Hollywood

Brooke McCree, a 22-year-old recent UCLA graduate, is the first to admit she’s been going to the movies a lot less.

Back when Regency operated the local Village and Bruin theaters in Westwood Village, she would often take advantage of the student discount and see as many movies as possible. But in the two years since the theaters closed, she said moviegoing for many UCLA students has become inaccessible.

“At UCLA, it’s been rough because I’ll have to walk really far or take the bus [to the movies]. There’s nothing really nearby,” said McCree, who recalled fond memories of seeing movies like “Madame Web” and a “Hunger Games” prequel in a dense crowd of excited college students. “I was pretty devastated when it initially closed.”

There is still hope for the Village Theatre, which recently received a breath of new life thanks to some of Hollywood’s biggest names.

For the first time since 2024, the theater opened its doors early last month for the Los Angeles debut of Billie Eilish and James Cameron’s co-directed concert film, “Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour. ” Hundreds of fans filled the college town’s sidewalks, and streets were closed for the black SUVs that dropped off A-listers and executives on the bright blue carpet.

The event was reportedly the first of a limited number of premieres and screenings planned for this summer to support a 12-month renovation set to begin this fall.

The revival is being led by Village Directors Circle, a group of 35 filmmakers who purchased the theater in 2024. They include prominent directors Jason Reitman, who is leading the effort, and Christopher Nolan, J.J. Abrams, Guillermo del Toro, Judd Apatow, Steven Spielberg and Chloé Zhao.

A representative for Reitman declined to comment on the plans.

The $25-million restoration, which organizers previously told The Times would be completed next year, includes plans for a restaurant, bar, gallery and a multipurpose space in the lobby for filmmakers and hosting premiere-related events.

Last year, the coalition of directors announced that American Cinematheque would operate the theater, hosting special screenings of new releases and repertory titles and conversations with filmmakers. The film non-profit already runs Santa Monica’s Aero Theatre and co-programs both the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood and the Los Feliz 3.

Historically, the neighborhood has been a tricky market for businesses, said Jonathan Kuntz, a former lecturer at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. He worked in the area for nearly 40 years and saw much turnover among local businesses due to high rents and inadequate parking.

“We’ve had some great things, like bookstores and eateries that have flourished sometimes for a decade or two, but it faded out,” Kuntz said. “[The theater] will certainly help Westwood if it is a success.”

For that to happen, Kuntz said, 1400-seat theater will need to screen a regular supply of films to a diverse customer base, including nearby students that have long been among its most frequent customers.

Many current UCLA students are already eagerly anticipating the theater’s reopening, said Ingrid Fan, a senior at the university majoring in public affairs.

“It’s been a bummer to have it closed for so long,” said Fan. “My friends and I always talk about how we just wish it opened sooner.”

While the theater’s renovation timeline won’t be complete before she graduates, she’s certain that other students will make good use of it when it reopens.

“Westwood is a college town, and we are always looking for a new source of community. It’s a space a lot of students would definitely flock to,” Fan said.

A historic movie hub

The university and its surrounding village, including the theater, were developed simultaneously throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Designed by Percy P. Lewis, the Westwood Village Theatre originally opened as a part of the Fox Theatres chain in 1931.

Despite launching during the Great Depression, the Westwood Village Theatre had a prime location working in its favor.

Westwood was imagined as a satellite town in West L.A. that would eventually support the growing UCLA campus. The neighborhood became known as the third major movie theater hub, behind downtown and Hollywood. In the 1920s, when the Chinese and the Egyptian theaters opened on Hollywood Boulevard, Westwood was next in line as a booming premiere destination.

“It was much more convenient to those folks than going to downtown Los Angeles, or even to Hollywood,” Kuntz said.

This was an era of moviegoing when premieres were essential to a movie’s box office success, drawing substantial marketing opportunities. The volume of films being produced at the time made it necessary to have multiple premiere-ready theaters around L.A., Kuntz said.

Over its 95-year history, the venue has been remodeled a handful of times, including in the 1950s when television became a mainstream medium. Soon, multiplexes emerged, which put the Westwood Village location at a disadvantage. To this day, the theater can only show one film at a time.

In the 1970s, the venue joined the Mann Theatres chain, and in 1988, it was designated a historic cultural monument.

Regency Theatres took over the Village Theatre and its neighboring film venue, the Bruin, in 2010. Notably, in 2018, Quentin Tarantino used the Bruin during the filming of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood,” which is set in late-1960s Los Angeles.

Regency continued to operate the two locations until its lease ended in 2024. Although the group of Hollywood directors was quick to bid on the Village (the Bruin was not included in the deal), the theater has remained closed since then, with the exception of the recent Billie Eilish premiere.

As theaters continue to navigate rough waters amid hopes of a durable post-pandemic recovery, celebrity buyers have become a driving force in the effort to preserve some of L.A.’s historic venues. Tarantino operates both the New Beverly Cinema and the Vista, and most recently, Kristen Stewart purchased the Highland Park theater.

“A lot of people in Hollywood want to preserve at least some of what made classic Hollywood successful, like the big screen experience,” Kuntz said. “These folks are the ones who could afford to buy a movie house or two, program it and keep that tradition alive.”

L.A. Times staff writers Josh Rottenberg and Meg James contributed to this report.

At the AI on the Lot media conference last week in Culver City, speakers laid out a view of artificial intelligence that was very much complementary to human workers.

Artificial intelligence is a tool that must be wielded by humans, several said. The idea was to help skilled artists and production specialists do their jobs and experiment, others said.

Of course, to many in Hollywood, AI is not that simple.

Guardrails on its usage emerged as a central issue in the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, and additional rules were added in the recent Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Writers Guild of America contracts. There are still big questions about AI’s effect on jobs in the entertainment business, as well as copyright and ethical concerns.

Whether it’s good or bad or some combination of both, AI, in some form, is probably here to stay.

So, eight months ago Amazon MGM Studios opened an AI Studios division to start work on Project Nara, an AI production toolkit built on Amazon’s AWS cloud computing platform that could be used by teams of filmmakers. Project Nara is still in beta mode, and the company set up a GenAI Creators’ Fund to give filmmakers interested in using the toolkit financial support, while also giving the studio feedback.

The beta testers got eight weeks to produce an animated short and, out of those, the company greenlighted three animated series.

Shortly after the conference, filmmaker Jorge Gutierrez, whose stop-motion-style “Punky Duck” was chosen as one of the greenlighted series, pulled out after an online backlash over his use of AI.

“We respect Jorge’s decision, as well as his incredible talent, his voice and the world he created with ‘Punky Duck,’” an Amazon MGM Studios spokesperson said in a statement. “We continue to be excited about the innovative work moving forward at our studio and the GenAI Creators’ Fund.”

Before the flap over “Punky Duck,” I spoke with Albert Cheng, head of Amazon MGM Studios’ AI Studios, about the goal of the division, what’s next for AI and his belief that humans are at the center of creativity. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why was AI Studios formed?

AI Studios was started last fall because we wanted to learn how to leverage AI technology to build tools that would help enhance or redefine the workflows for film and TV production.

When you look at the horizon of what it takes to drive continued engagement of a global streaming service like Prime Video, we need more original programs. So if you can figure out how we take the same amount of money that we spend and be able to make more shows, that’s ultimately what we want, and we think AI is going to be a help to drive that.

With AI, now we’re looking at how does technology change the way we actually create our cinematic storytelling? It could mean that with AI, we will hear from a lot more voices. If we can actually get the biggest costs down, we will be able to have more voices, be able to take more risks and creative risks most of all.

There’s always concern about what does AI mean for jobs. We believe that it actually creates more jobs and different types of jobs. In fact, people with experience, plus the tools, become even more valuable in terms of their ability to produce excellent quality work. So it’s always about the human behind it.

You mentioned that some of these production crews had more than 100 people, but crews in the past would have been much larger. How do you respond to concerns about that?

You may have smaller crews, but we’ll do more of them [productions], and more in a short period of time. When you actually have smaller productions and you do more of them, you’re increasing your throughput. Your turnover rate of the available jobs is much faster, so your job totals are actually going to be bigger.

You spoke about the idea of AI filmmaking bringing jobs back to L.A. and expanding California’s production incentive eligibility to include AI-assisted filmmaking. Can you elaborate on that?

When you look at AI production, it can be done on a soundstage. We don’t need to go to London, we don’t need to go to other places.

We do have technology companies in California that are driving this, we have people here in the city that have experience, if given the AI tools, can produce great work. So, how can we not incentivize more companies to use our soundstages and finally make productions and make more of them?

Have you or anyone else at Amazon spoken with government officials about this idea of expanding the incentive criteria?

We’ve been talking to a number of bodies about whether it’s possible. The question is, who’s going to take the ball?

How much can you decrease a show’s production budget by using AI?

I think we can get a show to half the cost, [or] to almost a fifth of the cost.

What was the thinking behind the GenAI Creators’ Fund?

We wanted to provide a support and invest in creators who wanted to try it, and then also give us feedback.

We also wanted to show that storytelling is the thing that drives the content. It’s not the technology; the technology just enabled them to make it.

What is the biggest misconception of AI use in production?

There’s a narrative that AI can do so many things by itself, that you don’t need people. That’s absolutely not true. It’s just a technology, it can’t make decisions.

In order for something actually quality to be made, a person actually needs to be behind that, and that’s been proven over and over again. People are still responsible for the output.

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

Internet culture drove the box office over weekend, with A24’s “Backrooms” hauling in $81.4 million in the U.S. and Canada.

The $10-million horror flick, which stars Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture store owner who finds a mysterious portal in his basement, was directed by 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons and is based on his online series of the same name. Worldwide, the film made nearly $118 million in its debut weekend.

Focus Features’ “Obsession” also had a big weekend with a 10% jump in domestic box-office revenue in its third outing. The horror movie, which had a production budget of less than $1 million, was directed by Curry Barker, who also built his reputation on YouTube.

Together, the two films highlight the growing power of YouTube — and online culture as a whole — on the big screen. They beat out franchise film “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” which dropped 69% from its debut last weekend to rank third at the box office.

What I’m watching

I’m just one episode away from finishing this season of “Bridgerton” on Netflix. While I liked that the show dived into the social class dynamics behind Benedict and Sophie’s romance, I have to say that I loved the secondary focus on Violet Bridgerton and Lord Anderson finding a second chance at love.

90s movie actress Ashley Judd looks worlds away from her Hollywood days as she rings in her birthday and sings into a hairbush.

The iconic star celebrated her 58th birthday in May and took to Instagram to share a note with her fans.

She was one of the most popular actresses in the 90s and has a strong filmography of work to prove it.

Ashley shared a video of herself singing into a hairbrush as she danced away in her garden with loved ones on her special day.

She popped her grey locks into ponytails as wore a navy plaid dress and went make-up free.

The actress also posted snaps of herself sat in front of a birthday cake as well as being serenaded by a group of musicians who played their instruments for her.

She penned: “On my 58th birthday, my inner 12-year-old was ready to receive love, care, attunement, delight, protection, and provision.

“Have you ever considered, from your adult perspective, restaging for your sweet inner child an experience she either never had at all?

“Or an experience that did not unfold with the safety and attention it should have?

“I deeply enjoy doing this from a loving inner-parent perspective for my inner family.”

Ashley went on to open up about her childhood and her relationship with birthdays as her fans wished her well on her special day.

The movie star began her career back in 1991 with a guest role in the television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Over her three-decade long career, she’s starred in movies including thriller Double Jeopardy, crime drama Heat and in The Divergent Series.

Her last acting role was in thriller film Lazareth, which released in 2024.

She’s worked with the who’s who of Hollywood, including Robert Deniro, Al Pacino, Tommy Lee Jones, Samuel L Jackson and Jim Carrey.

These days Ashley spends her time working as an activist and humanitarian and is an ambassador for UNFPA (United Nations Population Fund), which is a sexual and reproductive health agency.

She isn’t the only famous person in her family as she’s the daughter of country music singer Naomi Judd.

Her half sister Wynonna also forayed into the country music world.

Twenty pages into “There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood” by bestselling Pasadena author Rasheed Newson, I had to stop reading. Not because the story and characters were anything less than gripping —I was utterly transfixed. Not because I was unmoved by the setting, the 1950s version of the iconic landmarks where today’s Angelenos, myself included, work, play, eat and drink: Griffith Park, the L.A. Central Library, the Paramount Pictures lot, the Roosevelt Hotel, the Tam O’Shanter in Atwater Village and the Black Cat in Silver Lake, site of America’s first queer riot, also depicted in the book.

No, it was writerly admiration — OK, envy — that stopped me. As I turned the pages, I kept scribbling the same question in the margins. “How did Newson do this?”

How did Newson, author of the 2022 bestseller “My Government Means to Kill Me” and a producer/writer on such popular TV series as “The Chi” and “Bel-Air,” craft a novel populated with a seamless mix of real and invented characters, each with their own true or fictional backstory, personality, career vicissitudes, sartorial style and sexual proclivities, adhering simultaneously to both his novelistic timeline and historically accurate events?

How did Newson seat his fictional protagonist — Aaron Touissant, a Black, closeted gay Hollywood “fixer” employed by Skyline Studios to keep queer actors’ secrets secret — at the same Beverly Hilton ballroom table with Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, James Edwards, Eartha Kitt and Xavier Barlow, Newson’s invented Black gay movie star who is Skyline’s greatest hope and Touissant’s principal client?

I couldn’t read another page without knowing, and those unread pages were calling to me. So I called Rasheed Newson, whom I’d seen around the L.A. lit scene but had never met, and asked how he’d made the magic of his novel happen.

