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Thousands are confiscated annually because they are suspected of being driven illegally, or used in a crime - most are later destroyed, but a BBC investigation has found some are sold on to members of the public in online auctions.

Across the UK, police sold 161 e-bikes last year and 54 in 2024, although the real number could be higher because not every force responded to the BBC's Freedom of Information request.

Some of the forces said they had now ended the practice, but others defended it as a way of putting "money back into policing".

Six forces responded to say e-bikes they had seized had been sold, including large forces such as West Midlands Police and Police Scotland.

The figure includes electrically-assisted pedal cycles, which look similar to bicycles and have a motor that kicks in as a rider pedals, as well as electric motorbikes, which are usually more powerful and are propelled only by their motor.

E-bikes have become controversial because some think they are linked to crime and anti-social behaviour.

Recent BBC reporting has highlighted cases across the country of balaclava-clad young men riding illegally on footpaths and intimidating residents.

There have also been a number of pedestrian deaths, including 86-year-old grandmother Gloria Stephenson, who was struck at a zebra crossing in Sunderland last year by an illegal e-motorbike.

Police Scotland, which covers the whole country, says it sends seized e-bikes to an accredited recycler who may then decide to auction them, with money going back to the force. Last year 93 e-bikes seized by Police Scotland were sold, more than any other force.

Two e-bikes seized by West Yorkshire Police last year were sold at auction. The force said any money raised from the auctions was split between the force and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, and said some cash went to "local good causes". All of those sold were "legally compliant", they added.

West Midlands Police, which sold 12 e-bikes last year, said the "vast majority" of seized bikes were destroyed, with a "small number" sold "via an independent auction company so that the money can be put back into policing".

The BBC found some forces had also sold e-scooters. It is illegal to use a privately-owned e-scooter on public property, although owning an e-scooter is not illegal.

Durham Constabulary sold three of them last year, and West Mercia Police sold one. West Mercia's force also sold 24 e-bikes.

Both forces told the BBC they have recently reviewed their policy and they will no longer sell e-bikes or e-scooters.

Clive Grunshaw, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Lancashire said: "There's nowhere apart from [a] back garden that these scooters can be legally used, so it's a confused message," he said.

He urged police forces to stop selling e-bikes, which he said have become the "transport of choice for drug gangs" because they are "so difficult to catch".

He suspects that some criminals whose vehicles are seized simply try to buy them back from auction websites.

Grunshaw worries some criminals are buying legally compliant e-bikes from police and then giving them illegal modifications.

Legal electric pedal bikes are restricted so they cannot drive faster than 15.5mph, but criminals can buy "tuning kits" online, often from eastern Europe, allowing some to travel faster than 40mph.

Durham Constabulary, which sold 29 e-bikes last year, told the BBC they had recently reviewed its policy, and they "will now be crushed without exception".

Greater Manchester Police sold one e-bike last year.

Police tend to sell the vehicles through commercial auction websites like Raw2k, a company listed by several forces.

The website regularly advertises e-bikes as "sold at the direction of police", including a Chinese-manufactured electric dirt bike that it says was auctioned from Falkirk earlier this month, with an opening price of £250 (much less than the £3,295 listed as the retail price for a new model). %!s()

The main character for the “Control” sequel is Jesse’s younger brother, Dylan Faden (played by Sean Durrie), who battles a preternatural crisis engulfing a reality-warped Manhattan, unleashing his powers and mastering the different forms of his shape-shifting melee weapon, the Aberrant, to face dangerous enemies and monumental bosses.

“There’s this interesting kind of reverse symmetry when you look at both games,” “Control” franchise creative director and Remedy co-creative director Mikael Kasurinen tells Variety. “In the first game, Jesse arrives at The Oldest House looking for Dylan, trying to understand what happened to her brother. And her arc obviously then becomes a lot about herself, in many different ways. While she’s trying to look for Dylan and understand what’s going on, she becomes the director of this strange bureau called the Bureau of Control and it was, in a way, her fate to become that person. In a way, she found a place to be and she was happy inside The Oldest House.”

For “Control Resonant,” Kasurinen says “we turn it the other way around.”

