Daniel Whitehill

Video streaming site Hulu announced today that it's doing away with its ad-supported service where users could watch TV shows for free if they watched ads during programming. Going forward, Hulu will require a paid Hulu Plus subscription.

As reported by Variety, the move comes as Hulu inked a new distribution deal with Yahoo. As part of this, Yahoo will launch Yahoo View, an ad-supported TV streaming site that lets viewers watch the five most recent episodes of ABC, NBC, and Fox shows eight days after their original air dates. There will be programming from other networks, as well as clips, and full seasons of anime and "Korean drama," too.

According to Variety, the subscription-only path puts Hulu in a better position to go up against Netflix and Amazon Prime. Hulu Plus packages are offered for $8/month (limited commercials) and $12/month (no commercials).

The change-up comes just a week after Time Warner announced it would pay $583 million to purchase a 10 percent share of Hulu. As part of this, TNT, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, TruTV, Boomerang, and Turner Classic Movies programming will be available on Hulu. However, the deal does not cover Time Warner's HBO.

A desktop version of Yahoo View is available now, while mobile versions are coming later.

We don't yet know what's next for Rockstar, but we do know that we should find out relatively quickly. Without any degree of specificity, some sort of reveal is coming in the near-ish future.

During a quarterly investors' call (and as reported by GameSpot), parent company Take-Two Interactive said "Rockstar Games is also hard at work on some exciting future projects that will be revealed soon." Yes, it's about as vague as possible. But, it's also the most that could be said without tipping Rockstar's hand and also while not misleading investors.

As for exactly when the announcement is coming, that's anyone's guess. Rockstar has never kowtowed to the marketing cycle of conventional industry practices. We'll just wake up one day to news of Grand Theft Auto 6, 7, and 8, Agent, and Bully Harder.

Rockstar Will Reveal New Projects "Soon," GTA 5 Still Going Strong [GameSpot]

As everyone knows from the stories and stories about highly esteemed thespian Jared Leto going full method to play The Joker in Suicide Squad, highly esteemed thespian Jared Leto went full method to play The Joker in Suicide Squad. Jared spent time with mental patients who had been institutionalized and tried to freak out his co-stars by sending them all sorts of *~OhSoCraZy~* presents like a live rat, bullets, a dead hog, butt beads, condoms full of cum, etc…etc… But well, a ton of reviews are out and some critics think that Jared beat a hog to death with cum-filled condoms (that’s how the hog died, right?) for NOTHING, because The Joker is hardly in Suicide Squad and he hardly comes close to topping Heath Ledger’s Joker.

Suicide Squad currently has a whopping 34% on Rotten Tomatoes thanks to the mostly shitty reviews it’s getting. It looks like Margot Robbie, Viola Davis and Will Smith got praise for doing the most with what they had to work with. Many critics say that Suicide Squad is like a bedazzled turd. It’s pretty and shiny, but mostly a mess. Strangely enough, I’m pretty sure a bedazzled turd was another gift that Jared sent his co-stars.

Here’s some choice quotes from some choice reviews:

Suicide Squad is bad. Not fun bad. Not redeemable bad. Not the kind of bad that is the unfortunate result of artists honorably striving for something ambitious and falling short. Suicide Squad is just bad. It’s ugly and boring, a toxic combination that means the film’s highly fetishized violence doesn’t even have the exciting tingle of the wicked or the taboo. – Vanity Fair

As storytelling, Suicide Squad is the worst of the worst, but it’s no different in kind from the best of the best. This is all just high-priced junk. – Vulture

Suicide Squad feels like it was re-drafted in the editing room. It’s clumsy, disrupted by at least eight different plodding flashbacks, filled with lines of dialogue that cut well into trailers but make zero sense in context, and patched up with an embarrassment of rock-along musical cues.  – A.V. Club

A puzzlingly confused undertaking that never becomes as cool as it thinks it is, Suicide Squad assembles an all-star team of supervillains and then doesn’t know what to do with them. – The Hollywood Reporter

