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Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour concert movie has crossed the $250 million mark in worldwide ticket sales according to distributor AMC Theatres. The Hollywood Reporter said those impressive numbers mean the three-hour-plus musical extravaganza that has found Swifties singing and dancing in the aisles across the planet ranks among the top 20 biggest films of […]
Howard Stern revealed on Monday morning (Nov. 27) that he almost had a role in Bradley Cooper‘s hit A Star Is Born remake. The old friends got together to discuss Cooper’s new Leonard Bernstein biopic, Maestro, but talk soon turned to Stern’s fascination with Cooper’s singing in the 2018 Oscar-winning film in which the actor co-starred with Lady Gaga.
Cooper has become a regular on Stern’s SiriusXM show — with both now saying that they are also friends off the air as well — which might explain why Howard spent several minutes berating Cooper for not going out on the road for a proper tour in support of Star while further heaping praise on his friend’s singing ability.
“It’s really good,” Stern said of the Star film’s music, which included the hit “Shallow.”
The notoriously picky Stern — whose first, and so far only, starring role in film is as himself in the beloved 1997 biopic Private Parts — said that he’s only told a handful of people in his private life about the Star offer from Cooper. “And they look at me like, ‘what the f–k?! You didn’t do it?’,” Stern said of the role that Cooper clarified was eventually written specifically for the person who ended up playing the part.
“This was early-early things swimming in my head when I offered it to you,” Cooper said of his initial thought of including Stern in the mix on the film that also featured Sam Elliott, Anthony Ramos and Andrew “Dice” Clay. Stern said the initial offer was for him to play the brother of Cooper’s troubled singer, Jackson Maine.
“And I went, ‘whoa! You must think I’m a lot better looking than’… they’re gonna be like… what is this movie gonna be like Twins?’ I’m Danny DeVito and he’s Arnold Schwarzenegger?,” Stern joked. The plan was for Stern to play Maine’s older brother/manager, a role Stern said he found intriguing. “I said I’m going to go full-on into it. I’m gonna shave my head, I’m gonna change my whole look,” Stern recalled thinking of what would have been the unthinkable method actor act of buzzing off his signature flowing curly hair.
Cooper said the radio veteran –who often spends large segments of his SiriusXM show lamenting anything and everything he has to do that does not concern the broadcast — did not, as longtime fans might expect, immediately turn down the offer. “You really contemplated this,” Cooper said of the three weeks he waited around for Stern’s answer.
“Man, I would have won him an Oscar too!” Stern joked about the awards that would have surely rolled in thanks to his participation; the film scored eight Oscar nominations and won best original song for “Shallow.”
“But when we started talking about you shaving your head that was very exciting,” Cooper said of the role that was then reworked to fit veteran actor Sam Elliott, who played Cooper’s cantankerous older half-brother/manager Bobby Maine. “Oh it would have been amazing.” And though it did not end up coming together, Cooper said he’s confident he will eventually find the right project to lure Stern back to the big screen.
Cooper is currently out promoting Maestro, a six-years-in-the-making biopic depicting the relationship between American composer Leonard Bernstein and wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).
One of the most multifaceted — and busy — artists working today, Jon Batiste sometimes seems like a superhuman — a seemingly inexhaustible bundle of exuberance, creativity and energy. The New Orleans-bred, Juilliard-trained pianist, singer, songwriter and composer. With his band Stay Human, he spent seven years gaining a huge audience as bandleader on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert; he’s led “love riots” through the streets of New York, playing melodica literally among the city’s inhabitants; he’s won an Oscar and a Golden Globe as co-composer of the score for Pixar’s Soul; and he’s of course won Grammys, five last year alone, including album of the year for his We Are.
