 |
|
|
|||||
Even the worlds most bumbling detective could probably figure out why there havent been any comedy blockbusters lately. Amid all the rampaging dinosaurs, broods of superheroes, and live-action Disney characters who technically are not alive, no major comedies whatsoever have graced big screens this summer. (Or last summer.) Thats about to change, though. The Naked Gun reboot careens into theaters this weekend, with Liam Neeson filling in as the films leading man for Leslie Nielsen as shambolic police detective Frank Drebin (this isnt a 007 situationNeesons Drebin is Nielsens son). A spoof franchise thats lain dormant for three decades might not quite sound like a recipe for box office gold (even if it has been a recipe for romance). But Paramount reportedly has a lot of faith in the project, opening it wide against family friendly animated flick The Bad Guys 2. Helmed by Akiva Schaffer, part of the Lonely Island trio with Andy Samberg, The Naked Gun has already won over critics, with reviews hailing it as the funniest movie in years. If it hits hard, it wont just reignite the series, but potentially restore executives faith in theatrically released comedieswhich makes it kind of scary to contemplate what will happen if it flops. When a comedy connects with a packed theater crowd, the energy is electric. Synchronized belly laughs come tumbling out at every turn, seemingly summoned by the rhythm and sheer force of roiling collective joy. Its a visceral, physiological experience, akin to audiences gasping and screaming together at a horror movie. But unlike horror movies, pure comedies rarely make it to the big screen anymoreat least not without modifiers like family-, action-, or indie-. Where have all the comedy blockbusters gone? [Image: Paramount Pictures] When comedy was more common In 2005, Batman Begins kicked off Christopher Nolans Dark Knight trilogy. It was a massive hit, propelling Christian Bale to stardom and helping usher in the modern era of superhero movies. What now seems lost to history about the films success, however, is that it was slightly exceeded by the Vince Vaughn goof-fest Wedding Crashers, which earned $209 million to Batman Beginss $206 million at the domestic box officeon roughly a quarter of the budget. Wedding Crashers was an unusually big comedy 20 years ago, but not that unusual. It was one of 28 from the genre to reach the top 100 highest-grossers that yeara list that, in domestic box office returns, includes Will Smiths Hitch ($179 million), the Ben Stiller versus Robert De Niro sequel Meet the Fockers ($146 million), and The 40-Year-Old Virgin ($109 million), which kicked off Judd Apatows reign as something of a raunch-comedy auteur. The following year had even more comedies in the top 100, including Borat ($128 million) and Will Ferrells Talladega Nights ($148 million). Typically cheaper to make than special-effects-driven blockbusters, comedies remained a wildly profitable part of the box office throughout the early 2010s. As established stars like Vaughn and Adam Sandler began shedding some of their box office potency, new comedic heroes like Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover, $277 million) and Melissa McCarthy (The Heat, $159 million) emerged, right on schedule, to pick up the slack. By the back half of the decade, though, there seemed to be nothing but slack. [Photo: Frank Masi/ 2025 Paramount Pictures] The case of the vanishing chuckles Sandler saw the writing on the wall fairly early. In 2014the same year that Blended, his reunion with Wedding Singer costar Drew Barrymore, grossed a relatively paltry $46 millionSandler signed his first deal with Netflix to make comedies that live exclusively on the streaming platform. It was an ominous, accurate indicator that original streaming content was coming to eat the box offices lunchand comedies appeared to be first on the menu. The revolution rolled in gradually. In 2015, Apatow had his last big hit to date with Trainwreck, which made $110 million and anointed Amy Schumer as the next major comedy movie star. Tiffany Haddish snatched that title two years later, as the breakout of Girls Trip ($115 million), but neither star managed to sustain their momentum, with returns quickly diminishing. Meanwhile, the ceiling for big-screen comedies collapsed, as well-regarded hits like 2018s Game Night and Blockers topped out between $60 million and $70 million. (Crazy Rich Asians made a crazy rich $174 million that summer, but its more of a romantic comedy/drama than a pure comedy.) Buoyed by the dominance of superhero fare like Avengers: Endgame ($858 million domestic), 2019 became the biggest box office year on record, but comedy had comparatively meager returnscementing the conventional wisdom that the genre was no longer profitable. It coincided with the arrival of fresh streamers like Apple TV+ and Peacock, hungry for exclusive content, and COVID-19 keeping millions of moviegoers out of theaters for years. As far as theatrical releases go, comedy is now mostly relegated to an element that filmmakers inject into other genres. Thor: Love and Thunder ($343 million), is now a comedy. M3GAN ($95 million), with its made-to-be-memed