Los Angeles fire: The iconic Hollywood sign that has featured in countless TV shows and movies over the years is facing a massive risk of getting torched as Los Angeles wildfires continue to wreak havoc. As per a BBC report, fires could be seen burning a few miles away from the iconic landmark, situated on Mount Lee above Beachwood Canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains. While the Hollywood sign is yet to catch fire, several AI-generated images were floated on social media, leading to reports that the blaze had indeed engulfed the iconic landmark.

As the fake news went viral, the official handle of the Hollywood Sign clarified in a Facebook post that it “continues to stand tall”.

“The Hollywood Sign continues to stand tall! Please keep the rest of Los Angeles County in your thoughts, and stay alert if you have to travel around,” read the post.

Users on X (formerly Twitter) also posted messages debunking the claims with some saying using AI images to spread fake news at a time of natural disaster was ‘psychotic’.

“The Hollywood sign hasn’t burned yet due to the California fires, but it might be down soon if the fires don’t stop,” said one user while another added: “Using AI to fake a fire on the Hollywood sign is genuinely psychotic.”

A third commented: “Stop with the bullsh*t, people are losing everything. The Hollywood sign on fire is a fake, stop reposting it.”

Palisades fire

The Palisades fire, which started on Tuesday (Jan 7), has left more than 17,000 acres burning unchecked. In total, wildfires have burned over 27,000 acres. More than 100,000 residents have been ordered to evacuate, including high-profile celebrities who have lost their multi-million dollar homes, especially in Malibu.

While Hollywood Sign remained unscathed, the famous Sunset Boulevard was hit hard by the wildfires. Part of the area which spans 25 miles, is located in Pacific Palisades. The Palisades fire caused heavy damage, and many buildings along the famous street have burned down.

Trump blames Newsom for fires

President-elect Donald Trump has blamed Gavin Newsom for the fires, adding that the California governor refused a plan to send more water to the state’s agricultural Central Valley.

“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California,” Mr Trump wrote in his Truth Social post. “Now the ultimate price is being paid.”

Stars of the screen are mourning the death of James Earl Jones, the voice of “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader, on Monday at the age of 93.

Jones, who also voiced King Mufasa in Disney’s animated feature “The Lion King,” had a prolific and varied career.

Over six decades he worked with some of the greatest figures in cinema and theater, including Stanley Kubrick in his 1964 Cold War satire “Dr Strangelove.”

He also had roles in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film “Conan The Barbarian” and the 1989 Kevin Costner movie “Field of Dreams.”

But it was for his role as one of cinema’s most famous villains that he became most widely known.

While Darth Vader’s immense physicality was the result of the towering British actor David Prowse, the sinister voice that appeared to emanate from inside the reconstructed man-in-a-mask was that of Jones.

And it was Jones who gave the “Star Wars” franchise some of its most memorable lines, including when he reveals to Luke Skywalker –- played by a young Mark Hamill -– “I am your father.”

Hamill took to social media on Monday to share news of Jones’ death, writing simply: “#RIP dad” with a broken heart emoji.

“Rustin” star Coleman Domingo wrote on social media that Jones was “a master of our craft.”

“We stand on your shoulders. Rest now. You gave us your best.”

Lydia Cornell, whose 1982 debut “Bloodtide,” was opposite Jones, said: “Oh no!! I can’t believe it!! I thought he was going to live forever.”

“Adored working with him. Such a generous spirit, and so humble. Taught me the power of stillness and using my voice.”

“Selma” Director Ava DuVernay posted images of Jones, accompanied by a heartfelt message.

“Thank you for showing us ourselves. Our complicated selves, our dignified selves, our smiles, our pain. A job well done. A gift beautifully shared. Bless you as you journey on.”

Alongside a clip of Jones’ 1974 film, “Claudine,” she urged fans to seek it out if they have never seen it.

“Mr. Jones crying in a scene of this film is one of the most exquisite cinematic images of a Black man I’ve ever seen. Don’t miss it. He gave us so much,” she wrote.

“The Help” star Octavia Spencer posted a black and white photograph of Jones, alongside a tribute that nodded to his indelible role in “Star Wars.”

“Legendary doesn’t even begin to describe his iconic roles and impact on cinema forever,” she wrote.

