Hollywood

It’s no secret that Hollywood has dealt with a significant production downturn since the end of the streaming content boom three years ago. But the programs that have stuck to the Southland have reaped the benefits. And that goes for a slew of major-category Emmy nominees such as “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” which has filmed on stages all over L.A. County since its inception.

“First and foremost, it’s the people. I love the local people, but the people that come to Hollywood with a dream, with a drive, and their dreams sometimes get all twisted and turned, but they still have that ambition,” “RuPaul’s Drag Race” executive producer Tom Campbell says. “That’s why I love working with L.A. crews, and I love L.A. We’ve got 19 seasons in the can right now, and we’re about to start our 20th in not too long. To be with people that get to go home to their pets, or wives, or husbands, or children, makes for a different vibe on set. That’s kind of an incredible [bonus]. It’s a quality-of-life thing.”

Other iterations of the franchise have filmed all over the globe, from Colombia to Portugal to the Philippines, but Campbell doesn’t see how a hub in South America would allow guest judges such as Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Teyana Taylor or Cardi B to appear in person. He notes, “The celebrities don’t make or break the show, but the stars have to align that they have a day off when we’re shooting. And I think that kind of access and availability could only happen in L.A. I don’t think we’d get Cardi B for a day if she had to leave L.A.”

For “Drag Race” production designer Jen Chu, the ability to acquire raw materials in a short period of time is game-changing. She bluntly observes, “Sometimes you just need the assurance that you can go down the street and get that unusual prop or get that super-specific acrylic Plexi or anything that we could possibly need. It is somewhere in the city.”

Michelle Visage, left, RuPaul, Jamal Sims and Carson Kressley in “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”

(Jordin Althaus / World of Wonder)

Chu’s 15-person team also has an encyclopedic knowledge about where to get what they need and whom to ask at a moment’s notice. “It’s very, very common for somebody to be like, ‘Can you make a giant six-foot-tall pill bottle by tomorrow?’” she adds. “I think in those situations, we’re definitely calling on our resources and our friends and colleagues that we’ve known for so long. So, it could be anything from calling your laminate dealer that you’ve had in your phone for 20 years, or it’s literally like calling another dresser because you know that they have a life-size teapot in their backyard for some weird reason. It’s not uncommon for somebody to be like, ‘I know a guy that has a giant pickle or a huge frying pan’ or something like that.”

Veteran “Abbott Elementary” producer Patrick Schumacker is about to shoot a new Netflix series in L.A. and says it’s where to find the “most skilled, most experienced and best of the best” in all aspects of production. A lot of the onscreen talent happen to be pretty darn funny too.

“Honestly, so many hysterical actors are based out of here, and it makes it so much easier with regard to guest cast in a comedy,” Schumacker admits. “Casting becomes infinitely easier versus trying to get people to fly in from L.A. to a production elsewhere.”

Quinta Brunson’s landmark series is set in Philadelphia, but Schumacker credits location manager David Lyons for finding “outstanding places” that double for the city. He recalls, “We had a whole mall arc when the school had to relocate, and that was based on Franklin Mills, which is a real mall in Philadelphia that has the giant Ben Franklin head in it. The other part of the two-pronged attack is Michael Whetstone, Suzan Wexler and our entire art department, who have transformed the back lot at Warner Brothers into West Philly. They keep building out more and more of it every year.”

Sheryl Lee Ralph, right, in “Abbott Elementary.”

(Gilles Mingasson / Disney)

It’s also incredibly difficult to fake another city for Los Angeles. Can you imagine the L.A. romance “Nobody Wants This” trying to duplicate Silver Lake, Los Feliz or Koreatown in Atlanta?

“A real location helps the dialogue sound better. It looks better. It helps the actors know they’re in a real place. It helps the audience feel like they’re watching a real scene,” series creator and executive producer Erin Foster says. “When you think about ‘Sex and the City’ in its heyday, you would recognize the places that they’re at. You would recognize that they are actually authentic, real places that are cool. And it mattered. It made you take the characters seriously.”

Executive producer Jenni Konner adds, “And it sometimes informs story. We shot at Max & Helen’s, a notoriously difficult-to-get-into restaurant, and we had a story point where they weren’t able to get in because they didn’t realize how competitive it was. That was really fun to be able to highlight that truth of L.A.”

And not to take shots at Hollywood’s East Coast rival, but after the Netflix show recently shot scenes in New York for its upcoming third season, executive producer Bruce Eric Kaplan observed that the Big Apple presents drawbacks L.A. doesn’t. “It feels like the Los Angeles crew is a lot more concerned about our safety,” says the onetime “Girls” producer, lightheartedly. “I don’t remember ever having this many safety conversations, but you could shoot in the middle of anything in New York, and no one’s telling you to be safe.”

“Might be a sign of the times,” Foster wonders.

“Erin, I think you’re right,” Konner replies. “At first, I was like, ‘Oh, but it’s 10 or 15 years later, so safety rules have changed.’ But the truth is we shot in New York, and it did feel scary again. We were in the middle of the street in SoHo …”

Foster adds, laughing, “And they were just like, ‘We’ll just figure it out.’”

Netflix said it is in the process of closing two of its gaming studios, as the division is making another round of organizational changes.

