Paramount Chairman David Ellison believes the tug-of-war over his proposed $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery comes down to a single question: whether he can be trusted to control CNN.
“I believe this fight is not really about market share,” Ellison wrote in a Tuesday op-ed in the New York Times, noting that regulators around the world, including the U.S. Justice Department, have approved the deal that has been temporarily blocked by an antitrust lawsuit brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and his coalition of Democrat state attorneys general.
“I believe a plainer worry sits beneath the briefs and the news releases … The issue is whether I can be trusted as a steward of Warner’s CNN,” Ellison wrote.
The rare opinion piece serves as Ellison’s acknowledgment that his family’s close association with President Trump has sullied his standing in Hollywood and beyond.
Shakeups at CBS News, which is part of Paramount, the departure of CBS late night host Stephen Colbert, and a visible presidential lobbying effort — including hosting a dinner for Trump in Washington in late April and attending Trump’s birthday extravaganza in June with UFC fights on the White House lawn — have come with a cost.
Bonta and the other state attorneys general sued, saying the merger of two of the major film studios would give Paramount-Warner Bros. more than 25% of the wide-release theatrical film market. Their lawsuit also alleged the combined company would own too many cable TV channels — more than 50, including CNN, TBS, HGTV and Comedy Central.
Many in Hollywood fear that the consolidation of two historic studios will bring thousands of layoffs and contribute to a bleaker employment picture. Ellison’s Skydance Media’s takeover of Paramount a year ago resulted in the loss of 2,000 jobs.
Some have opposed the Warner Bros. deal, saying one family shouldn’t be allowed to control two significant news operations: CBS News and CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery.
“There has been speculation about my politics, my loyalties, my intentions,” Ellison wrote.
“Unfortunately, I can’t give anyone a view into my heart and mind, but I can share this: I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans,” Ellison said. “And when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth.”
“Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle,” he said. “That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it. And it requires independence. Our journalists will continue to answer to the facts and to all the people they serve — not to any party or cause.”
“These were founding principles for both CNN and CBS News, for legends like Ted Turner and Edward R. Murrow, and it is exactly that kind of independence that has always fueled the greatness of “60 Minutes,” Ellison wrote.
Fired “60 Minutes” correspondents, including Cecilia Vega, have complained that since Bari Weiss became editor-in-chief of CBS News last fall, journalists have been asked to tilt the presentation of controversial news events, including protests to Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions earlier this year in Minnesota, which led to the deaths of two Americans.
Paramount has pushed back saying the plaintiff states have defined markets that fail to factor in the rise of technology companies, including Netflix, Google’s YouTube and Amazon Studios, which also attract significant swaths of viewership.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, who is overseeing the high-profile case, issued a temporary restraining order to block the merger from finalizing while the two sides hash out the evidence. Late last month, Paramount agreed to delay the merger until after a trial — or until June 1, whichever date comes first.
In court documents filed Friday, Bonta and his coalition of 11 other Democratic attorneys general proposed having a two- to three-week trial in April to weigh the evidence.
Ellison’s Paramount pushed back, saying the media company would like to start the courtroom action on Nov. 4.
Now the judge must schedule the court date.
“The states claim this deal will give one company too much influence over theatrical releases and cable operators, while the W.G.A. argues that our combined market power will hurt writers,” Ellison said in the opinion piece. “Both suits imagine a Hollywood that no longer exists — an industry ruled by a handful of legacy studios.”
I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope newsletter. My birthday’s still a few months away. Is it OK if I have a slice of this cake, anyway? Maybe the Television Academy can send it to the Emmy nominees who are no longer invited to the ceremony this year.
Read on for more …
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Awards show adaptation or mere party foul?
What if you were invited to a party and then nine days later that invitation is rescinded? A party in your honor, no less, or at least one where you are among the honorees. How would you feel? Would you be tempted to take that birthday cake I just mentioned and smash it into the face of your host?
Maybe I’ve watched the pie fight in “Blazing Saddles” one too many times. (Happy 100th birthday, Mel Brooks!) Still, if I were among the Emmy nominees in the five categories that the Television Academy shuttled off the Primetime Emmy Awards to the untelevised Creative Arts Emmy Awards, I might be reaching for some baked goods and taking aim.
The five categories excised from the show include four from the limited series/movie group — supporting actor and actress, writing and directing. (Variety series writing was also cut.) When I wrote a few weeks ago that the limited series boom had gone bust, it wasn’t my intention that the TV Academy remove more than half of the categories from the show. It could have just been a down year, people! Television was pretty meh across the board the last 12 months. Why pick on one division?
In doing so, the Television Academy effectively disenfranchised HBO’s “DTF St. Louis,” the best limited series of the season, from the ceremony. Steven Conrad’s dark comedy about suburban loneliness earned 13 nominations, including supporting acting nods for each member of its stellar ensemble — Jason Bateman, David Harbour, Linda Cardellini, Richard Jenkins and Joy Sunday. Conrad was nominated for three — writing, directing and producing the series.
But now only Harbour, Bateman and Conrad will receive tickets to the show as executive producers of the nominated series. The other actors can attend the Creative Arts Emmys, held the weekend before the Primetime Emmys. And of course, HBO will be happy to buy them tickets if they want to go to the televised ceremony too.
The question is: Will they and other nominees, which include the likes of Nick Offerman (“Death by Lightning”), Charles Melton (“Beef”) and Dakota Fanning (“All Her Fault”), want to get dressed up two weekends in a row? (First-world problems, I know.)
“It really did manifest as a disinvite for all these people,” says one awards consultant who, like other sources for this story, requested anonymity in order to speak candidly about the move. “Had the Television Academy done it before nominations came out, then at least people’s expectations would have been managed. But now it’s sort of like you got invited to the party and now you can’t come. It’s not a very nice feeling.”
“Beef” star Charles Melton’s category, supporting actor in a limited series or TV movie, will be presented at the untelevised Creative Arts Emmys the weekend before the Primetime Emmys ceremony.
(Netflix)
Why did the TV Academy wait to shift the categories until after the nominations were announced? Why focus on limited series and not, say, spread the cuts across drama and comedy categories too? Are these changes permanent?
I asked these questions to the Television Academy and the answers were, basically: We announced as soon as possible. We’re going to sidestep that second query. And we’ll see how it goes!
What this comes down to is a desire to create a show that, in the words of a TV Academy spokesperson, is “driven by the need to innovate while delivering a three-hour broadcast, keeping audience expectations and the creative structure of the ceremony in mind.”
Translation: fewer awards, fewer speeches, more throwback segments that have a chance to go viral and get people talking.
The Oscars tried this in 2022, moving eight categories off the telecast, handing them out before the broadcast began. Members hated the idea and order was restored the following year with all 23 awards being presented during the live telecast. (In 2019, when the motion picture academy announced a similar move, saying that four categories would be handed out during commercial breaks, the blowback was so fierce that the decision was almost immediately reversed.)
Emmy ratings were up 8% last year, the highest since 2021. An average of 7.42 million viewers watched. Not NFL numbers, but a continued indication that the audience level for major awards ceremonies has stabilized after steep declines during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Still, there is a feeling among some that awards shows need to adapt and pick up the pace in a time when viewers’ attention spans have shortened. Is there an appetite for a three-hour ceremony when you can simply watch the highlights the next day on social media platforms?
“If people don’t want to see actors winning awards, then the days of televised awards shows should just be over,” gripes another Emmy consultant.
One thing that might be over — or at least greatly diminished — will be submissions for the supporting acting categories for limited series/movie next year if the academy makes this revision permanent.
“I think everyone will be going lead,” one network executive joked, “even if they have just five minutes an episode.”
Directed by Alice McShane, “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret,” which debuted Wednesday in the U.K., revealed new claims of criminal sexual conduct by the 54-year-old actor and musician from four women, including a possible instance of statutory rape in California. In the film, a total of 10 women recount allegations of sexual assault, along with inappropriate text messages, phone calls and behavior that occurred from 2002 to 2016. Leto has denied the allegations.
To ensure the integrity of the documentary, the hour-long program was not announced ahead of time.
“Everything came out at once,” says producer Jessica Sartenaer, speaking from London over Zoom alongside McShane on Friday morning. “That was all very much part of the strategy because we didn’t want to leak anything before the investigation came out.”
McShane began working on the film after Los Angeles-based DJ Allie Teilz reshared in April 2025 her Facebook post from 2012 in which she accused Leto of trying to “force himself” onto her backstage at a concert. Teilz described the actor as “Hollywood’s most persistent predator.” About 40 women contacted Teilz with their own allegations, according to Sartenaer. In June 2025, weekly newsletter Air Mail published accusations of impropriety against Leto by nine women, which he denied.
“I began ringing around trying to find the women who’d written into Allie,” McShane says. “When I was speaking to women, I realized there were other journalists on the trail. So I did think there was going to be something published relatively quickly, which we can’t compete with because we have a whole different set of considerations. It takes a lot longer to make.”
Social media was the main resource for finding people willing to speak on the record. The filmmakers say they discovered more than 120 separate allegations online.
“But that doesn’t necessarily mean these are all women who want to speak about their experiences,” McShane says. “They’ve posted anonymously for a reason. It was a lot of hours spent digging through hundreds of people from across Leto’s life and career — people who had worked with the band, people in his acting life, his fashion life. We had an enormous spreadsheet. It was a really in-depth process.”
Ultimately, 10 women agreed to be interviewed on camera. The filmmakers offered each various options of anonymity depending on their level of comfort. None are completely anonymous, although only three used their real names. All of their real voices are heard, which McShane says is unusual.
Sartenaer adds, “The courage it takes to come forward and come up against a powerful man like Leto is immeasurable. It’s absolutely incredible what these women have done, and the anonymity decision is a very personal one. Right away, [the women had] this gut instinct about the level of anonymity that they would like.”
“You really learn from a duty-of-care perspective how to best look after the women,” she says. “There’s always this balance of wanting to investigate the story, but also understanding these are people who have gone through incredibly painful experiences and they’re sharing very personal things with you. You never want to push. They are in control. You can never make these things happen. It has to come from the women.”
The initial investigation began in London and the filmmakers visited Los Angeles twice in the months that followed. The first interview was with a woman named Alex last fall. In the documentary, the former model recalls being invited to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert at London’s O2 in 2013 (Leto is the band’s frontman). She says his female assistant then brought her to an afterparty at the members’ club Shoreditch House. Although she was 19 at the time, she told Leto she was 17 to protect herself. She says the musician, then 41, replied, “Age is just a number, and, anyway, we’re in Europe.”
Alex was sent by Leto’s assistant to another afterparty at a nearby hotel, but Leto was the only one there, she says. Alex asked for a phone charger and cash for a taxi home, but was denied. When she asked if she could crash on the sofa in the hotel room, she says Leto threatened to rape her.
“Right from when we started investigating and started hearing from these women, [we were] noticing these patterns of behavior,” McShane says. “[Alex] is an extraordinary communicator. The women we were speaking to, all of them, are amazing storytellers, and resolute about telling their stories. Each time we spoke to somebody it reinforced the importance of getting it out.”
An explosive new documentary revealed new claims of criminal sexual conduct by actor and musician Jared Leto.
(Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images)
Sartenaer says Leto’s seeming fixation with women of a young age was something “we were interested in investigating right off because of the pattern we noticed in the reposts from Allie Teilz.”
“Many of them did mention that they were teenagers at the time of the alleged offenses,” she says. “We knew that was a thread to follow right from the beginning.”
One woman, named Clara in the documentary, spoke about having sex with Leto for the first time when she was 17 and he was 34. The encounter took place at his home in California. In the film, she describes having a conversation with Leto about the age of consent in the state. “He just kind of shrugged it off, like it wasn’t a huge concern for him,” she says.
As the documentary points out, the age of consent in California is 18. An adult having sex with someone underage can constitute statutory rape. The filmmakers can’t comment on the law or whether there will be any legal repercussions for Leto. However, Mike Radford, executive producer at BBC Current Affairs, says what distinguishes “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” from prior investigations is that the film showcases alleged criminal conduct.
“That’s a different level of potential wrongdoing,” Radford says, speaking on the phone from London. “From that point of view, it becomes a more serious story, and it goes beyond misunderstanding to something more worrying.”
The filmmakers sent a “lengthy right of reply” letter to Leto and gave him two weeks to respond. They followed up several times with his team to no avail. It wasn’t until after the documentary aired that Leto denied the allegations in a statement, which was shared Wednesday with The Times.
“I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life,” he said. “These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”
The documentary combines the interviews with reenactments and archival footage. Sartenaer says they had a “wealth of material” to pull from.
“There is so much content about him,” McShane adds. “And he’s so overtly sexual on the public stage. We’ve got examples in the film of him, like when he’s in the press room at the Oscars. Everything is packed with innuendo. There are examples where he’s being very inappropriate with young women on the stage. All of that placed next to these interviews can be so chilling and there were countless examples of that available to us.”
