Forty years ago, Nintendo was the little guy Universal tried to crush over a cartoon gorilla. Nintendo won, fair and square. Today it’s the one sending cease-and-desists to robbed card shops and bricking consoles, and the company it once beat is now its theme-park partner.

Nintendo may be in the middle of a villain arc, and the wild part is that the company seems to be the only one who hasn’t noticed.

This is the company that made so many childhoods. Mario, Zelda, the GameBoy under the covers.

But to many, we’re now watching a beloved underdog slowly turn into the exact kind of corporate bully it once beat in court, and wondering when somebody in Kyoto is going to look up and see it.

Let’s walk through how we got here.

How Nintendo became the underdog hero in the Donkey Kong case

Here’s the origin story a lot of people have forgotten. In 1982, Nintendo was the David, not the Goliath.

Universal City Studios came after Nintendo claiming Donkey Kong infringed on King Kong. Universal didn’t just sue Nintendo, either. It sent cease-and-desist letters to Nintendo’s licensees, companies like Coleco, Tiger Electronics, and Milton Bradley, threatening them and demanding a cut of every sale. Most of them, scared of a long legal fight, just paid up.

Nintendo refused. With attorney John Kirby leading the defense, the company stood its ground and discovered something delicious: Universal had previously argued in court that King Kong was in the public domain, when it suited them. They didn’t even own the thing they were suing over.

Nintendo won. In 1984 the appeals court upheld it, and the judges found Universal had acted in bad faith, bringing the claim just to grab a piece of Donkey Kong’s profits.

Nintendo collected millions in damages. The little Japanese game company had beaten a Hollywood giant that tried to bully it and its partners over IP it didn’t hold.

That makes the next parts of the story even more ironic.

Nintendo’s cease-and-desist over a Pokémon shop that got robbed

Fast forward to 2026. A small Pokémon card shop in New York, then called Poké Court, was held up at gunpoint during a community craft night. Three armed robbers, roughly $100,000 in stolen cards, customers with a gun in their faces.

The community rallied. Support poured in. And that outpouring of attention is, apparently, exactly what put the shop on Nintendo’s radar, because shortly after, Nintendo contacted the owners over the name and the Poké Ball logo, and the shop was forced to rebrand to Trainer Court.

The store got robbed. The community lifted it back up. And the reward for surviving was a trademark notice from the most powerful company in gaming. Whatever the legal merits, the optics are exactly what you’d expect from a cartoon villain, not from Mario’s house.

It’s not an isolated thing, either. It’s a pattern.

Nintendo keeps shutting down its own fan tournaments

Ask the Super Smash Bros. community, who have spent years as collateral damage.

In 2020, Nintendo hit The Big House Online with a cease-and-desist that killed the entire tournament. Its crime? Using a fan-made mod called Slippi that added the online netcode the community needed to compete during a pandemic when meeting in person could get people killed. Nintendo shut it down anyway. The hashtag #FreeMelee trended, and went unanswered.

The next year, Nintendo came for Riptide, forcing it to drop its Project+ event, a tournament that was entirely offline and required legitimate disc copies, so piracy wasn’t even on the table. Then in 2022 it pulled the plug on the Smash World Tour, an entire circuit with a championship finale, leaving organizers blindsided.

These aren’t pirates or counterfeiters. They’re the company’s own most devoted fans, building community around games they bought, and Nintendo keeps treating them like an infestation.

“You don’t own your games”: the Switch 2 bricking clause

Then there’s the ownership question, which might be the one that matters most long-term.

When the Switch 2 launched in 2025, Nintendo updated its user agreement with language giving it the right to render a console “permanently unusable in whole or in part” if it decides you’ve broken the rules. The same agreement spells out that your games are “licensed, not sold,” and that digital purchases can’t be resold or transferred. You’re renting, and the landlord holds a remote kill switch.

The clause drew enough heat that Brazil’s consumer-protection agency, PROCON-SP, formally challenged it as abusive under Brazilian law. Buyers were even warned about used Switch 2 units, since a console could already be bricked before resale.

This is the future a lot of fans see coming: a world where you pay full price and own nothing, where the box on your shelf works only as long as a corporation lets it. And Nintendo is planting the flag.

The fair case for Nintendo, because it exists

Now let me argue the other side honestly, because a villain arc isn’t the same as a one-sided hit job, and Nintendo isn’t cartoonishly wrong about everything.

Trademark law genuinely is use-it-or-lose-it. If Nintendo doesn’t defend the Poké Ball mark, it can weaken its ability to defend it later, so the lawyers have a real, boring reason to send those letters, even the ugly-looking ones. The anti-piracy logic is real too; emulation and ROM piracy do cost the company money, and protecting that isn’t villainy on its face.

And the bricking clause, as much as it stings, isn’t unique. Sony’s PS5 agreement contains similar remedies for hacked hardware, and attorneys say console makers are likely within their legal rights. Nintendo is the loudest and most aggressive about it, but it didn’t invent the practice.

The point isn’t that Nintendo has no reasons. It’s that “technically defensible” and “the behavior of a company people love” have drifted very far apart.

You can be within your rights and still be the bad guy in the story.

Nintendo is now running Universal’s old playbook, with Universal

Which brings us back to 1982, and the irony that ties this whole thing in a bow.

Look at what Universal did to Nintendo back then: targeted the licensees and small partners, leaned on legal threats over contested IP, tried to extract money through intimidation rather than the courtroom. The court called it bad faith. Nintendo was the sympathetic underdog who refused to fold.

Today, Nintendo is the company chasing the small fry, the card shops, the tournament organizers, the modders, over IP claims of wildly varying merit. It’s playing 1982 Universal’s role almost beat for beat.

The Palworld lawsuit, where Nintendo is pursuing patents it filed after the game already existed and has narrowed its own case down to versions of the game that no longer run, is just the highest-profile version of the same instinct.

And here’s the kicker. Nintendo and Universal are now partners. Super Nintendo World is one of the biggest draws at Universal’s theme parks, with Donkey Kong’s own expansion. The gorilla Universal once tried to sue out of existence is now selling Universal park tickets. The two combatants buried the hatchet and went into business, and somewhere along the way, Nintendo picked up its old enemy’s tactics.

The underdog forgot what it was

The thing about a villain arc is that it usually happens to someone who was the hero once. That’s what makes it a tragedy instead of just a story about a jerk.

Nintendo earned a mountain of goodwill over forty years. The games are still, genuinely, among the best in the world. But goodwill is a bank account, and the company has been making withdrawal after withdrawal, suing the robbed, shutting down the faithful, and quietly redefining “owning a game” into “renting one until further notice.”

John Kirby’s Nintendo fought the bully and won because it had the moral high ground and the law on its side. The Nintendo of 2026 still has the law, mostly. The high ground is the part it’s losing, one cease-and-desist at a time. And the company that once beat Goliath should remember how that story is supposed to end, before it finishes turning into him.

This op-ed reflects the views of the author.

ClownfishTV.com strives to be an apolitical, balanced and based pop culture news outlet. However, our contributors are entitled to their individual opinions. Author opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of our video hosts, other site contributors, site editors, affiliates, sponsors or advertisers.

Hat Tips:

• Justia and Casemine (court records) (1983-1986), verified for the Universal City Studios v. Nintendo rulings, the public-domain argument, the bad-faith finding, and the damages award

• Dexerto, Kotaku, and GameSpot (February 2026), verified for the Poké Court/Trainer Court robbery, the $100,000 figure, and the Nintendo trademark contact following the community support

• Kotaku, Game Developer, and TechRaptor (2020-2022), verified for The Big House Online, Riptide, and Smash World Tour shutdowns, the Slippi detail, and the #FreeMelee response

• Ars Technica, Game Rant, and Nintendo Wire (May-July 2025), verified for the Switch 2 EULA bricking clause, the “licensed not sold” language, the PROCON-SP legal challenge, and the comparison to Sony’s PS5 agreement

• Flickering Myth and Little Big Campus (2024-2026), verified for the Donkey Kong case narrative, the John Kirby defense, and the Universal licensee-pressure campaign

• Dexerto and Games Fray (June 2026), verified for the current Palworld lawsuit status and the post-filing patent strategy

It opened the season pegged at $55 million-plus. Now analysts are floating a $39 million low. We’ve watched a DC movie melt like this on the way to release before, and that one at least had Michael Keaton’s Batman to sell.

The numbers on Supergirl are going the wrong direction, and they’re not stopping.

When tracking first opened, Deadline had Milly Alcock‘s Kara Zor-El pegged for a domestic debut north of $55 million. Every update since has shaved a little more off. It slid to around $51 million, then settled into a $45 to $55 million range, and now Box Office Theory is floating a downside scenario as low as $39 million.

That’s a number that didn’t exist in this conversation a month ago.

A steady slide, not a stumble

Here’s the part that should worry Warner Bros., and it’s the shape of the drop more than the drop itself.

A movie can take a bad tracking hit and recover. What Supergirl is doing is sliding a little further every single week as the release date gets closer, which is the opposite of how this is supposed to go. The closer you get to opening, the more locked-in the audience interest usually is.

This one keeps leaking.

The $51 million figure isn’t just one bearish outlet, either. Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported the same number this week, citing the firm NRG, so the slide is showing up across the people who do this for a living, not just the fan sites.

And $39 million, if it lands anywhere near there, would open below The Marvels, the $47 million debut that became Marvel’s shorthand for superhero fatigue.

We’ve seen a DC movie melt like this before

If the pattern feels familiar, it should. This is almost exactly what happened to The Flash.

That one started with wildly optimistic projections too, some of them well into nine figures, riding early buzz and a “best superhero movie ever” quote Warner was happy to let circulate. Then the number came down. And down. By the time it actually opened in June 2023, it landed at $55 million and is now remembered as one of the most expensive box office failures the old DC regime ever produced.

So a DC tentpole watching its tracking erode week after week on the way to release isn’t new. We have the receipt.

The difference is the safety net, and Supergirl doesn’t have one

But here’s where the comparison gets interesting, because the two movies aren’t melting from the same height.

The Flash had a gimmick to sell, and it was a big one: Michael Keaton back in the cowl as Batman for the first time since 1992, plus a multiverse stuffed with cameos. Whatever you thought of the movie, that footage gave Warner a thing to put in every trailer, the kind of nostalgia hook that pulls in people who don’t read tracking reports. And The Flash still opened at $55 million.

