Ancient tools that were discovered in Madhya Pradesh’s Dhaba have led scientists to believe that the Toba supervolcanic eruption, which took place about 74,000 years ago in what is now modern Sumatra, did not actually bring humanity to the brink of extinction, as was previously believed. A Nature Communications study found that the ancient tools that appear in the sediment date to between 80,000 and 65,000 years ago. It says that the same type of tools continued to be used before, and after, the eruption, hence the researchers assert that the population must have survived the fallout from the Toba eruption.

The Nature Communications study also says that the tools found in Dhaba match tools used in Africa, Australia and the Arabian Peninsula, dating back to between 285,000 to 50,000 years ago. Given the similarities of these tools, the scientists suggest that the site now offers more evidence of Homo sapiens moving out of Africa earlier than previously believed.

The study, based on the span in time of stone tools used and manufactured in prehistoric India, which seem to have been unaffected by the purported super-eruption. It says that the aftermath did not stop early humans from surviving in Central India.

“The big theory was that the Toba supereruption created a volcanic winter, which led to glaciation, it resculpted ecosystems and had tremendous impact on the atmosphere and landscapes,” Micheal Pertaglia, an anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History was quoted by National Geographic as saying.

About 74,000 years ago, the Toba supervolcanic eruption on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the largest in the last two million years, and, it was believed, nearly wiped out humans. The eruption scattered ash thousands of miles and left behind a 60-mile-wide crater that has since filled with water.

The new study, however, provides further evidence against the popular belief that the supervolcanic eruption might have nearly wiped off humanity.

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Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is offering free audiobooks and ebooks to the first novel in her series, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, throughout April, to help families in lockdown during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, Rowling has also launched a new digital hub called “Harry Potter at Home”. Each week on “Wizarding Wednesdays”, it will offer a range of activities, quizzes, and other things to do, like how to draw a Niffler — the Fantastic Beasts creature attracted to shiny things. And every Friday, you’ll get new ideas in your inbox with an email newsletter, if you sign up.

The free audiobook version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone will be available on Audible’s newly-launched Audible Stories in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German and Japanese, with the English-language version narrated by Stephen Fry. Better yet, you don’t even need an Audible account to listen. As for the ebook, you can borrow it for free in over 20 different languages from a participating local or school library, at digital library supplier OverDrive, via its Libby app.

Rowling said in a prepared statement: “The teachers, parents, and carers working to keep children’s lives as normal and happy as possible while we’re all on lockdown deserve a bit of magic. I hope these initiatives will give children and even adults a happy distraction during their enforced stay-at-home time.”

“The Harry Potter books have always been a refuge, comfort and escape for readers, and right now, we need reading for pleasure more than ever,” J.K. Rowling’s agency, The Blair Partnership, founder Neil Blair said. “Many households will already have a Harry Potter book at home, but I’m delighted that we can now provide free online access to the audio and ebook of the first book in the series, through Audible and libraries, for all to enjoy, as well as a fantastic new digital hub for families with younger children to help them through these difficult times.”

Can Netflix force Bollywood to reinvent itself? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS. You can also download the episode or just hit the play button below.

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Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — the first Harry Potter book — will be read chapter-wise by several celebrities, author J.K. Rowling has announced. That includes Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe, ex-footballer David Beckham, Fantastic Beasts stars Eddie Redmayne and Claudia Kim, and actors Stephen Fry, Dakota Fanning, and Noma Dumezweni. Fry has previously lent his voice to the Harry Potter audiobooks, Redmayne and Kim play Newt Scamander and Nagini in the Fantastic Beasts spin-off series, while Beckham, Fanning, and Dumezweni are new to the Harry Potter club.

An official announcement says to expect “more surprises and special appearances”. The Harry Potter readings are being offered to entertain those stuck at home during the lockdown amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Readings will be offered for free in video and audio-only form so you can choose the format you prefer. The former will be available at harrypotterathome.com, with the latter exclusive to the streaming service Spotify. The first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, “The Boy Who Lived”, has been read by Radcliffe himself. It’s 25 minutes long. New chapters — there are 17 in total in the Philosopher’s Stone — will be released every week starting now and until the end of June.

This is the second phase of the “Harry Potter at Home” initiative launched by Rowling and her agency, The Blair Partnership, in early April, which kicked off with free audiobook and ebook versions of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, available for free via Audible Stories and participating libraries at the digital library supplier OverDrive, respectively.

“Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” has sold over 120 million copies since its release in 1997, putting it at the top among the Harry Potter series, which has total lifetime sales of over 500 million, making it the best-selling book series of all time.

Can Netflix force Bollywood to reinvent itself? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS. You can also download the episode or just hit the play button below.

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It’s why the game isn’t called Watch Dogs 3 or Watch Dogs: London, but Watch Dogs: Legion. Unlike Aiden Pearce in Watch Dogs and Marcus Holloway in Watch Dogs 2, there isn’t a central protagonist in Watch Dogs: Legion. Instead, you can choose to play as any London citizen (save for the antagonists that drive the story) once they have been recruited into the hacktivist group DedSec. It could be a young athlete, a beekeeper, a drone enthusiast, a professional hitman, a renegade judge, a former MI5 spy, or even an enemy who once hated your guts. Instead of building a legion of followers, as Watch Dogs 2 had you do, Watch Dogs: Legion wants you to assemble a team of myriad individuals — a maximum of 40 — who all bring something unique to the group.

This could be something obvious, like expertise with guns or drones, or access to resources such as a flashy car or construction tools. Or it could be something different. For example, a homeless man who sweeps the streets helps him blend into the environment, escape detection, and evade pursuit. Operatives, as they are called on Watch Dogs: Legion, have weaknesses too. Some include being a shopaholic, less physically fit, gambling away money, or giving themselves away in stealth due to a chronic medical condition.

Speaking of stealth, Watch Dogs: Legion involves a lot of it. It’s not only DedSec policy to use weapons as a last resort, which is the game’s way of asking players to prioritise hacking, the thing that drives Watch Dogs. Rather, going in guns blazing will attract so much enemy firepower that you’re likely to find yourself overpowered. Even if you manage to sneak in quietly, there’s always the rise of being spotted by a human or a drone. And if you don’t take them out quickly and silently, it’ll escalate to gun use. I found it much better to remain at a distance, hack phones to distract opponents and security cameras to discover a path to the target, use drones to move around facilities and then use the all-new “spiderbot” — an eight-legged drone — to get the job done.