The filmmakers worked with a limited budget and a small team of three: McShane, Sartenaer and cinematographer Theo Tennant. In total, they spent a year and half working full time on “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.”
Alice McShane, left, and Jessica Sartenaer interview entertainment journalist Maureen Ryan for “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret.”
(Theo Tennant / BBC)
The biggest challenge was the fact that “Hollywood is an impenetrable world,” Sartenaer says. The documentary features interviews with two people who worked with Leto speaking completely anonymously, but they were difficult to find and get on the record.
“It really took a very, very long time to have a breakthrough on the insider front [and] to actually get people to start talking with us,” Sartenaer says. “Hollywood is such a precarious place and it’s difficult to get into Hollywood, and I think once people are in, it’s probably a terrifying prospect. One foot stepped wrong could see them catapulted out of it again. We saw that nervousness in trying to speak with people. There’s a real culture of secrecy.”
Despite that, there are hopes that “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” will encourage other potential victims to speak out.
“The investigation is ongoing,” Sartenaer says. “What these women have done by coming forward [is commendable]. We think their courage will encourage other women to speak their truth, whoever it is about.”
Radford says the BBC is continuing its investigation into the allegations surrounding Leto.
“We would hope that should our investigation continue we would have enough material to make a subsequent documentary,” he says. “We’re not working on a documentary now because I’m not commissioned to do so. But it is our intention.”
At present, the BBC doesn’t have plans to air “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret” in the U.S. It was offered to the U.S. market while in production, according to Radford, but not picked up for distribution.
“There was no legal reason it isn’t airing there,” Radford says. “In fact, the legal threat is much greater in the U.K. because the libel laws are tougher in the U.K. So there was no fear around putting it out in the U.S.”
McShane and Sartenaer have been heartened by the immediate response to the documentary. But they also hope the momentum will continue.
“I hope we keep seeing the reverberations and I hope the conversation doesn’t die,” McShane says. “Ten years ago at the height of #MeToo this would have really punched through. The general outrage has cooled a little bit when stories of this nature are published. But we hope the conversations stay strong because it’s really important people keep talking about this.”
Resources for survivors of sexual assault
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual violence, you can find support using RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline. Call (800) 656-HOPE or visit online.rainn.org to speak with a trained support specialist.
Jared Leto faces allegations of criminal sexual conduct by several women who allege the sexual incidents with the musician and Oscar-winning actor occurred when he was in his 30s and 40s and they were teenagers.
In a BBC documentary titled “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret,” multiple women spoke about their experiences with the “House of Gucci” star and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman, detailing allegations of inappropriate text messages, sexual assault and statutory rape from 2002 to 2016. Among the allegations, one woman said she was 17 years old when Leto sexually assaulted her in a motel bathroom. Another woman alleges Leto continued to sexually pursue her in Los Angeles despite knowing she was 17 years old, younger than the age of consent in California.
Leto, in a statement shared with The Times on Wednesday, denied the allegations raised by the BBC documentary: “I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life,” he said. “These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”
Journalist and documentarian Jessica Sartenaer said in the segment published Wednesday that the BBC began its investigation into allegations against Leto after noting an Instagram story from a prominent DJ based in Los Angeles. In a since-expired Instagram story, DJ Allie Teilz, resurfaced a 2012 Facebook post in which she accused Leto of trying to “force himself” onto her backstage at a concert. Teilz captioned her repost: “Jared Leto was a creep then..still a creep now, going on 15+ years of being Hollywood’s most persistent predator,” according to the BBC documentary.
Numerous social media users reportedly responded to Teilz’s posts with their own claims about Leto’s alleged predatory behavior, many noting they were subject to Leto’s misconduct when they were teens. A woman identified as “Etta” told the BBC she was 14 when Leto approached her outside of a modeling agency and invited her to an Oscars party. Etta provided email correspondences to the outlet and said the “Morbius” actor encouraged her to stay in contact via text after the invite. Text messages turned into phone calls and conversations about her modeling career quickly turned sexual, according to the documentary. Leto allegedly asked Etta about her virginity, her kinks and sexual capabilities.
Etta said in the documentary that Leto’s legal team allegedly contacted her and urged her to sign a nondisclosure agreement about her relationship with the actor, though she never did.
The documentary portrays Leto as a celebrity who leveraged his fame to connect with young fans and control them. The woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted by Leto at age 17 in a motel bathroom told the BBC she met Leto in 2002 at a mall in Las Vegas. Leto would have been in his early 30s at the time. He invited her to meet him at a nearby motel. She waited in the room while he stepped into the shower, but he eventually called her over and began kissing her, according to the BBC. The woman, identified as “Isabelle,” accused Leto of forcing her hand to his genitals and using her hand to masturbate. Isabelle pulled away and moved to leave the room, but Leto allegedly looked outside the motel room for any potential bystanders before letting her out, she recalled to the BBC.
The BBC also published allegations by “Clara,” the woman who said Leto knowingly had sex with her when she was 17 — he was 34 at the time — at his house in California. Clara said she connected with Leto after his associate requested her phone number. She and her friend were invited to spend time with the band at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, where the age of consent of California became a topic of conversation. Leto, who allegedly shrugged off the conversation, invited Clara and her friend back to his home and told the friend to wait in another room while he had sex with Clara. Clara visited Leto’s home a total of three or four times, according to the BBC. She also alleged that Leto often requested that she call him “daddy” and that she pretend to be a little girl.
Leto in 2013 allegedly invited another woman, named Alex, to his band’s concert at London’s O2 and to an after-party. She was 19 at the time but told Leto she was younger out of a need to protect herself, the BBC reported. Leto allegedly replied: “Age is just a number, and anyway, we’re in Europe.” Alex alleges Leto threatened to sexually assault her in a hotel room later that evening.
The BBC also spoke to men who who worked closely with Leto’s band, Thirty Seconds to Mars. One man said Leto was often texting girls to invite them to spend time with the band. Leto also allegedly asserted control by ignoring the girls he invited and speaking to them rudely. The man also recalled that Leto took one fan, who was dropped off by her parents, “off to the bedroom.” Afterward, she called her parents to pick her up.
Leto has long faced quiet scrutiny for his alleged behavior with women and girls. In 2005 the New York Post published a story accusing the actor of “aggressively pursuing many” teen models. Last year Air Mail published accusations against Leto of impropriety by nine women, though he denied those claims at the time.
Still, the actor-musician has moved on from those allegations seemingly unscathed. Leto, who won his Oscar in 2014 for “Dallas Buyers Club,” most recently appeared in “Masters of the Universe” and is set to tour with his band next year.
Resources for survivors of sexual assault
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual violence, you can find support using RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline. Call (800) 656-HOPE or visit online.rainn.org to speak with a trained support specialist.
FOUR women have accused Hollywood actor Jared Leto of criminal sexual misconduct.
The allegations against the Oscar winner and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman, 54, come from when the women were teenagers aged 16 to 19.
Four women have accused Hollywood actor Jared Leto of criminal sexual misconductCredit: GettyLeto won an Oscar for Dallas Buyers ClubCredit: Getty – Contributor
One accuser alleges she was sexually assaulted in a motel bathroom when she was 17.
Another claims the Dallas Buyers Club star threatened her with sexual assault when she was 19 after the pair were left alone in a hotel room.
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A third alleges she had sex with Leto when she was 17, which under California laws would be classed as statutory rape.
The fourth woman has accused Leto of grooming her and alleges he once took advantage of his celebrity status by making repeated sexually explicit phone calls to her when she was 16.
Halfway through a ride on Universal Studio Hollywood’s new coaster, I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
The track turned, angled so my car was completely vertical to the ground, a cliff below me. And then my ride vehicle ever so slightly started to twist, to drift as if banking around a tight curve in a video game. Straight down from me was rocky terrain, but if I looked up and beyond the tracks, I had perhaps the best view of the Valley I’ve ever seen.
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Granted, it was fleeting. But I was alternately in awe and fearful of what Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift was presenting before me. I held onto my lap bar, gripping it tighter as I lifted out of my seat, and I couldn’t help but smile at my predicament. I was in a mini, expertly re-created Toyota Supra, hanging over a bluff. I was soaring, the sensation of a car careening off a canyon, only here, my life, thankfully, wasn’t at risk. And I didn’t want it to end.
Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is intense, yes, but more important, it’s a delight. It’s a roller coaster not just full of thrills but of surprises, of wondering where and when a coaster vehicle will be spin, careen or accelerate. Every turn, twist, flip will leave you guessing. And it’s the smoothest coaster I’ve ever been on, a feeling that lends it a sense of approachability not typically found in rides of this speed and unpredictability.
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It is also a ride that will forever change the tone and tenor of Universal Studios Hollywood, a destination that just two decades ago was largely a behind-the-scenes showcase dedicated to movie-making magic. No more. Universal Studios Hollywood is one of the foremost theme parks in the nation, home to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Super Nintendo World and now one of the strongest thrill rides in Southern California, changes that haven’t always been met with approval by the park’s neighboring Toluca Lake residents.
Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift surprise-opened to guests Monday afternoon. The ride is in technical rehearsals, a soft opening, more or less. That means it’s still in a testing phase and may not always be running. If getting on the coaster is a priority for you, it’s best to wait until Universal gives it a grand opening.
A look at Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift careening over the park’s escalators.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
The coaster — designed by Universal, manufactured by Intamin — has long been circled as the most important theme park attraction of 2026, a feat of engineering nestled on a steep hill between the park’s upper and lower lots that was 10 years in the making. Boasting 4,100 feet of track, two towering inverted loops as well as a pretzel loop and the ability to reach 72 mph through four individual launches, Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is full of unique attributes, including its ability to go above and under the park’s famed escalators.
But those not attuned to coaster speak need not be overwhelmed. Know only that at times you’re upside down, at times you’re on your side, some moments you’re facing the ground, others you’re glancing at the horizon, and then you may suddenly be flipped backward. And before you have time to worry about it, you’ll be rocketing forward.
The four cars, all expertly themed to storied vehicles from the film franchise in which the coaster takes its name, can rotate 360 degrees. The choreography is sudden, but not jolting and never gratuitous. I’ve gotten motion-sick on other coasters that can rotate, ones specifically in which designers have opted to move the vehicles in time to a soundtrack, but here, the movement is cleverly attuned to the track. If we spike upward at an angle, the cars twirl as if taking off in flight. A dive downward, and we may hear braking noises as the cars lock in a side-facing position. In short, the vehicles feel forever aligned with the designed course. I rode Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift twice with no issues.
Unversal Studios’ Hollywood’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift features expertly created mini cars.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
And those cars! They are not small. I’m 6-foot-2 and more than 200 pounds and I had ample leg room. And I know those bigger than I am have had no issues riding this new coaster, which seats four per vehicle. Modern coasters aren’t always known for their accessibility, but Universal has created a ride that should be accommodating for many. The ampleness of the cars, coupled with the smoothness of the track, allows Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift, I believe, to alternately appease those seeking high thrills while not freaking out those who may be more coaster cautious. The goal here is fun, not to terrify.
Universal has crafted some spectacular coasters in recent years: Florida’s Jurassic World VelociCoaster, Stardust Racers and Hiccup’s Wing Gliders, among them. Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift is not just a worthy addition to that portfolio, but a ride that many, I bet, will declare their favorite. Universal Creative, the division of the company responsible for theme park experiences, and especially the Universal Studios Hollywood team led by Jon Corfino, have accomplished what, just 10 years ago, would have been unthinkable. A high-speed outdoor coaster, in a landlocked studio tour park? Far-fetched, at best.
But instead, it’s a reminder that theme parks are where we go to imagine the impossible.
Tell us your stories. Ask us your questions.
Have a theme park tale to share? Whether it was a good day or less-than-perfect day, I would love to hear about it. Have a question? A tip? A fun photo from the parks to share? Email me at todd.martens@latimes.com. I may feature your note in an upcoming newsletter.
Ride on,
Todd Martens
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Emmy-nominated composer Bear McCreary has taken a reverse road to symphonic rock. Prog rockers have traditionally integrated symphonic elements; other rock bands have done orchestral versions of their songs. McCreary began creating television and film scores, discovered his inner metalhead, and has since bridged those worlds with his “Singularity” project. It all adds up to a different take on that time-honored formula.
The second of the two albums, “The Singularity: Ekleipsis,” is out Friday and features contributions from guitarist Steve Vai, Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez, Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump and McCreary’s younger brother Brendan, who sings on half the tracks. The multifaceted album feels like “I am Bear, hear me roar.”
“I love that quote,” he says, laughing, during his two-hour interview with The Times. “I want to put that on the posters. I feel like ‘The Singularity’ is a temper tantrum of a record from someone who had been writing music for other people for 20 years, then all these ideas exploded out.” Two years after the release of the first “Singularity” album, “Ekleipsis” feels more focused and personal to him.
