State Champ Radio Movies
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Joey Ramone‘s brother is fighting back against a lawsuit filed by Johnny Ramone’s widow over a planned Netflix movie about the pioneering punk band, calling the case “baseless and flimsy” and filing his own countersuit against her.
Johnny’s wife (Linda Cummings-Ramone) sued Joey’s brother (Mitchel Hyman, better known as Mickey Leigh) in January over allegations that he had “covertly” developed an “unauthorized” biopic, believed to be Netflix’s announced moving starring Pete Davidson as Joey. In the lawsuit, Linda said that any “authoritative story of the Ramones” would require her sign-off.
But in a sharply-worded response filed last month, Mickey’s attorneys argued that Linda had, in fact, already greenlit such a movie many years ago – and that her “baseless” lawsuit was simply one more step in a years-long plan to “install herself as the Queen of the Ramones.”
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“Ms. Cummings-Ramone’s main purpose is to embarrass, harass, and destroy the integrity of Mr. Hyman, create an utterly false narrative about him, rewrite her role in the history of the Ramones, and win a popularity contest in which, in her mind, she takes over … the legacy of a band of which she never was a member and had nothing to do with creatively,” Mickey’s lawyers wrote in the March 15 filing.
A representative for Linda did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday.
Joey (real name Jeffrey Ross Hyman) and Johnny (real name John William Cummings) were not actually brothers, and they had a notoriously chilly relationship during their decades as bandmates. In the years since the two passed away, that feud has seemingly continued between Mickey and Linda.
As the executors of Joey and Johnny’s respective estates, Mickey and Linda each own half of Ramones Productions Inc., the holding company that controls the band’s music and other assets. But that partnership has not gone smoothly, featuring multiple lawsuits and arbitrations over the past decade.
The latest legal scuffle was triggered in part by the plans for a movie version of I Slept With Joey Ramone, Mickey’s 2009 memoir, which Netflix announced in April 2021. In her January lawsuit, Linda said that such a project would need the sign-off of Ramones Productions and not just Joey’s estate.
“Ms. Ramone objects to defendants’ attempt to create a Ramones film without her involvement — not to be obstinate, but rather based on defendants’ disregard for [Ramones] assets and their conduct and treatment of Ms. Ramone and her late husband,” Linda’s attorneys wrote at the time. “To permit defendants alone to tell the authoritative story of the Ramones would be an injustice to the band and its legacy.”
But in his recent response, Mickey argued that the planned movie is about him and his brother, and is “not intended to be a ‘Ramones movie’ or a Ramones biopic.” And he pointed to a 2006 agreement in which he argued that Linda had already granted her approval to a film based on the I Slept With Joey Ramone book: “Ms. Cummings-Ramone did consent to Defendants’ development and production of a motion picture,” Mickey’s lawyers wrote.
In a copy of the alleged agreement filed in court, Ramones Productions granted approval to a company called Rosegarten Films to produce a movie based on the then-unpublished memoir. It’s unclear if that specific company is involved in the currently-planned film, but television and film producer Rory Rosegarten was listed an executive producer when Netflix announced the movie in 2021.
In a statement to Billboard on Wednesday, Mickey echoed his argument that the movie was not going to be about the Ramones as a band.
“The fact is, I did not write ‘I Slept With Joey Ramone: A Punk Rock Family Memoir’ about my brother’s band and had no intention whatsoever of doing that,” he said. “I wrote a story about growing up with a big brother who endured a severe somatic malady at birth, and later developed neurogenic problems. That led to doctors making diagnoses that he would never be able to function on his own in society — and that big brother, with support from his family, proved those doctors wrong as he went on to do great things with his life and become an inspiration to millions.”
The recent court filings came as part of Mickey’s so-called answer to the Linda’s lawsuit, denying the many accusations leveled against him in her lawsuit. Along with it, he filed his own counterclaims against her, arguing that it was Linda who had actually breached their partnership agreement with a “pattern of egregious conduct.”
The counterclaims set the stage for potentially years of litigation over Linda and Mickey’s back-and-forth accusations. Just like Linda’s original lawsuit, Mickey’s new case covers a wide range of alleged wrongdoing in their joint management of the Ramones assets well beyond just the proposed movie.
“She is driven by an alternate agenda, including her own fame and vanity, as well as a self-serving desire to obstruct projects and control RPI for reasons which conflict with her fiduciary duties and cause her to avoid any modicum of cooperation with Mr. Hyman,” Mickey’s lawyers wrote.
We’ve seen a couple of images to date of Lady Gaga‘s turn as Harley Quinn in the upcoming Joker: Folie à Deux sequel. But now thanks to a TikTok video posted on Tuesday (April 2) we can finally hear what the Joker’s foil sounds like.
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In a pic post entitled “The world is a stage” — a tease for the first official trailer due out on April 9 — you hear Gaga’s Quinn whisper, “You’re Joker… you can do anything you want,” over trilling, ominous piano as the screen flashes images of Phoenix’s terrifying clown getting a shave, standing in a rainstorm, locked in a prison and dancing with Quinn.
