Who want to be a billionaire? The Mega Millions lottery drawing failed to produce a winning ticket on Friday, raising the stakes to around $1.55 billion and climbing for Tuesday’s drawing. There have been no Mega Millions jackpot winner since April, inflating its grand prize. If you win, you have a $757.2 million cash option
Culture
It was a magnificent movie weekend. Barbie, Oppenheimer, Sound of Freedom. All hits, a blow-out! So what else have you got? The question sounds obnoxious, like its near-cousin, the always infuriating: “What have you done for me lately?” But it’s an honest query, and an important one for a strike-bound, streaming-bent, pandemic-emergent industry that is
What was it W. B. Yeats wrote, that line Joan Didion lifted and twisted in her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” about West Coast chaos in 1967? Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. That’s how it felt on Thursday, a few minutes before lunch with some seasoned film executive-friends at the Academy Museum (Salad Niçoise
There’s an axiom of the news business that a reporter should never make the story all about them. Valerie Bell, a television reporter at ABC affiliate WBMA in Birmingham, Alabama, broke that rule recently, but she can be forgiven. With the help of local police, she was lured to a marriage proposal staged by her fiance,
More than 1,000 artifacts from decades of television will hit the auction block on June 2-4. Among the items up for bids are The Tonight Show set from which Johnny Carson kept a nation awake and entertained until his 1992 farewell; the desk and New York City skyline from David Letterman’s Late Night; Archie and
“So today, I stand here before you very, very unemployed,” admitted Harlem creator Tracy Oliver today in her speech USC School of Cinematic Arts graduates. “ “Yup, I’m this year’s Mary Pickford recipient and I ain’t got no jobs, my Apple deal was just suspended, I can’t make money as a writer for however long
Comedy is back; Super Mario Bros has proved that laughs are good for a half billion dollars. The antihero business is intact. Both Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 and John Wick: Chapter 4 hit their marks. But affairs of the heart are still suffering at the movie box office. Love Again is the latest
Can we finally talk about movies for a minute? I mean, those of us who aren’t full-blown, always on-it awards professionals. The Republicans have had their Speakership brawl. The Democrats have observed their J6 vigil. The Twitter Wars have settled into the usual trench exchange between Left and Right. And the weary nation having survived
Reading the tea leaves with regard to China in 2023 is even more difficult than usual. The country’s about-face on its longstanding zero-Covid policy has implications from geopolitics to economics and, closer to home for Hollywood, the state of the market after a dismal 2022. Exactly what those implications are is where the guesswork comes
Any return of Buffy the Vampire Slayer would need new blood, according to the television series’ original star, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Gellar played the role of the monster-slaying high schooler for seven seasons, ending in 2003. But now, as rumors swirl of a revival, the 45-year-old says it’s time to find a younger star for
Shirley Eikhard, the songwriter behind Bonnie Raitt‘s Grammy-winning 1991 hit “Something to Talk About,” has died. She was 67 and died Thursday at Headwaters Health Care centre in Orangeville, Ontario from cancer complications. In addition to Raitt, Eikhard had songs covered by Cher, Emmylou Harris, Anne Murray, and Chet Atkins. Eikard wrote “Something to Talk
It was fascinating to see my good colleague Valerie Complex describe, in her review of the Antoine Fuqua/Will Smith slavery drama Emancipation, having almost walked out of the film, not because it was unworthy, but because she found the depiction of Black suffering and death almost too much to watch. In the end, Complex stuck
When a film as heavily promoted and well-regarded as Universal’s She Said gets body-slammed at the box office, it’s wise to pay attention. This weekend, the journalism procedural drama, about the pursuit of sexual predator Harvey Weinstein by two reporters from The New York Times, will take in perhaps $2.27 million in 2,022 theaters. That’s
Alyssa Milano has marked the five-year anniversary of her #MeToo tweet with a screenshot on Instagram, a reminder of one of the first strikes back against abusers in society. The Charmed actress saw her tweet go viral in 2017. It said, “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted, write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”
Predictions are always a hazardous thing. And I truly hope this one is wrong. But it sure looks like the movie box office, disastrously low in September, will be stuck on the bottom again this month. September is rarely a great month for ticket sales, but last month is better left undiscussed. Putting aside the
