George Clooney went on the air with NBC News to clarify why he held a political fundraiser this weekend. He also commented on the ‘obscene amount of money’ being raised for Hillary Clinton.
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The cord-cutter generation is growing, and those who are ditching cable are drawing a line in the sand.
Most cord-cutters now say they will not pay a single dollar for premium standalone cable channels, such as HBO or Showtime, that do not require a traditional TV subscription, according to a new study from Morgan Stanley Research.
The study polled 2,501 cord-cutters in the U.S. and 58% said they would not pay for an HBO standalone service, compared to 60% for Showtime and 63% for Starz. Moreover, 13% of respondents said they would pay no more than $3 for an HBO service, compared to 15% for Showtime and 13% for Starz.
This data indicates a major problem for HBO, Showtime, Starz, and peer services, especially as subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services such as Netflix and Hulu grow in popularity and take users away from traditional pay-TV.
Netflix leads all streaming services in terms of top content for the first time in the six years of Morgan Stanley's Online Video Study. The study asked which network or SVOD service has the best original content, and 29% said Netflix, compared to 18% for HBO, a 13% year-over-year decline.
Subscription rates among the major streaming service entities also seems to be slowing. HBO Now, the company's over-the-top (OTT) service, just neared one million subscribers in March, according to a statement from Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes. But analysts expected this to happen by the end of last year.
Netflix, meanwhile, is expected to report its smallest increase in new U.S. subscribers since 2012 during its first-quarter earnings call next week, reports Ad Age.
All of this data should particularly worry Starz, which debuted its own OTT service this month at $8.99 a month. That's the lowest price point among premium networks, but only 7% of those polled in the Morgan Stanley study said they would be willing to pay that much for the service.
The television landscape continues to shift as more consumers say no to traditional pay-TV packages. The ever-increasing selection of original content from Netflix and Hulu only makes the environment more complex.
Margaret Boland, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on subscription video on-demand services that examines how the growth of SVOD is coming at the expense of the pay-TV industry. The report analyzes the state of the pay-TV industry and maps out which demographics are more likely to stop buying traditional TV packages.
The report also discusses the user base, original content offerings, and subscription models of the major subscription streaming services available today, including Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video. Finally, it looks at how traditional pay-TV companies and premium channels like HBO and Showtime are addressing the shift to digital viewing, as well as the implications of their response for advertisers.
Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:
In full, the report:
To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:
The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of subscription video on-demand services.
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In the aftermath of the Flint water crisis, John Oliver took a look at America's relationship to lead on Sunday's "Last Week Tonight." The situation isn't pretty, he discovered, so he enlisted "Sesame Street" to help get the message out.
First, a USA Today study found that lead was present in water in all 50 states. But that's not even the worse source of lead poisoning in our homes. An American Healthy Homes Survey estimated that more than 2.1 million children under the age of six live in homes with lead dust hazards. And the CDC estimated that a little over 500,000 aged five and under have elevated levels of lead in their blood.
"That's terrible," the host said. "Lead is almost as much of a scourge in young children's homes as 'Frozen' merchandise."
The US lagged behind the rest of the world in banning the use of lead in paint in the 1920s.
"We knew it was dangerous," Oliver said. "But instead of joining [the lead ban], America put lead basically everywhere."
In addition to interior paint, lead paint has been used in different forms to fight rust on metal, such as bridges, and to protect wood, as in the exteriors of homes. But in the 1970s, several studies showing the health dangers of lead helped to ban it. As a result, the US saw a significant decrease in lead levels in children's blood. But the real problem was still all the lead that we used before the ban.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development's program to seal in lead and wash the dust from homes needs about $230 million to effectively keep poisoning at bay. Yet it has never been given anywhere near that number.
"This year, we've allocated just $110 million. That is just a little more than Americans spent to see 'Ride Along 2,'" Oliver said. "A movie that incidentally the New York Post described as 'as funny as lead poisoning.' It's amazing."
As a result, many Americans, mostly the poor, continue to live with the dangers of lead in their homes. And one would think after all the outrage of the the Flint water controversy, politicians would support efforts to rid homes of lead. But instead, the funds given to programs have stayed flat.