Supergirl doesn’t have a Keaton. It has Alcock, who’s earning real praise, and Jason Momoa‘s Lobo, who’s getting strong early reactions, but no decades-old legacy hook to bait the casual crowd. It’s a relatively unknown lead in a franchise that’s one year and one fine-not-amazing Superman into a hard reboot. If $39 million is even on the table for a movie carrying the most famous surname in comics, that’s the absence of a safety net showing up in the math.

The Toy Story problem on top of everything

And the calendar is rubbing salt in it.

Supergirl opens June 26, the same weekend Pixar’s Toy Story 5 hits its second lap after a debut tracking north of $140 million. Run the math on a normal Pixar hold and Toy Story 5‘s second weekend alone clears Supergirl‘s entire opening. So the most likely outcome is Kara debuting at number two, losing her own opening weekend to a cartoon that’s already been out a week.

None of this is destiny. The first reactions are genuinely positive, and strong word of mouth could firm the number up between now and Friday. A movie people like can outrun bad tracking.

But tracking that falls this steadily, this close to release, usually knows something, and the last time we watched a DC movie do this exact slide, it had Batman in its back pocket and still belly-flopped.

Supergirl is making the same descent with less to break the fall.

This article was brought to you in part by The Reefers of more.clownfishtv.com. Subscribers there get the full Clownfish TV podcast feed including livestreams and members-only episodes that don’t make it to the free side, plus articles like this one delivered to their inbox. Free subscribers get the articles. Paid subscribers get everything.

While you’re at it, subscribe to Clownfish TV on YouTube at @ClownfishTV, where new episodes drop daily, and catch the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeart.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

Hat Tips:

• Box Office Theory (June 18, 2026), verified for the slide from the $45–$55 million range to a $39 million downside scenario and the original tracking history

• Puck, via Matthew Belloni (June 18, 2026), verified for the $51 million NRG tracking figure, corroborating the decline beyond a single outlet

• Deadline (2026), verified for the original $55 million-plus opening projection and the $175 million net production cost

• Box Office Mojo, verified for The Flash’s $55 million June 2023 opening, The Marvels’ $47 million debut, and Superman’s $122–125 million 2025 opening

• ComicBookMovie and TechTimes (June 2026), verified for the positive first reactions, the Toy Story 5 calendar conflict, and the test-screening and runtime history

Elon Musk’s rocket company had the biggest IPO in history, spiked to an all-time high, and gave a chunk of it back over two ugly days. “Crash” is a strong word for a stock that’s still green.

SpaceX went public a week ago, shot to the moon, and then did the one thing rockets are supposed to avoid. It came back down.

But before anyone declares a disaster, the number on the screen: SPCX closed June 18 at $185, up 14.3% and $23.15 over five days. Green, not red. That’s not a crash. That’s a stock that ran too hot and let off some steam.

What actually happened to the stock

Here’s the week in order, because the order is the whole story.

SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share on June 12, in the largest public offering in history, raising about $75 billion. It opened at $150, popped 19% the first day, and then kept climbing. By June 16 it hit an all-time high of $225.64, a 67% gain in three days, before the company had filed a single earnings report as a public entity.

Then it turned. The stock fell two straight sessions, dropping as much as 10% intraday Thursday before trimming the loss, closing at $185 with after-hours trading nudging it to around $181.60. From the Tuesday peak, that’s about a 20% drop. From the IPO price, it’s still up better than a third, at a market cap near $2.43 trillion, which makes SpaceX the sixth-largest company on Earth even on a bad day.

So the headlines calling it a crash back to Earth are doing a little tabloid stretching. It cooled off. Hard, but off a vertical run that was never going to hold.

Why the rocket stalled

The reversal wasn’t one thing. It was four, stacked up over 48 hours.

On June 16, the same day as the peak, SpaceX announced it was buying Anysphere, the company behind the AI coding tool Cursor, for $60 billion in stock. A company that had just raised $75 billion turning around to spend $60 billion of its own freshly minted shares raised an obvious question about dilution and about how much money this business actually needs.

The next day, the Federal Reserve held interest rates steady, which knocked the broader market and ended SpaceX’s winning streak. June 17 also happened to be the first day options traded on SPCX, which finally gave short sellers a clean way to bet against it. And Bloomberg reported the company was lining up a $20 billion bond offering on top of everything else, partly to refinance a loan due in 2027.

Stack a giant acquisition, a rate hold, the arrival of the shorts, and a fresh debt raise, and a stock priced for perfection does exactly what this one did.

The bull and bear cases are absurdly far apart

This is where it gets strange, because Wall Street cannot agree on what this company is worth, and the gap is enormous.

Start with the tell hiding in plain sight on the stock page: the P/E ratio is blank. A dash. You can’t calculate price-to-earnings on a company that has no earnings to divide by, and SpaceX posted a $4.9 billion net loss for 2025, a reversal from a profitable 2024, driven mostly by its February merger with Musk’s AI outfit xAI, which burns cash at a staggering rate. The only consistently profitable piece of the whole operation is Starlink, the satellite internet business.

So how do you value that? Depends entirely on which analyst you ask. Morningstar cut its fair value estimate to $62 a share after the Cursor deal, which would imply something like 65% downside from where it’s trading and would be an actual crash. On the other end, Arete Research opened coverage at $401, betting Starlink and the AI bolt-ons carry it to a $5 trillion-plus valuation inside a year. Same company, same week, and a price-target spread of more than six to one.

That’s not analysis converging on a number. That’s a coin flip with a trillion dollars riding on it.

So is it crashing or not?

Depends on when you bought, which is the honest answer to almost every IPO question.

If you got in at the $135 offer price, you’re up nicely and a two-day dip is noise. If you chased it at $225 on Tuesday because the line was going up, you’re down 20% and wondering what happened. Both of those people own the same stock.

What’s clear is that the underlying business didn’t change this week. Starlink still makes money, the launch business still set records, and the losses still come from the expensive AI bet Musk strapped on. The stock moved on dilution, debt, and the simple fact that nothing climbs 67% in three days and stays there. Whether the next move is back toward $225 or down toward Morningstar’s $62 is the thing nobody can tell you yet, and anyone who says they can is guessing with conviction.

This article was brought to you in part by The Reefers of more.clownfishtv.com. Subscribers there get the full Clownfish TV podcast feed including livestreams and members-only episodes that don’t make it to the free side, plus articles like this one delivered to their inbox. Free subscribers get the articles. Paid subscribers get everything.

While you’re at it, subscribe to Clownfish TV on YouTube at @ClownfishTV, where new episodes drop daily, and catch the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeart.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

Hat Tips:

• Bloomberg (June 18, 2026), verified for SPCX falling 3.6% Thursday, the two-day 8.3% decline, the stock ending its first week up on the IPO price, and the ~$2.4 trillion market cap

• Yahoo Finance (June 18, 2026), verified for the second-day drop, the broken three-day winning streak after the Fed rate hold, and the reported $20 billion bond offering

• TheStreet and Reuters (June 18, 2026), verified for the $60 billion Anysphere/Cursor acquisition, the ~20% drop from the June 16 peak, and Morningstar cutting fair value to $62

• CNBC (June 12, 2026), verified for the $135 IPO price, the 19% first-day gain, the $75 billion raise, and the xAI acquisition context

• Multiple analyst notes (June 2026), verified for the Morningstar $62 and Arete Research $401 price targets framing the bull-bear split

UK filings show Jurassic World Dominion cost $658.8 million, topping Disney’s The Force Awakens. The pandemic shoot ran so long the cast ran up a $600-a-night hotel tab, which by Disney World standards is a bargain.

There’s a new record holder for the most expensive movie ever made, and it has dinosaurs in it.

Money, uh, finds a way.

According to financial filings dug up by Fortune, Universal spent $658.8 million making 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion. That edges out the old champ, Disney’s 2015 Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which ran $638.9 million. Universal takes the crown from Disney.

How Jurassic World Dominion hit $659 million

The number got that big mostly because of when it was made.

Dominion shot in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, which turned a normal blockbuster into a money pit. Universal had to run costly safety protocols, eat months of delays that pushed the release back a full year, and keep paying for soundstages and leased gear it couldn’t return without losing access.

It also kept producers and department heads on the payroll through the downtime just to make sure they’d still be available whenever filming could resume. Idle is expensive when the whole industry is frozen.

The $600-a-night hotel that dented the budget

Here’s the detail that turns a spreadsheet into a story.

During a five-month quarantine, the A-list cast was put up at Marriott’s Langley Hotel, an 18th-century manor near Pinewood Studios outside London. Rooms there run more than $600 a night, and Fortune notes the bill was big enough to register on the movie’s bottom line.

It wasn’t a bad place to be stuck. The hotel’s wood-panelled lounge has a piano, and Jeff Goldblum spent lockdown playing old jazz standards on it while Sam Neill sang along, footage that went viral at the time.

By Disney World standards, that’s a bargain

And this is where it gets funny.

Six hundred dollars a night for a historic English manor sounds extravagant until you’ve tried to book a room at the company Universal just dethroned. A night at a Walt Disney World Deluxe resort regularly tops $900, and the flagship Grand Floridian can climb well past a thousand dollars before you’ve bought a single churro.

So the same studio that just spent a record-breaking fortune housed its movie stars for less per night than a family of four pays to sleep within monorail distance of Cinderella Castle. Disney lost the most-expensive-movie title and still charges more for a hotel room.

The most expensive movie ever barely made money

The wild part is that all that spending didn’t translate to a hit on paper.

Filming in the UK let Universal claw back $127.8 million through Britain’s film tax-credit scheme, dropping its net cost to about $531 million. Dominion pulled in close to $1 billion at the box office, but studios only keep roughly half of ticket sales, so its theatrical run actually came up slightly short. The profit came later, from streaming, Blu-ray, and merchandise.

Stack the recent trilogy together and the pattern holds. Without that UK reimbursement, Universal’s profit on the last three Jurassic films would have been close to zero.

Why this record could stand for years

That tax credit is the whole reason these movies film in Britain, and it’s why Disney, Amazon, and Netflix have all set up shop there too. UK film spending hit a record $3.8 billion last year.