“I wanted to do a deep dive into Black queer history during the Golden Age of cinema,” Newson said. “The first thing that came to me was Xavier’s character. I decided to make him the 10-years-younger, queer rival of Sidney Poitier, to highlight the acceptable versus unacceptable — meaning, straight versus gay — 1950s Black movie star.

“I read a lot of books on Hollywood’s golden era,” Newson said. “But I was trying to get closer to what people were thinking at the moment, rather than what they reflected back on later. Only newspapers give you that. So I spent hours and hours in the downtown L.A. public library, poring over microfiche, reading the newspapers of the time.”

I asked Newson about the titular “one sin in Hollywood.”

“That sin is disobedience,” he said. “Particularly when your disobedience threatens to upend how the business makes money. In Hollywood you can be an addict, be a philanderer, be outspoken. But don’t disrupt the cash flow.”

Newson’s plot and characters serve the novel’s thesis well. We meet Aaron Touissaint as a brutally bullied “sissy” in a small, small-minded Ohio town. Aaron escapes his torturers, first by rooting himself in the town’s only movie theater open to Black people, and then by lying about his age and enlisting in the Navy at 16. On the Korean battle front, Aaron becomes the aide and the lover of superstar fighter pilot and “model Negro” Horace Dixon. When the war ends and Skyline Studios buys the screen rights to Horace’s life story, Aaron follows Horace to Hollywood.

The movie is canceled. Horace leaves Hollywood and a heartbroken but determined Aaron behind. Hired as a Skyline security guard, Aaron is promoted to fixer, keeping himself and Skyline’s A-listers closeted by any means necessary. To that end, Aaron marries Kimberly, who becomes his poised, self-contained “beard.”

At the top of Aaron’s client roster is Xavier Barlow, Skyline’s new, hot rising star and Aaron’s new, hot crush. “The bond between us was never conventional,” narrator Aaron tells us. “Off and on for nearly a decade, it was my duty to keep [Xavier’s] nose clean. … He challenged me to admit who and what I am. And I fell in love with him.”

As secret same-sex love stories all too often do, Aaron’s love for Xavier, and Xavier’s one-man campaign to mitigate Hollywood’s homophobia, come to a tragic and suspicious end. Soon after Xavier publicly protests the studio’s homophobic rewrite of a movie script he intended to serve as his coming-out announcement, a truck crashes into his car on Wilshire.

“This was no accident,” Aaron realizes. “Xavier was hunted down.” With his best friend, Diahann Carroll, and a sizable contribution from Sidney Poitier, Aaron organizes the funeral, attempting to redeem the reputation he was hired to protect. “The news reports following Xavier’s death impeached his character,” Aaron says. “The implication was that gay men naturally had messy lives and untimely deaths. … Confidential magazine went as far as to print that “the driver of the truck [that killed Xavier] could well have been one of Xavier’s spurned male lovers.”

“Furious at the coverage,” Aaron narrates the story, “Diahann asked me, ‘Why don’t they print the lovely things I have to say about Xavier?’ ”

“I said, “They never will. Xavier fought the studio, and everything you’re reading is part of his punishment.”

The erasure of gay Black Hollywood is really the point of this imaginatively crafted, stunningly tense, historically significant sophomore novel. Newson’s impressive gifts for story, for writing the erotic and the noir, and for rooting himself in his adopted city are on magnificent display here. By smoothly merging the true and the invented stories and characters of 1950s Hollywood, Newson alerts us to the increase in racism and homophobia evident in the entertainment business, and in the U.S., today.

Rasheed Newson will talk with novelist Laura Warrell at Octavia’s Bookshelf at 6 p.m. Monday, and with writer Manuel Betancourt at Skylight Books. at 7 p.m. June 24.

Maran, a Silver Lake-based author, has written “The New Old Me” and other books.

Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison has been circling the globe, meeting government regulators who will ultimately decide the fate of his controversial $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Last week, Ellison spent two hours answering questions from U.S. Justice Department antitrust lawyers in a bid to secure a key government approval — one that few people believe is in doubt because of President Trump’s strong support of tech billionaire Larry Ellison and his son’s ambitions to amass more power.

Throughout his travels, David Ellison has been accompanied by a savvy wingman: Makan Delrahim.

Delrahim, Paramount’s chief legal officer, served as the nation’s top antitrust regulator in the Justice Department during Trump’s first term. The 56-year-old Iranian American, who grew up in Los Angeles, is the architect of shrewd moves that have brought Paramount within reach of its blockbuster merger that would redefine Hollywood.

Politics have permeated the process — even before Trump announced he would get involved. Opponents have been suspicious of the Ellisons, given the family’s ties to Trump and programming changes to redefine Paramount’s CBS, including last month’s departure of late-night comedian Stephen Colbert and a shakeup at “60 Minutes,” CBS’ newsmagazine.

Buying Warner Bros. Discovery would give the Ellisons control of both CBS News and CNN.

Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. has sparked dread in Hollywood for another reason, too: Thousands of jobs already have vanished through a string of media mergers.

More than 5,000 artists and entertainment industry workers have signed an open letter, calling on California Atty. General Rob Bonta to try to block the deal on antitrust grounds.

In an interview with The Times, Delrahim responded to concerns and criticisms. This interview has been edited for length and clarity:

Where does the regulatory process stand?

We are still going through the regulatory approval process. We actually started planning for the regulatory approval filings last summer. We knew we were going to be pursuing this transaction but it took a few months longer to sign the transaction than we thought. There were some interveners [Netflix, Comcast], but we planned ahead.

Do you have a commitment from Trump or his administration that you’ll get a thumbs up?

There are no deals with the president. We have a deal with the Warner Bros. shareholders. We’ve submitted [applications] to the governments of Europe, Canada, U.K. and the U.S., and that’s where it is.

You got a head-start because you filed a regulatory approval in December — months before Paramount had a deal with Warner. Why so soon?

We were always very skeptical [the Netflix deal] would ever go through. The only way to really show the [Warner] board that our deal would get through — because it doesn’t have antitrust problems — was to move as fast as we could.

One of the benefits being a former [DOJ] enforcer and having a team of outside lawyers who are also former colleagues and enforcers was that we anticipated what the government would ask for. Those were questions that we would have asked, and so we provided those answers.

Your timeline is aggressive. Some suggest Paramount wants this deal done before the mid-term elections.

I don’t think it’s aggressive. It has nothing to do with the midterms. The midterms do not change the officials at the Justice Department or the FCC — we have that minor application there. The midterms have no effect on the European Commission or anybody else. We’ve been very transparent and proactive with members of Congress and with the state attorneys general and the federal authorities.

Are you preparing to defend a potential antitrust challenge from Atty. General Bonta?

Well, no matter what field you’re in, whether it’s antitrust or whether you’re preparing for a football game, you always prepare the best you can for the worst, and you hope it never gets there. So, we’re preparing for challenges from anybody and everybody. But I don’t think any serious antitrust enforcer who looks at the facts, the law, the economics of this transaction will see an antitrust violation.

Why are you so confident?

There’s no element of this merger that is anti-competitive. Once you look at it, it’s incredibly pro-competitive. It increases output, it increases jobs, and it lowers the cost to the consumers. If you actually try to block this deal, you’re going to harm consumers, you’re going to harm creative talent, because you’re going to harm the creative ecosystem — the vision that David [Ellison] is trying to deploy here. It’s transformative from the efficiencies that it creates.

David Ellison has promised to release 30 films a year. Was that commitment to show that this merger will not be a repeat of Walt Disney Co.’s 2019 purchase of Fox?

I’m quite familiar with that one because I was at the Justice Department and reviewed it. Disney-Fox was a transaction with a different thesis. Disney wanted to get into streaming and they wanted to get scripted series. It wasn’t about studios trying to increase output.

Our transaction, as David has described, is motivated to create more content to feed the theaters, then streaming. We have a natural economic incentive to create more content. We’ll still be in fourth place after this transaction on the streaming side — almost half the size of Netflix.

David Ellison hasn’t made any commitments on the television side or pledged pledge to keep the various TV studios intact. Why?

I don’t think there’s much of an overlap on the television studios. Look, you have incredible studios in HBO, Warner Bros. Television, certainly our own studio. We’re not paying money to limit supply. It’s the exact opposite.

There is overlap between CBS News and CNN. How are regulators looking at that issue?

We’re very proud of CBS News and hopefully CNN, post-transaction. There is very limited overlap. Why? Because CBS News only airs a few hours a week of programming whereas CNN is 24/7, and it has international reach.

Antitrust regulators are going to see that it’s going to create synergistic effects. You might be able to cross-program and more people will be exposed to the incredible programming of CBS News. They’ll benefit from each other’s independent strengths.

During the first Trump administration, you said merger conditions were problematic because it’s difficult for the government to enforce behavioral remedies. Has your thinking changed?

No, I’ve been quite consistent. If there’s an antitrust problem, you need a divestiture [selling assets]. I don’t think there’s a remedy needed in this transaction. But having said that, we’re happy to engage with regulators to discuss where they see a problem and a possible solution. We’re always wanting to engage in constructive dialogue.

Would Paramount spin off CNN?

I don’t see that. I can’t see any antitrust reason to do so. That would be a weaponization of the antitrust law, and that would not be appropriate.

Many people in Hollywood view the merger with trepidation because of the prospect of more job losses. Others see it through a political lens. How do you evaluate the politics?

Politics is part of life. It’s part of the beautiful process of democracy. Generally, we are very empathetic to the folks in Hollywood, but this transaction will actually create more and better and exciting jobs. David is an absolute lover of films; he’s a filmmaker himself. For the first time, you are getting an owner who comes from the creative side.

Let’s be honest. There’s a lot of fear-mongering, particularly from people in Washington, D.C. They are running a political campaign. Some of these people are trying to inflict harm on this transaction really because of their own antisemitic views. Regulators and law enforcement officials will see right through that.

Do regulators share others’ concerns about the merger debt — $79 billion — for the combined company?

Some regulators appropriately have asked about it. They say: ‘This is what we have heard, that you guys are not going to be around because of this debt,’ which is just silliness. David and his family are owner-operators. They’re not rented CEOs. They have over 50% ownership. They put their money at stake and my money is on them.

Daniel Patterson, the chef behind San Francisco’s Coi, who once helmed Alta Adams alongside chef Keith Corbin, has opened a new tasting restaurant in Hollywood, alongside his wife and former music journalist and producer Sarah Lewitinn. Jacaranda challenges stereotypes of stuffy or restrained fine dining restaurants with a Gen X playlist, casual service and lively conversations among guests. This approach, as Patterson told reporter Stephanie Breijo, better reflects the ethos of Los Angeles, where your next great meal is just as likely to come from a street vendor as it is from a 10-course dinner. The restaurant holds only one seating per night, to allow diners the opportunity to linger as you would at a friend’s dinner party, as well as a multi-course lunch on Sunday.

Not every summer movie needs to be a mystery that unfolds hallway after hallway, with a creature hiding around every corner ready to pop out. But maybe the best one is: “Backrooms,” opening May 29 and directed by 20-year-old phenom Kane Parsons. We chatted with him about how he got to make his big debut for A24. Apart from that inspiring story, what can we hope for at the multiplex? We asked our staffers for their dreamiest expectations and they didn’t hold back: space epics, Matt Damon in a helmet and, yes, a “Jackass” movie. Read on and let this be your guide.

‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’

(May 22)

TV’s “The Mandalorian” premiered in 2019 and was the first live-action series in “Star Wars” history. Now, the next adventure of the fierce bounty hunter and his adorable young charge will be the franchise’s first big-screen installment since the sequel trilogy wrapped with “Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker.” I, for one, am excited that Grogu, with all his snackish charm, has been promoted to title-character status along with Pedro Pascal’s more stoic Din Djarin. The movie will also introduce Sigourney Weaver as Col. Ward, a former Rebellion pilot turned New Republic leader, and Jeremy Allen White as grown-up Rotta the Hutt, Jabba’s son, who debuted as an infant in the animated “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” — Tracy Brown

‘Masters of the Universe’

(June 5)

Our opinions of Hollywood’s dip into the nostalgia well may vary, but it’s easy to want to feel the kind of joy that a game or toy brought us when the world felt less complicated. He-Man’s best stories so far may have been on animated TV, but I have enough childhood memories of smashing the character’s action figure against others that I’m curious about how he’ll play in the big-screen sandbox. Starring Nicholas Galitzine as a wayward Prince Adam trapped on Earth, “Masters of the Universe” adds a contemporary twist and some modern sensibilities to the lore. With Laika Studios vet and “Bumblebee” director Travis Knight at the helm, I’m expecting a sweet balance of humor and heart. — Tracy Brown

‘Disclosure Day’

(June 12)

Nearly half a century after “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and decades on from “E.T.” and “War of the Worlds,” Steven Spielberg is still looking to the skies — and we still want to know whether to be excited or terrified by what he sees. His latest brings extraterrestrial life into the realm of ’70s conspiracy thrillers. (Screenwriter David Koepp has compared it to paranoia pieces like “Three Days of the Condor.”) Emily Blunt plays a Kansas City meteorologist who begins receiving a signal from beyond Earth, while Josh O’Connor is a government employee on the run with information that powerful people are trying to keep hidden. If Spielberg’s earlier UFO movies gave us awe, comfort and catastrophe, this one feels like an encounter of a fourth kind: What happens when the cover story breaks? — Josh Rottenberg

‘The Death of Robin Hood’

(June 19)