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But as the moving new documentary American Symphony shows, Batiste, like so many artists, has a complex private life that his public rarely glimpses. Capturing an especially high-and-low-filled year in Batiste’s life, it interweaves Batiste’s experience as he composes the ambitious titular orchestral work for a Carnegie Hall debut, with the harrowing journey he and his partner, the author-artist Suleika Jaouad, find themselves on when, after a decade in remission, her cancer returns — all shortly before his astounding 11 Grammy nominations arrive.
Directed by Academy Award-winning director Matthew Heineman — who followed Batiste and Jaouad for seven months, filming over 1,500 hours of footage — and coproduced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, American Symphony opens in select U.S. theaters today before arriving on Netflix Nov. 29 (the film features a poignant new song, “It Never Went Away,” which Batiste wrote with Grammy-winner Dan Wilson, out now on Verve Records/Interscope). On Feb. 4, he could potentially make another significant showing at the Grammys, where he has six nominations, before heading out on his Uneasy Tour: Purifying the Airwaves for the People Feb. 16, supporting his latest album World Music Radio.
In the days leading up to his film’s premiere, he spoke to Billboard about opening up his and Jaouad’s lives to Heineman’s cameras, the importance of artists’ mental health, and why at this point he has to “chuckle” at the Grammy chatter around him.
In the film, we see your composing process up close, and it looks much more collaborative than the usual symphony composer’s may be. Is that your typical process? I’m always composing, and it’s not so different actually with a large-form but also longform piece. It was more about thinking about the form, from point A, B, C, D all the way to Z before starting, and then composing into a form that could shift and change depending on what discoveries I made along the way. When I’m writing songs or instrumental music or just a tune, it can happen in the moment, it doesn’t have to happen before I start. [For a symphony] there’s a lot more pre-planning, and then figuring out symbolically with American Symphony how I wanted to use the music as an allegory for certain values, the philosophy that was underpinning it.
If you think about the term classical music — which I love and has probably the biggest influence on my artistry, besides American music and jazz and New Orleans — every composer that comes from that tradition was drawing on the folk musics and traditions they grew up with, the country and time they lived in. The core quest with American Symphony was: if the symphony orchestra and symphonic compositions were to address America today, if they were invented today and I was the inventor, what would I be drawing from, what would I see in my culture and in the American landscape and the milieu I come from? That was really exciting.
Growing up in the generation where streaming music became the norm, electronic music and all the different technological advancements that we’ve come to now see as the norm — all these different approaches to collaboration and music in general that didn’t even exist back when Beethoven was making the seventh symphony or when Duke Ellington was around, but we can still use the lessons of those compositions. Duke, who’s one of my heroes, if he knew a certain musician in the orchestra had a specific approach to playing high notes, or playing ballads, or leading a section, he’d lean into that and compose toward that, and that’s something I always have a voice for. There’s so much you can speak to that many composers before me were speaking to, but I had a unique opportunity here to do a lot.
Creativity and creating art is clearly an important part of your relationship with Suleika, but at the premiere of American Symphony, it almost seems like a real surprise to her. When you’re at work on new music, do you play it for her?
She’ll hear pieces of things and I’ll play things for her typically in fragments, or in a state where the grandeur of what it will be isn’t obvious yet. As you saw in the film there’s a process of it coming to life that can only happen when I’m in the room with the other musicians. So it’s kind of hard to show that to Suleika in full before it happens, it just has to become what it is through a process of constant listening, refinement, composition. A piece like American Symphony is never meant to be completely finished, it’s meant to be a vehicle that evolves over many many years with different folks who can take ownership of all the themes of the piece, and the form and structure. Fifty years from now, if this is played in another part of the world by different musicians, it would be its own unique version.
Jon Batiste in “American Symphony.”
Courtesy of Netflix
We see a lot in the film how you have to constantly navigate between the public face you show the world and what you’re contending with privately, with Suleika’s illness. Especially when the public seems to expect you to be this joyful person at all times, that seems really challenging.
