The 11th Hour Dispatch — Friday, October 5, 2018
BINGE WATCH
The producers behind A Quiet Place have launched a new production company that already has a first-look deal with Paramount Pictures. Fully Formed Entertainment will continue Andrew Form and Brad Fuller’s commitment to genre-elevating content like A Quiet Place, the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot, and The Purge. The two have been with Paramount since 2008 with Platinum Dunes, the production company they founded with Michael Bay in 2001. Since, they’ve produced 18 films and grossed over $2.3 billion globally. “Michael Bay has been our mentor for 18 years and the lessons we learned from him are the building blocks that have allowed us to create Fully Formed Entertainment. Michael brought us into the Paramount family and our experience at this studio for the last ten years has been so rewarding that we are excited to continue working with the stellar team at Paramount,” the duo said.
YOUNG MONEY
Walgreens has taken a minority stake in popular beauty subscription box Birchbox. As part of the deal, of which no amount was disclosed, Birchbox will start selling products in eleven Walgreens locations across major U.S. cities. The $10-per-month subscription box has been looking for investors or a buyer for quite a while now and Walgreens has been looking for a way to increase sales of its beauty products in its stores, so this partnership seems a bit like a match in heaven. According to Statista, the U.S. cosmetics and makeup industry is worth a massive $62.5 billion.
BIG BUSINESS
We’re living inside a Bond movie because Chinese spies reportedly tried to plant microchips in the data 30 major American companies, according to a Bloomberg investigation. Two of those companies are apparently Amazon and Apple — though both companies are publicly denying this. The spies reportedly placed microchips into hardware from U.S. supplier Supermicro, which is one of the world’s largest sellers of server motherboards. Their compromised motherboards were then built into the servers of the targeted companies. Amazon — who I probably legally need to, again, say is denying this — reportedly noticed the chips in 2015 during due diligence for its acquisition of Elemental. The tech/e-commerce/streaming service Frankenstein then handed over its findings to the authorities. A secret investigation from that report is still reportedly open three years later.
NOTHIN’ BUT ‘NET
Mashable’s ranking of famous fat bears is journalism at its finest.
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