Go to the beginnings of Hollywood and there are Robin Hood movies: Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, some shorts from even earlier. And it’s a safe bet that, as long as there’s pull to the idea of stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, there will be more to come. Quietly, writer-director Michael Sarnoski has made a niche for himself as a storyteller of regrets, of roads not taken. His 2021 restaurant memory drama “Pig” gave Nicolas Cage his subtlest dialogue in years, while “A Quiet Place: Day One” had no business being as believably haunted as it was. Sarnoski is the perfect person to do a retelling tilted toward the end of a rampager’s life. Hugh Jackman embodies the role with a rough dignity. — Joshua Rothkopf

‘Leviticus’

(June 19)

Unlike many tales of demonic possession, Adrian Chiarella’s feature debut lingers in the mind for being so recognizably close to home; it doesn’t need to crab-walk into the room, spin its head 360 degrees and announce itself as evil. In a small, backwards Australian community, coming of age and coming out evince fear in the Christian townsfolk. Two teenage boys (Stacy Clausen and “Talk to Me’s” writhing standout Joe Bird) keep their attraction to themselves. Even so, a violent curse bedevils them, a sophisticated feat of careful writing and directorial sensitivity that sets Chiarella apart from the gorehounds. Let’s also cheer the return of Mia Wasikowska, stepping back confidently. — Joshua Rothkopf

‘Maddie’s Secret’

(June 19)

An affectionate throwback to overly earnest TV movies (and a knowing send-up of over-the-top bad-girl flicks), this film marks the feature debut as writer-director for comedian John Early, who also stars. With a cast drawn from comedy-scene friends such as Kate Berlant and Conner O’Malley all tuned into a very specific wavelength, the movie somehow surpasses conventional notions of camp and irony to exist in a genuinely unique space all its own. As Maddie, an aspiring L.A. food influencer battling a secret eating disorder, Early’s performance will undoubtedly remain one of the most distinctive and original of the year, by equal turns outrageously funny and tenderly vulnerable, often in the same moment. — Mark Olsen

‘The Invite’

June 26

Olivia Wilde’s dinner-party dramedy made good on its considerable promise when it premiered at Sundance in January, earning a standing ovation and tears (of relief? joy?) from Wilde as she took the stage. Wilde and Seth Rogen play longtime marrieds harboring a laundry list of resentments who host their upstairs neighbors (Penélope Cruz, Edward Norton) for an evening of fun. At least it starts off that way, but of course, the gathering quickly sours, leaving us rubbernecking the damage. Wilde navigates the tonal shifts with authority, delivering surprises along the way, including an ending that somehow delivers hope for the institution of wedlock. Am I overselling it? Would I cry Woolf to you? — Glenn Whipp

‘Jackass: Best and Last’

(June 26)

Johnny Knoxville and his band of professional bad decision-makers are calling this one their final hurrah and, really, can you blame them? The original “Jackass” crew are now in their 50s, long past the point when being shot out of cannons and zapped with tasers seems like a sensible career plan. Knoxville himself was hospitalized with a brain injury after being flipped by a bull during the filming of 2022’s “Jackass Forever” and has said he can’t risk another concussion. This send-off mixes new stunts with archival footage, promising the usual outlandish pranks and blunt-force impacts to sensitive bodily regions. If this really is the end for the franchise, it’s hard to argue they didn’t push it as far as it would go. — Josh Rottenberg

‘Supergirl’

(June 26)

No diss to last summer’s charmingly square “Superman,” but the funniest scene in the movie was Milly Alcock’s 45-second cameo as Kal-El’s cousin Kara, who stumbled into his Fortress of Solitude to collect her dog Krypto still hungover from an outer-space bender. (“This is why he has behavioral issues,” Superman said with a sigh.) Now, she and the mutt have their own movie and zero pressure to represent truth, justice and a better tomorrow. Ana Nogueira’s script appears to be a riff on the 2021 comic-book miniseries “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow,” in which the blond‘s birthday bacchanal takes a U-turn after Kara aligns with an alien child (young Eve Ridley from “3 Body Problem”). It’s basically an intergalactic “True Grit.” My one concern is that director Craig Gillespie made the too-squishy “Cruella.” Here’s hoping “Supergirl’s” tone is more sour than sweet. — Amy Nicholson

‘The Odyssey’

(July 17)

As the follow-up to his “Oppenheimer” — which won Oscars and made nearly $1 billion — Christopher Nolan has gone from an ambitious story about the creation of the nuclear bomb to an even more ambitious story rooted in the origins of literature. Adapting Homer’s ancient Greek saga, Nolan has created an epic to end all epics: the tale of a king struggling to return home after years away at war. With an absolutely stacked cast and told at a massive scale, “The Odyssey” indicates that Nolan seems to trust that modern audiences will respond to a 3,000-year-old tale, and that some aspects of the human experience truly are eternal. — Mark Olsen

‘I Want Your Sex’

(July 31)

A new Gregg Araki movie loaded with sex and bad choices? What a rare and wonderful summer treat. (It’s the indie provocateur’s first feature in more than a decade.) An unhinged Olivia Wilde as the ultimate bad boss — an art star hoping to recapture some edge — gets you in the door. But Araki has shaded in the margins masterfully, with vivid supporting turns by Chase Sui Wonders, Daveed Diggs and the now-ubiquitous Charli XCX. And it’s Cooper Hoffman, in a performance as flustered as his impresario in “Licorice Pizza” was confident, who commands the movie, topping from the bottom. Araki’s sensibility is, if anything, wiser now, though he’d probably flinch at the word. Brace for inappropriateness. — Joshua Rothkopf

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’

(July 31)

It’s been five years since our friendly neighborhood webslinger’s last big-screen adventure and a lot has changed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it appears things have pretty much stayed the same for Peter Parker (Tom Holland). His last adventure involved him staving off a multiversal crisis by making everyone in the world forget him, including his best friends MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon). “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” picks up a few years later, with Peter still protecting the streets of New York as a masked superhero while his friends continue to live their lives unaware of what he once meant to them. Can some mutating DNA be the catalyst for a happy reunion? I hope so. — Tracy Brown

‘One Night Only’

(Aug. 7)

“The Purge”… but hot? That’s the pitch behind Will Gluck’s high-concept romantic comedy in which singles are eager to hook up on the one night a year when premarital sex is legal. The original story by Travis Braun was ranked No. 1 on the 2024 Black List of the best unproduced screenplays. While “that Gluck magic” doesn’t have quite the flow of the “Lubitsch touch,” he’s already directed one of the best modern rom-coms (“Easy A”) and one of the most lucrative (“Anyone but You”). Those films crowned Emma Stone and Sydney Sweeney as official movie stars. I’d love to see this film’s ingenue, Monica Barbaro, ascend to their ranks. Barbaro excelled in the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” where her hard-to-impress Joan Baez earned her an Oscar nod for supporting actress. This is her chance to seduce the audience as well as her onscreen co-star Callum Turner. I’m eager to commit. — Amy Nicholson

‘Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’

(Aug. 7)

Jane Schoenbrun has become one of the freshest new voices in American independent filmmaking with 2021’s “We’re All Going to the World’s Fair” and 2024’s “I Saw the TV Glow,” transforming pop-culture obsessions into emotional explorations of identity and self-discovery. Promising to turn the summer camp slasher movie inside-out, their latest effort is about an up-and-coming director (“Hacks” star Hannah Einbinder) who entreats a faded scream queen (Gillian Anderson) to return to the horror franchise that once made her a star. Einbinder and Anderson locked into a psychosexual transference story already feels plenty potent. Put that setup in the anything-goes hands of Schoenbrun and it should make for a combustible combination of genre, persona, desire and fun. — Mark Olsen

‘The End of Oak Street’

(Aug. 14)

Do you ever look out your window and, tired of the same old view, long that you could just pick up and live somewhere else? I don’t know if Anne Hathaway’s character in David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street” has ached for that kind of change, but it sure seems to have found her and her family in this tale of a suburbia transported to … prehistoric times? To another dimension, a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind? I do not know. I do not want to know. I do know that there is a dinosaur giving chase. And Ewan McGregor looks alarmed. And Mitchell is the weirdo writer-director behind “It Follows” and “Under the Silver Lake.” That’s all I need. — Glenn Whipp

‘The Dog Stars’

(Aug. 28)

Director Ridley Scott long ago secured his place in film history with “Alien,” “Blade Runner” and “Gladiator.” The fact that he’s still at it at 88 makes each new film feel like an event. His latest adapts Peter Heller’s 2012 novel set in the aftermath of a pandemic that’s nearly wiped out humanity. Jacob Elordi, hot off “Frankenstein,” plays Hig, one of the few immune survivors, a pilot living at an abandoned airfield with his dog and a heavily armed survivalist (Josh Brolin). Hig’s days are spent flying perimeter patrols, scanning for signs of life — or trouble — until he encounters Margaret Qualley’s Cima, a medic guarding her own small foothold in the ruined world. Scott has called the film hopeful, which may be the most intriguing part: a post-apocalyptic story about why anyone bothers to keep going. — Josh Rottenberg

IT’S set to be the biggest celebrity bash of the decade, with a roll-call of global A-listers you’d usually only see at the Met Gala set to attend.

And while the favoured few who have bagged an invite to the multi-million dollar upcoming wedding of Taylor Swift to Superbowl hunk Travis Kelce will no doubt get seven-star service, music from huge stars, and lifelong stories, there could also be a lot of awkwardness, as several former lovers and stars with mutual exes are set to cross paths.

Likely to be front and centre on the guestlist is Taylor’s best mate Zoe Kravitz, who recently got engaged to Harry Styles – the man who famously broke Taylor’s heart more than a decade ago.

In 2012, Harry, then 18 and at the height of his One Direction fame, dated 22-year-old Taylor. While their whirlwind romance only lasted a few months, Harry was the muse for Taylor’s fan-favourite album, 1989, which cemented their status in pop culture history.

Fans hoping for a Haylor reunion may be disappointed, though. Harry will miss the New York nuptials as they clash with the Wembley dates of his Together Together tour.

But he’s a shoo-in for Travis and Taylor’s UK celebration at Chiltern Firehouse on the arm of fiancée Zoe.

The Sun previously revealed Taylor and Travis are planning a UK wedding party for 120 guests at the Marylebone celeb haunt, with a source revealing London “holds a huge place in Taylor’s heart.”

The UK party will no doubt be attended by Cara Delevingne, another former flame of Harry.

Taylor and Cara have been close since 2013, with the supermodel even moving into the Wildest Dream singer’s New York penthouse after a brutal break-up in 2016. Cara’s other celeb exes include singer Halsey, who dated another Swift muse, Matty Healy.

Meanwhile, Zoe, whose dad Lenny says “is like a sister to Taylor,” will cross paths with another of the Swift girl squad she shares an ex with.

The Batman actress, 37, dated Penn Badgley, 39, from 2011 to 2013, shortly after his break-up from Taylor’s other close pal, Blake Lively. The pair remain friends, with Penn calling the relationship “a real, true, earth-shattering love” that “transformed him”.

Blake, who will be attending fresh off her lawsuit with It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, dated her Gossip Girl co-star from 2007 to 2010 – before finding love with husband Ryan Reynolds. But there’s unlikely to be tension between Blake and Zoe – the pair have been pictured together previously at Taylor’s famous Rhode Island parties and are both happily in love.

Taylor is the godmother of Ryan and Blake’s children – and has even featured them in songs. The voice of the couple’s eldest daughter, James, 11, features on Taylor’s song Gorgeous from her 2017 album Reputation.

Meanwhile, James, Betty, and Inez are all named in her 2020 record-breaking album Folklore. The cover art for the project was also shot in the Lively-Reynold garden.

Meanwhile, Ryan will no doubt bump into Jack Antonoff, who was the high school sweetheart of Ryan’s ex-wife, Scarlett Johansson.

Jack is Taylor’s right-hand man and closest musical collaborator; she’s previously called him a “brother” and worked with him on 11 of her chart-topping albums.

He dated Scarlett while they were attending Professional Children’s School in Manhattan – and the pair went to prom together in 2002. Ryan was married to Scarlett from 2008 to 2010.

It’s unlikely there’ll be any bad blood between the superstar producer, who has also worked with Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter, and Ryan, but Jack could find himself in another icy encounter with another ex, Lena Dunham.

Jack, who married actress Margaret Qualley in 2023, dated the writer and actress for five years at the height of her fame from 2012 to 2017.

While the break-up was thought to be amicable, this year Lena released her memoir Famesick, where she admitted to cheating on Jack and said she discovered “incriminating texts and emails” that suggested Jack had cheated on her with New Zealand pop star Lorde, who was just 18 at the time.

Fans had long speculated that something happened between Lorde and Jack, who were living together to produce Lorde’s sophomore album, Melodrama. Neither Jack nor Lorde, real name Ella Yelich-O’Connor, has commented on the memoir.

Lorde, who is performing close by in New York a few days after the wedding, is also a close pal of Taylor. Taylor has previously thrown Lorde birthday parties and brought her out on tour.

Another guaranteed front row seat at the wedding is Selena Gomez, who met Taylor when they were both teenagers in 2008. At the time, Selena was dating Nick Jonas, and Taylor was seeing his brother Joe.

Selena, who last year married music producer Benny Blanco, famously inspired many of The Weeknd’s songs after the pair dated for 10 months in 2017.

The relationship came just months after the Blinding Lights singer broke up with supermodel Bella Hadid, causing a long-standing feud between the pair, which saw them follow and unfollow each other on social media several times.

