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A hole in one?
Happy hump day, FutureParty people. If you’re in Los Angeles, a “remake” of the James Cameron classic, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, is premiering at the Landmark NuArt Theatre. But here’s the thing: the film, titled Our T2 Remake, was made by 50 artists using only generative AI as a “commentary and satire about modern-day Al technology and its effect on humanity.” We have a feeling this is going to be wild.
In other news… LeBron James and Drake are investing in the PGA Tour, and NTWRK is folding its brand into Complex.
We hope you enjoy this and all upcoming issues, but we have one request: please share your feedback. If you have any thoughts at all about our new look, format, and direction, please reply to this email. It’ll go straight to us. Do not hold back.
LATEST PODCAST EPISODE
Feb. 29, 2024
Today we get into McDonald's new anime-based promotion, how Reddit is going public, and how Florida passed a new bill trying to ban kids younger than 16 from social media.
New Balance signed with CAA for representation in an effort to boost its presence in movies, TV, and video games. Read More → thr
A bipartisan House bill wants to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok in the US or face getting banned, labeling the platform a national security risk. Read More → deadline
Black cowboy fashion is back in the cultural saddle, thanks to Pharrell, Beyoncé, and Lil Nas X — a trend highlighting a lost American history. Read More → fastcompany
Target will roll out its $49/year membership in April to compete with Amazon Prime and Walmart+. Read More → insider
Meta’s suite of apps were hit with a global outage yesterday, affecting hundreds of thousands of users… giving a panic attack to anyone who forgot their passwords. Read More → wsj
52.3% of you voted No in yesterday’s poll: Do you play video games?
“No time for them.”
“No, but composer Christopher Tin’s music is wonderful!”
“Never really have!”
.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT CLEAN MY PHONE.
Do you need some (digital) space?
We don’t blame you.
Meet СleanMy®Phone, an AI-powered maintenance app that sweeps your iPhone and iPad to make room for new memories or memes — whatever you’re into.
Clean up your devices with any of these modes (or all of them)…
Scan your camera roll with declutter mode to scrap screenshots, duplicates, blurred images, screen recordings, TikTok videos, and more. Say goodbye to all 299 blurry pics of your cat.
Find similar-themed photos with organize mode, so you can keep your sh*t together in appropriate folders. It works with portraits, travel, pets, food, and text. This way, you can pull up that unbelievable hot dog you devoured at a second’s notice.
Use network mode to get things up to speed. Check your network connection and pinpoint whatever is slowing you down.
.SPORTS.
Celebrities tee up investment in the PGA
The Future. The PGA Tour has lined up a VIP roster of investors in a bid to expand the league’s appeal and keep players from defecting to Saudi-backed LIV Golf. As golf grows in popularity with young people, the headline-grabbing names and billions in investment now involved with the PGA could put pressure on the tour’s leadership to nix its proposed merger with LIV.
Club Golf
Drake, LeBron James, Chris Pratt, UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer, and billionaires Steven Cohen and Marc Lasry are joining Fenway Sports Group to pump $3 billion into the PGA.
LeBron and Drake (who invested in the Italian soccer team A.C. Milan together, as well) are “strategic investors” who will provide “marketing power” to broaden the tour’s audience, per NYT. (We’re calling a LeBron vs. Drake caddy showdown.)
The group of investors are forming under the umbrella Strategic Sports Group, with the investment kickstarting the tour’s creation of a new venture dubbed “PGA Tour Enterprises” that will allow pro players to become equity holders.
The formation of this new golfing super-company is a play at pushing back against the influence (and pocketbook) of LIV Golf. The PGA announced that it would merge with LIV last summer, but that deal hasn’t materialized yet… although, it’s supposed to close this year.
Maybe the PGA has purposely been avoiding the dotted line.
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Listen: a16z’s Chris Dixon stopped by NYT’s Hard Fork to soapbox the positives of crypto investing… just as Bitcoin hit an-all time high price.
Watch: WSJ dug deep into the technological innovation of IMAX and how it’s transforming moviegoing habits.
Read: The LA Times has the go-to guide on the new work vocabulary that’s popped up post-pandemic.
.MEDIA.
Hitting shelves // Illustration by Kait Cunniff with Leonardo.Ai
Complex takes over NTWRK
The Future. While most media brands are contracting, Complex’s new ownership team at NTWRK announced a major expansion… first things first, getting rid of the NTWRK name altogether. If Complex 2.0 is successful, it may launch an era when publishers’ best recipe for success is more is more.
Maximalist media
The new and improved Complex is off to the races.
The brand is boosting headcount and hiring many of its early execs, including former editor-in-chief Noah Callahan-Bever and the brand’s founder, fashion legend Marc Eckō.
It’s already made an acquisition, purchasing media firm Idea Generation to bolster its original content production.
It’s bringing back its monthly flagship magazine, which it’ll make shoppable, of course.
It’ll relaunch Complex News to incubate media talent and launch a paid-membership for access to exclusive content and product drops.
With Complex diversifying its revenue streams equally among commerce, content, and experiences, the publisher wants to make sure that it’s here for a long time.
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.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT CREATOR LOGIC.
Be a creator (but smarter)
When you’re a creator, you just figure everything out on your own, right?
Wrong.
You need Creator Logic — a weekly newsletter where successful creators share all their secrets. They’ll tell you the deets of their businesses, including revenue breakdowns, monetization tactics, and preferred tools and partners. And you know what that means? You’ll have more time to decide what trending audio to use (or something like that).
Around 2003 in Chile, when the original trilogy of Star Wars began airing on television there, they did this funny thing to avoid cutting to commercial breaks. They stitched the commercials into the films themselves. Here is one of them, with the English dub added in.
— #Windy 🛸 (#@heyitswindy)
8:22 PM • Mar 2, 2024
The Republic of Chile is clearly the OG at finding a way to watch movies ad-free. Hilariously amazing.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Boye Akolade. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.