It’s really something that I’ve struggled with for awhile. And I value parts of it as well — the idea of being able to bring folks a sense of uplift-ment in dark times, as a performer, an entertainer, an artist is something I value. But in general it’s been a struggle to navigate the humanity of being all those things. A lot of times I think that’s the case, which is one of the reasons why such an invasive film like this, and the vulnerability required of our family to share what you see, is something we wanted to move forward with. Sometimes pulling the curtain back is an opportunity for us all to tap into our humanity and not only see me in a certain way and realize, “Wow, these are things we all go through.” We can all grow from seeing it and have a deepened respect for this person we admire.
Suleika Jaouad and Jon Batiste in “American Symphony.”
Courtesy of Netflix
You’re incredibly open in the film about therapy, and about the mental health aspect of being an artist on the level you are. What was behind your decision to be open about this?
I hope it’ll be a beacon for a lot of artists. I fear that when people are successful, especially in a public sense, it creates an illusion of ease. I don’t ever want to make anyone feel lesser, or any artist feel like because they’re struggling in this crazy business with their mental state and fortitude that they’re not just like everybody else. Especially folks who are successful, you never know what somebody has given up or decided to do to get to where they are. We’re all just human beings dealing with the same set of things. It’s better if we show it more, rather than hide it away in a curated social media presence.
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Your stunning performance of “Freedom” at the 2022 Grammys is in the film — contextualized with a very clear picture of what you and Suleika were going through at the time, which makes seeing its exuberance especially astounding. Watching it now, what do you see?
It’s tough to watch the film. I don’t have a good barometer because I’ve only seen it a handful of times over the course of the edits. I do have a sense of what the film is like, and living through those moments, the Grammys performance was very much a lot of catharsis, and also a lot of vindication. Just being present in the moment was a difficult thing for me to do given where Suleika was and how much I wanted to be there with her, but also knowing how much she wanted me to be in the moment I was in. So the performance was a great way of zeroing into the moment and, as it always is for me, just channeling and trying to lift the present to a place of transcendence to what we do on the stage. And that moment in particular was more like that than winning the awards we won — it was just a real manifestation of what I do, and what all those artists in there, what I imagine drives them: the performance, not the awards.
Jon Batiste accepts the album of the year award for “We Are” onstage during tat the 64th Annual Grammy Awards held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on April 3rd, 2022 in Las Vegas.
Christopher Polk for Variety
We hear in voiceover some of the detractors who were rather loud in the wake of your big Grammy wins. How aware were you of that narrative in the moment, and how did you approach including it in the film, which I assume wasn’t easy?
I’m at a point, to be frank, that I don’t really care. These are things I’ve gotten used to in terms of creating music and doing things that are speaking to the culture, doing things that are counterculture, things that are perceived to be one way when they’re completely the opposite of that. I’ve been perceived to be an institutionalist, and to be not institutional enough. To be a person who is too sophisticated, and to be someone who is dumbing down what they do too much. To be a person who is a part of a fix in the system, someone who comes out of nowhere, and also as the industry darling or the vet or the favored one, who’s constantly had privileges. What that tells me overall, since I’ve been doing this from the age of 15 in New Orleans, is just that I have longevity and I have impact.
Even the fact of the symphony upon its performance at Carnegie Hall — which I unabashedly will say was a cultural moment, if not just for New York then for our country, for music — for there to be no critical review or discussion that was remotely intelligent discourse, with so many firsts [achieved with it that] I’ve lost count? I’m just so used to it. Twenty years in, you just kind of chuckle about it. Eventually, maybe, people will catch on, but I don’t really do it for that. Ultimately it’s just a matter of doing what I’m doing and doing what I love.
Disney boss Bob Iger spilled some super chilly tea on Good Morning America on Thursday morning (Nov. 16), revealing that on the heels of the announcement earlier this year of a third Frozen movie, another Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff and Anna adventure could be in the works as well.
