By Walt Hickey
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Demon Slayer
With another $17.3 million at the domestic box office, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — Infinity Castle has made $103 million stateside with another $451 million internationally for a global cume of $555 million. That’s nipping on the heels of Superman, which would position Demon Slayer to be the top-grossing comic book movie of the year if this momentum holds. It’s the first in a trilogy of films, which is a bullish sign for the box office, and a sign that young audiences may not be as immune to the charms of going to theaters as some in the industry had feared.
731
Meanwhile, on the other extreme of Japan’s cultural soft power, the top movie in China right now is 731 or Evil Unbound, which is about Imperial Japan’s biological weapons program during its World War II invasion of Manchuria. It made $345 million yuan (US$42.2 million) on its opening day, a Thursday, when 272,000 screenings were held across the country. It accounted for 99.7 percent of all screenings in China that day and went on to make 1.1 billion yuan (US$154.6 million) through Sunday. Despite the unconventional release day, it is now the fourth-biggest opening day in China this year, and ticket sales are poised to grow during the October 1-8 Golden Week holidays. Right now, there’s a lot going on in China to commemorate the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War, including the release of Dead to Rights this summer, a film about the Nanjing massacre of 1937, which became the top-grossing movie of the summer.
Vanessa Cai, South China Morning Post and Wataru Suzuki, Nikkei Asia
Necromancy
Stan Lee, the Marvel impresario who presided over some of the comic book company’s most creatively fruitful years, has been dead for seven years, and his final years prior to his demise at the age of 95 were rife with allegations that he was being exploited in his old age for money. The reveal of the Stan Lee Experience at L.A. Comic Con does not exactly refute that allegation. Fans can enter a 1,500 square foot enclosed booth where they can take photos with a hologram of Stan Lee, or have a three-minute one-on-one “conversation” with this dead man. If you want to interact with the ghoulish simulacrum, it’ll cost $15 to $20 to enter.
Aaron Couch, The Hollywood Reporter
Nebula
A clever study published in Astrophysical Journal Letters has pulled off the remarkable task of charting the growth of a nebula over the course of more than 100 years. The nebula in question, IC 418, was discovered on March 26, 1891, by astronomer Williamina Fleming at Harvard Observatory, one of 59 nebulae discovered by the astronomer. It’s at +9th magnitude and 18 arcseconds in diameter, roughly 2,000 light-years away and 0.2 light-years across. What’s cool about IC 418 is that there have been spectroscopic measurements taken of the nebula since the very beginning of the technique in the 1890s, with the first such observation from 1893. These observations were made consistently thereafter all through the modern era. The study looks at this over a century of data to track the death of the star over the course of decades. The central star has been increasing by 3000 degrees Celsius since discovery – 1000 degrees every 40 years — as it transitions from a red giant to a white dwarf.
Coachella
In a surprise move, the music festival Coachella has released its lineup months ahead of when it usually does, with Justin Bieber and Sabrina Carpenter headlining. Coachella used to sell out without even having to announce a lineup. However, after a few down years, it appears that the promoters of the top festival in North America have to add a little extra juice with big names. One big shift this year is the decrease to just six hip-hop acts at the festival, down from 10 hip-hop acts last year and nearly 70 percent down from the most recent peak of 19 hip-hop acts in 2022.
Reusable
Eliminating single-use cups can go a long way towards reducing the amount of waste from restaurants and retailers going to landfills. The American hospitality industry has taken the bold, innovative, and cutting-edge perspective of just letting Europe figure this one out and doing whatever they decide works. Some things under experimentation? In Aarhus, Denmark, 70 cafes are participating in a citywide returnable cup program where customers who buy drinks can get the beverage in a durable cup that can be returned at any one of 28 receptacles around the city. The receptacles will refund them 78 cents upon deposit. That program has a return rate of 87 percent and has saved 1.1 million disposable cups. Cups chipped with RFID stickers are also being trialed, which takes a deposit linked to the card of around $2.45 to $2.70 that is refunded when they return the cup to a bin with an RFID reader. It’s worked at music festivals and even Blenheim Palace in England, the birthplace of Winston Churchill. Blenheim Palace boasts a return rate of 85 percent and has eliminated 400,000 single-use cups per year, saving $81,000 in the process.
Saabira Chaudhuri, The Wall Street Journal
GTA
Next year’s release of Grand Theft Auto VI is going to be a massive moment for the video game industry, the kind of release that will signify both the end of one era and the beginning of another. That sounds heavy, I know, but the reality is that GTA’s sales figures are projected to be enormous and console-defining. As of June, Sony has released 80.2 million PlayStation 5 consoles since its release in 2020, and GTA IV will be exclusive to the PS5, presumably squeezing out any last remaining demand for this generation of PlayStation consoles. Currently, DFC Intelligence predicts that 40 million copies of GTA VI will sell in the first year of release, good for $3.2 billion in revenue. The Grand Theft Auto franchise also has a long tail, and its predecessor still generates about half a billion dollars annually. For Sony, it’ll not only get 30 percent of digital sales, but is also projected to move a few more million PS5s this year, months ahead of GTA VI. Sony is projected to finish the year with 86 million consoles installed, more than double the 36 million Xbox Series X/S. Even so, just as this will push the PS5 to its peak, there’s only one way to go from there; soon, Sony will prep for the inevitable PS6.
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