The Los Gatos, Calif., streamer said it closed the Hollywood-based gaming studio Night School, the maker of narrative games like “Oxenfree,” on Thursday and has proposed to close Helsinki, Finland-based gaming studio Moonloot. Night School was the first game developer Netflix purchased in 2021 as it expanded into gaming. At the time, the streamer was under pressure by investors to diversify its content to attract more customers, after experiencing two quarters of subscriber losses in 2022.

Night School viewed the acquisition at the time as “such a natural pairing” as the gaming studio wanted to stretch its narrative aspirations on original games and Netflix has a reputation of giving TV and film creators an “unprecedented canvas” to bring entertainment to millions of people, according to a blog post on its website.

In an email, a Netflix spokesperson said it is eliminating roles because the company believes it can operate more strategically and efficiently in its games business. The spokesperson declined to provide the number of workers affected.

Last year, the company shut down Boss Fight Entertainment, one of the gaming studios it acquired in 2022.

Games on Netflix have had mixed results. At the end of 2024, Epic Games executive Alain Tascan joined Netflix as president of the division and under his leadership, it has focused on key areas including kids, party games like “Netflix Minigolf,” narrative games and mainstream games like “FIFA World Cup: Launch Edition.” The company also removed games in part because they did not have high engagement from its library.

Last year, Netflix unveiled several party games including “Boggle Party” and “Pictionary: Game Night.”

In June, Netflix released a narrative game made by Night School called “Unhinged” about a woman who is trapped inside her apartment during a hurricane and is trying to find safety. Voice actors in the game include Zoë Kravitz and Sadie Sink.

In a July earnings presentation, Co-CEO Greg Peters reminded analysts of the market opportunity for games, with $150 billion in consumer spending not including ad revenue or markets in China and Russia. He said the streamer is seeing solid numbers from its cloud games such as FIFA and “Unhinged” and higher adoption and retention in the cloud games than mobile games. He also said there has been strong engagement and growth from kid games.

“We’re just getting started here,” Peters said. “We’re scratching the surface in terms of what we think the total potential of the space offers for us.”

The layoffs come as Netflix stock has declined 37% from a year ago. Investors are concerned about how much time people are spending on Netflix compared to rivals like YouTube. YouTube represents about 14% of streaming-watch time by U.S. viewers on TVs, compared to Netflix’s 8% in May, according to Nielsen.

In addition to games, Netflix has added other types of content to its streaming service over the years including live events like NFL football games and video podcasts.

Citing Hollywood’s already struggling production economy, two influential industry unions have jointly called on Paramount Skydance Chairman David Ellison and California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to settle their antitrust fight.

The Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees — which represent a combined 200,000 union members — are turning up the political pressure to try to resolve the clash over the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, which has already carved deep divisions throughout the industry.

The DGA and IATSE’s unusual missive comes as Paramount has been trying to drum up support for the deal and while
development projects reportedly are being put on hold. Paramount executives and others have decried the delay in deciding whether the deal moves forward. Bonta and Paramount are now poised to slug it out in an Oakland courtroom next spring.

“Our collective members are concerned about their futures, and the future of the industry,” DGA Executive Director Russell Hollander and IATSE President Matthew D. Loeb wrote Thursday in their three-page letter to Ellison and Bonta.

“We are aware of productions that have been put on hold or canceled altogether, leading to further reductions in available work for our members and other industry workers,” the letter reads in part.

The effort adds heat to a growing campaign urging Bonta to bend in his fight to block the industry- reshaping deal that would combine the Warner Bros. and Paramount film and television studios, HBO, CBS, CNN, HGTV and Comedy Central.

Earlier this week, California’s Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Xavier Becerra, said he favored a settlement. Republican Steve Hilton has decried the antitrust lawsuit as being politically motivated.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who leaves office next year, has stayed above the fray.

Paramount and Bonta’s office didn’t immediately comment.

The Writers Guild of America last month joined Bonta’s coalition of state attorneys general in filing lawsuits to upend the $111-billion transaction, saying the Paramount-Warner combination violates U.S. antitrust laws and would decimate the entertainment industry by erasing jobs and reducing pay.

At issue is the $81 billion in debt that Ellison would have to take on to pay Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders for the keys to the studios and HBO.

WGA leaders and others have warned that level of debt would choke the two historic studios, creating a more devastating sequel to 2019‘s combination of the Disney and Fox studios, and the 2022 takeover of Warner Bros. by Discovery.

The union leaders conceded they weren’t merger fans, and they stopped well short of asking Bonta to throw in the towel.

Instead, they listed nine conditions — including requiring Paramount to maintain its operations in Hollywood and a commitment to make film and television shows in the U.S. — as part of any settlement.

The unions want Ellison to make an enforceable commitment that Paramount and Warner Bros. studios each release 15 films into theaters a year. They also want a 45-day theatrical window so that cinema chains can continue their rebound.

Some of the DGA and IATSE terms may be difficult for Ellison to swallow. Already, Paramount is looking to shave expenses to come up with the $81 billion promised to Warner Bros. shareholders. Sources have said Ellison’s suggestion to move Paramount from its picturesque Hollywood campus is designed, in part, to attract financial incentives from another state, such as Tennessee, eager to help with a relocation.

Among the conditions, the DGA and IATSE asked that Paramount’s and Warner Bros.’ motion picture units be kept as “as separate studios, with each studio maintaining its own production, distribution, marketing and exhibition groups as distinct divisions.”

