Jeff Gamet

Monument Valley is a popular game on the iPad thanks to its beautiful graphics and clever puzzles. Now it’s going to be a movie, too. Paramount Pictures is developing a movie based on Monument Valley, and it’s sequel Monument Valley 2. Deadline says,

Paramount Pictures and Akiva Goldsman’s Weed Road Pictures have set Patrick Osborne to develop to direct Monument Valley, hoping to launch a live action/CG hybrid family franchise based on the Ustwo Games’ international mobile game phenomenon. Osborne won the Best Animated Short Film Oscar for Feast and is currently directing Nimona for Fox and Blue Sky. The mobile game and its sequel take place in a surreal, Escher-esque landscape, where established laws of space and time do not apply. The film will send contemporary live-action characters into the game’s extraordinary, mind-bending world.

I love the Monument Valley games and the idea of a movie set in that world sounds intriguing. Still, I’d rather see the movie focus on the game characters instead of tossing real people into their world.

Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change is an epic New York Times Magazine article, and now it’s going to be an Apple television series. Apple bought the rights to the 30,000 word article. The series is produced by Anonymous Content, and the article’s author, Nathaniel Rich, will be involved. From the New York Times:

The “Losing Earth” article recounted how, from 1979 to 1989, a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians tried to save the world from the ravages of climate change before it was too late. The article was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center and was based on more than 18 months of reporting and over 100 interviews.

Climate change is a big topic, and rightly so. It’s good to see Apple interested in more than just entertainment shows for its original TV content lineup.

The ongoing push for easier access to our personal data isn’t limited to law enforcement in the United States. Police chiefs in Canada are pressuring their government to strike a deal with the US government to share data from cloud service and mobile devices for investigations without requiring the current procedures they see as inefficient. Canada’s lawmakers, however, aren’t ready to rush in. CTV News says,

But the government and the federal privacy commissioner say more consultation and study are needed to ensure appropriate protection of personal information before taking such a step.

That’s reassuring. The idea that a government isn’t willing to rush to remove personal privacy protections is refreshing. That said, it’ll be interesting to see if that attitude stands.

Apple’s painfully out of date Mac mini is reportedly getting a long overdue refresh this fall. What’s more, Apple is targeting pro users with the updated Mac. News of a new Mac mini is something of a surprise since it saw only minor improvements four years ago, and its last major changes came back in 2010. Bloomberg broke the news saying,

The computer has been favored because of its lower price, and it’s popular with app developers, those running home media centers, and server farm managers. For this year’s model, Apple is focusing primarily on these pro users, and new storage and processor options are likely to make it more expensive than previous versions.

Insider sources also backed up earlier reports of a MacBook refresh. The new 13-inch model will have a Retina display, and it’s starting to sound more like a MacBook Air replacement. Looks like Apple has a lot of product announcements for us this fall.