From Anthrax dinners to sessions with Slash, Stewart Copeland and Bulgarian choirs, McCreary’s restless curiosity drives genre-bending songs that wrestle with identity, diaspora and the world listeners are trying to survive.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
The first “Singularity” double album — which featured guests like Serj Tankian, Corey Taylor, Rufus Wainwright and Joe Satriani — tied into a graphic novel about a man who repeatedly experiences loss and death at the hands of a villainous character in his every life across their multiverse. This leads to a major revelation at the end. Although McCreary says that “Ekleipsis” is not disconnected from that universe, it is not strictly tied to a narrative.
“I wasn’t setting out to write a concept album again,” McCreary admits, “but there’s something immediate in all the lyrics. Half of them are specifically talking about the world that we all find ourselves living in and trying to overcome in some way.”
McCreary’s sonic diversity continues with “Ekleipsis.” Gojira frontman Joe Duplantier collaborated with the McCreary brothers and the Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices choir on “Black Box” to create a work of dissonant majesty. The composer improvised his way through the initial stages of “Pray for a Storm,” his high-energy collaboration with famed drummer Stewart Copeland.
“Let’s all go into your studio with nothing,” McCreary recalls telling the irrepressible percussionist. “I’m not even going to bring an idea. We’ll plug in our instruments, set the mics up and play. I want to capture your ideas and your energy, then shape it into a song based on the pieces that I get.”
McCreary sees new endeavors as a learning experience. He meets his collaborators in the way they like to work. He was awed while writing with Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith on the anthemic “Cool Kids.”
“Those guys are true songsmiths,” the composer declares. “I think they’re unrecognized as songwriters. They wrote for Ozzy Osbourne. They’re focused on hammering down a riff until it works. We walked into a studio with a riff that Duff had written and walked out with this song that we brought Slash onto. We got that band experience [with them].”
McCreary is best known for scoring series like “Battlestar Galactica,” “The Walking Dead” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” along with movies such as “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” and the “God of War” video game franchise. He gained entry into metal through a dinner with Anthrax guitarist and “Battlestar” fan Scott Ian two decades ago.
“‘I know you. You’re a guy who loves Sepultura,’” Ian told him, invoking a musical link for the composer. Intrigued, McCreary listened to Sepultura’s folk-infused Brazilian death metal and loved it. His metal journey began.
Ever since, McCreary has been itching to dive into that arena. He has an important collaborator in that quest.
“My brother’s my secret weapon when it comes to rock,” McCreary says. “His body of [rock] knowledge makes up for mine. Our emphasis is in a different place. He is a fantastic producer because he’s got a really good radar for when things are useless, when a part of a song isn’t pulling its weight. It’s a very good influence to have someone like that. He’s got a great lyrical sense and an incredible voice.”
McCreary says Brendan is often the driving force of their lyrical efforts, and “sometimes we co-write with other people. Claudio Sanchez wrote all the lyrics on ‘Sweet Misery.’ It just depends.”
The younger McCreary was the propelling wordsmith on “One Fine Day.” “It’s about our experience as being in the Armenian diaspora and exploring what that means to us,” McCreary elaborates. “All the songs are very personal, which is another thing that sets this record apart from the last record. Many of them were personal, but I also had a weird song about an automaton that fell in love.”
Mentored at USC by Elmer Bernstein, McCreary now leaps from “God of War” themes to a Higgs boson rock musical and a roaring Singularity tour that hits L.A. on Sept. 17.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Before he jammed with rock icons, McCreary was mentored by the late, iconic Elmer Bernstein for nearly the last decade of his life. The burgeoning young composer organized Bernstein’s music archives, sat in on recording sessions and audited his senior-level classes for three years while studying at the Thornton School of Music at USC. McCreary says that Bernstein “really set me on the path that I am now on, not because I learned how to orchestrate or how to write music from him. But he showed me the life that I could envision myself having when I was 15 or 16, that crucial time when you’re really setting the rudder for where you’re going to go in life.”
That rudder has steered him to many shores. McCreary has been co-writing the musical “Particle Fever” with Zoe Sarnak (“Galileo).” Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony winner David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly)” wrote the book, and Tony nominee Leigh Silverman (“Suffs”) is its director. It is based on the documentary of the same name about the discovery of the Higgs boson — the “God particle” — at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN. It will debut at the La Jolla Playhouse in February 2027.
“It is a really kick-ass, earnest rock musical about a really ambitious discovery,” McCreary says. “My hope is that it actually has some of the swagger and fun that people found in ‘Hamilton,’ which also was a very dry subject that you learned about in eighth grade.”
The 47-year-old composer exudes an infectiously upbeat energy. He loves challenges and says he learned that charisma and charm are valuable assets to get in the door to prove one’s talents.
“I’m wired to be very positive and collaborative,” he concedes. “But I got so oppressively excited in my 20s that I started annoying people. My lesson was walk it back.”
His creative energy continues unabated. He’s even scored shorts for filmmakers he met through Twitter. (“I’m down to work.”) He has been blogging about his musical life for 20 years for a core group of followers. (“In hindsight, if Jerry Goldsmith had done that in the ‘80s, my God, my life would be different.”)
McCreary started as a high school keyboardist, then found the accordion in college, an instrument that gave him greater stage motion and which he later used to great effect in his music for the “Outlander” series. He loves to headbang while playing the hurdy-gurdy, an instrument he picked up in 2010 and later employed in the “Black Sails” show and “God of War: Ragnarok” video game. He learned guitar to play rhythm during his 2025 shows.
Those riffs will be on display at the Wacken Open Air festival on Friday and during McCreary’s eight-date September “Singularity” tour of the West Coast that hits L.A. on Sept. 17. McCreary has performed his symphonic scores in Europe and America with orchestras, but now he also loves to rock out (loud).
A big secret of the ambitious McCreary’s success harks back to lessons of simplicity that Bernstein taught him.
“The giant theme that I wrote for ‘God of War’ can be played with one finger on a piano,” McCreary reveals. “That is the thing that it boils down to, and that is what I listen for in music. Most of the time it means there’s a melody in there that sticks with you, and it doesn’t matter how well it is produced or how epic it is or how loud it is. A good song is a good song is a good song, and it really doesn’t matter how good a band performs. If the song is good, it will connect with people.”
New UCLA football coach Bob Chesney has won over cynics with his unflinching optimism and attention to detail.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
The new football coach has infused the completely rebuilt program into a place so energetic, his players run around sharing their inspiration to complete strangers.
“Yeah, we’re gonna win here,” Chesney says.
This shared spirit starts every morning in this building, in the team meeting room, where Chesney orders his players to stand and sing the school fight song as if they are standing on the field after a victory.
The words to the song are displayed on a giant screen, which increasingly isn’t used because most of his players have now learned the song by heart. Those who fail to sing get tagged with a red laser pointer, so pretty much everyone croons.
“I’m not gonna let people put limits on us,” Chesney says. “I’m not gonna let them tell us what we can and can’t do.”
“People say why here?” Chesney says. “I say, why not here?”
He shows up for my early afternoon visit last week dressed uniquely for a $33.75 million coach of a Big Ten school on the outskirts of Hollywood.
He is dressed like a player. Black shirt, black shorts, thin sheen of sweat adorning his expressive forehead.
“Been lifting weights,” he says.
Are weight machines set aside for the coaches?
“Lifting with the players,” he says. “These guys are telling me what to do.”
UCLA coach Bob Chesney stands on the field in between players and shouts instructions during a spring practice.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
Full disclosure: I arranged my visit full of skepticism about this guy that has UCLA fans swooning.
C’mon. Seriously? He’s ready for this? How can he be ready for this?
The son of a small-town high school football coach in Pennsylvania coal country, Chesney had risen from obscurity to … more obscurity. He had previously coached at four different small schools you couldn’t find on a map. Salve Regina? Assumption? What?
This will be Chesney’s first shot under the bright lights. And he is taking that shot with a program whose best shots couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.
The Bruins have not been to the Rose Bowl game in 28 years, and he is going to fix that? They have not won a Rose Bowl game in 41 years, and he was going to change that culture?
The celebrated Chip Kelly couldn’t do it. The emotional Jim Mora Jr. couldn’t do it. The cheerleading Rick Neuheisel couldn’t do it. The cerebral Karl Dorrell couldn’t do it. The affable Bob Toledo thought he had done it until his team inexplicably quit on him just 60 minutes from a berth in the national championship game.
I had covered all of these coaches, hearing their annual promises, seeing their annual collapses, realizing USC had a stranglehold on the college football money and attention in this town, and I had come up with an inescapable conclusion.
What Chesney is trying to do with UCLA football can’t be done.
Then I met him.
The best word to describe initial impressions of the 48-year-old former college safety would be, wow.
He talks fast. He oozes belief. He sells UCLA. He sells himself. He doesn’t shrink from his giant task. He doesn’t rationalize or equivocate his team’s sordid history.
He’s like one of those charming smart kids who never takes no for an answer.
“I feel it,” he says.”I feel it.”
No wonder his recruiting has been phenomenal, ranked seventh nationwide for the class of 2027, a trend that began this summer with 42 transfers, many of whom will start. No wonder he has been recognized by fans while hanging out in West Hollywood or Griffith Observatory or Dodger Stadium, where he’s already sat wide-eyed in a meeting with Dodger manager and UCLA grad Dave Roberts and Sandy Koufax.
He feels it, and the Bruin Nation feels it with him.
“Everybody’s included,” he says. “You wanna be included? C’mon, you’re included.”
As the self-proclaimed driver of the Bruin bandwagon in recent years — only to be derailed by midseason every time — I’ll pass on the inclusion. I’ve got to see it before buying it. But right now, Chesney has worked me up into such a lather that, yeah, I’m believing.
First, Chesney points to his resume, a litany of small schools who accumulated big victories, a dossier that includes only one losing season and none in the last seven years.
His head coaching career started at Division III Salve Regina (Rhode Island), where he turned eight consecutive losing seasons into three straight winning seasons.
“‘You can’t win there, nobody can win there’ is what they said,” Chesney says. “We won there.”
James Madison coach Bob Chesney and running back Wayne Knight celebrate after winning the Sun Belt championship on Dec. 5 in Harrisonburg, Va.
(Robert Simmons / Associated Press)
Then there was Division II Assumption in Massachusetts, where he took a team that had two winning records in 17 years and led them to five consecutive winning records and three straight playoff appearances.
“They said, ‘You can’t do it, nobody can do it,’’’ Chesney says. “We did it.”
Then there was Holy Cross, also in Massachusetts, where he took the team to a record five straight Patriot League championships while advancing as deep as the FCS quarterfinals.
“They told us, ‘The academics are too tough, the tuition is too high, you can’t win there,’’’ Chesney recounts. “We won there.”
Finally there was James Madison in Virginia, where he took a team whose stars had all followed Curt Cignetti to Indiana and still triumphed, leading them to a Cinderella appearance in the College Football Playoff.
“A lot of people doubted it, a lot of people didn’t believe it could work,” Chesney says. “We’ve proved a lot of people wrong throughout the years.”
After his resume, Chesney points to his surroundings. He is more awed by UCLA’s gravitas than any other football coach I can remember. It’s clear he can sell the school because he has such respect for the school.
“Here you’re a handshake away from changing your life … the school has an 8% acceptance rate, you’re walking around this campus with valedictorians and future CEOs and doctors and lawyers,” he says. “You’re surrounded by greatness, you have a chance to breathe this rare air that very few people get a chance to breathe.”
But for Chesney to fill this air with a football championship requires a price. It is a price that, so far, many potential donors have been reluctant to pay. But in today’s college football world, it is the cost of doing business.
Face it, Cignetti couldn’t have changed Indiana’s fortunes so rapidly if it wasn’t for Mark Cuban money. Chesney believes he can do the same thing here … with a little push.
Longtime UCLA donor Angelo Mazzone chipped in $10 million recently, and more such gifts are needed for UCLA to be able to pay the players that bring them a championship.
”There’s a major financial commitment that comes with getting those four- and five-star kids, but we can really turn the tables with that kind of help,” Chesney says. “Every single thing that is needed is here, we just have to make sure we get the support from the people on the outside that we need to actualize our dream.”
UCLA coach Bob Chesney shares his vision for the program during his introductory news conference on Dec. 9.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
He’s doing all the right things while chasing that dream.
Even as his bosses are pushing to move the team out of the Rose Bowl to SoFi Stadium, he loves the Rose Bowl, and took his team there for its spring game on a weekend that began with him standing outside the brightly lit marquee with his father and his son in the dark.
“It was one of those moments, I was like, man, the history of this place … to me to play in the Rose Bowl, what an honor and a privilege,” he says.
