California’s economy took off with Paramount Pictures’ Top Gun: Maverick as its wingman, according to new data from the studio. The high-flying feature added over $150 million to the economy when it filmed throughout the state.
Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association, said, “When a major motion picture films on location, the local economy soars. Productions like Top Gun: Maverick create jobs and support local businesses, while also highlighting our industry’s proud partnership with the U.S. military, which is particularly fitting as we celebrate Military Appreciation Month and Memorial Day in the coming weeks.”
Lee Rosenthal, president, worldwide physical production, Paramount Pictures. stated, “As filmmakers, we were thrilled to return to some of California’s most iconic locations to film Top Gun: Maverick. We couldn’t imagine filming this sequel anywhere else, and it was all possible because of California’s Film and TV Tax Credit program, the state’s welcoming communities and a phenomenal partnership with the U.S. Navy. During the production of this film, Paramount Pictures created nearly 3,000 jobs throughout the state and added scores of millions to the local economies. We look forward to our continuing partnership and support from the state so that Paramount can continue to produce amazing projects of scale and excitement.”
California Film Commission executive director Colleen Bell said of Top Gun: Maverick, “The film had a very positive impact on our economy, bringing production jobs and spending to regions across the state. In contrast to the 1980s when the first Top Gun was filmed, there is now global competition to host these big-budget projects – and receiving incentives is often the deciding factor. California is fighting back with a uniquely targeted tax credit program, not to mention being home to the best crews, talent, infrastructure, locations, weather and everything else that makes us the world’s entertainment production capital.”
The impact of Top Gun: Maverick’s production includes:
- More than $150 million invested in the local economy.
- More than 2,820 local workers earned wages totaling more than $80 million.
- More than $3.9 million spent on lodging.
- More than $2 million spent on transportation, including truck and car rentals.
- More than $1.4 million spent on catering and other food items.
- More than $1.2 million spent on hardware and lumber supplies.
- More than $6.7 million spent on local rentals and purchases for set decoration, production, and other supplies.
Top Gun: Maverick opens nationwide on May 27.
Google’s search engine’s latest AI injection will answer voiced questions about video and photos
Google is injecting its search engine with more artificial intelligence that will enable people to voice questions about images and occasionally organize an entire page of results, despite the technology's past misadventures with misleading information.
The latest changes announced Thursday herald the next step in an AI-driven makeover that Google launched in mid-May when it began responding to some queries with summaries written by the technology at the top of its influential results page. Those summaries, dubbed "AI Overviews," raised fears among publishers that fewer people would click on search links to their websites and undercut the traffic needed to sell digital ads that help finance their operations.
Google is addressing some of those ongoing worries by inserting even more links to other websites within the AI Overviews, which already have been reducing the visits to general news publishers such as The New York Times and technology review specialists such as TomsGuide.com, according to an analysis released last month by search traffic specialist BrightEdge.
The same study found the citations within AI Overviews are driving more traffic to highly specialized sites such as Bloomberg.com and the National Institute of Health.
Google's decision to pump even more AI into the search engine that remains the crown jewel of its $2 trillion empire leaves little doubt that the Mountain View, California, company is tethering its future to a technology propelling the biggest industry shift since Apple unveiled the first iPhone 17 years ago.
The next phase of Google's AI evolution builds upon its 7-year-old Lens feature that processes queries about objects in a picture. The Lens option is now generates more than 20 billion queries per... Read More