Cover News Reporter Cai Shiqi Ouyang Hongyu Lei Qiang Yi Yili
Universal Pictures surpassed Disney in box office revenue last year to become the company with the highest box office in the world
According to the latest reports, Universal Pictures’ box office revenue in 2023 surpassed that in many years Disney, the box-office champion, has become the highest-grossing movie company in the world. Universal Pictures released a number of highly profitable movies last year, including "Oppenheimer," "Super Mario Bros. Movie" and Blumhouse's sci-fi horror film "Megan." Among them, "Super Mario Bros. Movie" was released in April last year, and the global box office exceeded US$1 billion during its theatrical run, while the global box office of "Oppenheimer" exceeded US$954 million. Both films are among the top three global box office grossers in 2023, the other being Warner Bros.' live-action film "Barbie." In contrast, Disney, known as a box office juggernaut in the film industry, will not have a single movie reach $1 billion in 2023. Despite the release of many movies last year, including "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," "The Little Mermaid," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "The Haunting of Hill House" and "Captain Marvel 2," the total global box office of all Disney movies released in 2023 to US$4.827 billion. Disney CEO Bob Iger mentioned in August last year that the performance of recently released movies was "disappointing." "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" became one of Disney's top-grossing movies last year, with a global box office of $845 million.
Comment: Universal Pictures’ box office surpassed Disney’s in 2023. On the one hand, it benefited from the outstanding performance of Nolan’s work “Oppenheimer”, and on the other hand, it was also due to the poor quality of Disney’s works during this year. . The problem is that Nolan is not a "new year's" director. If Universal Pictures wants to maintain this overtaking, it must be able to produce good works steadily, otherwise it can only hope that its competitors will not be able to do so.
Alibaba Cloud Tongyi Qianwen app launches free function "Tongyi Dance King"
Alibaba Cloud Tongyi Qianwen app launches free function "Tongyi Dance King", users enter "Tongyi Dance King" in Tongyi Qianwen app After waiting for the password "National Dance King", you can enter the experience page. After users upload photos according to the prompts, a dancing video with both physical and spiritual features can be generated in ten minutes. Currently, Tongyi Qianwen provides users with the first batch of 12 popular dance templates. The algorithm behind this function is Alibaba Tongyi Laboratory’s self-developed video generation model animate anyone.
comments: With the rapid development of visual aigc technology, video generation related technologies are undergoing high-speed iteration. However, as characters are an important subject of visual content, character-related video generation still faces huge challenges. An important reason is that while generating a video of a person's movement, it is necessary to maintain the short-term continuity and long-term consistency of the person's appearance. Currently, most video generation algorithms cannot do this. Therefore, Tongyi Qianwen has achieved a certain level of leadership in the technical aspect of this scene. Furthermore, the fact that everyone can transform into the King of Dance through large models is just a small incision for AI technology to enter daily life. This has proven the appeal of turning large models into toys, and also indicates that there will be more applications of large models. Access to offline usage scenarios is a good sign for the entire track.
Xiaomi refutes rumors: Su7 price pictures 9.9w, 36.9w, 59.9w reported on the Internet are all fake
html On January 3, Wang Hua, general manager of the public relations department of Xiaomi Group, posted on Weibo: "I just saw a few pictures, it's really It’s fake at first glance! This can’t be a picture made by our rice fans. Not only is the font wrong and there is no rice mark, but it’s also a sloppy way to directly add the word “P” to the screenshot of the official website. Of course, it can also be seen from this that everyone is very concerned about the price of Xiaomi cars. , don’t worry, if you are willing to buy a car, please wait. I will definitely break the news on time!”comments: Looking back on Xiaomi’s rise in the smartphone market, “high cost performance” is a huge highlight that no one can ignore. However, based on the information disclosed by Xiaomi so far, it is unrealistic to label the car as "cost-effective". The current market competition is fierce, and many new cars are priced at "cabbage prices" just after they are launched. Most consumers are very sensitive to price changes.If Xiaomi abandons reasonable profit margins, low pricing of new cars may be detrimental to the long-term development of Xiaomi's brand value. After all, Lei Jun's entire reputation is staked on this "big gamble".
Alipay has applied for a patent for social relationship processing
Aiqicha app shows that Alipay (Hangzhou) Information Technology Co., Ltd. applied for an invention patent called "Social Relationship Processing Method and Device" in January 2023. The abstract shows that the social relationship processing method described in the patent includes: obtaining an access request sent by the user terminal for the user to access social relationships in the target service; in response to the access request, reading the user's predicted social relationship data and returning it to the user terminal; according to The relationship type of the predicted social relationship between the user and the social user corresponding to the selection instruction is generated to generate a social relationship factor between the user and the social user; a credible social relationship between the user and the social user is established based on the social relationship factor.
Comment: This is Alipay’s next attempt at community-based social services after launching “Circle” in 2016. At present, interest-based social networking is becoming a key track for major Internet companies to test the waters. In the past, there were Bytedance Chat and Douyin Circle, and later in Tencent's hood, WeChat Circle, etc. Interest social networking allows users to find people with the same interests as themselves on the platform and interact with them, thereby increasing the user's frequency of use and length of stay, and improving user stickiness.