I want NEVER gets. Last night, Jason Castillo went to bed a normal man, with a normal Twitter account and a few dozen followers.

This morning, Jason woke up to an inbox full of messages, thousands of new followers, and wants to sell his account for thousands of dollars. Well good luck on that one!

As previously mentioned Netflix made another fundamental mistake in launching their new spin-off brand, Qwikster: they didn’t make sure they had the name locked down on all of the big social networks before making the announcement. As Jason’s luck had it, he had long owned the @Qwikster handle. He’s willing to part with it — he just wants to make sure he’ll “be making bank” first.

After over a month of silence, Jason’s @Qwikster account sprang back to life just a few hours ago and, likely to Netflix’s horror, has been more active today than it ever was before.

Jason seems to have rallied the, erm, expert counsel of his friend Gabriel (@SoccerIsLifegc7) who says they’re “not talkin til the offers get in 6 figures”. Again good luck on that one! You guys are in a dream world (see below)

Someone should probably tell Jason that selling Twitter handles is strictly against Twitter’s Terms Of Service, and attempts to do so can quickly result in being dropped. Then Qwikster gets their name, free of charge. Social media is a mess anyway. Social Media = Second Life BS.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings announced a further split between the company’s DVD and streaming offerings with an apology.

In an email to subscribers and a video, Hastings said the decade-old DVD-by-mail service would change its name to Qwikster and be operated as a separate business from the company’s movie-streaming business, which will retain the Netflix name.

But the announcement began with an apology to customers who felt abused by changes — including price increases — Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) already has made.

“It is clear from the feedback over the past two months that many members felt we lacked respect and humility in the way we announced the separation of DVD and streaming and the price changes,” Hastings wrote.

With the change, Qwikster will add an option for customers to rent video games in Wii, PS3 and Xbox 360 formats. Customers who subscribe to both Qwikster and Netflix will be billed separately for those services.

Netflix‘s decision to raise prices by as much as 60 percent is turning into a bit of nightmare.

The customer backlash against the higher rates will end September with 600,000 fewer U.S. customers than it had in June.

It will mark just the second time in 12 years that Netflix has lost subscribers from one quarter to the next. The last downturn occurred during 2007 when Netflix lost a mere 55,000 from March through June.

Netflix has turned into Wall Street’s equivalent of a box-office flop. Its shares plunged $39.46, or about 19 percent, to close at $169.25, leaving Netflix’s stock price more than 40 percent below where it stood before the company unveiled the higher prices. The cost to shareholders so far: more than $6 billion in paper losses.

Netflix suffered a bigger setback earlier this month when Starz Entertainment ended talks to renew the licensing rights to a key part of Netflix’s video library for streaming over the Internet.

Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter thinks the company’s shares could fall as low as $110. “It’s like they have taken the beef away from the buffet.”

Chill Report gets the move – Netflix just don’t want to be in the DVD mailing business anymore, although that was the actual reason Netflix became so successful and why Blockbuster disappeared. Now we’re all living in a new world with companies pushing content to online, which cuts out warehouse costs and packaging costs for DVDs and cuts out all the mailing costs. So the loss of customers is probably not as bad as it sounds.

Netflix management believes the convenience of Internet video is the main reason that it has added 17 million U.S. subscribers during the past three years, establishing the company as a major player in the entertainment industry.

Netflix still expects to bring in $10 million to $25 million more from its customers than during the July-September period than it did April-June.

Until Sept. 1, Netflix offered plans that bundled DVD rentals and unlimited video streaming for as little as $10 per month. Those options are now sold separately, resulting in a cost of at least $16 per month for people who want streaming and DVDs. Having both choices is appealing because Netflix’s streaming library primarily consists of old TV shows and movies, leaving DVDs as the main way to see recently released films.

Many of the people no longer renting DVDs from Netflix will get their discs elsewhere. That will most likely be great business for Redbox, which rents DVDs for $1 per night through 33,330 kiosks in supermarkets and other retailers. Shares of Redbox owner Coinstar surged $3.33, or more than 7 percent, to close at $48.55 today. Dish Network’s shares edged up 11 cents to $25.82.

Internet retailer Amazon.com Inc. launched a free streaming service for subscribers to its two-day shipping service earlier this year. Greenfield and other analysts believe Google Inc., already the owner of YouTube, is eager to expand its Internet video offerings to include more movies. One way Google could achieve that would be to buy Hulu.com, which has been put up by for sale by the television network owners that supply its video content. All interesting stuff!

