What’s Brian David Gilbert’s favorite nail polish? How tall is he? And most importantly, how does he like his eggs? BDG answers those and more in this special Q&A.The Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a popular cinema chain headquartered in Austin, Texas, has filed for Chapter 11. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the chain, which also has locations in states including New York, Virginia, and California, has a deal in place to sell its assets to Altamont Capital and Fortress Investment Group–which will allow Alamo to restructure its business and try to weather the storm of the coronavirus’s impact on its business.
“The transaction will provide the company with much-needed incremental financing to stabilize the business during the pandemic, which has had an unprecedented and outsized impact upon the movie theater and dining industries,” a statement from the company said (via the Austin American-Statesman). “More importantly, it will position Alamo Drafthouse to return to growth and continue executing on its long-term strategic vision.”
The Alamo was an early adopter of what became an emerging trend last year among movie theaters: Allowing patrons to rent theaters for private viewing parties. As this filing indicates, the novel manuever was not enough to buoy business.
Starting tomorrow, March 4, CBS All Access will go by a new moniker: Paramount+. The revamped streaming service will feature all of CBS All Access’ content as well as a wealth of new content, including original shows and movies. While it’s too early to say if Paramount+ will truly compete with services such as Netflix and HBO Max, there’s a stellar deal on a 12-month subscription that’s hard to pass up. Until the end of today, March 3, you can save 50% on a 12-month Paramount+ subscription, dropping the price to as low as $30.
The deal applies to both the ads-supported plan and ad-free premium plan. You can get Paramount+ for $30 with ads or $50 without ads. That breaks down to $2.50 per month or roughly $4 per month for the ad-free plan, which is quite the bargain. If you snag the deal, you’ll technically be signing up for CBS All Access before it changes to Paramount+ branding tomorrow.
Before his roles in Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Interview, and Always Be My Maybe, Randall Park had a small role on The Office–which he completely forgot about.
Speaking to Conan O’Brien, the actor, who now appears in WandaVision, recalled that he filmed his brief opening scene for the Season 9 episode of The Office in just an hour. He left the set in a good mood but then completely forgot about it when the episode actually aired.
Park played the character “Asian Jim” as part of Pam’s prank on Dwight. Because Park forgot he filmed this scene, he thought he was the victim of a hate crime when people yelled out to him, “Asian Jim!,” when they saw him on the street.
Nvidia believes that the popularity of its latest Ampere-powered GPUs isn’t solely due to the popularity of cryptocurrency mining during its latest earnings quarter.
Nvidia CFO Colette Kress participated in the Raymond James Institutional Investors Broker Conference Call, explaining that the demand for the company’s latest range of GPUs would have affected supply as much as it has even if mining didn’t become as profitable again as it has.
“Our quarter for gaming, for example, probably would have been the same with or without crypto because we’re supply constrained,” Kress explained, via WCCFTech. “So we’ll continue to watch this. We believe that our CMP product will allow us better visibility for understanding the size of crypto within our quarter.”
The classic French comic book The Adventures of Asterix is being turned into an animated Netflix series. The show will be released worldwide in 2022.
The 3D animated Asterix show will be produced in France. The showrunner will be Alain Chabat, who wrote and directed 2002’s live-action movie Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra, which stands as the third highest-grossing feature film in French history. The show will be co-produced with publishers Les Editions Albert René.
The series will be based on writer René Goscinny and artist Albert Uderzo’s classic book Asterix and the Big Fight, in which the Romans organize a brawl between Gaulish chiefs, and attempt to fix the results with a magic potion. The 1971 book was previously adapted as an animated film in 1989.
Microsoft has announced the full lineup of additions to Xbox Game Pass in March, and they include some very high-profile games.
Coming to Game Pass this week include Madden NFL 21, Football Manager 21, and NBA 2K21, while players can look forward to Star Wars: Squadrons later in the month. In April, the professional ice hockey game NHL 21 will come to Game Pass on console.
Additionally, Microsoft announced that five games are leaving Game Pass on March 15, including The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Bloodstained, and Kona. You can see the full lists of the games that are coming to Game Pass and leaving down below.
Oculus Quest 2 will almost certainly receive support for 120Hz refresh rate in a future update, it’s only a matter of when (via TechRadar). Vice President of Facebook Reality Labs, Andrew Bosworth, confirmed by giving a thumbs up response during an Instagram Q&A to a query about whether or not Quest 2 will get the 120Hz upgrade.
UploadVR then spotted a 120Hz Refresh Support section in the Quest platform roadmap, a guide available to Quest developer accounts. It’s labeled as experimental and while the feature’s target release date is listed as March 2021, Oculus attached a medium confidence tag to the section. That means a delay could happen, and it’s uncertain when exactly Quest 2 users will get to test out 120Hz on the headset.
@ID_AA_Carmack In light of the new 120hz update, how confident are you that Quest games will be able to run at 120fps?
— Isaiah (@isaiahheitzman) March 1, 2021
Only a few existing games will be tweaked for 120, but some new titles will consider it an option in their design phase.
— John Carmack (@ID_AA_Carmack) March 1, 2021
John Carmack, Oculus VR’s consulting CTO, confirmed on Twitter that only a couple of existing games would be modified for 120Hz and new titles could “consider it an option in their design phase.”