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  • Disney+ Has a New Look—Which Is No Look at All

    Disney+ Has a New Look—Which Is No Look at All

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    Are you one of those people who arranges your apps by color? Do you keep folders? Or are you, like me, a moron who just keeps a loose memory of what color any particular app is and swipes and scrolls until their eyes catch a familiar glimpse? If you are the latter, finding Disney+—and Hulu—might be getting a little harder.

    This week, Disney rolled out Hulu on Disney+ in the US. Ostensibly part of company CEO Bob Iger’s promise of a “one-app experience,” the launch basically just means that if you have one of the Disney “bundles” you can now watch Hulu stuff while you’re in Disney+. OK, cool. Along with the change, though, Disney+ got a new logo, one awash in what it is calling “aurora,” a swampy blue-green hue that looks like what would happen if the eyes of Tammy Faye were imprinted on your device’s screen like it was the Shroud of Turin.

    As with any minor change to their digital experience, internet people have noticed this shift. And commented. Some called it “bland,” while others called it “lifeless.” More nuanced and jugular-aiming takes went like this: “I mean, it’s Disney. Making new versions of stuff that’s worse than the original is what they do.” A hot take for a cool color.

    Courtesy of Disney+

    Disney’s shift here isn’t entirely insignificant. It involved modifying everything, from re-encoding Hulu’s video files to work on Disney+ to updating the metadata attached to shows and movies. The idea is that one day Disney will have “one master media library for the entire company,” Aaron LaBerge, president and CTO of Disney Entertainment and ESPN, told the Verge. It is, in other words, about making Disney+ a bigger trove of content than it already is.

    This is where, metaphorically, the Disney+ color change takes on a different tone. It serves as a reminder of the flattening of the streaming experience. In the app libraries of our minds, Netflix is red, Apple TV+ is black, Hulu is green, Paramount+ and Amazon Prime Video have a very similar blue hue, Peacock and Discovery+ have a rainbow-and-black thing going on. These visual signifiers indicate what kind of experience will emerge when clicked. (I don’t know about you, but I now associate perfectly zestless television with RGB 229 9 20, aka Netflix Red.)

    As the streamers have consolidated or changed their identities, they’ve muddied the nonverbal cues that have set our expectations around what they offer. Had HBO kept that old black-silver-blue look from the Go days, maybe, coupled with Apple TV+, black would be the official color of prestige television. But it’s not.

    The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.



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  • ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Tech-Heavy Head Trip

    ‘3 Body Problem’ Is a Tech-Heavy Head Trip

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    Michael Calore: OK Kate, as our guest, what’s your recommendation this week?

    Kate Knibbs: Actually, I’m going to recommend another sci-fi series that’s a book adaptation and I wrote about it when I came out last year, which is Silo on Apple+. It’s adapted from Hugh Howey’s Wool book series. One of them is called Silo, which the books are great too. The show is fantastic, and I feel like it got buried in Apple TV… Is it Apple TV+ or Apple TV?

    Michael Calore: Apple TV+.

    Lauren Goode: Apple TV+. Yeah. Just add a plus to everything now if they’re charging you $9 a month or more for it, it’s just plus.

    Kate Knibbs: Yeah, Apple TV+ has this little collection of prestige sci-fi, and a lot of it’s really well done, and it’s just not taking off. I think it deserves to, and Silo is so good, and I think people should watch that too.

    Michael Calore: Awesome. And so it came out last year. Are they doing another season soon or?

    Kate Knibbs: I don’t know. There’s lots of material that they could be working from. I hope they’re doing another season if they don’t, though it definitely stands alone as a miniseries, and it’s about people who live in this underground silo sometime in the future, and things are not what they appear, and it’s excellent. Yeah, heartily recommend.

    Lauren Goode: I hear that if you get an Apple Vision Pro and you put it on your face, Tim Cook appears and tells you what their next season’s lineup is going to be.

    Michael Calore: There’s Apple products in all of the Apple TV plus shows, right? They use their streaming channel as a way to show off how good their products are.

    Lauren Goode: Yeah, they’re never using Signal. They’re always like bloop and blue messages when they message people in the program.

    Michael Calore: I’m sorry. It’s very annoying. It’s very annoying to imagine a world where three quarters of the planet is not using Android. Kate, what’s the status of Apple devices in the near future on Silo?

    Kate Knibbs: I don’t think they have any, but that’s because they’ve been in the Silo for a really long time I think. I am not sure about the exact timeline, but I think they went in the Silo before Tim even took the reins. They might’ve been down there… I don’t know. They have really old school 90s desktops in silo. There’s no blue bubbles to worry about.

