Numlock News: July 1, 2024 • Kei, Libraries, K'NEX

Jul 01, 2024

By Walt Hickey

Welcome back!

Box Office

Inside Out 2 continues its tear at the box office, adding another $57 million to its domestic total and pushing its global gross to $1.01 billion. Behind it was A Quiet Place: Day One, opening to an impressive $53 million domestically, the best start for a film in that franchise, which somewhat unexpectedly has shaped up to be a consistent horror franchise. At an otherwise stellar weekend at the box office, though, Kevin Costner’s Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1, a $100 million Western that is intended to be the first of four installments, opened to $11 million, well under the hoped-for opening and rough news for Costner, who put up $38 million of his own money, reportedly.

Rebecca Rubin, Variety

Golf Carts

Two American golf cart manufacturers — Club Car LLC and Textron Specialized Vehicles Inc. — are asking the federal government to hit Chinese imported, low-speed, battery-powered small vehicles with a 100 percent tariff, accusing their competitors of dumping. Imports of Chinese-made golf carts and similar buggies are six times higher than they were in 2020, in part because they’re assessed a different and cheaper tariff rate compared to traditional EVs. All told, the U.S. imported $915.6 million worth of the vehicles from China in 2023, up from $147.8 million in 2020.

Brendan Murray, Bloomberg

Redbox

After weeks of concern over their ability to continue operating, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as the Redbox owner stares down a mountain of debt to basically everyone in Hollywood. The company operated 40,000 Redbox DVD rental kiosks at peak, but it’s down to 27,000 now, and it also owns three ad-supported VOD platforms (Redbox, Crackle and Chicken Soup for the Soul). The position has become untenable: It owes $970 million in debt, has $414 million in assets, and lost $636.6 million in its most recent year of operation. It has a remarkable list of creditors, including studios like Universal ($16.7 million), Sony ($9.1 million), BBC Studios Americas ($9 million), Lionsgate ($4.6 million), Warner Bros. Discovery ($2 million) and Paramount ($3.16 million).

Erik Gruenwedel, Media Play News

Wires

Morocco has some of the highest potential for green energy on the planet, as a wind-swept and sun-drenched nation with immediate proximity to some of the highest-development energy buyers on the planet. Transmission projects can take years to build out, and several projects designed to connect buyers with places with huge potential for electrical export are in progress. There’s already a 475-mile subsea power line connecting the U.K. and Denmark, which was activated in December and became the longest such grid connection on the planet, and that linkup has some thinking bigger, including a 2,485-mile link between the U.K. and Morocco in the planning stages.

Ed Ballard, The Wall Street Journal

Kei Truck

Kei trucks are narrow vehicles that are popular in Japan and manufactured by the likes of Mitsubishi and Toyota. They’re handy because they have all the advantages of a pickup truck’s bed at a lighter and more compact size, with vastly better fuel economy for people who use their pickup trucks to work rather than as a masculine form of cosplay. Exports have quadrupled over the past decade and hit 68,800 last year, with the U.S. as the eighth-highest ranked recipient.

Sarah Hilton, Ignacio Gonzalez and Rachel Phua, Bloomberg

Libraries

Library visits in the United States have been declining sharply, down to 671 million physical visits in 2022 compared to 1.25 billion visits in 2019. The average number of library visits per user per year is down 49.1 percent. It’s going to have knock-on effects for the book industry as a whole: In 2022, there were 162 million fewer books on library shelves than there were in 2010, a 20 percent decline. The reasons for declining library visits are still being discussed, but that declining stock of books is a big factor.

Tim Coates, Publishers Weekly

Basic Fun

The toymaker Basic Fun, which makes Care Bears, Tonka and Lincoln Logs and lives up to its name, is looking to get approval for $50 million in financing as it files for bankruptcy protection. It’s one of the companies still reeling from the collapse of Toys R Us in 2018, and owns every second banana in the business, like K’NEX, Lite-Brite, and the Littlest Pet Shop.

James Zahn, Toy Book

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