Latest news with #TheAmericas'
Cision Canada
6 days ago
- Business
- Cision Canada
Activate Celebrates Milestone 50th Location, Continuing Rapid Global Expansion
WINNIPEG, MB, Aug. 6, 2025 /CNW/ -- Activate, the world's first active gaming facility and viral social media sensation, is proud to announce the opening of its 50th location, marking a major milestone in the brand's meteoric rise and continued growth across the globe. "Opening our 50th location is more than just a number–it's a testament to this team's incredible vision to reinvent immersive gaming and our players' passion for Activate," said Adam Schmidt, Co-Founder and CEO of Activate. Since opening its flagship location in Winnipeg in 2017, Activate has rapidly expanded across North America - now operating in 18 states across the U.S. – and internationally, with locations in Dubai, London, and soon France, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Mexico and more. The company currently welcomes more than 3.9 million players globally, with plans to open 200 locations over the next decade. Activate's immersive gameplay, fusing physical activity with cutting-edge technology offering players real-time brain and body challenges in digitally responsive game rooms like the viral Mega Grid., continues to set the brand apart in a crowded leisure market. This modern approach has fueled remarkable growth, earning Activate the top spot on The Globe and Mail's Top Growing Companies 2024 list with an impressive 1,105% growth rate over three years. Its latest opening in Pembroke Pines, Florida further underscores this momentum, following its recent recognition as the #1 Leisure and Entertainment brand on the Financial Times list of The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies 2025, based on a 209% compounded annual growth rate between 2020 and 2023. For more details on Activate's dynamic gaming experience, visit or follow @activategames on Instagram and TikTok. ABOUT ACTIVATE Activate is the world's first active gaming experience where players #EnterTheGame. Activate offers a unique blend of physical activity and gaming that promotes a healthy lifestyle. Each Activate location provides fun and interactive rooms where players can work cooperatively or compete against each other while tracking their achievements. With the global headquarters located in Winnipeg, Canada, Activate has grown to 40 locations across Canada, the U.S., London, UK, and Dubai. To join the active gaming movement, visit Activate and follow us on social media:
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘The Americas' Creative Team Didn't Just Capture Some of the Best Sperm Whale Footage Ever, They Made a Landmark Discovery
There are nature documentaries that show you things you've never seen before. Then there's 'The Americas,' which shows its viewers something literally no human had ever seen before. Marine scientists had long speculated that sperm whales dive all the way to the ocean floor to hunt for food. But they had never actually observed the whales doing so. How could anyone? As the executive producer of 'The Americas' and creative director of the BBC Studios Natural History Unit Mike Gunton said to IndieWire as part of our USG University virtual panel series, 'Sperm whales kind of break all the rules of biology because it's so challenging for any living creature to go from the surface of the sea all the way down there — the pressure change is huge. And then the camera had to do the same thing.' More from IndieWire Nathan Fielder's 'The Rehearsal' Season 2 Will Submit in the Comedy Series Emmy Categories 'The Last of Us' Writers Share the Video Game Adaptations Hollywood Should Tackle Next The distance from the surface to the seafloor off the coast of Dominica in the Caribbean Sea is a half mile, which means that the camera, newly invented by the production team over two years leading up to the shoot, would have to sustain pressure 100 times that of the atmosphere. Gunton was joined for the discussion by fellow 'Americas' team members Giles Badger, who directed the sperm whale shoot, cinematographer Dan Beecham, and composers Anze Rozman and Kara Talve, all of whose efforts were directed toward not just telling a compelling documentary story but illuminating a scientific first that the entire production enabled. 'There are things that lots of people have seen but we've never been able to bring to an audience before,' Gunton said. 'This is something that nobody has ever seen, and that's kind of a holy grail of wildlife filmmaking.' The segment director, Badger, spearheaded the efforts to design the camera rig. No human could survive in the water at the depths sperm whales can plunge, so the camera would have to be attached directly to a whale via suction cups, and affixed to its back from a long pole held over the bow of the production team's boat. Then the whale itself would take the camera down to the ocean floor. 'Ultimately, the animals will write their own script,' Badger said. 