"This problem was obvious enough 20 years ago for 'Sesame Street' to feel the need to address this," the host said. "And since we very much still have this problem, it's clearly time to address it again."
So Oliver decided to participate in an updated segment with his new network-mates, since the problem is still horrible.
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NOW WATCH: The water in Flint, Michigan, has been poisoning children — now teachers are seeing the effects
On Sunday, Amazon began to offer Prime Video as a standalone streaming service for the first time, bringing it closer in concept to the likes of Netflix and Hulu.
Prior to Sunday, to get Prime Video you had to subscribe to the entire Prime bundle, which included things like two-day shipping and access to Amazon's music streaming service. Setting aside the fact that at $8.99 per month, Prime Video is a bad deal, there’s another reason why it’s not a “Netflix killer.”
If you look at the overlap of users on the iOS apps for Netflix, Amazon Video, and Hulu, it suggests that the latter two services are as much complements to Netflix as head-to-head competitors.
First, let’s look at the overlap graph for Netflix (courtesy of SurveyMonkey Intelligence):
These numbers suggest that a substantial amount of Netflix subscribers don’t subscribe to Hulu or Amazon Prime, which makes sense given the scale of its US subscriber base (Netflix had 46 million US subscribers at the end Q4 2015, versus Hulu's last-released 9 million subscribers as of April, 2015).
And if these kinds of percentages also held true for Hulu and Amazon Prime — if we observed that subscribers to those streaming services largely don't subscribe to Netflix — it would paint a picture of a zero-sum ecosystem where the three companies are fighting to become the single streaming service you choose (albeit with Hulu and Prime being much smaller). You pick the one service that best suits your needs, and call it a day.
That’s simply not the case.
Here is is a graph of Amazon Video’s user overlap:
And Hulu’s:
Here you can see that a huge portion of the user base of these apps also use Netflix: 53% for Hulu and 62% for Amazon Video.
While Netflix has won the battle for one-service users, that likely isn’t the market that Hulu or Amazon are betting on.
The high rate of overlap suggests that Hulu and Amazon’s subscribers are people who have begun to buy into a streaming future. This is a future where you create your own entertainment bundle via a mixture of standalone streaming services.
And in that world, Prime Video isn’t a dark horse “Netflix killer,” it’s just one more channel of content.
SEE ALSO: Amazon's new Netflix competitor is a bad deal for most people
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Alibaba is diving into Hollywood.
According to a report from the LA Times, the Chinese e-commerce giant is investing in two more Hollywood summer films through its subsidiary Alibaba Pictures. Both "Star Trek Beyond" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows" will receive investments according to the LA Times, but Alibaba did not disclose the amount.
This marks the second and third time Alibaba Pictures has invested in a US production after doing so with "Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation" in 2015.
Alibaba Pictures is one of a number of ventures that founder Jack Ma and Alibaba have decided to take on over the past few years which also include sports and online food delivery.
The ventures are seen as something between wasteful passion projects and legitimate attempts to diversify the business, depending on who you ask. Either way, the company has reiterated that the moves are legitimate outgrowths of the business.
The side projects' success is becoming increasingly important, however, due to the slowing user growth that the company is facing in China, its host country. This has prompted the move to films, a push into non-US markets, and a serious stock price decline in the US over the past year.
Beyond Alibaba's fortunes, the Chinese firm's foray into film could be a boon for both the "Star Trek" and "TMNT" franchises. China is increasingly becoming a huge market for US films, and tapping into the market is important. Blockbusters have even begun to include some China-only scenes in order to be more attractive to regulators and audiences in the country.
According to the LA Times report, both films' previous outings — "Star Trek into Darkness" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" — earned approximately 12% of their total gross in China
Both films will also receive distribution from Alibaba's Taobao Movie platform which is akin to Netflix or Amazon Prime Video said the Times.
SEE ALSO: This is the world's biggest economic bright spot
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NOW WATCH: These striking images show just how overcrowded China's population really is
Coachella is one of the biggest and best music festivals in the country, but the fun is at least as much in the parties surrounding the Indio, California, destination event.
