Source: Fast Company, Jeff Beer
Photo: Apple Music

Forget Trump and the backlash! Apple’s halftime goal is to throw a global dance party.

When Roc Nation and the NFL decided that Bad Bunny would be their Super Bowl headliner, the next step was for Apple, the show’s sponsor, to set the strategy to hype the halftime show.

Apple has spearheaded the Super Bowl halftime show since 2023, building a complex array of advertising, teasers, playlists, and other content across its many platforms for Rihanna (2023), Usher (2024), and Kendrick Lamar (2025). Since the start of this $50-million-per-year sponsorship deal, Apple has treated the halftime show like it might be one of its products, with all the marketing and advertising bells and whistles it has at its disposal for things like the iPhone and Apple Watch.

And it seems to be working.

Since 2022, Apple Music has grown its subscriber base from 88 million globally to about 108 million. It currently has about a 30% market share of music streaming subscribers in the U.S., compared with Spotify’s 36%. Globally, though, Apple’s market share drops to about 16%—and this is where the Bad Bunny strategy comes in.

The Puerto Rican superstar is one of the most-streamed artists on the planet. As soon as he was announced, Apple Music released custom playlists, interviews, and more to excite fans and educate curious potential new fans. By crafting and promoting the Super Bowl halftime show as a global product launch starring such an internationally popular artist, Apple is using its broader playbook to expand the footprint of its big game investment.

Artist first

After landing the halftime performer, the first thing Apple’s vice president of marketing, Tor Myhren, and his team do is sit down with the artist and ask a few questions: What is it that you want to get out of this? What do you want this to be? What’s the goal here?

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, aka Bad Bunny, is a global superstar and one of the most-streamed artist on the planet. His answer? “This isn’t my halftime show. This is for everyone.”

“We thought that was such an inclusive, optimistic approach,” Myhren says. “So we just wrote that on the wall and said, ‘That’s the brief, so let’s just make sure it feels like this is for everyone.’ This is a celebration.”

The celebration theme is in sharp contrast to the reaction from right-wing media and social commentators, and even President Trump himself, since Bad Bunny was announced as the halftime act in late September. Last week, Trump was asked about him and fellow Super Bowl performers Green Day. “I’m anti-them,” Trump said. “I think it’s a terrible choice. All it does is sow hatred. Terrible.”

The reality of Bad Bunny’s message is the exact opposite of hatred. In the halftime show’s trailer, the artist is seen dancing happily with people of all shades, shapes, and sizes.

Myhren says that this, in essence, is Bad Bunny’s vibe. “He wants it to be positive. He wants it to be filled with optimism.”

And why shouldn’t he? He is the fourth artist to do the show since Apple took over its sponsorship, and each year it has broken viewership records. Rihanna’s 2023 show had 121 million, Usher’s had 123.4 million, and Lamar’s performance last year hit 133.5 million viewers.

Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music, Sports, and Beats, says that the company’s relationship with artists makes it ideal for the halftime show. They’ve been working with Bad Bunny since about 2016. “Unlike previous sponsors, we have such a close relationship with the artists that in all four years, we were able to work really closely on how we want this to be announced, how we want it to be rolled out, and what the surprises are,” Schusser says. “And I think that puts us in a very unique position, unlike any other version of this event.”

The goal this year is to globally expand the show. Myhren says Apple is using some of the same tactics it employs to launch new products around the world to promote this show.

“When you think about the way we launch our physical products—whether it’s an outdoor billboard, a film ad, a small piece in your social feed—they have to be able to play everywhere,” he says. “They have to speak to everyone, which is why we don’t use a lot of dialogue. Music is a universal language, so we use that. That’s been really, really fun and challenging.”

Measuring success

Apple’s halftime show sponsorship is a five-year deal with the NFL that was signed in September 2022. And just like any Super Bowl advertiser that wants you to remember its big game commercial, Apple wants to make sure we all know who’s sponsoring the halftime show. Myhren says that the brand measures success in the most obvious ways—total viewership, social impressions, and earned media. Are we watching and are we talking about it? Three years and three record-breaking audiences later, and the answer is pretty clear.

The brand produces a slick pregame press conference for each halftime artist to further entice music fans. Far beyond your typical press room table and mic, it’s more like a slick talk-show pop-up. The Apple Music platform is packed with a variety of playlists tailored to everyone from Bad Bunny stans to total n00bs. And all the video content, including the show itself, is available on Apple TV.

“We’ve figured out ways to just make sure we’re a part of that conversation, which is critical,” Myhren says. “By building up what’s happening on the platform, we want people—whether they’re Apple Music subscribers now or potential subscribers—coming to the platform and experiencing what we have there, especially around these few weeks.”

Myhren knows the question on any marketer’s mind is: What are you getting out of this?

“It really sits at the center of the biggest viewership event in the U.S. every year by a long shot. There’s nothing else even close,” he says. “I think it’s really unique and absolutely worth every penny.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeff Beer is a senior staff editor at Fast Company, and has been covering marketing, advertising, and how brands impact culture since 2006. . His coverage varies from in-depth features and interviews, to industry analysis and cultural commentary.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91483956/inside-apples-bad-bunny-super-bowl-halftime-show-strategy

Source: Smithsonian Magazine, Mary Randolph
Photo: Supervising animator Marc Davis often explored costume designs and helped develop the look and accessories of the characters he animated, including Cinderella. (Courtesy of Fox Carney/Disney Animation Research Library)

Over 75 years after its release, the film is still connecting with animators and audiences

In 1948, Walt Disney Studios was in trouble. The company, started in 1923 by advertising artist and animator Walt Disney and his brother, Roy, had brought the Mickey Mouse character into millions of American homes through cartoons and merchandise. In 1937, it had produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which was a huge success. Upon initial release, it earned around $8 million, nearly $185 million today.

But with the 1940s came World War II and workers’ strikes, and Disney lost its foreign markets, most of its box office sales and many of its creative staff. After the company spent the war producing propaganda and training films for the government, it faced a debt of $4.5 million (around $65 million today).

Disney needed a hit.

“During and just after World War II, they’re really kind of gaining this identity as an American brand,” says Bethanee Bemis, a museum specialist at the National Museum of American History who researches Disney theme parks. “But at the same time, they were pretty deep in debt, and there was a lot of uncertainty [about] the company and what would happen next for them.”

The studio had not produced a feature-length animation since Bambi in 1942, which had not been a financial success, and the staff knew they needed something like Snow White to save the company.

Their salvation would come in 1950, in the form of a kind, long suffering scullery maid. In Cinderella, the titular character, mistreated by her stepmother and stepsisters, has the chance to attend a royal ball with the help of her fairy godmother’s magic and sweet animal friends. There, she meets and falls in love with a prince but must leave the ball at midnight as the magic fades, before the prince learns her identity, and the two are separated—until he finds her using a glass slipper she left behind. She and the prince get married, and, of course, live happily ever after. Cinderella would go on to become a mainstay in Disney’s princess lineup.