Day Zero

All this helps you tackle the threats hanging over London. Those threats not only touch upon the ideas that have been running through Watch Dogs’ core from the start — the likes of datamining, mass surveillance, government overreach, and invasion of privacy — but also trade on civil rights, militarisation, immigration, authoritarianism, artificial intelligence, and human consciousness among others. In doing so, it’s able to draw parallels to British history, from the recent debacle of Brexit to its days as a colonialist force. Watch Dogs: Legion shows London at its most dystopic, where football stadiums have been converted into “processing centres” for immigrant detainees, and where civil liberties are routinely and aggressively violated, with the casual oppression on the streets.

Watch Dogs: Legion begins with a series of coordinated terrorist bombings (they will remind many of the 7/7 London bombings) in a near-future post-Brexit London, after a DedSec member and a talking artificial intelligence called Bagley put an end to a plot to blow up the Parliament (which is naturally inspired by Guy Fawkes’ infamous failed Gunpowder Plot). A rival hacking group called Zero Day blamed DedSec for the attacks, and its members were largely hunted down and killed. Meanwhile, London’s Metropolitan Police is disbanded, and private security firm Albion takes a very literal hands-on approach to rule of law. Albion is once described as the largest private army in the world. Bagley jokingly compares them to the British government, though in this case they are more like the East India Company.

With London’s DedSec affiliate at its lowest, Watch Dogs: Legion asks you to pick your first new operative from 18 presets. With assistance from Bagley the AI and access to DedSec code embedded into ctOS (central Operating System) that has centralised all computer networks, you set out to build a resistance to take down the new military rulers (Albion) and find the real culprits (Zero Day). But that’s not all. There are four main storylines on Watch Dogs: Legion — Zero Day hackers, Albion private security, Clan Kelley mafia, and a techpreneur called Skye Larsen. To help in your quest, you can even recruit Albion employees and members of Clan Kelley, who help you gain access to restricted locations that would otherwise be a lot tougher.

The unseen face of Zero Day in Watch Dogs: Legion
Photo Credit: Ubisoft

Team up

Recruiting is at the heart of Watch Dogs: Legion, and it helps unlock gameplay choices that were not possible before on previous entries. For instance, a construction worker can stroll into a construction site undetected. Barristers, on the other hand, will help reduce jail time for your operatives. You’ll need them if you’re arrested — depending on modifiers you’ve got on your team, you’ll be locked out of your character for 20 minutes; that increases with successive arrests — which happens if you’re detained in a place you’re not supposed to be. Watch Dogs: Legion also offers an optional “permadeath” feature. If all your operatives are dead, hospitalised, or arrested at the same time, the game ends. Of course, this is more palatable in a game where you can have a team of 40 playable characters.

As you roam around London, you can select any passer-by to see what they have to offer. If you think they would be a good addition, simply add them to the team. In some cases, this would be enough to make them join DedSec. But in most cases, you will need to chat them up. Watch Dogs: Legion will also suggest you to hire skilled recruits from time to time. These recruit missions are temporarily available and must be started within the time mentioned. The process usually involves doing a life-saving or professional favour before they agree to come on board. It involves a bit more work if the person you’re trying to recruit doesn’t like DedSec. And if they are a sworn enemy of DedSec, forget it, because they will never listen to you to begin with.

To recruit someone who hates DedSec (a red thumb signifies that on their profile), you’ll need to “deep profile” them, an option that becomes available with a tech upgrade. This shows their full daily calendar, from what they do for work, the friends and family they see, and any illicit activities they are up to. The game will highlight recruitment opportunities as you browse through their calendar, and you might have to spend some time observing an individual before you chance upon something you can use to recruit them. Watch Dogs: Legion wants its fictitious near-future London to feel like a living, breathing city, and the developers say they have spent considerable time to ensure that these routines don’t feel like a hotchpotch of elements fused together by sheer randomisation.

The profile UI you see when you hover over anyone in Watch Dogs: Legion
Photo Credit: Ubisoft

For all the work that has gone into crafting the London populace, the interactions between them are hardly convincing. Your operatives simply walk up to strangers to try and recruit them. If someone walked up to me on the street in a heavily militarised city, asked me to help build a revolution, and join an organisation that’s being blamed for multiple terrorist attacks, I would laugh at them and say: “Are you a cop?” It feels unrealistic that strangers would open up to each other so quickly, as Watch Dogs: Legion shows. The game does much better with the tinier throwaway moments. If you roam around in your Albion uniform outside of missions, prepare to hear profanity-laden insults shouted at you. “Pig” is among the words used.

Hack and drone

Watch Dogs: Legion currencies

There are three in-game currencies in the new Watch Dogs game. The previously explained Tech Points (a green hollow diamond) allows you to buy and upgrade tech. ETO (e symbol) is the game’s version of bitcoin that has replaced the British pound. It is used for all purchases inside in-game clothing shops and such. And finally, there are WD Credits (gold coin inscribed with “W”) that are bought with real money in the menu store. It can be used to buy not just cosmetics but also ETO, a collectibles map, and new operatives.

Of course, the more important thing is what you get to do with your recruits. Most missions are about figuring out a building’s labyrinthine layout by hacking into CCTV cameras and looking for the most hassle-free path to the assigned target. The last bit is usually a ctOS access port or an item that can be triggered or picked up by your spiderbot — that must stay hidden from enemies and enemy-controlled drones. In some cases, you’ll need to unlock a network by solving a puzzle that involves a bunch of levers to reroute data flow. And sometimes, you will have no choice but to walk into the front door to physically interact with an object.

To help you stay undetected and navigate the complex web, Watch Dogs: Legion gifts you a wide array of technological upgrades — gadgets, weapons, hacks, and more — that you can unlock with “Tech Points”, one of three in-game currencies. You can make yourself temporarily invisible with AR Cloak or cloak enemy bodies with AR Shroud. You can disrupt enemies or jam their guns as you can get in closer for a melee takedown. Or you can distract them as you covertly make your way elsewhere. You can also disable/ hijack enemy drones or even have them betray their masters. Or you can deploy your own spiderbot with an automated turret to cover angles for you.

