THE GREEN LIGHT flashes and I dart forward under the watchful gaze of a giant pigtailed animatronic doll. The doll's eerie voice intones, "Red light." I try to stop short, but the vibrating electronic bracelet on my wrist tells me I've failed. If I were a character in Netflix's dystopian drama series Squid Game, I would be executed on the spot.
If I were on the recent reality spin-off Squid Game: The Challenge, I'd lose the chance to win millions. Luckily, I'm just a player in a Los Angeles live experience called Squid Game: The Trials, where fans pay to reenact the show's childish amusements like marbles and Red Light, Green Light. A big X simply appears across my photo on the leaderboard, and I exit through the gift shop.
If you ever wonder how serious Netflix is about winning the global streaming wars, keep in mind that it transformed a brutal South Korean critique of capitalism into a capitalist blockbuster with many tentacles. It had its squid and ate it too. "Legacy media businesses are all retreating because their linear businesses are decaying faster than they expected, and that is giving Netflix strength," says Rich Greenfield, an analyst for the research firm LightShed Partners. "The new strategy of legacy media companies is to slash content, slash marketing, jack prices, and pray for the best.” As for Netflix? At press time, its well-regarded film chief, Scott Stuber, had announced his departure, but a positive earnings report had the company’s stock surging. “They created the sandbox,” says a top Hollywood agent. “Everybody has it and everybody uses it. They’re the most powerful operator in the television space right now.”
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Bu hikaye Vanity Fair US dergisinin Hollywood 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Both Now Sides - Selena Gomez is seriously in loveand making the best work of her career. With the audacious Emilia Pérez hitting theaters and Only Murders in the Building returning to TV, the actor, singer, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate talks, about the climb
Selena Gomez is seriously in loveand making the best work of her career. With the audacious Emilia Pérez hitting theaters and Only Murders in the Building returning to TV, the actor, singer, entrepreneur, and mental health advocate talks, about the climb
Give and Let Give -Melinda French Gates is speaking out for the rights of women and girls, embracing her role as godmother to her fellow philanthropists, and getting political, even when it's a little uncomfortable.
Melinda French Gates is speaking out for the rights of women and girls, embracing her role as godmother to her fellow philanthropists, and getting political, even when it's a little uncomfortable.
Party Planning - Putin wants Trump to win, of course, and he's got big ideas about a new world order. Think Yalta-on Fiji
I don’t know which moment in US history former president Donald Trump imagines when he says, “Make America great again.” He has never given a definitive answer in any speech or interview. But I know exactly which moment Vladimir Putin imagines in his own vision for Russian greatness. It is February 1945, when Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill divided the world in Crimea.
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For more than two years, in the small, unassuming beach town of El Segundo, California, dozens of young men have gathered with a singular mission: to save America. They will do this, they say, by building the next generation of great tech companies. They call what they are building real shit—not like what the software engineers make up north, writing code on shiny MacBooks. Instead, these men have a taste for the tangible: They spend their workdays toiling in labs and manufacturing lines, their nights sleeping on couches and bunk beds. Some are making drones to try to control the weather. Others are building nuclear reactors and military weaponry designed to fight Russia and China.
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Another Country- Searching for James Baldwin in the South of France
Since James Baldwin's death nearly 40 years ago, the literary lion's final home, in the South of France, has drawn a procession of acolytes to the Provençal community of Saint-Paul de Vence, where he spent the last 17 years of his life.The 300-year-old villa in which he resided no longer exists: By 2019 developers had converted the site into a luxury apartment complex. But that hasn't deterred generations of admirers, inflamed and enlightened by Baldwin's prose, from making a pilgrimage. Including me. Seizing the occasion of the writer's centennial year, I paid a visit in April. My first stop was a table at a Baldwin hangout, the Café de la Place on Place du Général de Gaulle, for a croque monsieur and a double espresso.
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