“America loves an underdog story, and you don’t get much more of an underdog than the scullery maid, or the woman who’s been cast aside in the castle,” Bemis says. “And so, we really identify with these princesses. But I think also the sort of sidekick characters provide a way for people on the outside to see themselves. Part of what makes Disney so successful is that their characters are flexible enough that almost everyone can see themselves in one of them.”

In 1922, before he started Walt Disney Studios, Disney made a short “laugh-o-gram” cartoon inspired by Charles Perrault’s classic 1697 fairytale, Cendrillon ou La petite pantoufle de verre (Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper).

In 1948, the studio began work on it as a feature film. To do so, Disney brought together his “nine old men”—a group of animators who worked at the studio from the 1920s to the 1980s. Several of them had been away in the military, and Disney wanted this film to bring them back together, says Mindy Johnson, an animation historian who worked as a publicist for Walt Disney Studios.

“The whole production process was designed and structured to get everybody back on the same page with their skills and their talent and the vision of storytelling,” Johnson says.

Disney also brought in Mary Blair as the color stylist and concept artist for Cinderella. Originally a watercolor artist, Blair often brought together colors in ways that were unusual and had more “whimsy” than was typical for Disney, says Brittney Lee, a visual development artist and production designer for the studio.

The color palette and visual language employed by artist Mary Blair greatly inspired the look of the final film. Courtesy of Fox Carney / Disney Animation Research Library
“Her palettes at the time were so unexpected,” Lee says. “But now we look at these palettes that she created and to us, it’s the quintessential fairytale.”

As was typical before the advent of most modern animation technology, Blair likely spent hours sketching out different color palettes that artists now test with the click of a button, Lee says. The studio also brought in live-action references for the characters in the film as guides for the animators.

According to early Disney animator Marc Davis, the scene where Cinderella’s tattered pink dress transforms into the famous ballgown was one of Walt Disney’s favorite animations. Johnson says this reflects a larger goal of Disney.

“That transition moment always typified what Walt was aspiring to in each of his films, a sense of magic and wonder and transformation and possibility in life,” she says.

While talking about artist Mary Blair’s use of color in the film, Brittney Lee made one note: “The dress is silver.” Though current commercial re-creations of the dress are often blue, and some lighting in the film gives it more of a blueish hue, the original animation of Cinderella’s dress was silver. “Anyone who ever gets to say anything about Cinderella from Disney Animation, we like to make that distinction,” Lee says.

Beyond the dress or style or animation, though, the storytelling was what really resonated with audiences, says Fox Carney, manager for research at the Walt Disney Animation Research Library. Coming out of the war, he says, the story captured a “spirit of optimism” that the American public was craving.

“Even though the audiences may have changed after the events that the world had endured, I think there was something simplistic about it, something engaging,” he says. “The story reflected that everybody can go from tough times to wonderful times, which kind of models the society at the time.”

This audience connection was reflected in the box office, and it’s estimated that the film’s initial earnings, according to a Walt Disney Family Museum post, were around $7 million (more than $94 million today), which brought the company out of debt and allowed it to continue production on films such as 1951’s Alice in Wonderland and 1953’s Peter Pan. The financial stability also allowed the founder to turn his focus to projects like theme parks: Disneyland in California opened in 1955.

“The success of Cinderella not only ushered animation back as an in-demand medium of masterful storytelling and visual artistry, but the success of it on every level opened the doors for the modern, complex world of everything Disney,” Johnson says.

Today, Carney gives tours of the Animation Research Library to animators and designers, and says he often observes them drawing inspiration from the work of past animators.

Lee, who has worked as an artist on the Frozen franchise, says the color work and the design of the castle in those movies have many influences from Cinderella.

Blair’s work specifically, Lee says, has a timeless quality that she aims to bring to all of her projects.

“There’s so much whimsy in her work and so much fun and charm for all of the different projects she worked on, but the pathos aspect of the work in Cinderella really helps the film have the weight that it does, the longevity, the relatability, even for audiences 75 years later.”

The fairytale remains relevant for the public, too. Since its initial release, the film has had numerous re-releases worldwide, and Cinderella has become the model for the Disney princess, Carney says.

“The fact that people still talk about it means that it has an impact,” he says. “It has a connection. It’s made that connection, and it’s not letting go.”

Bemis, author of Disney Theme Parks and America’s National Narratives, says that since the creation of the parks, the Cinderella castle, even more than Mickey Mouse, has become the ultimate symbol of Disney. She points to how many children of different backgrounds come to the parks dressed as Cinderella seven decades after the film’s release.

“Cinderella and other films like it have become these touchstones of American film history that are passed down from generation to generation,” she says. “Repeating these stories to each other is one of the ways in which we create a collective identity. We’re all repeating these stories to our children, and we’re in effect telling them, ‘This is who we are.’”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/disney-was-in-distress-during-the-late-1940s-then-cinderella-came-to-the-rescue-and-saved-the-company-from-financial-disaster

© 2026 Smithsonian Magazine

Source: MSN, Rik Henderson
Photo: Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and other streaming services set to change due to landmark ruling (© Rik Henderson/Future)

The rise of streaming has been nothing short of incredible. Netflix and Prime Video (formerly Lovefilm) just about got the ball rolling a couple of decades ago, the speed of growth in more recent times is extraordinary.

Then there are many, many alternatives that have popped up since, such as Disney+, Apple TV+, Paramount+ and a few others without “plus” in their names. It’s a phenomenal amount of content at your fingertips – if you want to pay for it.

It’s also a staggering amount of adverts you’re likely to watch if you don’t subscribe to the higher tiers.

That’s the less welcome side of streaming services, with many offering cheaper ways to get shows and films into your home, as long as you don’t mind watching waves of commercials.

There’s perhaps an even less savoury side to that too – I’ve certainly noticed over the years that adverts on streaming platforms (and broadcast TV, to be honest) are played at a higher volume than the content the punctuate. This has always been intentional, as advertisers vie for your attention, but it can be particularly annoying to have to lunge for the remote each ad break.

Some TVs have measures to combat this, automatically adjusting the volume of advertising to mitigate the inconvenience, but many do not. Thankfully though, even if your set or sound system does not, it might be that we won’t have to worry much longer.

The US state of California has passed a law that prohibits streaming services from transmitting adverts that have louder audio than the content they accompany. And that could send shock waves around the globe, with other regions considering following suit.

“We heard Californians loud and clear, and what’s clear is that they don’t want commercials at a volume any louder than the level at which they were previously enjoying a program,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom (via the BBC) when he signed the new law.

Sadly, even in the state, viewers will still have to put up with aural discrepancies for a few months longer – the law doesn’t come into effect until 1 July 2026. But it’s a start.

