Numlock News: May 13, 2025 • Beyoncé, Bollywood, Sargassum

May 13, 2025

Bite The Dust

A new analysis looked at the lead characters in 27,268 movies to find out how many times the main character of a movie dies. They found that the lead character bites it in 15.9 percent of films. Lately, these deaths have actually been rarer compared to the rest of film history — lead characters dying throughout the course of a film saw its heyday in the early 1970s, when about a third of movies consistently killed off their lead — but of course it’s damned hard to make a multi-picture franchise about a guy who eats it in act three of your first movie. There are some more fatal genres than others: for example, the history and biography films. Respectively, 28.7 percent and 28.5 percent of history and biography films end with the lead dying. This makes sense because that is actually what happens at the end for (as far as I can tell) everyone.

Stephen Follows, StephenFollows.com

Bollywood

In the 2025 fiscal year, the top movie chain in India — PVE Inox — suffered major setbacks, with Bollywood box office sales down 26 percent and admissions down 9.5 percent. Overall, annual revenue at the theater chain was down 5.4 percent, hitting 57.8 billion rupees. India has a relatively thriving cinema business and a whole lot of local production, which makes it a unique market globally. Regional language films made up a larger-than-usual portion of sales last year, coming in at 32 percent of the box office compared to 26 percent the prior year. The share of Hindi-dubbed films has also doubled.

Harshita Swaminathan and Satviki Sanjay, Bloomberg

Beyoncé

On Saturday, Beyoncé ended a run of five shows at SoFi Stadium outside of Los Angeles and entered the record books, with a $55.7 million gross across 217,000 tickets sold over the course of the run. That makes it the single highest-grossing tour stop for a female artist and the fifth-highest ever in Boxscore’s history. The stop comes behind two U2 legs at the Vegas Sphere, Harry Styles’ 15 shows at MSG, and eight nights of Take That at Wembley in 2011.

Eric Frankenberg, Billboard

Seaweed

Researchers at the University of South Florida Optical Oceanography Lab are projecting a massive year for seaweed on the Florida coast, estimating that there will be 40 percent more seaweed than the current record year of 2022. Though the mass of sargassum — measured at 30 million metric tons, based on satellite imagery — may not all careen into the Florida coast, the lab is trying to get better at predicting whether it would hit the coast. It’s an expensive question: beaches are big money in South Florida, and municipalities spend millions of dollars to remove seaweed from their beaches. Miami-Dade County even dropped $2.8 million on seaweed removal in that record 2022 year.

Ashley Miznazi, Miami Herald

Reptiles

About 4 million U.S. households own reptiles and amphibians as pets, and between food ($279 million) and supplies ($521 million), the overall market to serve those households has grown to about $800 million. That number is a 60 percent increase from 2019 and is projected to grow further still. Pythons, geckos, even humble turtles have become increasingly popular cold-blooded companions, and in no small part because, despite their scales and relative taxonomic distance, they are still telegenic to some on platforms like TikTok.

Karen Angel, Bloomberg

Babesiosis

Babesiosis is a rare tick-borne disease that appears in about 2,000 cases in the U.S. per year, and it’s on the rise. According to a new study, the parasite that causes it has been rapidly expanding throughout the mid-Atlantic. From 2015 to 2022, case counts in states reporting the disease rose 9 percent every year, thanks in part to warmer temperatures that give ticks more time to bite and spread. A study that collected 1,310 ticks from Virginia, Maryland and Delaware found the parasite in all three states. Untreated, the parasites infect and destroy red blood cells, and humans tend to need those.

Zoya Teirstein, Grist

Decongested

Several months in, and the once controversial congestion pricing policy in New York City is an all-around success. Cars on the street, car crash injuries, parking violations, traffic noise complaints, fire response times and school bus delays are all down. At the same time, traffic speeds, commute times, transit ridership, taxi trips and visitors to the congestion zone are all up. In April, there were 568,000 average daily visitors in the congestion pricing zone, which was well under the expected 644,000 average from previous years. The average speed of cars in the congestion zone is up 15 percent, increasing for the first time in years, simply because there are fewer cars in the way. Even New Jersey, one of the staunchest opponents, has reason to celebrate: the average speed of an express bus in the Lincoln Tunnel increased to 20 miles per hour from January 1 through April 21, well above the 16 miles per hour logged in the same period of last year.

Emily Badger, Stefanos Chen, Asmaa Elkeurti, Winnie Hu, Francesca Paris and Ethan Singer, The Upshot

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