Fourth Oddities Spotted in the News

[Labster]

Digger is poised to be one of the biggest box-office flops of the year

Despite a major star's return to dramatic acting, a two-time best director winner at the Oscars and enough publicity to rival the moon landing, Digger looks set to become one of the biggest box-office disasters of the year.

But the failure comes as the last release before Warner Bros. is fully acquired by Paramount on Tuesday.

Expect to see some major shakeups at the Hollywood movie studio. (Is there still more than one Hollywood movie studio any more?)

Digger comes at exactly the wrong time.  As I've said, satire is dead, deader than disco.  No one wants a satire because real life is crazier and more blatantly obvious than any writer can dream up, so every joke lands flat and every twist is guessable.  I think the movie may be better appreciated in the future (if they still have movies) (if climate change doesn't kill us all) (if AI doesn't kill us all).  There are some clever things here, like (spoiler, because you weren't going to watch it anyway) 30 minutes in when they break the fourth wall and it becomes clear that everything you've seen so far was a dress rehearsal of a play (in a teleplay).

I'm not even sure I could bear to watch the last satire film on the same topic I liked, Don't Look Up.  Because, again, reality has become worse than this. Not just purposefully ignoring the problem, but purposefully spending money to make it worse.  I'm living through an unbearable, unending summer right now.  Remember Eternal September?  Welcome to Eternal August, folks, where the weather is always August all the time, but hotter.

And meanwhile, the movie that Warners didn't release, Coyote vs. Acme, grossed $100M – not quite enough to make it immediately profitable for Warners, but definitely enough to make money at the discount that Ketchup bought it.