Sticking up for her. Hilarie Burton Morgan recalled how former costar Chad Michael Murray attempted to defend her amid an alleged assault during One Tree Hill season 4.
23.02.2023 - 23:51 / variety.com
Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “Hogwarts Legacy” has wingardium leviosa-ed Warner Bros. Games’ sales, earning $850 million in global sales and moving more than 12 million units in just its first two weeks post-launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC. That marks the biggest global launch ever for the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned video game company, with the “Harry Potter” action role-playing game also setting the Twitch record for single-player games with 1.28 million peak concurrent viewers at launch. As Variety previously reported, “Hogwarts Legacy” opened with stunning player engagement, topping 267 million hours played from launch on Feb. 10 through Feb. 21. On Thursday, Warner Bros. Games revealed the game had broken company records with 280 million hours played to date.
Per Warner Bros. Discovery, “Additionally, there has been an increase of global franchise fan engagement overall with Wizarding World Digital garnering 300% higher traffic over the normal monthly unique visitor average for the first 10 days of February.” The game’s arrival and subsequent success has sparked heated debate within the “Harry Potter” fandom, which has become increasingly distraught as author J.K. Rowling continues to publicly express views offensive to transgender people. While Rowling didn’t participate creatively in the game, she benefits financially from its sales, prompting anxiety over whether playing it is tantamount to supporting anti-trans causes. The ongoing PR headache for Warner Bros. will likely only get more complicated as Rowling continues to address her controversial statements on the podcast “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” which debuted Feb. 21. Developed by Avalanche Software and published by Warner Bros.
Sticking up for her. Hilarie Burton Morgan recalled how former costar Chad Michael Murray attempted to defend her amid an alleged assault during One Tree Hill season 4.
Former Inter Milan and Brazil defender Miranda has admitted he would have liked to have played for Manchester United during his professional career.
Thania Garcia As expected, Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” sky-rocketed to No. 1 on the albums chart –scoring the biggest opening week numbers of 2023 for any album by units earned and the fifth-largest streaming week ever. The 36-song record, released March 3 via Big Loud/Mercury/Republic Records, opens with the equivalent of 501,000 sales in the U.S. as the largest debut since Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” entered the charts last October with 1.5 million units. Approximately 76% of “One Thing at a Time’s” units come from its massive impact on streaming platforms, according to data by Luminate via Billboard. The super-sized set logged a total of 498.28 million on-demand streams in its first week and became Spotify’s most-streamed country album in a single day by a male artist.
Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Though Showtime is being rebranded into Paramount+ With Showtime, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish says the Showtime brand is alive and well and more projects based on the cable channel’s most iconic series, including “Ray Donovan,” are in the pipeline for the integrated platform. “We’re not just doing that streaming, we’re doing that linear as well,” Bakish said during a Morgan Stanley-hosted investor conference. “So come sometime this year, when you turn on Showtime linear, it’s going to be Paramount+ With Showtime. And it’s what I call a win-win-win. It’s a win for consumers, because the product is going to be fundamentally better than Showtime. You’re going to get ‘1923’ on it, you’ll get ‘Tulsa King,’ as part of your Showtime subscription. It’s just going to be a bigger, broader product. We fundamentally believe in a broad thesis. So that will work at the consumer level and as part of that, we’re leaning into the Showtime franchises. So you could think about the slate as smaller, which will be less expensive, but also really giving the people what they want — which is more Showtime, maybe more ‘Dexter,’ maybe more ‘Ray Donovan,’ and really leaning into that. And we have some exciting plans there.”
Manchester United forward Anthony Martial took part in a full training session at Carrington on Wednesday afternoon.
Real Betis have confirmed their 23-man travelling squad for their Europa League last-16 first leg against Manchester United.
Kylie Jenner took a subtle jab at Selena Gomez. Since then, the reality TV star has seen her Instagram following shrink by a million followers, SocialBlade.com reported. Although this might not seem like a big deal to many people, social media followings are equivalent to currency with the younger generation. The situation began after a TikTok user suggested that Kylie and Hailey Bieber shaded Selena about her eyebrows. Although Kylie denied ribbing the "Only Murders In The Building" actress, her Instagram following has dipped from 380 million to 379 million fans in a matter of a few weeks.
Bill Murray and star Jeannie Berlin set foot on the red carpet of the 2023 SAG Awards holding hands.Murray and Berlin appeared quite close when they arrived together for Sunday's soiree at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles. The star wore a black tuxedo with a colorful bow tie, while Berlin sported an all-black suit and shades.Berlin, who portrayed Hadassah Fabelman in the Steven Spielberg film, was there for the film's nomination in the Best Ensemble Cast in a Motion Picture category.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams after his racist rant.Adams had called Black American people “a hate group” and said white people should “get the hell away from Black people”, following his lead by moving to “a neighbourhood with a very low Black population”.In response, Minhaj used his time as The Daily Show guest host to address Adams: “Kanye heard this and was like, ‘whoa, whoa, my brother… pace yourself.’”The comedian went on to call Adams “a certain type of rich person” and compared him to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.“I can guarantee you: J.K.
