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It’s been nearly a year since Jamie Foxx was hospitalized with an undisclosed “medical complication.” And while the singer/actor has been mostly off the radar since then, on Sunday Foxx, 56, told the audience at the African American Film Critic’s Association Special Achievement Awards luncheon that he is finally ready to open up about the health scare that he’s previously described as a situation he wasn’t sure he was “gonna make it through.”
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According to Variety, while accepting the AAFCA’s Producers Award the Oscar and Grammy-winner Foxx promised that he will finally open up about the mystery ailment, with his signature wit and on his schedule.
“Everybody wants to know what happened, and I’m going to tell you what happened. But I’ve gotta do it in my way,” Foxx told the audience. “I’m gonna do it in a funny way. We’re gonna be on the stage. We’re gonna get back to the standup sort of roots.” Foxx teased that the show would be called “What Had Happened Was” and that it will feature “all the things that happened, especially on our side of our community.”
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The latter was reportedly a joke about the online rumors of phony post-hospitalization “Jamie Foxx” sightings. “I dove out of a car to save this Black woman’s purse,” he joked. “That ain’t no damn Jamie, that’s a clone.” That last one, by the way, was true, according to Variety.
Last July, Foxx posted an emotional video giving an update on his recovery after his April 2023 hospitalization. “I went through something that I thought I would never, ever go through. I know a lot of people were waiting or wanting to hear updates, but to be honest with you, I just didn’t want you to see me like that,” Foxx said. “I want you to see me laughing, having a good time partying, cracking a joke, doing a movie, television show. I didn’t want you to see me with tubes running out of me and trying to figure out if I was gonna make it through.”
Foxx’s daughter, Corinne Foxx, announced on April 12 that her dad had been hospitalized for an undisclosed “medical complication” while filming the Netflix movie Back in Action in Atlanta; to date the actor has not provided any additional information about his illness or recovery.
In January, Foxx re-joined Cameron Diaz on the set of the film Back in Action and is getting ready to re-team with his daughter on Fox’s Beat Shazam game show.
“I’m so thankful. And I just get emotional. Because it was really… it’s beyond the scope. Cherish life,” Foxx said on Sunday. “I have some people in my life that really made sure I was here because it was dire straits,” Foxx said, then joking about his daughter thinks he’s a bit too thankful for some things these days. “I was drinking some water, like ‘Wow, you taste this water? It’s so wet. This is the wettest water’ [and she replied,] ‘Dad, you’ve gotta chill out.’”
Watch Foxx’s new Beat Shazam promo below.
Gregg Alexander‘s music career could have taken a much different path had he not had a very bad night in Detroit 30 years ago. The reclusive singer/songwriter and leader of the New Radicals recently revealed that his band’s signature 1994 debut single, the up with (positive) people anthem “You Get What You Give,” almost didn’t make the grade thanks to an equally catchy song he ended up handing off.
“I had a moment of annoyance that I couldn’t go to the house clubs in Detroit. So he reached for the acoustic guitar in the back, channelling his emotion into a song beginning ‘It’s murder on the dancefloor, but you’d better not kill the groove,’” Alexander told the Guardian about a 1994 night when his old blue Ford Mustang wouldn’t start, depriving him of an evening of clubbing.
What he got instead, though, was the groove for “Murder on the Dancefloor,” the song that became a No. 2 hit for Sophie Ellis-Bextor in the UK and then hit the top 20 again this year after it was memorably used in the viral hit movie Saltburn. “You know how Paul McCartney originally sang about scrambled eggs in ‘Yesterday?;” Alexander said. “‘Murder on the Dancefloor’ wasn’t anything deep from my subconscious. It was just a dummy lyric that was kind of sung for fun, but then I couldn’t better it.”
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Alexander’s lost-to-time demo of the song has the same driving disco meter, but shot through with his signature keening vocals and his band’s eternal sunshine vibe, enhanced by a string section played on a keyboard. Alexander and the Radicals only released one album, 1998’s Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too, which featured the equally bouncy “You Get What You Give,” which hit the top five in the U.K.
“I almost flipped a coin between the two songs,” Alexander, 53, told the Guardian. “The record company wanted something urgently and I didn’t have the time or the budget to finish both. I felt like ‘Murder’ was a monster but ‘You Get What You Give’ was a masterpiece. It was everything I’d always wanted to say inside five minutes.”
In a way, Alexander won on both accounts, since the co-write with Ellis-Bextor (Alexander also co-produced “Murder”) has now become as iconic as the New Radicals’ hit, which has more than 440 million Spotify plays to date. “A publisher told me that in January it [‘Murder’] was the most heard music on the planet,” Alexander said of the track for which he recorded a “master quality” demo at the time. “That’s just incredible.”
Just two years after writing the double dose of pop wonderment, Alexander disbanded the New Radicals and receded from the spotlight to focus on songwriting, penning a Grammy-winning track for Santana (2002’s “The Game of Love”), as well as writing and producing tracks for Enrique Iglesias, Rod Stewart, Hanson, Ronan Keating and S Club 7.
