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The Mandalorian

  • Carl Weathers has died

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    2 min read

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    I’m a little at a loss for words.

    Carl Weathers has played so many wonderful roles over his tenure as an actor. I always thought he had such a lovely voice and brought us so much delight on the screen. It wasn’t until recently I learned he was an Oakland Raider in the NFL briefly!

    Weathers has had some iconic roles in the past, and frankly it’s a tragedy he doesn’t have a Hollywood Star. Maybe that could change posthumously. The man had major roles in Toy Story, Rocky, and Predator. Those 3 titles alone, were some heavy-hitters.

    Take a few moments to take in Weather’s considerate thoughts about how he perceived the character Greef Karga. You can tell that he was very jazzed to be him. Weathers is a studied man of many talents — chief among them is theater and he’s a director himself too. I just love hearing him carefully choose his words here. You can really tell he’s excited to have such an amazing opportunity to essentially take part in a modern western, and carve out Karga as a benevolent complex character on-screen.

    Here’s a few other noteworthy (and hilarious) characters he’s portrayed.

    High Magistrate Greef Karga

    (a starving) Carl Weathers as himself in Arrested Development

    Who could forget Chubbs Peterson?

    Rest easy Carl ❤️

  • Will Netflix survive the streaming wars?

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    2 min read

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    The short answer: it’s unclear.

    What is clear, is that the streaming wars are becoming increasingly expensive. Everyone is vying for the customer’s prime-time attention. Just to watch the latest new original series X on streaming service Y is a mind-bending calculation. Just between those two variables alone, and conservative estimates on new original content: roughly 10 services with original content, 5 new series per year at 10 episodes each, comes to about 250 episodes to stream. That’s roughly 250 hours worth of content to stream pear year. America’s greatest export is after all, entertainment.

    That’s a lot to keep up with, and that doesn’t even include cable studio production releases that come from favorites such as FX or SYFY.

    Professor Scott Galloway makes a great point that SVODs that have an economic flywheel (e.g. companies that attract customers via Prime or iPhone sales, and enjoy the benefits of staying within those ecosystems such as Prime Video or Apple TV+ respectively) are immune to economic downturns. A couple of obvious giants that fit that mould are Amazon and Apple:

    Chart: No Mercy / No Malice, Professor Scott Galloway

    Following that rubric, Disney+ doesn’t enjoy the flywheel designations and Netflix is experiencing an especially painful truth — producing original content is very expensive:

    I’m not even sure Netflix gets out alive. Netflix is now the US economy, vulnerable to a spike in interest rates as it takes on increasing amounts of debt to fund staggering investments in original content. The original gangster can’t rely on gross margin dollars from Mandalorian action figures, handsets, or paper towels (no flywheel). The key question is can Netflix’s first-mover advantage/skill be replicated in other markets.

    If Netflix isn’t careful, when the next recession or economic downturn hits, (reminder: the American deficit is nearing $1 Trillion) it’s entirely possible that Netflix won’t survive.

  • “Raspbaby Yoda” Raspberry Pie

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    1 min read

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    I hope you’ve been following The Mandalorian on Disney+. Wether you have (or have not) seen the show yet, matters not. All you need to know is, Baby Yoda, (or as he is officially known, The Child) is pretty much the cutest thing ever to grace the Star Wars universe.

    What happens when you combine stellar baking artistry and a love for the cutest alien sidekick ever? You get a Raspbaby Yoda. Get it?

    You can follow this incredible pie artist here on Instagram (via u/ThePieous on Reddit).

  • Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian Will Explore the Origins of the First Order

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    2 min read

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    SyFy.com reports:

    “What could happen in the 30 years between celebrating the defeat of the Empire and then the First Order?” said Favreau who also serves as writer and executive producer on the project. “You come in on Episode VII, [the First Order are] not just starting out. They’re pretty far along … “So somehow, things weren’t necessarily managed as well as they could have been if [the galaxy] ended up in hot water again like that.”

    “This doesn’t turn into a good guy universe because you blew up two Death Stars,” added Dave Filoni, a producer and director on The Mandalorian. “You get that the Rebels won and they’re trying to establish a Republic, but there’s no way that could have set in for everybody all at once. You have in a Western where you’re out on the frontier and there might be Washington and they might have some marshals, but sometimes good luck finding one.”

    Sign me the hell up. One of the missing pieces from the new Star Wars films was all the politics and progeny of strife in this new realm.

    We have the First Order, which acts a stand-in for The Empire. I get it. These films require an opposing armada of protagonists to move and grow the plot. It works, but how did the First Order happen in the first place? Obviously there’s dismay and some chaos that descends unto the galaxy in the wake of the fall of The Empire 30 years prior. But the specifics aren’t really known on the big screen. The Mandalorian occupying that timeframe is fertile storytelling ground in my opinion. Super exciting.

    I know where I will be on November 12. I’ll be glued to my couch counting down the hours for Disney+ to launch.