“His voice and talent will be remembered always. Sending love to his family, friends and countless fans in all the galaxies, far, far away.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Berlin:

A 19-year-old has been detained in Austria for allegedly plotting to kill people outside a stadium at a Taylor Swift concert, prompting the cancellation of the pop superstar’s three shows in Vienna this week.

Two other teenagers have been identified as suspects.

Here is what security officials have said about the three.

THE 19-YEAR-OLD

The Austrian national with North Macedonian roots was arrested in the early hours of Wednesday during a police operation at his home in Ternitz, a town near the Hungarian border.

The teen, who had posted a video online confessing to the plot, quit his job on July 25, telling people that he “had big plans”, public security chief Franz Ruf told reporters on Thursday.

The suspect had recently changed his appearance and had been consuming and sharing Islamist propaganda online, security officials said, adding that he had pledged allegiance to Islamic State but also held sympathies for Al Qaeda.

A neighbour told Austrian broadcaster Puls24 that the young man kept himself to himself and that he had grown a “Taliban beard”.

During a search of his home, law enforcement authorities secured various substances and tools used for building bombs, as well as Islamic State propaganda, 21,000 euros ($23,000) in counterfeit money, machetes, knives and blank ammunition.

The Kurier newspaper, citing sources familiar with the situation, reported that the suspect had stolen the chemicals from his former workplace, a metal processing company also in Ternitz. Officials did not comment on where he got the chemicals from, adding that this was a focus of their investigation.

THE 17-YEAR-OLD

After initially being tipped off to a single suspect, Austrian investigators came across the other two, including a 17-year-old Austrian national with Turkish-Croatian roots who was arrested in Vienna on Wednesday afternoon.

He had been acting conspicuously in the area of the Ernst Happel Stadium, where Swift’s stadium shows had been due to take place on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

The 17-year-old had been given a job with a company a few days ago that was providing services at the stadium.

The boy, who also appears to have been radicalised and was already known to authorities, had recently broken up with his girlfriend, Ruf said.

He is still to make a statement to police so his exact role in the plot is unclear, but he had extensive contact with the main suspect, officials said.

THE 15-YEAR-OLD

The third and final suspect is an Austrian national with Turkish heritage.

During questioning, the youngster said the main suspect had changed considerably in recent months and had also regularly enquired about devices to ignite explosives, officials said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Paris:

With Tom Cruise widely predicted to engage in a death-defying stunt on the roof of the Stade de France, Sunday’s Paris Olympics closing ceremony promises a memorable passing of the five rings flag to Los Angeles.

Two weeks after the unprecedented complexity of the opening ceremony along the River Seine, there are big expectations for the show to wrap up the Games.

The closing ceremony will be a much shorter affair and will take place — in more traditional fashion — at France’s national stadium.

Artistic director Thomas Jolly has revealed it will combine “wonder” with “dystopia”, suggesting some darker elements than the joyful and impertinent tone of the opening ceremony that drew a record audience of more than a billion worldwide.

Offering a sneak peak to journalists recently, Jolly said he saw the Games as a “fragile monument” and wanted to imagine what would happen if they “disappeared and someone was rebuilding them in a distant future”.

One sequence features “travellers from another space-time who arrive on Earth and discover vestiges from the history of the Olympics”, with acrobats restoring the famous five rings of the Games.

It will reportedly feature more than 100 dancers, circus artists and other performers, with the promise of aerial displays, giant sets and spectacular lighting.

Destination Hollywood 

The opening ceremony featured some huge stars including Lady Gaga, Celine Dion and Aya Nakamura, but some big celebrities are also expected Sunday.

Cruise has been at several Olympic events and the most daredevil of Hollywood stars would be a natural connection between Paris and the 2028 Los Angeles Games.

US media have reported that Cruise has been preparing a spectacular stunt to pick up the Olympic flag and transfer it to LA, with video sequences already filmed on both sides of the Atlantic.

There have been no shortage of Hollywood stars in attendance for the Games who might also play a role, including Snoop Dogg, Eva Mendes, Ryan Gosling and Sharon Stone.

There are unconfirmed rumours that Beyonce — a fervent supporter of the US team on social media — may perform.

Two of France’s biggest musical exports — Air and Phoenix — are already lined up to play, according to Le Parisien newspaper.

Organisers will be anxious to avoid a repeat of the controversy sparked by the opening ceremony, which featured drag queens in a sequence that some Christians and conservatives thought mocked the Biblical story of The Last Supper.