After moving to Notting Hill, England following the New Radicals’ break-up, Alexander’s demo got into the hands of Ellis-Bextor, at which point they finished the track together. “‘Murder’ was a song I always wanted the world to hear,” Alexander said, recalling that during sessions for the song he would walk down the halls at the studio and see people dancing along to “Murder,” which made him think they were on to something. “And when I met Sophie we embarked on a creative journey, the first of three or four Top 10 hits we had.”
The original demo also had the “I know, I know, I know” ad lib, which Alexander said he’d been told was a songwriting no-go. “I’d been told you can’t use the same words over and over because it’s too repetitive,” he said. “So I used ‘I know’ seven times.”
The reboot of “Murder” has also reconnected him with Ellis-Bextor, with Alexander realizing that sometimes things work out just as they were supposed to. “She’s so talented and humble but a great pop star. I think her genius, slightly deadpan delivery helped make it a hit,” he said. “Everything would have been different if I’d put out ‘Murder on the Dancefloor,’ but I feel that everything happened as it was meant to be.”
Listen to the “Murder on the Dancefloor” demo here (paywalled).
At this point, Adam Sandler has likely met just about every major celebrity you could imagine. But there is one A-lister that makes the perpetually casual comedic A-lister a bit anxious. “Taylor Swift, because what she means to my kids, I get it a little jumpy,” Sandler told pal Conan O’Brien on this week’s episode […]
A controversial line uttered by Megan Thee Stallion in this year’s musical reboot of Mean Girls has reportedly been cut from the video-on-demand version of the movie.Variety reported on Monday (Feb. 26) that it had viewed the updated version of the film on Amazon Prime Video and that the rapper’s reference to “fire crotch” was […]
Universal Music Group Nashville, known for its roster of country music artists including Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Eric Church and Chris Stapleton, has launched a new production arm of the Nashville-based entertainment company, focused on film and television projects.
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UMG Nashville‘s Sing Me Back Home Productions will delve into the deep catalog of artists throughout UMG Nashville’s history, in addition to celebrating newly-discovered talent. The new production arm is led by UMG Nashville chair/CEO Cindy Mabe, as well as senior vp, digital business and creative development Dawn Gates. The new division will focus on developing content for documentaries, original scripted and unscripted television, feature films and short-form content. In addition, it will be heavily involved in securing production partners, music supervision and distribution.
“Country music has always been the home of the richest storytellers in music. Storytellers like Merle Haggard, whose song ‘Sing Me Back Home’ helped frame the intent and name behind our production company,” Mabe said in a statement. “Songs and stories can transport people and literally sing them back home no matter where they are in the world. Creating a new canvas for our storytellers to paint was a natural next step for our artists to talk to their fans in a new way. With several productions underway, this new endeavor fits prominently into what we are sustaining and building as a music company: roots, legacy, music discovery, and storytelling. We are finding faith, family, and heartland are at the core of our business and we are making sure we are building generational content for different mediums across a variety of platforms and shepherding it into the homes of our audience.”
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Sing Me Back Home Productions has teamed with ITV America’s Thinkfactory Media to develop and produce a docuseries that will follow the personal and professional lives of Grammy-nominated husband-and-wife duo, The War and Treaty‘s Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter. The docuseries will be helmed by Thinkfactory’s CEO and veteran producer Adam Reed. The docuseries is already in the works with a broadcast partner and is among the first of several projects in development through Sing Me Back Home’s broader collaboration with Thinkfactory Media.
Additionally, the Betsy Schechter-produced documentary Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive, will soon be released in partnership with Storyville Entertainment. The documentary premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, and won the best feature documentary award at La Femme Women’s International Film Festival in Los Angeles. Most recently, Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive won The Palm Springs International Film Festival audience award “best of fest.”
“Country music and its community of artists, past and present, offer such a vast and rich world to explore for content,” Reed said in a statement. “As Thinkfactory doubles down on work rooted in the Heartland, we’re incredibly bullish on the projects we’re developing with Sing Me Back Home, and we admire what Cindy and her group are building at a time when the genre and its hitmakers are flying higher than ever.”
“We are thrilled to have the expertise of Cindy, Dawn, and the Sing Me Back Home team to partner on producing ‘Gloria Gaynor: I Will Survive,’” Schechter said in a statement. “Just like her iconic song ‘I Will Survive,’ Gloria’s life is equally inspirational and this film has the power to impact audiences around the world for years to come.”
The new production division is the latest expansive move for UMG Nashville, following the recent launches of Silver Wings Records, and the comedy division Capitol Comedy Nashville.
Zendaya had to unexpectedly press pause on her global Dune: Part Two promotional tour on Monday (Feb. 26). The actress posted a video in which she was clearly suffering from vocal issues while explaining why she could not appear on Good Morning America as scheduled. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest […]
02/22/2024
From ‘Barbie’ to ‘Anatomy of a Fall,’ here are the most memorable needle drops, covers and original songs in movies released in 2023.
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Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes (1917, Spectre) has gotten the green light to begin work on four separate feature films that will tell the individual stories of all four Beatles. According to a release from Sony Pictures Entertainment announcing the project on Tuesday morning (Feb. 20), Mendes will direct the films focused on George Harrison, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr due out in 2027.