    Michael Calore: Are they Mac clones?

    Kate Knibbs: I don’t know.

    Michael Calore: Are they Motorola Mac clones? That’d be amazing.

    Kate Knibbs: I’ll have to rewatch and take a look at the gadgetry.

    Michael Calore: I’ll watch it. Thank you for the recommendation. Lauren, what is your recommendation?

    Lauren Goode: Despite my throwing shade at you earlier for binge-watching, mine is a binge-watch, and there’s a little story behind this that’s related to 3 Body Problem. So listeners should know that Netflix gave us all early access to 3 Body Problem, and we had to log into our Netflix accounts and enter a pin code because we had to be approved to get these digital screeners. And over the weekend, I went to go watch 3 Body Problem and realized I didn’t have the pin code. So I emailed Netflix on a Sunday and just was like, “Hey, I am really sorry, but I don’t think I have this pin code, and so I can’t watch this.” It took them all of four minutes to get back to me.

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  • Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Adapts the Unadaptable

    Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Adapts the Unadaptable

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    Scientists keep taking their own lives, and no one knows why. That’s the central mystery at the start of 3 Body Problem, the new Netflix series based on a trilogy of sci-fi novels by Chinese author Cixin Liu. But it soon unfolds into something far grander: There’s a mysterious VR video game, flashbacks to revolutionary China, shady billionaires, and strange cults.

    But really, it’s all about physics. Liu’s novels are beloved in China and have a smaller but similarly dedicated following among English-language readers, but they are hard science fiction—heavy on concept, light on character. More than once in the series, someone resorts to wheeling out a chalkboard to make their point, and there are scenes in the books that seem impossible to film: multidimensional structures collapsing in on themselves, a computer made up of millions of soldiers, nano-wires cutting through steel, diamond, flesh.

    For showrunners David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo, adapting The Three-Body Problem for the screen presented a unique challenge. Woo was a writer on HBO’s True Blood, but Benioff and Weiss are best known for Game of Thrones. An adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s fantasy saga A Song of Ice and Fire, Thrones became a once-in-a-decade television phenomenon, but didn’t quite stick the landing—in some corners of the internet the names Benioff and Weiss are on a level with Joffrey Baratheon.

    Three people sitting on a table in a moody beige room

    (L to R) 3 Body Problem executive producers and writers D. B. Weiss, Alexander Woo, and David Benioff.Courtesy of Austin Hargrave/Netflix

    So there may be some trepidation for those weighing whether to watch their new show. But 3 Body Problem has all the ingredients that made those early seasons of Game of Thrones so compelling: jaw-dropping set pieces, a web of interpersonal conflict, and an existential threat slowly marching toward the gates.

    WIRED spoke to Benioff, Weiss, and Woo about the challenge of adapting a series previously thought to be unadaptable.

    Amit Katwala: You’ve talked about how you read the novels simultaneously and decided this was the thing you wanted to work on next. What really attracted you to Three-Body Problem as something to adapt?

    David Benioff: We might have three different answers. For me, there were so many scenes in the books that I read and thought, “I really want to see this.” Throughout the whole trilogy there are so many scenes that are thrilling to read, but also as a TV writer and producer deeply intimidating, because you’re thinking, how are we going to show multiple dimensions on screen? How is that going to work? I literally can’t visualize some of the things that are described in the book. The only other time I’ve had that experience is with George Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire.

    D. B. Weiss: Something that you’re going to devote this much of your life to, it has to haunt you. It has to be something that when you put it down and walk away it just keeps lurking in your mind. I read these books and I’d be thinking about them while I was going for a walk, I’d be thinking about them when I was taking my kids to school. I never stopped thinking about them.

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  • A Max Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming

    A Max Password-Sharing Crackdown Is Coming

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    Be warned, all ye who watch House of the Dragon thanks to your parents’ Max account: A password-sharing crackdown is coming.

    Warner Bros. Discovery, Max’s parent company, plans to launch the restrictions in late 2024, WBD’s head of global streaming and games, JB Parrette, said at Morgan Stanley’s Technology, Media & Telecom Conference on Monday. Details on the crackdown are scant, but the push toward paid sharing is expected to roll out more widely next year.

    Max, formerly HBO Max, is just the latest streamer to look to password-sharing limitations to keep streaming viable. Netflix started cracking down on users sharing their passwords outside the household last year. Disney recently informed Disney+ and Hulu subscribers of plans to convert suspected account sharers to paid subscribers. Disney emailed customers in February letting them know that their terms of service would be changing and that the sharing of login information with anyone outside their household would be forbidden starting March 14. Netflix, similarly, rolled out its restrictions last year by emailing users suspected of sharing their login details and telling them users outside the household would be shut out.

