1. CANNES TO UNDERGO MAJOR RENOVATIONS: Cannes has announced a $556 million project that will include renovating the Palais des Festivals, which is home to major events including the Cannes Film Festival and Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. The project will also involve building a new film museum and a technology park. The Hollywood Reporter: “Plans include adding another floor to the existing building that would house a 500-seat theater and renovating the Salon des Ambassadeurs. The cost is estimated at €62 million ($69 million). … The project, unveiled during a meeting held at the C.N.C. (Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée) in Paris, also calls for the creation of an international film museum that could open by 2025—at a cost of €200 million, or $223 million—and would be dedicated to the history of moviemaking, the Cannes festival and special effects, as well as the construction of a state-of-the-art 12-screen multiplex cinema that would house the biggest screen in southwestern France, with 2,426 seats.”
2. 'FORTNITE’S BLACK HOLE EVENT BREAKS VIEWING RECORDS ON SOCIAL PLATFORMS: Fortnite’s black hole event—which intentionally shut down the video game for two days last week to unveil a redesigned map and launch its 11th season—is now one of the biggest online gaming events ever. More than seven million people tuned into the event across Twitter, Twitch, and YouTube to watch the virtual black hole. The Epic Games event was officially titled “The End.” The Verge: “On Twitch, more than 1.7 million people were viewing either the official Fortnite stream or streams from popular creators. That’s ‘the platform’s peak concurrent record on a single game category,’ Epic says. On Twitter, the black hole event was the ‘most viewed gaming event on Twitter, with 50.7 million minutes watched and 42.8 million views.’ Epic says it peaked at 1.4 million concurrent viewers. On YouTube, far and away the largest of the three platforms, Fortnite black hole viewership hit 4.3 million concurrent viewers across all channels. The company is not sharing how many players tuned in for the live event in-game, although that figure may be revealed at some point in the future.”
3. PARIS 2024 OLYMPICS LOGO DRAWS CRITICISM: Paris unveiled the logo for the 2024 Olympics, a design representing the French symbol Marianne, which personifies the French Republic. But the reveal was immediately met with criticism, with many comparing the design to the flame from the dating app Tinder. Washington Post: “For years, the tentative design was a multicolored Eiffel Tower that ruffled zero feathers. … ‘The medal, the flame, Marianne,’ the official announcement read, highlighting a design that uses the medal as a face and the Olympic flame as a means of presenting a tousled bob of hair. ‘Here is the new face of the Olympic and Paralympic Games of #Paris2024.’ French feminists were none too pleased. The logo, observed Rebecca Amsellem, author of the weekly Les Glorieuses newsletter, resembles ‘a Japanese manga heroine drawn in a latte.’”