With desert temperatures that frequently exceed 100 degrees, there are plenty of ways to lie back and take in the sun at the festival that just wrapped its first weekend. And celebrities always make appearances, from the pool parties thrown by fashion brands to the shows.
See how Leonardo DiCaprio and Rihanna, Katy Perry with her lipstick, Taylor Swift with her squad, and more celebrities enjoyed Coachella this year:
SEE ALSO: 41 movies you have to see this summer
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YouTube wants to make digital video feel as real as possible.
The company will now allow 360-degree livestreaming videos, including a big debut of the new feature with broadcasts from the Southern California music festival Coachella.
"Today's kids dreaming of going to a basketball game or a concert can access those experiences firsthand, even if they're far away from the court," YouTube exec Neal Mohan writes in a blog post on the news. "What were once limited experiences are now available to anyone, anywhere, at any time."
The video sharing site is also launching "spatial audio" which will allow you to hear different depth, distance, and intensities in sound.
YouTube introduced 360 videos last March and livestreaming back in 2011, but the combination of the two comes as Google continues to up its focus on virtual reality. It currently sells low-cost Cardboard VR headsets, which work with smartphones to create a super-cheap virtual reality experiences, but is reportedly working on another device.
To try to get more YouTube creators to make these kinds of videos, Google has outfitted its eight YouTube Spaces studios around the world with 360 cameras and audio technology.
Live and 360 video is a particularly hot topic right now, with Facebook putting a huge emphasis on live video and 360 experiences, although the social network has not enabled live, 360 videos like YouTube has.
SEE ALSO: Facebook just revealed its ultimate vision for virtual reality — and how hard it'll be to get there
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In the wake of the controversial choice to cast Scarlett Johansson as the lead of the Hollywood adaptation of the Japanese anime franchise “Ghost in the Shell,” ScreenCrush reports that producers of the film tested digital visual effects that would make actors look more Asian.
According to a source in the story, producers immediately rejected the idea after tests were completed, but the news is the latest example of Hollywood “whitewashing” — casting white actors in non-white roles — that has been getting a spotlight in recent years.
Last year, Emma Stone was cast as a half-Chinese/half-Hawaiian woman in “Aloha,” Rooney Mara was cast as a Native American in “Pan,” and most of the stars in “Gods of Egypt” were Caucasian.
In the famous 1995 anime film "Ghost in the Shell," Motoko Kusanagi is a part-cyborg policewoman. Johansson is taking the role in the new movie coming out in 2017.
ScreenCrush reports that several sources say tests were done on Johansson herself to make her look more Asian. But Paramount in a statement to the site, while confirming a test, says it was only on a background actor.
"No visual effects tests were conducted on Scarlett’s character and we have no future plans to do so," the studio said.
Regardless of the subject of the VFX tests, what’s more disturbing is that Asian actors are frequently not cast in these roles.
Following the report by ScreenCrush, screenwriter Max Landis took to YouTube to give his two cents on the issue.
“The only reason to be upset about Scarlett Johansson being in ‘Ghost in the Shell’ is if you don’t know how the movie industry works,” he said in the video, pointing out that “there are no A-list female Asian celebrities.”
“It’s infuriating,” Landis added. “There used to be, in the ‘90s, diversity in our A-list actors. Jackie Chan and Jet Li were famous at the same time, they could both get movies made. We don’t have that guy any more, we don’t even have Lucy Liu any more.”
Landis argues the only reason "Ghost in the Shell" in its Hollywood form is being made is because a bankable star like Johansson is in the lead.
Paramount has not yet replied to a request for comment from Business Insider.
SEE ALSO: 41 movies you have to see this summer
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The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival's 2016 first-weekend run was quite a success. Big names such as Guns N' Roses, LCD Soundsystem, and A$AP Rocky were among the acts who graced the stage — and even more celebrities attended, Instagramming and tweeting from their VIP parties.