And hopefully, as the services have to introduce their own technologies to standardise their volume output, it will be implemented elsewhere too.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/netflix-prime-video-disney-and-other-streaming-services-set-to-change-due-to-landmark-ruling

Source: MSN, Laya Neelakandan
Photo: Elon Musk stands in the Oval Office to attend a press event with U.S. President Donald Trump, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 30, 2025.

Elon Musk this week urged his followers to cancel their Netflix subscriptions over a controversy surrounding an animated show and its creator.

Shares of the company are down 4% this week.

Analysts say the statements might not have as big an impact on the stock as Musk is intending.

Elon Musk this week urged his followers to cancel their Netflix subscriptions over a controversy surrounding an animated show and its creator.

Musk on Wednesday posted on his X platform saying, “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids.” The post was in response to an image accusing Netflix of carrying out a “transgender woke agenda.”

The controversy seems to stem from conservative backlash over an animated Netflix show, “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” which features a transgender character. The show was canceled in 2023 after two seasons.

In addition to several anti-trans posts, Musk also responded to a post criticizing alleged statements made by the show’s creator, Hamish Steele, that a prominent conservative X account said “mocked” the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Steele responded to Musk’s callout on rival social media platform Bluesky saying, “It’s probably going to be a very odd day.” Steele also shared a post by TV writer Jack Bernhardt that called “Dead End” a “brilliant show about kind, wonderful characters.”

Also this week, vocal conservative activist Robby Starbuck began posting about Netflix, echoing anti-trans sentiments and arguing the company has promoted an ideology that is “hateful to White Americans.” Starbuck, who has repeatedly targeted major corporations in recent months over diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, said in one of his X posts on Netflix, “No one should give this woke company another dime.”

Netflix did not respond to requests for comment from CNBC.

Netflix reported 301.63 million subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2024, the last time it reported the metric before shifting priority to revenue over user growth. The company has a roughly $490 billion market cap, and its stock is up more than 60% in the past year.

“Is that going to move the needle necessarily? … You’re going to see people sign up on the back of that to counter it,” CNBC contributor Guy Adami said Wednesday on “Fast Money.”

“I don’t think this is a reason to sell the stock,” he added.

Wedbush Securities’ Alicia Reese told CNBC that the comments came too late in the third quarter to make any meaningful impact on subscriber counts.

Still, she said she believes the backlash won’t make a major dent and that any impact will be offset by an increase in ad revenue.

“Their numbers should come out just fine,” Reese said. “I think that shares haven’t been hit too hard.”

Seymour Asset Management’s Tim Seymour said though a day of headlines may move the stock around, Netflix shares are ultimately too expensive to be significantly affected by internet backlash.

“We’ve had these moments in time where, whether it was an ad campaign that went wrong or whether it was some sense that a company was aligned in a particular political channel… I don’t think that that’s going to be the reason to sell Netflix here,” Seymour said Wednesday.

The calls for a boycott mirror those against Anheuser-Busch InBev in 2023 after it released an ad campaign with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. But the boycott of Bud Light, CNBC contributor Karen Finerman noted on Wednesday, yielded “far greater” destruction than any other recent examples.

“I feel like this will be very fleeting,” Finerman said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/elon-musk-is-telling-his-followers-to-cancel-netflix-subscriptions-here-s-what-s-happening

Source: Fast Company, Hunter Schwarz
Photo: Coutesy of Spotify

Spotify’s new ‘Mix’ mode lets listeners turn on auto-transitions between songs or make their own custom mixes to share with friends.

Impressing everyone when you’re handed the aux in the car to play DJ just got easier. Spotify now offers the option to listen to playlists with seamless transitions between songs, plus the user interface (UI) to mix them yourself if you want.

Spotify released the beta version of a new “Mix” mode for its Premium subscriber tier on Tuesday. The feature shows up as a “Mix” button above a track list that can be toggled on or off. Listeners can either opt in to auto-transitions between songs, or they can mix their own transitions instead with preset options like “Fade” or “Rise,” and settings for volume, equalization (EQ), and effects.

The feature is perfect for fitness instructors who want to program a playlist for a class or for anyone hoping to create a low-effort, high-impact soundtrack for a party.

Mixing for beginners

Spotify designed the Mix mode UI to make things simple for beginners. After tapping “Mix,” the app shows each song’s key and beats per minute to make track ordering simple, and the visualized waveform and beat data help when finding the best part of a track to drop in a transition.

Spotify advises newbies to choose songs with similar tempos and keys, consider the energy they’re trying to capture with a playlist, and start with genres that are transition-friendly, since mixing “works best with music produced for seamless transitions. Dance genres like house and techno tend to blend more smoothly.”

Spotify’s new feature comes two months after Apple Music announced its own “AutoMix” option for a seamlessly mixed listening experience. Spotify takes the idea of automatic mixing and makes it customizable and shareable, with the ability to swap and collaborate on playlists. There are also exclusive stickers and labels for custom playlist cover art that can only be used with mixed Spotify playlists.

“With nearly 9 billion playlists made on Spotify, we’ve seen the creativity of listeners from their playlist titles to cover art,” Spotify marketing lead Dayna Tran tells Fast Company in an email. “Now, we look forward to seeing them take their creativity to the next level by adding and customizing transitions between tracks. We hope to empower users to continue to shape their listening experience by expressing themselves through the music they love.”

The Premium strategy

Spotify reached its first full year of profitability in 2024. The company has more than 270 million paying subscribers and reported $4.75 billion in revenue for the second quarter of this year, up 10% year over year. That was led by Premium revenue, which rose 12% for the quarter.

Retaining and growing its paid subscriber base is key to the company’s future growth. Spotify announced a price hike for Premium subscribers in markets outside the U.S. earlier this month, and it’s pursuing a multipronged strategy to provide paid subscribers with content beyond just music by growing its video and audiobook offerings.

With Mix mode, the Swedish streaming giant shows it’s also finding new ways to offer Premium subscribers a one-of-a-kind music-listening experience that connects them with friends. Spotify’s Mix mode takes something that could have been just for personal listening and makes it social.

The early-rate deadline for Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, September 5, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hunter Schwarz is a Fast Company contributor who covers the intersection of design and advertising, branding, business, civics, fashion, fonts, packaging, politics, sports, and technology.. Hunter is the author of Yello, a newsletter about political persuasion.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91389122/spotify-mix-mode-playlist

Source: People, Dave Quinn
Photo: A rendering of Disneyland Abu Dhabi. (The Walt Disney Company)

The new location is the seventh Disney theme park resort around the world after the U.S., Japan, France and China

Disney is opening a theme park in Abu Dhabi, its first in the Middle East

The waterfront resort will open on Yas Island with immersive attractions, hotels and dining

An opening date has not yet been set

Mickey Mouse is packing his bags for a new destination!

