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Another day means more streaming news. We learned in early May that Disney+, which will combine with Hulu into a single app, would be removing certain streaming content from its platform. Disney’s Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy announced this on an earnings call saying that the company is revising its costs and strategy. Removing streaming content is a move we recently saw Max (formerly HBO Max) make as a cost-cutting measure.

 “We are in the process of reviewing the content on our DTC [direct-to-consumer] services to align with the strategic changes in our approach to content curation,” said McCarthy. “As a result, we will be removing certain content from our streaming platforms, and currently expect to take an impairment charge of approximately $1.5 to $1.8 billion. The charge, which will not be recorded in our segment results will primarily be recognized in the third quarter as we complete our review and remove the content.”

McCarthy also said the streaming service will produce lower volumes of content in the future.

As for what Disney is removing from Disney+ and Hulu, reference the list below.

9/11: One Day in America
America the Beautiful
Among the Stars
Artemis Fowl
Be Our Chef
Best in Dough
Best in Snow
Better Nate Than Ever
Big Shot
Bin Laden’s Hard Drive
Black Beauty
Buried Secrets of WWII
Cheaper by the Dozen remake
Clouds
Croc That Ate Jaws
Darby and the Dead
Diary of a Future President
Disney Fairy Tale Weddings
Dollface
Drug Lords: The Next Generation
Earth to Ned
Encore!
Everything’s Trash
Extreme Rescues
Flora & Ulysses
Foodtastic
Harmonious Live!
Hollywood Stargirl
It’s a Dog’s Life with Bill Farmer
Just Beyond
Keep This Between Us
Life Below Zero: Next Generation
Little Demon
Locked Up Abroad
Love in the Time of Corona
Maggie
Magic Camp
Marvel’s Project Hero
More Than Robots
Most Wanted Sharks
National Geographic Investigates: LSD and Psychedelics
North Korea: Inside the Mind of a Dictator
Own the Room
Pentatonix: Around the World for the Holidays
Pick the Litter
Pistol
Rogue Trip
Rosaline
Shop Class
Stargirl
Stuntman
The Armstrong Tapes
The Big Fib
The Come Up
The Deep End
The Hot Zone
The Making Of Willow
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers
The Mysterious Benedict Society
The One and Only Ivan
The Premise
The Princess
The Quest
The Real Right Stuff
The Right Stuff
The World According to Jeff Goldblum
Timmy Failure
To Catch A Smuggler Rome
Trafficked with Mariana van Zeller
Turner & Hooch
Ultimate Survival WWII
Weird But True!
Willow
Wolfgang
Y: The Last Man

This content is set to leave Disney+ and Hulu on May 26.

Originally published on May 11, 2023.

The post Here’s What Disney Is Removing from Disney+ and Hulu appeared first on Nerdist.

With concerns like high inflation and generating revenue prevalent in today’s unsteady economy, scores of small businesses continue to face challenges as they try to grow. It’s crucial for small businesses to find the best insurance coverage to help protect their assets.

Factors like rising interest rates and consumers looking closer and differently at how they spend money are also prompting entrepreneurs to focus more on their operations and prepare against unforeseen disasters that could severely harm or even shut down their businesses.

With May being Small Business Month, many small businesses can potentially reduce their risk of heavy unexpected financial loss stemming from everything from cyberattacks to employee theft. For instance, cyberattacks reportedly can cost companies an average of $200,000 for each occurrence.

To boot, small businesses are often so busy running their daily operations they may neglect cybersecurity best practices. That can make them prey to cybercriminals trying to profit off their vulnerabilities. And they most likely don’t have the ample resources of larger companies to combat the assaults.

BLACK ENTERPRISE connected with Steve Maliborski, general manager of commercial products at Acuity Insurance, on the topic. He offered recommendations on three different types of lesser-known insurance coverages small businesses may consider that could help protect their assets.

• Cyber Insurance

With larger companies investing in cybersecurity tools, hackers are increasingly targeting small and medium-sized businesses. However, small businesses can help guard themselves with cybersecurity insurance. It generally includes cyber liability and data breach coverage, one of the most common types of cybercrime. “Cyber insurance covers costs to identify the extent of the breach, how you should respond, notification and services to those affected, and any fines you incur.”

