albany, new york — A performer who appeared naked in a show by world-renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art is suing the museum, saying it failed to take action after he was sexually assaulted multiple times by attendees during the performances nearly 14 years ago.
The suit was filed in Manhattan on Monday under the New York Adult Survivors Act, a special state law that created a yearslong suspension of the usual time limit for accusers to sue. Although the law expired last year, the suit says the parties agreed to extend the window closing.
John Bonafede alleges in the suit he was sexually assaulted by five public onlookers who attended a show he was hired by the museum to perform in as part of Abramovic’s retrospective “The Artist Is Present.”
Email messages sent to the museum this week were not returned. Abramovic is not named as a defendant and did not immediately return a request for comment.
The work, titled “Imponderabilia,” saw Bonafede and another performer standing face-to-face with each other in a doorway about 18 inches (45.7 centimeters) apart, fully nude, silent, and still. The exhibition, which ran from March 14, 2010, through May 31, 2010, was curated by the museum in a way that encouraged visitors to pass in between the performers as they went from one gallery to the next, the suit alleges.
Mostly older men involved, says suit
The people who assaulted Bonafede were mostly older men, the suit says. One of the perpetrators was a corporate member of the museum, who was ultimately kicked out and revoked of his membership, according to the suit.
During the final weeks of the exhibition, another attendee non-consensually groped Bonafede’s private areas three times before they were finally stopped by security, the suit said.
Bonafede reported four of the individuals to the museum staff and security immediately, according to the suit, while the fifth was witnessed personally by the museum security staff.
Female performer also assaulted, suit says
At one point, Bonafede also witnessed a public attendee sexually assault his female co-performer by kissing her on the mouth without her consent, the suit said.
Prior to the exhibition, the performers had voiced their concerns about nude performers being subject to harassment in a letter to the museum during contract negotiations, the suit said.
Once it began, several news outlets including The New York Times reported on the inappropriate behavior by visitors, and the sexual assaults on “Imponderabilia” were discussed within New York City’s art and performance communities, the suit says.
Despite the museum having knowledge of the issue, it failed to take action to protect the performers and prevent further sexual assaults, such as telling visitors ahead of time that touching was not allowed, the lawsuit said.
About a month into the exhibition, the museum created a handbook outlining protocols for the performers to alert museum staff if they felt unsafe or were inappropriately touched.
Bonafede agreed to continue the performance after he was assaulted because of the “tough it out” culture of the exhibition, the suit says, but suffered for years from emotional distress, and his mental health, body image and career were damaged as a result.
The Associated Press generally does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly. Bonafede gave consent through his lawyer, Jordan Fletcher.
Fletcher declined to comment further on the suit, but said they will be seeking a jury trial and compensatory damages.
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MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s government has acknowledged that at least two well-known Mayan ruin sites are unreachable by visitors because of a toxic mix of cartel violence and land disputes.
But two tourist guides in the southern state of Chiapas, near the border with Guatemala, say two other sites that the government claims are still open to visitors can only be reached by passing though drug gang checkpoints.
The explosion of drug cartel violence in Chiapas since last year has left the Yaxchilán ruin site completely cut off, the government conceded Friday.
The tour guides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they must still work in the area, said that gunmen and checkpoints are often seen on the road to another site, Bonampak, famous for its murals.
They say that to get to yet another archaeological site, Lagartero, travelers are forced to hand over identification and cellphones at cartel checkpoints.
Meanwhile, officials concede that visitors also can’t go to the imposing, towering pyramids at Tonina, because a landowner has shut off across his land while seeking payment from the government for granting the right of way.
The cartel-related dangers are the most problematic. The two cartels warring over the area’s lucrative drug and migrant smuggling routes set up the checkpoints to detect any movement by their rivals.
Though no tourist has been harmed so far, and the government claims the sites are safe, many guides no longer take tour groups there.
“It’s as if you told me to go to the Gaza Strip, right?” said one of the guides.
“They demand your identification, to see if you’re a local resident,” he said, describing an almost permanent gang checkpoint on the road to Lagartero, a Mayan pyramid complex that is surrounded by pristine, turquoise jungle lagoons.
“They take your cellphone and demand your sign-in code, and then they look through your conversations to see if you belong to some other gang,” he said. “At any given time, a rival group could show up and start a gunbattle.”
The government seems unconcerned, and there is even anger that anyone would suggest there is a problem, in line with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s policy of playing down gang violence — even as the cartels take over more territory in Mexico.
“Bonampak and Lagartero are open to the public,” the National Institute of Anthropology and History said in a statement Friday.
“It is false, biased and irresponsible to say that these archaeological sites are in danger from drug traffickers,” added the agency, known as the INAH, which claimed it “retains control of the sites.”
Both guides stressed that the best-known Mayan ruin site in Chiapas, the imposing temple complex at Palenque, is open and perfectly safe for visitors. But starting around December, tourists have canceled about 5% of trips booked to the area, and there are fears that could grow.
Things that some tourists once enjoyed — like the more adventurous trip to ruins buried deep in the jungle, like Yaxchilán, on the banks of the Usumacinta river and reachable only by boat — are either no longer possible, or so risky that several guides have publicly announced they won’t take tourists there.
Residents of the town of Frontera Comalapa, where the boats once picked up tourists to take them to Yaxchilan, closed the road in October because of constant incursions by gunmen.
Even the INAH admits there is no access to Yaxchilan, noting that “the institute itself has recommended at certain points that tourists not go to the archaeological site, because they could have an unsuccessful visit.” But it said that the problems there are “of a social nature” and are beyond its control.
Cartel battles started to get really bad in Chiapas in 2023, which coincides with the uptick in the number of migrants — now about a half-million annually — moving through the Darien Gap jungle from South America, through Central America and Mexico to the U.S. border.
Because many of the new wave of migrants are from Cuba, Asia and Africa, they can pay more than Central Americans, making the smuggling routes through Chiapas more valuable. The problem now seems to be beyond anyone’s control.
The National Guard — the quasi-military force that López Obrador has made the centerpiece of law enforcement in Mexico — has been pelted with stones and sticks by local residents in several towns in that region of Chiapas in recent weeks.
The other tour guide said that was because the two warring drug cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco, often recruit or force local people to act as foot soldiers and prevent National Guard troopers from entering their towns.
