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The Coachella hype is starting to fade

Ticket sales have underwhelmed for the California music festival

4/15/24 10:52AM

The dust settles

Doja Cat brought the first weekend of this year's Coachella to a close last night with a set that was heavy on guest stars (including a crew of dancing yetis), but light on many of her biggest hits, leaving some attendees and viewers at home a little disappointed.

Coachella 2024 — the 23rd installment of the festival, which has been held at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California almost every year since 1999 — has had a tough time by its own hyped-up high standards. Indeed, the festival has seen the slowest ticket sales in 10 years, leading some to speculate that the Valley party might be past its peak, with preliminary data from Google Trends also revealing a modest decline in the number of searches for the desert event since online interest topped out in 2018.

Along with fellow headliners Lana Del Rey and Tyler, the Creator, Doja Cat represents a shift away from Coachella’s rockier, more independent origins... but it’s not just the acts on the festival's lineups that have started to look a lot different in recent years. Indeed, Coachella critics like to point to “brand houses” and the “I nfluencer Olympics” feel of the modern festival as examples of its over-corporatization and reasons for its waning popularity in recent years.

Millie Giles1/14/26

OpenAI set to air a minute-long Super Bowl ad for a second consecutive year, per WSJ

OpenAI is expected to broadcast a lengthy commercial at Super Bowl LX, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Having aired its first-ever paid ad at last year’s Big Game, the ChatGPT maker is set to take another 60-second ad slot during NBC’s broadcast on February 8, according to people familiar with the matter.

Exclusive | OpenAI Set to Run Another Super Bowl Ad as Chatbot Competition Heats Up

Millie Giles

GOLDEN RATIO

1/12/26

Big winners at the Golden Globes could indicate this week’s Oscar noms

With the Academy’s nominations voting opening today, the results of the Globes might signal the direction of certain Oscars categories (statistically speaking).

Chalamet with award at the Golden Globes

Millie Giles1/9/26

Tamagotchis are making a comeback, 3 decades after first becoming a global toy craze

If you were a ’90s kid, you might remember the craze around little egg-shaped toys with an 8-bit digital screen, displaying an ambiguous pet-thing that demanded food and attention.

Now, on the brand’s 30th anniversary, the Tamagotchi — the Japanese pocket-sized virtual pet that launched a thousand cute and needy tech companions, from Nintendogs to fluffy AI robots — is making a minor comeback.

Tamagotchi Google Search Trends — Sherwood News

Looking at Google Trends data, searches for “tamagotchi” spiked in December in the US, up around 80% from just six months prior, with the most search volume in almost two decades.

While the toys are popular Christmas gifts, with interest volumes often seen ticking up in December each year, the sudden interest might also have something to do with the birthday celebrations that creator and manufacturer Bandai Namco are putting on, including a Tokyo exhibition that opened on Wednesday.

Game, set, hatch

More broadly, modern consumers appear to have a growing obsession with collectibles (see: Labubu mania), as well as a taste for nostalgia (see: the iPod revival, among many other trends).

But, having finally hit 100 million sales in September last year, the brand itself is probably just glad to exist, giving a whole new generation the chance to experience the profound grief of an unexpected Tamagotchi death.

Millie Giles

PANDORA’S BOX OFFICE

1/5/26

“Avatar: Fire and Ash” surpasses $1 billion globally after 18 days

James Cameron is now the first director in history to have four consecutive movies gross over a billion dollars.

$5.6B

Max Knoblauch12/23/25

Disney could be well on its way to its third billion-dollar film of the year following a $345 million opening weekend for “Avatar: Fire and Ash.” The film’s opening gross puts the “Avatar” franchise’s total box office earnings at $5.6 billion — and counting.

The latest film, the second “Avatar” entry under Disney’s tent, earned about 75% of its total box office gross internationally — in line with previous movies in the (as of now) trilogy. Domestically, this one earned $88 million, falling short of expectations.

“Fire and Ash” was the widest Imax release ever, debuting on 1,703 screens globally and earning $43.6 million through the format. The $345 million “Fire and Ash” opening weekend was the second-highest of 2025, behind Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” which recently passed the $1 billion mark, globally.

Year to date, Disney has earned $5.8 billion globally at the box office.