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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 […]
The only group in the history of the Grammy Awards to have their golden gramophone revoked could pull off the ultimate redemption story if the stars align at next year’s broadcast. The upcoming Luke Korem-directed biopic Milli Vanilli has been submitted for consideration in the best film category at the awards slated to take place on Feb. 4 in Los Angeles more than three decades after the duo’s best new artist trophy was recalled by the Recording Academy.
“I actually had that vision four years ago when we began making this film,” Korem tells Billboard exclusively about the inspiration for the biopic that tells the full story of the duo’s rocket rise to fame and equally rapid descent into a music industry punchline; this writer appears in the film but was not involved in the production or marketing. “However, this time it’s not about whether or not they sang. This film is about the exploitation of two young artists – Robert Pilatus and Fabrice Morvan – at the hands of a greedy music industry. I think a lot of artists and musicians can relate.”
Milli Vanilli is among 94 films vying for a nomination for best music film, including Oscar-shortlisted David Bowie doc Moonage Daydream and Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen: a Journey, A Song, as well as films about Boygenius, Miley Cyrus, Kelsea Ballerini, Duran Duran, U2, Foo Fighters and live movies about Ellie Goulding, Guns N’ Roses, Imagine Dragons, Kendrick Lamar, Sam Smith and many more.
In an exclusive new trailer for the film that debuted earlier this year at the Tribeca Festival in New York, surviving member Fabrice Morvan solemnly admits that he and late partner Rob Pilatus were “lying” to the public before offering up a maxim in his native French: “Lies are taking the elevators while the truth takes the stairs.”
Morvan says in the trailer that he knew that at some point the truth would emerge and the pair’s charade would be uncovered after the group quickly rose to the top of global charts with a string of late 1980s hits from their smash 1989 Girl You Know It’s True album. They scored three Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s (“Blame It on the Rain,” “Girl I’m Gonna Miss You” and “Baby Don’t Forget My Number”) in 1989 and won the best new artist Grammy in 1990 before it was revealed that they didn’t actually sing on any of their massive hits, which were performed by a group of anonymous studio musicians.
Morvan and Pilatus danced to the songs on stage and did press as Milli Vanilli, but during performances they pretended to sing over pre-recorded backing tracks.
“They were going to catch us at some point or another,” Morvan says in the clip, a realization that left the friends wondering what they would do when the house of cards collapsed as the weight of the lie pressed down on them, reaching its peak when the new artist award was repossessed nine months after the Feb. 1990 Grammys; it was the first, and so far only, time a Grammy has been rescinded.
The preview also features heartbreaking testimony from Pilatus’ adopted sister, Carmen Pilatus, who says the crush of attention became a problem “pretty quickly” for her brother, as he tried to balance his painful childhood feelings of isolation and otherness with the unfiltered love he got from screaming fans. “To be loved, finally, to be loved… but having to lie to the people who love and idolize him that was for him a huge problem,” she says in the film.
Trying to blot out the pain of the constant deceit, Morvan says he and Pilatus drowned their sorrows in drugs and alcohol to “numb out,” with Pilatus admitting in an interview taped shortly before his death at age 32 in 1998 of an accidental drug overdose that he had frequent blackouts because of his out-of-control substance use.
Korem says he spent more than three years on the film in an effort to “expose the pop music machine in a way that no film has ever done,” with a focus on recognizing what Milli Vanilli gave the world: “great entertainment… And what better way than a Grammy? It would be the perfect ending to this wild story.”
Morvan tells Billboard that today he’s glad people found out about the ruse orchestrated by reclusive German producer Frank Farian, who struck gold a decade earlier with the disco pop group Boney M., which was also fronted by a dancer who did not sing.
“When people saw headlines about Milli Vanilli, they just thought of Rob and Fab,” Morvan says. “But now when they think of Milli Vanilli, they think of Rob and Fab, the music industry that was behind them, the producers, and [former head of their American label, Arista Records] Clive Davis — everybody had a hand in it and was a major part of organizing this whole thing as opposed to people believing that Rob and I did everything.”
Without naming names, both men said it’s “common practice” for acts to lip synch today to recreate studio magic on stage, to make sure, as Morvan says, “that people aren’t disappointed by not hearing what they heard on the record or on the radio.”