In Chiapas, residents are often members of Indigenous groups like the Choles or Lacandones, both descendants of the ancient Maya. The potential damage of using them as foot soldiers in cartel fights is grim, given that some groups have either very few remaining members or are already locked in land disputes.
The guide said the ruin sites have the added disadvantage of being in jungle areas where the cartels have carved out at least four clandestine landing strips to fly drugs in from South America.
But the damages are mounting for the Indigenous residents who have come to depend on tourism.
“There are communities that sell handicrafts, that provide places to stay, boat trips, craftspeople. It affects the economy a lot,” said the first guide. “You have to remember that this is an agricultural state that has no industry, no factories, so tourism has become an economic lever, one of the few sources of work.”
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CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy — Mikaela Shiffrin, Aleksander Aamodt Kilde, Petra Vlhova, Alexis Pinturault, Corinne Suter.
All five former overall World Cup ski champions or Olympic gold medalists have been involved in severe crashes during races over the past 15 days.
And they’re not the only ones.
Marco Schwarz, a former world champion who was leading the overall standings, didn’t even make it to January. He injured his knee on the dark and bumpy Bormio downhill in late December.
In a season without a Winter Olympics or a world championships, the ski circuit is hurting.
Why? Many skiers are pointing to an overloaded schedule in January after many races were canceled at the start of the season.
The International Ski Federation (FIS) scheduled two downhills for the men at Wengen, Switzerland, and Kitzbühel, Austria, and also two in Cortina for the women. Add in multiple training sessions at each of those venues and there’s high-speed, on-the-edge skiing going on virtually all week.
“If the strongest skiers are going down, it’s got to make you wonder,” leading downhiller Sofia Goggia said.
Shiffrin, who has a record 95 World Cup wins, crashed into the safety net at high speed during Friday’s downhill in Cortina on the course to be used for the 2026 Olympics. She avoided a serious leg injury and wrote on Instagram she was thankful it wasn’t worse. It’s unclear when Shiffrin will return.
Suter pulled up midway on her run, clutching her left knee. She tore her ACL, damaged her meniscus and is out for the season. Shiffrin and Suter were airlifted down the mountain.
The weekend before, Vlhova’s season ended after tearing ligaments in her right knee in a giant slalom in front of her home fans in Slovakia. That came after Pinturault and Kilde had season-ending crashes at Wengen.
“Races, travel, training sessions, pressure, stress,” said Federica Brignone, another former overall champion who crashed on Friday — although without getting hurt. “It’s time to reflect about the overloaded schedule.”
There were more crashes on Saturday in Cortina, where American racer Bella Wright sustained bruises and a cut on her chin.
“It hurt, but I knew right away my legs were OK,” Wright said. “They’re bruised and they’re definitely going to be more and more sore as time goes on. I was also spitting up blood and I wasn’t sure what that was from. And then they told me I have a laceration on my chin.”
Racing was suspended several times for long periods due to strong winds.
Czech skier and snowboarder Ester Ledecka was the first racer on the course and she pulled up shortly into her run after losing control.
Germany’s Kira Weidle and Switzerland’s Joana Haehlen also fell, and Haehlen was carried away from the finish area with her entire leg bandaged. She tore her right ACL.
The race was eventually stopped with two skiers still to start after Ania Monica Caill of Romania went cartwheeling into the safety nets.
“Talking only about the number of races is pointless,” said Lara Gut-Behrami, the Olympic super-G champion and a former overall winner. “There’s a ton of reasons that affect performance. True, the schedule is very full, but it’s been that way for years. Even when there are no races all the athletes go train.
“There’s more stress because of everything else surrounding the sport,” Gut-Behrami added. “Whereas before it was only about skiing, now an athlete has to multitask and worry about curating their image and marketing themselves. But the days still last 24 hours.”
The men will have a break, though, with FIS announcing that two upcoming downhills scheduled for Chamonix, France, have been canceled due to poor snow conditions.
Cut-proof underwear
Considering all of the recent crashes, some skiers are suggesting cut-proof underwear should become mandatory in more races.
Already required in parallel events, the cut-proof underwear could prevent racers from being injured by their super-sharp ski edges during crashes. But downhillers don’t wear it because it slows them down.
“This should be a safe improvement for all of us,” Goggia said. “It should be mandatory.”
Kilde had to have urgent surgery to repair a severe cut and nerve damage in his right calf, plus two torn ligaments in his right shoulder.
Cut-proof underwear, made of resistant polyethylene substances that are said to be stronger than steel or Kevlar on a per-weight basis, might have prevented Kilde’s injury. Just as inflatable airbags that skiers wear under their racing suits can provide protection.
“It’s a no brainer,” U.S. women’s coach Paul Kristofic said. “But there’s always people that push against these things for various reasons. There wasn’t unanimous support for the airbag either.”
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ACULCO, Mexico — The corral gate swings open and an energetic calf charges in, only to be wrestled struggling to the ground and immobilized by having its legs tied. The men go to work vaccinating the calf and marking its number with a burning iron on its back.
It happened in one of the sessions of a workshop that José Arturo Jiménez gave this past week at his ranch in Aculco, a town in the State of Mexico near Mexico City, attended by about 40 university students and others.
The event was part of an initiative by the Mexican Association of Bullfighting to attract new followers for the centuries-old tradition of bullfighting by educating young people about the different activities that surround the breeding of fighting bulls.
The association is trying to counter the growing global movement driven by animal defenders who seek to abolish bullfighting, which they consider torture of bulls.
Although bullfighting is still allowed in much of Mexico, it is suspended in some states, such as Sinaloa, Guerrero, Coahuila and Quintana Roo. There is also a legal fight in Mexico City that threatens the future of the capital’s Plaza Mexico, the largest bullfighting arena in the world.
Jimenez admitted that a good part of the public that now attends bullfights in Mexico is not very young.
So Jiménez and other members of the association in recent years have dedicated themselves to promoting a hundred events and educational workshops for young people in different parts of Mexico.
“You have to give the elements to people so they can decide what they like and don’t like … and at least let them know our truth and decide if it is good or bad,” the 64-year-old rancher said.
During the workshops, participants are taught the different aspects of the breeding of fighting bulls, their rigorous care and the studies that are conducted to determine the fighting spirit and proclivities of various animals.
Among those attending the rancher’s workshop was environmental engineering student Estefanía Manrique, who six years ago became drawn to bullfighting after reluctantly accompanying her mother to Plaza Mexico to see a cousin in a bullfight.