Hijack drones and turn them on enemies from a distance in Watch Dogs: Legion
Photo Credit: Ubisoft

At times, there are so many things to hack in Watch Dogs: Legion, that with a quick glance, I wasn’t quite sure what the cursor and imaginary line that points to it was actually attached to. Owing to that, on a couple of occasions, I accidentally triggered something I didn’t want to, which led to guards being alerted and a temporary setback. In short: the UI can get overcrowded.

For our non-lethal tastes, Watch Dogs: Legion feels very much a drone game. After all, the spiderbot is technically a drone too, given it’s a remote-controlled vehicle. My favourite mission takes place on the smallest of scales — it involves a mini-mini-mini-drone — and still kept me at the edge of my seat, thanks to the tiny margins that you’ve to perform within and the fact that it lacks in checkpoints, which means you’ve to be extra cautious. Another enjoyable one is set inside Big Ben, turned into a vertical platformer.

London Calling

As you build out your DedSec team and tackle the missions, you’ll get the opportunity to explore London. Well, more like a compact and redesigned version of eight London boroughs: City of London, City of Westminster, Camden, Islington & Hackey, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Lambeth, and Nine Elms. I took a walk along some non-touristy London streets that I remember and found them to be massively compressed. Albion has a tight grip and heavy presence across London, but you can do a bunch of activities to “free” boroughs and turn them into a defiant force. Freeing a borough not only reduces Albion presence and makes its populace easier to recruit, it also unlocks new missions, a skilled operative (no recruitment needed), and the locations of all Tech Points.

You can move around London’s boroughs on foot, in vehicles, or on the top of cargo drones. We didn’t enjoy driving in Watch Dogs: Legion as there seems to be no weight to the game’s cars. Bikes feel heavier and hence control better. You can also turn on a new “Autodrive” self-drive feature for all vehicles on Watch Dogs: Legion if you don’t feel like driving. You can use this to look around the world for hacking or recruiting opportunities, but Autodrive is buggy. It ran over a pedestrian once and brought down Albion heat, which forced me to take manual control if I didn’t want to be arrested for the AI’s fault. In other more forgivable cases, it would end up in the wrong lane and then have to take a detour, increasing driving time.

Bikes are admittedly more fun in Watch Dogs: Legion
Photo Credit: Ubisoft

And that’s not the only bug in Watch Dogs: Legion at launch. We encountered severe frame rate drops on multiple occasions with the Xbox One X. Watch Dogs: Legion also got stuck on a loading screen once; I waited 10 minutes and then killed the game. There are a lot of loading screens in general and they take a while (a minute easy). It’s a shame Ubisoft didn’t use the London Underground like Marvel’s Spider-Man did for New York Subway to infuse some creativity into loading screens. Speaking of the Underground, you can use its stops for fast travel, which I preferred over driving.

Theoretically, that should be much less of an issue on next-gen consoles. Watch Dogs: Legion arrives on the cusp of console generations, with new machines due in two weeks or so. This isn’t the best version of the game, and neither is this the complete experience. Ubisoft will ship four-player co-op multiplayer in December, and that is why this review pertains to single-player only. In its current state, Watch Dogs: Legion is largely about avoiding or studying humans. As such, it can feel like a lonely game. And since you can recruit and then play with anyone, there’s no personality to the characters and no one you particularly care about. Watch Dogs: Legion lacks a soul. It’s also a passive game, since there’s no active push-and-pull. Albion took over London, and now you push them out one borough at a time.

Some of this is fitting, for what it’s worth. For a game about hacktivists whose expertise lies in getting access to data that is being hidden or secured to keep the public in the dark, Watch Dogs: Legion usually tasks you to do just that — information retrieval. Multiple storylines deal with the human element, and how that’s being erased with the promise of a safer and more advanced world. Except that’s not what it’s really about. Surveillance capitalism reduces humans to numbers and patterns, and if those ones and zeroes are going to take on the insidious power structures, it’s going to require a large group of dedicated individuals — a legion.

Pros:

• Ability to recruit any passer-by
• Recruiting offers unique gameplay choices
• De-emphasising guns over hacking, stealth
• Attention to detail to London’s diversity
• Near-futuristic London looks believable
• Some small-scale missions are terrific

Cons:

• Lacks in personality
• Citizens’ behaviour in militarised London unrealistic
• Too many hacking opportunities causes overcrowded UI
• Frame rate drops on Xbox One X
• Driving is not enjoyable
• “Autodrive” is buggy
• Long, bland loading screens

Rating (out of 10): 8

Gadgets 360 played Watch Dogs: Legion on the Xbox One X. The game is available October 29 worldwide on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One. It costs Rs. 3,999 on PlayStation Store and Microsoft Store, $44 (about Rs. 3,250) on Epic Games Store, and €60 (about Rs. 5,200) on Ubisoft Store. You can also get Watch Dogs: Legion as part of UPlay+ (soon to be Ubisoft+) for €15 (about Rs. 1,300) per month.

The post Watch Dogs: Legion Review: Drone Away in Dystopic London appeared first on Technology News.

Hamilton is coming to Disney+ Hotstar this July. This is big news, because it was originally headed for cinemas globally in October 2021. Star, writer, lyricist, and composer Lin-Manuel Miranda announced Tuesday that the recorded version of his 2015 Broadway musical of the same name is coming to Disney’s streaming service on July 3. That’s in less than two months, in time for US Independence Day on July 4. It’s fitting because Hamilton is the story of Alexander Hamilton (played by Miranda), one of the founding fathers of the United States of America.

This news was confirmed by Disney+ with a tweet of its own.

Inspired by Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography “Alexander Hamilton”, Miranda created the stage musical while drawing heavily from hip-hop. Hamilton premièred Off-Broadway in early 2015, won several awards, and moved to Broadway — that’s the theatre district in New York City — where it was an instant hit. It would go on to set records at the Tony Awards — the stage equivalent of the Oscars — and win a Pulitzer Prize. Since then, it has resulted in productions in Chicago and London’s West End, with the original cast touring the US twice. The Disney+ version is with the original cast from 2016.

