NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump is opening a new salvo in his tariff war, targeting films made outside the U.S.
In a post Sunday night on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he has authorized the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to slap a 100% tariff “on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.”
Remember Hollywood North? Those were the days!
(UPI) — Accused sex-trafficker Sean “Diddy” Combs rejected a plea offer from federal prosecutors on Thursday and ahead of jury selection that starts Monday in New York City.
Combs, 55, told U.S. District Court for Southern New York Judge Arun Subramanian he rejects the plea offer during a pretrial hearing at the Manhattan federal courthouse, NBC News and ABC News reported.
A Harvey Weinstein accuser stormed out of a Manhattan courtroom in tears during a grilling by the fallen movie mogul’s lawyer Friday, forcing a judge to pause his sex crimes retrial for ten minutes.
Miriam “Mimi” Haley – during her fourth day on the witness stand – was only roughly 30 minutes into testimony Friday morning when aggressive questioning by the ex-Miramax honcho’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean turned sour.
In late 2022, well before Sean “Diddy” Combs got into real trouble, a man in Los Angeles approached Tanea Wallace with an offer.
The man was a scout for Soft White Underbelly, photographer Mark Laita’s YouTube channel about people struggling with issues such as abuse or addiction. Wallace, an aspiring singer who sometimes made money doing sex work, took Laita up on it, for $300, sitting for his camera and talking about her life.
In the interview, she recounted an alleged incident from 2018 — a crown prince of Brunei flew her from Los Angeles to Miami with a promise to help her singing career. Once there, he took her to a party on Star Island, an uber-exclusive, man-made enclave home to celebrities such as rapper Rick Ross, retired basketball star Shaquille O’Neal and Combs. The music mogul was throwing the party. Security guards took her phone before she could wander through the property.
Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal team has claimed that the disgraced music mogul might not have been mentally capable of committing crimes due to his substance use.
Combs, 55, faces a minimum of 15 years in prison after being charged with sex trafficking, racketeering and fraud. He is locked up without bail and his trial is set to begin May 5.
It’s a town built on one industry. So what happens when everyone realises it’s cheaper and easier to film in Hertfordshire?
Fans taking the popular studio tours in Los Angeles are given a behind-the-scenes look at where movie magic from a previous age was filmed. Universal has sets from Back to the Future, while Warner Bros boasts everything from Friends to Blade Runner.
These days, however, scenes are more likely to be filmed in Hertfordshire or Hungary than Hollywood.
Los Angeles has suffered a catastrophic collapse in film and television production, as the industry synonymous with the city shifts elsewhere to cheaper rivals able to entice producers with lucrative incentives.
Attorneys delivered opening statements on Wednesday in the New York retrial of Harvey Weinstein, with prosecutors accusing the disgraced film producer of using his immense power in Hollywood to sexually harass and abuse three women.
“The defendant wanted their bodies, and the more they resisted, the more forceful he got,” Assistant District Attorney Shannon Lucey told jurors on Wednesday.
In his third trial in five years, Weinstein is accused of sexually abusing a former television production assistant, an aspiring actress and a model.
Films made using AI will be eligible to win awards at the Oscars, according to new rules from its organisers.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this week that the use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking would “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination”.
The decision was recommended by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council.
If you’ve been a teenager in the last 40 years, you’re sure to feel some nostalgia when you think of the characters in The Breakfast Club coming together at the end of the film. So it’s a bit bittersweet to learn that the cast actually never got together afterward.
That changed this month, however, when the five stars of the film reunited in their first public appearance since the film’s 1985 release.
In September 2023 Sean Combs looked like the king of New York. Leaning out of the window of a black limousine, he cruised across Times Square, gold Rolex on one wrist, diamond bracelet on the other, holding the Key to the City above his head, an honorary award presented to him by the mayor, Eric Adams. This was a victory lap for Combs — also known as Puff Daddy, or Puffy, or P Diddy, or Diddy, or Love — who had dominated the hip-hop and R&B music scenes for three decades.
His label, Bad Boy Records, which he founded in 1993 at 24 years old, launched some of the biggest artists in the field, including the Notorious BIG and Faith Evans. Combs was a hip-hop Midas who turned the artists he signed into gold and platinum-selling megastars. He made himself a star, too, embarking on his own music career. He became the ultimate A-lister, a caricature of celebrity, throwing exclusive “white parties” — named after their dress code — in the Hamptons and St Tropez and rolling through Manhattan in fur coats and convertible Ferraris. He had a clothing line, perfumes, drinks brands — partnering with Diageo for Cîroc vodka — a TV network and he set up several schools in the Bronx, Harlem and Connecticut. By 2022 he was a billionaire.
Celebrities did not respond kindly to comedian Bill Maher visiting the White House for dinner with President Trump and were even more incensed over his retelling of the dinner.
(AFP) — The retrial of Harvey Weinstein, whose prosecution and conviction for rape and sex assault ignited the “MeToo” movement, kicks off in New York on Tuesday.
The disgraced movie mogul’s 2017 conviction by a jury was overturned seven years later by an appeals court that ruled the way witnesses were handled in the original trial was unlawful.
President Donald Trump mocked Hollywood on Thursday when asked about China reducing the number of American films it will import.
The question came during Trump’s cabinet meeting, and his response left his top officials in bellowing laughter.
The far-left Variety is speculating (without evidence) that President Trump’s tariffs have caused China to consider banning Hollywood movies.
“This past weekend in China, Warner Bros. and Legendary’s A Minecraft Movie conquered the box office,” writes Variety. “But it might be a short-lived triumph thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump‘s tariffs.”
In a huge, five-page, 3,200-word spread in Sunday’s Washington Post, Style section writer Jada Yuan heaped more liberal bile on the grossly anti-Christian, anti-family, pro-baby death, and far-left crowd behind the show The Handmaid’s Tale ahead of its final season. As is usually the case with puff pieces on the show, Yuan left out that star Elizabeth Moss is a devout Scientology which, if there ever was a dangerous cult, that’s it.
