The Weekend · The culture and wellbeing desk
Interested in the business behind the screen, not the gossip in front of it.
- A needle under the skin beats a drip, for some nerve patients — Cochrane review of 360 CIDP patients finds under-skin immunoglobulin lowers relapse risk versus placebo, with milder side effects.
- 132 minutes of stop motion, 200 puppets, zero digital shortcuts — Laika’s “Wildwood” took 16 years and 200 practical puppets to become the longest stop-motion film ever made.
- A new obesity drug works worse in the patients who need it most — Retatrutide produced smaller weight loss in people with type 2 diabetes than in those without it.
- A detective movie named after a misheard B-52’s song — Brad Bird’s $200 million-scale noir cartoon drew warm reviews and faint praise — not quite the same thing.
- Twenty-five million cases just got a number: type 5 — The International Diabetes Federation named malnutrition-related diabetes type 5 in 2025, ending a 70-year dispute.
- A shelved film made $100 million. The man who shelved it made $600 million. — Zaslav cashed $605 million exiting Warner Bros. the same month his cut film, “Coyote vs. Acme,” made $100 million.
- Nearly 70,000 new hepatitis C cases in 2023 were twice the US target — England cut hepatitis C deaths 36% with free testing; the US treats half its chronic cases.
- The role nearly didn’t happen for the actor playing it — Andrew Scott says a gay actor might not have been cast as Ian Charleson a decade ago.
- Twenty-four years of data just changed what 9/11 exposure means — JAMA’s review of the World Trade Center Health Program shows illness still emerging decades after the attacks.
- A sold-out Broadway week ran on a $275 ticket, not demand — “Other Desert Cities” grossed $1.9M in previews, but its edge was price, not crowd size.
- What it means for a trial to call itself pragmatic — JAMA revisits a 60-year-old term as a snack-based vaccine trial shows what “pragmatic” should mean in practice
- One screen made $86,000. A thousand couldn’t buy that — NAZA earned $86k from one New York screen; theater capacity, not demand, is the limit.
- 6.1 million people just redrew what “normal pain” means — A 118-country study of 6.1 million people gives pain its first age- and sex-adjusted reference curves.
- A comedy sketch did what a press tour couldn’t — Swift’s unannounced “SNL” cameo followed a music video, not a romance beat, and ratings will show the gap.
- A ship held 101 rescued people for a port that moved the goalposts — On two voyages in 15 days, Open Arms’ 101 rescued passengers waited out a distant, shifting disembarkation port.
- A 72-minute concert film has five camera operators and no dialogue — Paul Thomas Anderson filmed Cameron Winter’s solo Carnegie Hall show with five cameras and almost no cuts.
- A snack bar moved vaccination rates more than a vaccine campaign did — A nutritional supplement handed out monthly raised measles vaccination coverage in a trial of thousands of children.
- A film Shudder owned for a week sold for $10 million — Universal and Blumhouse paid over $10 million for “River,” outbidding Sony and Netflix after one festival screening.
- Eleven trials, 774 babies, and no answer on when to start caffeine — A review of 774 preterm infants can’t settle when caffeine should start — only that early often beats late.
- 30 films a year, one board, and a $30 million penalty per miss — Paramount’s $111 billion Warner Bros. deal closed with quotas, penalties, and a divestiture backstop attached.
- For every 71 people who exercise, one heart attack doesn’t happen — A review of 26,886 patients found cardiac rehab prevents heart attacks and likely cuts deaths, no drug required.
- 23 castle contestants, three renewed seasons, one 72% ratings jump — The Traitors’ 23-person Season 5 cast follows a renewal through Season 8 and a 72% viewership surge.
- Resident Evil needs $43.5 million. Practical Magic 2 needed $27 million and missed. — Resident Evil’s reboot targets a franchise record while Practical Magic 2’s $30 million debut trailed its own 1998 flop, adjusted.
- The 1.1% number that’s supposed to end colonoscopies at 75 — A study meant to stop surveillance colonoscopies in older adults is getting read as proof it should continue.
- Madonna hasn’t opened the VMAs since Rihanna tied her record — Madonna’s fifth VMA opening breaks a tie with Rihanna, following an album that outsold expectations by a wide margin.
- Half a million people just joined a study with no end date — Our Future Health enrolled 500,000 UK adults for lifelong data collection, funded by government and drugmakers jointly.
- Thymosin-alpha 1 cut deaths 3% to 5.8%, on 460 people — A hepatitis B injection showed fewer deaths and complications in 1,349 patients — but the trials were too small to be sure.
- The record isn’t adjusted for inflation, and it’s still real — Summer box office hit $4.76 billion, beating 2013’s $4.755 billion — but the season ran a week longer.
- Adding chemo to osimertinib helped one gene subgroup, not all of NSCLC — In TP53-mutated lung cancer, osimertinib plus chemotherapy outperformed the pill alone — but only in that subgroup.
- 28 years passed for the Owens sisters. 26 passed for us. — Practical Magic 2 arrives 28 years after the original — and critics disagree about what the gap bought.
- Five trials, 410 patients, and MRSA that clears itself half the time — A Cochrane review of five trials found antibiotics may clear MRSA in cystic fibrosis, but the data barely support it.
- The petition names one act. The tour books eight more. — A pro-Israel group wants Macklemore off Ed Sheeran’s tour after he said “Free Palestine” at MetLife Stadium.
- Touch, sound, light: 19 trials, one confident number — Multisensory stimulation may add hospital weight gain in preemies, but survival and development data stay uncertain.
- Community theater has no union scale, and that’s the film’s real subject — Jesse Eisenberg’s “The Debut” turns a New Jersey playhouse into a study of what unpaid ambition actually costs.
- Combined hormone therapy: 5 more breast cancers, 24 fewer fractures, per 1,000 — A Cochrane review of 45,660 women finds combined hormone therapy trades fracture risk for breast cancer and stroke risk.
- 36 days beat 50 days, and the gap is the real number — Spider-Man: Brand New Day hit $900 million domestic in 36 days, 14 days faster than Star Wars managed in 2015.
- 89 genes survived scrutiny. 426 didn’t. — A review of 515 genes linked to cerebral palsy found only 89 with strong evidence supporting the association.
- 41 screens, $1.6 million each, and no rival willing to compete — The Odyssey’s Imax 70mm run hit $66 million on 41 screens, extended for an 11th week.
- Six more quits per 100 patients, and that’s the confident number — Counselling plus nicotine patches in psychiatric wards helps 6 more per 100 quit — with low confidence and thin data.
- Clooney doubts the merger’s math, not just its politics — Clooney backed Ruffalo’s free speech while questioning if the $111bn Paramount-Warner deal makes any financial sense.