The arrival of Hamilton on Disney+ Hotstar is good news for fans of stage musicals and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Theatres, including those on Broadway, remain shut due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic has also delayed another Miranda musical, In the Heights, which was set to receive a film adaptation originally in June this year, but has now been pushed back a year to June 2021. Think of Hamilton‘s Disney+ release as a replacement, if you will.

And for Disney, this continues its proactive approach to serving stuck-at-home audiences with new content earlier than expected. All of Frozen 2, the Pixar film Onward, and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker were made available for streaming several months prior to their slated release dates. And while the likes of Universal Pictures (Trolls World Tour) and Warner Bros. (Scoob!) have decided to take films directly to video-on-demand — though not in India — Disney announced that its Artemis Fowl is going straight to Disney+ Hotstar on June 12.

Hamilton, out July 3 on Disney+ Hotstar, will be the second Disney release to skip cinemas entirely.

Can Netflix force Bollywood to reinvent itself? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS. You can also download the episode or just hit the play button below.

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For Jamdar, a Mumbai-based independent YouTube creator who has a history of creating Bollywood parodies, this wasn’t new. What was new was the fact that his diss track video didn’t have any copyrighted material.

“It was really funny, the reason just said “PEWDIPIE”, the spelling was also wrong,” Jamdar told Gadgets 360. “It was a clear indication of the power that [T-Series] have. They must have just said, ‘We want to raise this, just take it down,’ They didn’t even bother to put a reason. It didn’t make any sense.”

After Jamdar protested live to his YouTube followers, his video was brought back. Then, T-Series filed another claim a couple of weeks later. The reason? “PIEWDIEPIE DERAGATORY COMMENT”, with two misspellings. Jamdar complained again, and the video returned, again.

According to YouTube, a Content ID claim was made by T-Series on Jamdar’s video, but it didn’t result in a strike or a takedown. The Content ID claim meant that the video was blocked for his viewers, Jamdar reiterated. T-Series “manually” resolved the claims, per YouTube, post which Jamdar made the video private.

“I was like, ‘Are these guys playing with me or what? Are they doing it purposely, trying to toy with me?’ I was really confused,” Jamdar added. “So then I took it down myself only. I put up an old version — affixed below — where I had not taken [T-Series and PewDiePie’s] name explicitly.” But this was an extreme case. Typically, people like Jamdar simply lose money on ads.

That’s owing to India’s copyright act, which doesn’t classify parodies under fair use and gives the copyright holder the sole right to create them. India’s entertainment giants use this to their fullest advantage, which in turn has a distinctly negative impact on creativity and comedy both. And unless brands grow up, India is at a risk of creators moving away from YouTube — or worse, the parody business drying up.

A grey world

Intellectual property lawyers Gadgets 360 spoke to said the law allows for criticism under fair use — why news organisations can publish film, TV, and music reviews — but parodies aren’t seen as “a bona fide opinion, feedback or assessment”.

“A spoof is a comically exaggerated imitation of a work created for the sole purpose of entertainment,” the Indian Music Industry (IMI), an association that represents record labels, said in a mailed statement to Gadgets 360. “It is generally created by the creator either with the intent of seeking popularity or commercial benefit, or both, by riding on the goodwill of the work or its original creator and thereby cannot be qualified as a review.”

But how do platforms such as YouTube manage the thousands of copyright claims they receive? Every piece of content — be it the video or audio — has a unique Content ID attached to it on YouTube, which allows it to track if it’s used by someone else later. When there’s a match, YouTube informs the original content creator.

Click Digital Studios co-founder Anand Doshi, the owner of Bollywood parody channels Shudh Desi Gaane, and Shudh Desi Endings, an Indian take on the long-running How It Should Have Ended series on YouTube, explains.

“You could pick your song, put it on a Content ID, and tell YouTube, ‘Whoever uploads the song can keep it on their channel, but the ads that come on it will be monetised by me’,” said Doshi. “That’s one option. The second option that the content ID provides is — if anyone uploads my song on their channel, I have the option to take that video down as well.”

When a channel makes a copyright claim on someone else’s video, YouTube analyses and verifies said claim before enforcing the channel’s decision: monetise or takedown. This is when a mail is sent to the infringing creator, as happened with Jamdar’s diss track. Sometimes, YouTube will conclude that the content being used falls under fair use, which is also mentioned in those mails. But Jamdar thinks there’s a “great inconsistency” in how this is handled.

“There is one video of mine which was protected by that,” Jamdar added. “I got an email from YouTube, which said there has been a claim, but the claim is not put on your video because we have analysed, and it comes under fair use. But there’s nothing different in that video. That is also a parody so then I wonder if this is fair use, then why are the others not fair use? And it makes a lot of difference, because over this period of two years, I have made a lot of videos. And, like, for 80 percent of them, the revenue is going somewhere else.”

Bollywood is no fun

It’s not just T-series, though. One of the best known cases involves Yash Raj Films and the former comedy collective All India Bakchod. In November 2013, the latter approached the former to parody the trailer of its Aamir Khan-led action thriller Dhoom 3. But YRF refused to grant permission. In response, AIB documented the very problems of making a parody in India, wondering why Bollywood won’t “lighten up”.

By not letting the comedians poke fun at one of their films, YRF became the butt of the joke itself.

For what it’s worth, YRF has collaborated on parodies — including Doshi’s Shudh Desi Gaane. Though it seems to depend on what their pitch is or which star is involved. Shah Rukh Khan is one of the few sporting ones, Jamdar said, having worked with him on the parody of the song “Gerua” from the rom-com Dilwale.

“[That] a lot of movie actors [like Khan, Ajay Devgn, Riteish Deshmukh, and Vivek Oberoi] have actually come out and acted in these spoofs […] is pretty promising,” added Doshi.

Unfortunately, the problems don’t stop there. As if it weren’t enough to takedown videos of independent creators and deny them their revenue, T-Series has also allegedly copied their work. Back in February, electronic music producer Ritviz Srivastava went to the theatre to watch the Kartik Aaryan-starrer rom-com remake Pati Patni Aur Woh. Little did he know that he would run into a remixed version of his own 2017 track “Udd Gaye”.