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Speaking to co-anchor Michael Strahan, mouse house CEO Iger said, “Well, I’ll give you a little surprise there, Michael. Frozen 3 is in the works and there might be a Frozen 4 in the works too.” And while Iger didn’t have a ton of information the hint of a fourth chapter in the series that already owns the second and fourth spots on the list of highest-grossing animated films of all-time.
“But I don’t have much to say about those films right now,” Iger added. “But Jenn Lee, who created Frozen, the original Frozen and Frozen II, is hard at work with her team at Disney Animation on not one, but actually two stories.”
Frozen II grossed more than $1.4 billion in 2019, while the 2013 original pulled in more than $1.3 billion, while spawning a universe of beloved characters, Halloween costumes, Disney theme park attractions, video games, a Disney on Ice show, hit soundtrack albums, a Broadway musical and this year’s Disney Frozen: Forces of Nature podcast.
After Iger revealed in a February earnings call that sequels to Frozen, Toy Story and Zootopia were in the works, in June, Tony-winning singer/actress Idina Menzel — who voices Elsa in the films — confirmed that she is definitely on board for the third chapter in the Frozen story. At the time, though, she told Billboard that she was in the dark about what it would look, or sound, like.
“I don’t know a lot,” she said at the time. “To be completely honest, they teased it to us, and I have no idea. They don’t show you a script. They don’t show you anything. All I know is, yeah we are gonna make one, and that’s it. So, I’m like, ‘Cool! I will be able to pay my bills.’”
K-pop band SEVENTEEN will return to movie theaters around the world on Dec. 16 with their live concert film SEVENTEEN Tour ‘Follow’ to Japan: Live Viewing. The film will be broadcast from Japan’s Fukuoka PayPay Dome and broadcast live to Australia, South Korea, the U.S. and Canada, Brazil and European territories; all the participating countries […]
K-pop band SEVENTEEN will return to movie theaters around the world on Dec. 16 with their live concert film SEVENTEEN Tour ‘Follow’ to Japan: Live Viewing. The film will be broadcast from Japan’s Fukuoka PayPay Dome and broadcast live to Australia, South Korea, the U.S. and Canada, Brazil and European territories; all the participating countries […]
Hollywood’s biggest studios and the SAG-AFTRA union struck a tentative deal on Wednesday (Nov. 8), ending the historic 118-day strike by actors. Now, performers can get back to doing the second most important part of their jobs: promoting their projects.
After writers ended their walk-out last month, production on TV and film projects is expected to ramp back up once the actors’ deal is ratified by membership, meaning that on-hold projects could go into production within the next few months. Plus, musicians who act in TV and film can finally get back out there and plug, plug, plug those on-screen efforts.
That means you might see more of the reunited *NSYNC. Earlier this week, member Lance Bass lamented in an interview that what was intended to be a more robust reunion between himself, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone was reduced to a mild walk-on at this year’s MTV VMAs, with their plans to fully promote their first single in more than 20 years being scuttled by the strikes.
Instead, there was no music video, no live performance and no other appearances to hype the Trolls Band Together single “Better Place.” Bass lamented that the then-ongoing strike really “threw a wrench” in the quintet’s broader plans due to strike rules that prohibited union members from promoting new projects during the walk-out. “We finally released a song after 23 years and we can’t even mention the song and we can’t talk about the movie it’s in. It was going to be such a special moment for all of us, and unfortunately that got sidetracked,” Bass said.
Now, however, it seems like Trolls star Timberlake — who also could not make the rounds to promote his recent Netflix thriller Reptile — could potentially lean-in to a fuller *NSYNC celebration. Bass hinted as much in his interview, saying, “We had so much fun, I don’t see this as our last thing. Because of this strike, I feel like we owe it to the fans again to rectify this and do something else. But until the strike ends, we can’t really even figure out what is next, if there’s anything next. Hopefully we’ll have a plan in place once this lifts and we’re able to get back to work.”