Before going “I had this idea that it was abuse,” Manrique said, but her perception was changed by the ritual surrounding the bullfight.
“I really like theater, and seeing how they analyze the bulls and move them according to the characteristics they have — and it even seems that they are dancing, other times they seem to be acting — I loved that,” the 22-year-old said.
She added that her love for bullfighting has caused problems among her university classmates because most of her social circle are more sympathetic to the view of animal rights activists, but she said she defends her passion.
Jimenez has high hopes that the incipient educational effort will succeed in drawing in new aficionados for bullfighting and ensure the survival of the tradition.
“We want them to continue more than with this party,” he said. “Let people follow to go to the countryside, raise their animals, sow their seeds, harvest, have a bond with the land, eat healthy food and are not hypocritical, not made of glass and know that animals have to be killed to eat them and they have to be respected and cared for.”
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MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA — Aryna Sabalenka continued to be an irrepressible force at the Australian Open as she powered to a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Chinese 12th seed Zheng Qinwen on Saturday to successfully defend her title and add a second Grand Slam trophy to her cabinet.
The Belarusian second seed has barely put a foot wrong as she became the first woman to retain the Melbourne Park crown since compatriot Victoria Azarenka in 2013.
“It’s been an amazing couple of weeks, and I couldn’t imagine myself lifting this trophy one more time,” Sabalenka said.
“I want to congratulate you, Qinwen, on an incredible couple of weeks here in Australia. I know it’s really tough to lose in the final, but you’re such an incredible player,” she said. “You’re such a young girl, and you’re going to make many more finals and you’re going to get it.”
Sabalenka came into the match without dropping a set at the year’s first major. She remained perfect to join Ash Barty, Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova and Lindsay Davenport in the elite club of players to have managed the feat since 2000.
She unleashed monster groundstrokes to grab the final by the scruff of the neck with an early break, and thousands of Chinese supporters and millions back home watched Zheng fall behind 3-0.
Sabalenka did not have her nation’s flags in the stands because of a ban over her country’s role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the charismatic 25-year-old has a big Melbourne fan base. She rode the Rod Laver Arena support to take the first set.
Zheng, who had saved four set points, showed she was slowly growing in confidence in her second meeting with Sabalenka by firing up her own big forehand amid the rallying cry of “Jia You” from her compatriots in the crowd.
The 21-year-old first-time finalist, bidding to match her idol Li Na — the Melbourne Park champion 10 years ago and first Chinese player to win a major — saw her hopes fade after two more errors on serve left her 4-1 down.
Sabalenka shrugged off a shaky service game to close out the most one-sided final since Azarenka beat Maria Sharapova 6-3, 6-0 in 2012.
“It’s my first final and I’m feeling a little bit pity, but that’s how it is,” Zheng said. “I feel very complicated because I could have done better than I did in this match.”
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NEW YORK — Pornographic deepfake images of Taylor Swift are circulating online, making the singer the most famous victim of a scourge that tech platforms and anti-abuse groups have struggled to fix.
Sexually explicit and abusive fake images of Swift began circulating widely this week on the social media platform X.
Her ardent fanbase of “Swifties” quickly mobilized, launching a counteroffensive on the platform formerly known as Twitter and a #ProtectTaylorSwift hashtag to flood it with more positive images of the pop star. Some said they were reporting accounts that were sharing the deepfakes.
The deepfake-detecting group Reality Defender said it tracked a deluge of nonconsensual pornographic material depicting Swift, particularly on X. Some images also made their way to Meta-owned Facebook and other social media platforms.
“Unfortunately, they spread to millions and millions of users by the time that some of them were taken down,” said Mason Allen, Reality Defender’s head of growth.
The researchers found at least a couple dozen unique AI-generated images. The most widely shared were football-related, showing a painted or bloodied Swift that objectified her and in some cases inflicted violent harm on her deepfake persona.
Researchers have said the number of explicit deepfakes has grown in the past few years, as the technology used to produce such images has become more accessible and easier to use. In 2019, a report released by the AI firm DeepTrace Labs showed these images were overwhelmingly weaponized against women. Most of the victims, it said, were Hollywood actors and South Korean K-pop singers.
Brittany Spanos, a senior writer at Rolling Stone who teaches a course on Swift at New York University, says Swift’s fans are quick to mobilize in support of their artist, especially those who take their fandom very seriously and in situations of wrongdoing.
“This could be a huge deal if she really does pursue it to court,” she said.
Spanos says the deep fake pornography issue aligns with others Swift has had in the past, pointing to her 2017 lawsuit against a radio station DJ who allegedly groped her; jurors awarded Swift $1 in damages, a sum her attorney, Douglas Baldridge, called “a single symbolic dollar, the value of which is immeasurable to all women in this situation” in the midst of the MeToo movement. (The $1 lawsuit became a trend thereafter, like in Gwyneth Paltrow’s 2023 countersuit against a skier.)
When reached for comment on the fake images of Swift, X directed the The Associated Press to a post from its safety account that said the company strictly prohibits the sharing of non-consensual nude images on its platform. The company has also sharply cut back its content-moderation teams since Elon Musk took over the platform in 2022.
“Our teams are actively removing all identified images and taking appropriate actions against the accounts responsible for posting them,” the company wrote in the X post early Friday morning. “We’re closely monitoring the situation to ensure that any further violations are immediately addressed, and the content is removed.”
Meanwhile, Meta said in a statement that it strongly condemns “the content that has appeared across different internet services” and has worked to remove it.
“We continue to monitor our platforms for this violating content and will take appropriate action as needed,” the company said.
A representative for Swift didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Allen said the researchers are 90% confident that the images were created by diffusion models, which are a type of generative artificial intelligence model that can produce new and photorealistic images from written prompts. The most widely known are Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and OpenAI’s DALL-E. Allen’s group didn’t try to determine the provenance.
OpenAI said it has safeguards in place to limit the generation of harmful content and “decline requests that ask for a public figure by name, including Taylor Swift.”
Microsoft, which offers an image-generator based partly on DALL-E, said Friday it was in the process of investigating whether its tool was misused. Much like other commercial AI services, it said it doesn’t allow “adult or non-consensual intimate content, and any repeated attempts to produce content that goes against our policies may result in loss of access to the service.”
