Numlock News: November 3, 2025 • Bugonia, Ridiculousness, Lidar

By Walt Hickey

Box Office

It was the worst non-pandemic Halloween box office in 31 years (not adjusting for inflation) and the worst weekend so far this year, with just $49.8 million at the box office. This poor showing caps off the worst October in 27 years. There also appears to be a tie between the Colleen Hoover book adaptation Regretting You, with $8.1 million across 3,245 cinemas, and Black Phone 2 with $8 million from 3,425 cinemas. However, estimates from a number of studios are putting the latter as the top grosser. Down the rankings, Bugonia made $4.8 million in 2,043 theaters, which is its own kind of record for the most theaters ever simultaneously featuring a movie by Yorgos Lanthimos.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

Yamamoto

In what is already being held as one of the best championship performances ever in a sport, Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto clinched Game 7 of the World Series for the team after a series for the record books. His 34 pitches in Game 7 are all the more remarkable because he threw 96 pitches the night before in Game 6 and had been declared unavailable for the next game. Throughout the playoffs, Yamamoto played 37 1/3 innings across six games, posted a 1.45 ERA and became the first pitcher to have back-to-back complete games since 2001.

Jared Diamond, The Wall Street Journal

Ridiculousness

After 14 years and 46 seasons, the clip show Ridiculousness has been cancelled at MTV. The show has produced over 1,700 episodes and frequently dominated the schedule of the network. At one point in 2020, the series accounted for 113 hours of the network’s 168-hour weekly lineup, the defining documentary series of our era. Host Rob Dyrdek was making $21,000 per episode as producer and $61,000 per episode on-camera, which adds up when you’re producing more seasons per year than Florida experiences.

Ethan Shanfeld, Variety

Little

In what must come as a relief to many, Jacksonville Jaguars kicker Cam Little has snatched the record for longest NFL field goal with a 68-yarder to end the first half of a game that resulted in a 30-29 win over the Raiders. The record had been 66 yards set in 2021 by Ravens kicker Justin Tucker, who has since become known as disgraced kicker Justin Tucker. Little had hit a 70-yarder against Pittsburgh during the preseason, but, you know, nobody really cares about those. Kickers are getting really, really good; there have been seven field goals of 60 yards or more through week nine, which is already a record for a single season. The high water mark for an entire season had been five 60+ yarders in 2022 and 2023.

Michael DiRocco, ESPN

Hesai

Chinese tech company Hesai Technologies designed lidar, instruments that use light detection and ranging to ascertain distances. Lidar is used in all sorts of clever tech — strap it to a light aircraft, have it scan a jungle and maybe you find a lost city — but the real action is in autonomous driving. Vehicles that combine images from normal cameras with lidar tech are seen by some in the autonomous driving space as having superior performance to cars that rely only on standard cameras. The issue is that lidar devices were thought to be too expensive at $10,000 per unit. Hesai, which has a 33 percent market share in the automotive lidar business and has its products in use by 24 companies, wants to cut costs for a lidar unit drastically. Since 2022, the company has worked towards the ultimate goal of getting lidar costs sub-$500. The latest ATX model from the company has gone into mass production this year, and is selling for $200.

Eiki Hayashi, Nikkei Asia

Coffin

Coffins can be of immense scientific interest to dendrochronologists who study the wood and draw conclusions about the climate and weather of the era in which the individual died. For instance, a dendrochronologist studied the tree rings from a coffin interring the body of a wealthy Han soldier who died 2200 years ago in a hillside grave. Through the wood, they were able to demonstrate that from 270 BCE to 77 CE, the average humidity level was 18 percent to 34 percent higher. This may have been a factor in the Han Dynasty’s westward expansion into lands that today are a desert, but could have sustained civilization in that time.

Taylor Mitchell Brown, Science

Thanksgiving

After that dismal October, the movie business is very much excited for Wicked: For Good, which adapts the timeless story of the worse half of Wicked, the part that has few good songs. Still, fans are excited, and right now the tracking puts the movie at bringing in $115 million or more domestically over the long Thanksgiving weekend. It would not only be a record for a movie adaptation of a Broadway show, but also a record for a sequel to a movie adaptation of a Broadway show, a record for a sequel to a movie adaptation of a Broadway adaptation of a book, then a record for a sequel to a movie adaptation of a Broadway adaptation of a book based on a movie and (of course) a record for a sequel to a movie adaptation of a Broadway adaptation of a book based on a movie based on a book. Depending on how big the international box office gets, Wicked: For Good may even contend with the record for most money made based on a property that was originally mostly made about the gold standard, with Ron Paul 2012 being the high water mark there. Pre-sales are tracking ahead of the first movie, and the film is expected to have buzz over Oscar season, as well as looking at a long leg.

Pamela McClintock, The Hollywood Reporter

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