On Wednesday, May 7, the Walt Disney Company announced it will be opening its first-ever theme park and resort in Abu Dhabi, bringing the House of Mouse’s signature magic to the United Arab Emirates.

The destination — dubbed Disneyland Abu Dhabi — marks Disney’s seventh global theme park resort and its first in the Middle East. It’ll be built as a waterfront resort on Yas Island, a hub for entertainment that already draws millions of visitors from across the Middle East, Africa, India, Europe and beyond.

Miral, Abu Dhabi’s leading creator of immersive destinations and experiences, will oversee development and operations of the resort, while Disney’s famed Imagineers will lead creative design and offer operational guidance to ensure the park captures the immersive storytelling and world-class experiences the brand is known for.

“This is a thrilling moment for our company,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger in a statement obtained by PEOPLE, promising the park “will rise from this land in spectacular fashion, blending contemporary architecture with cutting-edge technology to offer guests deeply immersive entertainment experiences in unique and modern ways.”

“Disneyland Abu Dhabi will be authentically Disney and distinctly Emirati — an oasis of extraordinary Disney entertainment at this crossroads of the world that will bring to life our timeless characters and stories in many new ways and will become a source of joy and inspiration for the people of this vast region to enjoy for generations to come,” Iger said.

An opening date has not been set yet, Iger noted in an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Wednesday. “We’re not pinning down a date yet,” he said. “It typically takes us between 18 months and two years to design and fully develop and approximately five years to build, but we’re not making any commitments right now.”

The UAE’s strategic location and status as a major air travel hub were also key factors in the expansion. With over 120 million travelers passing through Abu Dhabi and Dubai each year, and one-third of the world’s population within a four-hour flight, the park is poised to become a major draw for families worldwide.

“Abu Dhabi is a place where heritage meets innovation, where we preserve our past while designing the future,” said His Excellency Mohamed Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Miral. “What we are creating with Disney in Abu Dhabi is a whole new world of imagination — an experience that will inspire generations across the region and the world, creating magical moments and memories that families will treasure forever.”

“This groundbreaking resort destination represents a new frontier in theme park development,” added Josh D’Amaro, chairman of Disney Experiences. “The location of our park is incredibly unique—anchored by a beautiful waterfront—which will allow us to tell our stories in completely new ways.”

Disneyland Abu Dhabi will feature themed accommodations, one-of-a-kind dining and shopping experiences, and all-new attractions that blend Disney’s heritage with Abu Dhabi’s architectural beauty and cultural identity. It’s a historic addition to Yas Island’s growing slate of world-class entertainment offerings — and a milestone moment for both Disney and the region.

“Together, we are creating a place of boundless innovation,” said Miral’s Group CEO Mohamed Abdalla Al Zaabi. “This marks a historic milestone in our journey to further advance the island’s position as a global destination for exceptional entertainment and leisure.”

Disney’s first park opened in 1955 in Anaheim, California, followed by Walt Disney World in Florida in 1971. Tokyo Disneyland opened in 1983, Disneyland Paris in 1992, Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005 and Shanghai Disney Resort in 2016.

https://people.com/disney-announces-disneyland-abu-dhabi-a-whole-new-world-of-imagination

Source: Fast Company, Clint Rainey
Photo: Chick-fil-A

What is Chick-fil-A Play? Inside the food chain’s surprisingly logical next move.

Since late last year, rumors have swirled that Chick-fil-A is launching its own streaming platform—scuttlebut that the chicken sandwich chain is eager to dismiss.

After getting a first look earlier this month at what the company actually has planned, Fast Company can report what the brand is launching is indeed less than a full streaming platform, but potentially something significantly more.

In late August, Deadline reported that Chick-fil-A was “moving aggressively into the entertainment space,” developing a slate of original content for an alleged proprietary streaming platform. “The fast-food firm has been working with a number of major production companies, including some of the studios, to create family-friendly shows,” it reported, citing sources close to the deals. The programming was said to span animated shows, reality shows, and game shows, with budgets running to $400,000 per half-hour episode, and the whole platform set to debut later this year.

This had followed a job posting the previous November where Chick-fil-A first revealed its hand. The company sought a producer to help create “original programming intended for Chick-fil-A’s soon-to-be launched PLAY entertainment app,” adding: “Shifts in the advertising industry, in concert with our customers’ trust and affinity for the Chick-fil-A brand, all open up an opportunity for Chick-fil-A to extend our role in customers’ lives.”

After Deadline surfaced some actual details, the media pounced. Outlets often responded with a mix of shock and mild condescension: “Um, Chick-fil-A Is Starting a Streaming Service?” asked Vanity Fair, New York went with “Normal Headline: Chick-fil-A to Launch Streaming Service,” while The Nation got theatrical (“Move Over Hollywood, Here Comes Chick-fil-A”), and Eater gave programming suggestions, such as a show called Eat Mor Chikin where the brand’s signature cow characters grow so erratically mischievous that “anti-red meat messaging and guerrilla activism tactics become too didactic for viewers.”

So what is Chick-fil-A releasing? The answer is an app, called Chick-fil-A Play, which will come out on November 18. It does indeed offer scripted programming that the brand’s fans won’t find anywhere else, along with family-focused games, activities, and entertainment options that reflect aspects of the brand that Chick-fil-A has been busily, if quietly, working to develop for years.

The early look we got made clear that if the Play app realizes its full potential, it could be a pipeline not only for a rich supply of original content (like Netflix and HBO), but also original audio series (like Gimlet Media and Wondery), ebooks (like Amazon Kindle), interactive games (like Nintendo), and cooking videos (like Bon Appétit’s Instagram and all those other viral food Reels).

So whatever you decide to call it—when asked, Chick-fil-A told me just to say an app offering “family-friendly games, activities, and entertainment”—the platform is laying the groundwork for a family-focused entertainment empire that could leave existing players like greeting cardmaker-turned-cable TV network Hallmark in the dust, and maybe even compete in scope, if not reach, with bigger players like Apple or Disney. After all, before being recognized this summer with a record 72 Emmy nominations for shows like The Morning Show and Palm Royale, Apple was simply a computer company.

What’s on Chick-fil-A Play

In some exciting news, the cows are definitely back. Daisy, Sarge, and Carrots welcome users, then pop up elsewhere across the Play universe, such as in Go Go Cow—which Dustin Britt, Chick-fil-A’s executive director of brand strategy, entertainment, and media, explained to me is the digital racing game the company released on its website last summer, but now with “some enhancements.” The cows appear in their own original shorts too, the company adds. (It’s a safe guess that they’ll be reprising their roles as anti-beef crusaders trying to sabotage the Circus Burger chain’s expansion plans, a theme Chick-fil-A has been developing in recent shorts.)

