Good morning and welcome to a brand spankin' new edition of The Monitor, WIRED's collection of all things pop culture. Spring has sprung, dear reader, and we have a lot to share with you, including news about last night's Game of Thrones, Kanye West's appearance at Coachella, and this weekend's boring box office. Let's get going.
First, the most important question: Did you watch Game of Thrones last night? Lots of folks did, but a few got to see it—or at least got to see spoilers about it—before anybody else. The eighth season's second episode—"A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms," aka "Episode 69"—leaked online early via Amazon Prime in Germany. News about the leak hit Reddit and Twitter quickly, but the footage was very rapidly scrubbed from the internet. Hope everyone out there was able to avoid seeing unwanted plot details.
In a somewhat surprising turn of events, Kanye West showed up at Coachella over the weekend to put on a "Sunday Service" during the music festival. The performance, held at a space near Coachella's campground, featured musicians, singers, and dancers doing spiritual songs and tracks from West himself, including a new one called "Water." There was also merch for sale.
Speaking of Coachella, Variety reports that Netflix's deal with Beyoncé, which includes her Homecoming film, is worth some $60 million. The deal is for three projects, and the next two are still undisclosed. Beyoncé's talent is priceless, so while $60 million is maybe not enough, this deal still seems pretty fair.
The Curse of La Llorona opened this past weekend and made $11.8 million. That's a pretty good sum for a movie with little name recognition, but it wasn't nearly enough to save this past weekend's box office. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it was the slowest Easter weekend in more than a decade. That's depressing, but there's also a reason behind it: All the studios are holding back their big movies until Avengers: Endgame hits theaters this Friday.
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