The 22nd annual BET Awards aired Sunday night, with Taraji P. Henson returning as host for “culture’s biggest night.” Presented live from the Microsoft Theater, the star-studded event featured a roster of fresh and familiar talent, including electric performances by Lizzo, Jack Harlow, Lil Wayne, Roddy Ricch and Chance the Rapper. Since 2001, the BET
It’s a bizarre world, this (almost, more-or-less, maybe) post-Covid movie landscape. Pieces are falling into place: Production starts have been up for a year, box-office revenue continues to climb, though it’s still a long reach to pre-Covid highs. But so much is so different, and I don’t mean just the obvious shift toward streaming. Look
In another 48 hours, we’ll know if it worked—the Oscar show’s Audience Replacement Therapy. Almost inevitably, total viewers for Sunday night’s Academy Awards telecast on ABC will rise from last year’s pathetic 10.4 million. The bar is very low, and other recent awards shows—the Emmys, SAG, Critics Choice—have all caught a bounce. For the Oscars
Miley Cyrus almost wore a costume more fitting for the New Year’s baby. During her live New Year’s Eve television show from Miami, the singer lost her skimpy top while strutting onstage at the start of the song “Party in the U.S.A.” Realizing that she was about to see more than the ball drop, she
My good colleague Pete Hammond tells us the film awards season is in full swing, live and in-person. Screenings. Panels. Parties. Lunch with the stars. Just like 2019. Now, if the audience would only catch up. This weekend, an extremely important connection got missed, as Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, meant to be a crowd-pleaser,
Awards revenue took a sharp hit in the last fiscal year at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, but rebounding investment income boosted finances even as viewers turned away from the Oscar show, according to the Academy’s annual report. Awards-related revenue declined 10.8 percent, to about $117.7 million from $131.9 million, in the
At the exit to a gallery in the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is a display of opinions about the future of cinema. For example: “THE FUTURE OF CINEMA IS INCLUSION NOT EXCLUSION” –Kimberly Steward
Nationwide and global remembrance of 9/11 made its way to the Creative Arts Emmys as The Mandalorian’s Ming-Na Wen and Saturday Night Live production designer Keith Ian Raywood commemorated the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Saturday. Before presenting Emmy awards for sound mixing and cinematography on Saturday, Wen addressed the crowd of fellow
It’s fascinating to watch local governments — New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans — rush to enact Covid vaccine requirements for entry to the publicly accessible spaces of private business, including, yes, movie theaters. I’m not equipped to judge the ultimate propriety or efficacy of such mandates. Frankly, the complexities posed by breakthroughs,
It’s thrilling to watch Lionsgate make a run at the box office top spot with The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, a grown-up comedy. Not a kiddie fantasy, like Peter Rabbit 2 or Cruella. Not a Covid-era placeholder, like The War With Grandpa, or a streaming event, like Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. But a rough, raucous, R-rated action
Bill Maher had some advice for Lin-Manuel Miranda on Friday. “Stop the apologizing,” said Maher about Miranda’s reaction to criticism that his new film, In the Heights, does not depict more darkly-colored Puerto Ricans onscreen. “You’re the guy who made the founding fathers Black and Hispanic! I don’t think you have to apologize to Twitter.”
On Wednesday morning, studio executives and exhibitors will rally at AMC’s Century City 15 multiplex to cheer the return of movie theaters that had been closed by the pandemic. “The Big Screen Is Back,” they’ll declare. Glad to hear it. That’s great, as far as it goes. But those movers and shakers should probably charter
SAG-AFTRA will launch a week-long virtual event aimed at addressing and combating discrimination and intolerance in the entertainment and media industries. The series of presentations, which will begin on Tuesday and run through Friday, will assemble a number of key figures including Olivia Munn, Richard Lui and Brian Tee. The Stop The Hate event will
The Daily Show‘s Trevor Noah will go head-to-head against Ted Lasso with himself for EA Sport’s FIFA Face-Off. The two-part live competition game show will feature Jason Sudeikis in his popular Apple+ role and co-star Bernard Hunt appearing as his Ted Lasso character, Coach Beard, to play the popular soccer video game. FIFA Face-Off airs
With the first green shoots of spring — and mass vaccinations — bringing hope for continued drops in Covid-19 cases, some events and venues sidelined for the past year are cultivating comeback plans. Below is a running list of theme parks and movie theaters that are reopening, movies rescheduled, and awards shows, film festivals and