Last year, however, The Only Murders in the Building star posted a picture of Bella to Instagram, praising her looks – and hinting they’d made up.

And before Selena, Benny dated model and actress Elsie Hewitt, who recently split from Margaret Qualley’s ex, Pete Davidson.

But that’s not the only Hadid sister Selena may find tension with. Selena also had a brief sling with Zayn Malik, who shares daughter Khai, six, with Gigi – who is one of Taylor’s best friends.

Taylor is close to both Gigi and Bella, with the older Hadid sister starring in Taylor’s music video for Bad Blood and attending several stops on her Eras Tour last year.

Taylor first met Selena when she was dating Joe Jonas, and Selena was dating his brother Nick. Both couples broke up, and Joe later went on to marry Game of Thrones actress Sophie Turner. The pair divorced in 2024, and Sophie grew close to Taylor, despite their mutual ex, with Taylor even lending her New York home to Sophie and her two daughters.

Sophie is also expected on the guest list. After her split from Joe, Sophie was linked to Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who dated Dakota Johnson for eight years following his split from Gwyneth Paltrow.

Dakota is another close pal of Taylor. Writing in Time magazine earlier this year, Taylor called Dakota “one of the most empathetic people I’ve ever known”.

And to add an extra layer of awkwardness, before Joe married Sophie, he also dated Gigi. She even directed the music video for Joe’s hit “Cake By the Ocean”. The split was said to be amicable.

And if Gigi brings her new beau, Bradley Cooper, he may be set for an awkward interaction, too.

Bradley’s ex, Suki Waterhouse, is friendly with Taylor and has often been spotted out for dinner with her. Suki, who dated the Hangover star from 2013 to 2015, has written cutting lyrics about the relationship on her recent albums – accusing the actor of treating her like a “trophy wife”.

While many of these relationships may be water under the bridge, there are more recent break-ups that could cause more tension.

Irish actor Paul Mescal is expected to come along, as he is currently dating Taylor’s pal and Eras Tour opener Gracie Abrams. This means he’ll likely cross paths with indie sensation Phoebe Bridgers, who also opened for a leg of the Eras tour and has collaborated with Taylor.

Paul dated Phoebe for two years between 2020 and 2022. Gracie also shares an ex with another Eras tour opening act, Sabrina Carpenter, a close pal of Taylor who will be attending.

Sabrina and Gracie both dated American actor Dylan O’Brien in 2022.

The Espresso hitmaker may also cross paths with another ex, Shawn Mendes, who has previously collaborated with Taylor and often spoken about his friendship with her.

Shawn, who features on Taylor’s 2020 song Lover, also dated Camilla Cabello, who opened for Taylor on her 2017 Reputation Tour.

Other likely attendees include Ed Sheeran, Graham Norton, the Haim sisters, Hayley Williams, and Emma Stone, as well as childhood best friend Abigail Anderson and influencer Ashley Avignone.

And if Taylor does invite her own exes along, Taylor Lautner is a shoo-in.

The Twilight star dated Taylor in 2009 after meeting on the set of Valentine’s Day. The pair are still close, and Lautner starred in Swift’s video for I Can See You in 2023.

On Travis’ side, his teammates Patrick Mahomes and his wife Britanny will join the guest list, as well as his NFL star brother Jason and his wife Kylie.

Taylor has been open about wanting an extravagant wedding and has even joked that “everyone she has ever spoken to” will be invited to avoid drama.

But in the incestuous circles of Hollywood, inviting everyone clearly brings its own repercussions.

Audiences are intrigued by the star portraying the brand-new character in the Disney+ series

Rivals season two is heating up with new additions arriving in Rutshire.

The beloved Disney+ show recently returned to screens with a super-sized season two and a total of 12 episodes for audiences to get their teeth stuck into.

The new series of Rivals picked up straight off the back of the last outing as Tony Baddingham (played by David Tennant) planned to exact revenge on his Venturer TV rivals Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and Declan O’ Hara (Aidan Turner).

Season two also brought into the fold some new faces in the form of Maxim Ays from The Larkins and Sanditon as Sebbie Carlisle and Wolfblood actor Bobby Lockwood portraying Dommie Carlisle.

Meanwhile, Marvel’s Agent Carter and Heartstopper star Hayley Atwell took on the part of the MP’s ex-wife and mother to his two children, Helen Gordon.

But what about her husband Malise Gordon, who was also Campbell-Black’s former show-jumping coach and mentor?

Here’s the lowdown on the star playing Malise in Rivals season two.

Who plays Malise in Rivals?

Malise is played by Hollywood star Rupert Everett, who is perhaps best known for 90s romcom My Best Friend’s Wedding alongside Julia Roberts and period drama An Ideal Husband.

With a career dating back to the 80s, Everett has had roles across film and TV and various genres.

Some of his previous projects include BBC ’s The Musketeers in which he starred opposite Rivals star Luke Pasqualino, The Happy Prince, Parade’s End, My Policeman, Everybody Loves Diamond, and The Serpent Queen.

Some of his more recent roles have included appearing in Nicola Coughlan ’s Channel 4 series Big Mood, Netflix ’s Emily in Paris and Madfabulous.

According to IMDb, Everett will be appeared in The Liar, The Resurrection of the Christ parts 2 and two and Out Late.

Speaking to the Radio Times about the dynamic between Campbell-Black and the Gordons, star Hassell teased that the couple had “really strong, fairly negative feelings” about the amorous politician and former Olympian.

Despite this, the pair were also “protective” towards Campbell-Black even though he had “really really hurt” them endlessly and they were “at the end of their tether”.

Rivals season 2 airs on Disney+ on Fridays

A year ago, David Ellison was viewed as a white knight poised to save Paramount.

Hollywood embraced billionaire Larry Ellison’s son, figuring he had the means and the mettle to revive the faded studio after decades of neglect.

But now, as the 43-year-old tech scion works to close his $111-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery — which would mark his second major studio acquisition in less than a year — a large swath of Hollywood has soured on the budding mogul and his audacious bid to build a new media colossus.

More than 5,000 artists and industry workers — including J.J. Abrams, Javier Bardem, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kevin Bacon and Tiffany Haddish — have signed an open letter opposing the union of two century-old studios.

“Our industry is already under severe strain,” the group wrote.

Many anticipate the U.S. Justice Department will rubber-stamp the deal because President Trump is friendly with Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle. Trump and his team want David Ellison to make sweeping changes at CNN, one of Warner Bros. Discovery’s premier properties.

David Ellison has spent the last year courting the president and his allies, including hosting a black-tie gala to honor Trump and attending state dinners and the president’s State of the Union address.

Ellison’s perceived coziness with the administration, along with controversial changes at CBS, has sullied his reputation in a town where image is everything.

Should the merger clear its regulatory hurdles, the Ellison family would control CNN and CBS News in addition to holding a significant stake in TikTok, the hugely influential social media app.

“When power is concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the stories that get told and the livelihoods of the people who tell them become hostage to whoever that power serves,” Jane Fonda, the Oscar-winning actor who is helping lead the opposition, told The Times. “We are not going quietly.”

Paramount declined to comment. Ellison previously has pushed back on fears that Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. would be bad for Hollywood. Instead, Ellison envisions building a stronger company to boost the industry, including movie theaters.

If the Warner Bros. Discovery deal is finalized, Ellison would control two legendary news organizations and two iconic studios. His determined White House outreach to speed approval of the Warner Bros. deal has aroused deep suspicion among many in Hollywood, which has long been considered a liberal bastion.

“They got too close to Trump,” said Norm Eisen, executive chairman of Democracy Defenders Fund, one of the groups coordinating the opposition campaign. “People in Hollywood are concerned that the Ellisons are going to do to CNN what they did to CBS.”

One of Ellison’s first moves after taking over Paramount was to hire journalist Bari Weiss, who had no TV news experience, as CBS News editor-in-chief. Weiss, who built her reputation being a contrarian voice, along with her recently installed evening news anchor Tony Dokoupil got off to a rocky start.

During his inaugural week, Dokoupil awkwardly saluted Secretary of State Marco Rubio (a fellow Floridian). “CBS Evening News” viewership fell 9% this season. The program, which attracts 4.1 million viewers, musters less than half the audience for ABC’s “World News Tonight with David Muir.”

Ellison is aiming to get his deal done by September.

“The projected merger timeline would have Ellison in control of CNN before November,” Fonda said, noting the high stakes this fall because the midterm elections will decide control of Congress.

“If this merger goes ahead, the administration will have yet another lever to cast doubt on results it does not like,” Fonda said. “This is about corruption, not optics.”

Her group has urged California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to file a lawsuit to try to block the merger. Bonta has said his team is reviewing potential antitrust concerns with the deal, which he said has “red flags everywhere.”

Some in Hollywood favor Ellison’s takeover, saying it would lift two middling players to create more robust competition to Netflix, Disney and Amazon.

“This deal will set up an environment where we will have four competitive streaming services, and that’s a good thing for the creative community,” said Ari Emanuel, executive chairman of WME Group and Ellison’s agent.

Ellison is pressing ahead, working to secure government approvals in Britain, Europe and the U.S. Prominent Democrats in Congress have decried the deal and Ellison’s proposed ownership structure, which would include the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi as significant, but passive, investors.

Paramount leaders have tried to keep their heads down by focusing on their businesses. This year, the company has signed deals with Kim Kardashian, Neil Patrick Harris, Tituss Burgess and Kinetic Content, the reality TV firm behind Netflix’s “Love Is Blind.”

Hollywood opposition

But the “block the merger” campaign has picked up prominent Paramount and Warner Bros. talent, including Oscar-winning filmmaker Adam McKay (“The Big Short”); “South Park” co-creator Trey Parker; and Emmy Award-winning actors Noah Wyle (“The Pitt”) and Mark Ruffalo, a stalwart of critically acclaimed HBO productions, including “Task.”

Some filmmakers have privately discussed whether to steer clear of Paramount, according to people knowledgeable of the discussions who were not authorized to comment. Taylor Sheridan, the prolific producer behind “Yellowstone” and “Landman,” last fall opted to switch teams. He eventually will make new shows for NBCUniversal instead of Paramount.

CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert’s sign-off Thursday night has added to the hand-wringing.

Colbert learned he was getting the boot in July, two days after he called Paramount’s $16-million settlement with Trump “a big fat bribe” during a show monologue. Paramount had agreed to pay the money to end Trump’s lawsuit over edits to a “60 Minutes” interview, a payout blasted by 1st Amendment advocates who viewed the Trump suit as frivolous.

Paramount settled because it needed Federal Communications Commission approval as part of its sale to the Ellison-owned Skydance Media. Paramount’s CBS has blamed declining revenues for its decision to oust Colbert, which came just before Ellison officially took the keys to Paramount.

This week, for the first time in 18 years, CBS will fall short of claiming the largest live audience in broadcast TV. NBC snagged the ratings crown, thanks to its sports-heavy lineup, prompting NBC late-night comedian Seth Meyers to crow about his network’s victory.

“We have taken down CBS,” Meyers told advertising buyers last week in New York. “Well, the Ellisons did, but I like to think we helped.”

Ellison’s supporters view the anti-merger campaign as politically motivated.

“So much of the criticism and negative sentiment originates from [Ellison’s] apparent relationship with Trump,” said one observer who was not authorized to speak publicly about the topic.

But interviews with numerous industry insiders reveal that concerns over Paramount’s proposed purchase of Warner go well beyond anti-Trump sentiment — or worries about CNN’s future.

The merger comes during an existential crisis for the industry, and for Los Angeles, as the shift to streaming has upended established business models.

“Whether it’s Ellison, Amazon, Apple or Netflix, these are essentially tech companies that are gaining increasing control over what has been a cultural and entertainment sector,” said Dominic Asmall Willsdon, executive director of the International Documentary Assn.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Apple’s outgoing Chief Executive Tim Cook also have openly embraced Trump, which some see as a pragmatic move to curry favor in Washington to advance their sprawling businesses, which include film and TV operations in Culver City.

Much of the angst over the Ellison deal is driven by economic uncertainty. L.A.’s film industry has been decimated by a flight of production to other locations.

“L.A. has already had a taste of things to come,” Eisen said. “There’s less competition so the artists get hurt, and so do the working people who have long been an integral part of Hollywood.”

A combined Warner-Paramount would instantly become the largest employer for union writers, said Michele Mulroney, president of the Writers Guild of America West. It would control HBO, CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, HGTV, Animal Planet and two of the largest film and television studios.

“This media behemoth would have enormous leverage to reduce content, raise prices, increase control of production, suppress our members’ compensation and silence the voices of our members,” Mulroney said.

Jessica J. González, the L.A.-based co-chief executive of the 1st Amendment group Free Press, said: “This isn’t just about David Ellison. It’s about what David Ellison did with his last merger and how he uses his power.”

Ellison’s wealth and privilege have also fueled resentment among the rank and file who are struggling amid America’s growing economic disparity. Said one veteran executive: “We’re living in a new gilded age.”

For many, the prospect of more job losses is most unsettling.

Ellison and his team have vowed to make $6 billion in cuts following the merger. Those cuts are expected to include sizable layoffs on top of nearly 2,000 in job cuts at Paramount since last fall.

Hollywood has a troubled track record with mergers, including two failed takeovers of Warner Bros.

AT&T misfired with its 2018 acquisition of Time Warner, and within four years, the phone company had unloaded the firm to David Zaslav’s smaller Discovery. That transaction saddled Warner with more than $50 billion in debt, and Zaslav and his team laid off thousands of workers and cut dozens of projects to dramatically reduce the company’s debt and keep the company solvent.