One of the goals of the merger is to shave costs by consolidating overlapping business divisions and back-office functions.

The union leaders also want Warner Bros. television studio to operate independent from the Paramount and CBS production arms. They called on HBO to remain a linear television channel and available on third-party platforms, including Amazon.

Loeb and Hollander’s requests are designed to keep production jobs in the U.S.

They asked Ellison to commit to producing films and TV shows in the U.S. “at no less than the average percentage produced in the United States during the last five years” excluding 2020, the pandemic year, and 2023, when two strikes idled production.

“Our goal, with respect to the proposed merger, has always been to achieve an outcome that ensures a vibrant, competitive marketplace for the production, distribution, and licensing of film and television programming that serves the interests of consumers and filmmakers alike,” Hollander and Loeb wrote.

“We believe that these conditions, if secured through a binding agreement, will largely serve this purpose,” the said.

Bonta previously has said his preference would be structural remedies — divesting key business units — rather than “behavioral” compromises that could evaporate soon after the merger closed.

Should the two sides fail to hash out a settlement with conditions, Loeb and Hollander asked Ellison and Bonta to seek an earlier trial date for the legal showdown.

A federal judge set a March 2 date — despite Paramount’s request to hold the proceedings in November.

A British travel content creator has shared her thoughts after visiting Los Angeles admitting she should have a listened to a warning she received when exchanging her currency

A British woman who visited Hollywood recently has explained how the “reality” surrounding Tinseltown is “definitely not what you think”.

Travel content creator Jasmine admitted she had been warned about Los Angeles by her local Post Office’s staff when she changed her pounds to dollars. “A lady on the counter asked if I was going anywhere nice and I told her was going to LA and she looked at me a bit gone out,” she began in a TikTok video. “I was a bit confused at this point and she asked if I had ever been before and that it would not be what I thought it’d be.”

And as Jasmine’s clip continued in California, it appeared the Post Office clerk clearly wasn’t wrong. “As soon as I got there I understood exactly what she meant,” she said.

On a dreary looking day, Jasmine headed to Mel’s Drive-In Celebrity Bar to order French toast. There, she continued: “It was exactly what she said it’d be and absolutely nothing like I had imagined.”

While Jasmine acknowledging Hollywood does boast some “fantastic places to go”, she couldn’t help but highlight other “really run-down places” as she strolled the Walk of Fame.

“There’s definitely a misconception of what LA actually is, especially when you are from the UK,” she mused. “If I had known what it was really like, I probably would have planned my trip a whole lot differently and missed Hollywood completely.”

Jasmine added that on her return to the UK she was regularly asked if she visited the Hollywood Walk of Fame. “It actually makes zero sense because it’s probably the worst place in LA to go,” she said as she ate a hot dog. “Just be mindful if you are going there from the UK, it’s not going to be how you imagine.”

In a follow-up video, Jasmine headed out for an early morning walk where she showcased little more than “all the cleaning crew out” and areas that were “dealing with homelessness”.

“There was rubbish and human waste on the floor, which can be a real issue,” she slammed. “It definitely gave me a bit of a reality check.”

Jasmine did offer praise for Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, however. “We tried so much amazing food there and experienced so many different sides of the city,” she enthused. “I guess what surprised me the most about LA is that every area feels so different. You can go from Hollywood to beaches to food spots all in one trip.”

Writing in response, a frustrated local asked: “No one in LA cares for Hollywood. Why do you guys always come to Hollywood? That’s like the last place we ever go to!”

A second person agreed with Jasmine: “I went to the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was absolutely shocked.” A third fumed: “Totally agree, I was massively disappointed, especially Hollywood, that was like a crack den.”

However, a fourth TikTok user exclaimed: “Los Angeles is gorgeous. You just need to have realistic expectations and stay slightly off the beaten track to see the real LA Hollywood and Downtown are must avoids.”

It will take someone better versed in finance, corporate law, family psychology and, perhaps, the impact of great wealth on brain chemistry than I to analyze the recent actions of Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison.

To a cultural journalist, however, it seems like he continues to make himself the best argument yet for opposing his company’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Mere days after taking to the media to insist that he is a misunderstood film buff who just wants to save Hollywood, he threatened to help destroy it.

If California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and state attorneys general from 11 other states, including New York, New Jersey, Washington and Colorado, refuse to negotiate a settlement of their antitrust lawsuit, Ellison said he will yank Paramount Studios, and potentially Warner Bros., out of California.

Um, OK, Ultron.

So that’s how Ellison wants to prove that he will be a steward of the flailing entertainment industry — by threatening to rip out a big part of its still-beating heart and implant it in Texas or Tennessee?

Will he be taking the Hollywood sign as well, to stick atop the Grand Ole Opry or, better yet, the Alamo?

Not only does this grant Bonta VIP access to the moral highground, it all but negates Ellison’s recent New York Times guest essay. Especially the part in which he wrote: “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.”

If one man can decide, in a fit of pique, to scoop up a huge portion of the entertainment industry and float it thousands of miles away, I’d say that’s a decent argument for “too much influence.”

Also, good luck with the landing. Texas and Tennessee are both fine states with vibrant cities, undeniable corporate incentives and lower costs of living, but their draconian abortion laws and restrictive LGBTQ+ legislation may give many in the entertainment industry pause.