    These moves come as providers struggle to hang on to their user bases and streaming becomes an even more crowded field, forcing consumers to make tough choices about which services they can afford. Netflix, following a couple rough years, bounced back and saw a boost in subscribers and revenue late last year following its password crackdown.

    Disney+ has been adding subscribers but struggling to hit profitability. Still, Disney CEO Bob Iger believes streaming can start making money by the end of 2024, thanks in part to its new ad-supported tiers and a combined Disney+/Hulu “one-app experience” coming this year.

    Meanwhile, Max has changed shape repeatedly following the Warner Bros. merger with Discovery, which ultimately combined HBO Max and Discovery+ into one streamer. The move yucked the yum of longtime HBO Max fans, but it led WBD to become the first Hollywood heavyweight to turn a full-year profit from streaming.

    Password-sharing crackdowns also come at a time when piracy is on the rise—something that’s keenly impacted WBD’s offerings. For years, HBO’s Game of Thrones was one of the most pirated shows on TV. More recently, The Last of Us and House of the Dragon have taken the top spots.

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  • My Quest to Fix a Crashing Roku App Provides a Warning About AI

    My Quest to Fix a Crashing Roku App Provides a Warning About AI

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    Two words in this statement popped out to me like a flying dinosaur in a mixed-reality headset: when possible. When I flagged this in a subsequent call, Roku reassured me that a fix for my issue will happen. In the worst-case scenario, if the problem won’t be solved in the next OS, sufferers will be provided some incantation to have their televisions backdated to the previous operating system. (Does this mean we’re back to hitting that home button five times?) And if that doesn’t work, which Roku says totally won’t be the case, the company will make sure to make everyone satisfied somehow. The company was ready to satisfy me right away, offering me a new TV. I declined, since they weren’t offering it to everyone whose Netflix was crashing.

    I think Roku is dealing in good faith. I’d been happy with my Roku-powered smart TV, until I wasn’t because it kept crashing. I take Roku at its word that it’s working on the problem and might actually fix it. I acknowledge that updating software on a static platform like a television set is a particular challenge. And God knows how common bugs are in software.

    In any case, my inability to stream Netflix without resetting the TV every time I watch a movie is a pretty trivial problem. And you know what? Even if I never watched Netflix again, I’d live. Now that Netflix has added advertising to its business model, I’m dreading the day when everyone on the service is exposed to endless commercials, unless we pay even more than the already out-of-control monthly fee. Beef was great, but I’d pass if every 10 minutes it was interrupted by pharma ads.

    Nevertheless, my Roku problem is a warning. Artificial intelligence is thrusting us into an era that intertwines our lives with digital technology more than ever. If you think that our current software is complicated, just wait until everything works on neural nets! Even the people who create those are mystified about how they work. And, boy, can things go wrong with that stuff. Just this week, OpenAI suffered a few hours where its chatbots blurted out incoherent comments, evoking the word salad of a stroke victim or the Republican front-runner. And Google had to temporarily stop its Gemini LLM from generating images of people, because of what it called “historical inconsistencies” in how it depicted the diversity of humanity. These are disturbing portents. We’re now in the process of turning over much of our activities to these systems. If they fail, “community discussions” won’t save us.

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    Time Travel

    Digital technology is too damn complicated, and we’re doomed to a life of bug-resolution. That was my observation 30 years ago when I wrote Insanely Great, in a passage spurred by a freezing problem I had with my Macintosh IIcx. As the Mac operating system struggled to handle a complicated ecosystem of extensions, boundary-pushing applications, and data at a scale the original had not imagined, bugs appeared that required Sherlock Holmes–level sleuthing to resolve.

    This was the background to my Macintosh troubles: the computer had become more complicated than anyone had imagined. I enacted a short-term fix, stripping the system of possible offenders. I was stepping back in time, making the Mac emulate the simpler, though less useful, computer I once had. As I wiped out Super Boomerang, Background Printing, On Location and Space Saver, I pictured myself as Astronaut Dave in 2001, determinedly yanking out the chips in the supercomputer H.A.L., with the uncomfortable feeling that I was deconstructing a personality. When I finished my Macintosh IIcx was not so atavistic as to sing “Daisy,” but it was, in a Mac sense, no longer itself. On the other hand, it no longer hung.