During the strike, musicians who act were not allowed to talk up their current or upcoming projects, which explains why there were so many late-night shows spotlighting comedians, politicians and non-performers over the past month. But now you can expect to see those double-threat singers make their way back to the couch to talk up projects due out in the next few months.
Here are some other music-related movies and TV shows starring and created by musicians that might get some personal attention now that the strike has ended. (All release dates subject to change.)
Sara Bareilles: The singer stars in the big screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Waitress, based on the 2007 movie of the same name, due out on Dec. 7.
Beyoncé: Though Queen Bey doesn’t typically do press around her projects, it’s possible she could make appearances to promote her upcoming concert film RENAISSANCE: A Film By Beyoncé, which will hit screens worldwide on Dec. 1.
Timothée Chalamet: The latest film based on Roald Dahl’s madcap candy-maker is a musical top-lined by the Dune star, who will make his big screen singing debut in the Paul King-directed film co-starring Keegan-Michael Key, Sally Hawkins, Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Grant, due out on Dec. 15.
Ariana Grande: The singer, who has kept a lower profile since 2020’s Positions, can now hit the promo rounds to talk about her role as Glinda in the upcoming two-part film adaptation of the musical Wicked; the first part was pushed back to Nov. 27, 2024 due to the strike.
H.E.R.: The musical polymath will star alongside Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks and fellow singers Halle Bailey, Jon Batiste and Fantasia in the musical re-imagining of the Alice Walker novel The Color Purple, co-produced by Oprah, Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones. It’s due Dec. 25.
Megan Thee Stallion: In addition to plugging her “Cobra” single, Meg could finally get out there and promote her roles in Dicks: The Musical and the seventh season of Netflix’s filthy animated series Big Mouth (which were both released last month) — and, perhaps, her rumored role in the untitled, upcoming Safdie brothers movie starring Adam Sandler.
Julia Michaels: The singer and Grammy-nominated songwriter re-teamed with frequent collaborator JP Saxe to write the songs for the animated Disney musical Wish (out Nov. 22), which stars Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk and Natasha Rothwell.
Reneé Rapp: The singer and The Sex Lives of College Girls star will co-star as Regina George alongside singer/actress Ashley Park (Gretchen Wieners) in Tina Fey’s big screen reimagining of the Mean Girls musical based on the beloved original movie, due out on Jan. 12.
Troye Sivan: Atfter getting blanked in the promo rounds for The Weeknd’s poorly received HBO series The Idol, the “Rush” singer could now get out there to talk about his role in Trolls Band Together as Floyd.
The Weeknd: Speaking of The Idol, according to IMDb, the singer who now goes by his birth name, Abel Tesfaye, will make his feature film acting debut in an untitled project directed by Trey Edward Shults in which he will appear alongside Jenny Ortega, Barry Keoghan and Charli D’Amelio. The movie was co-written by Shults, Tesfaye and his producing partner, Reza Fahim.
Zendaya: The Euphoria star is expected to take a bigger role in Dune: Part Two, which was pushed from this month to March 15, 2024, so expect her to begin making the rounds to promote that one in the next few months.
Rachel Zegler: For the follow-up to her Golden Globe-winning role in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story adaptation and Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Zegler will portray a scrappy singer-songwriter in the music-heavy Hunger Games prequel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, due out Nov. 17.
Zayn Malik will pull triple-duty in the upcoming animated feature 10 Lives, for which he will write new music and perform a duet with Bridgerton star Simone Ashley. Variety reported that Malik and Ashley will both star in the film, in which the singer will play play “tough-guy twins Cameron and Kirk,” with Ashley voicing […]
Back in April 1988, when DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince released “A Nightmare on My Street,” the song was an immediate hit. A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 was set for release a few months later, and the song – which made obvious allusions to Freddy Krueger from beginning to end – eventually climbed to No. 15 on the Hot 100.
