Latest Blackfish Stories

Tilikum, the famous orca whale at the center of the documentary Blackfish, was pronounced dead on Friday by SeaWorld.

It has been a few years since we’ve seen Steve-O in any Jackass entity, but that hasn’t stopped the actor/comedian from taking on big, bad stunts. This time around, his tomfoolery was apparently for a good cause at least.

It was around this time last year that Sea World finally admitted that the documentary Blackfish hurt their ticket sales. Well, it turns out that the hurt still isn't over for the theme park, as new reports say that the company's profits have dropped 84 percent.

From killer whales to an army of rats? That’s the path Dakota Group and Submarine – the producers behind the hit documentary Blackfish – are treading with the reveal of their next project. The team has announced plans to turn Robert Sullivan’s best-selling non-fiction book Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants into a feature length documentary.

While it didn't exactly make the money of a major studio blockbuster, the documentary Blackfish made an incredible impact when it was released in 2013. Pulling in an impressive $2 million while only being released in 99 theaters, and getting a powerfully positive consensus from professional critics, the movie began a national conversation about SeaWorld parks and the way that Orca whales are treated.

This change in direction for Finding Dory is an excellent PR move for Pixar, distancing itself from a documentary that’s grabbing a ton of press by shining its light on a serious problem in the aquatic community. We don’t know what the ending of Dory is (or was), but if it involved an orca in a Sea World park, then yes, it would have been tough to explain away the connections.

As kids, many of us were caught up in the wonder of SeaWorld, an amusement park that allowed us into the splash zone where we could get close—but not too close—to the incredible animals of the ocean. Shamu is essentially SeaWorld's mascot, a killer whale character played by various orcas all across North America. But there have been times when these killer whales live up to the darker aspect of their names, turning on their trainers.

Game of Thrones won't be back on the air for another nine months but, like they did with the second season, HBO will start shooting the third in the middle of July. And with the return to Westeros (and Qarth) imminent, there are plenty of previously announced partsthat still need to be filled. Minus one. The latest actor to officially join the ever expanding ensemble is Clive Russell as Brynden 'The Blackfish' Tully.