South Park debuted in 1997, focussing on the exploits of four boys – Stan Marsh, Kyle Broflovski, Eric Cartman, and Kenny McCormick – in and around the town of South Park in Colorado, USA.

That changes after he meets Molotov Girl, operated by the real-life Millie, who helps him decipher what’s really going on around him. She enlists Guy to help her take on Antwan (Taika Waititi), the creator of Free City, who she claims stole her code and IP.

Fandango has revealed Vudu’s fate more than a year after it purchased the streaming platform from Walmart. No, Vudu isn’t going away. In fact, it’s merging with its parent company’s own streaming service, FandangoNow, to form a single platform that’ll take on Vudu’s name. Fandango told TechCrunch that it decided to retain Vudu’s branding, because it has a following that’s significantly larger than FandangoNow’s. According to data from the NPD Group, Vudu is in over 75 million TV-connected devices in the US and has more than 60 million registered users. 

As a result of the merge, Vudu will replace FandangoNow as Roku’s official movie and TV store. Roku devices will automatically update the app, and owners will be able to purchase the media they want using Roku Pay. The new Vudu will offer more than 200,000 movies and TV shows they can purchase, including new releases like F9: The Fast Saga, Pixar’s Luca, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Peter Rabbit 2, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, A Quiet Place Part II, Disney’s Cruella, Godzilla vs. Kong and In the Heights. Next Tuesday, Black Widow will arrive on the platform. If you’ll recall, Scarlett Johansson sued Disney for the movie’s simultaneous release in theatres and on Disney+, which reportedly cost the star over $50 million. 

Even though only the Vudu branding will remain, FandangoNow customers won’t lose access to their purchased content. They can now transfer their accounts to Vudu, where they’ll be able to access their TV and movie libraries like usual. 

In the film, Zola, played by Paige, strikes up a friendship with a customer, Stefani, played by Keough, who cajoles her into joining her for a weekend of partying in Tampa, Florida.

Two decades after the release of Bigger, Longer and Uncut, the first and only South Park movie to date, series creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone will produce 14 direct-to-streaming films for paramount+ as part of a new deal the two signed with ViacomCBS to keep the show on Comedy Central through 2027. According to Bloomberg, the agreement is worth more than $900 million over six years, easily eclipsing the approximately $500 million ATT subsidiary WarnerMedia spent in 2019 to secure exclusive streaming rights to the show for HBO Max.

Parker and Stone haven’t made a movie together since 2004’s Team America: World Police. The first two films included in their ViacomCBS deal will debut later this year. Stone told Bloomberg he and Parker plan to expand the world of South Park by using the movies as an opportunity to introduce new characters and concepts.

What the deal doesn’t include is streaming rights to the South Park TV series. As mentioned above, Viacom licensed those to WarnerMedia in 2019, and that agreement is still in place. However, the $900 million investment in the brand does suggest the company will attempt to bring the series to paramount+ eventually. 

ViacomCBS executive Chris McCarthy hinted as much in the press release announcing today’s news. “Matt and Trey are world-class creatives who brilliantly use their outrageous humor to skewer the absurdities of our culture and we are excited to expand and deepen our long relationship with them to help fuel paramount+ and Comedy Central,” he said. “Franchising marquee content like South Park and developing new IP with tremendous talent like Matt and Trey, is at the heart of our strategy to continue growing paramount+.”

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“In hindsight, it turned out to be a really great decision,” Donna Langley, the chair of Universal Filmed Entertainment Group, said in an interview on Saturday. “We had a range of scenarios from best to worst, and this is right there as the best.”

“F9,” directed by Justin Lin and starring Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez, isn’t the first movie to perform well since movie theaters began reopening their doors. paramount’s gamble to delay the release of “A Quiet Place 2” also paid off. While the studio sold off some of its other properties including “Coming 2 America,” and the forthcoming “The Tomorrow War” to streamers itching to get their hands on additional content, it held on to “A Quiet Place 2,” the John Krasinski-directed horror sequel, until Memorial Day weekend last month and has accrued $135 million in the United States and over $200 million worldwide.

Others haven’t been as lucky. Warner Bros. Entertainment’s “In the Heights,” for instance, has had a muted run in theaters despite rave reviews from critics. Since opening simultaneously in theaters and on the company’s streaming service, HBO Max, on June 11, the adaptation of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical has earned only $22.5 million.

