Good morning to all AMC A-Listers: “Glicked” has officially hit the silver screen. Wicked, a Broadway musical adaptation, and Gladiator II, a sequel 20 years in the making, both open in theaters today, and Hollywood execs are shaking in their mansions to see if the big-budget blockbusters will pay off.

What to expect: Estimates put Wicked box-office sales between $100–$110 million for the opening weekend, and Gladiator II at $65–$80 million. Wicked cost $150 million to make—and so did Wicked: Part 2, the success of which will likely ride on how well the first film performs. Gladiator II cost over $350 million to produce and market.

While reviews are generally positive, both casts have cited the enormous pressure on the movies to deliver the same way that “Barbenheimer” did last summer. “The box office needs a shot in the arm, and if films like Gladiator II aren’t doing it, it would be concerning,” said Paul Mescal, the Irish hunk who stars in Ridley Scott’s Roman epic.

What if it doesn’t?

That will be almost as unfortunate as watching your uncle kill your dad. The box office needs a triumph after a year that’s seen more flops than a summer boardwalk:

• Apple lost over $100 million on the spy movie Argylle, and Fly Me to the Moon, which cost $100 million to make, grossed $10 million during its opening weekend.
• Big-budget blockbusters Joker: Folie à Deux, Fall Guy, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga not only lost significant amounts of money, but they also further enforced the widespread perception that Hollywood has lost its shine.

Zoom out: Barbie and Oppenheimer took in $162 million and $82.4 million, respectively, last summer to combine for the biggest box-office weekend in North America since 2019. But just because two very different movies come out on the same day doesn’t mean it’ll create a billion-dollar cultural phenomenon. Both Wicked and Gladiator II need to surpass current projections to pull off a similar, cinema-saving feat.—CC

Matt Gaetz withdrew as Trump’s pick for attorney general. And like that *poof* he’s gone. Just a week after President-elect Donald Trump nominated former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for the top law enforcement job in the US, Gaetz took his name out of consideration yesterday, saying in a post on X that he was “unfairly becoming a distraction.” Gaetz, who resigned from Congress to pursue the role, is facing allegations of sexual misconduct; CNN reported that 45 minutes before he withdrew, the outlet notified him it was about to report allegations of a second sexual encounter between Gaetz and a 17-year-old. A vocal opponent of Big Tech, Gaetz was seen as a “Khanservative” who may have backed current FTC Chair Lina Khan’s antitrust efforts as AG. Hours after Gaetz’s withdrawal, Trump named former Florida AG Pam Bondi as his new pick. A longtime Trump ally, Bondi represented him during his first impeachment trial.

The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. The International Criminal Court also issued warrants for crimes against humanity for former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas military chief Mohammed Deif, whom Israel says it killed in an airstrike. The warrant means that Netanyahu is supposed to be arrested if he steps foot in one of the 124 member states of the ICC, though it’s likely not all of them would comply. (The US is not a member.) Netanyahu called the arrest warrant “absurd” and said it would not deter him from continuing Israel’s war in Gaza.

Russia reportedly struck Ukraine with an experimental missile. Kyiv accused Russia of launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM)—a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead—but US officials said it was actually a “medium-range” experimental missile. In a televised statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the strike was “in response to the use of American and British long-range weapons.” The US recently gave Ukraine the green light to launch American-made missiles into Russia, which the country did for the first time this week. The experimental missile launch marks the latest escalation in a conflict that has now lasted more than 1,000 days.—AE

MicroStrategy, the largest publicly traded corporate owner of bitcoin, is putting its name to good use. With $BTC nearing $100,000 and MicroStrategy growing even faster than its favorite digital currency, the once-unknown software firm is ramping up its ambitious bet to grab as much bitcoin as it can afford, it announced this week.

So far, so great. Bitcoin has jumped about 130% this year, but MicroStrategy has skyrocketed almost 500%. It reached a high of $543 yesterday, up from $63 in January, after the company said it’s selling $2.6 billion more convertible bonds (a 50% increase of these offerings) to buy more bitcoin. That’s on top of $4.6 billion in bitcoin it purchased last week and the $30+ billion it owns altogether.

Scratching backs: MicroStrategy’s announcement also helped propel bitcoin, which reached consecutive record highs of nearly $95k on Wednesday and almost $99k yesterday. The crypto industry has benefitted from renewed digital-currency optimism ignited by President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory.

Enter the haters and doubters: Though bitcoin could have a bright future ahead—especially if inflation returns to scuff up the dollar—investors are also mildly concerned about the possibility of a bubble. One 24-hour period this week saw $100 million in Bitcoin short orders. And MicroStrategy tumbled 16% yesterday after GameStop short-seller Citron Research announced that it’s hedging its bitcoin position by shorting MicroStrategy.—ML

Bulbasaur will pay for this treachery. Niantic, the developer behind Pokémon Go, announced in a blog post last week that it is building an AI model that can navigate the real world. So, if you were one of the mobile game’s 232 million active players when it was all the rage in 2016 (or if you’re still playing), your data will be funneled into the company’s “Large Geospatial Model.”

How it works: If a Large Language Model uses huge amounts of text to train bots like ChatGPT to respond to your questions, this model uses all of the geolocated images of pedestrian-only areas to help the AI understand the physical world. Niantic said that as of right now it has 10 million scanned locations around the world, with about 1 million fresh scans coming in every week.

• The company hasn’t announced any partnerships, but said the AI could be used for augmented reality and robotics.
• That means your Pokémon Go data could, theoretically, be used anywhere from Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses to the robot dogs reportedly patrolling Mar-a-lago.

Big picture: Players who opened the app eight years ago likely didn’t anticipate their Rattata-catching mission would eventually be free data for AI companies. But critics raised alarms about privacy when the game first came out, especially considering it was not CEO John Hanke’s first time involved in a data scandal.—MM

If you have more miles of high-speed rail than the circumference of the Earth, you might have too much high-speed rail. China is about to exceed 30,000 miles of track for fast choo-choos, the Wall Street Journal reported, and much of it appears to be a waste.

While the Beijing-to-Shanghai route has thrived, some stations in rural areas are ghost towns. There are 12 high-speed depots within a 40-mile radius in central Sichuan province’s Fushun County alone, the WSJ reported. The project is unsurprisingly a drain on the Chinese economy: The country has spent more than $500 billion on it in the last five years, while its national railway operator is nearly $1 trillion in debt. And it’s probably not going to get any more popular, since China’s population is expected to shrink by 200 million over the next 30 years.—AE

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