It’s also the part that might freeze the rankings. President Trump has repeatedly threatened a 100% tariff on movies made in “foreign lands,” and if that ever takes effect and studios lose their British financing, nobody’s going to casually drop $659 million on a single film again. Dominion could sit on top of the list for a long, long time, which is a strange legacy for a movie most people barely remember.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Fortune (June 17, 2026), Christian Sylt’s exclusive, verified for the $658.8 million Dominion cost, the $638.9 million Force Awakens figure, the $600-a-night Langley Hotel detail, the Goldblum piano videos, the $127.8 million UK reimbursement, the trilogy economics, and the Trump movie-tariff threat

• Theme Park Shark and Mousesavers (2026), verified for Disney World Deluxe resort rates running $450 to $1,000-plus per night and the Grand Floridian topping $900 and beyond

• British Film Institute, via Fortune (2026), verified for UK film production spending rising 31% to a record $3.8 billion

Christopher Nolan’s $250 million Homer adaptation hits theaters July 17. Here’s who’s playing whom, where it parts ways with the poem, how Nolan’s track record actually looks, and what the box office is expected to do.

Will The Odyssey flop? The short answer? Probably not. The long answer is below.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey arrives July 17, and between the secrecy, the cast, and the price tag, there’s a lot to sort out. Here’s a breakdown.

Who’s playing whom

The ensemble is one of the deepest Nolan has ever assembled, and most of the major roles are now confirmed.

Matt Damon leads as Odysseus, the king of Ithaca trying to get home after the Trojan War. Anne Hathaway plays his wife Penelope, holding their kingdom together, and Tom Holland is their son Telemachus, off searching for his father.

The suitor crowding Penelope’s halls is Antinous, played by Robert Pattinson, who has compared the character to James Woods’ sleazy Lester Diamond in Casino. Mia Goth plays Melantho, a disloyal handmaid in the palace.

On the journey side, the gods and monsters fill out fast. Zendaya is Athena, Odysseus’s divine protector. Charlize Theron is Calypso, the nymph who keeps him captive for years (earlier reports had her as Circe, but Universal later confirmed Calypso). Samantha Morton is Circe, the enchantress who turns his crew into pigs. Stage veteran Bill Irwin plays the Cyclops Polyphemus, and John Leguizamo is the loyal swineherd Eumaeus.

Lupita Nyong’o pulls double duty as Helen of Troy and her sister Clytemnestra, with Jon Bernthal as Helen’s husband Menelaus and Benny Safdie as Clytemnestra’s husband Agamemnon.

And in a left-field touch, Travis Scott appears as a bard in his first scripted role, a casting Nolan explained as a nod to the poem’s roots in oral, rap-like performance. Elliot Page, Himesh Patel, Corey Hawkins, and a dozen more round out a cast topping 30 actors.

Where it parts ways with Homer

Nolan has called this a “realistic interpretation” of Greek mythology, and that phrase is doing a lot of work at the moment.

Homer’s poem is dense with gods meddling at every turn and is narrated out of order. It opens in the middle of the story, years after the war, then has Odysseus recount most of his famous adventures as a tale told at a banquet. Everything points to Nolan straightening that out into a more direct, forward-moving spectacle. The teaser even dramatizes the Trojan Horse, an event the Odyssey itself only references in passing, since the poem begins long after Troy has fallen.

Nolan shot the film on location across Morocco, Italy, Greece, Iceland, and the UK, entirely on new IMAX film cameras, and refused artificial facial hair, so Damon grew a real beard over a year. He also had the cast use American accents rather than British or Greek, a deliberate move away from period-costume-drama convention.

The script draws on Emily Wilson‘s acclaimed 2017 translation, the one that opens “Tell me about a complicated man,” and Nolan has said it’s exactly that complication, Odysseus as a wily strategist rather than a clean hero, that drew him in.

At 2 hours 52 minutes, it’s also a touch shorter than the three-hour Oppenheimer, which suggests real compression of a 24-book epic. What Nolan hasn’t revealed is the actual plot, which he’s guarded more tightly than any film he’s made.

Has Nolan ever actually had a flop?

Basically no, and that’s the short version of why Universal handed him $250 million.

Across roughly a dozen films, Nolan’s work has grossed more than $6 billion worldwide, with eight number-one openings. The Dark Knight Rises sits at $1.081 billion, The Dark Knight at $1.006 billion, and Oppenheimer at $975.8 million on its way to seven Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director. Inception cleared $836 million, Interstellar $731 million, and even Dunkirk, a dialogue-light WWII film, did $527 million.

The lone asterisk is Tenet. It earned about $365 million worldwide on a roughly $200 million budget, the only time a Nolan film failed to meet commercial expectations. The catch is the circumstance: it launched in September 2020, into a world where most theaters were closed or half-empty, as Nolan’s bet to drag audiences back to cinemas during the pandemic. Pulling in $365 million with the doors barely open is less a flop than a casualty of timing, and it was his last film at Warner Bros. before the move to Universal.

His early films were small rather than failed. Following cost $6,000. Memento made $40 million and rewired how thrillers get told. Nothing in the filmography is a genuine bomb.

What the box office is expected to do

The tracking is big, with one honest hedge attached.

Forecasts put the domestic opening in the $65 million to $80 million range, and Box Office Theory’s latest model pinpoints it as high as $118 million, which would be Nolan’s biggest debut since The Dark Knight Rises and the largest non-animated opening of 2026. For comparison, Oppenheimer opened to $82 million.

Universal began selling IMAX 70mm tickets a full year before release, an unprecedented move, and those screenings sold out within hours for about $1.5 million that first day.

When premium-format tickets went on sale in June 2026, AMC logged its biggest first-day presale launch since 2022, and London’s BFI IMAX moved a record 28,000 tickets in 24 hours.

Worldwide is where forecasters get careful.

Variety floated The Odyssey as a contender for the year’s top earner, but more recent analysis has cooled on the billion-dollar talk, noting that an R rating, the $250 million budget, and a marketing spend likely north of $100 million make even $1 billion a real climb rather than a formality.

The projection is a major hit that has to work for the truly historic numbers, and the first concrete answer lands the weekend of July 17.

TLDR: It’ll be big, but maybe not as big as originally projected. The casting may or may not factor into that for some people, but the general public either isn’t aware of it or doesn’t care.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Wikipedia and ComicBook.com (2025–2026), verified for the confirmed cast and roles including Damon, Hathaway, Holland, Pattinson as Antinous, Nyong’o’s dual role, Zendaya as Athena, and the Pattinson “Casino” comparison

• Cosmic Book News (June 2026), verified for Charlize Theron confirmed as Calypso over the earlier Circe reports, Samantha Morton as Circe, Bill Irwin as Polyphemus, and Travis Scott as a bard

• The Odyssey Wikipedia entry and Universal Pictures (June 2026), verified for the realistic-interpretation approach, the Emily Wilson translation, the American accents, the year-long beard, the IMAX shooting format and locations, and the 2h52m runtime

• Box Office Mojo, via GameSpot and ScreenRant (2024–2026), verified for Nolan’s film grosses including The Dark Knight Rises at $1.081 billion, Oppenheimer at $975.8 million, and Tenet at roughly $365 million

• Box Office Theory and World of Reel (June 2026), verified for the $65–80 million and ~$118 million opening projections and the presale records

• Variety and The Review Geek (2025–2026), verified for the top-earner projection and the more cautious billion-dollar analysis

Universal and Ron Howard are developing a follow-up to the 2000 holiday blockbuster, with Carrey in talks to return, the Curb Your Enthusiasm writers on script, and that brutal makeup the big question.

So this is happening. Twenty-six years after Jim Carrey went green and stole Christmas, Universal wants him to do it again.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news on June 18, and the rest of the trades fell in line within the hour. Universal and Ron Howard‘s Imagine Entertainment are developing a sequel to 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas, with Carrey in talks to climb back up Mount Crumpit and Howard returning to direct. No title yet, no release date, no production window. Just the three names that matter and a lot of people suddenly feeling very old.

Why Jim Carrey hated the original Grinch makeup

Here’s the part anyone who’s followed Carrey on this saw coming.

That Grinch suit was misery. The original makeup won Rick Baker an Oscar, and it also reportedly drove Carrey to the edge, hours a day buried under yak hair and green foam while a CIA-trained specialist was brought in to teach him how to tolerate it. He’s talked about it for years. Back in 2024 he told ComicBook.com that he’d consider coming back only if they could “figure out the Grinch,“ because last time he could hardly breathe in the getup and basically white-knuckled it on a loop of “it’s for the kids.“

So if this moves, the makeup is the conversation. Carrey’s floated motion capture as the way he’d do it now, which makes sense for a 64-year-old who already spent one shoot in sensory hell. And it would be a very 2026 solution to a very 2000 problem.

The Curb Your Enthusiasm writers scripting the Grinch sequel

The casting headline is Carrey. The interesting part is the script.

Universal handed it to Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer, and David Mandel, a murderers’ row out of Curb Your Enthusiasm, with Barry, Veep, and Silicon Valley among them. That’s a sharper, more acidic comedy pedigree than you’d expect on a kids’ Christmas movie, and it tells you something about the tone they’re chasing. The first film already leaned cynical, a whole subplot about Whoville’s gift-grubbing consumerism aimed squarely over the kids’ heads at the parents. Hand the sequel to the Larry David bench and that streak is not getting narrower.

There’s a wrinkle worth knowing, though. All three also wrote 2003’s The Cat in the Hat, the Mike Myers Seuss adaptation so reviled it helped Seuss’s widow slam the door on live-action Seuss films for years. Same trio, wildly different outcome. Make of that what you want.

Will Taylor Momsen return as Cindy Lou Who?

The one name nobody’s confirmed is the one fans actually want.

Taylor Momsen was seven when she played Cindy Lou Who, and she’s spent the years since trading acting for fronting the rock band The Pretty Reckless.

She and Carrey reunited at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last November and people lost it. But asked about a sequel earlier this year, Momsen said flatly that nothing was happening as far as she knew, and added “some things don’t touch.“ That was before today’s news, so her read may be due for an update. Or she meant it.

This is early. “In talks” and “developing” are the two softest words in a trade report, and plenty of projects with bigger names attached die quietly in exactly this phase. But the original was the top domestic movie of its entire year with $260 million, on its way to $345 million worldwide, it’s been parked on cable every December for a quarter century, and a green Carrey is about as close to printed money as the holiday calendar gets. Universal knows what it’s sitting on. Whether Carrey wants back in that suit badly enough to find out is the thing to watch.