robot dance, is a comedy. Barbie ($636 million) with its money-printing IP and the black swan event-iness of opening against Oppenheimer, is a comedy. As for pure comedies from legendary stars of the genre like Eddie Murphy, though, one need only scroll through Netflix and Prime Video, where movies like You People and Coming 2 America exclusively reside. Big-screen comedies, it would seem, are cooked. But maybe they dont have to be. Whats riding on The Naked Gun hitting The problem facing theatrical comedies now is one of expectations. As the potential for staggering worldwide grosses grew over the past two decades, studios became interested in top global performers and little elseand comedy tends not to translate well. Everything in theaters now seems to either be a $500 million juggernaut or a $20 million A24 movie made for pocket change. Whatever happened to midbudget movies and mid-level expectations? One of the last hyped comedies to hit theaters, the 2023 Jennifer Lawrence vehicle No Hard Feelings, was considered a flop because it only made $50 million domestically on a $45 million budget. This years One of Them Days, however, starring Keke Palmer and SZA, took in the same total on a third of the budget, and is considered a modest hit. (A sequel is already in the works.) If audiences will turn out enough to make that comedy profitable, it stands to reason theres a lot of untapped potential left in the genre. With a reported $42 million budget, The Naked Gun will have to shoot a little higher to be considered a hit. If it manages to clear that magic $100 mark, though, something a pure comedy hasnt done in ages, it could remind the decision-makers that filmgoers love to laugh. It could lay the groundwork for a big marketing push for Aziz Ansaris filmmaking debut, Good Fortune, starring Seth Rogen, which is slated for this fall. (I dont buy into this theory that theatrical comedies are not a thing, Ansari has said about his hopes for the film.) It might not take more than one or two major hit comedies before the genre is deemed theatrically viable again. If The Naked Gun flops, however, comedy stands to be further relegated to the world of streaming, where the stakes are low and so, too often, is the level of effort. Theres nothing funny about that.
Category:
E-Commerce
YouTubers dedicate their lives to building a following in hopes of creating and sustaining a livelihood. For top creators, the rewards are immense: MrBeast, the worlds biggest YouTuber, is estimated to be worth $1 billion. Its no surprise, then, that YouTube channels are valuable assets, often bought and sold for significant sums. A new study published in the Cornell University archive arXiv reveals that 1 in every 400 YouTube channels has changed hands on third-party platforms, frequently undergoing complete transformations in the process. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University analyzed Fameswapa kind of eBay for social media profilescataloging 4,641 YouTube channels with a combined 823 million subscribers listed for sale between October 2024 and March 2025. They then tracked which of those channels sold, confirming more than $1 million in transactions during that six-month period. It was really remarkable, says Alejandro Cuevas, the papers lead author. A YouTube spokesperson said that selling accounts violates the platforms Terms of Service, and the company will take action if such activity is detected. “If we detect that bad actors are creating channels with the intent to scam, mislead, spam, or defraud other users, we terminate those channels, the spokesperson tells Fast Company. Given the high prices paid, new owners are eager to see a return on their investment. About one in four of the tracked channelsrepresenting a combined 220 million followerswere completely overhauled within 30 days, with changes to their handle, title, and description that erased any connection to the original identity. The researchers found that these revamped channels continued to gain subscribers over the following 12 weeks, suggesting most viewers didnt notice the switch. However, many new owners werent focused on producing quality content: 37% of repurposed channels later promoted material flagged by YouTube as potentially harmfulespecially political disinformation, crypto schemes, and gambling ads. A follow-up analysis by the same researchers of 1.4 million randomly selected channels from analytics platform Social Blade revealed that around 0.25% showed similar patterns of transformation. The growing trade in YouTube channels reflects broader shifts in how we consume content, says Manoel Horta Ribeiro, a coauthor on the study. Part of the reason why this is so prevalent right now is because systematically, in these platforms, weve seen a decrease in the agency over what we consume, he says. Knowing that a channel already has an audience and a veneer of credibility makes it easier to push new content into users feeds. The shortform content paradigm facilitates this a lot, because in the past, you would search for channels directly, maybe by name, or be more aware of that, says Cuevas. This just makes it more fertile ground for these type of thing.
