Disney to Pay NBCUniversal Another $438.7 Million for Hulu Stake
Disney DIS 1.55%increase; green up pointing triangle has agreed to pay Comcast's CMCSA -0.29%decrease; red down pointing triangle NBCUniversal another $438.7 million for its stake in Hulu, tying up a lingering dispute over the fair value of the streaming service.
The pair of media companies reached a deal in December 2023 under which Disney would pay at least $8.61 billion for NBCUniversal's 33% interest in Hulu, but the sides continued to fight in arbitration over the ultimate value they would ascribe to Hulu.
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Geek Tyrant
25 minutes ago
- Geek Tyrant
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER Comic Shows the Force Ghost Army Moment We Never Got in the Movie — GeekTyrant
For years, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker fans have debated what could've made that climactic final battle hit harder. Now, thanks to the final issue of Marvel Comics' adaptation of the film, we finally get to see a powerful scene that was cut from the film… Rey standing side by side with an army of Jedi Force Ghosts. The moment in the movie where Rey declares herself 'all the Jedi'? It hits differently when you can actually see those Jedi with her. Back in 2019, the film ended with Rey facing off against Emperor Palpatine, bolstered only by the voices of Jedi from the past including Yoda, Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, Ahsoka Tano, and more. And while hearing those familiar voices gave longtime fans a chill, the comic takes it one step further. Writer Jody Houser and artist Will Sliney go all in, putting those Jedi right there with Rey, fully visible as a Force Ghost army. The scene delivers a visual representation of generations of Jedi standing behind the young Jedi warrior. This is a moment Lucasfilm once considered including in the film, but for a variety of reasons, it never made it to screen. Interestingly, its omission may have benefitted other Star Wars stories down the road. Seeing Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) return in Obi-Wan Kenobi , or Anakin Skywalker ( Hayden Christensen ) appear as a Force Ghost in Ahsoka , likely wouldn't have had the same weight if they'd already popped up alongside Rey. Chris Terrio, who co-wrote the film with J.J. Abrams, once touched on this exact subject. Regarding the film's ending, he said: 'We absolutely discussed who would be there at the end. It's not as though those Force ghosts will never appear to Rey now that she really is the first of the new Jedi. 'I think she has all of those Jedi behind her. J.J. was pretty clear about the idea that he didn't want to take away from the moment of Leia finally appearing as a Force ghost and the twins finally being together.' In regard to that final scene on Tatooine, he added: 'This might be in the novelization, but we talked a lot about how Leia lost her home. Alderaan is gone. So, she could never take Luke to see where she grew up as a princess, but Luke could've taken Leia to see where he grew up as a farmer. 'But, the twins never got to Tatooine together (to visit Luke's childhood farm). So, the idea of seeing the twins together after the sabers are laid to rest felt like it was something that was very moving to me and J.J.' That emotional thread certainly had merit. But from a fan perspective, seeing Rey, flanked by the spirits of Obi-Wan, Aayla Secura, Kanan Jarrus, Mace Windu, Yoda, and more, standing against Palpatine, is the kind of Star Wars moment fans live for. So while The Rise of Skywalker might never get a "special edition" to bring this to screen, the comic book fills in the gap. At least we get to see it visually brought to life in comic book art form. 'THE LAST HOPE OF THE RESISTANCE! REY races to confront PALPATINE, but can she stop him before the FINAL ORDER devastates the galaxy? Hope comes from unexpected places as the RESISTANCE makes its last stand!'