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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

Hat Tips:

• The Hollywood Reporter (June 18, 2026), which broke the story, verified for the sequel development, Carrey in talks, Ron Howard directing, Brian Grazer producing, and the Berg/Schaffer/Mandel writing team

• Variety (June 18, 2026), Brent Lang reporting, verified for the original’s $345 million-plus gross, the year’s top domestic spot, and the Cat in the Hat writing connection

• ComicBook.com (2024 interview, recirculated June 18, 2026), verified for Carrey’s comments on the excruciating makeup process and his interest in returning

• TMZ (June 18, 2026), verified for Carrey expected to star and the uncertainty around returning cast members

• NY Post (2026), verified for Taylor Momsen’s “some things don’t touch” comments and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame reunion

I love K-dramas, and I watch many of them throughout the year. While I find some I like, I will tell everyone when I find one I love! That is where ‘Teach You a Lesson’ falls.

The show is short enough not to lose my interest, and each episode is a self-contained story with an overarching plot tied in. I think that is a strength for this show.

I am going to keep this as spoiler-free as possible!

What is “Teach You A Lesson” about?

‘Teach You A Lesson’ deals with school issues facing students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Topics range from bullying to drugs.

The overall story is about a teacher being killed, and her father and fiancé working together to create a task force -the Educational Rights Protection Bureau (ERPB).

Of course, the ERPB is not a real agency, but in the world of this show, it is.

The ERPB's job is to protect and defend “victims” of misconduct in schools. As a government agency, they often have permission to use whatever means necessary to correct behavior and “teach them a lesson". Usually this is done with a “taste of your own medicine” payback.

It is kind of similar to “Weak Hero” but more fun.

There is also a payoff each episode because they are mostly self-contained stories, and the subplot that weaves throughout is nicely wrapped up by the end.

If you love more action-packed shows, suspense, or high school comuppance, this one is for you.

The show is based on the Webtoon ‘Get Schooled’.

Solid 8.5/10

I would love it if this show got another season, and it’s set up so it easily could have more episodes, like ‘Weak Hero’ did.

A second season seems likely! I hope so!

‘Teach You A Lesson’ is available now on Netflix!

The more Xbox falls apart while Valve quietly owns everything that matters, the more this is the only outcome that really makes sense.

There’s no deal, no leak, nobody’s reporting this. This is just staring at two companies headed in opposite directions and connecting the dots.

But once you connect them, you can’t un-see it.

Microsoft spent this month gutting Xbox — closing Ninja Theory, reportedly lining up Double Fine and Compulsion Games for the same fate, posting “reset” memos, limping toward a 3% margin. The Information even reported Microsoft has floated spinning Xbox off into its own company. You don’t pour concrete for an off-ramp unless part of you is thinking about leaving.

Meanwhile Valve is about to launch the Steam Machine. Put those two facts in one sentence and a very dumb, very logical idea falls right out.

Valve already won the war Xbox is still fighting

Here’s the thing nobody in Redmond wants to say out loud.

Xbox lost.

Not the hardware fight — the real one, over who owns the store. Valve owns Steam, and Steam is the toll booth every PC gamer drives through. Valve takes its cut of all of it, forever, no matter whose box you’re holding.

That’s the whole game: owning the pipe versus renting it. Xbox spent twenty years and tens of billions renting. Subsidized consoles. Subsidized Game Pass. Studios bought at a premium. And it never once built the toll booth.

Valve built its toll booth in 2004 and has been counting quarters ever since. So if you’re asking who should run a console business, the honest answer is the people who already solved the part Xbox never could.

The Steam Machine is a console-shaped Trojan horse

This is where the Steam Machine stops being a cute side project.

It’s a little SteamOS cube, roughly six times the muscle of a Steam Deck, and it plays your whole Steam library out of the box. And here’s the detail that should keep Xbox up at night: Valve has said it won’t sell the thing at a loss.

It doesn’t have to. Sony and Microsoft eat hardware losses to get a box under your TV, then chase the money back through games and subscriptions. Valve already has your money the second you buy anything on Steam, so the hardware can just be hardware.

Hand that company the Xbox install base and the Game Pass library, and you haven’t sold them a console. You’ve sold them a few hundred million new front doors into a store they already own.

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

Gabe Newell spent 13 years at Microsoft — he worked on Windows — before he walked out in 1996 and built the exact thing that would beat Microsoft at digital distribution. Microsoft selling Xbox back to that guy is the kind of ending a screenwriter would get told to tone down.

Here’s the catch, and it’s a big one

So why won’t it happen? Money. Mostly money.

Valve is rich the way a sniper is dangerous — small, precise, deadly in its lane. Newell’s worth lands somewhere around $11 billion, and Steam reportedly moved something like $16 billion in game sales last year. That’s staggering for a company of a few hundred people. It is also nowhere near multi-trillion-dollar Microsoft money, and a standalone Xbox would carry a price tag in the tens of billions.

The logic is airtight. The checkbook is the problem.

There’s more, too. Valve is a private, manager-less company that does whatever it wants on its own clock, and absorbing Xbox’s studios, contracts, and Windows-tied plumbing is the least Valve-like move we can imagine. Regulators who just watched Microsoft swallow Activision aren’t going to wave through “now give the console to the storefront monopoly,” either.

So now what?

We’re not predicting this. We’re telling you it makes more sense than almost anything Xbox is actually doing right now, and that should bother Microsoft more than it does.

Because strip away the price tag and the fantasy isn’t really about Valve at all. It’s a diagnosis. Xbox didn’t end up here because it needed a richer parent. It ended up here because it rented a position Valve simply owns — and no buyer, at any price, fixes that for them.

The Steam Machine isn’t going to become the next Xbox. It might just quietly prove the world never needed one.

ClownfishTV.com strives to be an apolitical, balanced, and based pop culture news outlet. However, our contributors are entitled to their individual opinions. Author opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of our video hosts, other site contributors, site editors, affiliates, sponsors, or advertisers. This website contains affiliate links to products. We may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.

The new Finn and Jake series promises lighter, standalone episodes like the show’s beginnings. But it lands June 29 on Hulu and Disney+, the first Adventure Time to premiere outside the Warner Bros. ecosystem entirely.

Finn and Jake are back, and they’re punching evil in the butt again. Literally. That’s the pitch.

Adventure Time: Side Quests drops June 29 in the US, and everything about it reads as a deliberate trip back to the beginning. Standalone episodes. Silly quests. The Ice King getting socked. Light, episodic, monster-of-the-week stuff.

The press materials say the quiet part out loud. The series “builds on the spirit of the early seasons,“ delivering self-contained adventures designed to introduce a new generation to Ooo while giving old fans what they loved first.

The trailer backs it up. Finn flips around the treehouse vowing to punch the Ice King in the gut, and BMO and Princess Bubblegum turn up to help. It’s a love letter to the Adventure Time of 2010, before things got heavy.

Why Adventure Time got so dark and existential

Because it absolutely did. The show that started as a goofy kid having sword fights with his stretchy dog turned into one of the most emotionally devastating things on television, and that wasn’t an accident.

Adventure Time ran 10 seasons from 2010 to 2018. Somewhere in the middle it stopped being a problem-of-the-week comedy and became a sprawling serialized epic about memory loss, trauma, abandonment, the apocalypse that created Ooo, and the slow tragedy of the Ice King being a good man erased by his own magic crown.

It got sad. Beautifully, on purpose, the-Marceline-and-Simon-stuff-still-wrecks-people sad.

So what happened at the top? Creator Pendleton Ward stepped down as showrunner during Season 5, telling Rolling Stone the job was wearing on his quality of life. He didn’t vanish, he stayed on as a writer, storyboard artist, and voice actor, but the chair passed to Adam Muto, his CalArts classmate who’d been on the show since the pilot and was, by Ward’s own design, groomed to take over.

Muto ran it from Season 5 through the finale.

Was the darkening a result of creative changes at the top?

Partly, but the honest answer is messier than “new boss made it depressing,” and it’s worth getting right.

The serialization, the lore, the heavy emotional arcs, a lot of that tracked with Muto’s era. But Muto himself has said the move from episodic to “lore-heavy” storytelling came from multiple directions. Some of it was the creative team. Some of it was the network.

Here’s the wrinkle nobody expects: Cartoon Network was reportedly resistant to the serialized turn at first, because it made individual episodes harder to promote. The lore-heavy Adventure Time people canonize as the show’s golden run was something the network had to be talked into.

And it worked. Season one averaged about 2 million viewers an episode. Once it serialized, it climbed past 3 million and became the cultural juggernaut everybody remembers. The darkness paid off creatively and commercially, which is why “Side Quests goes back to the start” is a genuine swing, not an obvious one.

Why Adventure Time: Side Quests isn’t on Cartoon Network

Now the part that should make you raise an eyebrow. The US home for Side Quests isn’t Cartoon Network. It isn’t even HBO Max. It’s Hulu and Disney+, premiering June 29.

Read that again. A series produced by Cartoon Network Studios, a Warner Bros. Discovery property, the crown jewel of CN’s entire animation legacy, is debuting on Disney’s streamers. Outside the US it airs on Cartoon Network and HBO Max as you’d expect. But in America, the company that made it handed it to a direct competitor.

This is a first. As reported around the launch, it marks the first time an Adventure Time show has premiered outside the Warner Bros. ecosystem. The thing was even announced back at the 2024 Annecy festival with no network attached at all.

Why does this keep happening? Because Warner Bros. Discovery has spent the last few years pulling back hard on kids’ and family animation. The earlier spinoffs, Distant Lands and Fionna and Cake, went to HBO Max, and then HBO Max started shedding the very kids’ content that would house something like this. When your own corporate parent is exiting the room, you sell the furniture to whoever’s still buying.

So Warner makes the cartoon and licenses its most beloved animated brand to Disney and Hulu, because the alternative is letting it sit on a shelf. It’s the same outsourcing logic eating legacy media everywhere: keep the IP, rent out the distribution, and hope nobody notices you no longer have a home for your own crown jewel.

The good news, and it’s real, is that the cartoon itself looks great. Showrunner Nate Cash said making Side Quests felt like making the original Adventure Time, “like hanging out with art school buddies making professional cartoons.“ That’s exactly the energy that made the early seasons sing.

