, wow, that's a $250 check. This movie's 12 years old. That's pretty bizarre,'" he said. "But hopefully, they keep playing it a lot, because that means more money for me."

SEE ALSO: THEN AND NOW: The cast of Titanic 20 years after it premiered

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