The bottom line is the best defense against cybercrime is prevention. Some commercial cyber insurance policies, including Acuity’s, contain resources to help minimize cyber risks. “Cyber insurance will cost you far less than you and your customers being the victim of a cybercrime.” Acuity’s average commercial lines policy starts at $263 yearly.

• Business income and Extra Expenses

Until repairs are made after a property loss, retailers may lose income. Business income coverage helps bridge the gap, while extra expense coverage pays for the added costs needed to resume operations. If the damage is extensive, you may need to shut down operations temporarily. Your income will be impacted during downtime, but your bills and expenses will still need to be paid. The business Income portion pays for the actual loss of income you sustain due to the necessary suspension of your operations. The extra expense portion pays for essential expenses you incur while your regular operations are restored. For instance, if you need to move to a temporary location, the coverage will include relocation expenses and costs to equip and operate the temporary site.

• Employee Dishonesty

A recent Zippia study showed 75% of employees steal at least once from their employer. This coverage will help as it pays for loss or damage to items such as inventory, office equipment, other personal property used in the business, forgery and fraud, money, and other forms of payment. “Employee Dishonesty Coverage provides an extra sense of comfort to your existing financial controls and security procedures by protecting you and your business against internal threats in your business.” Coverage costs can vary quite a lot by state and business type. Yet, an independent agent will be able to provide you with specifics about the coverage, evaluate your risks, and help you determine how much coverage you need.

We got our first look at season two of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds with a teaser chock full of emotion, adventure, and Spock being Spock. But now, the full trailer for Strange New Worlds season two has been released. And in addition to showcasing more of our favorite familiar faces, this trailer also gives us a look at a highly-anticipated Star Trek crossover event. Yes, the animated series Star Trek: Lower Decks is going live-action and crossing over into the Strange New Worlds universe. In the trailer for season two, we get a glimpse of live-action Beckett Mariner and Brad Boimler, played by Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid. We can also expect to see animation coming into the live-action world of the show.

You can watch the full Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season two trailer below.

The synopsis for the season shares a bit more about what we can expect to see. It notes:

Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), Spock (Ethan Peck) and the rest of the Enterprise crew are back exploring strange new worlds and boldly going where no one has gone before.

Short and to the point! But the trailer promises we’re going to go deep into the crew’s adventures. A blog post on Star Trek‘s official website notes that “In Season 2 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, under the command of Captain Christopher Pike, confronts increasingly dangerous stakes, explores uncharted territories and encounters new life and civilizations. The crew will also embark on personal journeys that will continue to test their resolve and redefine their destinies. Facing friends and enemies both new and familiar, their adventures will unfold in surprising ways never seen before on any Star Trek series.”

In addition to a season trailer, Paramount+ also released a clip showcasing the beginning of the trial of Una Chin-Riley (Rebecca Romijn). Starfleet arrested Number One at the end of the first season after learning she is an enhanced human, something wholly illegal. The clip shows various members of the crew giving testimony as to Una’s alleged sedition. While La’an (Christina Chong) and Dr. M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) highlight Una’s sterling character, Spock (Ethan Peck) alludes to her hiding something. We’ll have to wait for the season to find out what he says.

Well, that’s basically everything we love most about Star Trek. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season two releases on June 15. The series streams exclusively on Paramount+.

The post STAR TREK: STRANGE NEW WORLDS Clip Starts the Trial of Number One appeared first on Nerdist.

If you haven’t seen the latest iteration of the Fast and the Furious franchise, you are somehow missing out on everything all at once. As has been stated in an earlier review, the newest installment, Fast X, is bigger, faster, and, heck, even more car-packed than previous entries. However, the problem is that it is also more homophobic.

In the new movie, Jason Momoa stars as Dante Reyes, the Portuguese son of former Fast Five villain, Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). Almeida first made his appearance as the then-antagonist in Fast Five when the Fast family stole his safe and took it on an excursion through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, likely killing a bystander or two. Now, following Almeida’s late character, Momoa’s performance can easily be deemed exceptional, yet campy and charming.

Momoa plays the maniacal Reyes with the intensity of Heath Ledger’s Joker and the subtle corniness of every Schwarzenegger villain circa 1985–1990. Where things get weird, however, is when Momoa, the writers, or both, throw in a dash of queer coding to make Reyes that much more “menacing.” 