The game actually drew a decent spring crowd of 10,000-12,000, partially because Chesney had worked so hard at banging the drum. He and his players even brought pizzas to various campus groups in hopes of enlisting support.
“You want to be around this program, you can be around this program,” he says.
Then there’s his opinion of USC. He doesn’t have one. He never mentions them. For a UCLA coach, this is a good thing.
“I guess we’re perceived to be in their shadow, and for whatever reasons we weren’t an option the last couple of years, but look at our recruiting, I know we’re becoming an option for L.A. again,” Chesney says. “I think you can change a lot of people’s opinions on who they want to be rooting for.”
As in all levels of football, it all comes down to the quarterback, and Chesney had his first win by convincing budding star Nico Iamaleava. The kid was roundly criticized in this space for holding out and then walking out on his Tennessee team last year, but he has since grown up, and could be the sort of game-changer that Chesney requires.
“Watching Nico with his athletic ability, his arm, creating plays after the play with his legs, I have very high hopes,” says Chesney.
There are potentially outstanding transfers at half of the positions, and, with some solid returning players — this is a team that beat seventh-ranked Penn State, remember — the Bruins have a decent foundation.
UCLA coach Bob Chesney pats running back Anthony Woods on the helmet during the team’s spring game at the Rose Bowl on May 2.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Throw in a favorable 2026 schedule that doesn’t include Ohio State or Penn State or Washington or Iowa, and one thinks they might even have a chance at making some miracles.
“You’re going to see a different brand of football, one that is united, that is passionate, that is physical, that is tough, that has a lot of fun playing together,” he said.
You’re also going to hear a sound that died in the brief DeShaun Foster era, a sound that has never lasted more than a couple of weeks in the last 30 years.
That rumble is the Bruin football bandwagon. It’s revving up again. The inimitable force that is Bob Chesney wants to include you on the start of its journey.
As performers protest and studios sue in their war on artificial intelligence, the entertainment industry is deepening its dependence on it.
Although few places are better than Hollywood at crafting a narrative and concealing what happens off-frame, a Los Angeles Times survey of job postings sheds light on what is happening offstage.
Among hundreds of job postings in late June, more than one in 10 was likely connected to AI. The top studios’ public postings suggest they have been recruiting people to build AI tools. They are also recruiting teams to defend their intellectual property against unauthorized AI use.
“There are plenty of studios that are hiring [for AI] but never talk about it in public,” said Yoland Yan, a co-founder of ComfyUI, a company that helps studios juggle different AI tools.
Companies have been hesitant to detail how they use generative AI in film production — partly because they are concerned about consumer and union backlash.
The Walt Disney Studios complex on May 3 in Burbank.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
Some in Hollywood described AI use as the new cosmetic surgery, where everyone knows it is happening, but few will admit to it.
Recent want ads show Amazon MGM Studios trying to find a principal AI executive and Walt Disney Studios advertising for a production innovation technologist job.
“What you’re seeing in those job postings is that adoption is already happening,” said Bryn Mooser, chief executive of Asteria, an AI film studio.
Netflix recently posted a job that didn’t exist a year ago.
The streamer was hiring for the role of “Manager, Generative Workflows,” a job to help integrate more AI into Netflix films. It promised hands-on experience with the cutting-edge technology.
“The industry is flooded with speculative GenAI roadmaps, but few are battle-tested in production,” the post said, referring to generative AI. The post said the role will work on introducing AI into Netflix’s slate of films being released in the U.S. and Canada.
Although some companies may be shy about sharing their AI plans, big stars who don’t have to answer to others have been more open about their embrace of the new technology for storytelling.
An exterior view of the Netflix sign at Netflix on Vine in Hollywood in 2025.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Rejecting AI is like picking a horse and buggy over a car, said “Star Wars” creator George Lucas.
“Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies,” he told a trade magazine earlier this year. “There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s progress. It’s the future.”
Some in Hollywood have a softer stance on artificial intelligence, with studios cutting deals with AI companies, and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese backing AI companies.
Ben Affleck launched an AI film tech company then sold it to Netflix for half a billion dollars.
When launching InterPositive, Affleck said he wanted to keep “storytelling human” by building AI tools that could fix lighting, generate missing shots and other things while “keeping creative decisions in the hands of artists.”
The Times’ survey turned up two senior InterPositive roles to update the programming to apply AI to visual effects .
The Culver Studios on Feb. 12 in Culver City.
(Kayla Bartkowski/Los Angeles Times)
To gauge what is happening behind the scenes, The Times used Claude Code to build a scraper to identify job postings at Disney, Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony, Netflix and Amazon MGM. It found around 250 film studio job postings that were still public as of late June. Around 30 of those seemed to be connected to AI.
Disney, Netflix and Amazon had job postings that were about using AI on the creative side of the business. Universal, Paramount, Warner Bros. and Sony had job ads suggesting they were also using AI but for marketing, distribution and audience analytics.
The postings suggest the Disney, Netflix and Amazon studios are building repeatable AI workflows for visual effects, animation, sound and dubbing. The companies also seem to be building in-house teams to develop custom generative-AI models, while also using third-party software.
None of the jobs advertised were to create AI that wrote scripts or created AI actors.
Disney’s ten or so AI jobs showed the century-old studio building out its AI research and production muscle, while protecting its vault of beloved characters.
Mouse House is hiring PhD-level talent to study “computer graphics and AI” for Pixar and Disney films, people to “bridge the gap between research and practical studio application.”
Industrial Light & Magic, the Disney-owned visual effects shop, was searching for supervisors to “explore emerging technologies (including AI/Machine Learning)” to develop new production workflows.
The company’s audio post-production unit, Skywalker Sound, seemed to be recruiting to build proprietary AI models for soundtracks, voice separation, and voice transfer, the process of taking a speaker’s tone and pitch, and applying it to new content.
Disney was also hiring to defend itself. Three of its jobs were for “content security” to assess AI tools and guard against piracy, watermarking and rights-protection work.
The company’s public posture has so far been pursuing lawsuits against AI companies for inappropriate use of copyrighted material, and it pulled out of its plans to invest $1 billion in an equity investment deal with OpenAI.
Netflix’s posts suggested it is bringing more AI to the creative side of its business.
Netflix’s senior director of creative innovation, Girish Balakrishnan, outlined at the Runway AI film festival how AI was used to create soccer fans in “Brazil ’70” and establish shots for fight scenes in “Glory.”
Amazon, an early adopter, was hiring a principal AI executive to drive AI-tool adoption across production, plus roles in operations automation and LLM content classification, the listings revealed.
The Seattle-based streamer has been the most aggressive AI adopter in studios, and commissioned three AI animation series through its GenAI creator fund in May. Amazon has also bankrolled a Manhattan Beach production services company, Innovative Dream.
Even as studios build bigger AI teams, many in the industry are resisting, and some film fans are concerned.
The actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA in June ratified a new four-year contract with special protections against synthetic performers, and the union has backed a national bill designed to protect individuals from unauthorized, AI-generated digital replicas.
Studios have met with the union twice a year since 2023 to provide a confidential report on their AI-related activities. The studios tell the union they aren’t yet using AI that would entirely replace humans, said a person familiar with the discussions.
The union says it has no evidence that generative AI is being used to create performances, and the studios are supposed to notify the union if that happens.
Actors, writers, production staff and movie fans are still resistant to the overuse of AI and defining when and where it is acceptable, so studios are treading lightly, said AI film studio CEO Mooser.
“It’s been really a challenging thing to adopt both socially, ethically and legally, but we are seeing more adoption of it than we’ve ever seen before,” he said.
Over the weekend, the Academy Museumannounced that it will honor Mexican and Mexican American film history in an upcoming exhibition titled “Cinelandia: Celebrating Mexican American Cinema.”
Currently scheduled to open in September 2027 — likely to coincide with the onset of Hispanic Heritage Month — the showcase will span from the silent film era to the present day and examine movies from both sides of the border.
The idea for the exhibition was first discussed back in 2019 and work on it officially began in late 2022, Academy Museum associate curator Sophia Serrano told The Times.
The display will focus mostly on Mexican American cinema, but examines those films in conversation with Mexican features and other Spanish-language movies, made both in Hollywood and internationally.
Films included in the exhibit will be Day of the Dead flicks like “The Book of Life” and Disney’s “Coco” — as well as the Spanish-language version of the 1931 horror classic “Dracula,” plus director Luis Valdez’s “La Bamba” and “Zoot Suit.” Three groundbreaking works by Gregory Nava will also be honored: the Oscar-nominated “El Norte,” “My Family/Mi Familia” and the Jennifer Lopez-led biopic “Selena.”
Among the classic Mexican films included are the 1932 film “Santa,” which was the first Mexican narrative sound movie, as well as 1946’s “Enamorada.” Features from Mexico’s Oscar-winning “three amigos” of cinema — Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro Iñárritu — will also be highlighted.
Along with curator Serrano, “Cinelandia” is guided by a 12-person advisory panel: cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz; UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus Rosa-Linda Fregoso; LACMA curator and head of contemporary art Rita Gonzalez; animator-director Jorge R. Gutiérrez; writer-director Cristina Ibarra; Pitzer College professor Jesse Lerner; director-writer Carlos López Estrada; University of Arizona assistant professor Orquidea Morales; director Gregory Nava; UCLA professor Chon Noriega; University of Texas at Austin professor Charles Ramirez Berg; and USC professor Laura Isabel Serna.
Given that L.A. County’s population is almost 50% Latino, Serrano noted that part of the exhibition’s aim is to connect to the millions of Latinos in the county and show how they’ve been critical in informing the cultural landscape of L.A.
“Mexican American cinema is … a big part of Los Angeles’ history,” Serrano said. “We want this exhibition to connect with the broader Los Angeles community, as well as illuminate the history behind many of the beloved films from Mexican American and Mexican filmmakers. The exhibition is designed to offer something for everyone and bring people of all ages and backgrounds together to celebrate this important cultural heritage.”
“Many of the films and artists featured in the exhibition draw attention to or push against these challenges in a variety of ways,” Serrano said. “A guiding principle of the exhibition is foregrounding the voices of film artists themselves via interviews, written quotes, and guest curations and collaborations alongside the hundreds of original objects that will go on display, and this aims to tell an earnest and engaging story about this history.”
“We are also aiming to show how vast the contributions of Mexican American artists are, and these histories are often unknown or underrecognized. It’s essential that the exhibition celebrates these moments of impact and influence in a dynamic and educational manner.”
“Cinelandia” isn’t the museum’s first foray into identity-based exhibitions centered on underrepresented populations. In 2022, the museum opened the “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” exhibition which highlighted the work of Black creatives from filmmaking’s early days through the civil rights movement. The showcase — which closed in April 2023 — tackled such themes as the representation of Black people in early cinema (1897-1915), the era of “race films” made by Black filmmakers for Black audiences (1910s-1940s), musical films and stories born of the civil rights movement.
The museum’s ongoing showcase titled “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” explores the stories of the Jewish filmmakers and studio founders who helped cement the L.A. area as the world capital of entertainment.
A section of Sunset Boulevard remained closed on Sunday because of last week’s destructive water main break, with officials saying they didn’t know when repairs to the 110-year-old pipe would be completed or the street reopened.
“While there is no set completion date yet, our crews remain dedicated to finishing the repairs as quickly and safely as possible,” the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said in a Sunday release.
Some West Hollywood residents remained displaced Sunday from apartments where underground garages were flooded by Thursday’s water main rupture. And some businesses near the scene remained indefinitely closed.
An aerial view of workers viewing a broken water main at Sunset Boulevard and Holloway Drive in West Hollywood that sent water gushing down many streets, closing several of them Thursday.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Vanessa Lopez, an LADWP spokeswoman, said that two other water pipe ruptures on Saturday — one in Venice and another in Hollywood — had been repaired.
The city received a report of yet another break on an 8-inch water main at 1501 Lincoln Blvd. on Sunday morning, she said, which crews were still working to repair.
Lopez said those breaks were not related to each other or to Thursday’s fracture of the far bigger pipe in West Hollywood, which was constructed in 1916.
Officials said Sunday that Sunset Boulevard remains closed between Sherbourne Drive and San Vicente Boulevard, with limited local access on nearby streets including Cynthia and San Vicente.
City officials urged the public to avoid the area.
LADWP said tap water in West Hollywood remains safe to drink, but officials encouraged residents to conserve.
With the 36-inch water transmission line undergoing repairs, West Hollywood is currently being served by an 8-inch distribution pipe. Residents may notice low water pressure, especially those living in upper-floor apartments, officials said.
Book Soup, a popular bookstore on Sunset Blvd, was one of the shops and restaurants forced to close after streets were flooded.
“For the safety of staff and the community, we’re keeping the store closed for the time being,” an employee said in a recording on its answering machine Sunday.
“We want to reassure everyone that the store is completely fine and our books are safe and dry,” she added.