And while Rob and Fab (briefly) enjoyed the high life and the spoils of fame, Korem says that the price of not singing on the records was higher than either man imagined. “This deception cost Rob his life and nearly destroyed Fab,” he says. “Think about that. Someone came along to these two kids and said, ‘let me make you a star,’ and they said yes. They took a bite of the apple, and the world crucified them for it. For what? For doing something The Monkees and others had done? For dancing and providing entertainment? It’s ludicrous.”
Watch the new trailer for Milli Vanilli (which begins streaming on Paramount+ on Oct. 24) below.
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Deadpool 3 director Shawn Levy has seen Taylor Swift‘s directing skills up close and he thinks the singer has the makings of a movie mogul. Swift, who has directed (or co-directed) the videos for her songs including “The Man,” “Me!” and the 10-minute mini-movie for the “All Too Well” has already said that she has a feature film in mind for her next trick, and Levy is here for it.
“Taylor has not consulted me about upcoming directing projects, but I think she has the makings of a hell of a director,” Levy told EW when the mag asked if Swift had asked him for tips about directing a feature after he co-starred as her dad in the “All Too Well” short film. While Levy could not talk about what it was like acting in the Swift-helmed short because of the ongoing Hollywood actor’s strike, he said the singer has an impressive vision behind the lens.
“That list is short. Taylor, the depth of her vision for how she wants a creative piece to be, whether it’s a lyric, a melody, a bridge, a concert tour, a video, it’s profound,” he said in compiling a two-womean roster of artists whose cultural impact is off the charts; the only other name on his list, by the way, is Beyoncé.
“It’s profoundly vivid, and she has the strength of her convictions,” Levy added in dubbing Swift a “generational voice and creative force,” before tying that vision to a philosophy espoused by three-time Oscar-winner Steven Spielberg.
“Spielberg was on the set of a movie he produced that I directed, called Real Steel, and I said to him, ‘How do you know it’s the right shot?’ His answer was, ‘The way you see it, that makes it right,’” Levy explained. “I feel like that’s something Taylor Swift has figured out really well, because that’s about trusting your instinct.”
Swift has won two MTV VMAs for best director, one for the “All Too Well” short film and the other for “The Man” video and in December Searchlight Pictures announced that Taylor is gearing up to direct her first feature-length film based on her original screenplay.
Before she steps behind the camera, Swift is likely to smash box office records this weekend following Thursday night’s opening of her Eras Tour concert movie, which experts predicted could easily soar above $100 million in grosses in its opening frame, instantly making it the highest-grossing music film of all time.
When it comes to the music of Sofia Coppola’s films, “There’s always a bit of impressionism,” says Thomas Mars, the lead singer of Phoenix — who also happens to be married to the director. Think of My Bloody Valentine’s “Sometimes” scoring Scarlett Johanssen’s taxi ride through late-night Tokyo in Lost in Translation, Kirsten Dunst cavorting through a decadent young queen’s wardrobe as Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” blasts in Marie Antoinette or the haunting chords of Air lending a foreboding tone to 1970s U.S. suburbia in The Virgin Suicides.
And in Coppola’s latest film, Priscilla (out Nov. 3 from A24) — about when a teenage Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) and Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi) met — one moment in particular seems destined to join the canon of the director’s great needle drops: after Priscilla and Elvis’ first kiss, the resounding, viscerally recognizable trio of guitar chords of Tommy James and The Shondells’ “Crimson & Clover.”
“Sofia is really attuned to the grand majesty of popular music,” says veteran music supervisor Randall Poster, who shares music supervision credit on the film with Phoenix. “In a sense, ‘Crimson & Clover’ is as epic as Mozart or Beethoven — it encapsulates every adolescent emotion possible.”
In adapting Priscilla from Priscilla’s 1985 memoir, Elvis & Me, Coppola did use some of the historical music cues mentioned in it, such as a cover of Frankie Avalon’s “Venus” (which Phoenix plays variations of as the score throughout) and Brenda Lee’s “Sweet Nothin’s.” But for the rest of the soundtrack, “I didn’t want it to sound corny, like some music of that era can to me,” Coppola says. A fan of producer Phil Spector, his sound “became a way to tie things together. I wanted to embrace the melodrama of strings and big production.”