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“Now I have a story that I’d like to tell/ About this guy you all know him, he had me scared as hell!” rapped the Fresh Prince, who later became better known by his real name, Will Smith. “He comes to me at night after I crawl into bed/ He’s burnt up like a weenie and his name is Fred!”
Just one problem: New Line Cinema, the owners of the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, had already commissioned their own officially licensed Freddy Krueger rap track (“Are You Ready for Freddy”) by the Fat Boys – and, more importantly, they had specifically rejected DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s version.
Like a formulaic horror movie, you know what happens next. In July 1988, New Line took Smith, Jazzy Jeff (Jeff Townes) and Jive Records to federal court, arguing that “My Street” infringed their copyrights and trademarks to the Nightmare On Elm Street franchise. New Line also demanded an immediate injunction to stop MTV from airing the song’s soon-to-be released music video, which featured a look-alike Krueger and many other references to the movies.
What’s the origin story of this legal monster? According to legal filings from the case, New Line started thinking about commissioning a licensed hip hop theme song for “Elm Street 4″ nearly a year before the movie was released. Eventually, they settled on The Fat Boys, a pioneering rap trio who had released their breakout Crushin’ earlier that year. In March 1988, the group released “Are You Ready for Freddy” on their third studio album, Coming Back Hard Again.
But behind the scenes, an executive at Jive had been doing his best to convince New Line to use a theme song by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince instead of the Fat Boys. According to legal filings, Smith and Townes recorded “My Street” in late 1987, and then Jive sent a copy of the track to the movie studio for consideration. Negotiations dragged on for months, but never culminated in a licensing deal.
In April, Jive released the song anyway, including it on DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince’s album “He’s the DJ, I’m the Rapper.” The song told the story of the duo encountering the same haunting scenario as the movies, where Krueger kills people in real life by murdering his vicitms in their dreams
“It wasn’t a dream, man, this guy was for real,” Smith rapped. “I said, ‘Freddy, uh, pal, there’s been an awful mistake here’”
According to legal filings, as the August premiere of the movie got closer, Jive continued to get New Line to try to “change its mind” about licensing the song for the movie, including suggesting that MTV was interested in doing a music video for “My Street.” But the studio ultimately reached an official agreement with the Hot Boys to make their own licensed video for their song.
In July, New Line sent a cease-and-desist to Jive and owner Zomba Music, warning that the Fresh Prince song amounted to copyright infringement and demanding that the record be pulled from store shelves. Weeks later, New Line headed to court, accusing the Jive, Zomba, and the duo of a wide range of legal wrongdoing. Then in August, they went into overdrive after learning that Zomba had produced a music video for “My Street” and were planning to release it on MTV, demanding a preliminary injunction to block the video’s premiere.
In late August, a federal judge sided decisively with New Line. He ruled that the planned music video likely infringed the studio’s copyrights, citing the overwhelming similarities between them. And he rejected their argument that the video amounted to a legal “fair use,” saying it was instead simply an unauthorized competitor that was unfairly free-riding on New Line’s “massive promotional campaign.”
“The video exists solely as an vehicle to promote Zomba’s song,” the judge wrote, issuing the injunction banning the release of the video. “Thus, Zomba stands to profit financially by using Freddy without making the usual licensing arrangements, which in fact were made by the Fat Boys before they produced their video.”
Unlike the best horror franchises, there was no sequel to this legal fight. The case could have continued on to more litigation over the ultimate merits of the case, but after New Line won the injunction, the lawsuit quickly ended on a confidential settlement. The video was never released, and albums featured a sticker disclosing that the song was not affiliated with the movie.
But don’t forget, the killer is never quite dead: A version of “A Nightmare On My Street” is currently available on YouTube, where it now has 2.8 million views.
BTS‘ 2022 concert film BTS: Yet to Come is headed to Amazon’s Prime Video service next month. The show that took place in front of 50,000 fans last October at the Asiad Main Stadium in Busan, South Korea as part of the city’s bid to host the 2023 World Expo will hit the streamer on […]