Jared Leto creates a surprisingly sensual Joker, a Joker who likes to cradle people’s faces in his hands while he’s talking to them. Like Tony Montana if Jim Carrey had starred in “Scarface,” Leto is part gangster and part clown, but he’s not really part of this movie. [Director David] Ayer never finds anything for the character to do, and so Leto’s role is reduced to a glorified cameo, a prelude to a more significant performance in a future installment. – Indiewire

All that talk about Jared Leto going super-Method to play the Joker, tormenting his castmates and whatnot, has led only to a lukewarm display of villainy that, it turns out, teeters on the line between small supporting role and outright cameo. After all that, Leto’s Joker is barely in the damn movie, and when he is, he’s entirely underwhelming. – Vanity Fair

When you’ve got model-turned-actress Cara Delevingne as one of your chief villains, and she’s writhing and wriggling about in embarrassing fashion, spouting lines that make Dothraki sound like Shakespeare, you’re not just dipping your toes into camp territory, you’re getting soaked. – The Chicago Sun-Times

That last one really sold me and I am fully ready to worship Cara DeliVines as our new Camp Queen!

Suicide Squad is still going to make $15,698,989,984 at the box office and will make another $17,983,984,983 in merchandising. So there will probably be a sequel, which means that the cast should go ahead and start stocking up on antibiotics, because Jared Leto is going to try to outdo his “method gifts” by giving them jewelry made out of his dried tonsil stones and sculptures molded out of ripped-off herpes sores.

And here’s some pictures from last night’s NYC premiere including some of Margot Robbie looking like a glorious unicorn sorceress and a Gucci-covered Jared Leto looking like a Sgt. Pepper era Beatle as reimagined by Ed Hardy.

Pics: Wenn.com

This is a surprise—Netflix’s rejuvenation of dystopian British anthology series Black Mirror is a lot closer than we expected. We’ve heard about the tantalizing casting for a while, but now we know when we’ll finally be able to watch it.

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Pokemon Go is already a massive hit, and now it can claim the title of most popular mobile game in United States history. According to new data from SurveyMonkey, Pokemon Go reached just under 21 million daily active users this week, beating out Candy Crush's previous record of 20 million.

An important thing to note is that Candy Crush had 93 million total daily active users at its peak on a global basis, but this report is for the US only. Pokemon Go is not available everywhere yet--it was only just released in the UK today.

The SurveyMonkey data also posits that, if current growth rates continue (on Android), Pokemon Go is poised to pass Snapchat "within a couple of days." Additionally, Pokemon Go might be able to overtake Google's own Google Maps, which would be quite an achievement.

Another thing to bear in mind is that, despite the huge amount of hype around Pokemon Go, there is no guarantee that it will continue to perform.

"History hasn't always been kind to games that generate tremendous hype," it reported. "Back in 2012, Draw Something consumed the public consciousness for a few weeks before its user numbers dropped like a stone. Nintendo's last mobile game, Miitomo, met a similar fate, finding early success that was ultimately unsustainable."

Pokemon Go was not made by Nintendo, but instead Niantic Labs. The Google spinoff produced the title in collaboration with The Pokemon Company, which is partly owned by Nintendo. This may explain why Nintendo's share price soared after the game's release.

The game is free, but players can spend real money on microtransactions. According to a recent report, the game has already brought in more than $14 million. Additionally, sponsored locations, including possibly McDonald's, are coming to the game.

Pokemon Go--which challenges players to catch Pokemon in the real world and also helps sell pizza--launched last week and has become a phenomenon on a level that Niantic might not have even imagined.

Recently, it was reported that in wake of the game's huge success, Hollywood studios are scrambling to sign a deal for the Pokemon movie rights. In other news, two US Marines who were playing Pokemon Go helped catch an attempted murder suspect this week in California. Additionally, authorities in New York said Pokemon Go was partly to blame for a horrible-looking car crash.

For more on Pokemon Go, check out GameSpot's review.

