Paramount and Warner Brothers both have large studio backlots in the LA area. One wonders whether there’ll be consolidation there.

The Mississauga CBS Stages is a relatively modest venue. The biggest SFA sets were at Pinewood Toronto and the AR wall shared with Pixemondo — which is itself being organizationally deconstructed.

Also, there are incentives being offered by other US states such as Georgia, where Disney does much of its production. Moving back to the US may not necessarily mean California.

Anyway, it’s not particularly hopeful news for the industry overall especially in Toronto and Vancouver.

So sad.

I expect that any future production, if it happens, will be in the US.

It’s interesting.

Clearly Skydance/Ellison sees the synergistic value in integrating publishing with screen media even if the Redmonds were just stripping assets.

Seems like Paramount’s doing everything they can to distance the organization from any illegal action Shell may have taken. Due diligence but a definite cutting of ties.

Paramount Skydance issued a statement Wednesday confirming that Shell was departing, saying that the executive was stepping down to “focus” on the lawsuit filed by Cipriani. The company also said its independent investigation found that Shell did not violate any securities laws.

My thought was ‘centre as compared to what’?

The Overton window has been intentionally moved over the past decade, Even before, that what might be considered ‘centre’ in the US, even ‘centre-left’ didn’t align well with other OECD countries.

Пироги are always a great choice!

I found this interesting

In what we hear was a congenial atmosphere very different from the later years of Carol Lombardini’s reign at the AMPTP, the organization and the WGA leadership started talks in mid-March. “We’ve been talking about all these issues in a very collaborative way,” a labor insider told Deadline of the tone between Executive Director and chief negotiator Ellen Stutzman and the AMPTP in the room at SAG-AFTRA HQ the past few weeks.

Compared with a couple of years ago, the industry side seems more interested in keeping things moving than pushing back on labour demands.

Definitely a YMMV situation.

Many episodes that may be described as ‘filler’ are ones that have side adventures or character development. Farscape isn’t rigidly serialized. Just because it’s not moving the main plot narrative doesn’t mean it’s filler.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is very much more realistic in tone than the movies that take place later in the continuity, including the two you’ve seen.

It takes place before the earlier movie Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019).

It might be worth checking out even if kaiju aren’t usually your thing.

Coming back to add that, if you like character-driven stories, but have never thought that kaiju might be your thing, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters now in its second season on AppleTV might be for you.

The show takes place in the middle of the Monsterverse continuity that currently has the licence for Toho’s Godzilla monsters. It’s an entry point nonetheless. You needn’t have ever seen anything in this continuity or others to get into it.

It’s less focused on fighting Titans than on the mystery of understanding them, the weird science fiction efforts humanity uses to share a world with them, and most of all the characters whose lives are intertwined with the mystery.

Babylon 5’s is great if you like serialization. The first season is very weak due to a major health crisis in the principal character that occurred between the shooting of the pilot and the launch of the series. The story was adjusted so that a new station head and actor could take on the lead.

Farscape is an absolute gem and a wild ride. It really picks up after the first 12 episodes. It’s so incredibly influential on so many science fiction shows in the streaming era that it’s worth watching just for that alone. Be aware that the show was canceled before it could wrap up its full arc. A limited series was made later to wrap up the storyline — make sure you’ll be able to be able to get it.

I’m a fan of many of the old 1960s and 1970s shows but watching them really depends on your tolerance for older production styles and scripting. Space 1999 is worth tracking down for sure.

In terms of more recent shows, three serialized shows that involved time travel that actually stuck the landing are Continuum, Travelers, and 12 Monkeys. All are very good, with strong ensembles, but reflect the darker sci-fi trend of the 2010s.

Amazon took on another 3 seasons of The Expanse with about 130k, Netflix did an additional full 20 episode season of *Star Trek: Prodigy with 35k.

More than that, 32.5 k is a lot for one of these petitions in this amount of time. We don’t know what it will level off at.

The rate of signings is accelerating, with nearly 5k in the past 24 hours.

I wished they’d used an official image. It’s really odd.

But it was the first petition up so it’s the one with traction.

Cool. I think I’ll be supporting this one.

I’ve been having fun getting new and interesting games through kickstarter campaigns.

My partner is finding this eye rolling, as I’m roping them and one of our teens into play testing. But, I look forward to taking some of these to our regional gaming convention. It’s nice to be able to offer some fresh games with licensed media.

One suspects that the communications pros at Amazon-MGM decided that they couldn’t let this story have legs, informed Weir’s agent that he had to make some immediate effort to quell the controversy.

Meh

As a Canadian, I’ not going to rate that highly as an apology.

It’s rather a sorry, not sorry, let’s be buds and talk some (unspecified) time

But it may play differently in a US cultural setting.

It’s interesting that he felt he needed to do that though.

Cerebral is definitely not the way I would characterize Weir’s writing.

Middle school or YA science fiction is more like it. I first encountered his work when it was recommended for one of our kids.

It’s popular science level stuff. Fun, popcorn stuff.

I do like and read cerebral science fiction.

As an example for contrast, I would suggest the Machineries of Empire trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee, starting with Ninefox Gambit. It’s more on the speculative mathematicians side but it made me think more about topology and probabilistic spaces than I have had to since grad school. All the intellectual fun without the grind.

Let’s compare this to Tarantino, Sussman, and many others that have made pitches on the film and television side over the past decade.

They’ve all felt they had a great idea, they’ve been quite public about having pitched it, and they’ve attempted to build up fan interest and momentum.

If Weir had just done the same, I don’t think there’d be any adverse effect. Likely, the opposite in the current environment.

Instead, he took his moment in the sun not to pitch his idea to the public, or say that he had an idea that wasn’t viewed as fitting with where the franchise was then but perhaps it might be reconsidered: He took his moment in the sun to retaliate.

Why would a producer want to risk hearing a pitch from him in future?

This is fairly analogous to banks looking the other way at money laundering.

It points to the need for either more strict reporting and purchasing controls within the firm or more regulation.

Banks have tightened their internal policies to avoid more active government intervention to reduce money laundering.

Investors will get the analogy. A bank that let money laundering go unchecked and is facing scrutiny and a need to change protocols would see an adverse reaction from investors. No reason why Nvidia would not experience the same.