Srivastava took to Twitter to voice his displeasure, clarifying that “neither I or my appointed management had any role to play in this.” Though T-Series didn’t acknowledge the illegality of its move, it subsequently took down its version of “Udd Gaye” off all platforms.

T-Series did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Make India proud again

This is the bone of contention for Jamdar, in that a company that has no respect for Indian YouTube creators wants the support of Indians to grow on YouTube. During the competition versus PewDiePie, T-Series repeatedly fell back on patriotic fervour to fuel itself and increase its subscriber base, calling it “a matter of pride for all Indians” if T-Series were to beat the Swede.

T-Series chairman and managing director Bhushan Kumar, who initially claimed to be “not bothered about this race” changed tack in a few months and said in March 2019: “This is a historic movement for all of us, so let’s come together and subscribe to T-Series’ YouTube channel and make India proud.”

In between, driven by that and in reaction to PewDiePie’s diss track aimed at T-Series — which is blocked in India on a court order on grounds of defamation — came an onslaught of diss tracks from Indian YouTube creators, in support of T-Series.

“They all made diss tracks dissing PewDiePie, saying T-Series will win, where in their heart and minds, even they knew what goes on behind-the-scenes,” Jamdar told Gadgets 360. “It was just like, you know, fanning the fire, for your own advantage. Obviously, these guys know how they behave, but at that point, the public demand was ‘support T-Series’ so they all made these songs. It was very wrong.

“This was happening with me too. My followers were telling me, ‘Bro T-Series needs our help’, which is when I thought, ‘Okay no, they need to know the real scenario.’ And I knew that this would bring backlash, but people were blinded, connecting desh bhakti [patriotism] to T-Series.”

For Jamdar, the problem wasn’t just that T-Series was a big corporation that went after creators, but that it was a big corporation to begin with.

Photo Credit: Akhil Arora/Gadgets 360

“I wanted to make a video saying, ‘Don’t waste your time supporting either [T-Series or PewDiePie]. They’re just taking advantage, and both are growing,’” Jamdar added. That’s how his aforementioned diss track came into fruition. “So I put that in the form of a rap. And I tried to bring all these things out, how these labels — especially T-Series — behave, the way they just take down videos of these very individual creators that you would like to see on top tomorrow.”

Parody-less future

The IMI thinks labels are “very supportive” of independent creators in India, but that doesn’t mean creators have “a free ticket” to the labels’ copyrighted content. Independent producers see it very differently, naturally.

“We made a good 10 to 15 songs, but we couldn’t monetise any of them,” Doshi said. “Because they’re all flatly copywritten by the music producers. It was pretty useless because we didn’t see any opportunity to make any revenue in the long term.”

In the US, where fair use has more protection under copyright law, record labels are open to split revenue with creators, Jamdar noted. But there’s no consideration for that model here, sadly.

“Obviously you have to acknowledge that if it’s a parody, then you are using a tune,” Jamdar added. “But at the same time, you are also making something really different and original, so you can’t take that away. And I put a lot of effort and money in making a video. People have said that my parodies are more original than the original. But the irony is that all the money goes to the labels.”

The IMI disagreed. It said creators are trying to “unduly benefit” off someone else’s intellectual property. “It is protection of rights granted under the statute of the land. To sum it up, your right to swing your fist ends, where my nose begins,” the IMI added.

With nowhere to go, independent creators have no option but to move away from parodies altogether. Doshi’s Shudh Desi Gaane hasn’t published a parody in three years, with the focus largely on Shudh Desi Endings. And Jamdar — who was at Shudh Desi Gaane before starting his own channel — has also been moving towards originals for a while.

This doesn’t mean that creators have to entirely give up on parody, though. But they might need to move on from YouTube. Facebook — which has emerged as one of the biggest video competitors to the Google-owned platform — doesn’t have as aggressive a copyright claim system in place.

After one of Jamdar’s parodies was taken down by T-Series on YouTube, he said it went “really viral because they couldn’t do anything on Facebook.”

Cover image by Meena Kadri licensed under CC BY 2.0

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The 47-year-old Kashyap — perhaps best known for the 2012 two-part epic crime saga Gangs of Wasseypur — delivers his next movie, the aforementioned Choked, Friday on Netflix. It will be his fourteenth feature-length directorial venture overall, but it’s the first Kashyap film to skip theatres entirely and directly release on a streaming service. While that’s new, it’s also a continuation of Kashyap’s old and more recent ways.

“There’s a constant process of storytelling that I have,” Kashyap adds. He films in the morning and edits in the evening, working with an editor at his home. The last bit has got nothing to do with the lockdown, it’s his routine.

“That’s my process for working. And I like working with people who are comfortable with the process and accept the process, because every time I’ve stepped away from the process, something or the other has gone wrong,” Kashyap says.

ANURAG KASHYAP, the writer

Though he’s now one of the most well-known Indian directors internationally and among the select few auteurs Bollywood has in the early 21st century, Kashyap had a rocky start to life in the film industry. In the late ‘90s, he took over a movie based on the life of serial killer Gowri Shankar, better known as “Auto Shankar”, who was hanged for murdering six people in Madras in the late ‘80s.

“It was supposed to be written by Shiv Subramaniam,” Kashyap says. “I just wanted to take a go at it, and they gave me 24 hours to take a go at it and I did that. I’m so grateful to Shiv, Shivam Nair, and Sriram Raghavan that they put my name in the credits for the film.”

Though the film never saw the light of day, it did reach the eyes of Ram Gopal Varma and helped Kashyap get his big break in Bollywood: Satya. The 1998 RGV-directed crime drama was akin to a “two-and-a-half-year” film school for 25-year-old Kashyap, he says. “The writing, being part of shooting, being part of post-production, everything that I learned was on that one film,” he says.

Satya led to two more collaborations for Kashyap and RGV before the end of the century. But better yet, it “propelled my whole career forward,” Kashyap says. “I got [those films] with Ram Gopal Varma because of Auto Shankar, because he saw it. For me, as long as he saw it, it was fine.”

ANURAG KASHYAP, the writer-director

A run of bad luck

With three RGV films under his belt, Kashyap got his first taste of direction in 1999 with the made-for-TV thriller movie Last Train to Mahakali. But things didn’t go as smoothly with his first film — the 2003 crime thriller Paanch — inspired by a spate of 10 serial murders in Pune in mid ‘70s.