Several members of the Duggar family have shared their heartbreaking experiences with pregnancy loss over the years.
Zendaya has reportedly renegotiated her salary for HBO’s smash-hit show Euphoria, and she’s now in the range of the highest paid stars on television.
yet more Tolkien movies are on the way from their New Line Cinema.“For all the scope and detail lovingly packed into the two trilogies, the vast, complex and dazzling universe dreamed up by J.R.R. Tolkien remains largely unexplored on film,” said Warner Bros. Pictures Group co-chairs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy.The extended versions of the six “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” films add up to about 20 hours total, which seems pretty well explored to me.On paper, the move is logical.
Jordan Moreau “Cocaine Bear” is snorting up a solid opening weekend. The R-rated action-comedy earned $2 million in Thursday previews at the domestic box office. It opened in 3,000 North American theaters Thursday night and will expand to 3,534 on Friday. Universal’s bloody, real-life tale about a black bear on a cocaine-fueled rampage is projected to open with $15 million to $17 million this weekend. Some predictions have it opening with as much as $20 million, thanks to its positive word-of-mouth (or word-of-snout) and memeability online. The mid-budget film cost roughly $35 million, with much of it used on the CGI bear, so a launch in the upper teens would be a good sign.
Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+ added 1.1 million subscribers in Q4 to end 2022 with a total of 96.1 million worldwide. That’s up from the 95 million combined global streaming customers Warner Bros. Discovery hit from July 1-Sept. 30, the quarter during which the highly anticipated “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon” debuted. During the Oct. 1-Dec. 31 quarter, “House of the Dragon” concluded its first season the second season of HBO’s hot Mike White drama “White Lotus” premiered. Details about the upcoming combined HBO Max-Discovery+ streamer — which does not yet have a name, launch date or pricing details — will be revealed at an April 12 press day.
Warner Bros. Games Hogwarts Legacy, the open-world, action role-playing game has sold more than 12 million units and hit $850 million in sales globally and 280 million hours played in its first two weeks of launch, the company said, confirming a major hit as parent Warner Bros. Discovery prepares to release quarterly earnings shortly.
Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer After struggling to re-create the magic of the “Harry Potter” film franchise with the lackluster spinoff trilogy “Fantastic Beasts,” Warner Bros. has finally struck galleons anew with its latest piece of Wizarding World IP: video game “Hogwarts Legacy.” The action role-playing game, produced by Warner Bros. Games and Avalanche Software, has clicked with Potterheads since its Feb. 10 release. Sales figures are yet to come, but it’s clear from the buzz factor and other measures — including sales charts in Japan, the U.K. and Europe — that fans are engaged. For one, the arrival of the game spurred the highest traffic in the “Harry Potter” community on fan platform Fandom in more than seven years.
Hogwarts Legacy has confirmed there are “no current plans” for future expansions.Released earlier this month for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC, Hogwarts Legacy is an immersive, open-world, action role-playing game set in the 1800s. A Playstation 4 and Xbox One version will follow on April 4, while Nintendo Switch players have to wait until July 25.However, according to game director Alan Tew, developer Avalanche Software doesn’t have any plans to expand the Harry Potter world.“We’ve been really heads down bringing [Hogwarts Legacy] to life, so at the moment there are no current plans for DLC,” Tew told IGN.In a three-star review, NME wrote: “Hogwarts Legacy is fun and manages to get a lot of things right, but it already feels somewhat dated, no doubt a hangover from the six-year development cycle.
J.K. Rowling has said she doesn’t care if her views on transgender rights have damaged her legacy, saying she’ll “be dead”.The Harry Potter author has generated widespread controversy with a number of remarks that many have perceived as transphobic across the past two years. However, Rowling has shrugged off concerns that she may have destroyed her legacy when it comes to her controversial views.Appearing on the podcast The Witch Trials of J.K.
In the new podcast The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling, debuting today, the Harry Potter author says she does not concern herself with thoughts of legacy or how she’ll be remembered.
Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor J.K. Rowling claims people have deeply misunderstood her position on transgender women — and the best-selling author says she’s not preoccupied with how the controversy will affect her legacy. Rowling, speaking on the topic for the podcast “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” said she “never meant to upset anyone” with comments broadly seen as antagonistic toward trans women. About the reaction from fans that Rowling has “ruined” her legacy, she counters that people who express such sentiments “could not have misunderstood me more profoundly.” “I do not walk around my house, thinking about my legacy,” she says in the first episode. “You know, what a pompous way to live your life walking around thinking, ‘What will my legacy be?’ Whatever, I’ll be dead. I care about now. I care about the living.”