Finn and Jake are coming home to the tone that started it all. They’re just doing it on someone else’s channel, because their own one didn’t have room for them anymore.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Deadline (May 2026), verified for the Hulu/Disney+ June 29 US premiere, the Annecy 2024 announcement, and the WBD pullback on kids’ and family animation

• TheWrap (June 2026), verified for the trailer details, the first-time-outside-Warner framing, and the early-seasons callback

• Advanced Television and Skwigly (May 2026), verified for the October 5 international Cartoon Network/HBO Max date and the showrunner statement

• FormatBiz (May 2026), verified for the Nate Cash and Vanessa Brookman quotes and the Darrick Bachman story-editor credit

• ScreenRant via The Direct (October 2023), verified for Muto’s account of the network resisting serialization and the viewership figures

• Rolling Stone via Cinemablend and TV Tropes (2014), verified for Pendleton Ward stepping down in Season 5 due to burnout and Muto’s succession

The actor told a Spacecon panel he doesn’t believe the Emperor really died in The Rise of Skywalker -- then contradicted himself a few minutes later. There are no actual plans. For now.

“Somehow, Palpatine returned.”

That line — six years old and still getting dunked on — was Poe Dameron‘s, courtesy of Oscar Isaac, in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. And there’s a chance we could hear something like it again.

The source this time? The Emperor himself.

What Ian McDiarmid actually said at the panel

At a Spacecon panel in San Antonio this month, Ian McDiarmid got asked about the Emperor’s fate. His answer did not exactly settle the matter.

“I had no idea that I wasn’t dead,” McDiarmid said about Palpatine’s surprise Rise of Skywalker comeback. “So, it’s been a journey. But I think I’m dead now, but don’t quote me.”

Then, a little later in the same panel, he turned around and said the opposite: “I don’t believe he’s dead.”

So the official position from the man who has played the character since 1983 is, and I’m being precise here, both.

Palpatine has died at least four times already

Here’s why nobody’s treating “Palpatine might not be dead” as a wild claim.

The guy will not stay down. Darth Vader chucked him down a Death Star reactor shaft in Return of the Jedi, and that held for about eight years.

Then the 1991 Dark Horse comic Dark Empire brought him back in a cloned body. Luke and Leia put him down again. Dark Empire II un-did that. Empire’s End finally finished the job — in the old Legends continuity, anyway.

And then 2019 rolled around, Lucasfilm said “somehow,” and he was back on the big screen disintegrating Rey’s way instead. For a character whose whole brand is refusing to die, an actor saying “I don’t believe he’s dead” is less a bombshell and more a weather report.

Why a vague convention quote becomes a headline

Let’s be clear about what this is. An 81-year-old actor speculated at a fan Q&A. Lucasfilm has announced nothing. There is no project, no script, no “Palpatine returns” press release.

But it travels because the wound’s still open. The Rise of Skywalker resurrecting the Emperor with a one-word explanation is the exact creative move a big chunk of the fanbase points to when they say the sequel trilogy lost the plot. “Somehow” became shorthand for writing yourself out of a corner.

So when McDiarmid shrugs and says maybe the old man’s still out there, fans don’t hear a fun tease. They hear the thing they’re afraid Lucasfilm will actually do again.

There are a pile of Star Wars projects in development right now. None of them have been announced as starring Palpatine. If that changes, you already know the line that’s getting quoted — and Oscar Isaac is welcome to phone it in one more time.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Popverse (June 16, 2026), Joshua Lapin-Bertone reporting, originating source for McDiarmid’s Spacecon panel quotes and the Empire’s death-history rundown

• RosterCon, Comiconomicon, and CultureMap (2026), verified for Ian McDiarmid’s appearance at Spacecon San Antonio on June 12–14, 2026 — the actual date of the panel, which the originating coverage misprinted as 2016

The Loyal Subjects’ Pal figures are up for pre-order — but they’re the smallest piece of a game, trading-card, and Aniplex-backed empire built on Pokémon’s exact blueprint.

The Loyal Subjects has Palworld figures up for pre-order on BigBadToyStore, Entertainment Earth, and Amazon right now, mostly in the $19.99 to $24.99 range.

You can put a deposit on a Relaxaurus, a Foxparks, a Chillet — a slice of the game’s 200-plus collectible “Pals.” There’s a chibi-style Cheebee line and plush in the mix too. The first figures are estimated to ship around August 2026.

Cute vinyl monsters you catch and collect. Where have we seen that before.

The Loyal Subjects deal is the least interesting part

Here’s the thing. The toys aren’t the story. They’re the part of the story you can pre-order today.

The Loyal Subjects -- the company behind Strawberry Shortcake, TMNT, and a wall of Action Vinyls -- signed the Palworld license back in August 2025. CEO Jonathan Cathey called the game “the next big thing” for retailers, pointing at its 32-million-plus player base.

A toy line is the obvious move for any hit game. On its own, it’s a shelf at your local comic shop. Stacked next to everything else Palworld is doing this summer, it’s a corner of a much bigger map.

Palworld’s trading card game launches July 30 — with a World Championship

This is where it stops looking like merch and starts looking like a plan.

Back in January, at Bushiroad‘s Cardfight!! Vanguard anniversary event, Palworld announced an official trading card game. It launches worldwide on July 30 — two trial decks and a booster, in English, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese on day one.

And Bushiroad isn’t shipping a novelty. The TCG already has organized play mapped out: store-level demos this spring, regional qualifiers in the fall, and a World Championship at Card Game Festival 2027.

Regional qualifiers feeding a Worlds bracket. If that structure sounds familiar, it’s because it’s exactly how the Pokémon TCG has run for two decades.

Why Aniplex owning a piece of Palworld is the anime tell

There’s no formal Palworld anime series announcement yet. But the machine to make one is already assembled, and that’s the part worth watching.

Palworld isn’t managed by Pocketpair alone. The licensing arm, Palworld Entertainment, is a joint venture between Pocketpair, Sony Music Entertainment Japan, and its subsidiary Aniplex -- the studio behind Demon Slayer and Fate. It was set up in 2024 specifically to “expand and develop new businesses” off the game.

Pocketpair has been quietly dropping animated Pal shorts for months, and has floated the idea of a manga. When one of the biggest names in anime co-owns your IP, the cartoon isn’t an if. It’s a when.

This is the Pokémon playbook, run page by page

Step back and the shape is unmistakable. A monster-collecting game. A competitive trading card game with a Worlds circuit. A toy and plush line. An anime engine idling in the driveway.

That’s not four random licensing deals. That’s Pokémon‘s entire empire, rebuilt brick by brick -- and all of it landing around the game’s 1.0 launch on July 10, the day Palworld finally leaves early access.

The audacity is the best part. Palworld is assembling a Pokémon-shaped media empire while Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are actively suing Pocketpair for patent infringement over the game’s mechanics.

So they’re getting taken to court by the company whose playbook they’re running. And the toys are already up for pre-order anyway.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• The Toy Book and License Global (September 2025), verified for The Loyal Subjects’ Palworld licensing deal, Jonathan Cathey’s quotes, and the rollout timing

• BigBadToyStore (June 2026), verified for the current pre-order listings, price points, characters, and the August 2026 ship estimate

• Anime News Network (January 13, 2026), verified for the Bushiroad Palworld TCG announcement, the July 30 worldwide launch, the trial-deck/booster details, and the organized-play and World Championship structure

• Anime News Network (June 5, 2026), verified for the Palworld 1.0 launch date of July 10 and the Palworld Entertainment joint venture with Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Aniplex

• ComicBook (June 2025), verified for Pocketpair’s animated Pal shorts and the stated manga/anime ambitions

The Lilo & Stitch star, who died this week at 35, was destitute in her final years, according to her father. Her longtime manager says a career’s worth of Disney residuals sat in an account she was never able to reach.

The story of Daveigh Chase‘s death has come into sharper, sadder focus, and it lands on a brutal contrast. Her father says she died homeless and destitute. Her manager says she had millions of dollars she couldn’t collect.

What her father told the Times

Chase died Tuesday in Los Angeles at 35. Her father, John David Schwallier, confirmed the death to The New York Times, saying the cause was complications from bacterial meningitis and a blood infection.

Schwallier said his daughter had been homeless and living near the hospital with her boyfriend, and that the couple were “destitute.” He said she had struggled with drugs since she was 13, and that he hadn’t spoken with her since she was 19, after a falling-out within the family.

He arrived at the hospital just before she died.

What her manager says was waiting for her

The other half of the story comes from John Ryan, who managed Chase for more than a decade.

Ryan told the New York Post that the deal Chase signed as a child to voice Lilo was unusually generous. Instead of a flat fee, it gave her ongoing residuals and a cut of merchandise and other products using her voice. Lilo became one of Disney’s most enduring characters, and the checks kept coming.

By Ryan’s account, she never cashed them. He said he kept receiving SAG-AFTRA notices about unclaimed residual checks at his office, and estimated there was “millions” sitting in an account in her name. He and Chase’s stepsister tried to find her over the past year, he said, even hiring a private investigator, but lost her before they could get her help.

The gap at the center of it

Strip the story to its bones and it’s two facts that should not be able to coexist.

A career’s worth of money from one of the most beloved Disney characters of the century, sitting in an account. And the woman who earned it, dying homeless a few miles away, too far from all of it to ever sign for the check. Being wealthy on paper did nothing for the person whose name was on the paper.

This is only the first wave of accounts, told by a father who’d been estranged for years and a manager piecing it together from notices in the mail, and the full picture of Chase’s last decade will take time to emerge. What both of them agree on is the shape of the loss. A girl who, at 11, was a little embarrassed that anyone might recognize her, grew up to become a voice millions adored, and died with almost none of what that voice had earned her.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• The New York Times (June 17, 2026), John S.W. MacDonald reporting, verified for her father John David Schwallier confirming the death and cause, his account that she was homeless and destitute, the estrangement, and the biographical details

• The New York Post and The California Post (June 17, 2026), verified for manager John Ryan’s account of the unclaimed residuals, the childhood Lilo deal, the SAG-AFTRA notices, and the efforts to locate her

• TMZ (June 17, 2026), verified for the initial cause of death and the malnutrition hospitalization

The actress who died this week at 35 packed an astonishing range into her childhood, voicing two of the most beloved animated heroines ever and playing one of horror’s scariest kids, often in the same stretch of months.

Most actors would build a whole career around any one of Daveigh Chase’s roles. She did three of the biggest before she was a teenager, and they could not have been more different from one another.