'You never know exactly what you're going to get.' If the production team 'missed' and didn't affix the camera to the whale, it could be a full 40 minutes before the whale surfaced again and they'd have another opportunity. That was only the start of the challenge, though. The production team has a rule of not interfering in the lives of the animals it documents as much as possible. That meant they had it hard-wired in the camera's suction rigging that it would detach entirely from the whale after just five hours. A GPS tracker was attached to the camera, but the team would have to wait for it to wash ashore to retrieve it — hopefully before the battery on the geolocator had gone dead. 'You can go to all these lengths, you can spend two years building this camera, you can get it on a whale, you can record the footage, and then you lose the camera,' Badger said. 'So as that particular camera was out, we knew the battery was getting weaker and weaker, we knew that we only had a finite number of hours before we'd lost it forever. We managed to find it in the seaweed after five or six hours, and even at that point when the camera's been down and it's come up and you found it, you still don't know whether those tiny little cameras have got the images on them.' Just in case, Badger showed that a telephone number was imprinted on the camera with the promise of a reward for whoever should find it. By any standard, though, this is television production as playing the long game. For the cinematographer, Beecham, who was in a wetsuit and wearing a rebreather to capture footage of the whales closer to the surface of the water before their dive, it's almost as challenging. 'We went at a time of year where the ocean is supposed to be very, very calm, but I think the first 10 days or so of the shoot was very, very rough,' Beecham said. 'In this job, you get used to people always saying to you, 'Oh, you should have been here last week. The animals were amazing. The weather was amazing.' I've talked about getting T-shirts printed up with that one actually because that happens so much. And then you need the animals to actually be there when the weather gets good as well. And then you need the dive gear to work, you need the camera to work, you need the boat skipper to get the boat just in the right place so the whales don't get disturbed. And then I also need to not screw up when I go in and do my job as well. They're sort of these narrow windows of opportunity that we grab.' There's a particular psychology involved in swimming near whales that a cinematographer needs to keep in mind as well. 'The approach with whales is not how to get close to them, but it's how to position ourselves so they get close to us,' Beecham said. 'So we never approach a whale, we allow them to come to us. And very often they don't. Very often they'll dive, so then I'm swimming back to the boat, dejectedly saying, 'No shot. The whale dove. The whale turned off to the left or to the right.' But every now and again, it'll choose to come straight for you.' All of this may help to give a better sense of why 'The Americas,' as a 10-episode series, took five years to shoot and edit, even with multiple production teams spread out across the hemisphere. The sperm whale segment is just one out of dozens and dozens across that 10-hour runtime. The scientific discovery involved is impressive in its own terms, but this is also a TV show, and one of the key ways to convey the import of a segment such as this is through the music. Hans Zimmer composed the series' main theme, but Anže Rozman and Kara Talve composed the episodic music for moments such as the sperm whale's dive to the ocean floor. It's about finding an artistic expression for the wonder of what's being shown. 'With a project like 'The Americas,' where you have so many people that care and love what they do, and who want to share that with the world, you hope that the end product of so much care and love will be sharing that care and love with the audience and them caring about the environment and caring about these amazing creatures that inhabit our land,' Rozman said. As such, 'We work [on the music] in various stages of episode cuts, and we usually like to get cuts early so we can start getting immersed into the stories and the footage.' 'A lot of our job is making sure the instrumentation is portraying how big this animal feels,' Talve said. 'To convey how close up we are to them. 'Is this music narrating their relationship to their mother, perhaps?' But because of the cinematography, because of just how beautiful everything was, it's immediate inspiration.' The whale is diving to the ocean floor to hunt for food, which means she can then make milk for her calf. Rozman and Talve give some woodwinds at the beginning of the segment, to suggest the childlike quality of the calf, then there's some strings, and all of a sudden a little more urgency to the score, with a choir added, to convey the grandeur and mystery of when the mom makes her great dive. This is a wondrous discovery, and it's translated into the music. Another way the import comes across? Through the inquisitive narration provided by Tom Hanks. His own sense of curiosity and wonder that comes across through his voiceover is not just acting. 