After Saturday's closing shows, the rager kept going at the seventh-annual Neon Carnival, one of the most notorious after-parties held during Coachella weekend. The party is unaffiliated with Coachella, but it has fallen on the night between Saturday's and Sunday's shows for years.
This year, in order to avoid insane traffic on the way to the party's location at a private airport, VIP guests jumped into their jets and helicopters to make it on to the scene.
Taylor Swift, Leonardo DiCaprio, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Jared Leto, The Weeknd, and Alexander Wang were all among those spotted partying at the carnival.
SEE ALSO: How celebrities partied at this year's Coachella music festival
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Samantha Bee had a surprising answer for Yahoo's Katie Couric when it came down to who has provided the best comedy of the current election.
"Ted Cruz," she answered.
While the candidate clearly provided a lot of good fodder for the "Full Frontal" host, Bee had her favorite Ted Cruz moment. It occurred when a video of Cruz starring in a Harvard production of "The Crucible" came to light.
In the play, Cruz was Reverend Samuel Parris, the self-important minister with a huge role in the Salem witch trials.
"If I'm feeling down, all I have to do is watch Ted Cruz in the 'The Crucible' and my spirits lift," Bee said. "He didn't know that that performance would resonate through the ages in that way, and bring joy to so many people. So many 10's of people in my office."
Overall, the election has been good to Bee.
"The whole election season is such a carnival atmosphere," Bee said. "I know it wasn't just for us. It was really nice of everybody to be so crazy the year that we were launching our show. That was thoughtful."
TBS recently ordered episodes of "Full Frontal" to run every week through the end of 2016.
Watch the entire interview below:
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SEE ALSO: John Oliver and 'Sesame Street' take on the lead poisoning problem still sweeping America
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NOW WATCH: New York Republicans ignored Ted Cruz while he gave an impassioned speech at the GOP gala
On Monday, the historical musical phenomenon "Hamilton" won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama– one of only nine musicals to do so.
Before the show premiered on Broadway in August 2015, composer-lyricist, director, and star Lin-Manuel Miranda performed the opening number to the musical — the then mix-tape — for President Obama at "An Evening of Poetry and Music: The Spoken Word" in May 2009.
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Since the release of Alex Gibney's Emmy-winning documentary "Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief," fascination over the Church of Scientology has been at an all-time high.
Now the church is being examined through the unique style of BBC filmmaker Louis Theroux. Known as the Michael Moore of Britain, Theroux often stars in his docuseries projects featuring off-beat cultural subjects like "America's Most Medicated Kids" and "Twilight of the Porn Stars." "My Scientology Movie," Theroux's first feature film (directed by John Dower), is less of a broad historic look at Scientology, like Gibney's film, and more a spotlight on the alleged incidents church members have experienced under the thumb of current Scientology leader David Miscavige.
"I had tried to do something on Scientology in 2002, but I reengaged with the subject after our producer Simon Chinn read the Lawrence Wright New Yorker piece [in 2011]," Theroux told Business Insider hours before the film's international premiere on Sunday at the Tribeca Film Festival.
The film follows Theroux as he travels to Los Angeles to investigate what goes on at the church's headquarters. With the church unwilling to cooperate, Theroux enlists ex-Scientology executive Marty Rathbun (who also stars in "Going Clear") to give insight into what goes on there.
This then leads to Theroux asking Rathburn to help him in casting reenactments of incidents that allegedly happened to church members, many of which involve the church's leader, David Miscavige, bullying and physically abusing Scientologists.
As with "Going Clear," making "My Scientology Movie" involved lawyers dissecting every piece of footage in the final cut to make sure BBC Films and others with stakes in the film weren't making themselves legally vulnerable.
Due to differences in liable rules in the UK versus the States, Theroux believes "My Scientology Movie" was scrutinized more by legal than "Going Clear."
"When you don't have access to a subject and all you have is ex-members and critics, there is this gravitational pull toward telling a certain version of events," Theroux said. "Scientology would say this, and they have a point, that it's like doing a portrait of a marriage in which you're only hearing from the ex-wife and not the ex-husband. So as a journalist it's this nagging feeling that I'm not getting the full picture."