The year Daveigh Chase was everywhere

In a roughly twelve-month span around 2002, a kid from Albany, Oregon was simultaneously the warm heart of a Disney movie, the lead of an Oscar-winning Japanese masterpiece’s English dub, and the thing crawling out of your television to kill you.

From Chihiro to Lilo, a voice a generation grew up with

Chase voiced Lilo Pelekai in Lilo & Stitch, the lonely Hawaiian girl who adopts a destructive blue alien and refuses to give up on him. She stayed with the character across Stitch! The Movie, the TV series, and Leroy & Stitch.

Around the same time, she was Chihiro in the English dub of Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki’s film that went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Two of the most cherished animated girls in modern film, a Disney one and a Ghibli one, came out of the same young actress within months of each other.

Her path there started early. She was doing community shows in Oregon at three, shot a Campbell’s Soup commercial at seven, and auditioned for Lilo at eight. Steven Spielberg even handpicked her to sing “God Bless America” in 2001’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

Samara Morgan and an MTV award over Daniel Day-Lewis

Then there’s the role that made a generation afraid of their own TVs.

In 2002’s The Ring, Chase played Samara Morgan, the drowned girl whose cursed videotape kills you seven days after you watch it. The image of her crawling out of the screen, hair over her face, became one of the most parodied and imitated horror visuals of the century.

It won her the 2003 MTV Movie Award for Best Villain, beating a field that included Mike Myers, Colin Farrell, Willem Dafoe, and Daniel Day-Lewis. A 12-year-old took home the trophy over an eventual three-time Oscar winner.

She’d already shown that range a year earlier as Samantha Darko, Jake Gyllenhaal’s little sister in the cult classic Donnie Darko, a role she’d reprise as an adult.

Big Love and a long step away from Hollywood

Chase’s longest-running gig came on the other side of childhood.

From 2006 to 2011 she played Rhonda Volmer across 32 episodes of HBO’s Big Love, the polygamy drama with Bill Paxton, Chloë Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin. She also turned up on ER, Charmed, CSI, and Touched by an Angel along the way.

Her last credited role came in the 2016 film American Romance. She largely stepped away from acting after that and kept a low profile for the better part of a decade.

What’s known about Daveigh Chase’s death

The details, for now, come mostly from one person.

Her boyfriend, Roy Hernandez, told TMZ that Chase died on Tuesday, June 16, from meningitis and a blood infection that turned septic and led to organ failure. The Los Angeles County coroner has not yet released an official cause of death.

Hernandez said she had been hospitalized in Los Angeles earlier in the month, reported to be for malnutrition. In a GoFundMe he started before she died, he wrote about the hardship she’d carried for years, describing a difficult childhood, a painful falling-out with her family, and a struggle to find safety and stability in downtown LA.

Whatever the coroner ultimately determines, the throughline in his account is a woman who’d been having a hard time for a long while, and who he says just wanted a stable home.

She was 35, and she leaves behind a body of work almost nobody matches for sheer range. The same voice was Chihiro and Lilo. The same kid was Samara. Comfort and nightmares for the same generation, from one person who was barely out of grade school when she gave them all to us.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• TMZ (June 17, 2026), which broke the news, verified for Roy Hernandez confirming the death, the meningitis and septic blood-infection cause, and the earlier malnutrition hospitalization

• Hollywood Life and IBTimes UK (June 17, 2026), verified for the LA County coroner not yet releasing an official cause of death and the details of Hernandez’s GoFundMe describing her hardship

• TVInsider and Yahoo Entertainment (June 17, 2026), verified for her career credits including Spirited Away, Donnie Darko, Big Love, and her final 2016 role

• IMDb and D23 (career reference), verified for her early career, the Spielberg “God Bless America” detail, and her full filmography

Box Office Pro pegs Supergirl at a $45 to $55 million opening on June 26, the same weekend Toy Story 5’s second lap is tracking to top that on its own. These are projections, but the calendar math is rough on Kara.

Supergirl opens June 26, and the box-office trackers think it might not finish first that weekend. Not because of another new release, but because of a Pixar movie that’ll already have been out for a week.

What Supergirl is actually tracking for

The headline number keeps shrinking.

Box Office Pro‘s latest long-range forecast has Supergirl opening at $45 million to $55 million domestically. That’s down from the $55 million-plus Deadline had on early three-week tracking, and it lines up with Box Office Theory landing around $51 million.

For a sense of scale, that range sits below the openings of Aquaman and Black Adam, both around $67 million, and roughly even with 2023’s The Flash at $55 million. The low end would actually open under The Marvels, the $46 million debut that became Marvel’s shorthand for franchise fatigue.

It also follows Superman, which opened to $125 million last summer on its way to $354 million domestic. Milly Alcock’s Kara is projected to launch at well under half of what David Corenswet’s Clark managed a year earlier.

Why Toy Story 5 owns the June 26 weekend

The bigger problem isn’t the number. It’s the calendar.

Pixar’s Toy Story 5 opens June 19, one week ahead of Supergirl, and it’s tracking enormous. Box Office Pro has it between $165 million and $185 million, while Deadline takes the more cautious “north of $150 million.” Either way, its second weekend lands square on June 26 to 28, the exact frame Supergirl is trying to debut in.

Run the math and it’s ugly for DC. Toy Story 4 fell only about 50% in its second weekend. Apply that to a $160 million start and Toy Story 5 still pulls around $80 million the weekend Supergirl opens. Push the drop to a brutal 65% and it’s still near $56 million, enough to edge most of Supergirl‘s projected opening.

Toy Story has legs, and that’s the problem

This is where the matchup really tilts.

You’d need Toy Story 5 to crater for Supergirl to back into the top spot, and Toy Story movies do not crater. The franchise has pulled close to $2.9 billion worldwide across four films, with sequels spaced out far enough that each one hands the toys down to a new generation of kids.

The early word isn’t helping Kara’s odds either. Toy Story 5 drew strong first reactions out of its premiere, and Taylor Swift cut an original song for it that’s already racked up millions of views. Good buzz means a smaller second-weekend drop, which is exactly the wrong direction for anything opening against it.

A #2 debut is an optics problem, not a death sentence

Worth keeping some perspective here.

A $50 million opening for Supergirl isn’t a bomb, and losing a weekend to a Pixar juggernaut is the kind of thing Warner Bros. can explain away in a press release. The number that actually decides this movie’s fate is the multiplier, how it holds up after week one. Aquaman legged out to nearly 5x its opening. Black Adam managed only about 2.5x and faded.

That’s the real worry, because Supergirl is walking into a buzzsaw of a calendar. Minions & Monsters arrives July 1 and the live-action Moana lands July 10, both gunning for the same family and four-quadrant crowds Supergirl would need to build any momentum.

So the second-place opening, if it happens, is just the embarrassing part. Whether Kara has any legs left after a week of sharing screens with Woody and Buzz is the number DC Studios should actually be sweating, and it’s the one nobody can call until the reviews land and the seats fill.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Box Office Pro (June 12, 2026), verified for the $45–$55 million Supergirl opening forecast and the $165–$185 million Toy Story 5 opening range

• Deadline (June 2026), verified for Supergirl’s earlier $55 million-plus three-week tracking, Toy Story 5’s “north of $150 million” projection, and the warning that Toy Story 4’s tracking overshot

• Box Office Theory (2026), verified for the ~$51 million Supergirl estimate and the analysis of Supergirl’s crowded summer calendar against Minions & Monsters and Moana

• ComingSoon (June 2026), verified for the Supergirl comps to The Flash, Black Adam, and The Marvels, the multiplier comparisons, and the June 26 release details

• Cosmic Book News (June 16, 2026), the originating piece, for the second-weekend drop scenarios and the head-to-head framing

The Callback 8020 runs almost any Android app but blocks social media, browsers, and email at the system level, and it comes from a Commodore that a retro YouTuber bought and brought back last year.

The company that sold the best-selling computer of the 1980s just made a flip phone whose entire pitch is using a computer less.

The Commodore Callback 8020, announced June 16, is a real phone you can buy. First one to wear the Commodore name in over a decade.

What the Callback 8020 actually is

Here’s the part worth slowing down on, because it’s the whole point of the thing.

The Callback runs Sailfish OS, a Linux-based, de-Googled system, and Commodore says it’ll handle more than 99 percent of Android apps through a compatibility layer. Then it bolts the door on the apps everybody actually overuses. Social media, web browsers, and email are blocked at the system level, patent-pending, marketed flatly as “no social media, no browser.” A kid can’t sideload their way around it and neither can you at 1 a.m.

Texting is T9, the old multi-tap number pad, which Commodore pitches as a deliberate speed bump for your thumbs.

The rest is what you’d expect from a flip phone. Tiny outer screen showing the time and nothing else, small inner display, microSD card in the box.

Pricing is where the eyebrow goes up. It starts at $499 when pre-orders open June 30, runs to $549 for a translucent Starlight version, and tops out at $639 for a Founders Edition with a 24-karat-gold-plated button. Units ship in late 2026.

Who owns Commodore now

Worth knowing, because this isn’t the Commodore that went under in the ‘90s.

The brand was bought in 2025 by Christian Simpson, a retro-computing YouTuber known as Perifractic, who filmed the whole acquisition for his channel and now runs the place as CEO. His first product was the Commodore 64 Ultimate, a modern C64 remake that moved around 30,000 units. The Callback is product number two, and Simpson calls it the phone he “wished had existed” back when he was trying to cut his own screen time.

Who the Callback is really for

So who pays $500 for a phone that does less than the one already in their pocket?

A bigger crowd than you’d think, honestly. Dumbphone sales have been climbing for a few years now, with a real chunk of that coming from Gen Z trying to claw their attention back from the scroll. The cheap ones already exist. What they don’t have is a name anybody feels anything about, and feelings are most of what Commodore is selling here.

Then there’s the timing, which is the genuinely smart part. Australia has barred under-16s from social media, the UK and others are circling similar rules, and parents are stuck hunting for a phone that lets a kid call home without handing them an algorithm. A phone that physically can’t run Instagram solves that without a single parental-control app to configure or a teenager clever enough to disable one.

The wall it runs into is the sticker. A no-frills Nokia flip is about sixty bucks, so $499 buys a whole lot of nostalgia and willpower-by-hardware. This is a thing you buy because of what it says about you, not because of what it does, and that’s a narrower shelf than the press release wants it to be.

