Over the weekend the world finally got a sneak peek at Disney’s controversial live-action adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” starring Black R&B singer and actress Halle Bailey as Ariel.
A teaser trailer for the adaptation of the animated Disney classic was released Friday at Disney's D23 expo and already has more than 104 million (more than those of any other tease for a live action Disney adaption) views globally according to reporting from Variety.
Racists losing their minds because Halle Bailey is the new Little Mermaid. Bro it's only the top half and guess what? Mermaids aren't real ๐๐๐คท๐พ♀️ pic.twitter.com/FfMcZDnakP
It has also drawn praise from celebrities, parents and the original voice cast for Bailey —who has faced criticism of "blackwashing" since taking on the iconic role of the fictional red-headed mermaid who dreams of a life above the waves.
Jodi Benson (Voice of Ariel from 1988) shows love to Halle Bailey via ig story ๐๐ง๐ฝ♀️ pic.twitter.com/iEgE8XpGKA
Following the premiere, Jodi Benson, who voiced Ariel in the original 1989 animated film praised Bailey on Instagram writing, "Halle, you were absolutely amazing! I'm SO proud of you and your beautiful performance as Ariel."
The 60-year-old actress added that she had a great time celebrating the achievement with Bailey, 22, at D23 and shared some words of adulation for the film's director Rob Marshall as well.
She added, "Thank you for creating such a stunning film!!!"
The clip gives fans a brief look at the underwater world Marshall has created for the film and Bailey in action as Ariel — red hair and all — as she hits the beginning notes to bring to "Part of Your World."
Less than a week after Chris Rock finally addressed the incident, and four months after delivering the slap that shocked the cinema world, Will Smith posted a video to YouTube Friday to apologize again for striking the comedian during the live TV broadcast of the Academy Awards ceremony.
“I spent the last three months replaying and understanding the complexities and nuances of what happened in that moment,” Smith, who earned his first Oscar for "King Richard" moments after striding onto the stage and delivering a backhand to Rock, following a G. I. Jane joke at the expense of his wife Jada Pinkett Smith who has been candid over the years about her struggles with the hair-loss triggering condition alopecia.
He continued, “I’m not gonna try to unpack all of that right now, but I can say to all of you, there is no part of me that thinks that was the right way to behave in that moment. There’s no part of me that thinks that’s the optimal way to handle a feeling of disrespect of insults.”
Smith had previously posted an apology on Instagram hours after the incident. The video message, however, strove to answer questions about his motivations for his bad behavior as well as extend apologies to the comedian's family.
"It's been a minute," the opening credits of the video read. "Over the last few months, I've been doing a lot of thinking and personal work. You asked a lot of fair questions that I wanted to take some time to answer."
Among those answers were two that fans, television talking heads and entertainment rags had been speculating on for some time. Did his wife have anything to do with the attack, and why did he not apologize on stage when he accepted his award?
“I made a choice on my own, from my own experiences from my history with Chris. Jada had nothing to do with it," Smith said, making it clear that he was to blame for any actions he took that night. As for why he didn't immediately apologize to Rock during his acceptance speech for best actor, the Grammy winner said, "I was fogged out by that point. It’s all fuzzy."
Kevin Hart and Dave Chappelle surprised fellow comedian Chris Rock with a live goat—which they jokingly named ‘Will Smith’— during a recent comedy performance at Madison Square Garden. pic.twitter.com/n7AmRXbcQG
Seemingly holding back tears, Smith went on to offer apologies to Rock's mother, Rose, and brother Tony, as well as musician Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, who picked up his best documentary Oscar for Summer of Soul in the awkward moments following the slap.
The star also acknowledged that his apology, though sincere, might be too late.
"I've reached out to Chris and the message that came back is that he's not ready to talk, and when he is he will reach out," he said. "So, I will say to you, Chris, I apologize to you. My behavior was unacceptable, and I'm here whenever you're ready to talk."