'When showing him the footage, he'd turn to the projectionist and say, 'Have you seen this, guys?'' Gunton said of Hanks's reaction to what he was watching. 'This sense of, 'I don't believe what I'm seeing. I want you to show more!' And I thought, 'That is perfect. That is exactly what we want. This enthusiastic explorer who knows quite a lot, but doesn't know everything and wants you to join him on that journey.'' That's an invitation that's easily accepted. IndieWire partnered with Universal Studio Group for USG University, a series of virtual panels celebrating the best in television art from the 2024-2025 TV season across NBC Universal's portfolio of shows. USG University (a Universal Studio Group program) is presented in partnership with Roybal Film & TV Magnet and IndieWire's Future of Filmmaking. Catch up on the latest USG University videos here. Best of IndieWire 2023 Emmy Predictions: Who Will Win at the Primetime Emmy Awards? 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Special 2023 Emmy Predictions: Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Financial Times Names Zum to Its 2025 List of The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies
Recognition Marks Third Year in A Row Zum Has Appeared on Prestigious List REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 2, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the Financial Times announced that Zūm has been named to its annual "The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies List," a recognition that supports Zum's position as the leader in modern student transportation. Zum ranks No. 28 on this year's list of the top 300 companies and is the highest-ranking company in the Logistics & Transportation category. This is the third year in a row that Zum has been named to this prestigious list of innovative leaders across North, South, and Latin America. "Zum is leading a national movement to change the status quo in student transportation and transform how we apply critical technological innovation into the largest mass transit system in the country," said Ritu Narayan, Founder and CEO at Zum. "We are delighted to be named one of The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies by the Financial Times for the third year in a row, and to be included on a list of some of the most impressive companies across this Hemisphere." Zum unifies parents, students, school administrators and drivers on a single personalized end-to-end technology platform, enabling never-before-achieved levels of visibility and data-backed accountability. Through the Zum app, parents can view a profile of their child's bus driver, along with real-time tracking and notifications about their school bus location and their child's pickup or dropoff status. Zum also allows administrators to optimize routes and provides staff with real-time data and performance reports. Zum currently serves thousands of schools across 14 states, including districts in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland; Boston; Seattle; Spokane; Nashville; Omaha; Kansas City, Mo.; Howard County, Md.; and more. "From new school district partnerships to launching the nation's first all-electric school bus fleet with the ability to power the grid, we have made great strides in the past year in delivering a safe, reliable and equitable student transportation solution," Narayan added. "We are grateful to all of the families, drivers, school districts and communities nationwide that support our mission." Zum made history this year by launching the nation's first fully electrified school bus fleet in Oakland, CA that is equipped with groundbreaking vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology that enables the buses to return 2.1 gigawatt hours of energy to the grid, overall improving grid resilience and reliability during times of peak demand. This technology will soon be deployed at scale. "The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies" is compiled by the Financial Times in partnership with Statista, and features the top 300 companies in the Americas that have achieved the strongest growth in revenues between 2020 and 2023. Data was collected through official sources like publicly available earning presentations, investor relations, websites and annual reports. The complete list of The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies 2025 can be found here. To learn more about how Zum is working with thousands of schools across the nation to deliver safe, reliable and modern student transportation, please visit Zum's website. About ZūmZum is a modern transportation solution transforming school transportation, the largest mass transit system in the U.S. Today, the company provides turnkey modern transportation solutions to school districts in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Utah, and Virginia, and is expanding rapidly nationwide. Recognized globally for its innovative transportation and energy as a service platform, Zum has been featured among Fast Company's World Changing Ideas, CNBC Disruptor 50, CNBC Changemakers, World Economic Forum and Financial Times' Fastest Growing Companies. Learn more about Zum at CONTACT: Jenny Mayfield, Vice President of Communications – press@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Zūm Sign in to access your portfolio