Which is the part that makes me grin. A company preaching digital minimalism, selling restraint as a lifestyle, capping the lineup at a $639 model with a gold button on it.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Engadget (June 16, 2026), verified for the system-level social media, browser, and email block, the Sailfish OS basis, the colorways and pricing, and Christian Simpson’s digital-detox framing

• Tom’s Hardware (June 16, 2026), verified for the “no social media, no browser” positioning, the June 30 pre-order date, and the $499 starting price

• Notebookcheck (June 16, 2026), verified for the late-2026 delivery window, the full price tiers, and Simpson’s 2025 acquisition plus the ~30,000 C64 Ultimate units sold

• Android Police (June 16, 2026), verified for the screen specs, the roadmap, and the company’s history

A post in r/StarWarsLeaks’ weekly rumors thread, crediting scooper Jeff Sneider, lays out a reported Lucasfilm mandate to chase teens, aim PG-13, and lean on AI. Lucasfilm hasn’t confirmed a word of it.

Lucasfilm has a new creative chief, a box-office slump, and a leaked to-do list that fans are already pulling apart. Hold that last part loosely. It’s a rumor, and a layered one.

Star Wars went from $2 billion to $316 million

The Force Awakens made about $2.07 billion worldwide in 2015. That run made Disney’s $4 billion purchase of Lucasfilm look cheap.

The Mandalorian & Grogu, the franchise’s 2026 theatrical return, is crawling toward $316 million. It’s on track to land as the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars movie ever made, under even the 2018 flop Solo, and it lost the No. 1 spot in its second weekend to a micro-budget horror film almost nobody had heard of.

The spinoff defense doesn’t really cover it. Rogue One was a spinoff too, no Skywalkers, a cast audiences were meeting cold, and it cleared a billion in 2016. Back when the brand was healthy, the words on the poster did the work.

What the leaked Lucasfilm mandate reportedly says

A widely shared post in r/StarWarsLeaks’ weekly rumors thread (link), crediting scooper Jeff Sneider, lays out what it calls Disney’s new marching orders for Lucasfilm under president and chief creative officer Dave Filoni. The reported directives read like this:

• A target audience of 10 to 70, with the real focus on teens and young adults, anchored to PG-13 ratings.

• AI used to generate environments and visual effects.

• Stories built to fit inside Filoni’s overarching creative framework.

• A cadence of roughly two shows and one movie a year.

• Standalone films going rare, with the focus shifting to “the next saga.”

• Movies expected to be big, high-stakes events that establish worlds and connect to each other.

• All shows set in the New Republic era, used as a sandbox for tone and genre.

• A push to recruit younger talent, especially in the 18-to-25 bracket.

• And one blunt line quoted straight from the post: Star Wars “has to remain special.”

Lucasfilm has confirmed none of it.

Where the leak came from, and what Sneider cut

According to the thread, Sneider says he got hold of an internal Lucasfilm planning document and is relaying the entries close to how they’re written. He also says he pulled one juicy item about future TV plans after checking with insiders and deciding it was inaccurate, which is at least a sign he’s filtering the document rather than dumping it.

That cuts both ways. Sneider has a real track record and a real miss rate, and one commenter who follows his scoops pegged him at “50/50.” The document could be authentic and already out of date. A sketch, not a blueprint.

Even the leakers don’t trust the AI part

The telling thing is which piece the leak community itself flagged as fishy.

Not the demographics. Not the release schedule. The AI. Several fans in the thread pushed back on that bullet specifically, with one pointing out that Lucasfilm owns ILM, the best visual-effects house on the planet, and would absorb a wave of backlash for leaning on AI it doesn’t even need.

They’ve got history on their side. In 2025, Lucasfilm showed off an AI-generated Star Wars planet during a talk about AI in visual effects, and the reaction was savage. One widely shared comment summed it up: it’s “not impressive if a 14-year-old can do it on their smartphone.”

A plan to win over a young, online audience by leaning into AI walks straight into the thing that audience already told the studio to its face.

The one number that isn’t a rumor

Set the leak aside completely and the picture barely moves.

Younger viewers turned out at theaters in 2026. They turned out for scrappy originals and loud, community-driven event movies, the stuff that felt made instead of assembled. A plan that reportedly starts by naming an age bracket and a rating, then sorts out the actual movie afterward, is aimed right at what that crowd keeps saying it’s done with.

Plenty of the reported list is harmless. A steadier schedule, new directors, stories that connect, none of that sinks anything, and Filoni is a real storyteller. A leaked memo isn’t a finished film.

The drop from $2.07 billion to $316 million isn’t leaked or rumored or 50/50, though. That number is just real. No target age range fixes it and no AI-built backdrop does either, and what’s always pulled a Star Wars crowd back is the movie itself. The reported plan spends most of its bullet points circling everything except that one.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• r/StarWarsLeaks Rumors and News Tidbits Thread, week of June 15, 2026 (linked), the originating post, crediting Jeff Sneider’s reporting from his InSneider newsletter, for the reported Lucasfilm mandate, the detail that Sneider pulled an unverified TV item, and the community pushback on the AI claim — all treated here as unconfirmed rumor

• Box Office Mojo, verified for The Force Awakens at ~$2.07 billion, Rogue One clearing $1 billion, and The Mandalorian & Grogu tracking at ~$316 million as the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars film

• Deadline, Variety, and StarWars.com (January 15, 2026), verified for Kathleen Kennedy stepping down and Dave Filoni becoming President and Chief Creative Officer

• GamesRadar (May 2025), verified for Lucasfilm’s AI-generated Star Wars VFX demo and the negative fan reaction

• The Direct (February 2026), verified for independent reporting that the new leadership was weighing a revised, interconnected movie strategy

The Goonies and Stand By Me star, 54, got sick on a flight home from his 40th-anniversary tour and was hospitalized overnight — but his team says it was a bad case of food poisoning, and he’s already on the mend.

Corey Feldman gave fans a scare this week, but the latest news is the good kind.

The 54-year-old actor fell ill on Monday, June 15, during a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles. A doctor on board checked him out mid-air, and the Los Angeles Fire Department met the plane at LAX, transporting him to a nearby hospital for tests.

He’d been traveling home from the Stand By Me 40th-anniversary tour, where he’d reunited with costars Jerry O’Connell and Wil Wheaton to celebrate Rob Reiner’s 1986 classic.

A scary flight, then a much smaller diagnosis

Early reports floated pancreatitis or gallstones as possible causes. After an overnight stay and an MRI, both were ruled out.

The real culprit, per Feldman’s publicist on June 16, was “a really bad case of food poisoning.” He’d already been discharged and was, in his rep’s words, doing much better.

Feldman himself posted to fans late Monday, calling the episode scary but reassuring everyone that “all signs look good as of now,” and thanking people for the flood of well-wishes.

So no lasting drama here — just a rough flight and a worse meal. Feldman says he’s looking ahead to his new single, “What Am I Here 4,” due June 22, and a pair of birthday shows in Southern California next month.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• USA Today and E! News (June 16, 2026), verified for the publicist’s statement, the food-poisoning diagnosis, the overnight stay and MRI, and that Feldman was discharged and doing better

• TMZ (June 15, 2026), verified for the initial mid-flight emergency, the LAFD response at LAX, and the early pancreatitis/gallstones speculation that was later ruled out

• People and Hello (June 16, 2026), verified for the Stand By Me 40th-anniversary tour context, Feldman’s own X post to fans, and his upcoming single and birthday performances

Yum sold Pizza Hut in a $2.7 billion split — China to a Chinese company, and everything else, including the retro Classic red-roof locations, to a US private equity firm that’s never run a restaurant.

If you’ve been making the pilgrimage to one of those gloriously retro red-roof Pizza Huts, you probably saw the headline that Pizza Hut got sold to a Chinese firm and felt a little knot in your stomach.

Good news and complicated news. The Chinese part doesn’t touch your local red roof at all.

Who actually bought Pizza Hut, and who didn’t

On June 16, Yum! Brands announced it’s selling Pizza Hut in two separate deals worth $2.7 billion combined. And the “two separate” part is the whole story.

The mainland China locations are going to Yum China Holdings — a Chinese company — for about $1.2 billion. That’s the deal everyone latched onto.

But every other Pizza Hut on Earth, including all 6,000-ish US restaurants and every retro red roof, is going to a completely different buyer: LongRange Capital, an American private equity firm based in Connecticut, for roughly $1.5 billion.

So the retro Huts aren’t becoming Chinese-owned. They’re becoming private-equity-owned. Whether that’s better is a real question.

The retro red-roof Huts everyone’s been visiting

First, a refresher on what’s actually at stake here, because the timing is almost cruel.

For the past year, Pizza Hut has leaned hard into nostalgia. Yum says retro features have returned to around 155 US locations — branded “Pizza Hut Classic” — bringing back red cups, checkered tablecloths, Tiffany-style lamps, salad bars, arcade games, and the unmistakable red roof.

More than 80 of those have been redesigned to fully recreate the ‘80s and ‘90s dine-in format. The revival has been driven in large part by franchisees like Daland Corporation, whose president Tim Sparks runs nearly 100 Pizza Huts.

It worked, too. The Classic locations became TikTok pilgrimage sites, the kind of thing people drive an hour to photograph because it smells exactly like being eight years old.

What private equity ownership could mean

Here’s where the knot in your stomach earns its keep.

LongRange Capital has never owned a restaurant chain. Pizza Hut is its first. Its current portfolio is gyms (24 Hour Fitness), caskets (Batesville), food manufacturing, and industrial materials — a grab bag, not a hospitality résumé.

The firm is saying the right things. Founder Bob Berlin called Pizza Hut “a beloved global brand with a rich heritage” and promised investment in great food and experiences.

But private equity tends to run on one engine: margins. And a retro dine-in restaurant — with a waitstaff, a salad bar, a dining room, and a building shaped like a barn — is one of the most expensive, lowest-margin ways to sell a pizza that exists. The carryout-only model Pizza Hut spent two decades shifting toward exists precisely because it’s cheaper.

Pizza Hut was already closing stores while reviving others

And the company wasn’t exactly healthy walking into this.

Even as it was cutting the ribbon on Classic locations, Yum confirmed it would close roughly 250 underperforming US Pizza Huts in the first half of 2026. US same-store sales fell 3% in the last quarter of 2025 and 5% across the year. Domino’s and the delivery apps have been eating the chain alive.