Rock has been tight-lipped concerning the subject in public. His first comments came over the weekend while headlining stand-up shows in New York and New Jersey.
“Yeah, that s—t hurt, motherf—ker, but I shook that s—t off and went to work the next day,” Rock said.
He added, “I’m not a victim, motherf—ker. I don’t go to the hospital for a paper cut.”
They say religion is the opiate of the masses. That may be true, but if so, entertainment is not far behind, and movies are perhaps its most effective delivery method.
There are likely several reasons "Top Gun: Maverick" clocked a billion dollars at the box office 36 years after the original, but one of them is surely the collective need for a break from reality.
In a world where global warming, class wars, political unrest and a persistent pandemic have made life — less than optimal— sometimes 120 minutes in a fantasy world is the perfect prescription for the new-millennium blues.
With that in mind, the mad doctors at Netflix may have stumbled onto this summer's best remedy for that ailment with their latest offer.
Combining the talents of two of hip-hop and R&Bs finest, "Day Shift" is a modern-day take on the vampire genre that looks better than it has any right to be if the final cut lives up to the action-packed trailer.
Rap legend Snoop Dogg and Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx, who has also been nominated for eight Grammys for his musical contribution and won one, portray unionized vampire hunters in the tale. It's a twist that Starbucks' corporate is sure to hate but it provides context for the motivation of Foxx's character, who has fallen out of favor with the union and is doing jobs on the side when not cleaning pools to make ends meet. The duo is joined by Dave Franco in a role that plays to his talents as a straight-man and comic relief.
Netflix boasts the film is “from the people who taught John Wick how to kick ass" in the trailer, and the movie does have strong ties to the highly praised action trilogy.
Director JJ Perry was a second unit director and stunt coordinator whose previous credits include the John Wick franchise, and the movie was adapted from an original script by Tyler Tice that has been revised by Shay Hatten ("John Wick: Chapter 3- Parabellum" and "John Wick: Chapter 4").
Check out the synopsis below and watch the official trailer.
Day Shift tells the story of longtime vampire hunter Bud Jablonski (Jamie Foxx), a man whose relationship with his wife (Meagan Good) and daughter (Zion Broadnax) is somewhat strained because of his secret line of work. While Bud’s family generally goes with the story that he works as a pool cleaner, in reality, he’s one of the many vampire hunters operating around the world to take out the blood-sucking ghouls for sizable bounties. Unlike Bud, who somehow managed to get himself booted from the union in the past, hunters like Big John Elliott (Snoop Dogg) count on their membership to get paid and stay involved in the larger fight against evil.
Prolific music producer Patrick Adams, the driving force behind countless disco hits who helped shape the evolution of hip-hop, passed away Wednesday at the age of 72.
Adam's daughter Joi Sanchez announced the composer's death in a social media post.
"My father passed away earlier today at on his sleep at the golden age of 72 after living a life of music," she wrote. "Forever grateful for what I learned from him? Who I became because of who he was. I’m amazing because he was literally legendary."
A musical renaissance man, Adams earned 32 gold and platinum records during a career that began in the 1960s and spanned decades and genres.
Born in 1950, the New York City native got an early start in music. Already an accomplished songwriter, instrumentalist and budding engineer — he joined the Harlem band the Sparks as a 16-year-old. The group was signed to Curb/MGM and played shows with acts like the Commodores and Jerry Butler.
By 1970 Adams had been hired as the vice president of A&R for New York-based Perception/Today Records, after discovering and signing the teenage R&B trio Black Ivory in 1968. The group's first single, powered by the vocals of lead singer Leroy Burgess, peaked at No. 38 on Billboard's R&B chart in 1971.
His success as a manager was quickly eclipsed by his highly coveted work as a producer. Adams eventually started his own production company focused on dance — Patrick Adams Productions Music and went on to produce and arrange music for some of the biggest disco, R&B and hip-hop acts of the 70s and 80s.