Category:
E-Commerce
If you sit on the terraced steps at the newly-rebuilt Wagner Park on the Manhattan waterfront, looking out at the Statue of Liberty, you probably wont know that theres an 18-foot-tall flood wall hidden under your feet. The small park, which just opened after an 18-month renovation, is one piece of a larger, $1.7 billion system of flood protection being installed in New York City. Most of the park now sits around 10 feet higher than it did in the past, with the hidden wall high enough to hold back water in a storm surge. Under the central lawn, a 63,000-gallon stormwater cistern holds rain in heavy storms, then recycles the water to irrigate the park. On the other side of the wall, near the Hudson River, rain flows through gardens and into an infiltration system that releases it slowly to help avoid floods. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] You can engineer these solutions with large floodwalls everywhere, says Raju Mann, president and CEO of Battery Park City Authority, the public benefit corporation that manages urban planning in the area. But here, we took a more careful approach. How do we have a great open space that also has flood protection in itnot how do we just build a flood protection project? [Image: BPCA] From the beginning, the design team knew that they wanted to avoid exposing the floodwall as much as possible. In a few spots in the park, tunnels underground meant that it wasnt possible to go down to the bedrock, and the wall is exposed. But most of it is completely hidden. In other parts of the park, flood gates integrated into pathways can pop up in an emergency, but otherwise arent noticeable. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] Its a beautiful waterfront, says Gonzalo Cruz, vice president and principal for landscape architecture and urban design at AECOM, the engineering firm that worked on the design. We want people to feel very connected to its experience and how to navigate the park, he says. “Back in the day, when mechanisms for flood protection were put into place, they were erected without any consideration for how people use these spaces. Were rethinking the way we think about open space and how we design around infrastructure. The redesigned park feels larger than it previously did, Mann says, with more outdoor rooms and space for concerts and other performances. It will also have a new energy-efficient pavilion with community space where nonprofits can have classes, and a rooftop terrace. Gardens through the park are designed with native plants. The paving materials were chosen to help reduce the urban heat island effect. The solar-powered lighting in the park is DarkSky compliant to reduce the impact of light pollution on wildlife. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] The plan for the transformation started more than a decade ago, after Hurricane Sandy devastated lower Manhattan. The storm surge reached 13 feet at Battery Park, at the southern tip of the island. Streets and subway tunnels were flooded. The power went out for days. Some offices closed for weeks. A hospital had to evacuate patients. Two residents drowned in a basement apartment in the East Village. Wagner Park sits next to the Battery, but at a higher elevation. It avoided flooding during Sandy. But its in the 100-year flood plain. The city recognized that major storms are becoming more likely because of climate changeboth storm surges and heavy rain. And it knew that the park needed to be better protected. The new design is based on flood levels that are possible in the 2050s as the sea level rises. [Photo: Battery Park City Authority] The floodwall will connect to other projects to the north and south. Collectively, the new infrastructure will help make it less likely that the surrounding neighborhoods flood. Thats especially important now, Mann says, as the federal government is pulling back from climate action. As we’re getting less serious as a country about managing our greenhouse gas emission, then we need to get more serious about how we actually adapt to a change in climate, he says. I think it’s going to put more and more pressure on places to think about how do we actually grapple with the reality that increasingly looks like. And with some optimism, meaning, can we actually design better places? I think that this project, and other projects getting delivered now, provides some optimism that climate change adaptation doesn’t need to be just taking your medicine. It can actually be better space.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||