Asked about the Swift deepfakes on NBC Nightly News, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told host Lester Holt in an interview airing Tuesday that there’s a lot still to be done in setting AI safeguards and “it behooves us to move fast on this.”
“Absolutely this is alarming and terrible, and so therefore yes, we have to act,” Nadella said.
Midjourney, OpenAI and Stable Diffusion-maker Stability AI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Federal lawmakers who’ve introduced bills to put more restrictions or criminalize deepfake porn indicated the incident shows why the U.S. needs to implement better protections.
“For years, women have been victims of non-consensual deepfakes, so what happened to Taylor Swift is more common than most people realize,” said U.S. Rep. Yvette D. Clarke, a Democrat from New York who’s introduced legislation would require creators to digitally watermark deepfake content.
“Generative-AI is helping create better deepfakes at a fraction of the cost,” Clarke said.
U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, another New York Democrat pushing a bill that would criminalize sharing deepfake porn online, said what happened to Swift was disturbing and has become more and more pervasive across the internet.
“The images may be fake, but their impacts are very real,” Morelle said in a statement. “Deepfakes are happening every day to women everywhere in our increasingly digital world, and it’s time to put a stop to them.”
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Washington, DC has turned the National Building Museum into a wonderland of children’s literature. Using children’s books, it’s an immersive journey into architecture, engineering and design. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera and edit: Andrey Degtyarev, Andrey Degtyarev, Anna Rice
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Jannik Sinner has upset Novak Djokovic to reach the Australian Open men’s final, ending the 10-time champion’s career unbeaten streak in semifinals at Melbourne Park.
The 22-year-old Italian broke Djokovic’s serve twice in each of the first two sets but missed a match point in the third set of a 6-1, 6-2, 6-7 (6), 6-3 victory Friday that earned him a place in a Grand Slam final for the first time.
On his second match point, 55 minutes later, he made no mistake and completed his third victory in four matches against Djokovic since losing to the world No. 1 in last year’s Wimbledon semifinals.
“It’s always nice to have this kind of player who you can learn from,” Sinner said in his on-court TV interview. “I lost last year in the semifinals in Wimbledon, and I learned a lot from that. The confidence from the end of last year has for sure kept the belief that I can play the best players in the world.”
The youngest player to reach the men’s final in Australia since Djokovic’s first title in 2008, Sinner will play either third-seeded Daniil Medvedev or No. 6 Alexander Zverev for the championship on Sunday.
Djokovic’s bid for a record-extending 11th Australian and 25th major title overall will have to wait.
He hadn’t lost a match at Melbourne Park since 2018 and was on a 33-match winning streak at the season’s first major. Every previous time he’d won a quarterfinal in Australia, Djokovic had gone on to win the hardcourt title.
The loss to Djokovic at Wimbledon has become a turning point in their rivalry. After losing the first three meetings, Sinner won two of the next three — all in November — in the group stage of the ATP Finals in Turin and in the Davis Cup semifinals.
Sinner was the only player in the final four who didn’t drop a set in the tournament, and he spent almost four fewer hours on court through five rounds than Djokovic, who was taken to four sets three times.
Still, the odds were stacked against fourth-seeded Sinner.
But he played calm, nearly flawless tennis in the first two sets and piled pressure on Djokovic’s serve in a relatively cool 21 degrees Celsius and a light breeze.
He was holding his serve with relative ease against a player contesting a 48th Grand Slam semifinal.
Djokovic rallied, as he always does, to make Sinner win it. But he had few chances and didn’t get a look at a break point in the match — the first time he’s experienced that in a completed Grand Slam match.
The 36-year-old Serbian star missed his first chance to be just the third person in history to win 11 titles at any Grand Slam event — Rafael Nadal has 14 French Open titles and Margaret Court won 11 Australian Open women’s titles.
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LONDON — An American scientist has sparked a trans-Atlantic tempest in a teapot by offering Britain advice on its favorite hot beverage.
Bryn Mawr College chemistry professor Michelle Francl says one of the keys to a perfect cup of tea is a pinch of salt. The tip is included in Francl’s book Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, published Wednesday by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Not since the Boston Tea Party has mixing tea with salt water roiled the Anglo-American relationship so much.
The salt suggestion drew howls of outrage from tea lovers in Britain, where popular stereotype sees Americans as coffee-swilling boors who make tea, if at all, in the microwave.
“Don’t even say the word ‘salt’ to us,” the etiquette guide Debrett’s wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The U.S. Embassy in London intervened in the brewing storm with a social media post reassuring “the good people of the U.K. that the unthinkable notion of adding salt to Britain’s national drink is not official United States policy.”
“Let us unite in our steeped solidarity and show the world that when it comes to tea, we stand as one,” said the tongue-in-cheek post. “The U.S. Embassy will continue to make tea in the proper way — by microwaving it.”
The embassy later clarified that its statement was “a lighthearted play on our shared cultural connections” rather than an official press release.
Steeped, in contrast, is no joke. The product of three years’ research and experimentation, the book explores the more than 100 chemical compounds found in tea and “puts the chemistry to use with advice on how to brew a better cup,” its publisher says.
Francl said adding a small amount of salt — not enough to taste — makes tea seem less bitter because “the sodium ions in salt block the bitter receptors in our mouths.”
She also advocates making tea in a pre-warmed pot, agitating the bag briefly but vigorously and serving it in a short, stout mug to preserve the heat. And she says milk should be added to the cup after the tea, not before — another issue that often divides tea lovers.
Francl has been surprised by the level of reaction to her book in Britain.
“I kind of understood that there would hopefully be a lot of interest,” she told The Associated Press. “I didn’t know we’d wade into a diplomatic conversation with the U.S. Embassy.”
It has made her ponder the ocean-wide coffee-tea divide that separates the U.S. and Britain.
“I wonder if we’re just a more caffeinated society — coffee is higher in caffeine,” she said. “Or maybe we’re just trying to rebel against our parent country.”
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San Francisco — Netflix added 13 million subscribers in the final three months of last year, the company said on Tuesday, despite price hikes at the leading streaming service.
Netflix finished 2023 with slightly more than 260 million subscribers worldwide, with a profit of $938 million in the final quarter versus just $55 million in the same period a year earlier.
“We believe there is plenty of room for growth ahead as streaming expands,” the U.S. company said in an earnings letter.
Netflix shares were up more than 8% to $532.75 in after-market trades that followed the release of the earnings figures.