Thursday’s fracture was on a steel pipe that forms the major arteries for water delivery from reservoirs and tanks to smaller distribution lines across Los Angeles. That section of the Sunset Trunk Line had been slated for replacement in 2031, according to the utility.
In 2019, LADWP said roughly 29% of the city’s pipes were over 80 years old, nearing their typical 100-year lifespan.
When the trunk line ruptured early Thursday morning, millions of gallons of water gushed down Holloway Drive, inundating businesses and flooding underground parking garages.
Repairs to a water main on Sunset Boulevard Saturday in West Hollywood.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman estimated that between 150 and 200 cars were damaged or destroyed in the flood.
The leak was stopped after a few hours, leaving a giant sinkhole in the middle of Sunset Boulevard.
On Saturday, city crews replaced a 25-foot section of the line. Workers have refilled the pipe with water and are now working to repressurize it, officials said Sunday.
The workers must then disinfect the pipe with chlorine and test the water’s quality for safety. The hole in Sunset Blvd. will then be filled and the street repaired, officials said.
Residents and businesses who lost property and suffered damages can find information about filing claims at www.LADWP.com/Claims.
California has some of the nation’s toughest gun laws, but state lawmakers are concerned that a new technology is allowing criminals to obtain firearms by building them from scratch. By using 3-D printers, they warn, lawbreakers are able to make key components of untraceable “ghost guns” with the press of a button.
Ghost guns, which authorities say make it more difficult to investigate shootings because they lack serial numbers, have been a growing problem for law enforcement nationwide. According to federal data, the number of privately made firearms recovered in crimes surged from more than 1,600 in 2017 to nearly 27,500 in 2023. California leads the nation in recoveries over that period.
In response, legislators are seeking to mandate that all 3-D printers sold in the state come equipped with software that prohibits users from making triggers and other gun parts. A bill passed the Assembly in May and is advancing through the Senate.
But the proposal has drawn opposition from a diverse coalition, which includes civil liberties groups, tech companies and 3-D printing enthusiasts as well as Hollywood effects studios, who argue that “firearm blocking software” will also prohibit legitimate designs and expose makers to government or corporate surveillance.
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Inside a San Fernando workshop, Samuel McBride makes movie monsters come to life for the camera. One of his latest creations, an animatronic hand, clutches when he pulls a trigger that he built using a 3-D printer.
McBride says the technology has transformed the work at Legacy Effects, where he is a lab manager, but he’s worried it will soon be off-limits because of a proposed change in California law.
McBride fears the law would interfere with the making of devices like the one that activates his lifelike hand.
“If I just took apart this trigger and put it on a printer, how is anyone, computer or human, going to tell me how I intend to use it?” he asked.
Backers of the proposed law say it has the potential to help save lives.
“As gun violence continues to devastate our communities, we cannot allow 3-D printing technology to become a new pipeline for untraceable weapons,” said Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, the bill’s author.
Critics of the proposed California law note that 3-D printed guns represent a small subset of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement at crime scenes. According to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, most “privately made firearms” recovered by police are assembled from mail-order kits or unfinished parts rather than printed at home.
Jorge Perez of Monster City Studios holds a sculpture made with a large, industrial 3-D printer.
(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
“This fight is not over whether ghost guns are dangerous,” said David Tobin, an independent creator leading the coalition. “It is over whether the state can or should require a consumer tool to surveil a person’s designs before they are allowed to make something.”
Everytown for Gun Safety, a national nonprofit that advocates for gun control and has pushed for the passage of California’s bill, pointed to rising 3-D printed firearm recoveries across 20 major cities and warned that homemade plastic parts can help people bypass background checks or turn handguns into automatic weapons.
Krystal LoPilato, who advocates for policy at Everytown, said the group has successfully guided a similar bill through the New York state Legislature.
A handgun frame made using a 3-D printer is held for display at the office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
LoPilato said the policy aims to be proactive, rather than allowing more violence to take place before regulating the problem. Opponents counter that California already bars unlawful firearm manufacturing with 3-D printers, and that ghost gun recoveries have declined since the state adopted a series of new laws and enforcement efforts.
A June 1 letter to lawmakers, signed by a group of 3-D printing companies, stagecraft and prop-making studios and industry stakeholders, argued that AB 2047 raises 1st Amendment concerns and would harm businesses. The letter was signed by a wide variety of companies and individuals, including Prusa Research, a prominent 3-D printer manufacturer.
“To an algorithm, a gun barrel and a piece of pipe are the same grooved cylinder,” Jakub Kmošek, head of public affairs at Prusa, said in a statement to The Times. “This bill will only make it harder to build, repair, experiment, and innovate in California.”
Alan Scott, Legacy Effects’ co-founder, said 3-D printing has become central to the company’s survival in an industry where budgets are tighter and deadlines are shorter.
“Everything’s just got to be done faster these days. You don’t get to reduce the quality. We couldn’t stay in business if we weren’t 3-D printing,” Scott said.
To solve this problem, Bauer-Kahan put an entertainment industry exception in the bill, exempting “printers manufactured for and sold exclusively to entertainment industry stagecraft and propmaking studios” from the software requirement.
McBride, Legacy’s 3-D lab manager, said those printers do not really exist.
Legacy uses the same general-purpose machines available to other businesses willing to invest in the equipment, and no printers are marketed exclusively for Hollywood, he said.
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1.A 3-D printed sculpture concept at Monster City, a special effects studio in Santa Clarita.(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)2.3-D printing advocate David Tobin showcases a robotics kit at Monster City.(Ronaldo Bolaños / Los Angeles Times)
Legacy also worries about privacy. Major studios require strict secrecy before a movie or show is released. To accommodate this, the company shares design files through encrypted servers and protected internal systems.
“We’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring all that technology here under the umbrella of our NDAs and our IP protection,” McBride said.
Bauer-Kahan noted at a Senate hearing that she is working to address concerns raised by 3-D printing users and industries that rely on the technology.
Paul Powers, chief executive of Physna, a company whose technology could be used to block gun parts on 3-D printers, said the strongest criticisms of AB 2047 “misunderstand how the software works.”
“Something that vaguely looks like a gun part is not considered to be a match,” he said.
Powers also responded to surveillance concerns by clarifying that his company’s software only blocks the printer from making prohibited parts — it doesn’t flag them to authorities or log users’ intellectual property.
“There’s no communication with anyone; it doesn’t go anywhere,” he said.
But Marleen Vogelaar, chief executive of Thangs3D, a platform for independent creators to share and sell 3-D printable designs, said that answer does not resolve her broader concerns about how AB 2047 would work in practice.
“These databases will always lag behind innovation and can be easily circumvented and generate false positives that block legal designs and wrongly flag everyday makers,” she said at a Senate hearing this month. “The bill also creates serious privacy and security risks by giving third parties access to analyze designer’s files. That threatens intellectual property and adds digital surveillance in a state that values data privacy.”
If the bill passes, the state’s Department of Justice would publish a roster of compliant printers. Printers not on the list would be banned from sale or transfer in California beginning in December 2029.
Aubrey Rodriguez, a legislative advocate with American Civil Liberties Union California Action, an advocacy organization formed by the ACLU’s three affiliates in the state, said the bill would ask ordinary users, schools and businesses to accept a new layer of control based on software they still do not trust.
Rodriguez said the proposal risks creating “a permanent back door into the privacy of our own homes, ripe for exploitation.”
“Once this new infrastructure exists, it is a simple software update away from tracking political dissent or preventing 3-D printing designs deemed inappropriate,” Rodriguez said.
Hardly anyone walking up Peppertree Lane notices the Hollywood Bowl Museum on the way to the amphitheater entrance. The overlooked museum, however, has been refreshed with an enchanting new exhibition. Well-timed, it provides an excellent primer on changing L.A. mores seen through the history of the Bowl over the past century.
Change is again upon us. As Angelenos have evolved, so have our ideas about the Bowl. A concert was a concert and audiences of yore dressed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, indoors or out. Men wore coats, ties and fedoras. I have a photo of my mother at the Bowl on a chilly 1940s evening sporting, like other ladies around her in the inexpensive bleachers, her mink stole.
The Bowl was said to boast, before the construction of the Hollywood Freeway, a natural acoustical, well, bowl. Even so, sonic adventurers, beginning with Leopold Stokowski in the 1930s, experimented with amplification in an obsessive, seemingly quixotic effort to locate a mythical sonic grail on the Cahuenga Pass. Boys with their toys, thought The Times’ feisty critic Isabelle Morse Jones.
We now have it with a spectacular new sound system along with the old caveat: Beware of what you wish for.
The Bowl, of course, remains the Bowl. Last week when the Los Angeles Philharmonic opened its summer season in the venue it built and has managed for over a century, there were all the familiar alfresco and musical pleasures: convivial picnicking, fine weather, inimitable atmosphere, a white-jacketed orchestra on an iconic stage. The museum’s panorama of ageless ambience is this summer enhanced by increased yet snappy security and a handsome “John Williams Stage” plaque honoring L.A.’s beloved composer.
The newly designed white French loudspeakers suspended over the Bowl stage along with ground-level white cubes of super-effective subwoofers have clean, unobtrusive lines that well fit the shell. Their unobtrusive placement complements their immersive musicality, hitherto only possible outdoors with high-end earphones or headphones connected to sophisticated digital acoustic conversion equipment costing a bundle. For the first time, a dollar seat (there are still a few for the L.A. Phil) strives for such sonic bliss.
It feels miraculous. You are in an excellent concert hall-like acoustical environment while in the great outdoors. Our earbuds have already trained us to think of music as a private escape from reality. Even so, to be in that environmentally exclusive sonic world while sharing music with thousands of others in a special setting, ironically begins to feel more artificially escapist than a crummy sound system that reminds you of where you are.
Will we — should we — learn to love it and find anything less artificial? Car audio systems creating concert hall conditions suggest we will. Audiophiles well know that you get used to new equipment, no matter how revelatory it first sounds, very quickly.
A few years ago, when I heard a demonstration of a souped-up, hi-res recording in surround Dolby Atmos of excerpts from Wagner’s “Die Walküre” on a 32-speaker Burmester audio system crammed into a fancy Mercedes SUV, I was scared out of my wits. “Apocalypse Now” on the 405 is not for the faint of heart.
Yet I’ve spared no expense on what I find a more refined sound system in my Volvo, which I now use more and more for audio books than music. The richer, more human quality of a recorded voice is like having a virtual companion reading to you. I’m less in a hurry. It’s nice to have a pal at rush hour.
It is far too soon to say what ways the fabulous new Bowl sound system, which happens to be AI-endowed, might become friend and/or foe. In the first two L.A. Phil classical concerts, the white speakers brought out wonders and caused problems. But the minimal Bowl rehearsal time allows little opportunity to fine-tune.
One big change in Bowl priorities has been the rise of pop as king. Not that long ago, the L.A. Phil’s opening night was the Bowl opening night, suitable for conspicuous socialite picnicking. Not only has the Bowl opener been turned over to star pop performers (who bring in bigger bucks), this year there wasn’t even a first L.A. Phil Tuesday. That date became yet another money-maker with private event — a screening of “Moana” with live orchestra, luckily before the disappointing reviews and box office performance. The first L.A. Phil concert of the season was moved to Wednesday and poorly attended.
The back-to-back Wednesday and Thursday night programs featured music composed and performed by Americans. Each included a short new work commissioned by the L.A. Phil. On Wednesday, moonlighting Hollywood Bowl Orchestra music director Thomas Wilkins led the premiere of Shaina Taub’s “Suffs” Song Cycle — orchestrations of four songs from her recent musical about women’s suffrage that played just down the road at the Pantages last year. The next evening, Tito Muñoz made a strong L.A. Phil debut in a program that included the premiere of “The Art of the Goal,” celebrating Los Angeles Football Club, and that was credited jointly to filmmaker Josh Kahn and composer Adam Schoenberg.
Both premieres were reminders that the sound system will have many purposes. In “Suffs,” stalwart amplification emphasized the predictability of forthright lyrics and score. AI is supposed to make voices stand out, but it is not helpful to singers’ limitations. On the other hand, is brought out the sumptuous quality Alex Newell’s voice potently making the adamant “Keep Marching” keep marching.
Muñoz’s program was titled “The Classical World Cup,” with music by Argentine composer Alberto Ginastera, Mexican composer Silvestre Revueltas and U.S. composers Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland along with Schoenberg. As it turned out, Mexico and the U.S. were already out of World Cup competition, and “Art of the Goal” came across as an eight-minute advertisement for the L.A. footballers. They’re in the dressing room revving up and, on the field, revved up, sped up, cut up with music that excites and far too many shots of a soccer field lined with advertisements, just the kind of branding we hope to escape at the Bowl.