Organisers insisted it was a reference to Greek gods> But Jolly and other members of the team have since been victims of social media harassment, triggering police investigations and condemnation from French President Emmanuel Macron.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

What is common to Aavesham, Premalu, Manjummel Boys, Aadujeevitham, Bramayugam, Aranmanai4 and Hanu Man? All these South films were made on budgets ranging from Rs 10 to Rs 40 crore and were blockbusters, with some even collecting over Rs 100 crore. Though South does have big star flicks too, small- and medium-budget films have always been part of the industry’s oeuvre. They form its backbone, and they are what many filmmakers strive for. 

Cut to Bollywood, where after a revival of sorts in 2023, the industry is again seeing itself go kaput this year. Big Hindi films like Maidaan, Bade Miyan Chote Miyan and Chandu Champion fizzled at the box office, stunning filmmakers. On the other hand, medium-budget films like Munjya (Rs 30 crore), Article 370 (Rs 20 crore), Madgaon Express (Rs 30 crore) and Srikanth (Rs 45 crore) turned out to be hits.  Karan Johar and Guneet Monga’s recent release, Kill, made at just Rs 25 crore, is also performing very well at the box office, despite the Kalki 2898 AD juggernaut. 

Also Read | Bollywood Needs To Stop Bleeding Producers Dry. South Has Lessons

Even so, the risk appetite for most producers remains intact as they sign on A-listers and make big-budget, lavish (Rs 80 crore and above) films. But is the box office giving them the desired results? Sadly, no.

What The Audience Wants

It’s no secret that the Hindi film industry has been going through a tough time this year. Many producers and corporates have seriously started introspecting on what needs to change.

In a recent interview, producer and director Karan Johar said that with shifting audience tastes and high filmmaking costs due to inflation, the Hindi film industry and filmmakers must stop chasing trends and write fresh stories that are culturally rooted. “Firstly, the audiences’ tastes have become very definitive. They want a certain kind of cinema. And if you (as a maker) want to do a certain number, then your film has to perform at A, B, and C centres. Multiplexes alone will not suffice. Simultaneously, the cost of filmmaking has increased. There has been inflation. There are about 10 viable actors in Hindi cinema, and they are all asking for the sun, moon, and earth. And then your film doesn’t do the numbers. Those movie stars asking for Rs 35 crore are opening to Rs 3.5 crore. How’s that math working? How do you manage all these? Yet, you have to keep making movies and creating content because you also have to feed your organisation. So, there’s a lot of drama, and the syntax of our cinema has not found its feet,” he said in the interview.

Can’t Just Dismiss Spectacle Cinema

Of the 1,000-odd movies that are released in India each year (across various film industries), most are small- and medium-budget ones. Spectacle movies number just around 12. While they are important for the Hindi film industry and contribute a significant portion to the box office each year, smaller films are also needed to provide a continuous flow of content to distributors and keep the business going. Plus, the risks for the producer are much lower – smaller and mid-budget films are known to give major returns on investment. Thus, a producer needs to be strategic not just in terms of the number of films he finances each year, but also the budgets.

While scale may matter, substance does too. Where the South film industries are scoring sixes after sixes is content. Small and mid-budget flicks give more room to filmmakers and writers to experiment and be more creative with new themes, genres and storylines. Content-driven films do bring the audience to theatres, as seen across states in India.

Also Read | Anurag Kashyap On Actors’ Demands, Entourage Cost: “Car Is Sent Three Hours Away To Get A Five-Star Burger”

This phenomenon was new neither to the South film industry nor to Bollywood. But over the past several decades, Hindi film producers slowly started looking the other way as they felt such films weren’t able to draw enough people to theatres. When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the burst of OTT platforms changed the game altogether in India.

The Economics Of The Film Industry

Director Gauravv Chawla, who’s known for Adhura and Baazaar, says, “Tentpoles will always be present and should be. As an industry, we need those big films. But these are few and far between because of the time and scale it takes to mount them and the risks of getting them just right. What has been heartening this year is the number of medium-budget films that have performed well at the box office. This used to be the case pre-pandemic too. We need to make sure we build on this audience appreciation by creating more films where content is the star, be it comedy, drama, supernatural or romance. The steadier the flow of these films, the better it will be for all – makers, exhibitors, distributors and audiences.”

