Movies
The Dead Are Working Again
Gene Wilder is narrating a game show ten years after his death. Val Kilmer has a new lead role. Hollywood finally solved consent, and it fixed nothing.
4 min read
Gene Wilder started narrating a Netflix show this week. He has been dead since 2016. The Golden Ticket, a Wonka-themed competition series, uses an ElevenLabs recreation of the voice fans know from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. His estate…
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Cover Story / The Long Read
No one's fifties beat Morgan Freeman's
Morgan Freeman turned 89 on June 1, and the most interesting number in his story is not 89. It is 50. That is how old he was in 1987 when Street Smart cast him as the hustler Fast Black and…
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More this week
Movies
The Odyssey Dislike Campaign Is a Verdict on Nothing
106,000 dislikes for a film nobody can see until July 17. The target is a cast list, and the collateral damage is exactly the kind of movie theaters keep begging for.
Games
Sony didn't kill the disc. It killed the last pretense that you own your games
Sony will stop manufacturing physical discs for new PlayStation games from January 2028, and the backlash was loud enough to knock the company off social media for a full day.
Television
The Golden Ticket Was a Test of Character. Netflix Skipped That Part
Netflix's Wonka competition show is narrated by a man who died in 2016. The estate signed off. That settles less than the streamer thinks.
Movies
Supergirl's Ending Has Fans at War, and Both Sides Have a Point
A $38 million bow and a 56 percent Tomatometer would normally be the story. Instead everyone is arguing about the final minutes, and the argument is worth having.
Books
The AI book flood is real. The witch hunt it started is worse.
Kobo is rejecting 45 percent of self-publishing submissions, Amazon uploads have reportedly tripled, and Granta is refusing to publish prize winners an investigation already cleared.
Music
A Pixar song at No. 1 is the Hot 100 working, not breaking
Taylor Swift's Toy Story 5 song "I Knew It, I Knew You" is the first Disney song ever to debut at No. 1 on the Hot 100, her 15th chart-topper.
Television
The Boroughs cancellation looks less like math and more like a grudge
Netflix cancelled its top-10 drama The Boroughs on June 18, one month after launch, and stars Geena Davis and Denis O'Hare are urging Emmy voters to punish the platform.
Games
Destiny 2 didn't die of old age. It was starved
Bungie cut roughly 400 jobs on June 25, about half the studio, gutting the Destiny 2 team and effectively ending support for the game after Monument of Triumph.
Music
Confessions II is not nostalgia-mining, and the double standard is showing
Confessions II, Madonna's direct sequel to 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor and her 15th studio album, arrives July 3 to some of her strongest reviews in years.
Books
Heartstopper earns an ending most franchises never get
Alice Oseman's sixth and final Heartstopper graphic novel publishes July 2, with Netflix's concluding film Heartstopper Forever following on July 17.
Games
Skyrim Refuses to Die Because Players Want Worlds, Not Release Dates
A 2011 RPG posted the biggest jump in our catalog this week, pulled five other open worlds and its own soundtrack along with it, and somehow Sun Tzu came too.
Movies
Karlovy Vary Is Asking the AI Question Hollywood Won't
The festival's 60th edition opens July 3 with AI and storytelling as its headline theme, and Dustin Hoffman, Juliette Binoche and Jeffrey Wright in the honoree seats.
From the archive
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