Then again, even though “Goal” was shown only on video monitors, the Bowl with its new sound system worked brilliantly as the grandest cinema on the planet. Hollywood may be hurting, but let the Bowl now save the day by inspiring Hollywood to reinvent, in its backyard, film with live music.
As for regular orchestral music, the sound system was hit and miss. On Wilkins’ program, Valerie Coleman’s dark “Fanfare for Uncommon Times” brought a listener inside brass and percussion. Leonard Bernstein’s lavish orchestrations of his “Three Dances from ‘On the Town’” and Ellington’s “Harlem” benefited from Wilkins’ low-key conducting, offering ease and freedom to the players.
Muñoz’s program was bookended by dance scores — Ginastera’s “Four Dances from ‘Estancia’” and Copland’s ballet “Billy the Kid” — that evoke the prairie and the people in it in both viscerally and spiritually. The new sound system and eager performances made the prairie feel close. In between, violinist Randall Goosby brought richness to Barber’s Violin Concerto and the L.A. went in for gripping weirdness in “Sensemayá.”
But who did what? Were balances the conductors’, the sound engineers’, AI’s? While the amplified soundstage is now as huge as the Bowl, attention was increasingly drawn to individuals, heightened by video closeups. A horn flub (and horns flub) stands out. The sound is not just big and bold, but scrubbed clean by AI with the goal of maddening perfection. Will such scrutiny, in the end, make players uptight or liberate them? It’s well to remember that in the early days of synthesizing instruments, violins with perfect vibrato sounded especially fake, until tiny errors generated by chance were added to the sine waves.
The Hollywood Bowl has created a beast. If humanized, the Bowl could serve as antidote to a worrisome AI future. But the question remains whether we can change AI or the newly potent sound waves only make matters worse.
IT WAS must-see viewing for Britain’s teenagers slumped on the sofa on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The cool young cast of T4 delivered zany segments and upbeat links between popular programmes including Hollyoaks and Shipwrecked.
And now as a former teen telly icon is given a peer by Keir Starmer we reveal where some of the other popular TV presenters are now.
Vernon Kay, June Sarpong, Steve Jones, Miquita Oliver and Anthony Crank on T4 in 2005Credit: Getty
June Sarpong (2000-2007)
June Sarpong was made an OBE for services to broadcasting in 2021Credit: Getty
SHE was a working class immigrant kid who grew up on a council estate but now TV star June Sarpong is taking a seat in the House of Lords.
The proud honour marks a meteoric rise for June, 49, who first appeared on our screens as a host of MTV before joining the iconic Noughties show T4 way back in 2000.
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She was awarded an MBE for services to broadcasting and has made a name for herself as a high profile equality campaigner.
As she celebrated the political honour yesterday, June said: “Words cannot even begin to describe how truly honoured and humbled I feel to have been appointed to the House of Lords by Keir Starmer on his final Honours list.
June with co-host Vernon Kay 25 years agoCredit: Channel 4
“As a working class immigrant kid from a council estate in East London it is not lost on me what this means.
“As I embark on this next chapter, I look forward to being able to use this role to further champion the causes and issues that are dear to my heart.”
But June is not the only former member of the T4 gang who has gone on to bigger and better things.
It was a hugely successful launchpad for many of the most familiar faces on TV today.
Dermot O’Leary (1998-2001)
Dermot moved from T4 to Big Brother Little BrotherCredit: E4
A baby faced skinhead, Dermot was part of the original presenting line up when T4 first launched.
Before that he had been a DJ on Radio Essex but Dermot, now 53, proved such a success with the viewers that Channel 4 swiftly selected him to front spin off show Big Brother’s Little Brother until 2008.
He has since landed a string of high profile presenting gigs including The X-Factor which he hosted for 11 years.
Now Dermot has a Radio 2 show and fronts This Morning on Fridays, as well as publishing a string of hugely successful children’s books about Toto The Ninja Cat.
Margherita Taylor (1999-2001)
Dermot O’Leary and Margherita Taylor in 2000Credit: Alamy
She was a DJ at Birmingham based radio station BRMB when she took part in a radio contest and moved to Capital Radio.
From there Margherita landed a spot on T4’s starting line-up alongside Dermot and Vernon Kay and never looked back.
Ben Shephard got his big break on the teen telly hitCredit: Handout
Ben, 51, was a regular host of Channel 4’s spin-off morning show The Bigger Breakfast when bosses decided to put him on T4.
Just two years later he joined ITV’s GMTV as an entertainment host, then as a main presenter in 2005.
He quit the show in 2010, weeks before it was axed anyway, but returned to ITV in 2014 to front the newly-launched Good Morning Britain, where he remains as one of the country’s most recognisable presenters.
Now the much loved millionaire dad of two is rarely off the box, having swapped his seat at the Good Morning Britain newsdesk for the sofa at This Morning alongside Cat Deeley.
Ben has also hosted hit gameshows including The Summit, Tipping Point and Ninja Warrior UK.
Vernon Kay (2000-2005)
Vernon at the 2005 T4 Honours AwardsCredit: GettyVernon and Tess Daly called time on their marriage this yearCredit: Alamy
Hunky Bolton lad Vern was working as a model when he was scouted by TV bosses to front T4 and soared to stardom.
After quitting the show All Star Family Fortunes made him a household name.
His 23 year marriage to Strictly’s Tess Daly has crumbled but this week he was named as one of the BBC’s best paid presenters, raking in a staggering £450,000 a year for his Radio 2 mid-morning show, Alternative Dance Sounds of the 90s and other appearances.
Steve Jones (2003-2010)
A naked Steve Jones playing guitar with June SarpongCredit: Channel 4Former T4 presenter Steve Jones in 2007Credit: PA:Press Association
Welsh lad Steve, 49, – who stripped off several times on the show, was one of T4’s best loved presenters when Simon Cowell chose him to present the American version of The X Factor.
But the show bombed and Steve was axed after just one series.
The former model went on to present a property show called Perfect House, Secret Location and appeared on This Morning before landing a full time gig in 2016 to lead the presenting team for Channel 4’s F1 coverage.
Miquita Oliver (2006-2010)
Miquita Oliver and former co-host Simon AmstellCredit: Channel 4
While most of the original T4 crew were newbies, Miquita already had five years of telly experience under her belt having fronted Popworld with Simon Amstell.
But she was suspended from T4 in 2010 after being overheard insulting singer Kesha.
She has also claimed she lost a job on Radio 1 for “saying silly things”.
Since then fashion favourite Miquita, 42, has been on a string of TV programmes, including Celebrity Gogglebox alongside her mum Andi, and has a hit podcast with her pal Lily Allen.
Rick Edwards (2007-2011)
Nick Grimshaw, Rick Edwards and Jameela Jamil at T4 On The Beach in 2011Credit: Getty
Rick, 47, was performing stand-up comedy at Cambridge University when he was spotted by T4 producers who gave him his first TV job.
Since then he went on to land a string of presenting gigs including Tool Academy, Made in Chelsea, Freshly Squeezed, E4 Music, and much of Channel 4‘s 2012 Paralympics coverage.
Rick has also hosted a BBC One quiz show called !mpossible and now he can be heard on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast Show every morning, as well as Fighting Talk on Saturdays and their Premier League review on Sundays.
Alexa Chung (2008-2009)
Nick Grimshaw and Alexa ChungCredit: Not known, clear with picture deskAlexa Chung was a familiar face on the show in 2008Credit: Splash News
Fashion icon Alexa, 42, began working as a model after she was scouted at the Reading Festival at the age of 16. She joined Popworld alongside Alex Zane in 2006 before joining T4 two years later.
She famously inspired the Alexa handbag by British designer Mulberry, and has dated big names like Arctic Monkey’s Alex Turner and actor Alexander Skarsgard.
She pivoted back to style and lifestyle content on TV for shows like Gok’s Fashion Fix, Next In Fashion and now runs her own lucrative fashion label.
Jameela Jamil (2009-2012)
Alexa Chung and Jameela Jamil at V Festival 2010Credit: Getty – Contributor
London born Actress and activist Jameela, 40, was working as a school teacher when she was scouted by a TV producer in a bar.
She followed Alexa on to music show Freshly Squeezed alongside Nick Grimshaw and became a DJ on Radio 1 and the event circuit – with her first show being at Elton John’s birthday party.
In 2016 she moved to LA to become a screenwriter but ended up landing a role in American hit comedy The Good Place as Tahani Al-Jamil.
She’s also become an outspoken campaigner for equality and is dating pop star James Blake.
Nick Grimshaw (2010-2012)
Breakfast show star Nick GrimshawCredit: Alamy
Grimmy started out in student radio before landing a job on Radio 1’s Switch youth programme in 2007.
His career really kicked off the following year when he landed the station’s weekend breakfast show, before moving to a late-night presenting slot.
In 2010, Nick, 41, added T4 to his roster, fronting it until he was promoted to the Beeb’s breakfast show, replacing Chris Moyles.
Paramount Skydance’s top antitrust attorney told a judge Friday that David Ellison’s company would voluntarily delay its proposed $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery at least until mid-August amid a legal challenge brought by 12 state attorneys general.
The states, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, have asked a judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would prevent Paramount from finalizing its deal as the court battle ramps up. Paramount made the pledge in hopes of avoiding such a ruling that would tie its hands — and give the states an early win in the litigation.
Federal District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín said she would decide by Wednesday whether to issue a restraining order.
Tech scion David Ellison has been a regular in Washington D.C. this year as he races to consolidate Warner Bros. Discovery — less than a year after his family bought Paramount.
(Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images)
Friday’s hearing in Oakland opened the first chapter in the fight over the blockbuster deal that both sides agree would dramatically reshape Hollywood. Two century-old film studios — with rights to Harry Potter, Batman, “Top Gun,” “The Big Bang Theory” and “Game of Thrones” — would be combined, and HBO and CNN would come under new ownership.
Antitrust attorney James H. Weingarten, of the Washington law firm Milbank, represents California and the other states. He told the judge it would be impossible to untangle the two companies if they are allowed to combine.
“If this merger is allowed to close … the harms begin,” Weingarten said. “The job losses, the synergies — that’s the fancy word for ‘we’re going to save money and there might be job cuts.’ All of that process starts rolling.”
Bonta filed the suit Monday, alleging the proposed merger — the largest in Hollywood in decades — would violate the U.S. Clayton Antitrust Act, a 112-year-old law to prevent mergers that weaken competition and raise costs for consumers.
The lawsuit alleges antitrust violations in three markets where the two companies currently compete: wide-release films, potential blockbuster movies and cable television, where the combined entity would own more than 50 cable channels.
Paramount shares fell 4.3% to $8.75 on Friday. Warner stock slipped 1.5% to $26.87 — below Paramount’s offer of $31 a share.
More than two dozen lawyers attended Friday’s hearing, including from Colorado, Oregon, Washington and New York who came to support California, which is leading the case.
Paramount, represented by antitrust lawyer Jeffrey L. Kessler, argued a temporary restraining order was not necessary. The two sides should instead focus on the next big step — whether the judge issues a preliminary injunction, he said. Such a ruling could delay the deal for months.
Kessler said Paramount should be allowed a hearing to defend against a preliminary injunction by the end of August. The company wants to wrap up the litigation by late September to avoid a higher payout to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.
In a show of confidence earlier this year, Paramount offered Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders a “ticking fee” of 25 cents for every quarter after Sept. 30 — until the deal was done. Such payments would cost Paramount more than $7 million a day, which Kessler called a “massive injury.”
California Atty Gen. Rob Bonta is leading a coalition of 12 state attorneys general to try to halt Hollywood’s biggest merger in decades.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Paramount would also have to pay Warner a $7-billion breakup fee should the deal fall apart.
Kessler argued the states had not made a sufficient case that competition would be harmed. “We don’t think they’ve come close to jumping through that hurdle,” Kessler said.
Earlier this year, Kessler represented the state attorney generals in their winning case against Live Nation Entertainment. A jury found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, operated as a monopoly. This time, Kessler is representing corporate interests.
Prominent Los Angeles litigator Daniel Petrocelli is representing Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount hired attorney Jeffrey Kessler to lead its antitrust defense.
(Noah Berger / Associated Press)
The case was assigned to Martínez-Olguín Wednesday after Paramount requested an earlier judge be removed because he formerly worked as a labor attorney.
Martínez-Olguín said she inherited the case because she was already overseeing another lawsuit dealing with the merger — not because Paramount had agitated for a change.
The industry saw immediately just how lucrative fear could be. More than a century later, there is always someone in the entertainment media willing to trade in racist tropes for money, as well as an audience ready to receive them.
Two new films, “Citizen Vigilante” and “Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels,” demonstrate that streaming platforms and social media no longer simply distribute controversial content but in fact thrive on content that provokes, polarizes and sustains attention, regardless of the social cost.