From a film distributor’s point of view, it can be said that both big films and small films have been doing well at the box office. Akshaye Rathi, a film exhibitor and distributor, says, “I think it’s important for all sorts of movies to be made. As much as Laapataa Ladies and 12th Fail have done well, these are very niche successes in terms of their geographical impact. These are movies that have done well in 15-20 large cities. For the entire exhibition sector of the country to sustain, you need big-ticket films or tentpole blockbusters like Gadar, Animal, Pathaan and Jawan to set the box office on fire across the length and breadth of the country. Only that will allow the exhibition sector of the country to sustain well. Simultaneously, it’s important for mid-segment and small-budget movies to fill the gap and keep the scorecard ticking between the tentpoles.”

A Healthy Mix

Ultimately, filmmakers in the Hindi industry feel that a mix of movies across genres – and across budgets – is what is needed to keep the audience happy. As Rathi puts it, the more the Hindi film industry churns out just large-scale, big-ticket actioners, the more fatigued the audience will get. Badly made films will not help the industry either. “We need all sorts of genres and styles of film-making to coexist so that there’s something in the cinemas at any given point of time for every audience category,” he adds.

The Hollywood in the 2000s had witnessed a similar situation. Studios had been consolidating budgets to make blockbuster films, and consequently, the number of smaller films reduced drastically on studio ledgers. In 2013, predicting the end of this cycle, director Steven Spielberg warned makers of an ‘implosion’. “There’s going to be an implosion where three or four, or maybe even half a dozen mega-budget movies are going to go crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm,” he said. Hollywood ultimately went through an upheaval at the time. Of late, that cycle has re-emerged after COVID-19 as Hollywood studios bat for big blockbusters and mid-range films are premiered directly on OTT platforms.

The bottom line is that movie theatres can’t survive on blockbusters alone, whether it is Hollywood or Bollywood. Perhaps, it is time for the Hindi film industry to rethink its model.

(The author is a senior entertainment journalist and film critic)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

Los Angeles:

Hundreds of Hollywood celebrities signed an open letter Thursday condemning the “barbaric acts” of Hamas fighters who murdered and abducted Israeli civilians in a shocking weekend assault.

“Wonder Woman” actress Gal Gadot, an Israeli, was among film and TV stars on the list, which also included Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Pine, Mayim Bialik, Liev Schreiber, Michael Douglas and Jerry Seinfeld.

“Hamas murdered and kidnapped innocent men, women, and children. They kidnapped and murdered infants and the elderly,” the open letter, released by Creative Community For Peace, said.

“This is terrorism. This is evil. There is no justification or rationalization for Hamas’ actions,” the letter went on. “These are barbaric acts of terrorism that must be called out by everyone.”

The letter, which was signed by over 700 people from the world of entertainment, came less than a week after Hamas gunmen killed 1,200 people in Israel and took about 150 hostages in a surprise onslaught launched from Gaza.

Israel has retaliated by raining air and artillery strikes on Hamas targets in Gaza for six days, claiming more than 1,400 lives.

The letter calls on people in the entertainment industry to throw their full support behind Israel.

It also asks colleagues to “do whatever is in their power to urge the terrorist organization to return the innocent hostages to their families.”

The statement is the first large-scale reaction from the industry, but follows a plethora of social media posts from individuals.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

LOS ANGELES:

An all-star lineup of late-night television hosts are uniting to chat about Hollywood’s ongoing labor disputes on a new podcast, a group effort to raise funds for their striking staff writers.

Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers and John Oliver will take part in the podcast that debuts on Wednesday called “Strike Force Five,” according to a statement from streaming service Spotify. All five will appear on each episode and they will take turns as host.

The roughly 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) went on strike in early May after failing to reach a new labor agreement with the major Hollywood studios that produce films and TV shows. The SAG-AFTRA actors union, Hollywood’s largest union with 160,000 members, walked off the job in July.

Without teams of writers to pen topical jokes, the late-night shows have been airing re-runs for nearly four months.

The five hosts have been meeting weekly over Zoom “to discuss the complexities behind the ongoing Hollywood strikes,” Spotify said, and the new podcast will allow fans to “listen in on these once-private chats.”

Spotify said “Strike Force Five” will be available on most major podcast platforms and run for at least 12 episodes. Kimmel – in a post on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter – said the podcast would continue “for the remainder of the strike.”

All proceeds will go to the writers of the late-night shows, Spotify said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)