The project will mark the first time the band’s Apple Corps Ltd. and the group — McCartney and Starr and the families of Harrison and Lennon — have given full access to life story and music rights for a scripted film. “I’m honored to be telling the story of the greatest rock band of all time, and excited to challenge the notion of what constitutes a trip to the movies,” said Mendes in a statement.
Mendes will direct the four stand-alone theatrical movies — with each one told from one band member’s point of view — as well as intersecting to tell the full story of the Fab Four. SPE, which will finance and distribute the movies conceived by Mendes, will share the details of the roll-out, which it promised will be “innovative and groundbreaking.”
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The director’s Neal Street Productions partner, Pippa Harris, added, “We intend this to be a uniquely thrilling, and epic cinematic experience: four films, told from four different perspectives which tell a single story about the most celebrated band of all time. To have The Beatles’ and Apple Corps’ blessing to do this is an immense privilege. From our first meeting with Tom Rothman and Elizabeth Gabler, it was clear that they shared both our passion and ambition for this project, and we can’t think of a more perfect home than Sony Pictures.”
One of the most scrutinized and studied groups in popular music history, the Fab Four have been the subjects of hundreds of books and docs, including Peter Jackson’s acclaimed 2021 four-part documentary series, Get Back, which incorporated previously unseen and unheard audio and video.
Apple Corps Ltd. CEO Jeff Jones said the company is “delighted to collaborate with Sam, Pippa and Julie to explore each Beatle’s unique story and to bring them together in a suitably captivating and innovative way. Sony Pictures’ enthusiastic support, championing the project’s scope and creative vision from the start, has been invaluable for all of us.”
Sony Music Entertainment is suing the producers of the 2022 biopic Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody, accusing them of failing to pay for the more than 20 Whitney tracks that appeared in the movie.
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In a lawsuit filed Thursday in New York federal court, Sony claims that Anthem Films, Black Label Media and others behind the movie signed deals for sync licenses to feature songs like “I Will Always Love You” in the movie – but that more than a year after the film was released, the label hasn’t been paid a dime.
“To date, Anthem has not paid the fees, or any portion of the fees, due under the agreements,” Sony’s lawyer, Christine Lepera of the firm Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, wrote in the complaint. As a result, the Sony says the use of the songs amounts to “willful and deliberate infringement” of its copyrights.
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Riding a wave of enthusiasm for musical biopics – 2018’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” earned more $900 million at the box office and Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 “Elvis” made $288 million – “I Wanna Dance” was released in December 2022 to middling reviews and an underwhelming return of $59.8 million gross.
According to Thursday’s lawsuit, Anthem and others signed a sync license agreement on Dec. 5, 2022 – less than ten days before the movie’s release – covering the use of Sony’s sound recordings of Houston’s songs, including “Greatest Love of All,” “I’m Every Woman” and the titular “I Wanna Dance with Somebody.”
“Unlike other types of films, musical biopics by their nature require use of the subject musician’s music, as it is nearly impossible to explain the importance of a musician’s creative genius or unique style and talent without the use of the musician’s music,” Sony wrote. “Aware of the need for authorization to use Plaintiffs’ sound recordings in order to produce a biopic about the life and music of Whitney Houston, and aware of the value of plaintiffs’ catalog, Anthem entered into a license agreement.”
But by August, Sony says it had not been paid anything. After notifying Anthem of the problem, the company allegedly told Sony that it was waiting on funds from a tax credit owed by the state of Massachusetts. But such a payment never came, Sony says.
“As a result of Anthem’s failure to pay the fees to SME, it is clear that there was no license or authorization to use the SME Recordings used in the Film,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “Nevertheless, the Film embodying the SME Recordings was, and continues to be, exhibited, distributed, and exploited.”
As defendants, the lawsuit names Anthem Films, a Boston-area film production company that allegedly produced the movie; NYBO Productions LLC, the entity that allegedly owns the copyright to the movie; Black Label Media, a Los Angeles film finance company; and WH Movie LLC, an entity allegedly created by Black Label to help finance the movie.
According to the lawsuit, the complex corporate structure behind “I Wanna Dance” potentially played into the lack of payment.
Though Sony says it notified Anthem that it was open to waiting for for the Massachusetts tax credit to be paid out, it demanded that such an agreement be formalized in writing. Anthem allegedly refused, saying that Black Label had “approval rights over Anthem’s and NYBO’s expenditures” and ultimately “ordered that Anthem neither pay SME out of the proceeds of the tax credit payment nor direct the relevant tax authority to credit SME the amount of the Fees.”
In technical legal terms, the lawsuit accused Anthem and NYBO of direct copyright infringement, while it accused Black Label and WH Movie of so-called vicarious copyright infringement – meaning they had some control over Anthem and profited from its alleged wrongdoing.
The defendants could not immediately be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Sony Music did not return a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Lady Gaga and Joaquin Phoenix look crazy in love in a new series of Joker: Folie à Deux set pictures posted by director Todd Phillips on Valentine’s Day. Philips shared three images from the upcoming DC sequel on Instagram — tagged to Gotham City, naturally — in which Phoenix’s Joker shares some quality time with […]