In the movie, many title cards giving information about alleged incidents also include counter-statements from the church. But Theroux believes Scientology's side comes through in its actions during filming.
In a few instances, Theroux finds camera crews, allegedly Scientologists, filming him making the movie. (Scientology informed Theroux that it's making a film on him.) Rathburn also films alleged Scientology members harassing him.
"When they show up saying they are making their own film on me, or filming Marty, as a viewer you no longer have that thought, 'I wonder how Scientology would characterize this?' It strengthens the film," Theroux said.
But Theroux admits he may have gone too far in a key moment in the film. Following an encounter Rathburn has with alleged church members, Theroux and Rathburn discuss the incident, with Theroux reminding Rathburn that when he was in Scientology these were the kind of tactics he instructed people to use on ex-members. This sets Rathburn off, and he curses out Theroux.
"I think I was probably over the line," Theroux said. "Every screening I've been in when that moment plays, it's tense and people think, 'I don't know what I feel about this.'"
But director John Dower believes it needed to be addressed.
"Louis needs to ask that question because Marty had consistently batted it away so many times before," he said. "It so happens that's the only time he could get an answer out of him."
"My Scientology Movie" offers the impression that even if you decide to leave the church, members will never leave you alone — especially if you go public with what goes on inside it.
Since filming wrapped, those involved with the movie have thought the church was behind bizarre moments in their lives.
Dower knows his Instagram account was hacked by the church because, according to Dower, Scientology officials admitted to doing it in one of their cease-and-desist letters to the BBC regarding the film.
Then there are the threats toward Theroux.
The morning of this interview, Theroux was locked out of his email account due to, as he called it, "suspicious activity." He believes it might be Scientology-related. And a few months ago, the police came to his house telling him they'd been tipped that someone wanted to do bodily harm to him due to his Scientology movie.
"I asked the police where the threat came from and they said Scientology called them saying they had heard it," Theroux said. "I was like hold on, that doesn't sound right. They were the ones who made the call? Now I'm on a special list where if I call the police they are on the fast track to where I am. But my take is it sounded like Scientologists were just trying to wind me up by getting the police to come to my house."
Numerous attempts to contact Scientology to comment for this story were not successful.
Here's a clip from the movie:
SEE ALSO: 25 pressing questions we still need answered on "Game of Thrones"
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NOW WATCH: Here are Hollywood's biggest donors in the 2016 election and how much they're spending
It turns out the likes of Emma Stone, Kaley Cuoco, Demi Moore, and Sugar Ray Leonard are all registered members of a small conservative party in California, despite having politics that don't align with the group.
According to a Los Angeles Times phone survey of 500 members of the party, nearly three out of four did not realize they had enrolled in a political party that opposes abortion rights and same-sex marriage, and is for a fence to be built along the US border.
The reason for all the confusion is the party's name, American Independent Party (AIP). If voters don't want to be affiliated with a party, they will often check off where it says "independent." But in California, you must check a box on a registration form that says "no party preference."
“Demi Moore is not, nor has ever been, a member of the American Independent Party,” Moore's rep told the paper. “Any record that states otherwise is a mistake.”
Moore has contributed money to and campaigned for President Barack Obama.
“The views of this party do not accurately reflect my personal beliefs and I am not affiliated with any political party,” Cuoco, known for her role on “The Big Bang Theory,” said in a statement to the Times. “As such, I am taking the necessary steps to immediately remove my name as a member of this voting party.”
The highly conservative AIP dates back to 1967, when segregationist and former Democrat George Wallace launched his second run for the White House and created a new party in the process. The party now only exists in California.
Of people surveyed in the Times poll, fewer than 4 percent could correctly identify their own registration as a member of the American Independent Party. According to the Secretary of State's Office, the party has about 472,000 members, or 2.7 percent of the statewide total.
In one unsurprising finding, some voters who mistakenly registered with the party said they found the state's official registration materials confusing.