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  • Live TV Is the New Streaming

    Live TV Is the New Streaming

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    “Biggest audience since the moon landing.” That was the headline when Nielsen released viewership numbers for Super Bowl 2024. About 123.7 million people in the US watched the game, more than any other game since Nielsen started keeping track and, yes, close to the 125 to 150 million people in the US who watched the moon landing in July 1969. Despite the scores of streaming options and other things to watch, people still tuned in to watch live—to see the Kansas City Chiefs win in overtime, to see Taylor Swift, to watch Usher, to see Martin Scorsese’s alien-invasion ad, to catch the new Deadpool & Wolverine trailer.

    Maybe live TV isn’t dead after all.

    It is, of course, easy to chalk this up to the event being, well, the Super Bowl, which is still the single most popular US sporting event of the year. Also of note: A billion-plus people watch events like the World Cup globally. Still, the Big Game wasn’t the only thing people tuned in for this week. On Monday, Jon Stewart reclaimed his place at The Daily Show desk and brought in 1.9 million viewers—the most the show has seen since 2018. It’s an election year, and as Alison Herman wrote in Variety, “anyone who has living memories of the War on Terror is powerless to resist Stewart’s particular blend of cynicism and moral righteousness.” Or, maybe after seeing Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, they’re just longing for the days when Stewart would go on CNN to call Carlson a “dick” on Crossfire.

    While this may seem like a yearning for the days of more appointment television and setting our VCR to tape My So-Called Life, and it is, there’s something else at play. There is a malaise associated with streaming these days, when scrolling through the endless libraries of “Eh, OK, Sure” TV on Netflix or Hulu doesn’t feel all that different from the mindless channel-surfing people did in the ’90s while they were waiting for Friends to start. With streamers raising prices and adding commercials, maybe the urgency of watching something as it’s happening has the juice to bring people back to broadcast.

    Streamers certainly think so. In a quest to get more subscribers, one of their biggest plays has been to secure the rights to live sports. Apple TV+ has baseball and soccer, Amazon Prime Video has Thursday Night Football, Netflix just landed WWE wrestling. Hulu and Disney+ can be bundled with ESPN. Outside of sports, Max has the CNN live feed. Netflix just hosted the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The Oscars will air on ABC on March 10, but you can also watch them on Hulu or YouTube TV.

    All of which to say, even if live TV is making a comeback, it’s a comeback buoyed by streaming. One of the reasons, beyond Taylor Swift and Usher, that lots of people tuned in to the Super Bowl was that, in addition to CBS, the game also aired on Nickelodeon, where it was hosted by SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick Star. (I’m told it was fun to watch on edibles.) The game also streamed on Paramount+, and although some viewers reported glitchiness early in the game, the easy access across multiple platforms boosted the game’s viewership numbers. HBO’s current Sunday Night Sad show True Detective: Night Country has surpassed the first season in total viewers. A lot of them watch the show when it airs on Sunday, and a big chunk watch on Max. Nearly a million people—930,000—watched Stewart’s return to The Daily Show; some 6 million more have watched his return monologue on YouTube.

    The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

    For years we’ve been debating whether the watercooler show is over. Was Game of Thrones the end? Has Last of Us revived that zombie concept? I remain on the fence. There’s far more niche programming for niche interests than seemingly ever before, but global sporting events and world news events will always capture the public’s attention in a way viral moments can’t. People watching the Super Bowl still knew the Chiefs won in overtime before they saw it on X.

    On Wednesday, my phone buzzed with an alert from The New York Times. Something awful had happened during the Chiefs’ victory celebration in Kansas City. Later, I learned that one person, a popular local radio DJ, had been killed, and more than 20 others were injured, in a mass shooting at the event. But I didn’t learn that by diving further into my phone. I turned on MSNBC.

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  • Where to Stream 2024’s Best Picture Oscar Nominees

    Where to Stream 2024’s Best Picture Oscar Nominees

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    No matter which movie snatches Best Picture at this year’s Oscars, “Barbenheimer” will still go down as the winner. Last summer’s box office face-off between Christopher Nolan’s historical drama about a troubled male genius and the atomic bomb, and Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster comedy about women working together and neon rollerblades, was one for the ages. Barbie ultimately ended up making more moolah, but soon Oppenheimer will have a chance to get the glory at the 96th Academy Awards.

    Whether you want to win your office’s Oscar ballot competition or are just curious to see some of 2023’s best movies, you still have time to watch every major nominee before the Oscars air on March 10. While most of the movies up for the top award can be streamed right now, three are not yet available online: American Fiction, Poor Things, and The Zone of Interest. Here’s where to stream the rest of the 2024 Oscar nominees for Best Picture—no IMAX 70mm projector required.

