By Walt Hickey

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Wow Platinum is actually a dear friend

Megalopolis, the Francis Ford Coppola passion project that asks the provocative question, “What if Marci Tullii Ciceronis orationes in Catilinam was mostly about zoning?” was not a hit at the box office. Ostensibly starring Adam Driver but actually starring Aubrey Plaza, Coppola sold some of his winery to fund the $120 million movie, which was initially projected to open to $5 million to $7 million but in fact made $4 million. Anyway, if you think FFC made this sucker for the money, you’re nuts — he obviously did not make Megalopolis so he could reap the annual revenues of a Krispy Kreme location — so good for him for finally making the movie he’s desperately wanted to make for decades. The reports cite “poor word of mouth,” which is a load of crap; go see this fiasco so you can tell your descendants you were there. In actual box office news, DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot is a charming hit, making an above-expectations $35 million.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Tattoos

A fascinating copyright case is working its way through the courts, and while the amount at stake in the case is small — $3,750 — the implications for the video game industry are potentially vastly higher. From 2002 to 2008, WWE wrestler Randy Orton got six tattoos inked by tattoo artist Catherine Alexander, and Alexander has a copyright for five of them. WWE paid Orton to wrestle, and in doing so, paid him for his name, image and likeness, the last two of which clearly included the tattoos. Then video game studio Take-Two Interactive made a WWE video game, paying WWE for the right to portray their roster’s names, images and licenses. Alexander is suing Take-Two, arguing they never paid her, and a jury found copyright infringement and awarded $3,750. But now a judge is diving deeper into the legal questions, granting Take-Two’s demand that the damages be set aside because the artist failed to prove she was harmed financially.

Michael McCann, Sportico

Helene

Hurricane Helene was a monster of a storm, leading to devastation far inland related to serious floods even in the mountainous regions of western North Carolina. Helene hit Florida as a Category 4 hurricane and notably remained a hurricane six hours after landfall, only then falling back into tropical storm strength. Helene was the ninth-strongest hurricane since 1900 to make landfall, and with winds of 140 miles per hour was the most powerful hurricane to hit the Big Bend of Florida since the first records were kept in 1851. Helene has continued to cause destruction with flooding not seen in decades near Asheville.

Michael Doyle, Jennifer Yachnin and Daniel Cusick, E&E News

Strike

Video game voice and motion capture workers are on strike, as SAG-AFTRA attempts to compel the industry to set up worker protections to ensure that voice artists and physical performers aren’t training digital replacements. The 160,000-member union has been on strike against Electronic Arts, Epic Games and Take-Two for the better part of two months, though 90 games in development from smaller publishers have signed interim agreements that agree with whatever the final deal ends up being on AI. Budgets for games are massive — Grand Theft Auto VI is coming in at something like $2 billion — but spending on video games has been flat, up just 1 percent last year, and the price of a flagship game has pretty much been locked in at $70 since 2020. To respond, studios have embarked on a brutal headcount cut, with some 12,700 layoffs across the industry this year.

Max Knoblauch, Sherwood News

Counterstrike

There are no servers for the video game Counterstrike in Russia anymore, but nevertheless Russians make up about 10 percent of Counterstrike’s global player base. This is actually somewhat interesting geopolitically, as given the cutoff of access to Western social media platforms and game stores, existing multiplayer game servers based in North America or Europe are indeed some of the last places that ordinary Russians interact with people from the West.

Joshua Foust, Foreign Policy

Flowers

A new analysis sought to determine the long-term fates of the insects and flowers that U.S. states have designated as their state representatives. Among flowers, 33 states have a single official floral species, while 15 states have both a state flower and a state wildflower. Of these 63 flowers, only one — Connecticut’s state flower, marvel of Peru — is expected to experience increased habitat suitability thanks to climate change, while 42 of them (66 percent) are expected to suffer from climate change. Among state insects, 33 states have a state insect while 16 had multiple types (particularly official state butterflies), and 20 of them are the European honey bee because state governments are uncreative. Anyway, 51 percent of state insects are likely to see reduced habitat suitability. I, for one, would love to see this study for birds, as I don’t know what kind of climate impact New York’s official state bird — a low-flying plane landing at La Guardia — will have.

Science

Tigers

There are 7,000 tigers living in private facilities in the U.S., including roadside zoos, ranches and your typical rich crackpot’s house. This is more than the 5,000 tigers estimated to still live in the wild. A new study looks at American tigers — mostly descended from captive animals brought into the U.S. for circuses and zoos in the early 1900s — to see what their genetic diversity situation is, to help determine potential suitability for rewilding. The study looked at 138 privately owned tigers and found that they don’t have a ton of unique variation, but nevertheless have genetic diversity on par with wild populations.

Darren Incorvaia, Science

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