Motor Trend
32 minutes ago
- Motor Trend
You Can't Give Teslas Away These Days, but Tesla's Actually Trying To
Free car giveaways are typically associated with TV game shows, radio sweepstakes, or halftime contests, but right now there's one being hosted directly by an automaker. By participating in Tesla's 'TeslaVision' contest, you could score a brand-new Model Y and a private tour of the Texas Gigafactory. In 2017, Tesla held 'Project Loveday,' a video contest named after a 10-year-old fan of the brand who wrote a letter to CEO Elon Musk suggesting that customers submit promotional video clips to make up for the company's lack of traditional advertising. That contest received thousands of submissions and was eventually won by none other than YouTube superstar Marques Brownlee. The TeslaVision Contest Now, Tesla is holding the TeslaVision contest as a follow-up to Project Loveday. According to the company, it's here 'to commemorate launching deliveries of New Model Y in all continents where we operate.' That new Model Y is the so-called Juniper version, which arrived earlier this year sporting hardware updates, a remodeled interior, and a Cybertruck-esque headlight bar. So, the TeslaVision contest—it is, in Tesla's words, 'a global celebration and showcase of the owners and fans who have always recognized the true value and impact of our products.' To participate, submit a video no longer than 90 seconds 'showing how Tesla vehicles give you more in your life—more freedom, more safety, more fun, more convenience.' That video must then be posted to YouTube and shared on X and Instagram with Tesla's accounts tagged, and then those links uploaded in the contest submission form on Tesla's site. In addition to the Model Y winner, two runners-up will get an all-expenses-paid private tour of the Gigafactory outside of Austin, Texas, which produces some Model Ys and every Cybertruck. We Have Some Thoughts Acclaimed as America's best-selling EV, one might imagine that the Model Y is in such high demand that it wouldn't be so available as to be offered up as a giveaway. Evidently, however, Tesla has enough idle inventory to make one the grand prize in the TeslaVision contest. The EV innovator has faced harsh backlash due to CEO Musk's controversial involvement in Donald Trump's presidential administration. It's possible that the TeslaVision contest is being held to gather and then promote positive takes from Tesla fans who remain unbothered by Musk's drastic social impact, and are uninterested in the numerous other EVs from brands that don't have the contentious symbolism that Tesla now does, in addition to potentially longer range, faster charging, better quality, greater comfort, prettier styling, or higher performance. To wit, we question how a video could be created under Tesla's suggested parameters. Regarding 'freedom,' the advantage Tesla once held by keeping its widespread Supercharger network exclusive to its own cars is slipping away as other EVs gain access, allowing rivals to also enjoy road trip ease. Regarding safety, the 2025 Model Y scores the highest five-star overall safety rating from NHTSA, as a plethora of other EVs do, but it no longer qualifies for IIHS Top Safety Pick as it did in years past. Furthermore, how Tesla's flagship Full Self-Driving (FSD) software has a propensity to make errors such as veering across a solid double yellow line into the oncoming lane of traffic makes safety seem tenuous at best. About fun, in our testing and assessments we've found Tesla vehicles don't have much to offer beyond the common EV attribute of quick straight-line acceleration, while rivals have superior chassis and handling refinement. To convenience, the spacious cabin, frunk and sub-trunk, and minimalistic layout found in Tesla vehicles contribute to that measure. However, the experience with MotorTrend 's 2023 Model Y long-term review car has often proved incredibly frustrating, such as the finicky flush-mounted exterior door handles, which often do nothing because the car doesn't recognize its smartphone app-based key, or how the cruise control can deactivate when using the windshield washers, or how, for now, using an adapter is necessary to charge on public Level 2 plugs. Hmm, maybe we wouldn't win this contest... positive thoughts! We should also point out the incongruity between asking fans and owners—many of whom likely already own a Model Y, given its ubiquity—to get excited about winning another one. If you're super excited about Tesla and want to show the company just how great you think it is and win a Model Y, you can submit your video clip to the TeslaVision contest website. Act soon, since the contest closes on July 17, 2025 or when 10,000 entries are received, whichever comes first.
Boston Globe
35 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Disney has filed an AI lawsuit that could shift the future of entertainment
As AI rapidly develops, tech companies have raced to build and monetize tools that generate Hollywood-grade images and videos. Now these tools are poised to transform moviemaking and the entertainment industry in coming years, experts say, and this lawsuit represents a bid by some of Hollywood's giants to secure their place in that future. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'It's sort of a 'finally' moment,' said Chad Hummel, principal at the Los Angeles office of the law firm McKool Smith. Previously, entertainment giants had stayed on the sidelines even as researchers documented how AI tools could be used to generate apparently infringing content. Now they've entered the fray in a big way. Advertisement Midjourney is one of a handful of AI generators that has captured the world's imagination by letting users spin up images on demand. What started as a novelty quickly became a major source of online content, as people used Midjourney and other generators such as OpenAI's Sora and Stable Diffusion to generate everything from memes to pornography to reimaginations of popular characters from movies and TV. Advertisement But the resulting images don't come from a vacuum - the AI models are trained by ingesting millions of words and images from across the internet, including copyrighted work from individual artists and entertainment studios. AI companies claim that their generators are spitting out entirely new creations and that the training data falls under 'fair use' according to copyright law. Artists and midsize media companies have pushed back, saying the AI is stealing