“Initially, it got stuck with censors,” Kashyap says, as the CBFC objected to the violence, drugs, and vulgarity in the film. “But after censors cleared it, I think it became part of a deal with Sahara, where it got stuck under some money thing. The film has a lot of liability on it, many more times than its budget. I don’t think it can be extracted out of there unless somebody from Sahara is generous enough to put the film out there. It’s not really in my hands, anybody’s hands. It’s one of those bad luck cases.”

Vijay Maurya as Dawood Ibrahim in Black Friday
Photo Credit: Mid Day Multimedia

Unfortunately, Kashyap’s bad luck didn’t stop there. He then took up Black Friday — about the 1993 Bombay bombings and the ensuing police investigation — but the film’s 2004 release date was indefinitely pushed after the court issued a stay at the request of the accusers. Meanwhile, Kashyap moved on to Allwyn Kalicharan, led by a neon-lit, shotgun-toting Anil Kapoor. But Kapoor lost faith in the project, and the film never got off the ground.

In 2005, Kashyap began working on a movie titled Grand Hotel, but it too was shelved, as with Allwyn Kalicharan. With two completed films waiting on release and two others scrapped, Kashyap cooked up a fifth in 2005: Gulaal. Set in Rajasthan, following student politics and a Rajputana secessionist movement, Gulaal ran into trouble during filming after the producer fell ill.

“The bad luck continued for seven years,” Kashyap summarises. “Five films in seven years: two that never got made and got shelved, and one in Gulaal which was half completed, and two others in Black Friday and Paanch being stuck.”

But Kashyap believes it was ultimately a blessing in disguise, as those seven years has resulted in the person he is today. If those hiccups hadn’t occurred, it might have all gone to his head.

“The kind of praise that was coming my way [with Paanch], I almost thought I was the next big thing,” Kashyap says. “And then there was a reality check that kept me grounded. Otherwise, I would have probably lost my mind; I would have been like so many other people that I know who can’t handle success.”

“I look back at everything very positively because everybody’s a sum of all things. […] And I believe failure is the greatest teacher that we all can have; success is actually a very bad teacher,” Kashyap adds.

Lady Luck smiles

Black Friday‘s release in 2007 — and the critical acclaim that followed — changed everything for Kashyap. He later said: “The response was tremendous. After that, every producer came to me with obnoxious amounts of money and laid out the red carpet for me.”

It was followed by two more films in 2007 — the John Abraham-led psychological thriller No Smoking, and the animated Return of Hanuman — though neither was especially well-received. Kashyap changed course in 2009 with the romantic black comedy Dev.D, a contemporary spin on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Bengali novel Devdas. 2009 also saw the release of Gulaal, with the film being completed under a different producer.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui as Faizal Khan in Gangs of Wasseypur
Photo Credit: Viacom18 Motion Pictures

And then in 2010, Kashyap began work on Gangs of Wasseypur. Ambitious in scope and length (over 5 hours), it chronicled the multi-generational feud, spanning six decades, between three fictitious crime families that were at the centre of the Mafia Raj in Dhanbad.

“I love the idea of telling the whole story,” Kashyap says. “I like longer stories; my struggle mostly has been to contain the story within two hours. I can go on telling the story as long as people will watch it. And I like it because it helps me bring out every aspect of a story. It helps me develop every character, give them their full arc. I like the long form much more than short form.”

Its release in 2012, after a showcase at Cannes, brought Kashyap to the world stage. A year later, Netflix came calling. The streaming service wanted Kashyap to split Gangs of Wasseypur into a six-part miniseries for the US as “an experiment”, he says. This was in 2013 and Netflix has yet to enter India. Gangs of Wasseypur ended up being the first Indian acquisition on Netflix, Kashyap claims.

“And we also recorded a commentary over the entire film,” Kashyap adds. “All of us, all the cast and crew were part of the commentary, which was an optional track, only for [Netflix] US.”

Is there any way for cinephiles in India to access the Gangs of Wasseypur commentary? “India rights are with Viacom[18], but the US distribution rights were sold to somebody else for five years,” Kashyap says. “I think it must be back with Viacom so if Viacom wants to do it, they can do it.”

The massive success of Gangs of Wasseypur freed Kashyap in many ways. He thinks it gave him the strength to make the movies that he had wanted to for the longest time. First up was Ugly in 2014, about the kidnapping of a struggling actor’s daughter. Kashyap kept the script away from actors and emphasised on improvisation and a commitment to reality.

Then came Bombay Velvet in 2015, Kashyap’s most expensive (Rs. 120 crores) and high-profile (Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Karan Johar) project to date. A Chinatown-style hard-boiled noir set in ‘70s gritty then-Bombay, it bombed critically and commercially. That forced Kashyap to shift his next film — 2016’s Raman Raghav 2.0, about the eponymous serial killer in ‘60s Mumbai — to a contemporary setting.

ANURAG KASHYAP, the director

Raman Raghav 2.0 marked the end of an era, as it was the last movie Kashyap himself came up with. All his projects since have been born in someone else’s mind, the director notes.

Viineet Kumar conceived 2017’s Mukkabaaz, about an aspiring boxer who falls in love with the boxing federation chief’s niece. Sacred Games — Kashyap’s first series directorial venture — based on the novel of the same name, was developed by Varun Grover and Vikramaditya Motwane.

Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag Kashyap at a Sacred Games event
Photo Credit: Netflix

Kashyap’s most recent film, 2018’s Manmarziyaan, was penned by Kanika Dhillon. Even the two Netflix shorts — in 2018’s Lust Stories and 2020’s Ghost Stories — Kashyap has helmed have been someone else’s ideas. And that’s also true of his latest, Choked, written by Nihit Bhave.

“What happens when the idea and the script or the story comes from outside, I’m more objective to it,” Kashyap says. “When I’m writing it myself, I’m subjective to it. I can’t judge it. I just want to finish it. To develop an objectivity on something that you’ve written, it becomes difficult. I really am looking at people to bring some objectivity to it.