The app will also feature family trivia and singing games, craft activities, cooking videos called “Recipe Remixes” that jazz up a popular Chick-fil-A menu item, a joke generator that Britt warns is programmed with dad jokes, and a library that will initially carry 20 e-book titles, like Kate Messner’s Over and Under the Snow and Kimberlee Gard’s The Day Punctuation Came to Town, with some interactive elements added in.

But the section known as “Watch” is what’s primed to draw the most interest. This is where initial users will find seven original animated shorts, though more are planned. Two involve the cows. The rest are episodes of Chick-fil-A’s Evergreen Hills franchise, which the company has spent the past five years refining, maybe for this exact moment.

Loosely, it’s about a girl named Sam who discovers a magic passageway in her family’s grandfather clock where she encounters “the Timekeeper,” a wise figure who teaches her the power of small acts of kindness. The first four episodes were bite-size storylets of only two minutes, doled out one per year, pegged to the holidays. However, last year Sam discovered the world inside the grandfather clock is actually far more elaborate than she believed; that fifth episode, of 10 minutes, has pulled in 141 million views on YouTube. Play app users will get to watch those five episodes, plus the first full season, along with five more episodes (now 22 minutes long), with a new one dropping each week through the holiday season.

There’s also audio: A brand-new series called Hidden Island follows a family that got shipwrecked during a catastrophic holiday ocean misadventure. (Chick-fil-A loves good holiday-themed drama.) More audio shows are set to debut in 2025, one being Ice Lions, based on the true story of Kenya’s only hockey team.

All of this original content—plus for that matter, anything else on the app—stays true to Chick-fil-A’s two-pronged business philosophy that all products must be memorable, and their ingredients must include family values. That’s been the corporate ethos since S. Truett Cathy founded Chick-fil-A almost 80 years ago, though lately the company has been working to make its reach much more inclusive. The app seems to be an obvious next move in this strategy.

In fact, according to Khalilah Cooper, vice president of brand strategy, advertising, and media who helped walk us through the app, the new content push represents a direction the company was moving in already. Chick-fil-A’s sales—$19 billion in 2022 and $21.6 billion in 2023—are basically the envy of the industry, but executives are aware of the fact that customers also spend less and less time inside their restaurants’ four walls. In light of that, Cooper says the company simply chose to double down and “create something uniquely Chick-fil-A.”

Former chief marketing executive Steve Robinson told Fast Company in an interview last year that Chick-fil-A was founded on the idea that customer service comes first, and initially that took the form of simple acts inside the restaurants—roaming the dining room with a pepper grinder for salads, escorting guests to their cars by umbrella when it’s rainy, building over-the-top playgrounds. But in an era when guests “don’t necessarily even come inside on every occasion,” as Cooper notes, hospitality needs to take other forms. In Chick-fil-A’s case, that means making guests feel safe and happy wherever they might end up enjoying their chicken sandwich. And lately, she says, the company believes it’s becoming “harder and harder” to find “safe and trusted” family entertainment that is top-rate.

“Content and games sit very adjacent to mealtime,” adds Britt. “If you want to watch or play something, you may be doing it during a meal. Sometimes you’re doing it on the way to the meal. Sometimes you’re doing it while you’re making a meal.” He gave an example of a family pulling into a Chick-fil-A drive-through with hangry kids; the parents crank the app’s dance game, which warns nonparticipants they’ll have to pay a waffle-fry tax. And of a tired working mom grabbing chicken sandwiches on her drive home on Friday, then assembling the kids on a blanket in the living room picnic-style to stream the cows or Evergreen Hills on the big TV.

All brands are content creators now

Anyone who chuckled at the notion that Chick-fil-A was creating its own content hasn’t been paying much attention over these past few years. Mattel made a Barbie movie that earned $2 billion. Nike has a sports film deal with Apple TV+. Luxury giant LVMH forged a content partnership with the same production house that Nike chose (Superconnector Studios), and as Fast Company’s Jeff Beer reported earlier this year, the two are hoping to tell long-form brand stories about, say, Tiffany & Co. making the Stanley Cup and pens that were used to sign international peace treaties. Mall accessory brand Claire’s is developing kids programming with Sony Pictures. Yeti made a fantastic short film. REI is in the game now too, to “shift perceptions of the outdoor experience,” as is New York’s largest hospital system, Northwell Health.

In the meantime, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros., and others are embracing brand-sponsored TV that resembles early soap opera days—like an hour of commercial-free Olympics coverage, or Saturday Night Live skits where brands like Volkswagen and L’Oreal agree to become the butt of jokes.

Oscar-winning producer Michael Sugar has for some time been arguing that we are living in an era when any brand can, and probably should, build their own entertainment empire. His studio, Sugar23, now offers brands a tool kit, and it announced a new marketplace in April that seeks to connect advertisers directly with talent, to level the playing field between them and legacy Hollywood production companies. Brands representing $120 billion worth of ad dollars have reportedly signed up.

Sugar23 has confirmed that Starbucks is a client. This past June, the two unveiled Starbucks Studios, an endeavor they say will “produce original entertainment and tell stories that deepen connections and spark conversations.”

Sugar23 is also working with Chick-fil-A. The company, alongside Glassman Media—maker of reality series and primetime TV game shows such as NBC’s The Wall—are in the middle of producing a 10-episode game show for Chick-fil-A. Sugar23 declined to comment for this story, and for now, Chick-fil-A still isn’t confirming that deal. “We can’t share any specifics at this time,” a company spokesperson tells us, leaving things coyly at: “There are many production companies we are in discussions with over potential future content.”

Chick-fil-A’s continuing odyssey

Chick-fil-A is new to producing original content with such high production values, but it has been creating original entertainment that competes with Hollywood for decades

Throughout the ’90s, the heyday for kids’ meal toys, the fast food industry leveraged Hollywood hard. McDonald’s cranked out a seemingly indefatigable stream of Disney Happy Meal toys: plastic Ariels, Genies, Quasimodos, Buzz Lightyears, Timons and Pumbaas, and literally a hundred and one different 101 Dalmatians puppies. Pizza Hut armed small children with throwable plastic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pizzas. Burger King caused stampedes by releasing a comically large set of 57 collectible Poké Balls for the Pokémon movie. Wendy’s introduced at least four different sets of Land Before Time dinosaurs. Subway countered with Jurassic Park trading cards.

But Chick-fil-A skipped the transactional blockbuster promotion deals. Its kids’ meals prizes were what you could call “evergreens”: toys with an educational and often morally edifying purpose, such as space decals developed exclusively with NASA in the ’80s, VeggieTales CDs in the 2010s, and, most importantly here, limited-edition cassettes for an audio series called Adventures in Odyssey.