USA Today
12-03-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
When do new episodes of 'The Americas' release? Where to watch Tom Hanks-narrated wildlife series
When do new episodes of 'The Americas' release? Where to watch Tom Hanks-narrated wildlife series Show Caption Hide Caption The most anticipated TV shows of 2025 USA TODAY TV critic Kelly Lawler shares her top 5 TV shows she is most excited for this year Take a virtual tour of the "world's greatest supercontinent" in a new docuseries narrated by Tom Hanks. Produced by renowned wildlife producer Mike Gunton, "The Americas" is a new tentpole series that "showcases the wonders, secrets and fragilities of the world's greatest supercontinent," a news release by NBC says. The series has been produced by Gunton for BBC Studios Natural History Unit in association with Universal Studio Group division Universal Television Alternative Studio. "For the first time, the Americas stars in its own incomparable series, using cutting-edge technology to uncover never-before-seen behavior, and highlight the extraordinary, untold wildlife stories that will deeply connect with millions around the world," NBC says. The docuseries aimed at highlighting "the wonders, secrets and fragilities of the world's greatest supercontinent" has been filmed over a span of five years across 180 expeditions. Each hour-long episode features a different location, such as Patagonia, the Gulf Coast, wild west and the Andes among others across the entire continent of America, including north and south America. Here's what to know about "The Americas" including how to watch new episodes. Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox When do new 'The Americas' episodes come out? How to watch New episodes of "The Americas" air every Sunday on NBC at 8 p.m. ET / PT on NBC. The episodes are available to stream the next day on Peacock. The series premiered on Feb. 23 with two back-to-back episodes. 'The Americas': Stream on Peacock 'The Americas' episode schedule Here's a look at the upcoming episode schedule for "The Americas." "The Gulf Coast": March 16 at 8 p.m. ET/PT "The Andes": March 23 at 8 p.m. ET/PT "The Caribbean": March 30 at 8 p.m. ET/PT 'The West Coast': April 6 at 8 p.m. ET/PT 'Patagonia": April 13 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT Previous episodes and their air dates are: "The Atlantic Coast": February 23 "Mexico": February 23 "The Wild West": March 2 "The Amazon": March 2 "The Frozen North": March 9 'The Americas' narrator The series is narrated by Tom Hanks while the music has been composed by Hans Zimmer. The making of 'The Americas' A week after the series concludes on Monday, April 21, a special episode "showcasing a behind-the-scenes look at 'The Americas'" will stream exclusively on Peacock and will feature Hanks and the crew "revealing perils and breakthroughs behind the lens of this milestone nature series." NBC says the special will explore "the dedication, fieldcraft, humor, heart, and innovation that came together to create one of the most ambitious wildlife series ever produced." Watch the 'The Americas' trailer We occasionally recommend interesting products and services. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. USA TODAY Network newsrooms operate independently, and this doesn't influence our coverage. Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at sshafiq@ and follow her on X and Instagram @saman_shafiq7.
Yahoo
06-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘Suits LA' Recruits Another Original Character to Guest Star
Another 'Suits' fan-favorite will be making a trip to its Los Angeles-based spinoff. Rick Hoffman, who played the hilarious and cunning Louis Litt on the USA Network legal drama, is set to reprise the role on 'Suits LA' in one episode, TheWrap has learned. The actor might appear in more episodes in the future, should the NBC drama series receive a Season 2 renewal. Hoffman's Litt reprise marks the second original series character to jump over to the West Coast. Gabriel Macht's Harvey Specter is set for a three-episode recurring role in Season 1, which will kick off later in the season. 'Suits LA' stars Stephen Amell as Ted Black, a high-powered attorney turned agent who takes on some of Hollywood's biggest cases — from negotiating contracts for Hollywood big wigs to defending clients on murder charges. The show also stars Lex Scott Davis, Josh McDermitt and Bryan Greenberg. The show, which premiered Sunday , Feb. 23, scored 4.7 million viewers across all platforms, according to Nielsen live-plus-three-day numbers. 'Suits LA' grew 87% in total viewers and 213% in the key broadcast demo among adults 18-49 when compared to same-day viewing. Episode 3 is set to air Sunday night alongside new shows 'The Americas' and 'Grosse Pointe Garden Society.' 'Suits LA' airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC and streams the next day on Peacock. Deadline first reported the news of Hoffman's casting. The post 'Suits LA' Recruits Another Original Character to Guest Star appeared first on TheWrap.