Both of these xenophobic and Islamophobic films are being pushed as “anti-woke” vehicles, deliberately engineered to bypass traditional critical reception and capitalize on a fractured media ecosystem. “Citizen Vigilante,” which features an American protagonist killing dark-skinned immigrants and Muslims in an unnamed European setting, was denied a rating certificate by the German government for inciting violence. Yet despite that determination, the film secured global reach through decentralized digital distribution and high-profile promotion from Elon Musk.
Similarly, “Run, Fight, Hide: Infidels” — a campus siege narrative evoking 1980s action film nostalgia that leans heavily into outdated, post-9/11 anxieties — relies on a built-in conservative media apparatus to guarantee financial returns. The film is produced by the conservative media figure Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire, which he co-founded. It is a sequel to a 2020 film that was their film company’s premiere.
But while promoters of such films frame their work as a brave rebellion, the reality is much more sinister: rehashing 40-year-old tropes while invoking conspiracy theories of Muslims bringing sharia law to America, because outrage is cheap to produce and easy to monetize.
Stories matter. Stories shape how we see one another. They influence what we love, what we celebrate, whom we trust, whom we understand and whom we fear.
Since January, the Muslim Public Affairs Council has documented a sharp escalation in threats and attacks targeting Muslims and Islamic institutions across the United States, including vandalism, shootings, bomb threats, attempted assassinations and physical assaults. These are not isolated incidents. They reflect a broader climate in which dehumanizing representation increasingly manifests as real-world violence.
Entertainment and politics increasingly employ the same tactic as one another, recycling narratives of fear and “otherness” to mobilize audiences, voters and consumers. When political leaders encourage those narratives, as President Trump recently did by amplifying and commenting on a photo of young Muslim American students in hijab, they further normalize the same stereotypes that entertainment companies have learned to monetize.
Yet while the social costs continue to mount, the economic incentives remain firmly intact. “Citizen Vigilante” earned a 93% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes despite receiving just a 6% critics’ score. More tellingly, it quickly climbed to the top of Amazon’s and Apple TV’s paid video-on-demand charts.
And this isn’t just a Muslim and immigrant issue — and it’s not only about who is portrayed on screens, but also who is not. Representation has been backsliding, and audiences are left with fewer opportunities to see the reality and humanity of diverse communities, making them more vulnerable to fear-based narratives.
According to a 2026 report from the nonprofit Define American, which tracks representation across television and film, Latinos account for only 23% of immigrant characters represented on screen, even though they make up more than 40% of the immigrant population in the United States. In 2020, 50% of immigrants on screen were Latino.
The industry’s defense is that whitewashed and xenophobic films reflect audience demand. But the recent research by Define American challenges this assumption. Data show that nuanced, multidimensional storytelling, in which immigrants and minority characters are woven into the fabric of everyday narratives rather than tokenized or villainized, actually leads to greater audience engagement and deeper systemic understanding.
Entertainment doesn’t simply reflect culture; it teaches us who belongs within it. Studios, distributors, streaming platforms and filmmakers all have a responsibility to reject narratives that portray immigrants as enemies and instead embrace stories that reflect the diversity and complexity of our world. At the same time — as with voters — the power ultimately rests with consumers. The choice to demand storytelling that challenges prejudice rather than profits from it belongs to all of us.
Paramount Skydance has prevailed in its first court move to defend its Warner Bros. Discovery merger — prompting the departure of a judge who initially had been assigned the high-profile antitrust case.
Late Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín took over the case brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general. The states’ coalition is attempting to derail Paramount’s proposed $111-billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging it violates a century-old antitrust law.
Court records show U.S. District Judge P. Casey Pitts, based in San Jose, had initially been assigned. Early Wednesday, Paramount filed a motion requesting that Pitts step aside, citing his previous role as a labor lawyer, including for the Writers Guild of America.
The WGA joined the legal fray Tuesday by bringing its own antitrust complaint against Paramount, alleging the proposed union of two of Hollywood’s biggest studios would lead to fewer jobs and lower pay for writers.
In its motion, Paramount argued that Pitts’ past association with the Hollywood union was problematic.
“A reasonable person would question Judge Pitts’ impartiality in this case based on his prior work,” Paramount’s attorneys, led by Jeffrey Kessler, wrote in their eight-page motion.
Martínez-Olguín has been overseeing a separate lawsuit that also challenges Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros.
Five Paramount+ subscribers sued in late April to unravel the merger, claiming Paramount’s proposed consolidation of streaming services, film studios and national news networks — CBS News and CNN — would lead to higher prices and harm to consumers.
Paramount, in its motion, had requested that Martínez-Olguín preside over the state attorneys general lawsuit.
Martínez-Olguín, in an order, said she would now conduct a hearing that Pitts had scheduled for Friday to evaluate Bonta’s request for a temporary restraining order to prevent Paramount from finalizing the blockbuster transaction while the litigation is pending.
The Oakland-based judge joined the federal bench three years ago after being nominated by former President Biden. She was confirmed by the Senate in 2023 when former Vice President Kamala Harris cast a deciding vote to break a Senate deadlock.
The judge is a former immigration attorney.
Pitts, who is based in San José, also has served as a judge for three years. In December, he decided a significant case against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that barred ICE agents from making courthouse arrests.
Both sides went along with the judge switch, following a long-standing legal practice of having one judge oversee related cases.
The three lawsuits, all filed in the Northern California district, may eventually be combined. On Wednesday, Martínez-Olguín said the cases could travel together but she stopped short of consolidating them.
In the latest episode of “The De Los Podcast,” actor and comedian Fabrizio Guido spoke with hosts Fidel Martinez and Suzy Exposito about his role in the Netflix series “Running Point” — as well as being a part of a new wave of young Latino Hollywood stars and how he got his start in the stand-up comedy world.
Having grown up in L.A. himself, Guido talked about owning the persona of “Running Point” character Jackie Moreno: a concession-worker-turned-executive-assistant from Boyle Heights.
“I just felt I had all the tools necessary to bring this character to life,” Guido said. “It was a really important opportunity for people to see this side of L.A. … to get to know that kid that you see on the street or at the mall [and say] ‘Oh, that guy reminds me of Jackie.’”
Part of the appeal of the character was the chance to “showcase how much heart L.A. has.”
“It can be isolating if you’re the only Latino on a set,” Guido shared. “So to have peers that share a similar upbringing as you — you walk away with a friendship most of the time because you have stuff in common.”
He also mentioned that the bump in Latino talent has led to diversity in roles within the community.
“For the longest time, it could’ve been stereotypical — the only things Latino could play,” Guido said. “For the first time we’re starting to see this emergence of what it means for each one of us to be Latino. I’m bringing my experience to the table, Keyla is bringing her experience to the table, Xolito is bringing his. We’re not going by what the industry thinks Latino is, we’re bringing what we think Latino is.”
But beyond the acting world, Guido has also tackled the stand-up comedy scene in recent years.
He shared that he got his first gig thanks to comedian Gabriel Iglesias, who he worked with on the Netflix sitcom “Mr. Iglesias.” The arena comic convinced Guido to do a five-minute set — which Guido worked on for two weeks — at the Brea Improv.
“I got on stage, did my first joke and was super nervous,” he said. “Second joke did really well and it afforded me enough time to get present and then I ran through my five minutes, got off stage a different person. I knew I was in love. I felt like something in my life had shifted in that moment and I’ve been in love with stand-up ever since.”
FORMER Hollywood child star Rivkah Reyes looks unrecognisable after joining OnlyFans.
The actor, 33, is best known for playing Katie in the hit film School of Rock back in 2003.
Former Hollywood child star Rivkah Reyes looks unrecognisable after joining OnlyFansCredit: rivkah.reyes/InstagramThey share plenty of racy content onlineCredit: rivkah.reyes/Instagram
But nowadays their life is looking very different as they’re now making content on the subscription platform.
They took to TikTok on Tuesday to share a video of oneself staring into space as the saxophones in the background are getting louder.
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Rivkah, who goes by they/them pronouns, wrote across it: “Being a former child actor means realising why my Oh Eff does so well.”
They encouraged their fans in the comments to support their music career so they can stop doing OnlyFans.
Rivkah penned: “Anyway would LOVE for ya’ll to support and check out my music so that I can quit doing the other thing.”
Rivkah’s OnlyFans content includes a mix of explicit adult content, lifestyle content, behind the scenes updates and giving fans early-access to their “sapphic bubblegrunge” music.
The singer has shared plenty of racy videos on both Instagram and TikTok for non OnlyFans subscribers.
In one video posted on Instagram last week, they’re seen wearing short denim shorts and a bra top as they roll around the floor and dances suggestively on stage.
At one point, they lay their head on the floor and thrusts their derriere in the air before humping the floor in a suggestive manner.
Rivkah was nine years old when they were cast to play Katie, the quiet cellist-turned-bassist in the iconic musical comedy film.
Rivkah played Katie in School of RockCredit: AlamyThey acted alongside Jack Black in the hit filmCredit: Alamy
The movie saw Hollywood heavyweight Jack Black play the role of Dewey Finn, a struggling rock guitarist who fakes his identity to become a substitute teacher at a prep school.
While there, he discovers his students musical talents and secretly forms a band with them to win the local Battle of the Bands competition.
The film became a huge box office success and received critical acclaim from critics and fans alike.
The success of the movie led to a musical adaptation on Broadway in 2015 and a television adaptation on Nickelodeon which ran for three series from 2016 to 2018.
However, Rivkah’s experience after the film’s release was a stark contrast as they faced bullying from her classmates in school.
They took an extended hiatus from acting and only returned to acting in 2017.
Speaking in an interview with the New York Post in 2021, they recalled: “Especially after production wrapped, when I first came back to school, people were really nice or really mean. There was no middle ground.
“I was literally followed around the school with people chanting School of Rock.”
They revealed that the harassment from their peers led to them becoming “a raging addict” and was forced to eventually overcome “a lot of demons”.
ONCE the golden couple of Hollywood, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s multi- million-pound divorce battle rumbled on longer than they were man and wife.
And ten years since proceedings first started, the bitterness between those involved shows no sign of slowing down.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s multi-million-pound divorce battle rumbled on longer than they were man and wifeCredit: Rex FeaturesAngelina and Brad with kids Zahara, Maddox, Vivienne, Shiloh, Knox and Pax in the month their divorce beganCredit: Fame Flynet
Brad, 62, watched in horror this week as the final steps were taken to remove any trace of him from the once-glorified “Brangelina” clan.
In a brutal move, his children Maddox, 24, and Zahara, 21, have both filed court papers to officially change their surname from Jolie-Pitt to just Jolie.
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Siblings Shiloh, 20, and Vivienne, 18, have already turned their backs on the Pitt name, while Knox, 18, has also dropped it from informal documents and is estranged from Brad.
This leaves only Pax, 23, still using the Pitt surname.
Insiders say that Brad has been left privately “devastated” by the decision.
A source said: “One by one, his children, who he was once so close to, have removed their connection to him.
“He really wonders if he’ll ever rebuild bridges with his shattered brood now.”
It is the latest twist in the family saga, following on from allegations of physical abuse, financial coercion and severe family PTSD as well as a Father’s Day Instagram post from Pax calling Brad a “world-class a**hole”.
It all helps cement Brad and Angelina’s divorce as perhaps the most toxic the entertainment world has ever seen.
In September, it will have been a decade since Maleficent star Angelina, 51, first filed for divorce from movie heart-throb Brad.
Their relationship started not long after they met on the set of 2005 film Mr & Mrs Smith, when Brad was still married to Jennifer Aniston.
They wed in 2014 but, less than two years later, in September 2016, they split in explosive fashion.The former couple had previously adopted Maddox, Zahara and Pax before having Shiloh, Vivienne and Knox.
But Brad, who was once inseparable from all six kids, has now been well and truly frozen out.
Legal notices published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal yesterday reveal that both Maddox and Zahara have filed petitions to change their surnames.
If approved, the changes will become official in court, with Maddox’s hearing set for September 14 and Zahara’s two weeks later.
Zahara has publicly gone by Zahara Jolie since starting university.
Angelina and Zahara, who has filed court papers to officially change her surname from Jolie-Pitt to just JolieCredit: GettyLegal notices published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal yesterday reveal that both Maddox and Zahara have filed petitions to change their surnamesCredit: AP
Shiloh legally dropped “Pitt” after turning 18 in 2024, while Vivienne was credited simply as “Vivienne Jolie” as a production assistant for the Broadway show The Outsiders.
Pax is the only one still using the Pitt surname, but he has an incredibly difficult relationship with his dad, who he once claimed made his younger siblings “tremble in fear”.
Brad’s relationship with his children seemed to change for ever after an ill-fated flight in 2016, which also marked the end of the high-profile showbiz marriage.
The couple are said to have tried to keep their blistering rows from the children, but that became impossible in the confines of a private jet.
In a report filed by the FBI about the incident, Angelina claimed Brad yelled at her before pulling her into the toilet, where he pushed her against the wall and punched the ceiling repeatedly.