Walt Disney Co.’s $72-billion acquisition of much of Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox in 2019 led to thousands of layoffs as one of the industry’s original studios all but disappeared.

“We have seen from that merger the earnings and employment numbers for screenwriters significantly reduced,” Mulroney said.

Emanuel, the power agent, pointed to Ellison’s commitment to keep the Warner and Paramount studios largely intact, with each entity releasing about 15 films into theaters each year.

“He’s going to be making a minimum of 30 movies a year for theatrical release plus content for both their own and other platforms because that’s the only way to generate revenue,” Emanuel said.

Still, critics question whether Ellison will be able to keep his commitment due to the $79-billion debt load he will take on.

“I’m sure [Ellison’s] intentions are genuine,” Mulroney said. “But a promise like that’s not enforceable, and there are no consequences if you don’t meet the quota that you’ve set for yourself.”

On Wednesday, S&P Global Ratings agency said Paramount Skydance will remain on a negative credit watch due to balance sheet concerns.

S&P also cited worries about Ellison’s prospects “given the immensely complicated endeavor of combining two of the largest global media companies and the limited track record of PSKY’s management team in integrating and transforming such companies.”

Emanuel and others say Ellison’s image won’t suffer long-term damage.

The two sides, he predicts, will eventually work together.

“Here’s a guy who’s willing to put a lot of money on the line and take huge risks to make our environment more competitive,” Emanuel said. “The one thing about David is that he’s not a vindictive person. He always does what’s best for the project.”

Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who serves the 4th District, makes her way across an empty, unnamed backlot, presenting her case to be the city’s next mayor.

“Studio lots like this one used to be filled with people, costumers, electricians, set medics, caterers, thousands of Angelenos making a living,” she says in the video posted on social media. “Now these lots are quiet. Since 2018, shooting days in the city have fallen by half.”

After telling voters this issue is “personal” (her husband is a TV writer and producer), criticizing Mayor Karen Bass’ leadership on the matter and outlining her own plans, Raman proclaims, “I’m running for mayor to make sure Los Angeles stays the film and TV capital of the world.”

Placing the concerns of the entertainment industry at the center of the city’s mayoral race would have been unthinkable even in the last election cycle. But the production crisis, which has rocked Hollywood and pummeled its workforce, has reached a critical juncture. The state of L.A.’s signature industry is now a political flashpoint alongside affordability, crime and homelessness in the upcoming election.

In campaign ads, interviews and the recent televised debate, the top three contenders: incumbent Mayor Bass, former reality TV villain Spencer Pratt and Raman, have made the ongoing production slump a pivotal topic, highlighting their plans to revitalize the industry while deploying the issue to undercut one another.

For decades, elected officials have not had to focus on the film and TV business, let alone turn it into a campaign issue. It was simply a given that local production would continue to play a dominant role in the city’s economy as it has for more than a century.

But the cumulative effects of consolidation, runaway production to tax-friendly states and countries and the end of the streaming boom has caused Los Angeles to lose billions in economic activity, shed some 57,000 jobs over the last four years and led to the closing of more than 80 film and television production service businesses across the city since 2022.

“For us, ‘save Hollywood’ is more than a slogan and more than headline. It is what needs to be done,” said Pamala Buzick Kim, one of the co-founders of Stay in LA, a grassroots campaign aimed at increasing film and television production in Los Angeles.

To be sure, the biggest driver of where studios and producers film are state and federal tax credits, over which the city has no control.

But Buzick Kim and others argue that “there is lots the mayor can do, hand-in-hand with the City Council.”

For starters, say filmmakers and advocates, much can be done to tackle the city’s sclerotic bureaucracy, onerous regulations and a slow and costly permitting process that has pushed filmmakers to flee to friendlier and cheaper locales.

While steps have been put in place recently, including a pilot program offering reduced-cost filming permits for shoots that demonstrate a “low impact” to the surrounding community, many complain such steps have come too little and too late.

“The industry is in collapse and people have been talking about fixing things for years, but all we get are incremental little changes,” said Ed Lippman, a location manager of 34 years who lives in Sherman Oaks and has worked on such shows as “ER” and “The X-Files” and movies including “Galaxy Quest.” “And if the city is not being business-friendly, the business will go elsewhere.”

Compounding the problem, the Los Angeles area has more than 100 jurisdictions, many of which have their own set of rules and regulations regarding filming.

“There needs to be universal standards,” said Travis Beck, a location manager for commercials, small films and music videos. “Burbank is different from Glendale, which is different from Pasadena.”

The recent kerfuffle over filming “Baywatch,” the lifeguard reboot at Venice Beach, underscored both the efforts to bring production back to L.A. — enticed by a $21-million tax credit — and the complex, baffling red tape required to film here.

When shooting began in March, the production encountered a number of hiccups, including that it needed nearly double the parking space it had received a permit for, which was not part of the original approvals.

An anonymous crew member claimed on Facebook that government restrictions had forced production to relocate from Venice Beach. Production staff denied they had relocated. However, the incident prompted a backlash, becoming a rallying cry over L.A.’s burdensome filming bureaucracy.

The “Baywatch” team quickly met with city and county officials and resolved the issue, securing an agreement for a 20% parking discount from the city, and the mayoral candidates used it as an opportunity to score political points.

Pratt slammed the city’s permitting problems.

“LA turned its back on Hollywood — now the golden goose needs CPR,” he wrote on his Substack.

Bass highlighted her administration’s leadership on the matter.

“The City of Los Angeles will always clear bureaucratic barriers, making it easier and more affordable to film in the entertainment capital of the world,” she wrote on X last month.

On April 21, the mayor unveiled programs to offer productions 20% discounts on city-owned parking lots and other equipment, reduced filming fees at places like the Griffith Observatory and reopened the Central Library for filming. Last August, she appointed Steve Kang, president of the Los Angeles Board of Public Works, as the city’s film liaison.

Raman has pledged her support for expanding the state’s $750-million tax incentive program, streamlining permitting and lowering fees and eliminating those for small productions. She has also said she will establish a dedicated city film office with a liaison who understands production.

“Los Angeles is losing Hollywood,” Raman said in a statement. “Not because productions want to leave, but because we’ve made it too hard for them to stay.”

On his Substack and various podcast interviews, Pratt has promised to slash location fees in half, speed up permit approvals, reduce on-set city staff for the majority of productions and waive all fees for shoots with budgets under $2 million.

All three candidates have attacked one another over their approach to Hollywood.

Pratt and Raman have said Bass moved too slowly to address spiraling production and retain film jobs, saying she enacted measures only recently as the mayoral race was heating up.

Speaking on the Monks & Merrill podcast, Pratt criticized Bass’ moves to cut costs to film at the Griffith Observatory, saying, “Who needs that shot right now with the homeless poop all around it?”

The incumbent mayor has defended her administration’s record with the entertainment industry.

Bass and Pratt have taken Raman to task, calling her out for what they say is her lack of advocacy during her time on the City Council.

“She feels very strongly about it. But never offered one motion on the industry, and when motions came up on the industry she either recused herself, or got up and walked out,” said Bass during a debate this month.

Citing a potential conflict of interest over her husband’s work in television, Raman refrained from voting on several motions related to Hollywood.

Many working in the industry would like to see full-throttled support coming from the mayor’s office that will get results. They note how New York City has successfully promoted itself as a leading film destination over the years. (Kang, the city’s chief film liaison, said the city is working on a similar marketing campaign to promote filming that will launch by early fall.)

“For all the talk about, ‘We need to support and bring back filming,’ if they just did basics like lowering the fees and simplifying the process … that would actually help people and get things produced,” said Chris Fuentes, 66, who worked for 30 years as a location manager until he retired last year.

“We’ve heard a lot of great things, but not all things are possible in the mayor’s remit,” said Buzick Kim, noting that tax incentives are a state and federal issue.

Still, she said, “the mayor must understand that Hollywood needs to be made a priority and to find and create inspired thinking to make things easier and cheaper.”

Kang agrees, but says there are limits to what the mayor can achieve.

“We definitely can do a lot to really open up the entertainment industry, but at the same time, we recognize the larger impact needs to come from Sacramento and Washington, D.C., because L.A. just does not have the resources to compete with other jurisdictions in providing millions of dollars in tax incentives,” he said.

For most working in the industry, they just want city leadership that will execute on more than just talking points.

“This is the birthplace of cinema,” Beck said. “It shouldn’t be so hard to film here.”

A city hearing concerning on-site alcohol sales provided the public a chance to air their opinions on the possible reopening of the Cinerama Dome and ArcLight Hollywood on Tuesday morning.

Though a final letter of determination is still to be issued, Tim Fargo, the associate zoning administrator in charge of Tuesday’s meeting, said he was “inclined to approve” the conditional-use permit under consideration. The permit would cover the Cinerama Dome, 14 adjacent auditoriums and a restaurant café with two outdoor spaces.

The Dome closed in March 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and in April 2021 it was announced that the venue would not be reopening. Film lovers in Los Angeles and around the world have since been hopeful the venue, seen by many as a symbol for Hollywood itself, could reopen.

During the meeting, Elizabeth Peterson-Gower, a land use consultant representing the owner and applicant Dome Center LLC, was asked if there was a timeline for reopening the theaters. She responded, “I too don’t have a schedule yet, but when I do, I’ll convey it to you.”

In a separate phone interview following the meeting Tuesday, Peterson-Gower referred to the approval of the conditional-use permit as a “milestone” in the process of reopening the theaters and added that ownership has noted the intense public interest around the Dome and the ArcLight and that “it will inspire a time frame in the near future.”

Throughout the meeting, Peterson-Gower referred to the success of the Blue Note jazz club that opened on a corner of the property in August 2025.

“What it proves to me is that the ownership cares greatly,” Peterson-Gower said after the meeting. “That’s a big undertaking and a big statement in favor of the fact that ownership care what’s there.”

Numerous other voices were heard throughout the hearing as well. Ted Walker, planning deputy for Council District 13, where the theater is located, said, “Too often we see [historic-cultural monuments] around our city sitting vacant. So we’re very supportive of anything to bring some life back into this. We know there’s a lot of love for the Cinerama Dome and we want to acknowledge the work of all the community members who are advocating for it. We believe resuming these operations will further enhance the vibrancy of Hollywood.”

Burbank City Council member Konstantine Anthony noted that he was a former usher at the Dome and also voiced support for the reopening.

More than 30 people provided public comment. Among those were Kat Kramer, daughter of filmmaker Stanley Kramer, director of “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” the very first film to play in the Dome in 1963, film critic Wade Major and Ben Steinberg, who has led a grassroots campaign to get the venue reopened.

One commenter said, “Why have they kept it closed? Is this just a strategy to let it rot so that they can get building violations and just tear it down and build condos? There’s a lot of fear about what’s going to happen with this thing that people feel attached to. And to not answer questions over all this time has frankly been offensive.”

Another commenter said that the delays in reopening feel like ownership “keeping a bit of our heritage hostage from us.”

Even those who were asking for clear specifics from ownership were nearly all in favor of granting the conditional-use permit, which was the ostensible purpose of the meeting. As local preservation advocate Kim Cooper said, “I know that this has been hard and it has seemed like the citizens versus the ownership — that’s not what it is. People want to come together and help and bring this place back.”

Speaking after the meeting, Peterson-Gower noted her own history with the Dome, having been involved with many events there in the late ’80s and early ’90s when she was vice president of the Hollywood Athletic Club, located just a few blocks away on Sunset Boulevard.

“Everyone has a story about the Dome that’s lived here, even me,” she added. “I didn’t want to bring my personal life into the hearing, but I care passionately as well about it opening.”

While the final outcome of the hearing is still to be fully determined, all signs point to the permit being granted and the project being free to move forward.

“I was overwhelmingly pleased with the comments,” said Peterson-Gower. “I think that it shows that there’s a great historic use in a historic property and I think that people care passionately about it operating and are very, very proud of the property being here in Hollywood.”

Comedian Conan O’Brien will return to host the 99th Academy Awards set for March 14.

O’Brien, known for his self-deprecating humor, emceed the Oscars this year and in 2025.

“Conan has created remarkable energy around the Oscars,” President of Disney Television Group Craig Erwich said in a statement Tuesday announcing O’Brien’s return. “His singular comedic voice makes Hollywood’s biggest night one of the most entertaining celebrations of the year. We’re proud to welcome him back and look forward to what he and the producing team deliver next.”

Raj Kapoor and Katy Mullan are set to return as the show’s executive producers for the fourth consecutive year.

Major changes are in store for the entertainment industry’s biggest night.

Starting in 2029, the Oscars will move from Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, its home for nearly a quarter century, to the L.A. Live in downtown Los Angeles. The ceremony will also stream on YouTube, ending a five-decade run on ABC, beginning that year.

Oscars viewership has been in flux as younger audiences prefer to view clips of the ceremony on social media, rather than on television.

ABC’s telecast of the 2026 ceremony averaged 17.9 million viewers, down 9% from the previous year, when it garnered 19.7 million viewers. Ratings for the Oscars reached an all-time low of 10.5 million viewers in 2021.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Chief Executive Bill Kramer and President Lynette Howell Taylor announced the news at its upfront presentation Tuesday.

For Vince Gervasi, chief executive of Triscenic Production Services, it was yet another body blow.

His company, a leading supplier of set and scenery storage and transportation for the film industry, was poised for a turnaround after nearly three years of losing money.

Then, last week, he said a line producer on “Shark Tank,” one of his long-standing clients, called him to say the hit ABC reality show was relocating production from the Sony Pictures Studios lot in Culver City to Atlanta.