Chuck Tingle, famous author of sexy stories , has after a few days of furious writing released a $3 piece of Pokémon Go erotica. It features, believe it or not, lots of balls. And butts.

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In the wake of its tremendous popularity, everyone’s wondering about is how Pokémon Go intends to make money. In addition to in-app purchases, Niantic chief John Hanke has said that the game intends to create “sponsored locations,” as they did with their earlier game Ingress. And a few enterprising Redditors apparently figured out who the company’s first customer will be.

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The long-awaited adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower has been in production for several weeks. Lead actor Idris Elba was pictured on-set in May, and now co-star Matthew McConaughey has been revealed, in full costume as the Man in Black. Check the images below, via Lilja's Library:

Elba is playing gunslinger Roland Deschain, while McConaughey's character is a demonic sorcerer also known as Walter Padick. It is directed by Nikolaj Arcel, who previously helmed the Oscar-nominated A Royal Affair.

The film is based on King's fantasy series, which encompasses eight novels, written between 1982 and 2012. The books blend classic western themes with horror, sci-fi, and fantasy.

In May, the author revealed that while the book's famous opening lines would kick off the movie, audiences should expect a few changes. "I expect that the movie will start where the books start," he told the EW Podcast. "Y'know, 'The man in black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.' I think that nails it right in place for people. I've been pretty insistent on that, and I think everyone's onboard with it."

However, King went on to explain that from that point, the movie will deviate from the book. He stated: "It starts sort of in medias res, in the middle of the story, instead of at the beginning, which may upset some of the fans a little bit. But they will get behind it, because it is the story."

The Dark Tower arrives in theaters on February 23, 2017.

Pokemon Go, the newly released mobile game that challenges players to catch Pokemon in the real world, reached the top of the charts for its release last week. Now, a new report puts the game's enormity into perspective, claiming it is bigger than dating app Tinder.

According to data from SimilarWeb (via Business Insider), as of July 8, Pokemon Go was installed on 5.16 percent of all Android devices in the US. That number may not seem huge, but there are more than 1 billion Android devices out there today. For comparison, Pokemon Go is well ahead of Tinder when it comes to installs on US Android phones.

Some other impressive Pokemon Go stats are centered around engagement. More than 60 percent of people who downloaded the app are using it every day, the report said. Additionally, Pokemon Go is reportedly closing in on overtaking the well known and widely used social networking site Twitter when it comes to its number of daily active users.

Another standout stat is that, as of July 8, people are using Pokemon Go for an average of 43 minutes and 23 seconds every day. That's higher than Whatsapp, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger.

For more, check out the full blog post on the SimilarWeb blog. Bear in mind that these numbers are only for US Android users; the game is also available for iOS devices. Pokemon Go is coming to international markets, such as Canada and Europe, but not right now.

Although Pokemon Go is not made by Nintendo, the game appears to be helping the Japanese game giant's business significantly. Shares initially rose by 10 percent last week after the game launched. Now, on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Nintendo shares jumped by as much as 25 percent, the biggest single-day increase since 1983, according to Bloomberg.

Pokemon Go is developed by Niantic Labs, in collaboration with The Pokemon Company. Nintendo owns a part of that company, which may explain the surging stock price.

The game is free, though there are some items players can spend real-money to acquire. Given the game's massive userbase, those microtransactions may prove to be lucrative.

In other news about Pokemon Go, Niantic Labs has laid out some of its plans for new features coming in the future such as a trading system and improvements to AR.

For lots more on Pokemon Go, check out GameSpot's roundup of everything you need to know. Keep checking back with GameSpot for more on Pokemon Go.

Following this weekend's UFC 200, it has now been confirmed that the league itself has been sold for $4 billion. The New York Times reports that talent agency WME-IMG has purchased the league with backing from private equity companies such as Silver Lake, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, and billionaire Michael Dell's private investment firm.

An official announcement is expected as soon as later today, July 11, but UFC president Dana White already confirmed the sale to ESPN. According to the sports media giant, $4 billion represents the biggest transaction for an organization in sports history.