“Netflix sticks out as the clear front-runner in the streaming wars,” said Insider Intelligence principal analyst Ross Benes.
The streaming pioneer said that despite last year’s strikes by Hollywood actors and writers, the company has a “big, bold” slate of content for release this year.
The company touted coming content including a sequel to the hit Squid Game series out of South Korea and a brand new “3 Body Problem” show based on a bestselling novel by the same name.
“Choice and control are the price of entry in modern entertainment, and that is streaming,” Netflix said in the letter. “It’s what consumers want, and we believe it’s the best way for our industry to stay relevant and growing.”
The earnings news came the same day that Netflix sealed a long-term broadcast deal with the WWE professional wrestling juggernaut, as it pushes further into sporting events.
Beginning in the United States in 2025, Netflix will become the exclusive new home of “Raw,” the WWE’s flagship program that has been broadcasting on television since 1993.
The agreement will also see WWE shows and live events streamed across the globe as their rights become available.
With an initial 10-year term for $5 billion, the deal has an option for Netflix to extend the deal for an additional 10 years or opt out after the first five years.
“We expect our industry to remain highly competitive,” Netflix said, citing heavy investment by rivals including Amazon, Apple and YouTube. “It’s why continuing to improve our entertainment offering is so important.”
Netflix late last year increased the price of its basic plan in the United States to $11.99 monthly and its premium plan to $22.99, with similar price increases seen in Britain and France.
After a period of rocky earnings, earlier in 2022, the Silicon Valley giant expanded its crackdown on users sharing passwords with people beyond their immediate family.
In a separate bid for revenue, Netflix launched an ad-subsidized offering around the same time as the crackdown.
The ad-supported tier is priced at $7 monthly and is growing fast but has yet to become a main driver of overall revenue, according to Netflix.
As the ad-tiers gain momentum, the company said on Tuesday that it would retire the lowest cost ad-free plan, starting with Canada and the UK in the second quarter of this year.
The company said earlier this month it has 23 million subscribers using the ad-supported tier, which accounts for 40% of new sign-ups.
Netflix Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters said during an earnings call that the company is continuing to expand its lineup of more than 80 mobile games that subscribers can play, having recently added the blockbuster “Grand Theft Auto.”
“We’re stoked by the performance of GTA,” said Peters, noting that the Netflix mobile game exceeded even the company’s high hopes for it.
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NEW YORK — Charles Osgood, a five-time Emmy Award-winning journalist who anchored “CBS Sunday Morning” for more than two decades, hosted the long-running radio program “The Osgood File” and was referred to as CBS News’ poet-in-residence, has died. He was 91.
CBS reported that Osgood died Tuesday at his home in Saddle River, New Jersey, and that the cause was dementia, according to his family.
Osgood was an erudite, warm broadcaster with a flair for music who could write essays and light verse as well as report hard news. He worked in radio and television with equal facility and signed off by telling listeners: “I’ll see you on the radio.”
“To say there’s no one like Charles Osgood is an understatement,” Rand Morrison, executive producer of “Sunday Morning,” said in a statement. “He embodied the heart and soul of ‘Sunday Morning.’ … At the piano, Charlie put our lives to music. Truly, he was one of a kind — in every sense.”
“CBS News Sunday Morning” will honor Osgood with a special broadcast on Sunday.
Osgood took over “Sunday Morning” after the beloved Charles Kuralt retired in 1994. Osgood seemingly had an impossible act to follow, but with his folksy erudition and his slightly bookish, bow-tied style, he immediately clicked with viewers, who continued to embrace the program as an unhurried TV magazine.
Osgood, who graduated from Fordham University in 1954, started as a classical music disk jockey in Washington, served in the Army and returned to help start WHCT in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1963, he got an on-air position at ABC Radio in New York.
In 1967, he took a job as reporter on the CBS-owned New York news radio station NewsRadio 88. Then, one fateful weekend, he was summoned to fill in at the anchor desk for the TV network’s Saturday newscast. In 1971, he joined the CBS network and launched what would be known as “The Osgood File.”
In 1990, he was inducted into the radio division of the National Association of Broadcaster’s Hall of Fame. In 2008, he was awarded the National Association of Broadcasters Distinguished Service Award. He won four Emmy Awards and earned a fifth lifetime achievement honor in 2017.
Jane Pauley succeeded Osgood as host of “Sunday Morning,” becoming only the third host of the program.
When he retired in 2016 after 45 years of journalism, Osgood did so in a very Osgood fashion.
“For years now, people — even friends and family — have been asking me why I continue doing this, considering my age,” the then-83-year-old Osgood said in brief concluding remarks. “It’s just that it’s been such a joy doing it! It’s been a great run, but after nearly 50 years at CBS … the time has come.”
And then he sang a few wistful bars from a favorite folk song: “So long, it’s been good to know you. I’ve got to be drifting along.”
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Nairobi, Kenya — Being the preferred choice of footwear for many, flip-flops – typically made of plastic or rubber – break easily and often aren’t disposed of properly. Therefore, millions of them end up in oceans, waterways, dumpsites, and landfills all over the world.
Ocean Sole, a Kenya-based company, has found creative and functional ways to reuse the hundreds of thousands of discarded flip-flops that arrive regularly at their warehouse located in Karen, about 45 minutes from Nairobi’s city center.
Joe Mwakiremba has been working for the company for about 10 years. He says the company was “founded on the premise of cleaning our ocean and waterways [while] at the same time employing lots of artists from high-impact communities in Kenya.”
He told VOA that flip-flops are generally collected from weekly beach cleanups and other places.
At Ocean Sole, they usually weigh the material and pay collectors about 18 cents per kilogram. Then, to prepare them for carving, they are first hand-washed, one flip-flop at a time.
“The next stage for our smaller and medium-size sculptures, we have a die cut machine that would punch out a template of a giraffe, a lion or a rhino. Those templates are joined together with glue and carved out into that respective animal,” he notes.
For life-size pieces, the company reuses an additional material.
“The big piece like this couch I am sitting on, the inside of it is polystyrene. Polystyrene comes from shipping companies; they use it as insulation. When it’s worn out, they toss it away, so we carve out our big-size sculpture like the giraffe behind me using that material and pad it using the flip flops around it,” he expressed.
Using a machine, the pieces are then sanded before being cleaned again and readied for shipment.