“I would call the moviegoing market during the last month ‘tentative,’” said David A. Gross, who owns Franchise Entertainment Research, a movie consultancy. “It’s hard to get a clean read because of the muddle of streaming options — different for each movie.”

Indeed, the pandemic has only accelerated Hollywood’s interest in experimenting with release patterns for its feature films, and that flexibility is likely to continue into the foreseeable future.

By Marianne Garvey, CNN

Updated 12:35 PM ET, Wed August 4, 2021

Chrome, at least in its experimental Canary version on Android (and only for users in the U.S.), is getting an interesting update in the coming weeks that brings back RSS, the once-popular format for getting updates from all the sites you love in Google Reader and similar services.

In Chrome, users will soon see a “Follow” feature for sites that support RSS and the browser’s New Tab page will get what is essentially a (very) basic RSS reader — I guess you could almost call it a “Google Reader.”

Now we’re not talking about a full-blown RSS reader here. The New Tab page will show you updates from the sites you follow in chronological order, but it doesn’t look like you can easily switch between feeds, for example. It’s a start, though.

Image Credits: Google

“Today, people have many ways to keep up with their favorite websites, including subscribing to mailing lists, notifications and RSS. It’s a lot for any one person to manage, so we’re exploring how to simplify the experience of getting the latest and greatest from your favorite sites directly in Chrome, building on the open RSS web standard,” Janice Wong, product manager, Google Chrome, writes in today’s update. “Our vision is to help people build a direct connection with their favorite publishers and creators on the web.”

A Google spokesperson told me that the way the company has implemented this is to have Google crawl RSS feeds “more frequently to ensure Chrome will be able to deliver the latest and greatest content to users in the Following section on the New Tab page.”

RSS was one of the fundamental technologies of the Web 2.0 era. Even today, it’s still the easiest way to get timely updates from your favorite sites (though some may not offer feeds anymore) without any recommendation algorithms getting in your way. Yet while RSS was always extremely useful, the user experience wasn’t always ideal, though services like Google Reader (RIP) and Feedly did a lot to make it simple enough to subscribe to feeds and get updates. But when Google offered Google Reader at the altar of Google+ back in 2013, that era came to an end, even as diehard news junkies kept holding on to their Feedly accounts and old copies of NetNewsWire.

I think a lot of people will be glad to see that Google is bringing it back as a core feature of its browser. If you prefer an open web, RSS, for all its occasional clumsiness, is the way to go.

For now, though, this is only an experiment. Google says it wants to gather feedback from “publishers, bloggers, creators, and citizens of the open web” as it aims to build “deeper engagement between users and web publishers in Chrome.” Hopefully, it won’t stay this way.

RSS is undead

Google’s FeedBurner moves to a new infrastructure but loses its email subscription service

Staying ahead of the curve on Google’s Core Web Vitals

Maybe it’s just us, but when we see people in period clothing singing catchy modern pop songs, we’re instantly transported back to 2001. That was when a young actor named Heath Ledger (along with Paul Bettany, Alan Tudyk, and others) gave us A Knight’s Tale, a fun medieval adventure film filled with modern music. What follows is certainly not that but the vibe is there and we aren’t mad at it.

The movie in question here is Cinderella, written and directed by Pitch Perfect writer Kay Cannon. It stars pop star Camila Cabello as the title character in what looks like a fairly modern retelling of the classic story. There are lots of other stars along the way—and definitely some Knight’s Tale flavor too—so check out the new trailer.

The appearance of James Corden, who seemingly pops up anywhere these days if there’s a musical, might be off-putting to some, but look at everyone else. Idina Menzel! Billy Porter! Pierce Brosnan! And yes, that’s even Minnie Driver! Cannon has put together a stacked cast with a Cinderella who, obviously, can sing quite well considering her numerous chart-topping hits. No, it’s not a movie for everyone, but the film certainly feels like it’s going to find an audience.

Cinderella comes exclusively to Amazon on September 3 which is really quite soon. That might leave you wondering why you’re maybe just hearing about this film now. Well, that because it was supposed to be a theatrical release through Sony earlier in 2021. But, after all the release date changes due to covid-19, it got pushed back to summer, and then sold to Amazon, much like paramount’s Coming 2 America and The Tomorrow War. Hence the September release date. But again, a film that seems like it’s aimed at a younger audiences feels right at home on streaming, where young people who become obsessed with this whimsical world can watch it again and again.

Wondering where our RSS feed went? You can pick the new up one here.