SEE ALSO: How celebrities partied at this year's Coachella music festival
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NOW WATCH: The trailer for the first 'Star Wars' spin-off movie 'Rogue One' is here
Taylor Swift showed off her new platinum bob at Coachella. She seemed to be having the time of her life, and especially loved dancing to Rihanna's surprise performance during her boyfriend, Calvin Harris', set.
Story by Anjelica Oswald and editing by Chelsea Pineda
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"Avengers" director Joss Whedon is well-known for his work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and for bringing "Buffy the Vampire" to television, but could he also take on Broadway?
During a Tribeca Film Festival panel Monday evening with "Avengers" actor Mark Ruffalo, a fan asked Whedon when we'll get a Broadway musical from him.
"I was actually working on a musical earlier ... or last year," Whedon said to the crowd's surprise. "Something that was very much a departure from the movies I've done."
That shouldn't come as too much of a surprise if you're familiar with Whedon.
The 51-year-old director is a self-proclaimed theater geek. His father was a screenwriter, and wrote off-Broadway musicals. Both his parents acted. Whedon himself directed a black and white version of "Much Ado About Nothing" in 2012. So he has an obvious love for the theater.
However, it didn't come to fruition for two reasons. The first was a little movie called "Avengers: Age of Ultron," which Whedon directed.
"I had a little hitch of my giddyup on the musical partially because after 'Ultron,' it was just too much ... there were too many moving parts, and I was like, I need to write something that I completely understand that I'm going to shoot. So, it's taken a bit of a backseat."
"Also, something else happened," Whedon continued, aware of a particular cultural phenomenon. "Nobody will be surprised, even remotely, to hear that that something was 'Hamilton.'"
Lin-Manuel Miranda was awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his work on the hip-hop Broadway show about Alexander Hamilton Monday afternoon.
"Which it was only after the album came out and I was listening to it 24/7 that I was like, 'I can't hear myself. I can only hear him,'" said Whedon. "So I was just like ... I'll get back to that ... as soon as I stop listening to 'Hamilton,' in 2021."
"I don't blame you," added Ruffalo.
Earlier in the hour, Ruffalo asked Whedon what music is to him, to which Whedon gave a very detailed answer.
"There's two things that I would say about music, particularly," he started. "One is that, you mentioned theatricality, as a part of my filmwork. There is a heightened state. Particularly, in a song, in a musical. If the musical is being done right, this is the moment, this is where it all comes out. This is where ... everything is building to this, and you have this perfect state where, not only, is somebody articulating who they are and what they need, but it rhymes, like it was absolutely this pristine and very structured thing.
"Everything I do sort of is about that structure and about that moment of somebody going, 'This is the best version of me that I can explain,'" he continued. "You're always trying to hit that feeling, whether it's sad, happy, or scary, whatever that feeling you get that a musical number is in that moment. You're trying to hit those peaks all the time in conversation. I know that the stuff I write is occasionally less than naturalistic."
While Whedon didn't say what the play was about, it sounds like we won't get to see a work from Whedon on Broadway — yet.
Instead, Whedon teased he has something else in the works.
"The thing that I'm writing now, by which I will not, unfortunately, say a damn thing except that it's super good," he teased.
What could that be? Well, at 2015's San Diego Comic Con, Whedon announced one of his future projects was a comic called "Twist" centered around, what he described as, a Victorian female Batman.
We hope that's what he was talking about. We'll have to wait to find out.
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NOW WATCH: Here are Hollywood's biggest donors in the 2016 election and how much they're spending
"Avengers: Age of Ultron" debuted to a mixed critical reception and even though nearly a year has passed since its release, it's still something that weighs heavily on director Joss Whedon's mind.
Whedon appeared in New York City Monday evening at a Tribeca Film Festival director's talk with "Avengers" actor Mark Ruffalo to speak about his career. While the Marvel movie wasn't the main focus of the evening's discussion, when "Ultron" did come up, Whedon didn't shy away from mentioning it.
"Directing became fun for me. Writing is perfect joy. Writing is the moment I started writing I was like, 'Oh, this is it. This is my true love. This is why I am on the planet, if there's any reason at all.' And that's still the case ... even after things sometimes don't go the way you wish they would. (In a hushed voice) Even after 'Avengers' [Age of Ultron]."
