Nicholas Cage comes to Netflix and says some swears

F*ck that!

Cinema icon and artist Nicholas Cage is finally coming to TV. He’ll host Netflix’s History of Swear Words. It’ll run for six episodes at 20 minutes apiece with every installment focused on a different swear word. Cage will interview historians, entertainers, and experts in etymology and pop culture.

Episode subjects will include:

f*ck
sh*t
b*tch
d*ck
p*ssy
d*mn

There’s one notable word not on that list. Maybe those c*nts will get to it in season 2.

Source: Variety

HISTORY OF SWEAR WORDS Nicolas Cage — Nicholas Cage asks the question: Will today’s ABW go straight to the spam folder?

Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes star in new Netflix series

True Story is a new fictional limited series coming to Netflix which will star Kevin Hart and Wesley Snipes as two brothers

Hart will play Kid, a famous comedian, while Snipes will play his wayward older brother, Carlton. Billed as an event series, True Story concerns a tour stop in Kid’s hometown of Philadelphia that becomes a matter of life and death when the consequences of a lost evening with Carlton threaten to destroy everything he’s built.

Source: Collider

PODCAST: Streaming services with purpose - Femflix and Demand Africa

This week on The Aus Media Report, my podcast where I talk to industry professionals about subjects related to the Australian media industry, I focus on streaming video. There’s two interviews:

Demand Africa is a US-based streaming service delivering TV shows from across Africa to a global audience. It has launched in Australia. I speak with Narendra Reddy, the Vice President and General Manager of the service, and Dean Cates who is the exec in charge of Demand Africa.
Samantha Laidlaw is an Australian who has just launched Femflix - a streaming service focused on movies that are either driven by female identified creatives or have very strong themes related to women.

HBO ready to take another bite at True Blood

File this under things that nobody has really asked for, but Riverdale’s Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is working with NOS4A2 creator Jami O’Brien on a new version of True Blood. HBO hasn’t confirmed this.

Here’s my question: Why spend all that money on rebooting True Blood? Why not just dust off the old show and find a new audience for it? The show still looks and feels contemporary. Plus it was never such a hit that everybody watched it - there’s still a huge audience yet to discover it.

Put it on the carousel (the main featured area) on HBO Max. Stage some fan events and get social influencers on board. For the cost of the catering truck on the pilot of the new show, HBO can have itself a reheated hit.

Source: TV Line

Netflix roll out smart parents advisory

Helpful guide or really clever content marketing? I say both. Netflix is trialing a new program that will see parents emailed data about the TV shows their kids are watching. The trial is underway in a number of test countries, which includes Australia (Always Be Watching reader Simon Band alerted me to the fact he received one of these emails a few days ago).

Called the Kids Activity Report … the new breakdown includes data on what type of programming kids are spending the most time watching, who their favorite character is, and recommendations for new shows based on their interests.

The good news is that parents will no longer have to watch kids shows to be able to talk to their kids about them:

“Most parents have a pulse on what their kids like, based on their Halloween costumes or toys they ask for at Christmas, but we don’t always know what those shows are about,” Parson said. “What is the show, in essence, talking about?”

Read: The Verge

Pornhub move to limit exposure

Last week the New York Times published an op-ed that accused Pornhub of hosting videos that were uploaded without participants’ consent. These videos included scenes featuring rape, spy-cameras of women, and underage girls.

Pornhub has responded quickly with changes to its platform that will restrict who can upload videos. From now, only verified users can post videos. Downloading of videos from the site (as opposed to streaming videos) will also be restricted.

Major credit card companies have reported that they will investigate their ties to the site.

“At Pornhub, nothing is more important than the safety of our community. Our core values such as inclusivity, freedom of expression and privacy are only possible when our platform is trusted by our users,” the company wrote in an announcement. “Today, we are taking major steps to further protect our community.”

Read: Business Insider

YouTube to stop peddling misinformation

In a sign that YouTube simply doesn’t take its influence as seriously as it should, only now is the video streamer doing something about videos alleging Donald Trump had won the US election.

According to YouTube, since September 2020, it has terminated more than 8,000 channels and “thousands of harmful and misleading elections-related videos” for violating existing policies. It also said more than 77% of those videos were pulled before they had accumulated 100 views (but YouTube didn’t reveal how widely others were viewed).

Source: Variety

Netflix cancels Hoops

Animated comedy Hoops has been cancelled at Netflix. Not a huge surprise considering there seemed to be zero buzz surrounding the show and almost every critic piled on it.

We took a look at it for the Always Be Watching podcast. The criticism myself and co-host Chris Yates had about it was that the show itself was actually pretty funny, but the animation style (which looks the same as almost every other animated sitcom from the past 30 years) was working against it.

TeeVee Snacks

The very funny and delightfully odd How To With John Wilson has been greenlit for a second season. Read: The AV Club
The house from Father of The Bride is up for sale. Read: The Dirt
Steven Soderbergh will be a producer for the next Academy Awards. Read: CNN

They’re finally pulling the pin. One Day at a Time is done for with the producers no longer shopping the show around. Source: Variety

Fashion Police

Photos from the set of Marvel’s Hawkeye TV series have revealed the costume to be worn by Hailee Steinfeld as Kate Bishop on the show. It looks just like the comic book version. Source: Dark Horizons