For those new to the term, “queer coding” is when a character is played as fitting the stereotypical trappings of being LGBTQ+ without the connection ever being made explicit. Further, queer coding in particular seems to occur most frequently when the character is meant to be a strange, villainous “other.” Think Jafar from Aladdin being depicted as an eyeliner-wearing, primly dressed sorcerer placed opposite a plucky, makeup-free street urchin modeled more like a California surfer bro. Think Scar from The Lion King being given more effeminate mannerisms, a lithe figure, and arched eyebrows as opposed to Mufuasa and an adult Simba being broader in physique and stereotypically coming off as distinctly more masculine. Heck, think Ursula of The Little Mermaid being modeled after drag queen Divine. And of course, Disney is not the only company to have engaged in this practice (although they really seem to enjoy doing it); they are just a part of a larger problem — our view that queerness, homosexuality, or anything that runs against heteronormativity is creepy, weird, or scary. 

Enter Jason Momoa.

Now, to say Momoa plays Reyes as queer-coded is not a stretch. Just a brief glance at reviews will reveal some interesting word choices. Vanity Fair applauds Momoa’s “flamboyant” take on the character. Forbes similarly uses the very same word. And The Verge notes that Reyes’ wildness “smacks more of gay panic” than anything. “Flamboyant,” of course, could be applied to straight people as well as queer people, but when the character, like Momoa’s, is the only male character in the film to don pig-tails while he paints his toenails and the nails of two male corpses he has propped up next to him, then, well, “flamboyant” just seems like a polite euphemism. 

People that have seen Fast X will likely point out that Momoa’s character is never shown to be attracted to other men (although one wonders what ended up happening with those spa-day corpses) and, indeed, that Reyes only ever flirts with Isabel (Daniela Melchior), a woman who does not reciprocate his feelings. But the thing about subtext is that it’s, you know, subtext. It is a point made at the periphery of stated intention. At its best it is meant to evoke a feeling in an audience without insulting their intelligence by spelling out every single intention behind a work of art. At its worst, whether done consciously or not by an artist, subtext can lead audiences to a series of harmful equations like “nail polish + man = bad,” or “long hair + outlandish style = strange,” or, most interestingly, “atheist = villain.”

I bring up this last issue because it underlies the main conflict in Fast X; while all the main heroes like Dom (Vin Diesel), Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), or their son Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry) reiterate that they “have faith,” Reyes is presented as explicitly atheist in a monologue where he explains that he was legally dead for two minutes and saw nothing. As a result of this experience, he seemingly “lost” faith, and he has become a nihilistic terrorist since. 

So, on one hand, we have the faithful, family-oriented group wherein “family” implies a mom, a dad, and children surrounded by a loving network of other equally straight, equally faithful mommies, daddies, and children. On the other hand, we have the “flamboyant” atheist-terrorist who literally tries to blow up the Vatican at one point while doing a sacrilegious Christ-like pose. I lied — it’s not subtext. It’s overtext. It’s beating us over the head with several points, and it really just won’t stop. Add to this that Dom’s crucifix necklace becomes the currency various characters exchange with one another to show that they, too, have “faith” and that Reyes explicitly taunts Dom for trying to be a “saint” who must perform miracles to save his only begotten son. All these factors combine to result in a film so wildly anti-queer in its effect that Mel Gibson making Satan a hairless, effeminate weirdo actually comes off as subtle.

Now, none of this is to say that Jason Momoa or the screenwriters set out to revitalize a harmful trope that was on the decline. Likely, homophobia is so ingrained in our society that, in order to make a character truly villainous or “other-ized,” they must seemingly flow against the currents of our social order. That means foes who are presented as “queer,” in every sense of the word, are usually done so with an emphasis on the sexual connotation of the word. 

Yes, Fast X is a big-budget Corona and car commercial that probably spent about a week or so really working out its script beyond getting its characters in position to set up parts two and three, but that doesn’t mean it’s beyond criticism. The Fast movies have combined to make a $7 billion franchise; that means, however silly they are, they are getting millions of views, and often those views are children who are soaking up the themes these films impart. If the theme is “gay atheists want to destroy the world,” that’s a huge problem, and the overly stereotypical push of queer misconceptions in the film is an understatement. Jason Momoa’s Dante Reyes is a harsh example of a meltdown when it comes to adequate LGBTQ+ representation. 

Fast X is currently in theaters.