Gladys Knight, Candi Staton, Keith Sweat, Salt-N-Pepa, Eric B & Rakim, Loleatta Holloway, Sister Sledge and Eddie Kendricks, are just a few of the artists and icons who the arranger and composer elevated with his work. His songs have been heavily sampled by some of hip-hop's greatest rappers including Kanye West, Nas and Wu-Tang Clan.
In 2017 Red Bull Music Academy honored his work and its impact on the music industry with a celebration in New York that worked to shed more light on his then mostly overlooked legacy.
“You can tell a Nile Rodgers record a million miles away because it has an imprint that emanates from his guitar,” he told Red Bull Music Academy. “In my case I tried to avoid that. I didn’t want my records to sound the same. Whether that was a positive thing or a negative thing, I don’t know. But at the same time there is a signature in my music—sometimes it’s harmonic, and sometimes it’s just in the quirkiness of things. And sometimes you just don’t hear it until somebody points it out to you and asks, ‘Oh, he did that record too?’”
Jada Pinkett Smith addresses her husband's assault of Chris Rock
on the latest episode of "Red Table Talk."
Over two months after actor Will Smith seemingly had a flashback to his Oscar-nominated role as Muhammad Ali, taking to the stage mid-segment to deliver a blow to host Chris Rock, his wife is finally speaking out about the incident, which was sparked by a joke about her hair.
Actress and singer Jada Pinkett Smith, best known for her roles in "The Matrix" series of movies and "Girls Trip", used the opening seconds of "Red Table Talk" to address the March 27 assault on the comedian by her husband.
"Now, about Oscar night, my deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out, and reconcile," Pinkett Smith said, referring to the drama that played out after Smith took a bald joke by Rock as a character made famous by Demi Moore as a sleight toward his wife, who suffers from alopecia areata and was sporting a short shorn hairdo.
Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the #Oscars after the comedian made a joke about Jada Pinkett Smith's hair loss while presenting the award for documentary feature.
She added, "The state of the world today, we need them both, and we all actually need one another more than ever. Until then, Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years, and that’s keep figuring out this thing called life together."
The drama began when Rock said "Jada, I love you. G.I. Jane 2, can’t wait to see it," referring to the 1997 film in which Demi Moore sported a buzzcut, during his monologue. Smith walked briskly on the stage and delivered a hard slap that shook the comedian before returning to his seat and yelling, "Keep my wife’s name out your f—ing mouth."
Celebrity-watchers had been waiting to hear from Pinkett Smith since the "slap seen around the world." Smith, who avoided charges and later returned to the stage to win his first Academy Award for his portrayal of tennis family patriarch Richard Williams in the movie "King Richard," was later banned from attending the Oscars for 10 years.
Previously, Pinkett Smith had shared an Instagram post, many deduced was about the dustup, which said, "This is a season for healing and I’m here for it," but her comments to open the fifth season of her popular Facebook Watch advice show, hosted along with her daughter Willow and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, was her first time to address the matter directly.
Pinkett Smith followed up the statement with a show addressing alopecia. Her guests included the mother of 12-year-old, Rio Allred, a girl who was bullied over her hair loss and died by suicide just weeks before the melee at the Oscars, and a physician who explained the different types of the disorder.
HARTBEAT’s Chief Content Officer Bryan Smiley, Chairman Kevin Hart, CEO Thai Randolph and Chief Distribution Officer Jeff Clanagan.
Kevin Hart is laughing all the way to the bank.
The stand-up comedian turned movie star has proven he has what it takes to shine in the business world as well.
Tuesday, he announced, thanks to a $100 million investment from private equity firm Abry Partners, the expansion of his already formidable media empire.
The new venture, born of a merger of his two current production companies, Laugh Out Loud and HartBeat Productions, will simply be called HARTBEAT.
'"The creation of HARTBEAT and our capital raise with Abry represent a new era in comedy," said Hart in a statement released by the company about the deal.