“Jesse is missing, lost, we don’t know what’s going on with her and Dylan wakes up and then he starts his search for her and trying to understand again what is happening in the world,” Kasurinen says. “And he ends up dealing with the imminent threats and he finds Zoe, as Jesse found Pope early on [in ‘Control’]. So there’s a lot of this interesting symmetry between the characters and their journeys. But of course, Dylan’s thing is to try to find connections and a sense of belonging and all of those things that are unique to him and his arc. And as he searches for Jesse, we unlock more and more what she’s doing, what she’s dealing with and so on. And we start to understand her choices as well that she took early on in the story. Going further than that would be spoiling it, but both stories revolve around both siblings, and we just basically switch sides in a way.”

“Control Resonant” star Durrie says when he was brought on for the original game, the team prepared him for the idea of Dylan taking the lead in the sequel.

“When they told me about the project and were pitching it to me, we got to the very end and they’re like, ‘And he’s not dead. He’s in a coma,’” Durrie says. “And so while they didn’t get into the details of where we are today, I knew that they had things up their sleeve right at the beginning.”

Durrie says he used some details from the first “Control” to develop Dylan’s character for “Resonant,” but notes that much of his previous performance wasn’t carried over due to the state of mind Dylan is in when the franchise begins — namely, being controlled by The Hiss.

“I took, in particular, the events of the first game of why he was victimized, letting the Hiss in, his guilt from that, his need for atonement and then now his need to want to rediscover his humanity,” Durrie says. “So I took his backstory of living in this house since he was 10, and then at one point in time, getting thrown into a cell and forgotten about and so that’s where we really started to find the bits that really made it through to the second game. Performance-wise, he’s infected by The Hiss in the original ‘Control,’ so he doesn’t act like that anymore, but his memory of it is, his guilt, quite frankly, of it and what he did, even if it wasn’t under his control and what the end result was and now telling the story of him rediscovering himself.”

It’s not only the main POV that the “Control” team has changed for “Resonant,” but also some of the game mechanics.

“In regard to the first game, having this sense of fast-paced, first-person action was already a key thing,” Kasurinen says. “Combining the use of a weapon with preternatural abilities, all of those elements were already there and we knew that. And I think that’s a kind of a ‘Control’ recipe, in many ways. And it sounds like a small thing, but of course it is a bigger thing that we switched the weapon. Instead of a gun, Dylan uses a melee weapon. And we wanted to go a lot further into how you can feel like you jump into this interesting, colorful sandbox and making sure that the environments are as versatile as they can be and find many different ways for Dylan to navigate those environments, including being able to utilize the gravity anomalies through shift and attach himself to different surfaces. And then to create an interesting wide range of different types of enemies for you to fight against, and also avoid. Like in the first game, that we don’t get stuck with one single enemy, but it’s more like a composition of enemies that you have to face. I think that larger philosophy was already there in the first game, and I think we were able to go a lot further into that direction with the second game.”

For those completely new to the world of “Control,” the sequel game is sure to be a challenge, but the creative team has found one way to make it a little easier to enter without all the proper backstory.

“Zoe’s character will be helpful if this is the first venture you’ve had into ‘Control,’” Durrie says. “She’s kind of asking the questions that you may be asking. But if you are well-versed in the lore of ‘Control,’ you’ll jump right in. So either way, we’re ready for people to play.”

“Zoe is, of course, a big new character,” Kasurinen adds. “Crucial for Dylan, crucial for the storytelling and all of those elements. It’s very much the player perspective into the situation. Like, what the hell is The Hiss? And who’s Jesse? Who are you?” %!s()

Kevin Rodriguez and Samuel Reveron, both 25, were arrested by New York City police on Friday and booked with counts of trespassing as well as conspiracy, the local news outlet WABC reported.

Court documents reviewed and reported by the outlet indicated that Rodriguez and Reveron were released without being required to post a bond because their charges were not eligible for a bail amount setting. According to court documents reviewed by WABC, Reveron got supervised release. WABC reported that Rodriguez was released on his own recognizance.

The New York Post reported that Reveron allegedly told police: “We go into the sewer and look for valuables that get stuck in the storm drains and sewers, gold, anything of value.

The arrests of Reveron and Rodriguez came after reports on Thursday that three people emerged from a manhole on Manhattan’s Upper East Side during the United Nations general assembly in New York City.

Three people were seen coming out from a sewer near Park Avenue and East 61st Street at about 4.35am on Wednesday before fleeing north on Park, according to WABC.