Still, according to Ellison, it’s Bonta and his gang who are trying to make things political, not him; in his essay, Ellison claimed that the suit is mostly about preventing his ownership of CNN, despite his insistence that (the hiring of Bari Weiss to oversee CBS News to the contrary) the news network would remain autonomous.

As a journalist, I would love to believe that Bonta and the other attorneys general are simply going to bat for the Fourth Estate; with President Trump openly longing for the day when Ellison controls CNN, it is no doubt a concern. But as Ellison seems intent on personally underscoring, the bigger issue is how to prevent a dwindling number of individuals from controlling enormous portions of an industry that not only employs millions, but also plays a vital role in shaping the nature of art and culture in this country and the world.

(Never mind the queasy fact that Ellison is being bankrolled by his billionaire father Larry, who is putting many, if not all, of his eggs in the AI basket, to the detriment of his employees.)

Shaping art and culture is, of course, precisely why Ellison wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, almost literally at all costs. When he first lost the bid for Warner Bros. to Netflix, he (and his dad) responded by offering enough money (including a $7-billion payout should the deal not clear antitrust regulation) to make Ted Sarandos blink. Money has always been a ladder to power and influence in this country, and the widening wealth gap, not to mention the current administration, has turned the ladder into a rocket ship. (See please Elon Musk.)

Ellison has continually stressed his love of cinematic storytelling. Under the proposed Paramount Warner, he promises to produce 30 theatrical films and 170 television series a year and create more work for everyone.

That would be lovely (if fiscally difficult) to believe. If only he hadn’t just tried to hold the state that gave birth to cinematic storytelling hostage by threatening to kidnap one of its kids.

As negotiating tactics go, it certainly undermines whatever public approval he hoped to gain with his “I’m just a guy, standing in front of the movie biz asking it to love me” bit.

Change is coming for Paramount Studios — the lot on Melrose Avenue — either way. If Paramount Skydance acquires Warner Bros., production will likely shift to the Warner Bros. lot, with Paramount leased or sold.

Now, it seems, Ellison is willing to have a fire sale — he’ll certainly need to raise a bunch of cash if he’s going to quickly flee to redder pastures. As for the thousands of local workers who depend on Paramount production to make a living, well, Ellison and his executives may be able to afford to relocate or (more probably) commute out of state, but most of the people who actually make movies and television cannot.

Business, of course, is business and it has become financially and politically fashionable to desert California to avoid whatever local law, regulation or tax you now find unfair. Tech mavens, including Musk, have ditched California for the Lone Star State. Ellison’s father recently took Oracle out of Redwood City, first to Austin, Texas, then to Nashville, workers be damned.

But Ellison taking Paramount and potentially Warner Bros. out of Los Angeles isn’t about business. It’s pure politics, of the savage, oligarchical variety.

Given the stakes, it’s difficult to imagine that some sort of deal won’t be struck that allows the sale to go through. But Ellison isn’t saving the entertainment industry, he’s leveraging it.

And if he has to spit in Hollywood’s face to save his own, well, apparently that’s fine too.

AN A-list Hollywood actor was spotted shopping at a Pokémon market in Brighton – but would you have been able to recognise him in the crowds?

A TikTok user shared a snap of the star, 48, looking around a gymnasium in a white cap and glasses.

Molly Wheatley, user name @xo_mxlly_ox, captioned the snap: “That’s just a random man in a white hat…”

But then in the next slide she revealed exactly who it was, as she posed for a picture with none other than Tom Hardy.

Fans rushed to the comments section to swoon over the Venom star, with one writing: “WOAH.”

Another said: “my jaw hit the floor.”

PIK ‘N’ CHUSE

I took my son to Lego festival with Pokemon ‘battles’ and F1 brick car racing

PIKA-CHEW

Brit nettle eating champ takes on world in bizarre contest to be Pokemon megastar

“I knew it was him before the second picture. I KNOW THAT HANDSOME MAN FROM A MILE OFF,” a third chimed in.

A fourth added: “Idk you but I hate you!!”

A fifth chimed in: “I would simply keel over.”

A sixth joked: “He is a pretty good tom hardy look alike tbf.”

Tom, who was born in Hammersmith, London, is a well known English actor who has starred in a number of popular films and TV shows since shooting to fame in the late 90s.

Some of his movie roles include in Star Trek: Nemesis, RocknRolla, Bronson, Warrior, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Mad Max: Fury Road, Dunkirk, Venom, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Bikeriders and Havoc.

Meanwhile he’s also been in Wuthering Heights, Peaky Blinders, Taboo, Oliver Twist, and most recently MobLand.

He has also won the Rising Star Award at the British Academy Film Awards in 2011, as well as the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Actor in an Action Movie in 2015.

And fans will be over the moon to know that Tom is reprising his role as Harry Da Souza on MobLand, after it was said that the hunky actor had been fired from the Paramount+ hit.

Deadline confirmed the integral cast – which is also made up of Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren – will remain for the third instalment, and that includes Tom.

And last month The Sun exclusively revealed a world-exclusive first look at the upcoming action.

In less than a month, Paramount Skydance Chief Executive David Ellison has exhibited a dizzying range of emotions as the goal line for the coveted $111-billion Warner Bros. Discovery deal has moved farther away.

The tech scion initially exuded confidence that Hollywood’s biggest merger in decades was on a fast track to completion by September. Ellison and others downplayed efforts by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta to challenge the acquisition — until Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general gained momentum in their antitrust lawsuit, which now threatens to derail Paramount’s Warner Bros. deal or, at least, make it significantly more expensive.

