MPN Podcast: ‘Quantumania’ Revitalizes Box Office; ‘Avatar 2’ Becomes Third-Highest-Grossing Film; New Shows on Netflix
February 22, 2023
On this week’s episode of the Media Play News podcast, hosts Charles Parkman and Charlie Showley lead with the box office numbers, which have returned to eight-figure opening weekends with the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. In spite of the negative reviews aggregated on sites such as Rotten Tomatoes, Quantumania netted more than $120 million at the box office and was the biggest release of the three “Ant-Man” films to date. Charles gives his initial impressions of the movie having watched it over the weekend. Meanwhile, Avatar: The Way of Water had a resurgence over the holiday weekend, giving it enough of a push to cross Titanic to become the third-highest-grossing movie of all time. Charlie shares a news article from December calling Avatar 2 a flop after its initial weekend: what a long way it’s come since.
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On Netflix, the streaming service has dropped its “Surprise Me” feature which would recommend a random TV show or movie based on the user’s preferences. Charlie and Charles spend several minutes roasting the feature as it comes off as a completely incompatible product for long-form media. TikTok can get away with suggesting 30 second videos one after the other with varying degrees of relevance, but expecting a movie randomizer to work better than scrolling the Netflix carousel is madness. Lastly on Netflix, Charlie recommends some recent shows he’s been watching: “You” season four, which released half of its episodes this month with the rest scheduled in March, and “Physical: 100,” a South Korean reality show that’s a cross between “Squid Game” and “American Ninja Warrior.” Both shows get the host’s thumbs up.