Ruffalo quickly chimed in for some moral support from the audience, "'Avengers Age of Ultron' was a great film, right?"
While Ruffalo steered the conversation away from "Ultron," Whedon came back to it about five minutes later when the two began joking about their careers being all over now that their latest big gigs were up.
"You had a really wonderful few years," said Ruffalo.
"It's over, is what you're saying?" joked Whedon to much laughter from the audience.
"How do you feel about it? How do you feel about where you are right now?" Ruffalo pressed on.
"That it's over," Whedon continued to joke.
Ruffalo finally caved in. "Yeah, that's how we always feel, right?"
"This is a bad one. I mean, I know that you get that after any project, probably. It's worse this time," said Whedon, speaking of "Ultron." "'Ultron,' I am very proud of. There were things that did not meet my expectations, of myself. And then I was so beaten down by the process, some of that was conflicting with Marvel, which is, inevitable. But a lot of it was about my own work and then ... and I was also exhausted."
After "Age of Ultron," Whedon famously said he wasn't going to be doing any future Marvel movies. Whedon said he had clashed with Marvel execs over several scenes, including a confusing one with Thor which was trimmed down for the film's theatrical run.
When Entertainment Weekly interviewed him last March ahead of the film's release, they described him as looking physically drained and exhausted. At that point, Whedon had moved into a suite on Disney's Burbank studio lot temporarily so he could wake up, work on the film, go to sleep, and then start all over again. Not an ideal life.
"Then we went right away and did publicity and I kind of created the narrative wherein I am not quite accomplished at — and people just ran with that [about 'Ultron']," said Whedon. "So it became, 'Well, it's okay, it could be better. But it's not Joss' fault.' And I think that did a disservice to the movie and to the studio and to myself. Ultimately, it was not the right way to be because I am very proud of it."
"The things about it that are wrong frustrate me enormously and I had probably more of those than I have on the other movies I've made, but I got to make — for the second time — an absurdly personal movie where I got to talk about how I felt about humanity and what it means in very esoteric and bizarre ways for hundreds of millions of dollars," he continued. "The fact that Marvel gave me that opportunity twice is so bonkers and so beautiful. And the fact that I come off of it feeling like a miserable failure is also bonkers, but not in a cute way. Like, it becomes problematic."
Whedon said after that, he took his first vacation that was more than two weeks in 25 years.
"I really set out to do nothing, to accomplish nothing, and I'm proud to say that I have truly accomplished nothing. I got to a higher state of f--- all," said Whedon.
But that wasn't going to last long.
"My resting state is not a good one," he admitted. "I work hard. I love to work. I love the work that I do. When I'm not doing it I remember that I hate myself. So the vacation's over."
Whedon teased that he has another project in the works coming up, but he wouldn't say anything else about it other than that it's "super good."
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NOW WATCH: 'Saturday Night Live' took on Sanders and Clinton's feisty exchange in Brooklyn
HBO and Discovery have taken an equity stake in virtual-reality and 3-D pioneer OTOY, with the goal to produce "original holographic content," OTOY announced on Tuesday.
HBO will start its foray into OTOY's new technology with Jon Stewart, who is currently working to develop "upcoming content" using the company's platform.
“OTOY is unbelievable! It’s a limitless mind blowing creative platform. My dream is to someday understand how they did it,” Jon Stewart said in a statement.
OTOY had previously announced a four-year production deal with HBO and Jon Stewart.
What exactly is holographic content? The details are murky, but OTOY CEO Jules Urbach describes his vision of the future of entertainment as moving beyond the screen: "The future of media and entertainment is not going to be constrained by a screen, nor consumed through monolithic apps or platforms,” he said.
OTOY's previous products have touched on many facets of virtual reality and 3-D and have led Urbach to a string of successes that include an Academy Award. OTOY's board includes superstars like Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, Javascript creator Brendan Eich, and Hollywood power broker Ari Emanuel.
