Today Neighbours celebrates its 35th anniversary. It debuted on 18 March 1985 on Channel Seven in Australia.
To mark this anniversary, the show is airing double episodes all week and promising three deaths and five weddings. That’s almost too much soap.
Production Assistant Amanda Smith was paralyzed on the set of the show Batwoman. This happened two days before the set was shut down due to coronavirus concerns.
Source: Deadline
Actor Lyle Waggoner has died aged 84. Best remembered for roles on Wonder Woman (he played Steve Trevor) and The Carol Burnett Show, his biggest contribution to the industry was in launching Star Waggons - these are the large trailers often found on Hollywood sets and location shoots.
Read more: Variety
I really liked seeing Waggoner on screen and got a real kick when I discovered that he was close to being cast as Batman in the 1966 series, losing to Adam West.
Fox is buying streaming service Tubi for $440 million.
Source: Marketwatch
COVID-19: Tokyo Drift
With lots of people across the world self-isolating and working from home, I’m not at all surprised that Pornhub are reporting a massive spike in people accessing the platform. But, what is interesting is what people search for when they get to Pornhub.
They’re actively searching for terms involving Coronavirus, COVID, etc.
If I were to guess, I’d suggest this is less fetish searches and more people accidentally doing a search in the wrong browser and not paying attention. But… maybe people have specific interests they’re hoping to see realised.
If you’re curious to see how your country is stacking up against the rest of the world, this graph shows usage increase by country. Australia and the US… right down the bottom. The wowsers.
If you want to learn more, Pornhub have an extremely detailed page with many graphs you can, uh, pull from. Be aware that this information is on the Pornhub website, so you might not want to do it on a work computer/VPN.
Read more: Pornhub
Both Empire and Supernatural were about to film their series finales right as production was shut down due to the coronavirus. A final episode for each will likely be recorded, airing either during the summer hiatus or as event specials in the next TV season.
Read more: Deadline
Yesterday I speculated in ABW that the Disney Marvel film Black Widow may see a Disney+ release coinciding with its theatrical release. Disney has today pulled the release from cinemas. The question I ask is could a simultaneous Disney+/cinema release be put back on the table when cinemas re-open in China?
Read more: Polygon
The reason I’m so bullish on the idea that Black Widow may wind up on Disney+ is two-fold:
- Disney+ really needs a couple of big-name titles to keep up interest in the platform. Its slate is pretty bare until the end of the year when more of its originals start coming online. Black Widow would be a huge title that would fill the gap very nicely.
- There’s already so many other Marvel movies in production and scheduled that this really upsets the roll-out of those movies. You could start pushing titles back, but then that starts interfering with how tightly connected the Marvel films are going to be with the Disney+ original shows like Wandavision (which has a strong connection with the Doctor Strange film that comes out just a few months later).
Read more about the Marvel film schedule and how Black Widow fits into that: Indiewire
What’s next?