Sometimes that meant nodding to Spector in unexpected ways: As the film opens, the orchestral psychedelics of Alice Coltrane’s “Going Home” fade into Spector’s trademark kick drums and lush strings — and the joltingly nasal voice of Joey Ramone covering The Ronettes’ “Baby I Love You” (a track from the Ramones’ Spector-produced End of the Century).
But many times during the film, silence is used to striking effect. As Mars points out, key synchs like “Crimson & Clover” needed some quiet preceding them. “We felt this will be a big moment, so we can’t have too much music before. To make sure these moments are highlighted, there’s a bit of negative space.” And silence was, in fact, a big part of the discussion among Coppola, her longtime editor Sarah Flack, Mars and Poster about how music would inform the telling of Priscilla’s story. Coppola has always been drawn to illuminating the interior lives of young women, and Priscilla, for much of the film, is alone — left at Graceland, away from her family, while her husband is off in the military or on film sets.
“She’s trying to fit in; she’s not sure where she is,” Mars says. “It takes time for her to get her life back, to make her own choices.” Emphasizing the stillness of her life without Elvis, and the noise and parties when he returns, was important. “I think those silences push you deeper into the movie, ultimately,” Poster says.
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Although Elordi magnetically portrays Elvis, the film is centered in Priscilla’s experience, and his music is almost entirely absent from it. Authentic Brands Group, the majority owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises, which controls approval of Elvis song usage, did not grant it to Coppola. But that meant “we had to make a weakness a strength,” Mars says. “In the end, it’s better that it’s more focused on Priscilla’s perspective.”
And it seems the film’s subject was pleased. At the movie’s Venice Film Festival showing, Priscilla embraced Coppola and wiped away tears during a standing ovation. “We haven’t talked specifically about the music, but she said, ‘You did your homework,’ ” Coppola says. “She felt it was authentic, which was so important to me.”
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
“Are you guys doing something?” Taylor Swift asked the members of *NSYNC on Sept. 12 while onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards, where the reunited boy band had just arrived to shrieks and presented Swift the best pop trophy. “I need to know what it is!” *NSYNC was back, and even pop’s biggest superstar was amped.
Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Lance Bass, Chris Kirkpatrick and Joey Fatone demurred at the time, but soon after the VMAs, *NSYNC announced “Better Place,” its first new song together in over two decades. The shimmering, falsetto-heavy disco-pop track was created for Trolls Band Together, the third installment in the hit animated film series in which Timberlake voices a main character, Branch, and has contributed hits to each of the first two Trolls movies.
“My excitement started way back in the early part of the year,” says Gina Shay, the producer/music supervisor for the films. That was when Timberlake sent her a demo of “Better Place,” designed to follow his Billboard Hot 100-topping smash “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” from the original Trolls film in 2016 and his SZA collaboration, “The Other Side,” from 2020’s Trolls World Tour.
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Shortly after sending the demo, Timberlake texted Shay that he felt inspired to reunite *NSYNC to record “Better Place.” “It was like dynamite was going off inside my brain,” Shay says. After all, *NSYNC — whose four studio albums have sold 27.9 million copies, according to Luminate, and scored turn-of-the-century smashes like “Bye Bye Bye” and “It’s Gonna Be Me” — hadn’t released music together since 2002.
And while Trolls Band Together focuses on a boy band reunion, Shay says that the plot had been locked in long before any talk of an *NSYNC comeback. “The movie’s story has been solid for about four years,” she says, “so it was just that perfect confluence of a song to reunite *NSYNC and to carry the narrative.”
Although Shay says that coordinating all five members’ schedules with their individual teams “took a little time to sort through,” “Better Place” came together rather seamlessly once the quintet was fully on board. After *NSYNC announced its reunion at the VMAs and unveiled “Better Place” on Sept. 29, Shay hopes that the song will become ubiquitous prior to the Nov. 17 release of Trolls Band Together — but however high it climbs, she’s glad that the film franchise could play a role in the reformation of a pop behemoth like *NSYNC.
“I’m so glad we were able to do this for the fans,” she says. “It has been a mix of love, pandemonium and wish fulfillment.”
This story originally appeared in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.