The UFC's main owners, casino investor brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, bought the league in 2000 for only $2 million. They run the UFC under a company called Zuffa (which means "fight" in Italian) and are expected to stay on as minority investors after the deal goes through.

In May, Dana White appeared on the Dan Patrick Show and addressed rumors of a UFC sale.

"We're not up for sale," White said, as reported by the Review Journal. "We're always working on deals and our expansion globally. I've been saying since this thing came out, 'No, we're not for sale.' But let me tell you what--if somebody shows up with $4 billion, we can talk."

Here is what he said today on Twitter after the story broke:

What the sale might mean for the EA Sports UFC video game franchise, if anything, remains to be seen. We have contacted the publisher in an attempt to get more details.

The latest game in the series, EA Sports UFC 2, launched in March for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Welp. Everyone knew this would happen, right? Pokémon Go makes use of your camera, and you can take a picture of whatever you’d like while playing, after all. (NSFW content ahead!)

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Light beer is as American as apple pie, and Miller Lite is one of America’s favorite light beers. But what if I told you that the marketing man behind the creation of the Miller Lite brand was investigated by the FBI for being a communist? That’s the startling revelation that has come to light based on newly released documents that I obtained today from the National Archives.

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The upcoming Power Ranger movie will differ significantly from the '90s TV show--and that may be for the best. That's according to Zordon actor Bryan Cranston, who recently spoke to The Huffington Post about the dramatic differences that exist between the show and the film.

Cranston, who did voicework for the show and is even the inspiration for the Blue Ranger's name, said he was reticent to even look at the role because of the show's "farcical and silly" nature. After he read the script and spoke with the producer and director, however, he decided it was a project he wanted to be involved with because it goes in a different direction.

The Breaking Bad actor specifically cited the differences between the Batman TV series and the Batman movies franchise as an example of the path Power Rangers is going down.

"You can't compare those two, and nor can you compare this movie version of the Power Rangers to that television series. It's unrecognizable for the most part," he explained. "There are tenets of the folklore that you hold onto for sure, but the inspiration is different, and the sensibility of it, and the approach to the film making is completely different."

Cranston specified that he was referring to Christopher Nolan's Batman movie series. He also mentioned that the tone for the new Power Rangers movie is possibly not as dark as the Batman films "because you're dealing with teenagers" in large part as opposed to adults.

Overall, the Power Rangers film will cover things like "real teenage life," including cliques and popularity (and non-popularity), as well as bullies and insecurities that teens have.

"You embrace all of that into a retelling of the Power Rangers. And what you would get is this new version, this new reimagined version," he said.

Power Rangers opens in theaters on March 24, 2017. The cast includes Elizabeth Banks as villain Rita Repulsa, while the Rangers are played by Dacre Montgomery (Red Ranger), RJ Cyler (Blue Ranger), Becky G (Yellow Ranger), Ludi Lin (Black Ranger), and Naomi Scott (Pink Ranger). You can check out the new Power Rangers' costumes here--they kind of look like something out of Halo.

The rebooted Power Rangers movie could be the first of many. In a conference call with analysts, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said the production company is "really, really excited about the Power Rangers movie" and "could see doing five or six or seven."

With the dust still settling after the dramatic season six finale of Game of Thrones, it can feel overwhelming to think about all the unanswered questions that will need resolution over the course of what are expected to be the show's final two seasons.

But one big mystery that didn't even get a nod in the sixth season is the fate of Gendry, the former King's Landing rascal and apprentice blacksmith who seems to be the only living heir to the Baratheon line left in Westeros.

Gendry's HistoryWhen we last saw Gendry, Ser Davos had just saved his life and helped him escape Dragonstone in a rowboat at the end of the third season — but his story started way, way back in the first season.

We first met Gendry when Ned Stark was in King's Landing, serving as Hand of the King under Robert Baratheon and slowly uncovering the truth about the death of his predecessor, Jon Arryn. Ned realizes that Gendry is Robert's bastard son, but doesn't tell him. Read More