Ellison and his executives have vacillated from anger to acceptance. Last week, Ellison attempted a high-profile reputation reboot, extolling his love for movies and blaming politics for opposition to the deal.

The mogul has told investors the company is willing to negotiate a settlement with Bonta in hopes of completing the massive merger as soon as possible.

But Ellison also is making contingency plans to shift Paramount’s historic home base from Melrose Avenue to Tennessee — or perhaps Texas — as early as this fall.

Paramount’s board has approved Ellison’s relocation plans, according to people familiar with the situation who were not authorized to speak publicly. Ellison shared the concept with his executive leadership team in a meeting last Wednesday but said his preference was to remain in California, these people said.

The proposal includes potentially selling the 65-acre Paramount lot in Hollywood — as well as the larger Warner Bros. campus in Burbank, should Paramount prevail in the merger battle. Such sales would generate revenue to help pay merger costs, one of the knowledgeable sources said.

Paramount’s sudden relocation plan has further rattled Hollywood, which already is reeling from thousands of job losses in recent years.

Bonta, in a statement Tuesday, blasted Paramount’s latest strategy, calling it “another attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through.”

“Paramount has lost the plot as it continues to lose in court,” Bonta said. “My office remains committed to stopping illegal consolidation and protecting a vibrant California economy for businesses that play by the rules.”

Behind Paramount’s pivot is a desperate scramble to bolster its legal case and muster funds to help finance a deal Warner shareholders approved in April.

Paramount offered to pay Warner investors $31 a share as well as so-called “ticking fees” of 25 cents per share for every quarter after Sept. 30 until the transaction closes.

That sweetener was intended as a show of confidence that Paramount’s deal would sail through its regulatory reviews, unlike a Netflix acquisition that faced more regulatory scrutiny. Netflix subsequently dropped its bid.

Paramount was banking on the swift approval of the U.S. Department of Justice, which arrived in June. President Trump is friendly with the Ellison family, and he has been eager for a shakeup at CNN, one of Warner’s properties.

“Ellison thought he had an ace in the hole with Trump [and] the DOJ, but it backfired on him because the clearance was so obviously rubber-stamping,” London-based media analyst Alice Enders said. “Now, the issues have resurfaced and it’s a costly potential delay.”

The ticking fees could add $7 million a day — or $650 million a quarter — to the $81 billion that Paramount had already anticipated paying Warner shareholders. (Paramount also agreed to absorb about $30 billion of Warner Bros. debt left over from last merger, in 2022.)

Ellison has repeatedly defended his proposed purchase, saying the tie-up does not threaten competition because Hollywood has been transformed by Netflix and other deep-pocketed tech giants.

Already, Paramount has received clearances from 65 foreign regulators, including Britain and the European Commission.

To accelerate California approvals, Paramount requested a November trial date for Bonta’s suit. Instead, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín scheduled a March 2 trial — dealing another blow to Paramount.

Ticking fees alone could add $2.1 billion to the cost of buying Warner Bros. In addition, Paramount said that delaying the transaction until next spring will add $190 million in bridge loan financing costs.

Paramount disclosed that it had $1.6 billion in cash on hand and a revolving loan of $3.2 billion available for its use.

If the deal fails to close by June 4, Paramount would have to pay Warner Bros. a $7-billion breakup fee. That’s when Warner’s board could pull the plug on the Paramount deal.

Puck News first reported Ellison’s latest plan to quickly move Paramount’s operations as soon as October.

“This is a plan — not a threat,” said a person who was in the room when Ellison discussed his plans but who was not authorized to comment.

The relocation campaign echoes a tactic employed by software giant Oracle Corp., co-founded by Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison.

Oracle was based in Redwood City for three decades, but in late 2020, the company moved its headquarters to Austin, Texas, joining other California tech firms leaving in protest of the state’s high taxes and steep cost of living.

Then, two years ago, the elder Ellison announced that Nashville would host Oracle’s new headquarters. At the time, Oracle saw that state’s healthcare industry as a promising growth business. Oracle since has bet heavily on artificial intelligence.

In contrast, it would be difficult for Paramount to pack up its operations because it depends on producers, directors, writers and stars to make its TV shows and movies. The two studio lots also boast dozens of soundstages; century-old fortresses that would not be easily duplicated. And many Paramount executives are not eager to leave Los Angeles.

Some observers questioned Paramount’s willingness to carry out a move, which surfaced a week after David Ellison’s guest essay in the New York Times, which described his love of Hollywood and movies ever since he was a boy.

Ellison believes the proposed Warner merger is the best way to save Hollywood, saying the combination of two storied studios would strengthen not harm the film industry.

“One moment he’s promising to reinvigorate theatrical releases. The next he’s talking about uprooting two historic companies and moving them 2,000 miles away in order to avoid a lawsuit,” said Gabriel Kahn, journalism professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication.

Paramount’s corporate headquarters are in New York but after the Ellison family’s acquisition last year, the center of gravity shifted west. Ellison and other top executives live in Los Angeles.

Another corporate move wouldn’t disrupt Bonta’s lawsuit, experts say.

Instead, they suggested Paramount’s flurry of recent activities — including winning the support of two large theater chains, AMC and Regal, with promises of a robust movie pipeline post-merger — appeared to be part of a public relations and pressure campaign.