“But when I’m working on somebody else’s idea or a script, then I’m so objective that my whole focus is on making it the best form of what it can be. Then it is not about me telling the story, because the story has already been told. Now I’ve to tell it the best possible way and make it the best form of what it is. That has been my recent discovery […] and I’m enjoying this process so much more.”

“Because I feel like I’m stepping away from what’s expected out of me. Choked is so far removed from how I would have initially conceived every single character. They are all Nihit Bhave characters that I’m interpreting my way. I’m shooting them and looking at them my way, but they are created by him. For me, it’s a place of privilege and power, which is creatively very beneficial to me.”

That objectivity isn’t the only thing that’s keeping Kashyap happy in his new phase. His relationship with Netflix is also part of it, and why Choked is his first film to première on a streaming service.

Owing to Kashyap’s proclivity to choose actors that suit the role and not their marketability, all of his movies have been “a very big struggle”, he says. Working with Netflix not only allows him to pay his cast and crew what they deserve, but not have to worry about publicity et cetera.

“Now I’m making films the way they should be made,” Kashyap adds. “Nobody’s doing a favour to me and I’m not doing a favour to anybody else. […] I think, creatively, I’m in a very exciting period of my life.”

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George R.R. Martin hopes to finish “The Winds of Winter” in 2021, the Game of Thrones author said in a blog post on his official website Tuesday. “The Winds of Winter” is the long-awaited sixth novel in A Song of Ice and Fire series, perhaps better know today for HBO’s Game of Thrones. That is bound to be a ray of hope for book fans, but it’s right to be sceptical at the same time, given Martin has flown past multiple deadlines he set for himself in the past.

“[The] enforced isolation has helped me write,” Martin wrote, crediting the ongoing coronavirus pandemic for the progress. “I am spending long hours every day on ‘The Winds of Winter‘, and making steady progress. I finished a new chapter yesterday, another one three days ago, another one the previous week. But no, this does not mean that the book will be finished tomorrow or published next week. It’s going to be a huge book, and I still have a long way to go.”

Martin said he’s recently written chapters involving the likes of Cersei and Tyrion Lannister, Asha Greyjoy (known as Yara Greyjoy in Game of Thrones), former Kingsguard Lord Commander Ser Barristan Selmy, and Sunspear guard captain Areo Hotah. Next week, he’ll be writing a chapter that’s set in Braavos.

“I have bad days, which get me down, and good days, which lift me up, but all in all I am pleased with the way things are [going],” Martin added. “I do wish they would go faster, of course. Way, way back in 1999, when I was deep in the writing of [book three] ‘A Storm of Swords’, I was averaging about 150 pages of manuscript a month. I fear I shall never recapture that pace again. Looking back, I am not sure how I did it then.”

Martin also shared a tiny update on the Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, claiming it is “flying along wonderfully”. He’s also trying to “relaunch” a series adaptation of sci-fi superhero shared universe anthology “Wild Cards” which he edits, and he confirmed that his stories — 1979’s “Sandkings”, 1980’s “The Ice Dragon”, and 1982’s “In the Lost Lands” — are in development as movies. Martin also shared a couple of recent books he loved.

“Mostly, it’s just me in Westeros, with occasional side trips to other places in the pages of a great book,” he concluded.

The Winds of Winter has been in the works since 2012.

Image by Sanna Pudas is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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San Diego Comic-Con has gone online. With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic making in-person events a disastrous proposition, the 2020 edition of the world’s biggest pop culture convention will take place from everyone’s homes, with all the stars tuning in over video calls. It’s been rightfully dubbed Comic-Con@Home. And in a departure from San Diego Comic-Con’s usual policies, all the Comic-Con@Home panels will not only be available online — letting fans join in, no matter where they live around the world — but they are also free for everyone. No badges, no charge, and no viewer caps.

At the same time, owing to the uncertainty caused by COVID-19 — movies are either stuck in production or awaiting release; and there’s little clarity on when it will be safe to reopen, with concerns over the virus’ resurgence as lockdowns are eased — many studios are sitting out. There’s no Marvel, Lucasfilm, Paramount, Sony, or Universal. WarnerMedia’s DC Entertainment is having its own event in August. It’s not a good time for movies. And because of that, the list below is largely made up of TV series.

Still, there’s a fair bit to look forward to Comic-Con@Home. We’ve focused on those panels where we expect new announcements, reveals, or trailers. And since it’s all happening online, we’ve got the respective YouTube embeds below as well. Simply bookmark this page and you can tune into all of the biggest Comic-Con@Home panels right here. Mind you, the videos are currently labelled as “private” and are expected to go live around the event time.

Comic-Con 2020 dates and schedule

Comic-Con@Home will run from Wednesday, July 22 to Sunday, July 26. There are hundreds of panels taking place across those five days, all of which can be found in the official schedule. Naturally, it’s a lot to wade through, which is why we’ve highlighted the biggest ones below.

Thursday, July 23

Star Trek

Time: 10am PDT (10:30pm IST)

The ever-growing Trek TV universe — Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Lower Decks, and Star: Trek: Picard — will kick off Thursday proceedings. Discovery stars will do a table read of the season 2 finale and maybe give us a second season 3 trailer. Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan and the voice cast will give us an “extended first look” at the first episode. And Picard‘s cast will discuss the first season, and possibly hint at the second.

His Dark Materials

Time: 1pm PDT (Friday 1:30am IST)

Executive producers Jane Tranter and Jack Thorne will be joined by cast members Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, Ariyon Bakare, Amir Wilson, Andrew Scott, and Lin-Manuel Miranda to talk about season 1 of their adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy — and what fans can expect from season 2.

Amazon’s Utopia

Time: 1pm PDT (Friday 1:30am IST)

Gone Girl writer Gillian Flynn delivers a long-in-the-making remake of a British original about the hunt for a graphic novel manuscript that details a massive real government conspiracy. Flynn will be joined by stars John Cusack, Rainn Wilson, Sasha Lane, Ashleigh LaThrop, Dan Byrd, Desmin Borges, Javon “Wanna” Walton, and Jessica Rothe for Comic-Con@Home.

