🌊 Box Office Defies Gravity

Calm before the Spotify Wrapped storm.

Unless your only contact with the modern world is this newsletter, your social media feeds will soon be swimming in Spotify Wrapped’s. For the uninitiated, a Spotify Wrapped is basically your music report for the year: It lists your most listened-to artists and provides you with various analytics — cue the Moneyball theme — about your music habits.

We’re just glad society has normalized posting Spotify Wrapped’s and not screen time reports. It would be a shame if our friends had to see how much time we’ve spent on the weather app this year (we go to parties and never leave the corner — people must think we’re answering texts).

Also, we accidentally hid the Rundown and Popcorn in yesterday’s newsletter. We apologize, have put the intern is in the dog house, and ensured all stories are back today.

–Max and Max

KEY STORY

Box Office Bonanza

US movie theaters saw their best Thanksgiving holiday weekend ever

• Moana 2, Wicked, and Gladiator II sold nearly 30M domestic tickets from Wednesday through Sunday: 17.4M tickets were sold for Moana 2, 8.7M for Wicked, and 3.3M for Gladiator II. The trio brought in ~$420M over the holiday weekend

• Moana 2 enjoyed the biggest opening weekend for an animated Disney film ever while Wicked became the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation at the domestic box office. Demand was so high that AMC’s website had 10+ minute wait times for tickets

Dig Deeper

• Wicked, Moana 2, and Gladiator II made up more than 75% of movie ticket sales over the long weekend – a phenomenon analysts say resembles the “Barbenheimer” craze, in which films with broad but varied appeal attract massive audiences

KEY STORY

The Park of Cubes

Minecraft theme parks are coming to the US and UK

• Mojang Studios released Minecraft – the best-selling video game of all time – in 2011

• The franchise will now partner with Merlin Studios to build two Minecraft theme parks, set for 2026 and 2027 openings

• Merlin – the theme park operator behind LEGOLAND – will invest $110M (£85m) to build the parks. Some analysts have told eager enthusiasts to temper their expectations, though: Merlin’s $110M budget is relatively low. For reference, Super Nintendo World’s Japan location alone cost nearly $600M to build

Dig Deeper

• The Minecraft franchise has also spawned several other games and movies, including a Minecraft movie that stars A-listers like Jack Black and Jason Momoa and is set for a 2025 release

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KEY STORY

Ancient Cat Discovery

Mammoth tusk hunters discovered a mummified saber-toothed cat cub in Siberian permafrost, the first such preserved specimen ever found

• The tusk hunters discovered the remains in 2020 and turned them over to paleontologist Alexey Lopatin and his team from the Russian Academy of Sciences. They analyzed the specimen and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports

• The findings will enable future analysis that will help scientists understand how saber-toothed cats evolved and their relationship to other cat species

Dig Deeper

• Scientists believe the cub drowned and was quickly buried in sediment, freezing into the permafrost

• The three-week-old cub belonged to Homotherium latidens, an extinct species of saber-toothed cat. Despite its early age, the young animal already showed distinctive features of its species, including a thicker neck than modern lion cubs and longer forelimbs

KEY STORY

Celebrity Businesses Flopping?

Companies founded by LeBron James, Jay-Z, and Gwyneth Paltrow have had terrible years

• LeBron James’ production company SpringHill – which produced “Space Jam” and “Shooting Stars” – reportedly lost $28M in 2023 and $17M in 2022, and is on track to be in the red again this year

• Jay-Z’s luxury cannabis company Monogram, which he launched in 2020, has stopped selling its products

• Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellness company Goop – once valued at $250M – has done two rounds of layoffs in the last two months and has already closed the flagship store it opened in London last year

Dig Deeper

• In 2020, Goop went viral for selling a candle called “This Smells Like My Vagina." It has also sold condom dispensers, golden dildos, and vampire repellent spray

• After launching to great fanfare in 2020, Monogram's parent company had $575M cash on hand and a mission to build a cannabis empire. Now, that cash is reportedly gone

RUNDOWN
Some Quick Stories for the Office

📉 Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger resigned after a nearly four-year tenure marked by declining sales, a 61% stock drop, and failure to capitalize on the AI boom that propelled rival Nvidia to become the world's most valuable company

🇺🇸 Donald Trump threatened to “hit [Hamas] harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied history of the United States of America” if the group didn’t release all the October 7 hostages immediately. The warning came after Hamas confirmed the death of a 21-year-old American citizen in captivity

🪖 NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he warned Donald Trump that a Russian victory in Ukraine would pose a “dire security threat” to the US

🔋 General Motors announced it would back out of a $2.6B electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Michigan amid low demand for EVs

🚗 The CEO of Stellantis – which owns brands like Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Fiat – unexpectedly resigned, citing “different views” between himself and the company’s board

COMMUNITY

🧐 Yesterday’s question: Should we remove fluoride from our water? (See Wrap below for more…)

🧠 Today’s question: Before Spotify Wrapped comes out, who would you guess were your five most listened to artists this year?

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

POPCORN
Some Quick Stories for Happy Hour

🐹 Rodent Roulette: A 34-year-old British man nearly died of anaphylactic shock when his Syrian hamster, Mochi, bit through his hand while suffering a seizure

🎬 It Was Her Idea: Margot Robbie revealed on the “Talking Pictures” podcast that her full-frontal nude scene in the Wolf of Wall Street was her idea 

🚚 Chick-peace Out: A truck carrying 44,000 pounds of chickpeas "burned up" in Death Valley National Park after illegally driving through a road closed to commercial traffic, marking the seventh vehicle fire in the park this year

🕳️ Ground Breaking News: A housing complex in Wales was evacuated after a 50-60 foot deep sinkhole opened up in front of it

🇺🇸 Badge to Worse: A former "Deputy of the Year" in Georgia was arrested for a DUI after allegedly attempting to direct non-existent traffic outside an elementary school while drunk and in plain clothes

ROCA WRAP

Sex is Work

Belgium 

This country has become the first in the world to give sex workers full employment rights.

A Western European nation of 11.5M people, Belgium has long been known for progressive social policies, including decriminalizing sex work in 2022. This month, a new law will go one step further and take the unprecedented step of treating sex work like any other profession.

The new law grants the workers official employment contracts, health insurance, pensions, maternity leave, and sick days – rights previously denied to them. The change came after months of protests during the Covid pandemic, when many workers found themselves out of work without state support.

Under the legislation, brothel rooms must be equipped with alarm buttons, while employers with criminal records will be banned from the industry. The law aims to protect workers by allowing them to refuse clients or acts they're uncomfortable with, while maintaining strict oversight of establishments.

Many sex workers have celebrated the law as life-changing, with the potential to bring the industry out of the shadows and better protect workers. One vocal proponent of the law, the president of the Belgian Union of Sex Workers (UTSOPI), has said it’s overdue given that most of the job isn’t even about sex: “It’s giving people attention, listening to their stories, eating cake with them, dancing to waltz music,” she told the BBC, estimating that just 10% of sex working hours go toward sex itself.

Yet criticisms abound, including from those who say the law normalizes an amoral business, legalizes exploitation, or prevents the government from having to help people leave the profession.

Regardless, for the time being, in Belgium, sex is work.

EDITOR’S NOTE
Final Thoughts

We had one Roca Reader suggest that instead of fluoride we add Ozempic to the water. That’s certainly one idea!

Thank you for reading today’s newsletter. Also, with all the snowfall across the country, we’re thinking of doing a winter edition of the Roca fall pics showcase. Thoughts?

–Max and Max