“They said it was too expensive here to do anything,” Gervasi recalled being told. “I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ This show has money.’”

For the last six years, Triscenic had dedicated a 70,000-square-foot warehouse at its Santa Clarita facility to store the show’s items, transporting them in 30 custom made semitrucks between seasons.

Battered by the pandemic, the dual labor strikes, economic downturns and consolidations, Gervasi told The Times in 2024 that he had laid off 78 of his 85 employees and winnowed down his once-buzzing operations that housed sets and scenery across 2 million square feet in 41 buildings to half that, with the expectation that things would bounce back.

Like many other local film industry veterans, he is still waiting.

“I’ve been doing this for 41 years. I’ve seen the good and the bad — this is a complete decimation. It’s unprecedented.”

From florists to prop rentals to catering and beyond, production services and craft businesses are the hub and spoke of L.A.’s film and TV industry. But many of these businesses — some of which have been family-operated for generations — are struggling to weather a post-pandemic slump in film activity deepened by runaway production, media consolidation and the end of the streaming boom.

Film shoot days in the Los Angeles region have fallen nearly 50% since 2019, according to FilmLA data reviewed by The Times. Employment in Los Angeles County’s motion picture and sound recording industry has similarly plummeted, with a loss of some 57,000 jobs in the last four years, federal labor data show.

The slowdown has become a major issue in the L.A. mayoral race as evidence mounts of the economic toll on the city.

Just last month major industry vendor Quixote — whose Star Waggons trailers were once ubiquitous on the streets of L.A. — announced that it was winding down most of its sound stage business in Los Angeles, closing its operations in Atlanta and laying off 70 employees.

In a note to its clients and partners, Hudson Pacific Properties Inc., Quixote’s parent company, said that “we have persisted through the prolonged and ongoing slowdown in commercial, television and film production. But ultimately, industry conditions have forced difficult decisions.”

Between 2022 and 2025, more than 80 such businesses across Los Angeles have closed down, according to a list compiled by the ACME Directory, a production resource that connects TV and film professionals with specialized products and services.

“It’s, in many ways, a much bigger reflection of the contraction we’re seeing in the industry right now,” said Kevin Klowden, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, focused on entertainment and technology. “The surge in demand for streaming and the consequential demand to catch up on content hid the fact that the industry was shrinking.”

Last October, the family-run Costume Rentals Corp. began liquidating its inventory after dressing film and television characters for 50 years. The North Hollywood firm provided costumes for “Forrest Gump,” “Apocalypse Now,” “Fast and Furious” and, more recently, the 2024 Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.”

A year earlier, Valentino’s Costume Group closed its doors after two decades in business and sold off its 400,000 items. At the time, Shon LeBlanc, the North Hollywood shop’s last owner standing, said he had endured a “perfect storm” of calamities and was drowning in debt following the cancellation of 15 shows in a single week.

Even the legendary Western Costume, which has been in business since 1912, has been hurt by the slowdown. During the 2023 strikes by writers and actors, Western Costume furloughed 43 employees, or about two-thirds of its staff. Recently, the North Hollywood costume mecca, which has supplied such classic films as “Gone with the Wind,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “The Sound of Music” and the TV series “Mad Men,” furloughed an unspecified number of its workers, said two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.

A representative of Western Costume did not respond to a request for comment.

Marc Meyer, the owner of Faux Library Studio Props, had strained to stay in business through the pandemic shutdown and the 2023 labor strikes — laying off 11 of his 13 employees.

By the start of 2024, Meyer, a set decorator who was credited with inventing the fake movie book, was drastically behind on rent, owing $500,000, he said.

Meyer’s landlord had given him a week to come up with more than $100,000 in unpaid rent or vacate the 89,000-square-foot warehouse in North Hollywood filled with props, books, antique furniture and other items that have decorated such film and TV sets as “Angels & Demons” and “The X-Files” for almost a quarter-century.

Meyer came up with $45,000 to mollify his landlord, garnering a month’s reprieve. A GoFundMe was set up during the strikes and a host of industry colleagues such as “Top Gun: Maverick” set decorator Jan Pascale stepped up, buying props to help fill his coffers.

A year later, Meyer was out of business, selling off Faux Library for parts in a massive auction. He died last July at 77.

“The change in our city is palpable,” said writer and director Sarah Adina Smith, a co-founder of Stay in LA’s, a grassroots campaign aimed at increasing film and television production in Los Angeles. “It’s not just that so many crafts and artists are out of work, but you see small businesses, too. In L.A., we’re an ecosystem fed in large part by creative jobs, and that is quickly vanishing.”

Marlon Gilbert still waxes nostalgic about the days his Commerce-based company, Gilbert Production Service, stored and transported scenery and props for TV shows including “Dancing with the Stars” and feature films like “Batman.” At one time, he said, he was handling seven active TV shows in a single season.

“When it was still on Fox, the ‘American Idol’ finale, we had like 20 semitrucks going in and out. Money was flowing like crazy,” he said. “But eventually times got hard for them, and they cut back on their production stuff.”

By last year, Gilbert was down to just three clients. “It wasn’t sustainable,” he said.

In December, after three decades, the family-owned business filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shut down too.

“I couldn’t pay rent on our warehouse lease, I blew through my savings and my 401(k),” he said. After his wife was hospitalized following multiple strokes in 2023, he said, “I didn’t have the energy to beat the bush for new business.”

“I would’ve liked to have gone out with more panache and made a big splash and money selling the business. But there was nothing left to sell.”

Scott Niner, president and owner of Dangling Carrot Creative, offers a case study in how production service businesses have navigated the tidal wave of upheavals.

After 18 years in business creating graphic signage, custom flooring and wallpaper to make sets look exactly as art directors dreamed up, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last April.

Before the pandemic, Niner’s Valencia-based business was thriving.

In 2014, he opened a Georgia satellite office to service the film and TV productions that had migrated to take advantage of the state’s generous tax credits. He steadily expanded his workforce to 32 employees in L.A. and Georgia.

Production was so plentiful that he even branched into the bakery business in 2018, delivering graphics and cupcakes in the same order. At its peak, Dangling Carrot generated $800,000 a month.

When the pandemic shutdown hit, Niner’s monthly revenue dropped to $50,000, he said. He kept his workers employed by making face shields that he donated to hospitals.

“I hung in there, and it was painful,” said Niner, who received some government assistance.

During the strikes in 2023, he drained his 401(k) and his union pension to keep his shop open and his workers employed.

Niner said he deployed a strategy of “pivoting and praying.” He shifted his business to focus more on fabrication, making giant 3-D-printed items for movie premieres, 25-foot-long, 8-foot-tall and 8-foot-deep ammo chests for a “Call of Duty” promotion and even graphics at airports.

Last last month, Niner sold off his Georgia business as filming in that state shifted to the U.K. He downsized his home and moved his business from Valencia to a much smaller building in North Hollywood. He is now down to 11 employees.

“I have a very bright outlook on the future, especially because we’re getting phone calls from people who never would have called us because all the other guys are out of business,” he said. “There’s something to be said about the last man standing. But I’m the last man standing on $2 million in debt. I’m more like lying down.”

The industry got a reprieve last week when CBS announced that it was relocating its hit drama “Tracker” to Los Angeles from Vancouver, Canada, after receiving a $48-million tax credit. Many view such moves, however, as small wins over comprehensive ones.

“There’s been a fundamental change happening here over the past five years,” said Cale Thomas, a makeup artist who has worked on “Guardians of the Galaxy 3” and the recent biopic “Michael.”

Thomas, who is a member of Stay in LA, acknowledges that California’s step last year to double its tax incentives has helped to spur an uptick in local production, but that has not stopped the outflow of productions or resolved a host of restrictions and costs that have hampered the industry.

He worked on “The Mandalorian” and other Lucasfilm series that stream on Disney+ for five years. “We shot in Manhattan Beach Studios,” he said, but noted that Lucasfilm has since moved one show to the U.K. and produced two others there.

“This has been devastating for our industry,” he said. “Hundreds of generational family businesses aren’t being used anymore.”

The pain points are not confined to Hollywood.

Last year, Marvel Studios — which had made Georgia, known as Hollywood of the South, its primary filming center for such major franchises as “Avengers: Infinity War” — relocated much of its production to the U.K.

The impact has meant even fewer domestic productions causing an even bigger ripple effect.

Among the high-profile casualties was Hackman Capital Partners, which aggressively snapped up studios, acquiring $10 billion in assets under management before production activity plummeted nationwide.

In January, the company defaulted on its $1.1-billion mortgage on Radford Studio Center, the historic lot where “Seinfeld” and “Gunsmoke” were filmed and which gave Studio City its name.

Three months later, lender Deutsche Bank filed a foreclosure complaint on the also-historic Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens, N.Y., home to “Sesame Street” and “Succession.”

Kaufman, also owned by Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on an outstanding loan balance of $359 million that was due to be paid last fall, according to CRE Daily.

Gregg Bilson sold ISS Props, the Sunland-based company his father founded in 1977, to Manhattan Beach Studios, part of Hackman Capital Partners, five years ago, staying on as CEO to help run and expand the company.

After 40 years in the business, he retired last August with a little more than a year and a half left on his contract.

Bilson now sees himself as a Hollywood relic.

“Many of my contemporaries and I have had conversations where we say we saw the best of the film and TV industry when it was an art form,” Bilson said. “It will never be the same.”

On one of her previous visits to Los Angeles, Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martel found herself having a smoke on Hollywood Boulevard.

There, while she stepped over the famous concrete-embedded stars, an unhoused man struck up a conversation with her.

“He kept explaining to me that he was poorly dressed because he was currently living on the street after someone robbed him, but he had written a screenplay,” Martel, 59, recalls in Spanish over coffee on a morning in April at a West Hollywood hotel.

“He told me they had stolen a watch from him — not a Rolex but a known brand,” she continues. “The whole time he was trying to convince me he was a millionaire who just so happened to be on the street because of random circumstances.”

One of Latin America’s most indispensable storytellers, Martel is fascinated by how prevalent that dream still is in L.A. — that movies can change your life overnight.

“That particular fantasy is par for the course in this city,” she says, though she’s not above it. It’s the reason she’s back to promote her first documentary, “Our Land,” out Friday.

Unhurried when it comes to her output, Martel has only made four fiction features, among them 2001’s “La Cienaga” and 2008’s “The Headless Woman” (returning to theaters this month in a new 4K restoration). Her biting and formally audacious narratives examine class, politics and — a speciality — the interiority of women through enigmatic portraits of psychologically complex individuals.

“Our Land,” a piercing indictment of the enduring wounds of colonialism, chronicles the murder of Indigenous Argentine activist Javier Chocobar in 2009 and the prolonged trial of the perpetrators in 2018.

Chocobar was shot during a confrontation with armed men over land in the Tucumán province of Argentina where the Chuschagasta Indigenous community has lived for many generations. Martel explores the killing not as an isolated event in her country’s recent past but as part of a long history of dispossession.

“Racism is a foundational element,” she says of her homeland. “The only consistent thing in Argentina, from the country’s birth to the present day, is the rejection of Indigenous people.”

In Argentina, Martel explains, public education has indoctrinated the population into believing Indigenous people no longer exist. Yet many Argentines proudly claim a connection to the Europeans, Italians in particular, who arrived in the country in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

“When giving speeches, our presidents always say, ‘We are a country of immigrants,’ or ‘We came from the boats,’” says Martel. “They use metaphors like these because deep down Argentines feel much more indebted to European immigration than to our Indigenous population. But more than half of the people in Argentina have Indigenous ancestors.”

In 2020, Chocobar’s three convicted murderers appealed their guilty verdicts and were set free. “Our Land” premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2025, which brought renewed attention to the case. A month later, the sentence was upheld and two of the men returned to prison (one died in the interim).

Martel believes that outcome was a response to her film. “Communities wage the fight but cinema helps,” she says.

For over 14 years, Martel worked on “Our Land” on and off. This time included periods when she focused on 2017’s “Zama,” her masterful period piece following a Spanish official in 18th century Argentina “who doesn’t want to be American,” she says, referring to the continent. In her mind, both “Zama” and “Our Land” come from the same impulse to dissect colonialism.

As part of her research process, Martel and her team created a detailed archive of documents related to the case that the Chuschagasta community now has at its disposal. Over the years, Delfín Cata, one of the Indigenous men present during the attack, would call Martel. He never asked about how her film was going, but the director sensed he was tacitly checking in on her progress, hoping that she was not losing faith.

“That was a confirmation that, beyond my own interest, there were people who needed this film,” she says. “I felt the immense satisfaction of knowing I was doing something that would be concretely useful.”

For Martel, the question of whether she was the right person to make this film (one she got in Venice) seems unfair. “It’s wrong to prevent a human being from speaking about their own history because they are not a woman, because they are not Black, or because they are not Indigenous,” she says. “It’s better to make mistakes trying to understand something than not to try at all. The chances of making a mistake are enormous in a film, no matter how good your intentions are.”

A key piece of evidence in the Chocobar case, prominent in the film, is a video that one of the attackers filmed, presumably expecting the Indigenous community to react violently, to justify firing his gun at them. The Chuschagasta men that faced them weren’t armed. As used by their aggressors, the camera functioned as a weapon.

Hollywood feels incompatible with Martel’s sophisticated, confrontational movies rooted in her country’s troubles. By Martel’s own admission, it doesn’t feel like a fit for her.

“I would have to force myself to create something outside my own country, outside my own language,” she says. “And that doesn’t really appeal to me.”