Officers responding to a 911 call about a possible crime learned of the situation after arriving near 535 Park Avenue. A New York City police surveillance camera captured the scene, according to the outlet, which cited officers.

A New York police spokesperson said the case met the “same criteria” as other recent ones involving “individuals going into the sewer system to look for valuables and other scrap metal after a storm”.

Police said they were “conducting additional security sweeps” with their federal partner “out of an abundance of caution given the UN general assembly and the sensitivity of the location”.

In late August, New York police said they were investigating a social media video of three people emerging from a manhole near Madison Square Garden.

That video came after a series of other reports of individuals – dubbed “mole people” by the hoi polloi – mysteriously emerging from manholes across Brooklyn and Queens.

Speaking to NBC New York in June, Aki Jakupovic, a witness, summarized the situation by remarking: “Three random guys walking around in a strange suit, open the sewer, go in like Ninja Turtles.” %!s()

The universe had other plans.

“I made this movie that I thought was my best movie,” Winkler says. “It came out in the middle of COVID in theaters. It was part of a junk deal from the financier to sell to Paramount. It was so crushing, and I had no money and I had just bought a house and was completely broke. My wife was pregnant at the time. At a certain point — I’m still an artist, but I stopped pretending I was someone else. I stopped pretending like I had to try and be Paul Thomas Anderson, which I’m never gonna be, because there’s only one Paul Thomas Anderson. I became a craftsman in a way, and I was just like, ‘All right, fuck it. I need to make money.’”

Winkler first entered the Ryan Murphy vast universe of television shows through directing episodes of both “American Horror Stories” and “American Horror Story” in 2021. What he admired about Murphy’s vision was how his fascinations aligned with populist ideas.

“The interesting thing about Ryan, same thing with Spielberg, is what they’re interested in happens to be the thing that the rest of the world is interested in,” Winkler says. “It’s insane. If I was left to my own devices, my interest is, ‘How do I make it feel like “The Last Detail,” which appeals to you and me and seven other people?’ With kids and the actual fire of ‘No, I have to work,’ I was able to say, ‘How can I take these ideas that are a little bigger than I’m comfortable doing? How can I still make it the way I made my movies, with a specificity and, God willing, a craftsmanship and a level of care?’”

Ultimately, the pair kicked off a robust collaboration that grew and grew, with Winkler directing episodes of and executive producing nearly every Murphy project, from the “Monster” franchise to “Love Story,” “The Shards” to “Feud: Capote vs. The Swans”

“I think we both genuinely like to impress one another,” Winkler says. “He writes the script and the scripts are really, really good. Or he does the dramaturgy for it, and says, ‘Are you interested in this?’ If it’s something I feel like I connect to, I love working with him. I find his brain fascinating, and the fact that I happen to find him to be truly singular and brilliant is the first part of it. So when he turns over a script and says, ‘Are you interested?’ I’ll go and I’ll make it, and we’ll talk about it. And we talk about what our influences are and what we want it to feel like. And then I will try really, really, really hard to surprise him and impress him and shock him by the time he sees a cut. We go back and forth and back and forth, and it’s like a dare. My collaboration with him is something that is really important to me.”

Even though Winkler is in Murphy’s inner circle, the creator is constantly full of surprises, as Murphy takes unexpected turns. For example, Winkler first caught wind of “Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story” while in the middle of keeping things running on two wildly different series.

“I read pages without knowing anything about it,” Winkler says. “I was shooting ‘Love Story’ and I was editing ‘Ed Gein’ at the same time. I thought that maybe ‘Monster’ was going to take a break. And Ryan called me. I knew Ryan and [‘Monster’ showrunner] Ian [Brennan] were thinking about a different version of the show with some different people involved. He called me and said, ‘What do you know about Lizzie Borden?’ I was immediately floored by the rhythms of the writing, the sense of humor and the energy and the femininity of it. I felt so much empathy for Lizzie, and who she is when we meet her. Ian and Ryan are genuinely funny human beings, and I could feel their black humor in this — and it excited me tremendously.”

That penchant for dark humor reverberates through Winkler onto the set. Hunnam, who became friends with Winkler after “Jungleland,” and has worked with him such on projects as “Ed Gein” and “Lizzie Borden,” says that Winkler’s wit helped formalize the tricky tone on “Lizzie Borden.”