So Pizza Hut is doing two opposite things at once: pouring money into nostalgic dine-in rooms while shuttering hundreds of locations and, in some markets, testing fast-casual redesigns that look more like Chipotle than 1994.

That’s the contradiction LongRange just bought.

Will the red roofs survive?

So no, a Chinese firm isn’t taking over your childhood Pizza Hut. An American private equity firm is — one with no restaurant experience, inheriting a 68-year-old chain in the middle of betting on its own past.

The retro revival is the best story Pizza Hut has told in years. It’s also a tiny, expensive slice of a struggling chain, and private equity is not historically sentimental about expensive slices.

The red roof is either the brand’s whole future or the first line item somebody circles in a cost review. Which one it turns out to be is now up to people who, until this week, were better known for gyms and caskets.

Hat Tips:

• Yum! Brands investor release and CNBC (June 16, 2026), verified for the $2.7 billion total, the LongRange Capital sale of Pizza Hut ex-China for ~$1.5 billion, the Yum China purchase of mainland China locations for ~$1.2 billion, and the Q3 2026 close pending regulatory approval

• Fast Company (June 16, 2026), verified for LongRange Capital being Connecticut-based, Pizza Hut being its first restaurant chain, its portfolio (24 Hour Fitness, Batesville, Bakkavor, US Synthetic), and founder Bob Berlin’s statement

• Yum.com and Food Network (May–June 2026), verified for the ~155 retro “Pizza Hut Classic” locations and the returning red roofs, red cups, salad bars, Tiffany lamps, and Book It! nostalgia

• New York Post (May 17, 2026), verified for the 80-plus redesigned locations and the Daland Corporation / Tim Sparks franchisee-led revival

• AOL and Southern Living (2026), verified for the ~250 US closures in the first half of 2026 and the 3% and 5% US same-store sales declines

The owner of Fox News and the NFL agreed to buy the streaming platform sitting on 100 million-plus TVs — the menu, the data, and the ad space — in a cash-and-stock deal that spooked its own investors.

Fox Corporation announced Monday, June 15, that it’s buying Roku — the streaming box, the home screen, the whole thing — for about $22 billion.

This is the company that owns Fox News, Fox Sports, and Tubi buying the operating system that millions of people use to open Netflix every night. Sit with that one for a second.

What’s in the Fox–Roku deal

The terms: Fox pays $160.00 per share in a mix of cash and Fox stock, valuing Roku at roughly $22 billion in enterprise value. To pull it off, Fox is borrowing $12 billion.

When it closes, current Fox shareholders will own about 73% of the combined company and Roku shareholders about 27%. Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood sticks around and joins the Fox board.

The companies expect to close in the first half of 2027, assuming shareholders and regulators sign off. That second part is not a formality.

Why Fox wants Roku’s home screen and your data

Fox isn’t really buying a hardware company. It’s buying a position.

Roku reaches more than 100 million streaming households worldwide. The Roku Channel alone is about 3% of all U.S. streaming, fifth behind YouTube, Netflix, Disney, and Amazon. That’s a giant front door — and Fox now owns the door, the welcome mat, and the list of everyone who walks through it.

That last part is the real prize. Roku brings first-party viewer data and an advertising platform, which Fox bolts onto Tubi and its live sports and news. As one Forrester analyst put it, the bigger play here is advertising — the thing every streamer is now fighting over.

Lachlan Murdoch, Fox’s CEO, called it “a defining moment” and the next step in a decade-long strategy. Translation: owning content stopped being enough. You have to own the rails it rides on.

Fox sold its Roku stake at $58 in 2020. Now it’s paying $160.

Here’s the part that writes itself.

Back in 2020, Fox dumped its 6 million Roku shares at around $58 each to help fund its $440 million purchase of Tubi. Six years later, it’s buying the entire company at $160 a share.

Sold low, buying high, on the same stock. That’s a heck of a way to prove you believe in streaming now.

Investors aren’t sold on the Fox–Roku deal

The market’s first reaction was a flinch. Fox shares dropped as much as 18% on Monday, with investors balking at the roughly 11% premium over Roku’s Friday close.

There’s also the regulatory wall. This lands in the middle of a 2026 streaming consolidation wave, and a deal that puts this much control of distribution, data, and ad inventory under one media company is exactly the kind of thing antitrust reviewers tend to read twice.

What the Fox–Roku deal actually means

Strip it down and this is cord-cutting eating its own tail. People fled the cable bundle, and the streaming aggregator they fled to is now worth enough that a legacy TV giant is paying $22 billion to own it.

The fight stopped being about who makes the best shows. It’s about who controls the screen you turn on, the menu you scroll, and the data that says what you’ll watch next. Fox just bid to own all three.

Whether that’s a brilliant pivot or an expensive panic depends entirely on a deal that won’t close until 2027 — if it closes at all.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Fox Corporation and PR Newswire / SEC 8-K filing (June 15, 2026), the primary source, verified for the $160-per-share price, the ~$22 billion enterprise value, the cash-and-stock structure, the 73/27 ownership split, and Anthony Wood’s board role

• Variety (June 15, 2026), verified for the $96-per-share cash portion plus 0.9693 Fox shares, the first-half-2027 close window, and the Tubi acquisition history

• NBC News (June 15, 2026), verified for the $12 billion Fox is borrowing, the 18% share drop, the 11% premium concern, and the Nielsen 3%-of-streaming figure

• Hollywood Reporter (June 15, 2026), verified for Fox selling its Roku shares at $58 in 2020 and the LightShed analyst flagging Fox as a likely acquirer

• ABC News (June 16, 2026), verified for the regulatory and shareholder approval requirements and the Forrester analyst’s advertising-revenue analysis

A group called SHADOWBYT3$ says it stole 859 MB of employee data through the HR platform TINYpulse and wants $2 million. Nintendo confirmed a limited breach — just not the version the hackers are selling.

Nintendo has been hacked again. The good news, if you own a Switch, is that this one probably isn’t about you.

A group going by SHADOWBYT3$ surfaced on June 13 claiming it stole 859 MB of internal Nintendo data and slapping a $2 million ransom on it. The twist is where the data came from: not Nintendo’s servers, but a third-party HR tool called TINYpulse.

What SHADOWBYT3$ claims it stole

The group says the haul is employee data going back nearly a decade, from 2016 to 2026.

Per cybersecurity outlets covering the claim, that allegedly includes full employee names, corporate emails, employee IDs, workplace survey responses, engagement rankings, and — the ugly part — bank statements and W-9 tax forms.

SHADOWBYT3$ gave Nintendo a 48-hour deadline. When Nintendo didn’t bite, the group redirected the shakedown at TINYpulse itself and pushed the clock back a day. That’s an “extortion-as-a-service” play: steal the data, threaten to dump it, and bill whoever blinks first.

What Nintendo actually confirmed

Here’s where the hacker’s pitch and reality split.

Researchers who poked at the leaked sample found signs it’s at least partly real — they matched names to people still working at Nintendo, and some files carried metadata stamps from January 28, 2026. So this isn’t pure bluster.

But Nintendo of America confirmed only a limited breach tied to TINYpulse. The company says its own systems were never compromised, and no customer data or payment information was touched. The exposure was internal survey content from a small slice of employees, most of it years old.

In other words: real, but narrower than a $2 million headline wants it to be.

This is a supply-chain hack, not a source-code heist

What makes this one interesting isn’t the size. It’s the door they came through.

Nobody cracked Nintendo’s vault. They hit a vendor — an employee-feedback SaaS app most people have never heard of — and walked out with HR paperwork. That’s the modern shape of these attacks. You don’t break into the castle; you break into the company that does the castle’s payroll surveys.

Which is a long way from how Nintendo used to get burned.

Nintendo has been a hacker target for years

Because if there’s one company that knows the hits keep coming, it’s this one.

In 2020, Nintendo revealed that 300,000 accounts had been compromised — it started at 160,000 before the number ballooned. Hackers used old Nintendo Network IDs to get into accounts, see birthdays and emails, and in some cases reach linked PayPal and card info to make fraudulent purchases. Nintendo killed NNID logins and pushed everyone toward two-factor. That one was about customers.

That same year came the Gigaleak, a flood of Nintendo source code, prototypes, and internal dev tools dumped onto 4chan — SNES and N64 guts laid bare, a goldmine for emulation and a nightmare for Nintendo’s legal team. The leaks traced back to a hacker who’d also breached Microsoft.

Then in October 2024, the big one: the Teraleak. Pokémon developer Game Freak got hit for what some estimated near a terabyte of data. Game Freak confirmed the names and contact details of 2,606 employees and contractors were exposed, alongside source code, unreleased Pokémon projects like Winds and Waves, Pokémon Legends: Z-A details, and even Switch 2 codenames. Nintendo went so far as to subpoena Discord to unmask the leaker.

The target keeps moving outward

Line them up and you can watch the soft spot drift.

2020 was the customers. The Gigaleak was the source-code vault. The Teraleak was the crown-jewel studio. This week, it’s an HR survey app a vendor runs on Nintendo’s behalf.

Nintendo can wall off its own servers, and clearly has — its systems held this time. But you can’t patch every company you’ve ever signed a contract with. The most secretive, litigious giant in gaming just got reminded that these days, the weak link usually isn’t you. It’s whoever you outsourced to.

Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.

D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.

Hat Tips:

• Nintendo Life and Nintendo Everything (June 15, 2026), verified for Nintendo of America’s official statement confirming a limited TINYpulse breach, that its own systems and customer data were not compromised, and that the data was internal survey content from a small subset of employees

• Cybernews (June 14, 2026), verified for the $2 million ransom demand, the 2016–2026 data span, and researchers matching leaked names to current Nintendo employees plus the January 28, 2026 metadata stamps

• Otakukart and Technadu (June 2026), verified for the SHADOWBYT3$ June 13 claim, the 859 MB figure, the TINYpulse attack vector, the deadline shift to the vendor, and the extortion-as-a-service framing

• CNN and CBS News (June 9, 2020), verified for the 300,000 compromised Nintendo Network ID accounts, the data exposed, and the fraudulent-purchase response

• Wikipedia and Hackread (2020–2026), verified for the Gigaleak source-code leak details and the 2024 Game Freak Teraleak, including Game Freak’s confirmation of 2,606 affected employees and contractors