In 2023, the company said it recycled 750,000 flip-flops. This year it aims to recycle one million.
Florence Auma is an artist who has been working for the company for 14 years. Auma told VOA she had to learn the art of carving from scratch.
“I came into this company, washing flip-flops. I started with washing, then I started with blocking, then I am the first female carver in this company. Now, I am happy because I have many skills in this company,” she says.
Skills, she says, that have allowed her to be able to carve just about anything — like coasters — and to travel the world to showcase her talent.
Mwakiremba told us one of the largest pieces the company made was a life-size car for a Honda dealership in the United States. They spent three months on the project, using 2,500 flip flops.
Ocean Sole is now collaborating with a design artist from Uganda who now lives in Finland and founded a studio there, in one of their biggest projects to date.
It’s a project they had planned to work on together in 2019 but had to pause due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lincoln Kayiwa – who has used material such as ceramic, granite, wood, and glass — has decided to try something new with flip flops.
He recently traveled to Kenya to finalize a furniture project to be launched in April during Milan Design Week — Salone del Mobile — in Italy.
To cook up this kind of project, Kayima told us he wanted to combine different elements, including a unique design concept with a meaningful product combined with his Ugandan and Finnish cultures — and that of Kenyans at Ocean Sole.
“The project itself has 14 pieces; you are just seeing three of them … of course it’s a win-win situation; the more flip-flops are used, that means the more flip-flops are being taken out of the environment. For me that’s the meaning of sustainability,” the Alvar Aalto University graduate said.
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NEW YORK — After a tumultuous movie year marred by strikes and work stoppages, the Academy Awards showered nominations Tuesday on Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic, “Oppenheimer,” which came away with a leading 13 nominations.
Nolan’s three-hour opus, viewed as the best picture frontrunner, received nods for best picture; Nolan’s direction; acting nominations for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt; and multiple honors for the craft of the J. Robert Oppenheimer drama.
But the year’s biggest hit, “Barbie,” came away with a nominations haul notably less than its partner in Barbenheimer mania. Greta Gerwig’s feminist comedy, with more than $1.4 billion in ticket sales, was nominated for eight awards, including best picture; Ryan Gosling for best supporting actor; and two best-song candidates in “What Was I Made For” and “I’m Just Ken.”
But Gerwig was surprisingly left out of the best director field. Gerwig was nominated for best director in 2018 for her solo directorial debut, “Lady Bird.” At the time, she was just the fifth woman nominated for the award. Since then, Chloé Zhao (“Nomadland”) and Jane Campion (“The Power of the Dog”) have won best director. Before those wins, Kathryn Bigelow (“The Hurt Locker,” in 2010) was the only woman to win the Oscar’s top filmmaking honor.
Both Martin Scorsese’s Osage epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Frankenstein riff “Poor Things” were also widely celebrated. “Poor Things” landed 11 nods, while “Killers of the Moon” was nominated for 10 Oscars.
Lily Gladstone, star of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” became the first Native American nominated for best actress. For the 10th time, Scorsese was nominated for best director. Leonardo DiCaprio, though, was left out of best actor.
The 10 films nominated for best picture were: “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Poor Things,” “Killers of the Flower Moon,” “The Holdovers,” “Maestro,” “American Fiction,” “Past Lives,” “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest.”
Lead nominees “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” “Poor Things” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” made for a maximalist quartet of Oscar heavyweights. Nolan’s sprawling biopic. Gerwig’s near-musical. Scorsese’s pitch-black Western. Lanthimos’ sumptuously designed fantasy. Each utilized a wide spectrum of cinematic tools to tell big, often disturbing big-screen stories. And each — even Apple’s biggest-budgeted movie yet, “Killers of the Flower Moon” — had robust theatrical releases that saved streaming for months later.
The Associated Press notched its first Oscar nomination in the news organization’s 178-year history with “20 Days in Mariupol,” Mstyslav Chernov’s harrowing chronicle of the besieged Ukrainian city and of the last international journalists left there after the Russia invasion. It was nominated for best documentary, along with “Four Daughters,” “Bobi Wine: The People’s President,” “The Eternal Memory” and “To Kill a Tiger.”
“20 Days” is a joint production between The Associated Press and PBS’ “Frontline.”
The nominees for best international film are: “Society of the Snow,” (Spain); “The Zone of Interest,” (United Kingdom); “The Teachers’ Lounge” (Germany); “Io Capitano” (Italy) ; “Perfect Days” (Japan).
The nominees for best animated film are: “The Boy and the Heron”; “Elemental”; “Nimona”; “Robot Dreams”; “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.”
Oscar season has reunited “Oppenheimer” with its summer box-office partner, “Barbie.”
Historically, blockbusters have helped fueled Oscar ratings. Though the pile-up of award shows (an after-effect of last year’s strikes ) could be detrimental to the Academy Awards, the Barbenheimer presence could help lift the March 10 telecast on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel is returning as host, with the ceremony moved up an hour, to 7 p.m. Eastern.
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Being the preferred choice of footwear for many, flip-flops — typically made of plastic or rubber — break easily and don’t get disposed of properly. Millions of them, therefore, end up in oceans, waterways, dumpsites and landfills all over the world. A Kenya-based company has found creative and functional ways to reuse them. VOA Nairobi Bureau Chief Mariama Diallo visited their warehouse located in Karen, about 45 minutes from the city center, and has this report. Camera: Amos Wangua
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NEW YORK — Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and “Moonstruck” to social dramas such as the Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” has died at age 97.
Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died “peacefully” Saturday, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson. Additional details were not immediately available.
Throughout his long career, Jewison combined light entertainment with topical films that appealed to him on a deeply personal level. As Jewison was ending his military service in the Canadian navy during World War II, he hitchhiked through the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation. In his autobiography “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me,” he noted that racism and injustice became his most common themes.
“Every time a film deals with racism, many Americans feel uncomfortable,” he wrote. “Yet it has to be confronted. We have to deal with prejudice and injustice or we will never understand what is good and evil, right and wrong; we need to feel how ‘the other’ feels.”
He drew upon his experiences for 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” starring Rod Steiger as a white racist small-town sheriff and Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia trying to help solve a murder and eventually forming a working relationship with the hostile local lawman.