Nike have made 1,500 pairs of Nike Air Mags, the futuristic shoes Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly) wore in Back to the Future II.

Buyers can head to eBay — where bidding as of Friday afternoon was well into the thousands — until Sept. 18, when the auction ends. A pair went for $37,500 at a live auction Thursday night, to UK rapper Tinie Tempah. All proceeds will benefit the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

Tinie Tempah said, “It was a total spur of the moment decision. I was really touched in the moment by the presentation and next thing I knew I owned these iconic sneakers.”

Tinie — a longtime sneaker-collector — says he’s also a HUGE fan of “Back to the Future” … so the shoes “were an all-around great purchase that will go on to help [The Michael J. Fox Foundation].”

Tinie adds, “I feel fortunate to be able to help.”

Marty himself — a.k.a. Fox — showed off a pair Thursday night on the Late Show With David Letterman.

“This brings together three populations of people with major Joneses,” Fox told Letterman as he made the shoes light up, just like in the movie. “The sneakerheads, the Back to the Future people, who, believe me, are out of their mind … in a good way! Thank God for them. And the people in the Parkinson’s community who have an interest in research.”

Eddie Murphy is set to step back into the spotlight in a big way: He’s agreed to take on hosting duties at the Oscars next February.

The selection of Murphy, 50, is a departure from last year’s Academy Awards hosts – the unlikely duo of James Franco and Anne Hathaway.

“Eddie is a comedic genius, one of the greatest and most influential live performers ever,” telecast producer Brett Ratner says. “I know he will bring excitement, spontaneity and tremendous heart to the show.”

Peter Berg and Universal have spent $200 million creating one of the action events of next year. But forget that, check out Rihanna.

The ‘Um-ber-rella’ singer will play an FBI espionage agent brought in to help defeat the mysterious ‘orgin’ extra-terrestrials who are taking it to Taylor Kitsch, Liam Neeson and the US Navy in the 2011 blockbuster.

The apes have conquered the movie world fueled by great word of mouth and superb reviews, 20th Century Fox’sRise of the Planet of the Apes opened to $54 million at the domestic box office. That’s $20 million more than the best forecast.

Rise of the Apes is particularly drawing notice for its photo-realistic apes, which were created by Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital using advanced performance capture technology. Andy Serkis plays the ape Caesar, and is the movie’s lead character.

An origin story set in present day San Francisco, where man’s own experiments with genetic engineering lead to the development of intelligence in apes and the onset of a war for supremacy.

Planet of the Apes movie starring James Franco, Tom Felton, Andy Serkis as the Ape, Brian Cox, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Tyler Labine, and David Hewlett.

Cool Review: My wife is not a fan of scifi. So after a little begging she went with me to see it. By the end of the film she fell in love with Ceaser and his plight. So if you can turn a non scifi, non planet of the apes person into a fan thats saying something.

Funny Review: I saw the trailer and thought it was about the Kardashians.

Only days after reporting $363.9 million in quarterly revenue and $79 million in operating income, up 34% and 99% year-over-year, respectively, DVD kiosk company Redbox has released some more impressive figures. With more than 27,000 kiosks spread across the country, the Coinstar-owned service is now seeing an average of 55 million monthly rentals and up to 40 rentals per second.

That’s a lot of movies circulating for a service that requires a trip to the local grocery store. But as Redbox’s numbers indicate, the company is growing fast, and expanding its reach beyond physical pickups and into the digital world.

According to Redbox, which released a handy infographic to boast of its growth, the company has seen more than 4.5 million iPhone app downloads and more than 2.1 million Android app downloads. Additionally, Redbox.com is now receiving nearly 9 million monthly unique visitors, while it also boasts 30.5 million newsletter subscribers and 2.7 million SMS subscribers.

In other words, consumers aren’t just experiencing Redbox at the kiosk–although an estimated 270 million people walk by one each week. Its digital reach provides a healthy foundation in case it ever decides to expand beyond its kiosk competition with NCR’s Blockbuster chain, and launch a streaming video service, as reports have suggested.

And for Netflix, the numbers are yet another sign that competition is growing. The streaming and DVD-by-mail service recently caused shockwaves after announcing a price hike, which analysts estimate could cost the company more than two million subscribers–subscribers who could find their way to a Redbox kiosk with the cash saved.

via @fastcompany

With 700,000 downloads in less than a month, newcomer Justin Eugene Evans shoots down the standard distribution model in favor of video-sharing site VODO.