“They lost a lot of leverage now that the trial is set for March,” said Abiel Garcia, a former prosecutor and partner at the Manhattan Beach firm Kesselman Brantly Stockinger.

“And when you don’t have leverage in court, you go the political route,” he said, adding that Paramount seems to be angling for Gov. Gavin Newsom to join the fight.

Newsom, who has presidential ambitions, has been sensitive to the flight of companies from California. However, he has avoided picking a side in the messy merger squabble.

What’s more, the governor lacks authority to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Bonta and 11 other state attorneys general.

“All I know is that if I was governor, I wouldn’t want to lose Hollywood from this state, I wouldn’t want to lose a major company like Paramount to another state,” Paramount Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim said late Tuesday at a Politico Live conference in Sacramento. He had been asked about the stances of Newsom and his potential successor, Xavier Becerra, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee.

“I hope it settles before court,” Becerra said at the conference. “It is easier to stand in a conference room and settle than it is to stand in a courtroom.”

Delaying the trial until March has been “devastating,” Delrahim said, adding that Paramount proposed settlement terms on May 19 — but the state attorneys general instead moved forward with their suit.

“It’s costing jobs. It’s costing a lot of uncertainty for a lot of our employees, for Warner Bros. employees,” Delrahim said.

Still, Garcia and others expressed doubts about Paramount’s full-court press.

“It just feels a little over the top. It feels like a PR blitz,” Garcia said. “It suggests to me that they think their case is weaker than I even thought.”

The show will go on for ZZ Top.

Last week, the blues rock band canceled its Hollywood Bowl concert because longtime drummer Frank Beard had health issues, Rolling Stone first reported.

That Aug. 5 Los Angeles concert was supposed to be the kickoff for the band’s the Big One tour. But a spokesperson for the band says that frontman Billy Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis will continue the tour.

Michael Monahan will substitute for Beard for the remainder of the Big One, which will conclude its U.S. run on Oct. 9 in Port Wentworth, Ga.

The band has not said that it will reschedule the L.A. show, and all tickets, including transportation and parking passes, were being automatically refunded, according to the Hollywood Bowl.

Gibbons previously posted on Instagram that there were unexplained “insurmountable obstacles” leading to the band’s sudden cancellation at the Hollywood Bowl.

The band has released no details on Beard’s condition, although this is not the first time the drummer, 77, has faced health-related issues in his long tenure with the band. Beard joined ZZ Top in 1969, soon after the band formed, replacing founding drummer Dan Mitchell.

In March 2025, the Texan trio announced via its Instagram that Beard would temporarily step away from the band’s Elevation tour to tend to a health issue, which was later revealed to be foot and ankle problems. John Douglas — a longtime tech member, percussionist and drummer — replaced Beard in the interim, having done so previously when the veteran drummer underwent an emergency appendectomy in 2002.

In ZZ Top’s early days — following the release of the 1976 album “Tejas” — Beard dealt with issues related to substance abuse that led to the band’s three-year hiatus, which he and his bandmates opened up about in the 2019 documentary “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”

“Frank goes all out on what he does and that includes the bad things,” bandmate Dusty Hill, who died in 2021, said in the documentary. “He was sick. If you’re a very good friend, you love a guy, you don’t want to see him die. You just want to see your brother get well.”

The Grammy-nominated band, which formed in Houston, is known for its edgy blues twang in popular singles including “La Grange” and “Tush” and across 15 studio albums. In November, ZZ Top will close out the Big One tour with eight performances across Mexico and South America.

A HOLLYWOOD icon looks incredible as she dances in a swimsuit with a bottle of rosé in her hand – but would you have clocked her?

The legendary actress, 80, has been spending some quality time with her family while on holiday across Europe.

In the short clip, Goldie Hawn is seen pulling out some dance moves while wearing the black bathing suit embroidered with silver crystals.

Her daughter Kate Hudson took to her Instagram feed to share a video of her mother being as fabulous as ever.

Stylish Goldie wore a grey cardigan over the top and accessorised with a silver necklace and a clip in her hair.

The Overboard actress held a nearly-finished bottle in her hand as she sashayed her way out of the shot.

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Kate, 47, also shared a whole host of other snaps and videos as the family were pictured having the best time.

She captioned it: “A few love letters from Europe.”

Her followers flocked to the comments section to compliment Goldie in particular.

One person gushed: “Omg your Mom!! I love her energy!!”

Another Instagram user enthused: “I want to be @goldiehawn in my next life.”

Somebody else commented: “Love you and your mom!! I’m sure your kids are just as amazing.”

While a fourth added: “I love your mum. She’s always dancing and being happy.”

Goldie started out in Hollywood back in 1966 with her career spanning over six-decades.

Her most famous roles include The First Wives Club, Private Benjamin, Overboard and Death Becomes Her.

Goldie has won several awards over the years, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for a BAFTA and two primetime Emmy Awards.

She married musician Bill Hudson in 1976, before welcoming daughter Kate and son Oliver into the world.

However, the pair got divorced after just four-years of marriage.

Goldie began dating actor Kurt Russell in 1983 and although they never got married, they welcomed son Wyatt in 1986.

Kate began her own career in 1996 and has become a staple in Hollywood in her own right.

She’s appeared in iconic films including How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days, You, Me and Dupree, Bride Wars and Raising Helen.