Here is how OTOY described the investment in a statement:
The investment will fuel development and distribution of original holographic content, enabling HBO and Discovery to deliver new entertainment experiences to consumers across TV, mobile, web, social and emerging wearable technologies such as virtual and augmented reality. OTOY is currently working with Jon Stewart on the development of upcoming content for HBO built using this platform.
SEE ALSO: The man behind Jon Stewart's secret project lays out the future of media — and it's riveting
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NOW WATCH: Here's what real NFL agents think about HBO's 'Ballers'
For the past 10 years, Taylor Swift's career hasn't slowed down for a moment.
The 26-year-old singer has released five albums, sold out numerous world tours, won hundreds of awards — including 10 Grammys — and broken countless records.
But after all of her success, the singer is now ready to step back from it all and take a break.
She told Vogue in her cover story for the May issue, "Honestly, I never relax, and I'm excited about being able to relax for the first time in ten years."
As Swift takes a breather from her ambitious career, here's a look back at how exactly the Pennsylvania-raised Swift made her way from country hopeful to country star, only to then conquer pop music around the globe.
SEE ALSO: Here's how Taylor Swift says she deals with her critics
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Source: The New Yorker
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Source: CMT
The way consumers access media content is drastically evolving. Viewers once limited to watching programming by a cable or satellite provider at a specific time and via a certain channel package are increasingly moving to over-the-top content (OTT) — or content that's streamed over the internet — for its greater selection and convenience.
Since streaming media devices debuted in the mid-2000s riding in the wake of new OTT services like Netflix, they've grown in popularity. In fact, over half of homes in the US have at least one television set that's connected to the internet.
In a new report from BI Intelligence, we size up the overall streaming media device market by device category and take a more granular dive into each. The report includes new shipments forecasts, identifies major players, and assesses the advantages and weaknesses of each device category. We also examine how usage and ownership may vary among device categories and the implications of this upswing on various ancillary markets, like advertising and app development.
Here are some key takeaways from the report:
In full, the report:
Interested in getting the full report? Here are two ways to access it:
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Samantha Bee decided to look into the legislators behind bills that legislate what bathrooms transgender people can use, aka the "bathroom laws." Focusing on Tennessee, Bee on her show "Full Frontal" found that a couple of these lawmakers have some pretty atrocious public records.
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz famously supported the possibly unconstitutional bathroom laws, saying, "As a father, I'm not terribly excited... about men being able to go alone into a bathroom with my daughters."
She first looked at Tennessee Representative Jeremy Durham, one of the sponsors of the bill. He has been accused of sexual harassment, including inappropriate touching, severe enough that Durham was deemed a "risk to unsuspecting women" by the state's attorney general, and then forced to move his office out of the legislative building.
"Tennessee's self-appointed ladies' room bouncer has been deemed such a risk to women that he needs a whole separate building to protect female colleagues from him," Bee said. "But he's still a champion at protecting children from sexual predators, right?"
But then Bee dug deeper. Durham actually wrote a letter of support for a former youth pastor who admitted to having child porn and pleaded guilty to the statutory rape of one of his youth group members. As a result of Durham's intervention, the man's prison sentence was reduced from 20 to three years.
Durham wouldn't disclose how he knew the man, nor why he wrote the letter.
"Because sexual predators stick together?" Bee suggested. "You know what they say, bros before little people who can't stick up for themselves."
Then Bee moved on to Tennessee Representative Sheila Butt, another supporter of the bathroom law. The host found that Butt helped to pass a law that denied rape and incest victims from being exempt from the state's 48-hour waiting period for abortions. Butt's reasoning? These cases can't be verified.
"Right, those crimes are totally unverifiable," Bee responded. "So we should go with the likeliest assumption that girls are lying whores who just like the prestige of claiming to be raped by their fathers."
She also discovered a tweet written by the lawmaker that stated, "It's time for a Council on Christian Relations and an NAAWP in this country."
Watch Bee take down the bathroom law backers below:
SEE ALSO: Samantha Bee says Ted Cruz has provided the best comedy of this election
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NOW WATCH: New York Republicans ignored Ted Cruz while he gave an impassioned speech at the GOP gala