“One of the great joys of my career is getting to make Max laugh,” Hunnam says. “He laughs a lot during takes behind the monitor, and you try with something that you think is going to be funny and play it out. Whether you hear that laugh or you don’t is a barometer of how successful you’ve been. If we were making him laugh, we felt like, ‘All right, this is probably on the right track.’”

Despite his laughter, Ella Beatty, who plays Lizzie, says that Winkler also has an openness that allowed her to experiment in portraying the complex character.

“He has such a spirit of play and emotional availability,” she says. “So there really was an environment of trusting what happened and getting really specific on your homework in the beginning, so that you can come in and not show any of it and you can just play.”

Working so closely on so many of Murphy’s shows not only gave Winkler a creative charge — “OK, I can express myself in a different way and still do what I do well” — but the newfound spotlight of high-profile projects also gave him an exciting new relationship with art.

“I want to make really good things for people that actually get to go and see them, because I’ve never had that experience,” he says. “I didn’t know you got to talk about the things you made while they were out. These last few years, I’ve made things — between ‘Ed Gein’ and ‘Love Story’ and, I hope, ‘Lizzie’ — where I’m actually getting to interact with people in its intended window. It’s delightful. A really nice part of it is to just feel like you exist. You’re embarrassed to admit it sometimes, but you do want people to see this shit. You work so hard on it, and in your greatest moments, you feel like Orson Welles. In your worst moments, you feel like the biggest fucking loser hack of all time. Being present in the process and not making anything for a result is super important. But having kids allowed me to say yes to things that I was afraid to say yes to because I was an idiot, and still find a way to express myself and build a career that I have now, which is way different from when I was in film school and had a very small view of what a career could look like.”

This interview has been edited and condensed. %!s()

A new movie every 11 days? That's what Paramount's David Ellison is promising after clearing a path this week for his company's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, combining two storied Hollywood studios.

The CEO's settlement with a group of state attorneys general over antitrust concerns stipulates that the newly minted company will release at least 30 films into theaters in 2027 and 2028 and at least 32 films in 2029, 2030 and 2031.

Currently, the combined entity has 35 films scheduled to be released next year, according to data from Rentrak.

But questions remain about what caliber of releases the industry can expect — and what happens after the five-year agreement expires.

"This is much more complicated than simply asking whether 30 movies is enough," Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak, told CNBC. "Thirty wide releases would represent a meaningful commitment to theatrical, and I think everyone in exhibition would welcome a robust pipeline of films.

"But ultimately the proof will be in how those movies perform, how varied the slate is, how consistently they reach theaters and how the combined company executes on those commitments," he said.

Hollywood has been clamoring for more theatrical titles since the Covid pandemic shuttered theaters and clogged the production pipeline. Ellison's theatrical commitment, which he touted as early as April at the industry's annual CinemaCon event, had garnered approval from the CEOs of the "Big Three" cinema operators — AMC's Adam Aron, Cinemark's Sean Gamble and Regal's Eduardo Acuna — even before Paramount's settlement.

Samuel Boivin | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Cinema United, the lobbying group that represents theater owners, had been staunchly against the merger, but gave its seal of approval this week, saying the agreement with the states "accomplishes many of exhibition's objectives."

However, not all exhibitors are on board. A number of theater executives, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, told CNBC they remain skeptical.

Consolidation concerns

Paramount's settlement includes stipulations about the number of theatrical releases the company must distribute over the next five years, how many of those releases need to be distributed widely and how many need to have a budget of more than $50 million. Paramount agreed to face steep penalties if it fails to meet the thresholds.

Consolidation among movie studios has traditionally led to fewer film releases, which, in turn, results in lower revenue, particularly for smaller theater chains and independent operators.

Overall industry dynamics have shifted drastically since Covid disrupted the theatrical space, leading to fewer screens and fewer moviegoers. Some of these woes have been masked by higher movie ticket prices — which are expected to help boost the domestic box office above $10 billion for the first time since the pandemic — but the moviegoing industry is still adapting to new economics.

Several theater operators told CNBC they were concerned the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. would not only decrease the number of studios contributing films to the ecosystem, but also decrease competition and give the combined company a more powerful bargaining position when it comes to windowing terms and rental fees.