James Baldwin condemned the film’s “appalling distance from reality,” and thought the director trapped in a fantasy of racial harmony that would only heighten “Black rage and despair.” But The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther was among the critics who found the movie powerful and inspiring and, in a year, featuring such landmarks as “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” Jewison’s production won the Academy Award for best picture while Steiger took home the best actor Oscar. (Jewison lost out for best director to Mike Nichols of “The Graduate”).
Among those who encouraged Jewison while making “In the Heat of the Night”: Robert F. Kennedy, whom the director met during a ski trip in Sun Valley, Idaho.
“I told him I made films and he asked what kind I make,” he recalled in a 2011 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “So I told him that I was working on ‘In the Heat of the Night’ and that it’s about two cops: one a white sheriff from Mississippi and the other a black detective from Philadelphia. I told him it was a film about tolerance. So he listened and nodded and said ‘You know, Norman, timing is everything. In politics, in art, in life itself.’ I never forgot that.”
He received two other Oscar nominations, for “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Moonstruck,” the beloved romantic comedy for which Cher won an Academy Award for best actress. He also worked on such notable films as the Cold War spoof “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” the Steve McQueen thriller “The Thomas Crown Affair” and a pair of movies featuring Denzel Washington: the racial drama “A Soldier’s Story” and “The Hurricane,” starring Washington as wrongly imprisoned boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.
A third project with Washington never made it to production. In the early 1990s, Jewison was set to direct a biography of Malcolm X, but backed out amid protests from Spike Lee and others that a white director shouldn’t make the film. Lee ended up directing.
Five Jewison films received best Oscar nominations: “In the Heat of the Night,” “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Moonstruck” and “A Soldier’s Story.”
Jewison and his wife Margaret Ann Dixon (nicknamed Dixie) had three children, sons Kevin and Michael and daughter Jennifer Ann, who became an actress and appeared in the Jewison films “Agnes of God” and “Best Friends.” The Jewisons were married 51 years, until her death in 2004. He married Lynne St. David in 2010.
Jewison, honored by Canada in 2003 with a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, remained close to his home country. When he wasn’t working, he lived on a 200-acre farm near Toronto, where he raised horses and cattle and produced maple syrup. He founded the Canadian Film Centre in 1988 and for years hosted barbecues during the Toronto Film Festival.
The Toronto-born Jewison began acting at age 6, appearing before Masonic lodge gatherings. After graduating from Victoria College, he went to work for the BBC in London, then returned to Canada and directed programs for the CBC. His work there brought offers from Hollywood, and he quickly earned a reputation as a director of TV musicals, with stars including Judy Garland, Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte. Jewison shifted to feature films in 1963 with the comedy “40 Pounds of Trouble,” starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette.
The director’s light touch prompted Universal to assign him to a series of comedies, including “The Thrill of It All,” which paired Day with James Garner, and “Send Me No Flowers,” starring Day and Rock Hudson. Wearying of such scripts, Jewison used a loophole in his contract to move to MGM for 1965’s “The Cincinnati Kid,” a drama of the gambling world starring McQueen and Edward G. Robinson. He followed with “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” which starred Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint and was the breakthrough film for Alan Arkin.
His other films included “F.I.S.T.”, a flop with Sylvester Stallone as a Jimmy Hoffa-style labor leader; “… And Justice for All” (1979), with Al Pacino fighting a crooked judicial system; and “In Country,” featuring Bruce Willis as a Vietnam War veteran. His most recent work, the 2003 thriller “The Statement,” starred Michael Caine and Tilda Swinton and flopped at the box office.
“I never really became as much a part of the establishment as I wanted to be,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2011. “I wanted to be accepted. I wanted people to say ‘that was a great picture.’ I mean I have a big ego like anyone else. I’m no shrinking violet. But I never felt totally accepted — but maybe that’s good.”
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New York — On a quiet weekend in movie theaters, “Mean Girls” repeated atop the box office with $11.7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday, while a handful of awards contenders sought to make an impact ahead of Oscar nominations Tuesday.
With a dearth of new releases in cinemas, Paramount Pictures’ Tina Fey-scripted musical “Mean Girls” pushed its two-week total past $50 million, along with $16.2 million internationally. So far, it’s outpacing the tally for the 2004 original “Mean Girls.”
Only one new film debuted in wide release: “I.S.S.,” a modestly budgeted sci-fi thriller starring Ariana DeBose. The film, which speculates what would happen aboard the International Space Station if war broke out between the U.S. and Russia, debuted with $3 million on 2,518 screens for Bleecker Street.
Expectations weren’t high for “I.S.S.,” which drew only so-so reviews and was lightly marketed. Audiences also didn’t like it, giving the film a “C-” CinemaScore.
But even for January, historically a low ebb for moviegoing, it was a sparsely attended weekend, with paltry options on the big screen. The top 10 films collectively accounted for just $51.3 million in box office, according to Comscore.
With a similarly thin release schedule on deck for next weekend, it could be the start of a chastening trend for Hollywood in 2024. Due to production delays caused by last year’s strikes, there are significant holes throughout this year’s movie calendar.
The Jason Statham thriller “The Beekeeper,” from Amazon MGM Studios, remained in second place, grossing $8.5 million in its second weekend to bring its total to $31.1 million. Warner Bros. “Wonka,” six weeks into its smash run in theaters, was third, with $6.4 million in ticket sales. It’s taken in $187.2 million domestically.
Also continuing to leg out was Sony Pictures’ “Anyone But You.” The rom-com starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, crossed $100 million globally in its fifth week of release. It’s the highest grossing R-rated romantic comedy — a genre that has largely migrated to streaming platforms — since 2016’s “Bridget Jones’s Baby.” Domestically, it came in fourth with $5.4 million.
Much of the weekend’s action was in expanding awards contenders.
After a qualifying release in December, Ava DuVernay’s “Origin,” starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the “Caste” author Isabel Wilkerson, launched in 125 theaters and pulled in $875,000 — a strong start for the acclaimed film.
Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark fantasy “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, added 820 theaters and grossed $2 million from 1,400 locations. The Searchlight Pictures release, which won the Golden Globe for best comedy-musical, has earned $33.7 million globally in seven weeks of slowly expanding release.
Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction,” starring Jeffrey Wright as a frustrated novelist, expanded to 850 screens and pulled in $1.8 million. “American Fiction,” up to $8 million in six weeks, will look for a boost in Tuesday’s Oscar nominations.