Still, Marvel Studios famously asked to meet with her when seeking a director for 2021’s “Black Widow.” Martel says she was among many directors they contacted, but she was curious to take the meeting even if she knew nothing would come of it.

“They wanted to do it over Zoom and I happened to be here in Los Angeles,” she remembers. “I told them I could come in, because I wanted to see what the whole process was like.”

Martel describes the month she spent in L.A. — an eye injury prevented her from flying home sooner — as a “lot of fun in the end,” even if no blockbuster emerged from it. More recently, another Hollywood offer did tempt her, but she ultimately passed.

“It was a good book suggested to me by an actress of undoubted talent,” Martel shares, careful to avoid names. “I considered it, but you very quickly have to picture yourself spending three years or at least a year and a half living in the United States making a movie. I have a thousand things in Argentina to worry about.”

Still, Hollywood, and its significance to moviemaking, has a singular, unnerving allure on her. Two of Martel’s favorite movies set in L.A. are David Lynch’s nightmarish “Mulholland Drive” and Robert Aldrich’s psychodrama “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?”

“There is something ruthless and utterly devoid of sanity at the heart of this film industry, and I’ve never felt that darkness as clear as in ‘Mulholland Drive,’” she says. “How can an industry that handles so many millions [of dollars] and such impeccably dressed famous people be so full of lunatics? That film captures that perfectly.”

And occasionally, she thinks, a big production breaks the mold, such as Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2019 when Martel served as jury president — a controversial choice.

“It certainly had an impact on me,” says Martel. “I didn’t vote for it, though. I had another favorite, a Chinese film that stood no chance of winning.”

Phillips, she thinks, created a premonition for what was to come. “For me, the real killer clowns are Trump, Milei or Orbán,” Martel says, referring to polarizing leaders. “They expose themselves to ridicule and spout all sorts of nonsense. Those are clowns. And I think that movie captured that.”

Not one to mince words, Martel elaborates on the relation of Joaquin Phoenix’s social outcast turned supervillain and President Trump.

“The origin of the Joker is social resentment,” she says. “Trump holds no resentment toward society because the system gave him everything. But he has exploited the people who do harbor resentment. That is where you see the kind of clown he is, one who knows how to use people.”

Artificial intelligence, far-right ideologies, voracious capitalism — all of it makes Martel alarmed, seeing it as pushing us collectively to the brink of collapse. But there is hope, she thinks.

“What we have invented is very dangerous but we can dismantle it,” she says. “That is the only thing I’m betting on, that, at some point, a consensus will emerge and we’ll go, ‘Let’s not do this.’”

“I believe that we must use cinema for its enormous power to alter perception and not soothe the rich,” she says. “It’s not about delivering a message but rather about showing how an idea functions.”

She points to one of her subjects in “Our Land,” an Indigenous man who told her he loves the 1959 Charlton Heston epic “Ben-Hur,” a passion she does not share but understands.

“That’s a blow for all of us who make auteur cinema,” Martel says with a laugh. “That feeling that ‘Ben-Hur’ evoked gave him the strength to continue fighting for his community’s territory.”

The night before our interview, Martel rode around L.A. on a scooter holding onto a friend. These days she uses a cane to help her with mobility. “The city has great light,” she says, still open to being surprised by it.

EMMY award-winning actor William H. Macy has revealed the most difficult Hollywood stars, according to him.

The star, 76, has been acting for four and a half decades and has worked with the who’s who of Hollywood in his time.

He appeared on the We Might Be Drunk podcast with hosts Mark Normand and Sam Morril as they attempted to get some gossip out of him.

Mark asked: “We gotta ask, which actors do you really hate?,” before listing off some big names, including Tommy Lee Jones, who he acted in the 1994 film, The Client with.

William responded: “He was rough,” before adding: “I’m not letting out any secrets.”

The hosts then asked him what he thought about Jim Carrey, to which he replied: “I did not act with him, but I’ve just heard he can be really tough.

“You know, there are a lot of actors out there, it p****s me off, who make life miserable for a lot of people and they don’t get busted for it and it p****s me off.”

William began his career on stage in theatre, before building his career by starring in small, independent films.

His breakthrough role was in black comedy crime film Fargo in 1996 which got him critical acclaim and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He went on to star in big Hollywood films in his career, including Psycho, Jurassic Park 3, Spartan and The Lincoln Lawyer.

William’s television work includes playing Dr. David Morgenstern in ER for 15 years and as Frank Gallagher on the US Shameless for 10 years.

He is a two-time Emmy Award and four-time Screen Actors Guild Award winner, and has been nominated for an Academy Award, a Drama Critics’ Circle Award, and five Golden Globe Awards.

The Hollywood star married actress Felicity Huffman in 1997 after dating on and off for 15 years.

The pair went on to have two children together – daughters Sophia Grace and Georgia Grace.

Felicity was jailed in 2019 for 14-days for her part in the college bribery scandal.

She admitted to paying $15,000 (£12,000) to rig her daughter’s SAT scores, tearfully apologising to the teen for not trusting her abilities.

SABRINA Carpenter rocked an old Hollywood look at the Met Gala on Monday, rocking a tight-fitting frock with a racy thigh-high slit.

The 26-year-old singing sensation wore a gorgeous dress made out of real old Hollywood film reels as she attended the star-studded event in New York.

The film reels on the dress were of the Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn movie, which is titled Sabrina.

She flashed her toned pins as she strutted her stuff in front of onlookers, smiling and beaming as she made her way up the iconic steps.

Fans were left completely enamoured by her sizzling ensemble.

“The hair is so pretty, the dress is stunning, everything is amazing,” penned one person.

“This b**ch wrapped herself in Kodak film,” added a second, complete with a laughing emoji.

“That is a cool dress and idea,” said a third.

“She DEFINITELY understood the assignment,” added a fourth.

While a fifth wrote: “Sabrina Carpenter’s dress is one of the most creative I’ve seen tonight. I love that.”

But not everyone was complimentary of her outfit, with some quick to share their critique.

“It’s classy but she could have done a whole lot better,” said one person.

“Boring as usual,” slammed a second.

While a third penned: “the dress itself is beautifully constructed but the choice of the film strips is lost on me and its connection to the theme/dress code?”

This comes off the back of Sabrina’s sensational headline concerts at Coachella last month.

The singer delivered a set dubbed “Sabrinawood” with a Hollywood-themed set across two weekends on April 10 and 17.

Her shows featured some very iconic cameos from the likes of Madonna, Susan Sarandon, Will Ferrell, and Sam Elliott.

The setlist highlighted her most recent album Man’s Best Friend, but also included some of her biggest hits like Espresso and Feather.

“Curly” Williams returned to his old high school campus last week for the first time in 76 years, but did so under his given name — the same name emblazoned on North Hollywood High’s newest attraction: the John Williams Performing Arts Center.

Williams, 94, attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony last Wednesday, which commenced with the composer’s rousing “Raiders March” played by the school’s marching band and accompanied by its blue-clad cheerleaders.

“I think you played that better than we could have,” Williams said, speaking from a wheelchair under the sign of his namesake venue in front of other accomplished alumni and friends, including producer Kathleen Kennedy. “That’s a hard piece.”

The ambitious construction project, initiated in 2015 and designed by CO Architects occupies 35,000 square feet and seats 800. Michael Stebbins, project manager for the BroadStage in Santa Monica, served as project manager. The center is equipped with state-of-the-art amenities to host student performances and school assemblies, but also to train the next generation of theater technicians. Besides an enormous stage, blue velvet curtains, a mixing console and safe catwalks, the building also features new classrooms and rehearsal spaces.

A 75-foot hand-painted mural in the lobby, still in the works by artist Ian Robertson-Salt, is inspired by Williams’ formidable filmography, which serves “as a daily reminder to every student who walks these halls that greatness can begin right here,” remarked Andrés Chait, acting superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District.

Due to health complications, Williams has made few public appearances in the last two years. He last conducted a concert in February 2024 — and he has also consistently turned down requests to name buildings after him, including at his beloved Tanglewood in Massachusetts, although the Hollywood Bowl did recently name its stage for Williams. It’s a testament to his affection for his time at North Hollywood High, and his regard for the next generation of students, that he not only blessed this dedication but showed up and spoke to a gathered crowd of hundreds.

“I’m sort of silly happy to be here,” he said, calling the dedication “a singular honor in my life.”

Other showbiz alumni on hand included “Beauty and the Beast” producer Don Hahn (class of ’73), “Independence Day” writer-producer Dean Devlin (’80), and Rob Friedman (’81), CEO of Ascendant Entertainment. Partly due to its proximity to the entertainment industry, North Hollywood High has produced a host of famous artists over the decades, including the late Michael Tilson Thomas, who attended in the early 1960s.

“At some point you have to stop calling that a coincidence,” said Kennedy, a longtime collaborator of Williams who gave brief remarks before handing him the microphone. “Something happened here, and something can happen again.”

Williams moved to North Hollywood with his family in 1947, having grown up in Queens. He transferred to North Hollywood High as a 15-year-old sophomore, and joined the band and orchestra as a jazz-loving trombonist. His classmates included Susan Sontag (“I remember her teaching a class in civics, when the teacher would sit down and listen to her,” he told me in 2023) and many future actors, including Barbara Ruick, who played Carrie Pipperidge in “Carousel.” But his best friends were all music-inclined guys whose dads, like his, were famous musicians.

Williams embraced the nickname “Curly,” given to him by a fellow student in response to his curly red hair, and quickly created his own jazz band with classmates. Ruick sang with them at school events and dances, and they became the house band at a new teens-only venue in Van Nuys called the Dri-Nite Club. Broadcast on local radio, they caught the attention of Time magazine, which ran a story on “Curly’s” band in October 1949.

Williams has said he fondly remembers his civics and French classes at North Hollywood High, but his time and passion were almost exclusively devoted to music. He rigorously practiced the piano at home, studying with a local concert pianist and MGM arranger named Robert Van Eps; on Wednesday nights he played in jam sessions with his father (Johnny Sr., a drummer) and the Columbia Pictures orchestra. He bopped around clubs in L.A. listening to jazz greats like Oscar Peterson (whose style influenced Williams’ recent piano concerto), and started making a name of his own as a wunderkind performer and arranger.

Long before he scored “Star Wars” or “Harry Potter,” Williams did his earliest arranging and orchestrating for theater productions at North Hollywood High. The impact of his time at North Hollywood High cannot be overstated.

During his remarks about the performing arts center on Wednesday, Williams said he felt particularly overwhelmed because the school was “formative in my thinking and my professional work … This is a great, magical place, North Hollywood.”

Williams eventually married Ruick, his high school sweetheart and mother of his three children. Ruick was instrumental in making many of Williams’ earliest career connections. She died from a brain aneurysm in 1974, at the age of 41, just one year before Williams’ career catapulted with “Jaws.” The couple’s youngest son, Joseph, lead singer of Toto, stood proudly behind Williams during the theater’s dedication.

The John Williams Performing Arts Center (JWPAC) is the crescendo of a $319.5 million modernization project at North Hollywood High, which also includes modern classrooms and athletic facilities. It’s a reflection of the diverse public school’s commitment to the arts; students here can play in the orchestra, marching band or modern band, and study drama or modern dance.

“As I think about what else I might say to all of you younger people, students here,” Williams said at his homecoming Wednesday, “two words about this beautiful building: simply use it. Make sure you all use the place.”

Tim Greiving is the author of “John Williams: A Composer’s Life.”

The Great British Bake Off host Alison Hammond appeared on ITV’s Lorraine on Monday

A Great British Bake Off star has opened up about Nigella Lawson’s chemistry with Paul Hollywood.

Nigella has taken over from Prue Leith as the latest judge, where she will join Paul, Alison Hammond and Noel Fielding in the tent for the upcoming season that’s set to air later this year.

Alison appeared on ITV’s Lorraine on Monday (May 4), where she spoke to Lorraine Kelly about the new series, which has begun filming.

Lorraine said: “There’s a new judge. How’s that all going? Have you met up?”

Alison replied: “She’s so lovely. Nigella is incredible. Obviously we’ve started, so I’ve been watching.”

She added: “I’m telling you, the chemistry between her and Paul is unbelievable,” before clarifying: “Not in that sort of way!”

A picture of Paul and Nigella was then shown on screen, with Alison saying: “Don’t they look good looking?”

Lorraine jokingly added: “Do you know what, that looks like a crime scene, doesn’t it?!”

Alison continued: “But honestly, they’re so good together! I’ll be honest with you, they don’t always agree – it’s so good,” with Lorraine concluding: “No, that’s fine, and that works.”

Prue Leith announced her exit from the hit competition back in January after nine years. The 85-year-old restaurateur and broadcaster first joined the series in 2017 when it moved from the BBC to Channel 4, and has been a beloved fixture on it ever since.

In a statement, she said: “Bake Off has been a fabulous part of my life for nine years. I have genuinely loved it and I’m sure I’ll miss working with my fellow judge Paul, Alison and Noel, and the teams at Love Productions and Channel 4.”

Speaking about stepping into Prue’s shoes, Nigella said: “I’m uncharacteristically rather lost for words right now. Of course it’s daunting to be following in the footsteps of Prue Leith and Mary Berry before her, great dames both, but I’m also bubbling with excitement.”

She added: “The Great British Bake Off is more than a television programme, it’s a National Treasure – and it’s a huge honour to be entrusted with it.

“I’m just thrilled to be joining the team and all the new bakers to come, I wish the marvellous Prue all the best, and am giddily grateful for the opportunity!”