Set in a fictional Middle America town, Adventures in Odyssey centered around a bespectacled, white-haired ice cream proprietor, Whit, who’d impart moral lessons and practical wisdom to the unruly local kids. Produced by Focus on the Family when the conservative Christian group’s cultural influence was at its zenith, the series commanded a cast rivaling what you could find on the major networks’ Saturday morning cartoons. Voice artists, in no particular order, included actors who portrayed Goofy and Owl from Winnie the Pooh, Wilbur on Mister Ed, Elmer Fudd in Looney Tunes, Milhouse from The Simpsons, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Michelangelo, the America’s Funniest Videos announcer, and Scrooge McDuck.

These bona fides surely pleased Chick-fil-A’s owners, who were entertainment lovers. Founder S. Truett Cathy was infatuated enough with 1992’s Batman Returns to buy the Batmobile that Michael Keaton drove. His son Dan Cathy entered the moviemaking business two decades later by helping erect the Atlanta-based Trilith Studios in his old airplane hangar. At 700 acres and 32 sound stages and counting, Trilith has grown into the largest studio outside of Hollywood, and in fact now rivals those within it. It’s where almost every Marvel movie since 2014 has been shot—including the latest Avengers, Spider-Man, Ant-Man, and Blank Panther films. Other recent “tentpole” movies filmed there include Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey’s remake of The Color Purple, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, and, yes, Barbie.

Chick-fil-A reps are quick to point out that Dan Cathy’s film work with Trilith has zero overlap with the chicken sandwiches being made at its 3,000 restaurants; they are separate companies. But there’s an undeniable through-line: the family’s formidable skills at using storytelling to craft successful brands.

Consider, for example, that Chick-fil-A essentially already operates a theme park of sorts. The company’s Atlanta headquarters sells 90-minute “backstage tours,” some that sell out months in advance, in which fans meet three generations of Cathys (Truett, Dan, and Dan’s son and current CEO Andrew) in a biographical film, gawk at Truett’s Batmobile and other cars he collected, and step into his old office furnished exactly how he’s said to have kept it, down to the trinkets on his big wood desk. It’s billed as a chance to get up close to the history, culture, and values of the brand, and gives off Disney vibes.

Chick-fil-A has also spawned a side business, Pennycake, specializing in offscreen entertainment. Launching right before the 2023 holidays, the company, citing a survey that found American families get on average 37 minutes of quality time together each workweek, set out to develop puzzles and various games (memory keepers, conversation starters, travel games). There are already more than 15, and almost immediately they snagged a wide array of national parenting awards that in the past have been given to Lego, Disney, and Hasbro.

Chick-fil-A Play’s hidden advantage

The Chick-fil-A Play app is functioning as an R&D lab for the brand’s burgeoning entertainment arm—a controlled environment that allows Chick-fil-A to test out new content and gauge user reaction and engagement.

That’s effectively how the company developed Evergreen Hills. The bespectacled, white-haired “Timekeeper” character is a throwback to Whit in the brand’s first big success, Adventures in Odyssey, but whereas the action in the earlier series sometimes occurred in Sunday school class, and Whit’s ice cream store was located symbolically atop an old church, the new show contains all kinds of fantasy tropes that could hook a Comic Con-goer, including a Game of Thrones-style intro sequence where molten metal flows through channels, set to a dramatic score.

These flairs are the work of Aaron Johnson, the creative director of a discreet division within the company that’s been dubbed “Brand Entertainment.” (Before Chick-fil-A, Johnson spent time cowriting the Ender’s Game comic books for Marvel as well as several sci-fi film screenplays with Orson Scott Card, the Hugo and Nebula winner and occasional conservative political commentator.)

The series “was supposed to last one year, that was as far out as we saw,” Britt said. But now they’re “in a rhythm,” he added. “The narrative framework is there for us to have lots of options.”

Maybe that will mean heading to a studio to produce a live-action Evergreen Hills movie. Maybe it will be a spin-off series. The company’s morals-focused messaging over the past several decades has helped it cement a loyal and powerful faith-based audience—representing over a trillion dollars in annual purchasing power—but could be an obstacle in scaling it further.

After all, storytelling was an obsession of Howard Schultz’s while he was Starbucks’s CEO. He even formed an in-house media venture that produced original docuseries, like Upstanders, that, much like Schultz’s memoirs, implored readers to fix America’s social ills by finding ways to unite and essentially love the country more. That approach never energized the target audience.

Similar activist bents by brands have also proven unpopular. In 2013, Chipotle released a dystopian animated short called The Scarecrow that savaged industrialized food. It attracted some raves and won an award at Cannes, but its ham-fisted back-patting and moralizing—set to “Pure Imagination,” the Gene Wilder Willy Wonka song that gives many people the heebie-jeebies—turned off enough viewers that the whole film got ranked one of 2013’s worst ads and spawned a Funny or Die parody. Consumers will fight over a kids’ Hollywood tie-in toy made in China, but the truth is few are interested in being served a social agenda with their fast food.

But maybe the moralizing will become subtle enough that it becomes indistinguishable from what you’d see in typical Disney family fare. One thing’s certain: Chick-fil-A has built a thriving entertainment ecosystem, one that’s about to meet a much larger swath of parents and kids on road trips, errands, and game nights. Critics will be cynical about what comes next, but the market potential is impossible to ignore.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Clint Rainey is a Fast Company contributor based in New York who reports on business, often food brands. He has covered the anti-ESG movement, rumors of a Big Meat psyop against plant-based proteins, Chick-fil-A’s quest to walk the narrow path to growth, as well as Starbucks’s pivot from a progressive brand—into one that’s far more Chinese.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91210395/chick-fil-a-play-app-streaming-entertainment-evergreen-hills-trilith-cathy

Source: ModernRetail, Mitchell Parton

While Amazon has been offering free movies and shows to Prime members since 2011, more retailers and delivery platforms have added streaming to boost their subscription services over the last few years.

Retailers are now looking beyond the standard perks of free delivery, savings on gas and restaurant discounts as they look for new ways to retain and attract people to their membership programs. Kroger announced this month that it would add a choice of Disney streaming options — Disney+, Hulu or ESPN+ — for Kroger Boost members paying $99 or $59 annually. The program also offers benefits like free next-day delivery from Kroger stores and added fuel points. “Collaborating with Disney takes Boost member savings and benefits to the next-level, making our industry-leading program even more valuable and convenient for our members,” Stuart Aitken, Kroger’s senior vice president and chief merchant and marketing officer, said in a statement.

In 2022, Walmart announced it would add a Paramount+ Essential subscription to its Walmart+ membership program. This past November, Instacart and Peacock announced a similar partnership to offer Peacock Premium to Instacart+ members in the U.S. The practice is similar to how cell phone carriers offer streaming deals: Verizon announced earlier this year it would offer six months of the Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ bundle (with no ads on Disney+ but ads on Hulu and ESPN+) to some mobile customers. Some T-Mobile unlimited plans also come with ad-supported Netflix subscriptions.

