CineQuote, the new daily game you need in your life, and HBO Max doubles down on scaring creators away
...and get your Zamrock on
I still have a SIGNIFICANTLY LARGER PIECE planned on the Royals for the smattering of you to whom that’s of interest. I have little interest in covering each individual roster move or granular piece of Royals news (sorry, Ryan Yarbrough), as I have to admit that as the Moore years dragged on I generally moved past a team-centered fandom into following the game at large. Frankly, I watched many more Padres and Dodgers games this past year than Royals games. Hell, I might have watched more Andrew Painter starts this year than Royals games. But that doesn’t mean I’ll never talk about them, and this one just requires A LOT more work for me, so it’ll have to wait until I’ve edited Monday’s Munch My Benson episode.
CineQuote is upon us
Friends Sean McGrath and Dan Flettre have launched a new daily movie trivia game, CineQuote. Per Sean in an introductory email:
Ahoy there. Pardon the email outta left field, but I’ve got a little cheer to share with you. Together with my friend and collaborator Flet, I've developed a new app and TODAY we have officially launched!
It’s called CineQuote. It's basically "Name that movie in five quotes". You can play right on your phone or computer. Every day you’ll hear up to five quotes from the same movie. All you gotta do is guess what the movie is. It's quick, free, somewhat painless, and possibly fun. And if you don’t guess correctly, don’t worry, we’ll have a brand new movie for you to try the very next day.
We’ve put a lot of work into this and hope you’ll help us out by playing it and getting the word out for us to your friends, family, coworkers, or anyone you know that likes movies. It would really, really help if you could share with folks in your world.
We are not trying to replace Wordle (and if we were they'd have us both killed...) but we'd love it if you could make us a brief part of your day.
Hope your Holidays are stress-free and your New Year is the best one yet. We’ll see you over at CineQuote.net and if you’ve got social media you can find us at twitter.com/cinequotegame or instagram.com/cinequotegame
Thank you!
I was [appropriately] a beta.
Tester. Beta tester. It’s super fun. Five quotes, starting hardish, getting easier.
This is coming from Flet—the creator of Episode.lol, the randomizer that we use on Munch My Benson—and Sean—who Adam and I have been working with on our second podcast that we’ve been recording test episodes of—so they’re basically family.
Check the game out. Tell your friends. Share your daily results on social media, just like you do with Wordle or Worldle or Sedecordle.
What the hell is going on at HBO Max?
I’m hardly the first person to talk about this—
reminded me of this in today’s newsletter—but earlier this week, HBO Max’s baffling leader David Zaslav, who took over the platform after coming over from Discovery in the merger with Warner Bros., canceled Minx despite its principal photography for Season Two being nearly completed. Minx may still find another home, as it was a co-production with Lionsgate, so maybe it ends up on Starz.HBO Max, which at the time of the merger with Discovery had maybe the most impressive catalog of properties in its streaming library, has spent the months since the merger pulling content without warning, apparently not knowing why people subscribe to their service. The Variety article (the first link) details the slew of decisions that when grouped together have to leave any creators leery of working with HBO, a statement that would have been laughable prior to the merger.
Despite it being in post-production, they pulled the plug on the Batgirl film.
They killed Chad despite its second season being shot in its entirety.
They notably pulled the already canceled Westworld and The Nevers from the platform with no warning this past week.
All scripted programming at TBS and TNT looks to have been terminated.
Over 20 HBO Max Originals have been pulled from the platform, including 12 Dates of Christmas, which I kind of worked on in S2.
From what I’ve seen speculated, Batgirl, Minx, and Chad can be written off as losses due to merger legalese that’s in effect through the end of 2022, but to see three separate properties killed when production was either completed or nearly done is pretty shocking in this landscape where you’ve got a platform you can put it on at no cost. And to kill Minx and pull a high-profile property like Westworld off your platform the day after one of your few active hits (White Lotus) drops its much talked-about season finale, effectively sucking the wind out of the platform’s sails seems like the pinnacle of obliviousness.
If you were a creator, why in the hell would you get in bed with Zaslav’s new HBO Max right now? Even if there’s a January 1, 2023 end date to the madness, they’ve shown no indication that they give a damn about any of the properties in their vault or on the production slate. Why would you pour your blood, sweat, and tears into a project with them only to have to worry if anyone will be able to see it ever or still be able to see it a six months after it drops?
And while more people point toward the importance of owning the physical media of properties you love, tell that to fans of shows that never see a physical release like Terriers or Perpetual Grace LTD or Patriot.
Nugs
Our new Munch My Benson dropped this week (Episode 138), and it’s a wild ride. Seasons 19 and 20 of #SVU are wild, rough, feverish, and largely unprofessional, and this week's draw is no exception, as it presupposes a world in which half of a pair of shut-in hoarder septuagenarian brothers becomes the literary voice of this new generation. Truly insane logical gymnastics accompanied by a shocking amount of bigotry being casually espoused by the pair of acclaimed actors Wallace Shawn and Judd Hirsch. Sheer lunacy.
The Munch Casts Discord is going well. As the network grows—and it will grow—it should increasingly be a nice place that can serve as a community of likeminded folks—the Munch Casts’ water cooler if you will. It’s easy to join and pretty easy to navigate with different sections for different topics of discussion. Here’s the invitation link if you’re interested: https://discord.gg/9GPacYMdZY
And now for some Zamrock to help you forget about the blanket of snow draped over your yard—either literally or metaphorically. If you want to go down the Zamrock rabbit hole, there’s a very long playlist here with tons of great tunes.