Kate is mum to three children, with her eldest son Ryder, 22, from her former marriage to musician Chris Robinson.

She shares 15-year-old son Bingham with ex-fiance and Muse frontman Matt Bellamy.

The Hollywood star is also mum to seven-year-old daughter Rani with her fiance Danny Fujikawa.

She and Danny first met in 2016 and got engaged in 2021.

The ongoing explosion of revival screenings in Los Angeles is an opportunity not just to revisit accepted classics, but also to give a spotlight to undersung oddball picks deserving of broader attention.

Take for example 1988’s “Tapeheads.” An offbeat comedy about two friends trying to break into the then-emergent world of music videos, the film stars John Cusack and Tim Robbins just as their careers were starting to take off. A snapshot of a specific moment in Los Angeles — some shots of downtown’s skyline at sundown have an unexpected beauty — the film has never been lost exactly, but it is deserving of renewed interest.

The movie will show on Monday as part of the American Cinematheque’s Cinematic Void program at Los Feliz Theatre, screening from a rare 35mm print provided by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Director and co-writer Bill Fishman will be there along with producer and co-writer Peter McCarthy, producer Eric Barrett and production designer (later turned director) Catherine Hardwicke.

Cusack and Robbins star as Ivan and Josh, friends since childhood now working as nighttime security guards until they figure out their future. Cusack’s Ivan has ambition and drive while Robbins’ Josh is sensitive and creative. Together they launch a music video business and take it upon themselves to revive the careers of their favorite soul singers, the fictional Swanky Modes (played by real-life soul legends Sam Moore and Junior Walker). Josh and Ivan soon find themselves accidentally wrapped up in a blackmail scheme involving a sex tape and a conservative politician, complicating everything.

“It was a hustler and an artist and the merging of the two, trying to get some sort of balance with your creative side and what you needed to do to make a living,” explains Fishman, now 68, during a recent video interview from Venice, Calif. “We came up with the credo ‘You do what you gotta till you can do what you wanna.’ And that was really where it came from.”

Before making his feature debut with “Tapeheads,” the native New Yorker had already found success in his 20s as a music video director himself, creating clips for songs such as Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized” and the Georgia Satellites’ No. 2 hit “Keep Your Hands to Yourself.” Straddling the music scene and Hollywood, Fishman found that a satire of conservative politics came to him naturally.

“Music videos seemed to be an easy thing for me to do because I knew that world,” he says. “Even though the story was what we thought would be completely ludicrous, it ended up being much more realistic than we believed.”

John Cusack, left, and Tim Robbins in the movie “Tapeheads.”

(American Cinematheque)

James Branscome, who programs the Cinematic Void series for the American Cinematheque, calls the rare chance to show the film a bucket-list experience.

“It was a weird movie that felt lost, especially when it stars John Cusack and Tim Robbins being zany in a way they don’t often get to be,” he says by phone. “It felt like this very organic, perfect movie, like: This checks so many boxes for me.”

Among the producers on the film is Michael Nesmith, a former member of the Monkees, and through him the project fell under the production umbrella of NBC. Fishman remembers being invited to the home of Brandon Tartikoff, president of NBC Entertainment and a green-lighter of titles including “Miami Vice” and “Seinfeld.” What he thought was going to be a relatively brief meeting was instead hours of Tartikoff patiently going through the script page by page.

“I did not know anything,” remembers Fishman, whose most recent credit is the 2024 film “Waltzing With Brando,” starring Billy Zane. “I thought Hollywood was always going to be like this. But I didn’t realize that my best experience was my first and then we were going to have to fight and claw for the rest of it.”

It was young casting director Victoria Thomas (lately of “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and “Michael”) who brought in Cusack and Robbins. Cusack, a Chicagoan, was in Los Angeles to appear onstage with Robbins’ theater group the Actors’ Gang and the two of them came in to audition together.

“They had really prepared,” says Fishman. “And after an hour or more of the interview, which went great, I said, ‘I want you guys to switch roles.’ And that freaked them out. They were like, ‘We can’t do that. We rehearsed. We can’t just throw this together for you.’ I said, ‘I really think you should.’ And they said, ‘OK, give us 15 minutes.’ And they walked out onto the street in Venice and they came back in as the other characters, redid the audition and that’s how they were cast.”

Mary Crosby and John Cusack in the movie “Tapeheads.”

(American Cinematheque)

Fishman made sure to show Cusack the 1957 film “Sweet Smell of Success,” with Tony Curtis’ smarmy press agent an influence on his character. Fishman also says Cusack’s greased-back hair and pencil mustache were partly inspired by Eric Roberts in “Star 80.”

“Tapeheads” captures a specific moment in Los Angeles history, sure to be nostalgic for some, from a desolate downtown to a percolating music scene. Legendary local party band Fishbone provided music for the score and appears briefly as a country-and-western bar combo. Devo rerecorded a version of their song “Baby Doll” in Swedish to stand in for an international boy band’s hit. The film is also full of cameo appearances by real-life music figures, including “Soul Train” host Don Cornelius, MTV’s Martha Quinn, comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, rapper Doug E. Fresh and musicians “Weird Al” Yankovic, Ted Nugent and Stiv Bators. (A then-largely unknown Courtney Love has an uncredited appearance as a dominatrix on a sex tape.)