For director Justin Eugene Evans, making the movie was the easy part. Finding somewhere to show his low-budget tale of Vietnam-era espionage was far more complicated. Even with Oscar-nominated star James Cromwell, (Babe, L.A. Confidential) and the buzz-generating blitz of 39 film festivals, the filmmakers for A Lonely Place for Dying struggled to lock in a distribution deal. “We were approached by independent distributors and just about every top sales agent and rep in Los Angeles,” says Evans, but the deals, he claims, were so lopsided in favor of the distributor, he and his investors wouldn’t make a dime.

So he turned to an unlikely ally in mainstream Hollywood: the legally murky world of peer-to-peer file sharing, partnering with VODO, a free video-sharing site with distribution ties to other prominent P2P networks BitTorrent and Vuze. VODO is currently developing a new film distribution model that has the fundraising ambitions of Kickstarter: a film’s supporters give money to the creators and their participation makes them part of the action. A donation of five dollars earns a digital copy of the screenplay and a podcast interview with Evans. A healthy three grand will get you a private screening. And a whopping $50,000 gets an executive producer credit along with the other bevy of perks.

To make this gambit work on a P2P site, Evans had to flip the script of standard feature length, chopping his film into five serialized parts. The first teaser “episode” is up, with three more episodes to be released over the coming months, with the final episode pegged to run several weeks after the film’s theatrical release.

Jamie King, founder and COO of VODO, explains that beyond Evans’ film, the company’s aim is to be a P2P Netflix, pairing up online audiences with the directors and writers searching for them. Says King: “If we can put the two together, we solve two core problems: giving audiences who are increasingly criminalized by their sharing activities a legitimate engagement with creators, and giving creators who are not served by the incumbent media system a quick, effective route to [the] audience.”

With roughly a million uniques a month, King and his VODO team are also planning to get involved with more mainstream distribution services to institute a pay-per-view system for the media available on VODO’s site. So far so good: Since its premiere early this month, the film has been downloaded 700,000 times and landed a sponsorship with another online distributor, dotTV, which paid $15,000 for the first three episodes. Viewer donations will go to promoting the film’s theatrical and Blu-ray release with ads in traditional media outlets. Any Oscars, though, Evans gets to keep.

via @fastcompany

Sacha Baron Cohen is preparing his next semi-improvised, semi-political comedy. The Dictator, which may or may not be inspired by Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (bet on ‘may’) has Borat director Larry Charles set to direct from a script by Alec Berg, Jeff Schaffer and David Mandel. The script, which has Sacha Baron Cohen playing dual roles, may or may not be followed to the utmost degree.

Last week an actress shortlist was assembled as producers cast the film’s female lead, and one of the primary concerns for the woman in question was an ability to improvise. So it isn’t much of a surprise that Anna Faris got the final nod. She’s now negotiating a deal to appear in the film.

Paramount had previously said The Dictator is “the heroic story of a dictator who risked his life to ensure that democracy would never come to the country he so lovingly oppressed. It is inspired by the best selling novel, Zabibah and The King, by Saddam Hussein.”

[Sacha] Baron Cohen plays a ruthless dictator who heads to the U.S. for a meeting at the United Nations and finds that his number two has replaced him with an unsuspecting sheepherder lookalike. As the dictator wanders the city, he meets the owner of an organic food store… She turns around his dictatorial thinking, and there’s a little romance in it as well.

Ben Kingsley we hear will co-star in the film as “one of two Middle Eastern characters who factor into the plot,” with Jason Mantzoukas is (The League) in talks for the other role.

When Joseph Gordon-Levitt was confirmed for Christopher Nolan‘s The Dark Knight Rises, there was also word that actress Juno Temple was being eyed for a role. Now she is confirmed for the film, and will reportedly play “a street-smart Gotham girl.” That could mean a lot of things — she could literally be a very tertiary character who just has a small role. But the description also sounds just enough like Frank Miller’s version of Robin from the original Dark Knight mini-series that there has already been a good amount of speculation about the reality of the role.

Much more likely, however, is that she’ll play another Frank Miller character, Holly Robinson, who is friend to Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman.

Sandra Bullock is proving to be one generous actress.

The Oscar winner donated $1 million to the American Red Cross this week to aid earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan, the charity told CNN on Thursday. This is the largest celebrity donation to the Red Cross since the disaster, although the charity has received other anonymous donations, it reports.