Jonathan Glazer’s Auschwitz film “The Zone of Interest” expanded to 82 screens, grossing $447,684 for A24.
But after a strong launch, another awards contender, “The Color Purple,” has quickly fallen off the radar of moviegoers. Though widely acclaimed and with the backing of producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, the Warner Bros. musical has dropped fast in recent weeks. In its fourth week of release, the Blitz Bazawule-directed film starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson and Danielle Brooks, grossed just $720,000. Its domestic total is $59.3 million, below hopes for the $100-million budgeted film.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
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“Mean Girls,” $11.7 million.
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“The Beekeeper,” $8.5 million.
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“Wonka,” $6.4 million.
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“Anyone But You,” $5.4 million.
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“Migration,” $5.3 million.
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“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” $3.7 million.
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“I.S.S.,” $3 million.
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“Night Swim,” $2.7 million.
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“The Boys in the Boat,” $2.5 million.
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“Poor Things,” $2 million.
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SEOUL, South Korea — Video footage released by an organization that works with North Korean defectors shows North Korean authorities publicly sentencing two teenagers to 12 years’ hard labor for watching K-pop.
The footage, which shows the two 16-year-olds in Pyongyang convicted of watching South Korean movies and music videos, was released by the South and North Development Institute, or SAND.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage, which was first reported by the BBC.
North Korea has for years imposed tough sentences on anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or copying the way South Koreans speak in its war on outside influences. A sweeping new “anti-reactionary thought” law was imposed in 2020.
“Judging from the heavy punishment, it seems that this is to be shown to people across North Korea to warn them. If so, it appears this lifestyle of South Korean culture is prevalent in North Korean society,” said Choi Kyong-hui, president of SAND and doctor of political science at Tokyo University, who defected from North Korea in 2001.
“I think this video was edited around 2022. … What is troublesome for [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un is that Millennials and Gen Z young people have changed their way of thinking. I think he’s working on turning it back to the North Korean way.”
The video, made by North Korean authorities, shows a large public trial in which the two students in grey scrubs are handcuffed while watched by about 1,000 students in an amphitheater. All the students, including the two 16-year-olds, are wearing face masks, suggesting the footage was shot during the COVID pandemic.
The students were sentenced, according to the video, after being convicted of watching and spreading South Korean movies, music and music videos over three months.
“They were seduced by foreign culture … and ended up ruining their lives,” the narrator states, as the video cut away to young girls being handcuffed and Pyongyang women wearing South Korean fashion and hairstyles.
Reclusive North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and are divided by a heavily fortified demilitarized zone.
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Los Angeles — Fantasy musical “Wonka” bounced back to the top of the North American box office this New Year’s weekend as an otherwise pallid film year came to an end, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday.
The Warner Bros. film took in an estimated $24 million for the three-day weekend in the U.S. and Canada, and $31.8 million when New Year’s Day is included. It has passed the $140 million mark domestically and taken in $244 million globally.
That strong showing came at the end of an off year for Hollywood, with numbers roughly 20 percent below the three-year pre-pandemic average, said analyst David A. Gross. Audience tastes are starting to change, he said, from universe-saving action films to stories closer to home.
Close to home — at least if you live near a chocolate factory — was family-friendly “Wonka,” with Timothee Chalamet as a younger version of Roald Dahl’s famous chocolatier. Hugh Grant has an unforgettable turn as a grouchy, green-haired, gnome-like Oompa Loompa.
Last weekend’s leader, Warner Bros.’ “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” took on a bit of water, slipping to second at $19.5 million for three days ($26.3 million for four). Jason Momoa again plays the sea-dwelling superhero, this time joining with his half-brother and former foe to fight turmoil and climate change.
In third was Illumination and Universal’s animated comedy “Migration” about the adventures of a family of mallard ducks as they fly from New England to Jamaica. It earned $17.2 million for three days ($23 million for four).
Completing a strong weekend for Warner Bros. was the new musical version of “The Color Purple,” in fourth spot at $13 million ($17.7 million). Based on the Alice Walker novel that became a beloved movie, “Purple” follows the struggles and triumphs of Celie, a young Black woman in rural Georgia in the early 20th century.
One-time “American Idol” winner Fantasia Barrino-Taylor plays Celie — a role played by Whoopi Goldberg in the 1985 film — with backing from Danielle Brooks, H.E.R. and Colman Domingo.
And in fifth was Sony rom-com “Anyone But You,” at $9 million ($11.5 million). Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell star in the tale, oh-so-loosely based on Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” that takes the two from instant connection to crossed signals to the scheming of friends to a lot of splashing in Sydney Harbour before ultimately … but nay, the rest is silence.
Rounding out the top 10 were:
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“Wonka,” $24 million.
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“Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” $19.5 million.
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“Migration,” $17.2 million.
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“The Color Purple,” $13 million.
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“Anyone But You,” $9 million.
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“The Boys in the Boat,” $8.3 million.
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“The Iron Claw,” $5 million.
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“Ferrari,” $4.1 million.
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“The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” $2.9 million.
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“The Boy and the Heron,” $2.5 million.
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london — Two-time Oscar-nominated actor Tom Wilkinson, who starred in “The Full Monty” — a movie about a group of unemployed steel workers who launched new careers as strippers — died suddenly on Saturday.
The British actor’s death was confirmed in a statement released by his agent on behalf of his family. He was 75.
“It is with great sadness that the family of Tom Wilkinson announce that he died suddenly at home on December 30. His wife and family were with him.”
Wilkinson was nominated for Academy Awards for actor in a leading role for “In The Bedroom” in 2001, and for a supporting role in “Michael Clayton” in 2007.
He most recently reunited with his “Full Monty” co-stars, Robert Carlyle and Mark Addy, in a Disney+ series of the same name.
The original 1997 smash hit about an unlikely group of men stripping won an Oscar for best original musical or comedy score and was nominated for three others, including best picture and best director.
Wilkinson played ex-foreman Gerald Cooper who was recruited to help the unemployed men dance.
The actor also took home the best supporting actor Bafta for the role.
Wilkinson won a 2009 Golden Globe and 2008 Emmy for his role as American political figure Benjamin Franklin in the HBO series “John Adams,” opposite Paul Giamatti.
He was also known for his roles in a BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens novel “Martin Chuzzlewit,” the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” the 2014 Wes Anderson comedy drama “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and 2011 ensemble comedy “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”
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