New York Post, Sunday, October 25, 2020nypost.com“Cuties” turned out to be
ugly for Netflix.
Subscription cancellations
skyrocketed by 800 percent
after the French film trig-
gered a boycott in Septem-
ber over its “hypersexualiza-
tion” of children, analyses
show. Within two days of the
movie’s premiere, #Cancel-
Netflix became the top
trending topic on Twitter
and a petition on Change.org
garnered hundreds of thou-
sands of signatures.
Netflix’s chief financial
officer Spence Neumann
didn’t mention “Cuties” in a
third-quarter earnings call
this week, instead focusing
on the first half of the year,
when coronavirus lock-
downs drove subscriptions.
He said the company
“came pretty close” to meet-
ing its membership goal of
195 million worldwide. For
the three months that ended
Sept. 30, it added 2.2 million
global subscribers, down
from the first two quarters
of 16 million and 10 million.
But numbers analyzed by
New York data analytics
firms Antenna and YipitData
show the protest made a big
dent. Antenna reported Net-
flix lost five times as many
subscribers in September’s
first couple of weeks than it
lost in all of August. Yipit-
Data put September cancel-
lations at 8 times of those in
August. Melanie Gray
‘Cuties’
cut into
Netflix
Iran blasted Sudan Satur-
day for paying “ransom” to
the US in exchange for the
Trump administration re-
moving the country from a
list of state sponsors of ter-
rorism.
The country also criti-
cized as “phony” a Wash-
ington-brokered deal to
normalize diplomatic rela-
tions between Israel and
Sudan.
On Friday, when the deal
was announced, Sudan be-
came the third Arab gov-
ernment in the last two
months to establish diplo-
matic ties with Israel, fol-
lowing the United Arab
Emirates and Bahrain.
Isabel Vincent
Iran slams
Sudan deal
city in crisis
A young film major from
Indiana who’d come to
New York for a “dream”
skateboarding trip with
buddies was fatally shot by
a stray bullet to the chest
in Bushwick early Satur-
day after less than a day in
the city, police said.
Ethan Williams, 20, wasin town with friends for a
weeklong trip to
make skateboarding
videos and was the
unintended target.
The gunman, who
wore a black hoodie,
was being sought
Saturday night.
“Ethan [inset] would havewanted the shooter to know
he’s already forgiven
them,” his distraught
father, Jason Willi-
ams, said in a phone
interview. “He would
have wanted to be his
friend.”
Ethan spent his life
trying to give back to oth-ers; he did missionary work
with orphans in Rwanda
while in high school, where
he also started an LGBTQ
club. Though he wasn’t gay,
Williams hated seeing his
classmates getting bullied,
his dad said.
“It’s hard to express how
much he loved everybody,”Jason Williams said.
A sophomore in the film
media program at Indiana
University, Ethan “wanted
people’s stories to be told.”
Meanwhile three people
were shot and wounded
Saturday morning.
Tamar Lapin, Larry
CelonaandTina MooreVisiting skateboarder gunned down
By Larry CeLona
and Dean BaLsaminiHe has been pushing the envel-
ope for years.
A “person of interest” wanted
for questioning in the shocking
Times Square subway shove is a
career criminal with a lengthy rap
sheet who has exhibited bizarre
behavior before, according to po-
lice and law-enforcement sources.
Joshua Diaz, 30, whose last
known address is in Mount Ver-
non, has been arrested 30 times,
sources said, including collars for
burglary, assault, resisting arrest
and criminal trespass.
He was most recently accused of
sitting in the cars of strangers in
Queens.
Diaz was nabbed Sept. 10 for un-
authorized use of a vehicle after
he was allegedly sitting in some-one’s vehicle in Douglaston, play-
ing music. Four days later he al-
legedly pulled the same stunt, sit-
ting in a different person’s car in
Jamaica.
A law-enforcement source told
The Post that 11 of Diaz’s arrests
have been sealed.
Diaz’s record dates back to 2012,
the source said.
But Diaz had not, as of Saturday
evening, been charged in the chill-
ing Friday incident in Times
Square, in which a woman was
suddenly shoved from behindonto the subway tracks without
warning.
Diaz was arrested Friday for re-
sisting arrest, obstruction of gov-
ernmental administration, crimi-
nal trespass and disorderly con-
duct, police said, after he was
caught just before 6 p.m. smoking
a cigarette on a Bronx subway
platform.
He was taken into custody be-
cause he fit the description of the
wanted photo circulated by the
NYPD for the unprovoked attack
on the victim, a 28-year-old NewJersey woman, police said, even
including the clothes worn by the
suspected perp.
“The push is still under investi-
gation,” the NYPD said.
No other information was im-
mediately available.
A source said Diaz was at Jacobi
Hospital in the Bronx Friday un-
dergoing a psychiatric evaluation.
It’s unclear if Diaz was still hos-
pitalized late Saturday.
Police are now looking for more
witnesses and video of the shoving
incident. The victim was waiting
on the northbound N/Q/R plat-
form in Times Square, police said.
The woman was able to climb
off the tracks before a train bar-
reled into the station; she was
treated for a wrist injury at NYU
Langone Hospital, authorities
said. Additional reporting by Sam
RaskinTwIST IN ShoVe
Stunning: A day after a New Jersey
woman (left) was luckily OK after being
shoved to the Times Square subway
tracks, police named Joshua Diaz (inset)
as a “person of interest” in the incident.Cops looking for
recidivist drifter
Robert Miller