Many of the streaming services bundled in with retail memberships are ad-supported rather than ad-free. So while the stated reason behind the partnerships is to add more value to retailers’ growing membership programs, analysts and consultants say it’s also an incentive for streaming platforms as they help them grow their ad-supported plans. It gives the streaming companies more eyeballs to report to potential advertisers, in addition to potentially upping retention for the retailer programs.

“The more people you have in your platform, the better, and there’s a cost and value to that,” said Eunice Shin, CEO and founder of consulting firm Elume Group, whose clients include both retailers and streaming companies. “They’re all trying to push their ad model, and their ability to sell higher premiums is based on eyeballs.” She added that the streaming platforms care about increasing the subscriber count of their ad-supported plans, whether those subscribers are paying or getting it for free through another service.

Brad Jashinsky, a retail analyst for Gartner, said for retailers, streaming and other added perks like food and gas discounts are there to add more value on an ongoing basis so that when the consumer thinks about canceling, there is more for them to lose.

The primary reason someone would sign up for Kroger Boost or Walmart+ is likely not for streaming; the core of the services is free delivery, but access to entertainment is something retailers find their customers are also interested in. Tom Duncan, vp of marketing at Kroger, told Bloomberg that Disney and Kroger started talking earlier this year after many Kroger customers said they would want streaming as part of the membership program. Walmart has similarly used customer insights to inform its decisions on what to add to Walmart+.

Gartner research shows how attached customers are to streaming services; a cost-of-living and price sentiment survey from the firm last year found streaming services were one of the purchase categories customers would part with last when making budget cuts. Meanwhile, retailers are in an arms race to add as many benefits as possible to ensure people stay subscribed to their membership programs. More of them now offer free and fast shipping, and even Amazon has recently produced more marketing, highlighting all the various perks people get through Prime to remain competitive.

“When a consumer is thinking about ending their subscription to a Walmart+, to Kroger Boost, Amazon Prime, it’s going to give them pause because they will lose a number of benefits, not just the core benefit of the free shipping,” Jashinsky said.

Retailers and delivery services are also trying to grow their retail media networks to place advertising in their online marketplaces. Thus, they care about growing their membership count and building out their own diversified flywheels to compete with the large amount of advertising spend that Amazon takes in.

“I think the Amazon model is what everyone is vying for in their own special way,” Shin said. “But really, it’s that full-fledged Amazon flywheel that they’re looking to be able to serve. And since they don’t have their own entertainment assets, that’s where they’re finding leverage with the streamers.”

https://www.modernretail.co/technology/why-retailers-like-kroger-walmart-are-adding-streaming-services-to-their-membership-programs

Source: Time, Angela Haupt
Photo: Photo-illustration by TIME

The premiere of the first-ever season of The Golden Bachelorette has been on my calendar for months. I can’t wait to watch 24 men who have aged exceedingly well climb out of their limos and greet the star, Joan Vassos, on Sept. 18 at the Bachelor Mansion. I’ll pay special attention to a few of them—because I already know exactly which guys are making it to hometowns and fantasy suites, and which one will walk away with the final rose.

No, I’m not clairvoyant—don’t ask me how long Vassos and her leading man will last in the real world—and no, I don’t have an in with the network. I just happen to love spoilers. If I don’t know exactly how a TV show or movie I’m watching ends when I’m at the beginning, I won’t watch. I flip to the last few pages of books for the same reason. The uncertainty—and possibility that the ending will crush me into smithereens—gives me a boatload of angst that I definitely don’t need.

I’m far from alone: Just ask the guy who’s made a career out of spoiling The Bachelor franchise. “I’m not getting people to turn off the show, or not to watch,” says Steve Carbone, a Dallas-based blogger better known by his internet moniker, Reality Steve. “It’s just watching differently.” Carbone started blogging about The Bachelor in 2003, and in 2009, he received his first spoiler from a tipster—correctly revealing a couple weeks in advance that Jason Mesnick would dump his chosen winner, Melissa Rycroft, in favor of his runner-up and now-wife, Molly. It was Carbone’s big break: After he posted the spoiler, his following and credibility skyrocketed. “Then every season, people just kept coming to me with info.” He started dropping tidbits about Vassos’ season of The Golden Bachelorette during filming in July, and revealed her final four on Aug. 27, three weeks before the show was slated to air.

Carbone now has hundreds of thousands of spoiler-hungry followers on Instagram and X, as well as a popular podcast, and his spoilers are the subject of much discussion in niche corners of the internet, like the daily “spoiler” thread in The Bachelor subreddit. While he doesn’t personally like his entertainment spoiled, he gets why other people do. “The biggest thing I’ve gotten from people is that they tell me they watch for a particular edit”—like who’s being portrayed as a villain or set up to be the heartbroken runner-up—“because they know when this person is leaving, or when this person is getting a one-on-one date,” he says. “It’s like a CliffsNotes guide to watching.”

Spoilers don’t ruin stories

When Jonathan Leavitt started researching spoilers, he wanted to prove that suspense is good—that waiting with bated breath to find out what happens enhances the reading or watching experience. Instead, according to study results published in Psychological Science, it turned out that people enjoy a story more when they know how it ends. (Hello, validation!) “It was definitely surprising,” says Leavitt, who now works as a data scientist.

Why all the spoiler love? Leavitt suspects it has to do with the fact that stories are often complex and intentionally misleading—prompting tension and confusion. “When you know the outcome, you get to feel a lot smarter and make better inferences,” he says. “And, I believe, you ultimately understand the story better in the end.”

Take a mystery book, for example. Many of the clues sprinkled throughout the novel will be misdirects—but you already know who the killer is, because you flipped to the last page. “You’re seeing this one character act very suspicious, so it’s like, ‘People are going to think this person did it, but I know they didn’t,’” Leavitt says. “And then you might actually get a better idea of why they’re acting that way. You organize the elements of a story better in your mind, and you’re less fooled. There are fewer pathways to go down.”

People often tell Leavitt they hate spoilers; maybe their favorite movie is The Sixth Sense, and they say that if they had known what happened, it would have ruined the whole thing. He likes to ask how many times they’ve watched it—and can’t help but smile when they say four or five times. It’s more evidence, he believes, that knowing what happens doesn’t derail enjoyment.

During the many times Leavitt has rewatched The Lord of the Rings, for example, he’s found that he has the same fulfilling viewing experience he did the first time he watched. Once you’re transported into a different world and engaged in the production, that sense of immersion overrides what you already know about it. “We went in thinking spoilers are the antithesis of suspense,” he says, “but they are absolutely not.”

A sense of comfort and control

Alison McKleroy, a therapist in Oakland, Calif., sees a lot of spoiler lovers in her practice—and she, too, is one of them. “Earlier in my life I wanted a little more surprise and adventure, and now I love peace and relaxation,” she says. “I’ve done so much work to have a more peaceful nervous system with yoga and mindfulness. It just feels like I don’t need to undo that.”