"This all started out with a mission to keep the world laughing together, and I'm so proud our teams have delivered on that, putting in the hard work to build the most innovative and inclusive comedic storytelling company."
The new company is reportedly valued at over $650 million. Abry's minority stake in it equates to about 15%. Hart will act as chairman. The existing leadership team from both entities will continue to oversee day-to-day operations. Thai Randolph, who had been the chief operating officer of both Laugh Out Loud and HartBeat Productions, was named chief executive.
HARTBEAT will use the investment to grow existing brands, produce new content and grow its team.
"At HARTBEAT, we're building an end-to-end entertainment enterprise that creates, markets and distributes the most culturally relevant IP and experiences in comedy and beyond. The merger and capital raise help us further scale and invest in the future of comedic entertainment, creating more high demand content and experiences at the intersection of comedy and culture," Randolph stated.
Abry Partners partner Nicolas Massard will be joining the HARTBEAT board as part of the deal. NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock, which took an equity stake in Laugh Out Loud in 2020, will remain a shareholder.
The company has 60 projects in various stages of development across various platforms, and in addition to a first-look deal with Peacock, boasts several other strategic multi-year partnerships. HARTBEAT has a film deal with Netflix, a partnership with SiriusXM, and a deal with Audible in partnership with multimedia star Charlamagne Tha God.
Upcoming projects for the company include "Me Time," a Netflix movie starring Mark Wahlberg and Regina Hall, "Storytown" on HBOMax and an Apple TV+ documentary, "#1 on the Call Sheet."
The slap heard, and seen, around much of the world, continues to have new ramifications for embattled Oscar winner Will Smith.
Friday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' board of governors handed the actor a 10-year ban from attending the ceremony. It was the first punitive action taken by anybody, including the Los Angeles Police Department, against the star.
Smith, 53, walked onstage and struck Rock during the March 27 ceremony for telling a bald joke about the rapper-turned-actor's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss on the scalp and elsewhere.
'I accept and respect the Academy’s decision,' Will Smith said in response to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences banning him from attending Oscars and other Academy events for 10 years https://t.co/H8Oq2EECSApic.twitter.com/O0scK2tcq0
Rock, 57, was approached by officers from the LAPD after the slap. He declined to press charges, and moments later Smith returned to the stage to accept his first Oscar, on his third nomination, for his performance as the father of tennis icons Serena and Venus William in the biopic about his life, "King Richard."
By the following day, Smith had left a long and seemingly heartfelt apology on Instagram.
"Violence in all of its forms is poisonous and destructive. My behavior at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable and inexcusable. Jokes at my expense are a part of the job, but a joke about Jada’s medical condition was too much for me to bear and I reacted emotionally," the post read.
Chris Rock made fun of Jada and Will Smith got on stage to slap him and cursed him from his seat after. Live feed stopped on Astro because. Not scripted. Audience stunned. #Oscarspic.twitter.com/F5dN4prPfY
— ๐๐๐๐ต๐ฎ ๐ฅ๐ถ๐ฑ๐๐๐ฎ๐ป (@ayshardzn) March 28, 2022
"I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris. I was out of line and I was wrong. I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be. There is no place for violence in a world of love and kindness."
It continued, "I would also like to apologize to the Academy, the producers of the show, all the attendees and everyone watching around the world. I would like to apologize to the Williams Family and my King Richard Family. I deeply regret that my behavior has stained what has been an otherwise gorgeous journey for all of us. I am a work in progress."
While Rock has remained mum on the subject, refusing to talk about the incident, the apology proved lacking to the Academy which said in a letter sent by President David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson, the organization decided "for a period of 10 years from April 8, 2022, Mr. Smith shall not be permitted to attend any Academy events or programs, in person or virtually, including but not limited to the Academy Awards."
"This action we are taking today in response to Will Smith's behavior is a step toward a larger goal of protecting the safety of our performers and guests and restoring trust in the Academy. We also hope this can begin a time of healing and restoration for all involved and impacted," the statement continued.
