Welcome to Significant Digits, a daily digest of the telling numbers tucked inside the news.
4 movies
Director James Cameron announced that he will make four sequels to his 2009 film “Avatar,” aka Pocahontas in space, instead of two. It’s unclear what Cameron believes he failed to say with “Avatar” that requires four additional films, but we’ll see when the sequels come out in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023. [Variety]
7th-largest
If “The Walking Dead,” a comic published by Image Comics, were its own comic book company, it would be the seventh-largest production house by market share. The comic book and the television series it spawned are juggernauts; as a result, Image Comics and AMC, the network that airs the TV adaptation, have earned enough money and prestige to each undergo a creative renaissance. [FiveThirtyEight]
11 losses
In the eight GOP and 10 Democratic conventions since the Civil War that required more than one ballot to select a presidential nominee, the leader on the first ballot lost the nomination 11 times. That historical precedent is not great for Donald Trump, who could face a contested Republican convention in Cleveland, but when has that guy ever given a hoot about historical precedent? [Pew Research Center]
20 percent
How much the price of televisions sold online fell in February compared to a year earlier, according to a new price index from Adobe. The Consumer Price Index, which looks at television prices across the whole market, saw a 15 percent drop over the same period. [The New York Times]
51 cars
Czech police say that an officer driving drunk crashed his Jeep into 51 parked cars Tuesday. This is honestly pretty impressive and a general credit to the durability and sturdiness of both the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Czech liver. [Associated Press]
$175,000
Remember that time a University of California, Davis, cop blasted pepper spray into the eyes of a bunch of college students at point-blank range? UC Davis would rather you didn’t. The university has paid upwards of $175,000 to consultants to scrub the image from the internet. You know, this image of a UC Davis officer pepper spraying college students. [Sacramento Bee]
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