While larger exhibitors, which operate hundreds of locations, can weather consolidation, the smaller players have far less leverage.

Some theater owners also said they fear that Paramount will not be able to sustain its 30-plus theatrical output after the five-year deal, especially as production and marketing costs continue to rise and as Paramount contends with around $79 billion in debt once the merger closes.

"Of course, I worry about what happens in year six," Rob Lehman, president and chief operating officer at Santikos Theaters, told CNBC. "You know, after the five years is up, does it then drop down to 18 movies a year?"

Still, Lehman called Paramount's guaranteed number of films "a win for the industry."

Under the terms of its settlement agreement, if Paramount falls short of its annual quotas, it'll be fined $30 million per film, 90% of which will be paid out to film workers and 10% to the National Association of Attorneys General.

The Paramount logo the water tower at the Paramount Studios lot on July 13, 2026, in Los Angeles, California.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

Though $30 million per film could prove to be a material penalty if Paramount significantly misses the mark, it pales in comparison to the cost of actually making and marketing a film.

And, "quantity by itself is not enough," Dergarabedian said. "You could say you are going to release 30 movies, or even 100 movies, but those movies still have to connect with audiences. If you had half as many films and every one of them became a major hit, which scenario would you rather have? So ultimately, it is not simply about how many movies are released. It is about having enough movies, released at the right cadence, that audiences actually want to see."

Next year, the combined Paramount-Warner Bros. slate includes new entries in popular franchises like Sonic, Godzilla, Minecraft, A Quiet Place, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Lord of the Rings, The Conjuring and the DC superhero universe.

A packed calendar

There are also simple logistical questions around 30 films released from one company in a year.

With 52 weeks on the calendar, that's less than 2 weeks between new releases — not accounting for marquee weekends when the industry typically stacks big premieres.

A merged Paramount-Warner Bros. could easily cannibalize its own ticket sales if major releases are placed too close to one another.

Combine that with growing competition for coveted premium large format screens like Imax and Dolby and the schedule looks even trickier.

At present, the combined slate of Paramount and Warner Bros. for 2027 contains six dates where both studios have a theatrical release planned. There are also pockets on the calendar that have three to five releases stacked up on a weekly basis.

"From a pure strategy standpoint, it's reasonable to expect release date shifts among the two studios' planned slates," Dergarabedian said. "In some cases, it'll be to avoid overlapping audiences while, in others, it may be to diversify their cadence of box office."

For example, the combined company currently has nine horror films slated for 2027 and could look to shift dates to allow these features to have longer playability without competing.

"Hopefully, they put together some great movies and counterprogramming," Lehman said. "Show us the kids' movies, show us the horror movies, show us the high-end action movies."

The fine print

Paramount's settlement with the state AGs mandates that at least 20 of the films released by the combined company in each of the first two years after closing have a wide release in more than 2,000 theaters. For the following three years, that increases to at least 21 films.

"The agreement very specifically stipulates that it only has to be 20 wide releases, which is nothing," said industry analyst David Poland.

Currently, Paramount is on track to have 14 wide releases in 2026 and Warner Bros. is set for 13, for a total of 27 wide releases between them, according to Rentrak data.

"The importance of wide releases cannot be overstated," Dergarabedian said. "These are the films that generate the biggest theatrical impact, fill auditoriums, drive concession sales and create the kind of cultural conversation that benefits the entire moviegoing ecosystem."

Then there is the definition of "tentpole."

Still from Paramount's "Sonic the Hedgehog 2."

Paramount

In Hollywood, a tentpole film is one with a high budget that makes enough money between ticket sales and merchandise tie-ins that a studio can fund smaller-budget projects that may not be as profitable.

For many in the industry, a tentpole feature is one that costs more than $100 million to produce, often exceeding $200 million or $250 million, and that drives significant traffic to movie theaters. Think, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Universal's recent hit "The Odyssey" or Sony's "Spider-Man: Brand New Day."

The Paramount settlement, which mandates that at least 20% of the company's annual releases be tentpole films, defines that category as a film with a budget of at least $50 million.

"A $50 million production budget feels like a relatively low threshold for what we traditionally think of as a tentpole movie," Dergarabedian said. "But at the same time, a $50 million movie can absolutely become a tentpole if it breaks out and becomes a cultural and box office phenomenon." %!s()