Smith's response to the judgment was swift and simple.
"I accept and respect the Academy's decision," he told Page Six Friday.
Accepting his punishment without a fight was not enough to end the drama for Smith, who can still be nominated for his work. Over the weekend, several prominent entertainment voices were speaking out in favor of more severe punishment.
Harry Lennix, an actor known for his bit roles in movies like "Ray" and "Justice League," as well as a plethora of roles across his career on the stage and television screen, went so far as to write a guest column for Variety urging Smith to voluntarily return his Oscar statuette for best actor.
"At this point, the only person who can redeem the integrity of the Oscars is Smith himself," Lennix, 53, wrote, adding, "Smith's brutality stripped the entire evening of its prestige."
"The stain on the Motion Picture Academy cannot be easily remediated. The only hope for a justifiable grace must involve Smith voluntarily returning his award for best actor," he added.
A screengrab of the slap from the Oscars' live broadcast.
Diddy Says Beef Between the Duo Has Already Been Squashed
What did the five fingers say to the face?
Comedian Chris Rock, 57, found out that times may have changed, but the answer to the old punchline remains the same.
While performing a comedy bit during the Oscars Sunday night, the Grammy winner made a joke about actress Jada Pinkett Smith, which did not go over well with her Oscar-nominated husband Will.
Seconds later, the 53-year-old rapper-turned-actor charged the stage and delivered a stinging rebuke — in the form of a pimp-slap during the live broadcast.
Following the altercation, clearly stunned, Rock said, “Will Smith just smacked the s—t out of me."
Smith, who had returned to his seat, yelled at Rock to"Keep my wife's name out your f—ing mouth!
The full uncensored moment from Japanese TV. WILL SMITH hits Chris Rock on the Oscars stage for making a joke about his wife, minutes before winning Best Actor. #Oscarspic.twitter.com/KonRha0fc9
Celebrities in the audience as well as those following along at home seemed not to know how to react at first, but the dawning realization that the slap was real and not a bit between the two usually amicable celebrities set in fast.
Lupita Nyong’s reaction to Will Smith slapping Chris Rock in 4 stages: 1. This is a funny sketch 2. Why is he screaming 3. Oh shit he’s being serious 4. Act normal pic.twitter.com/V3lHrbeiGL
Please tell me I didn’t see what I just saw. Somebody please tell me that @willsmith was joking and it was part of the show when he just smacked @chrisrock on National Television. I’m begging y’all….please don’t tell me @willsmith would do something like that???
So, what got the artist formerly known as The Fresh Prince all riled up?
Until Smith makes his thoughts known on the subject, one can only speculate. The incident, however, did take place moments after Rock joked about his wife looking like “G.I. Jane.”
“Jada, I love ya. GI Jane 2, can’t wait to see it,” Rock said. The joke was an obvious one but probably one best left out of the routine, considering that Pinkett Smith has spoken openly about having alopecia (a hair-loss condition) and the physical and mental stress it has caused in her life.
Regardless of why it happened, it seems that the two have managed to squash the beef. Rock refused to file a police report with the Los Angeles Police Department. Shortly after the dustup, Smith won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Venus and Serena Williams’ father in “King Richard," and Sean “Diddy” Combs confirmed to Page Six Sunday night at the Vanity Fair Oscar party that the duo had already made amends.
“That’s not a problem. That’s over. I can confirm that,” Diddy, 52, said.
"It’s all love,” he added. “They’re brothers.”
Official LAPD statement on the Will Smith x Chris Rock incident:
"The individual involved has declined to file a police report. If the involved party desires a police report at a later date, LAPD will be available to complete an investigative report." pic.twitter.com/cgzD9UPUlF
Smith, who apologized to everyone except Rock, in his speech following his first-ever Oscar win, definitely seemed to be over it. He celebrated the night away, dancing and singing along to some of his biggest hits as a musician.