“The soundtrack and the people we used in the film were reflective of the wide spectrum of what was unifying, I thought, for the counterculture in specifically L.A.,” says Fishman. “It wasn’t a film about punk rock, it wasn’t a film about rhythm and blues or hip-hop. It was a film about young people expressing themselves.

“When you would go out in Los Angeles at that time, you would go to nightclubs and all these bands would be playing in the same club,” he says. “If you were part of the counterculture you could play anything or dress any way and you were sort of accepted. It was a creative scene and that’s what the film was about.”

One highlight of the movie is a commercial Ivan and Josh make for local L.A. eatery Roscoe’s House of Chicken ‘N Waffles (still going strong), featuring a memorable rap by blues singer King Cotton and done with a bold yellow and black look.

“I grew up in New York City and chicken and waffles was not a thing,” says Fishman. “People here would go get it late night in Hollywood and when I was looking for some business that they could do a video for, it just struck me as an absurd combination, which was all about what the film was about: absurd combinations. And it happens to be delicious.”

“That Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffle commercial is incredible,” says programmer Branscome. “Which is the most California thing because outside of L.A. no one knows what a Roscoe’s is unless you’ve been here. It’s full of very niche stuff that is elevated. It works on one level, but if you know exactly what it is, it gives it a different dynamic.”

Tim Robbins in the movie “Tapeheads.”

(American Cinematheque)

When “Tapeheads” was released in October 1988 (after a berth at the film festival that would be later renamed Sundance), it struggled to find theaters. Moore and Walker performed on “Late Night With David Letterman” as the Swanky Modes. According to Fishman, Cusack and Robbins were both reluctant to do press for the film at the time “because they thought it was uncool.”

It was not until it hit the VHS market that the movie truly began to find its audience. That said, it has never been on Blu-ray and is available to stream from only a few scattered sites. Perhaps this sold-out L.A. screening, with the support of some of the key behind-scenes-team, will help spur the film toward a broader renaissance. It deserves to be seen as more than just a cult curio.

“As soon as people saw the film, they said, ‘Oh, this is a cult film’ and I always hated that,” says Fishman. “I was like, ‘No, it’s not a cult film — it’s a pop movie.’ We wrote it to play to everybody.”

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.

More than 5,000 entertainment industry workers, including such high-profile stars as Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Bryan Cranston and Mark Ruffalo, signed an open letter early this year, calling on Bonta to try to block the merger.

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.

The Writers Guild of America has separately sued to block the merger, saying the deal would lead to less opportunities and lower pay for writers struggling to stay in the industry.

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.”

Do we still call it a “heat wave” if it never ends?

Maybe my Texas and Arizona friends can help me out here on proper nomenclature because, while everybody loves the sunshine, I’m starting to dream of the time when autumn leaves start to fall.

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 …

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.”

After a year and half of research and interviews, the BBC on Wednesday aired an explosive new documentary in which multiple women accused Oscar winner Jared Leto of sexual assault.

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.”

McShane drew on her past experiences, including making the 2023 Channel 4 documentary “Russell Brand: In Plain Sight,” which investigated comedian Russell Brand’s treatment of women, to guide the interview process.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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He suggested they should have sex on at least one occasion, the alleged victim claims.

Four other women also allege they received strange and often sexual phone calls from Leto when they were younger.

A ninth woman also accuses the Morbius lead of ordering a security guard to take her backstage at a music festival when she was 14.

The woman alleges he made a sexual comment about her chest during an autograph-signing before claiming her mother confronted him.

The allegations all come from between 2002 and 2016 when Leto was in his 30s and 40s.

Leto is yet to respond to the allegations.

He has previously denied historic sexual misconduct accusations by nine women, including some who said they were teenagers at the time.

The Sun has reached out to Leto’s team for comment.

The allegations all come from a new BBC documentary titled Jared Leto: Hollywood‘s Dark Secret.

One unnamed accuser said: “This was 25 years ago… he has gotten away with it.”

Leto starred as The Joker in Suicide Squad and won an Oscar and Golden Globe for Dallas Buyers Club. 

He is also the frontman to rock band Thirty Seconds To Mars. 

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.

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

P.S.

Mr. Todd’s Wild Ride typically comes out every Tuesday, but we occasionally publish special editions (like this one!) when we have breaking theme park news. Make sure you’ve signed up to be the first to know.

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.”

Walking down a hallway at UCLA’s Wasserman Football Center earlier this week, I became a believer.

Bouncing hurriedly in my direction was a bright-eyed kid with a huge smile. I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me.

Yet as he passed, he suddenly stuck out his hand for a fist bump, which I was too stunned to ignore, and so I pounded back while wondering.

What just happened?

Then it hit me.

Bob Chesney just happened.

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.”

This shared spirit continues deep into the night, as some of his players recently had a pool party at the home of Cori Close, the Bruins national championship women’s basketball coach. She was not teaching them how to swim. She was teaching them how to win.

“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.

Let him.

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 Museum announced 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.

“It grew from a previous research and programming project we did as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: Los Angeles x Latin America initiative, before we opened the Academy Museum in 2021,” Serrano said.

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.”

As with previous exhibitions centered on minority populations, the Academy Museum won’t be shying away from the uncomfortable truths around Latinos in Hollywood — from the demographic’s stereotypical portrayals in film to its underrepresentation in the industry that continues to this day.

“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.