The New Mutants

Time: 2pm PDT (Friday 2:30am IST)

Delayed several times — originally due to the film, then Disney’s acquisition of Fox, and later the coronavirus pandemic — it’s only natural to wonder if this X-Men horror spin-off will ever see the light of day. The New Mutants is the only superhero movie on the Comic-Con@Home slate, which makes you wonder if it’s going to be announced as a Disney+ release.

Writer-director Josh Boone and cast members Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt, and Henry Zaga are on board for the panel.

The Boys season 2

Time: 3pm PDT (Friday 3:30am IST)

We’ve already gotten a trailer for The Boys season 2, which is why the panel will give us a behind-the-scenes look at the series’ sophomore run. Executive producer Eric Kripke will be joined by Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr, Erin Moriarty, Jessie T. Usher, Laz Alonso, Chace Crawford, Tomer Capon, Karen Fukuhara, and Aya Cash. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg will make a special appearance too.

Friday, July 24

The Walking Dead

Time: 1pm PDT (Saturday 1:30am IST)

An upcoming standalone episode, “A Certain Doom”, which finds Beta in the final battle of the Whisperer War, will be the highlight of this eleventh panel for the long-running zombie series. Showrunner Angela Kang, director Greg Nicotero, and cast members Norman Reedus, Melissa McBride, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Cohan, Josh McDermitt, Seth Gilliam, Ross Marquand, Khary Payton, and Paola Lazaro will be present.

It’s one of three Walking Dead panels at Comic-Con@Home. The other two — centred on Fear the Walking Dead and The Walking Dead: World Beyond — take place an hour prior (12pm PDT) and after (2pm PDT).

Marvel’s Helstrom

Time: 3pm PDT (Saturday 3:30am IST)

Hulu has a new live-action Marvel series — to join the existing Marvel’s Runaways — from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. alum Paul Zbyszewski and based on the comic book characters Daimon and Satana (Ana on the show) Hellstrom. In the comics, they are the children of Satan. On the show, they are the children of a powerful serial killer, which might be a roundabout way of making their background a mystery.

It’s unclear if Helstrom has a future given Marvel Television has been shut down and its sister series, Ghost Rider, was cancelled before it could start. The Comic-Con@Home panel will feature Zbyszewski alongside cast members Tom Austen, Sydney Lemmon, Elizabeth Marvel, Robert Wisdom, Ariana Guerra, June Carryl, and Alain Uy. A trailer is very much expected, given it’s out in October.

Saturday, July 25

The Simpsons

Time: 11am PDT (11:30pm IST)

Lockdown-shmockdown. The Simpsons season 32 is on track despite the pandemic, and this panel — featuring Al Jean, Matt Selman, David Silverman, Carolyn Omine, and Mike B. Anderson — will tell you how they have been working with social distancing and other coronavirus-driven restrictions to continue the animated series.

For All Mankind

Time: 2pm PDT (Sunday 2:30am IST)

We’ll get a first look at For All Mankind season 2 at the end of this Comic-Con@Home panel, which will otherwise look back at the highlights of the Apple TV+ series’ season 1. Creators and executive producers Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi will be joined by Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten, Jodi Balfour, Wrenn Schmidt, Sonya Walger, and Krys Marshall.

Lovecraft Country

Time: 4pm PDT (Sunday 4:30am IST)

J.J. Abrams and Jordan Peele serve as executive producers on this HBO adaptation of the 2016 dark fantasy horror novel, about a black sci-fi fan who looks for his missing father while dealing with 1950s racial segregation in southern US and Lovecraftian monsters. With only a teaser released as yet and the show premièring in August, expect a trailer to be unveiled.

Showrunner Misha Green will be joined by cast members Jurnee Smollett, Jonathan Majors, Michael Kenneth Williams, Aunjanue Ellis, Wunmi Mosaku, Abbey Lee, and Courtney B. Vance.

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Netflix has announced an English-language adaptation of Chinese author Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem trilogy, also known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past. It’s being made by Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson. Benioff and Weiss will write The Three-Body Problem for Netflix with Alexander Woo (The Terror: Infamy, True Blood), and will serve as executive producers Johnson. Cixin will also serve as a consulting producer on the Netflix series, in addition to Ken Liu, who worked on the novels’ English translation.

The Three-Body Problem trilogy becomes the first project that stems from Benioff and Weiss’ deal at Netflix, reportedly worth $200 million (about Rs. 1,460 crores), announced in August last year, following which they quit the Star Wars universe. The Game of Thrones duo are going from one big show (Game of Thrones) — arguably one of the biggest of all time — to another, given the vast space time expanse of the story, which goes from the 1960s to the end of time, and makes use of flashbacks and flashforwards to depict its doomsday tale of humans encountering aliens known as the Trisolarans.

First published in Mandarin in 2008, and translated into English in 2014, The Three-Body Problem won the Hugo Award for Best Novel. A sequel, The Dark Forest, followed in 2008 in Mandarin and reached English readers in 2015. The third and final book, Death’s End, was published in 2010 in China and 2016 elsewhere. Death’s End won the Locus Award for Best Sci-Fi Novel and was a finalist at the Hugo Awards.

In addition to Benioff, Weiss, and Johnson, executive producers on Netflix’s Three-Body Problem series include the president of Benioff & Weiss’ production house Bernadette Caulfield, Johnson’s producing partner Ram Bergman, Johnson and Bergman’s T-Street president of TV Nena Rodrigue, and rights-holders Yoozoo Group and The Three-Body Universe chairman Lin Qi, and The Three-Body Universe VP Zhao Jilong. Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment and Rosamund Pike’s Primitive Streak are also involved on the Netflix adaptation of Cixin’s award-winning sci-fi trilogy.

“I have the greatest respect for and faith in the creative team adapting The Three-Body Problem for television audiences,” Cixin said in a prepared statement. “I set out to tell a story that transcends time and the confines of nations, cultures and races; one that compels us to consider the fate of humankind as a whole. It is a great honour as an author to see this unique sci-fi concept travel and gain fandom across the globe and I am excited for new and existing fans all over the world to discover the story on Netflix.”

Benioff and Weiss added in a joint statement: “Liu Cixin’s trilogy is the most ambitious science-fiction series we’ve read, taking readers on a journey from the 1960s until the end of time, from life on our pale blue dot to the distant fringes of the universe. We look forward to spending the next years of our lives bringing this to life for audiences around the world.”

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