their work. Disney and Universal's lawsuit frames the issue as a matter of good versus evil, calling Midjourney 'a bottomless pit of plagiarism.' AI industry advocates counter that legacy media companies are standing in the way of a technological advance that could unleash a wave of creativity. Midjourney did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. In the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the companies allege that Midjourney 'seeks to reap the rewards' of Disney's creative work by selling an AI image service that 'functions as a virtual vending machine, generating unauthorized copies of Disney's and Universal's copyrighted works.' Indeed, AI-generated content depicting beloved - and copyrighted - characters such as Mario, Shrek or Winnie the Pooh has circulated online, at times going viral on social media and spawning a new approach to fan art. Star Wars junkies, for instance, no longer have to comb the web for stories and visuals based on their favorite characters - they can use an AI video generator to create an original 11-minute Star Wars movie with photorealistic sets and characters. AI video still isn't advanced enough to produce passable full-length films or TV shows, Washington Post tests found. Advertisement That might be why copyright holders waited to file lawsuits against AI video generators, said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at Cornell University. While AI audio can now produce songs that sound human-generated, AI video hasn't made that leap, he said. OpenAI's Sora, for example, can only generate content roughly a minute long. And although the speed and fluency is a remarkable improvement compared to older models, it doesn't offer the kind of fine-grained controls directors and studios need, according to Grimmelmann. But production companies are already using AI for preproduction brainstorming, special effects and on-screen images. The quality of AI-generated content has improved rapidly since OpenAI first released its image generator DALL-E in 2021, with companies including OpenAI and Google now offering video generators to the public. Many believe it's a matter of time before content that's entirely AI generated makes its way into mainstream entertainment. SAG-AFTRA, the union representing film and TV actors, has struck deals with voice AI companies allowing actors to license their voices, and this week the union reached a tentative agreement with a collection of video game companies to pay actors if their voices or likenesses appear in AI-generated games. 'Patience and persistence has resulted in a deal that puts in place the necessary A.I. guardrails that defend performers' livelihoods in the A.I. age,' the union said in a blog post Monday. Meanwhile, a new class of AI start-ups such as Moonvalley and Runway are already working with Hollywood studios to integrate AI into the production process, the companies have said. This lawsuit is the latest in a barrage by rightsholders - including artists, authors and media companies - alleging infringement by AI firms. Among the highest-profile cases is one filed by the New York Times against OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. At the same time, many are signing multimillion-dollar licensing deals with AI firms granting them full access to their content - for a price. (The Washington Post has a content-sharing deal with OpenAI.) Advertisement The Disney and Universal suit takes a different tack from other lawsuits, demanding that Midjourney filter what it generates rather than avoid scraping the studios' intellectual property altogether. 'This one seems more aimed at establishing the kind of expectations that copyright owners have of non-AI platforms: You need to take down obvious copies of our works,' said Grimmelmann. What the movie studios don't want, according to Hummel, is for tech firms to be able to cut them out of the equation by training models on their work without having to pay for it. 'This is not going to be Hollywood trying to shut down generative AI,' Hummel said. 'It's about compensation.' Already, many visual artists are feeling the effects of AI's entry, said Jon Lam, a video game artist and creators rights activist. He said he has watched his circle of professional contacts struggle to find work when AI can replicate different art styles with the click of a mouse. Wednesday's lawsuit was 'a huge confidence boost' for creatives like Lam hoping for an upset that stops film, TV and video game studios from drawing on artists' work without paying them, he said. A win for Disney and Universal wouldn't necessarily protect artists in the entertainment industry from getting replaced by AI, said Ben Zhao, a professor of computer science at University of Chicago who helped build Glaze, a software tool that protects visual art from AI mimicry. But it could drastically limit the material that AI tools can draw from, he said. Without fresh data, AI generators would regurgitate the same visual ideas over and over, Zhao said, making them less useful for production companies. In that sense, both AI companies and entertainment studios rely on artists who produce new work and make a living wage. Advertisement Some tech industry leaders have argued that creating tools such as ChatGPT would be impossible if they couldn't be trained on copyrighted data - and that requiring AI companies to pay every creator would stall an AI boom that promises vast economic benefits. Studios such as Disney and Universal should embrace AI video rather than suing to stop it, said Adam Eisgrau, who leads a program on AI, creativity and copyright for the Chamber of Progress, a center-left trade group that represents technology companies including Midjourney. 'My initial reaction is that the movie industry has a long history and a short memory,' Eisgrau said. He compared the lawsuit to one decades ago in which studios sued the makers of videocassette players and lost - which he said was 'lucky for them,' because they ended up profiting greatly from the technology. Meanwhile, each step forward for AI video is met with rapt attention from fans of the tech. A clip posted Sunday in the Reddit forum r/aivideo showed a short trailer for a nonexistent movie - one with visual references starkly similar to science fiction series such as Star Wars. 'Please turn this into a feature film. It would be freaking crazy,' one commenter said. 'That's the plan!' replied the poster. Advertisement - - - Nitasha Tiku contributed to this report.
