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Cirque du Soleil acquires Blue Man Group
- gcb0 9y agowhy is this here?
- andymcsherry 9y agoBecause 40+ people upvoted it and thought it added value to the community, your comment however does not. From the Guidelines: > Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site.
- mrkrab 9y agoHe didn't complain about this article being here. He asked why 40+ people found it interesting. I share his question, I don't understand what's interesting about this at all, and there's no actual conversation around it here either.
- gcb0 9y agocorrect. and when I commented, the article had a single point.
- GuiA 9y agoThe obvious answer is that enough people found it interesting, and upvoted it. If your question is really "I don't get why do HN users find this interesting?", then I'd recommend reading up about Cirque du Soleil. They're a very interesting business, that got started by 2 street performers who are true hackers, even if their medium of predilection is performing arts rather than computers. In times where many circus businesses are bleeding money and folding due to shifting consumer expectations, Cirque du Soleil has managed to established a solid brand that many people associate with quality shows. They've effectively disrupted the circus industry, moving it away from sad animals and unfunny clowns, and making tons of money in the process.
- 0898 9y agoIs there a book on Cirque du Soleil you can recommend?
- vermontdevil 9y agoDunno about book but this is a good article https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/05/life-and-death-at-cirque-du-soleil/ https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2015/05/life-and-death-at...
- k_sze 9y agoThere used to be some kind of urban legend or joke about CdS, where a banker refused to invest in CdS, saying "Who the hell would lend money to a bunch of clowns?". The banker, of course, headdesked very hard and for a very long time afterwards.
- mynameishere 9y agoThat's a very funny joke. I wonder if there are any other examples of people missing out on investment opportunities.
- jacquesm 9y agohttps://www.bvp.com/portfolio/anti-portfolio https://www.bvp.com/portfolio/anti-portfolio is a classic example.
- amygdyl 9y ago"24 October 2000, The Register, New Intel Adverts Are Cr" At the same time as I feel that thirty years of my life just blitted by unmeasurably fast, the above headline from just 17 years ago seems like a true relic of a different era. And oh how much I'd love to feel like my computer was going to be really fast come my next upgrade. Thank goodness I am just enough older than to have been learning only while everyone and dog knew what Moore's Law was.
- duskwuff 9y agoHow does this comment relate to Cirque du Soleil?
- raverbashing 9y agoThe Blue Man Group has advertised for Intel
- amygdyl 9y agoSorry about that. I knew that I should have linked the article to show the connection, but I was wary of it containing inappropriate language. Anyhow here is the explanation : https://m.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/24/new_intel_tv_ads_complete/ https://m.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/24/new_intel_tv_ads_comp...
- thebiglebrewski 9y agoPush-aw! This is clearly an aqua-hire!
- unfunco 9y agoNetflix acquires story for Tobias Fünke in Arrested Development season 5.
- spydum 9y agoAhhh, wonder if this is why Disney hasn't yet said what is replacing La Nouba in Orlando after its last show - they were waiting for the acquisition to clear.
- octygen 9y agoI see a lot of synergy for Disney acquiring Cirque. For example: 1) Disney just built PandoraLand... Cirque has a new show based on Avatar: Toruk. 2) Disney is an entertainment megacorp whose weakness seems to be live entertainment... enter Cirque whose strength is exactly that and has global recognition for it. 3) Disney is going to China (Park in Shanghai)... Cirque is building a resident show in HangZhou. 4) Cirque is weak at merchandise and character building... which happen to be two of Disney's superstrengths. 5) Disney doesn't have a presence in Canada, a rather progressive family-oriented country that generates a lot of traffic in at least DisneyWorld... Cirque is one of the biggest, if not THE biggest brand in Canada. 6) The Canadian $ is low, the American $ is high. 7) The two companies already work together on projects and have been doing so for at least 15 years. 8) Cirque already has a show smackdab in the middle of Downtown Disney. Am I crazy?
- objclxt 9y ago> Disney is an entertainment megacorp whose weakness seems to be live entertainment... I don't know, Disney Theatrical Productions does pretty well. It's true that Disney has never really embraced Las Vegas, where Cirque is king, but that's also because it's not totally on point with their brand. Outside of Vegas though there's Disney on Ice, and all the Disney musicals with more to come (Frozen opens on Broadway next year, I think).