People who prefer spoilers typically value predictability, ease, comfort, clarity, and a sense of control, McKleroy says. The world is rife with uncertainty—she calls it “free anxiety”—so why subject yourself to more? For many people, not knowing what happens leads to anticipatory stress, or an increased stress response triggered by an unpredictable plot. “When you’re anticipating something bad happening—like for me, when the music starts to turn—your heart starts pumping, and you’re not enjoying yourself anymore,” she says. My anxiety, which is already high at baseline, spikes so much when I’m reading a thriller, or even watching a couple I’m rooting for break-up in a rom-com, that I simply can’t enjoy myself until I’m certain things will end in a satisfying way.

That resonates with Christina Scott, a social psychology professor at Whittier College in California and devoted spoiler lover. Her 10-year-old twins have even started asking for spoilers for the books they’re reading—maybe it’s genetic to a degree, she speculates. Either way, she likens a preference for spoilers to what people enjoy at amusement parks. “Some people want to go on roller coasters that flip them upside down,” she says. “I just want to go on the cute little merry-go-round. You need to do whatever’s going to help you enjoy the ride.”

A desire to know what happens, from start to finish, might reflect an unmet need for certainty in our own lives, Scott theorizes. “There’s enough ambiguity and stress—enough cliffhangers in real-life existence—that you want to sit down and enjoy a movie that should be relaxing,” she says. “I think in some ways we also want that reassurance in our life, but it’s not possible.” She’s told her kids that she wishes she could see what they’ll become a couple decades down the line—and then she could easily weather the ups and downs of the impending teenage years. That same outlook translates to how she feels about what she watches and reads.

Plus, while many people can keep some distance from the book or movie they’re consuming, spoiler lovers tend to be deeply empathetic. We put ourselves in the characters’ shoes and feel what they feel, at times perhaps because what they’re going through triggers a memory from our own life. “To invest in a character who’s now going to be blown to pieces—that’s the ultimate worst,” Scott says. “Knowing they’ll be OK allows you to feel safe in rooting for them and empathizing with them, because you know it will be worth the investment.”

Spoiler alert: No, she’s not going to change her ways

Daniel Green, director of the master of entertainment industry management program at Carnegie Mellon University, does not seek out spoilers. He’s worked in TV production on shows like The Sopranos and Party of Five, so he has a traditional view of how media is meant to be consumed. “I like to go on the journey in my head, because all the writers took so much time to come up with it,” he says. “Really good stories are built on structure, and it goes 1-2-3. It doesn’t necessarily go 1-2-5-4.”

It’s a convincing argument, and I admitted to Green that I can recall a couple times when I skipped to the end of a book—like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl—only to become wildly disappointed that the big reveal was ruined. On the other hand: There have been countless more times when I let out a sign of relief after reading the last chapter, and then enjoyed it in its entirety, from start to finish. On other occasions, I’ve discovered a movie or book ending that rattled me to my core—looking at you, One Day—and crossed it off my list before ever starting, relieved I didn’t waste even more time on it.

Plus, I keep returning to a point made by McKleroy, the therapist in California. When we’re in fight-or-flight mode, it’s hard to focus because our brain is working overtime to help ward off a threat. “If we’re running from a tiger in nature, we’re not going, ‘Oh, look at that beautiful butterfly going by,’ or, “Gosh, the sun is so pretty,’” she says. “From a nervous system perspective, people who engage in spoilers are actually getting to savor the beauty as it unfolds—and they have space to treasure the less obvious elements of the story.” It might not be exactly what a writer intended, but spoilers grant some of us the ability to enjoy and appreciate their work to the fullest possible extent.

There’s nothing wrong with needing to know what happens, Scott says, and no one should make you feel bad or embarrassed about it. If you’re watching a movie with someone, and they don’t get why you’re reading an annotated recap first, try explaining where you’re coming from. Scott advises wording it like this: “I understand this doesn’t work for you, but just like you want plain popcorn and I want mine buttered, this is what will help me enjoy the movie the most.” Sometimes, she says, your viewing partner might feel like you have an unfair “leg up” on them, because you know what happens and they don’t. “They might think they’ll look foolish based on their reaction [to certain parts], and feel like you have extra armor,” she says, which is why it’s helpful to shine light on your perspective—and to assure them you won’t spoil anything for them.

Of course, it’s easiest when you don’t have to offer any explanation. Scott and I joked that we ought to start a spoiler lovers support group, a place for people like us to come together, no judgment, and bond over the joy of knowing what to expect. We’d all meet at the movie theater—and ease into the film with the comforting knowledge of what comes last.

https://time.com/7019752/psychology-of-book-movie-spoilers

Source: The Hustle, Sara Friedman
Photo: The Hustle

In your favorite Netflix original show or movie, the protagonist likely spends most of their time on screen bathed in the perfect lighting.

That movie magic adds a lot of drama and, unfortunately, a hefty dose of greenhouse gas emissions — the entertainment industry produces ~700k tons of CO2 equivalent a year.

But Netflix is working on changing that by implementing new practices to curb emissions on its sets, per Bloomberg:

“Virgin River” uses two 18k-watt, battery-powered lights on set instead of traditional diesel generators and shuttles talent to and from filming locations in Teslas.

“Bridgerton” experimented with hydrogen-powered trailers and trucks, and “Stranger Things” is testing solar-powered trailers.

In Netflix’s Albuquerque studio, it’s invested in EV fast chargers, battery and solar storage systems, and geothermal water loops.

All those changes are part of Netflix’s goal to cut emissions in half by 2030.

But progress has been slow — the company’s 2021 and 2022 emissions increased compared to 2019, with the company growing faster than its carbon-cutting can keep up.

Green Screen

Netflix, Walt Disney Co. and nonprofit RMI formed the Clean Mobile Power Initiative — which launched with 10 startups — to supply clean energy businesses with $100k convertible notes, investor intros, and access to sets to test their tech.

Plus, most of Hollywood is jumping on board, per The Hollywood Reporter:

Warner Bros. Discovery’s Leavesden, England, facility switched to LED lighting and is testing out solar-powered carts and vehicles.

NBCUniversal’s GreenerLight program brings sustainability to all stages of production. The company aims to be carbon neutral by 2035.

While change is happening, there are challenges.

Vancouver, BC, has as many as 50 productions filming at a given time, but only seven production-ready batteries, per Bloomberg. And building a solar-powered trailer costs 50%+ more than an equivalent diesel trailer.

Plus, actors need to fly and drive to get to filming locations, adding to emissions.

Unless, of course, the locations come to them, like with Amazon MGM Studios’ virtual Stage 15.

https://thehustle.co/news/lights-camera-climate-change-hollywood-cleans-up-its-act