It is also alleged that when one of their kids tried to protect their mum, Brad “choked one of the children and struck another in the face”.
It has long been rumoured that it was Maddox who was assaulted.
The report said Brad then poured beer on his family as they tried to sleep.
Brad, who was once inseparable from all six kids, has now been well and truly frozen outCredit: GettyBrad and Anjelina in 2015Credit: Getty
The incident led to an investigation by children’s services, with Angelina being awarded temporary full custody and Brad only allowed supervised visits. He was later fully cleared.
Just days later, Angelina filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.
Pax’s private Instagram post on Father’s Day 2020 suggests the kids experienced problems before and after the plane incident.
He wrote: “You time and time again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person.
“You have no consideration or empathy toward your four youngest children, who tremble in fear when in your presence.
“You will never understand the damage you have done to my family because you’re incapable of doing so.”
Brad later confirmed that his boozing had become a problem, revealing he had visited Alcoholics Anonymous groups.
He said: “I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges.
Brad and new love Ines de Ramon last monthCredit: GettyFrom left: Pax Thien Jolie-Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Zahara Marley Jolie and Maddox Chivan Jolie-PittCredit: Getty
“You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard.
“It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself. It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself.
“There’s great value in that.”
The confession did nothing to quell the animosity between the parties, though.
And while the divorce might have been finalised in 2024 — after eight agonising years — another legal fight is still rumbling on.
The former lovers are locked in an acrimonious $350million court battle, known as the War Of The Rosés, over Angelina’s decision to secretly sell her stake in their Chateau Miraval vineyard and home for $64million to Russian booze tycoon Yuri Shefler in 2021.
A source said: “Ines wants to have a life together — with possibly children in the future — without the albatross that is the eight-year War Of The Rosés.”
While Angelina’s attorneys have filed explosive allegations in court, she has kept a mostly dignified silence.
In 2020, the actress turned human rights advocate addressed the ugly split in a rare interview with Vogue.
She said: “I separated for the wellbeing of my family. It was the right decision.
“I continue to focus on their healing.”
During another interview, when asked if she worried about the safety of her children, she said: “Yes, for my family. My whole family.”
And during the Press tour for her 2021 Marvel film Eternals, in which she played Thena, a warrior battling memory loss and a fantasy-world version of PTSD, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with the condition.
She said: “I had talked to the director about experiencing PTSD myself a few years ago and my own fears about not being strong enough to protect those that I love.”
And while Brad might have moved on, Angelina, who was widely once considered one of the world’s most beautiful women, remains single.
Last month, she said: “To be candid, I haven’t dated since I divorced a decade ago.
“So I kind of get in my head that that aspect of me is not centered in my life if I’m focusing on my children, my family.”
It is true that all six children have certainly been caught up in the crossfire of their parents’ decade-long war, with the sorry saga serving as a cautionary tale to other Hollywood couples on the cusp of divorce.
Now, as the February 2027 trial over the battle for the French vineyard looms, peace still seems a long way off.
And while Brad might still be fighting over his financial future, his legacy with his family appears to be long gone.
Last March, the L.A. Times had proclaimed that Nathy Peluso had found her musical language. Later that year, the Argentine singer decided to mix things up by releasing her 2025 EP, “Malportada.”
In a departure from her urbano and alternative leanings blended with notes of R&B, the six-song EP was a straightforward, traditional salsa offering that featured a collaboration with Venezuelan salsa hybrid band Rawayana on the title track.
“My experience being a woman and making music has always been to talk about my freedom [and] how I feel,” she told The Times in a recent interview inside the famous Amoeba Music record store in Hollywood. “Salsa seems to me like a stage that invites one to express themselves fully, speak loudly, dance freely and feel powerful.”
Peluso had previously dabbled in the salsa genre with tracks like 2020’s “Puro Veneno,” 2021’s “Mafiosa” and the 2025 salsa erótica tune “Erotika,” but had never dedicated an entire project to the Caribbean musical styling.
“It’s [my] function in society,” Peluso previously told The Times in a 2025 interview when asked about the criticism of her salsa jams. “I’m not the kind of artist who’s complacent or politically correct. I don’t do anything with the intention of pleasing others. I chose the mission of bringing salsa back to the present because I’m passionate about it. If a genre gives me so many wonderful sensations, I want everybody else to feel them as well. As long as people argue, they will have to listen to the songs — and as a result, they will listen to salsa.”
Peluso’s gamble paid off — as “Malportada” was so well-received by critics, fans and the wider salsa community that she managed to get herself booked as the co-headliner for the Hollywood Bowl’s upcoming Salsa Spectacular on Wednesday.
Over the last few years, salsa music has enjoyed a bit of a renaissance — thanks in part to the success of Bad Bunny’s universally acclaimed album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos” — which featured the salsa fusion hits “Baile Inolvidable” and “Nuevayol” — and Rauw Alejandro’s 2024 LP “Cosa Nuestra.”
But for Peluso, her integration into the salsa world was a long time coming.
“I grew up listening to Gloria Estefan, I fell in love with [the 2000 album] ‘Alma Caribeña,’ I fell in love with the richness of that music,” said Peluso. “I’ve had a strong relationship with salsa music since I was young, even though I didn’t grew up in a place that was a cradle for that genre.”
Peluso was born in the Argentine city of Luján and lived there until she was 9, when her family moved to Spain, eventually settling in the southeastern city of Alicante.
In addition to Estefan, she cited inspiration from Nuyorican percussionist Ray Barretto, Puerto Rican salsa orchestra El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico and genre icons Héctor Lavoe and Willie Colón.
(Ronaldo Bolanos / Los Angeles Times)
“Throughout my career, I’ve always flirted with the genre,” Peluso said. “After doing the press for [the 2024 album] ‘Grasa’ there reached a point where I realized I was ready to make my salsa record, and it just happened to coincide with the current salsa boom.”
While paying respect to the musical tradition, Peluso also imbued her spin on the genre with some of the swaggering feminine energy often found in urbano music — as is evidenced in the “Malportada” track “A Caballo.”
“I grew up listening to a lot of masculine salsa and I thought it would be interesting to approach that type of energy from a woman’s perspective,” she explained. “[To take] all these stories of danger and sex and desire that the genre is known for, but give them a feminine spin.”
Peluso further bolstered her salsa bona fides when she teamed up with a pair of Caribbean music legends over the last year.
In September, she collaborated with her idol Estefan for a remix of the 1993 track “Chirriqui Chirri.” The duo performed the explosive song at the 2025 Latin Grammy Awards show. In February, Peluso jumped in the studio with Puerto Rican salsero Marc Anthony to record the original track “Como en el Idilio.”
“It was so awesome to sing with [Anthony] because he is one of the all-time legends we have in salsa who expanded the genre worldwide,” Peluso said. “It was a blessing to sing with Marc and Gloria in this moment of my career in which I’ve decided to represent salsa from my point of view.”
For her Hollywood Bowl gig, Peluso will be accompanied by the Colombian salsa collective Grupo Niche, a Grammy- and Latin Grammy-winning group that has been around since the late ’70s.
“I’ve admired Grupo Niche for years,” Peluso said. “We met at the Latin Grammys a few years ago and really hit it off. A little while back, when I was offered to do the Hollywood Bowl show alongside them, it was a no-brainer.”
But the biggest honor that Peluso is looking forward to is playing the hallowed stage of the Hollywood Bowl.
“It’s like playing in a palace for me,” she said of the historic venue. “The last time I was in L.A. for the ‘Grasa’ tour, I left wanting more. I knew I’d have to waiting until my next tour to try it, but I didn’t expect my next tour to come so quickly. It’s such a mythical place, it’s such a luxury.”
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general filed a lawsuit Monday to block Paramount Skydance’s proposed $111-billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery — a last-ditch effort to derail a deal that would transform Hollywood.
Tech scion David Ellison’s proposed merger has been hurtling toward the finish line after securing approvals from the U.S. Justice Department and numerous foreign governments. President Trump, an ally of Ellison’s billionaire father Larry Ellison, favors the deal. He is eager for a big shakeup at CNN, which is currently controlled by Warner Bros.
David Ellison now faces his biggest challenge yet as he attempts to build a new entertainment behemoth.
A Paramount representative did not immediately comment.
The suit, filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that the proposed merger would violate the U.S. Clayton Act, a century-old antitrust law to prevent mergers that weaken competition and increase costs for consumers.
“Consolidation here not only leads to higher prices — it also leads to fewer opportunities for important stories to come to life, and fewer ways for audiences to encounter stories, ideas, and perspectives beyond their own experiences,” Bonta said in a statement.
“California and our sister states are fighting for free and fair markets, not rigged markets,” he said.
California and the 11 other states, including New York, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado, allege the merger would devastate the theatrical film business by combining two historic film studio rivals. The Ellison family would control such storied franchises as Harry Potter, Bugs Bunny, Batman, “Top Gun” and “Game of Thrones.”
The proposed purchase also would unite two prominent news organizations — CNN and CBS News.
The states have asked Paramount to delay the closing of its Warner Bros. takeover until the litigation can be resolved.
If Paramount refuses, Bonta said the coalition would seek a temporary restraining order asking a judge to hold up the merger, a move that would cause costly delays and escalate legal expenses for Paramount in their quest to finalize the deal.
Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle, is bankrolling his son’s ambitions to acquire a second major entertainment company in less than a year. The Ellison family acquired control of CBS-owner Paramount in August and, at the time, David Ellison touted the move of Paramount’s headquarters from New York’s Times Square to Hollywood.
Now, Paramount is reportedly threatening to leave California in the face of Bonta’s legal action.
If the merger goes through, Paramount would own four streaming services, including Warner’s HBO Max and the dominant U.S. cable TV channel owner with HBO, TBS, HGTV, Animal Planet, Food Network, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon.
The U.S. Justice Department last month approved the merger, saying the combination would likely bolster competition — not harm it. The agency’s decision had been expected because of Larry Ellison’s strong support of Trump.
In a show of confidence earlier this year, the Ellisons agreed to increase the payout to Warner investors should the regulatory approval process drag on. Those extra 25-cent-per-share payments begin with the October-December quarter, and would add more than $650 million in deal costs each quarter — giving David Ellison an increased incentive to quickly close the deal.
The proposed merger has sparked fears in Hollywood that it will bring thousands of job losses — similar to past consolidations, including Walt Disney Co.’s 2019 takeover of Fox entertainment properties.
Some theater owners, hard hit by the pandemic and production slowdowns, have expressed concerns the merger would lead to fewer films being made.
The new colossus would significantly dampen competition, Bonta and the other Democrat prosecutors argue. They pointed to the wide-release movie film distribution business, where Warner Bros. and Paramount control about 27% of the market.
After the merger just four companies — Paramount-Warner, Disney, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures — would control 86% of the films that were widely released, Bonta said.
Paramount has said the deal will boost competition — not hamper it. Ellison has promised to continue releasing 30 films a year with a combined Warner Bros.-Paramount studio, roughly the current output of the two studios.
Ellison also vowed to protect the HBO brand.
Another concern is the licensing of basic cable TV channels, including CNN and HGTV, to pay-TV providers such as Charter’s Spectrum, DirecTV and Google’s YouTube TV. Warner Bros. is the second largest cable channel owner and Paramount is the third largest. Together their channels would represent about 27% of the market.
The typical threshold for antitrust concerns is at least 30% marketshare.
More than 5,000 entertainment industry workers, including Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston, Javier Bardem, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Mark Ruffalo, signed an open letter calling on Bonta to block the merger.
The Ellison family recently shed its movie theater chain, which it picked up as part of the Paramount acquisition, to clear the way for the Warner deal.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta is leading an effort by state attorneys general to block Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.
(Paul Kuroda/For The Times)
The deal also faces opposition outside the U.S. . The British culture minister in late June said she was weighing whether to intervene in the deal due to concerns about maintaining a competitive media market. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority also has opened an investigation into Paramount’s proposed merger.
In April, a federal judge in Sacramento granted a request from Bonta and seven other attorneys general for a preliminary injunction, which freezes the merger of Nexstar Media Group, which owns KTLA-TV Channel 5, and Tegna. The deal was designed to create the nation’s largest TV outlet group .
A larger group of state attorneys general also won a New York jury verdict against Live Nation Entertainment and its subsidiary Ticketmaster. Jurors found that Live Nation had illegally monopolized the live concert industry.
Bonta also has an ongoing case against Amazon for price fixing, which the company denies.
Still, legal experts say the states may face an uphill climb to detrail the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger because the arrival of Netflix, Amazon and Apple dramatically shifted the landscape.
The tech giants, which introduced consumer-friendly streaming options, have lessened the influence of traditional companies like Paramount and Warner Bros.
Paramount’s deal would mark the third time Warner has changed hands in the last decade.