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    Oppenheimer

    Oppenheimer is up for the most awards with a total of 13 nods, including Nolan for directing and Cillian Murphy for actor in a leading role. The historical drama focuses on the development of nuclear weapons in the New Mexico desert during World War II. Clocking in with a three-hour run time, Oppenheimer is surprisingly not the longest movie up for Best Picture—that honor goes to Killers of the Flower Moon—but it is the most likely to walk away with at least one trophy.

    Barbie

    While Barbie is up for eight awards, the bigger discourse online is about who didn’t receive a nomination for their involvement with the movie: Margot Robbie. The actor, who also served as a producer on the film, was not nominated for her portrayal of the iconic plastic doll. Gerwig also was not nominated for directing. Despite the lack of recognition in certain categories, nothing can discount the fact that Barbie grossed over $1 billion worldwide and remains the biggest theatrical success of last year.

    Killers of the Flower Moon

    Directed by Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon centers on the tragic murder of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Lily Gladstone’s nomination for lead actress is one of the very few times that the Academy has recognized the work of Native Americans while also marking Scorsese’s 10th nod for directing. Now that Killers of the Flower Moon is available to stream at home, you’re free to stop for as many intermissions as your heart desires.

    Past Lives

    In addition to Best Picture, Past Lives is also nominated for its screenplay written by Celine Song, who directed the romantic drama. Anchored by Greta Lee’s subtle performance in the lead role, Past Lives chronicles the tension between two people who used to be romantically involved and are reuniting after years apart.

    The Holdovers

    Almost two decades after his last nomination for a role in Cinderella Man, Paul Giamatti is once again nominated for Best Actor for his performance in The Holdovers. In the film, Giamatti plays a boarding school teacher who bonds with students and staff as they’re all stuck together over winter break.

    Anatomy of a Fall

    Anatomy of a Fall is a French drama about a woman on trial after her husband mysteriously falls to his death. Sandra Hüller is nominated for her leading role in the film. She stars in The Zone of Interest as well, which is also up for Best Picture. Justine Triet, who directed and cowrote Anatomy of a Fall, is the only woman nominated for Best Director at this year’s Oscars.

    Maestro

    Maestro is up for seven awards, including nods to Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan for their leading performances. This movie about the complicated life of conductor Leonard Bernstein was directed and cowritten by Cooper.

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  • Apple’s Vision Pro Is Trying to Solve a Nearly Unsolvable Problem

    Apple’s Vision Pro Is Trying to Solve a Nearly Unsolvable Problem

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    Netflix didn’t come to play. Neither did YouTube. Following the Apple Vision Pro’s big preorder rollout two weeks ago, news slowly started to trickle out that neither of those video services would have native apps on Apple’s new spatial computing device. Netflix’s co-CEO, Greg Peters, went on a podcast and wondered aloud if the Vision Pro was even “relevant to most of our members.” Ouch.

    In fairness, the concept of spending $3,500 for souped up snorkeling goggles in which to watch Netflix isn’t a relevant expense for a lot of people. The Apple Vision Pro might be “magic, until it’s not” or maybe “bulky and weird,” but even if it’s the perfect device of the future (future perfect?), it still probably isn’t the best place for the thing Peters sells: hours-long movies and series people want to binge-watch.

    The reluctance of Netflix and YouTube to go all-in on the Vision Pro actually highlights a problem that’s plagued virtual reality and mixed reality—specifically the former—for a long time: Watching long-form video in a headset sucks. James Cameron might find using one to be “religious,” but those who study headsets advise against keeping one on for the length of Avatar.

    Mixed reality “shouldn’t be used for hours at a time. Its strength has always been in its ability to provide us with special experiences, not with unending engagement,” says Jeremy Bailenson, the founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which just published a paper on the psychological implications of using mixed-reality devices with pass-through video technology like the Vision Pro’s. “MR is a special and intense medium.”

    Emphasis on the intense. Believe me when I say that I initially found the idea of a piece of technology that could sit on my face and envelop me in fantastical worlds to be thrilling. Almost 10 years ago to the day, while at the Sundance Film Festival, I tried my first VR film experience and marveled at the possibilities. Theoretically, at some point, Mark Zuckerberg did too. Then he dropped a cool $2 billion on Oculus and set a path to lead us all into the metaverse.

    The Monitor is a weekly column devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.

    But that part where people just chill in their headsets has always felt just out of reach. For years after that Sundance festival in 2014, I wrote about virtual-reality films. Oculus, after being acquired by Facebook, launched a filmmaking wing called Story Studio and made an animated short so good it made me cry. The idea of VR filmmaking became a hot topic at film festivals. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu won a special Oscar for a VR experience. Henry, that movie that got me teary, got an Emmy. Still, the highlights had run times that were shorter than the delivery time on a pizza.

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