The Great British Bake Off returns to Channel 4 later this year

SOPHIA Grace and Rosie were the viral child stars who went from their Essex bedrooms to rubbing shoulders with Hollywood’s finest – landing roles alongside the likes of Ariana Grande, appearing on the Ellen Show and even bagging their own movie.

But fast forward 15 years and the cousins have traded the bright lights of Tinseltown for very different lives back home in the UK, as The Sun lifts the lid on how they coped after they were no longer the cheeky youngsters the world fell in love with, and avoided the dreaded child star ‘curse’.

Sophia Grace, now 23, and Rosie, now 19, were cousins who rose to prominence by uploading videos from their Essex bedrooms to YouTube.

In 2011, it was a video of the duo, who were then eight and five, respectively, performing a cover of “Super Bass” by Nicki Minaj that caught the attention of US megastar Ellen DeGeneres.

She invited them to fly across to the US to appear as guests on her eponymous show, which led to a regular slot for the girls and exposure to fans across the pond, who fell in love with the tutu-wearing duo and their British charm.

The girls had their own segment on the show where they would chat with A-listers, from Justin Bieber to Hugh Grant and Taylor Swift. This then led to them bagging appearances on Nickelodeon show Sam and Cat, which featured Ariana Grande in the titular role, and their own movie by the channel, Sophia Grace & Rosie’s Royal Adventure.

However, as Sophia Grace and Rosie got older, the high-flying opportunities also came to a halt, with the young women no longer as in demand as their younger selves once were.

A close friend of the cousins tells The Sun: “People don’t realise how intense it was back then for the girls. One minute Sophia and Rosie were just kids playing dress-up, and the next they were everywhere – on TV, interviews and cashing in on big brand deals. 

“It felt like the world couldn’t get enough of them. But that kind of spotlight doesn’t really grow with you, it stays frozen in time.

“I remember when things started to shift. It wasn’t dramatic, the calls just slowed down. Not because they weren’t talented, but because they weren’t those tiny girls in tutus that the world couldn’t help but fall in love with anymore. The industry loves a moment, it’s not always about the person behind it.”

Now, Sophia Grace is a doting mum-of-two and often shares mumfluencer content with her little ones to her Instagram page, which still boasts an impressive 1.5 million followers.

Whilst Rosie, who has just shy of one million followers, is an aspiring pop star and often shares music videos and new songs to her profile.

Despite the pair still successful online, that doesn’t mean it’s been an easy transition, as they navigated being shunned from Hollywood for simply growing up.

The friend said: “They had to go through that strange identity thing a lot of child stars face. Like, who am I if I’m not that version of me everyone fell in love with? It’s not just about losing jobs, it’s about outgrowing a character the whole world still expects you to be.

“There was definitely a period where it hurt. They’d worked so hard, and suddenly it felt like they had to prove themselves all over again, but as completely different people. That’s exhausting, especially when your past success kind of boxes you in.”

This had the girls thinking about what is next as they reinvented their careers, rather than remaining stuck.

“What people don’t see is how much strength it took for them to step back and rethink everything. They didn’t just cling to what used to work. They had to start asking bigger questions like what do we actually enjoy now? What kind of life do we want outside of all that?

“They’ve had to evolve and figure out who they are without the glitz glam and cameras. And I think that was harder than actually being famous in the first place.

“There’s something bittersweet about it. Now they’re building something quieter, more personal and it actually belongs fully to them this time.”

Child stars who have been catapulted to fame so young are famously at risk of falling victim to the “curse”, which has seen numerous celebrities fall off the wagon after earning their careers at such a young age.

From Drew Barrymore to Macaulay Culkin and Britney Spears, several stars have spoken out about their struggles with mental health, addiction, financial issues and more after being put under such pressure so young.

But Sophia Grace and Rosie have managed to successfully manage becoming household names so young whilst avoiding being plagued with the curse.

“People always expect a sad ending with child stars, like it’s inevitable that something will go wrong once the spotlight fades. But that was never going to be their story,” said the friend.

Explaining how they managed to remain grounded, they said that the pair have always been “normal and down to earth”, even when things were “unpredictable” in their careers.

“Sophia was always the one with that natural warmth. Even as a kid, she had this way of making people feel comfortable around her, what you saw was exactly what you got,” said our insider.

“Becoming a mum didn’t change her either, it’s been the making of her. She talks a lot about wanting to give her child stability, something consistent and safe, because she knows firsthand how unusual her own childhood was.

“What people see online is only a small window into their world – behind the scenes she’s very careful, and very protective of her family life. She’s also been smart financially, which people don’t expect. She made sure early on that she wasn’t just spending what she earned, she was thinking about the future. She’s got investments, savings and she’s financially fine for a very long time.”

And for Rosie, it seems that music was always the long-term plan.

“She stepped back, took time to grow up outside of the spotlight, build up her confidence and then came back to it on her own terms. That’s something I really admire about her. She’s spent years working on her voice, writing, figuring out what she actually wants to say as an artist instead of trying to recreate something from the past. 

“There’s a lot of discipline there, and a kind of quiet confidence that people may have otherwise overlooked. She’s not chasing attention at all because she’s building something meaningful and long term.

“The thing that really stands out about both of them is that they never lost themselves in it. They had good people around them from early on, family who kept things steady and didn’t let the fame become everything. And they listened to that. They made choices that weren’t the flashiest, but they were the right ones for the lives they all wanted.”

The duo were also meticulously careful about money, our source says, despite having an influx of earnings so young.

“At the end of the day, they didn’t just grow out of being child stars, they grew into adults with lives that are  real and wonderful. And that’s something you can’t fake for likes.”

“All the President’s Men” was released 50 years ago this month, an anniversary that’s been greeted with equal parts rue and reverence by the journalists, political junkies and discerning cinephiles who have worshiped the film for five decades.

As a member of all three of those constituencies, I’ve done my share of genuflecting, most recently as chief film critic at the Washington Post, whose city room was as vivid and fully realized in the movie as Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein.

Like so many Posties of my generation, I’ll never forget the so-real-it’s-surreal experience of walking into the fifth-floor newsroom for the first time in 2002. By then, standard-issue electric typewriters and six-ply carbon paper had been replaced by far less visually interesting computers. But the office’s pervading atmosphere of hard work and quiet focus felt uncannily similar to its big-screen analog.

For the last two years, I have been researching a book about the making of “All the President’s Men,” whose production involved almost as many contingencies and unresolved questions as Watergate itself. Among the film’s many mysteries, one I’ve found particularly intriguing has to do with Katharine Graham, publisher of the Washington Post and CEO of its parent company during the Watergate investigations. As the movie amply demonstrates, it took guts for Woodward and Bernstein to persevere with their reporting in the face of terrified sources and their own growing paranoia. But, unbeknownst to many observers at the time, Graham was enduring even more withering pressures, with determination that was all the more impressive for being almost entirely invisible.

I’m still in the process of discovering why she remained invisible in “All the President’s Men.” For now, it’s clear that the backstory is more nuanced than mere oversight or, as many are quick to assume, simple sexism.

In fact, William Goldman’s first script of the film featured a sequence with Graham and Woodward, a scene that appeared in every subsequent draft. Based on an actual meeting between the two, it’s a cagey game of cat-and-mouse, with the publisher taking the measure of a nervous, still-inexperienced journalist, looking for reassurance that his reporting will prove out.

Earlier this year, at a January staged reading of “All the President’s Men” at Harmony Gold Theater in Hollywood — a fundraiser for the Stella Adler Academy — it was possible for fans to conjure what might have been. Mark Ruffalo played Woodward and Ethan Hawke played Bernstein in a version of the movie assembled from different Goldman drafts.

A high point of the evening was when Ruffalo and actor Susan Traylor brought the Graham-Woodward scene to tentative, tense and teasingly playful life. After grilling Woodward about his sources and coyly asking him about Deep Throat’s identity, Traylor’s Graham asked him if the truth about Watergate would ever be revealed. “It may never come out,” Ruffalo’s Woodward replied. “Don’t tell me ‘never,’” Graham laments, before bringing the meeting to a close with a gently peremptory “Do better.”

In poring over director Alan J. Pakula and Goldman’s papers, I’ve probably read that scene dozens of times. But when I heard it play out in real time, I was ambushed by the emotions it stirred — a mixture of pride in Graham’s legacy and deep sadness at how that legacy has been so inexplicably ignored in recent years.

I was also sad that Redford, who died in September, wasn’t there. He often expressed regret that Graham wasn’t a featured character in “All the President’s Men.” Keenly aware of how her spine and steadfastness made Woodward and Bernstein’s work possible, he wanted to honor that crucial support. When I interviewed him for the first time in 2005, he insisted that fearless owners were every bit as important in preserving democracy as the reporters he and Hoffman helped glamorize.

Over the next two decades, every time I saw Redford, he bemoaned the “downward slide of this thing,” by which he meant the constellation of institutions “All the President’s Men” celebrates: not just journalism and a robust First Amendment but a Washington where investigators, prosecutors, judges, the Senate and Congress did their jobs regardless of partisan loyalties, and a Hollywood where a studio as mainstream as Warner Bros. would agree to finance a tough-minded film about a contentious and still-raw period in recent history.

Granted, that film was based on a bestselling book and anchored by two huge stars. But today, with political and corporate leaders — including media companies — falling over each other to curry favor with President Trump, “All the President’s Men” feels like an artifact from a vanished age.

Nowhere is this more distressingly true than at the Post itself, where the newsroom immortalized by the movie has been slashed by more than a third, and where Jeff Bezos, who bought the paper in 2013, seems intent on erasing Katharine Graham’s legacy until it vanishes completely. During the first Trump administration, Bezos stood up to threats against the Post and the press at large that would make Nixon blush, or at least pea-green with envy.

Now, Bezos has become a one-man meme of what author Timothy Snyder calls “obedience in advance,” quashing an endorsement of Kamala Harris, ostentatiously grinning his way through Trump’s second inauguration, vastly overpaying for a promotional film about First Lady Melania Trump and staying conspicuously mum (at least publicly) when a Post reporter’s home was raided by the FBI in January.

All of this has come at an enormous moral and material cost, with thousands of readers canceling their subscriptions and an alarming number of the Post’s finest reporters and writers leaving for other publications and platforms. As my former boss Marty Baron told my former colleague Ruth Marcus in the New Yorker in February, Bezos’ turnaround has been “sickening” to witness: “a case study in near-instant, self-inflicted brand destruction.”

Of course, that brand was built, in no small part, by “All the President’s Men,” which taught a generation how to walk, talk, dress and act like real reporters. (Hint: A good corduroy jacket and a pen in your mouth can’t hurt.)

In 1976, Pakula was interviewed about his dealings with Graham, whom he admired tremendously and with whom he would become close friends. “I could do a film about the Katharine Graham story,” he enthused. “It’s a superb story.”

Thirty years later, Steven Spielberg would bring Pakula’s idea to fruition with “The Post,” about Graham’s decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, a dress rehearsal for the even higher stakes of Watergate a year later.

“The Post,” which starred Meryl Streep in a shrewdly judged performance of aristocratic assurance and creeping insecurity, premiered in Washington less than a year into Trump’s first administration. Bezos attended that screening, which many of us saw as tacit acknowledgment that he was taking her lessons in character, comportment and competence to heart.

That was clearly wishful thinking. Graham may have finally assumed her rightful place in the newspaper-movie canon, but we’re still left to ponder her absence from the most iconic journalism movie of the 20th century.

It’s no longer the shoe-leather reporters who need a big-screen tutorial in how to do their jobs. It’s their bosses. A simple place to start would be to memorize the best two-word speech to never appear in a major motion picture: Do better.

Ann Hornaday was a film critic at the Washington Post from 2002 to 2025, when she retired. “All the President’s Men” plays at TCM Classic Film Festival Saturday at 2:45 p.m.

For Rutherford a spell in the Welsh leagues followed but time is now spent split between some coaching, taxi-ing two of his boys to football training and working in a showroom of a hardware store.

All a world away from the millions on the line for the internationals in Parkinson’s squad aiming for the Premier League, one that has been rebuilt season on season with £30m-plus spent last summer alone.

“But even though it’s very different, it’s also the same club,” he says, his middle son part of the club’s academy.

“I’ve been fortunate enough to go back now and then and you see some of the same faces, good people, people who gave up their time for free to keep the club afloat.

“It’s a global brand but the football club is still at the heart of it. It’s kept its soul.”

Rutherford is well-qualified to judge. Although the co-owners never reached out after his release, he was invited to sample the US adulation for his old club as part of an invitational Wrexham side in a tournament in North Carolina alongside the likes of Mark Howard, Lee Trundle and Andy Morrell.

“Honestly, it’s hard to put it into words how big it’s become unless you see it,” he says of Wrexham’s new fanbase. “It was just after the club got into League Two, and I actually said when I was out there that they would be in the Premier League in 11 years.

“I don’t know why I didn’t say 10, but I thought they would land in League One for a few years and then take five or six years to get out of the Championship.

“To think they could do it in four is just phenomenal. I don’t want to say it would be a Hollywood story, it’ll be more like something out of Football Manager.”

Either way, there is a final day to script, with Rutherford a reminder that not every ending is a happy one.

“It’s bittersweet that we couldn’t get that promotion to the league and what happened, but I can look back now and say I was one of those who played a small part in the story and be proud of that,” he says.

“It was difficult at the time but hindsight gives you that context and I hope people keep that context if it doesn’t happen this time.

“It would only be a tiny applying of the brakes on an unbelievable journey – they’re still on their way.”