- CosmicShadow 9y ago#5 Uh what?? As a Canadian, I didn't even know Cirque was actually Canadian (nor was it in any top 50 Canadian brands lists I just Googled), so I'm not quite sure if it's the biggest brand in Canada, unless you are strictly speaking the biggest brand that is from Canada, but people don't know is from Canada. I know it's a huge brand, but man, I've never seen it in a list, or articles or anything, you know, all that crap that comes up in "25 great things you didn't know were Canadian" and what not, or discussions with people. Maybe I'm just out of the loop. The rest of this stuff makes sense.
- Jensensen 9y agoWhat are the most interesting new developments in this realm? I'm aware of Drip (https://ilovedrip.com/ https://ilovedrip.com/) by one of the Blue Man Group people (every audience member might get drenched in paint, the nerves that this show has.. wow :-D), and just interactive and immersive theatre in general. But I haven't heard of any emerging big shows that rival CdS and BMG.
- icebraining 9y agoNot sure it's the same realm, but I've recently watched (on TV) Mourad Merzouki's Pixel, which is a mix of modern dance with digital projection, and I found it interesting and well done.
- parkaboy 9y agoI'd say Punch Drunk (https://www.punchdrunk.com/ https://www.punchdrunk.com/) is a big (up-and-comer?) production group in that space. In NYC and Shanghai they put on Sleep No More (consists of an entire multi-story old hotel gutted with stage detail work almost at the level of a spec of dust). Edit: I'll add another 2 production groups heavier on the physical comedy/circus-side: Strut&Fret -- mainly AU-based but tour int'l. http://www.strutnfret.com http://www.strutnfret.com, and spiegelworld (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegelworld https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegelworld) --mainly in NYC and Las Vegas (put on Absinthe).
- Jensensen 9y agoGreat links, thanks! I'll have to add street theatre company Royal de Luxe ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_de_Luxe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_de_Luxe ). Due to them being essentially free, they will probably never get as rich as the founder of CdS, but their scope and mechanical accomplishments probably leapfrogs any other show. It's really a sight and thought to behold how they transform a city and keep a story moving day and night for 2 or 3 days with 10 meters high giant puppets.
- goldenkey 9y agoThat Drip "thing" is so cringe..how the ..well..wannabe socialites. Egh.
- retox 9y agoHacker news.
- archildress 9y ago"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- retox 9y agoSomeone has a financial interest in this story, that much is clear.
- archildress 9y agoInteresting - curious to get your thoughts on how posting to HN could enhance someone's financial stake in this. Given that the acquisition is already complete, that seems less likely to me. Now, if this was done with the intent to drum up interest (and consequently, the value of) Blue Man Group pre acquisition, I might agree - although a simple link feels like a reach.
- johnhattan 9y agoI remember standing in line for Maker Faire in San Mateo several years ago. We arrived a half-hour early, so we had plenty of time to chat with the people around us. Turns out the guy in front of us was a Blue Man, and he was there because they were always on the lookout for interesting bits to add to the show.
- two2two 9y agoBoth BMG and CdS have succeeded for so long due in part to their constant tooling with the latest tech. A couple of years ago CdS released a video called Spark exhibiting their take on drones. [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C8OJsHfmpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C8OJsHfmpI
- ehsankia 9y agoCdS showed up at Microsoft Build this year [0] too, to talk about how they planned to use AR/VR to step up their show production. While it looks a bit like a superficial, it still is neat how they are always on the look for new technologies to improve their work. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNz5Rw6TwCw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNz5Rw6TwCw
- saneshark 9y agoWow! "I'm afraid I just blue myself."
- fatjokes 9y agoI know the site rules require comments to add to the conversation. I for one will upvote all the Tobias Funke jokes as I believe they are core to the conversation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- wallflower 9y agoMany, many years ago, I was at a random party where there were some people from Broadway (mostly from behind the scenes people). One small group was impressed that I, a non-theater random, knew what a dramaturg did when I eventually asked what they did. [1] During the course of our conversation, they told me that the original Blue Men who started the original Blue Man Group had families in Japan and elsewhere who literally mortgaged their own properties (or whatever the equivalent is) to get the original show off the ground. The genius of Blue Man Group, to me, was always that their branding made the person performing the role irrelevant (outside of standard physical characteristics). Having no speaking roles, they were all Blue Men. They were all part of their same planet. [1] www.lmda.org/dramaturgy
- mvidal01 9y agoIt's an old idea. In the silent film days audiences didn't know the performers real names so that they did not become too independent or powerful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system_(filmmaking)#Beginnings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_system_(filmmaking)#Begin...