Gaga will suit up as Quinn in the sequel to director Todd Phillips’ billion-dollar 2019’s global hit Joker, which is due out on October 4. Variety recently reported that the eagerly anticipated film leans heavily towards being “mostly a jukebox musical” that integrates at least 15 reinterpretations of “very well-known songs” and could contain one or two original soundtrack songs as well.
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Among the unnamed classics that are said to appear in the film are the 1953 song “That’s Entertainment,” a showstopper tune often associated with Judy Garland. And though music will reportedly play a major part in the film, Variety noted that Joker 2 is expected to “break the mold of traditional musicals.” No plot details have leaked yet about the movie, but it has been described as a drama with elements that take place around the notorious Arkham Asylum.
EW also noted that while previous Quinns have leaned into the character’s Brooklyn accent — including Arleen Sorkin, the voice actress who originated the role in Batman: The Animated Series, and Margot Robbie in the DC Extended Universe’s live-action films — Manhattan native Gaga’s take on Quinn appears to be accentless.
In addition to Gaga and Phoenix, the film stars Zazie Beetz (Atlanta), Catherine Keener (Incredibles 2) and Brendan Gleeson (The Banshees of Inisherin). Variety also reported on Wednesday (April 3) that the film has been rated R for “some strong violence, language throughout, some sexuality and brief full nudity”; the previous film was also rated R for “strong bloody violence, disturbing behavior, language and brief sexual images.”
Listen to Gaga’s Quinn voice here.
The Bad Boys are back, only this time they’re the ones on the run. In the first trailer for the upcoming fourth installment in the Bad Boys renegade cop action series, Bad Boys: Ride or Die, Will Smith (Det. Lt. Michael “Mike” Lowery) and Martin Lawrence (Det. Lt. Marcus Burnett) have to take flight to solve the biggest case of their careers.
The three-minute preview that dropped on Tuesday morning (March 26) opens with the partners stopping to get a snack at a convenience store where they swiftly dispatch an armed perp who clearly picked the wrong store, on the wrong day. Cut to the partners learning that their old boss, late Miami PD Capt. Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano) had allegedly been secretly working with drug cartels for years, an assertion they think is bogus.
The pair then receive a beyond-the-grave message from Howard instructing them to clear his name, which, of course, sets off a series of explosive adventures as the fugitive cops run for their lives while looking for evidence to exonerate their boss. As you might expect, their time on the lam is accompanied by the requisite avalanche of explosions, gunfire and GIF-worthy quips along the way.
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After director Michael Bay helmed the first two installments of the Miami-based comedy action franchise that launched in 1995, the pair behind the most recent installment, 2020’s Bad Boys For Life, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, are back behind the camera for the upcoming quadquel. The fourth chapter brings back characters previously portrayed by Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, DJ Khaled, Paola Núñez and Jacob Scipio, while adding new faces John Salley, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Rhea Seahorn and Joyner Lucas.
The film represents a big screen return for Smith, who has been mostly laying low since his March 2022 onstage attack of Chris Rock at the 94th Academy Awards after the comedian told a joke about Smith’s wife, actress Jada Pinkett Smith. Will Smith’s previous film, the slavery drama Emancipation, had a selective release in theaters and then streamed on Apple TV+ in Dec. 2022; Bad Boys: Ride or Die will open exclusively in theaters on June 7.
Check out the Bad Boys: Ride or Die trailer below.
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Paul Rudd has proudly talked about being a good dad and taking his teenage daughter Darby to see Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour last summer. During an interview with MTV this week to promote his starring role in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Rudd was asked if he was a true Swiftie, or just a Swiftie “by proxy” […]
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The Oscars are here, and many are hate watching just for the sake of complaining what actor of color got jerked. It is what it is, and sometimes they do get it right, and here are the Black actors we’re rooting for that actually won.
After the 2016 #OscarsSoWhite hashtag went viral, thanks to April Reign, the Academy took notice and began to diversify its members. While they may have gotten a little better at making sure actors of color get their do, it’s not by much.
But here’s who won in 2024, so far.
Da’Vine Joy Randolph won for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her star-making turn at Mary Lamb in The Holdovers. It is her first Oscar.
Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction won for Best Adapted Screenplay. Splendid.
And that’s it, so far…
Jack Black knows what you need. So, after giving a little tease of his band Tenacious D’s rocked-up cover of Britney Spears signature 1998 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash “…Baby One More Time” last week, the singer/actor dropped the full thing on Friday (March 8). In addition, Black and TD bandmate Kyle Gass got […]
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Actor Carl Anthony Payne II, best known for playing Martin Lawrence’s goofy friend Cole Brown in the iconic comedy sitcom Martin, will star in an upcoming horror film.
No, Carl Anthony Payne II won’t be running from Big Shirley in the upcoming indie-horror film The Grove. Instead, he will deal with animalistic behavior that could prove deadly for himself and others.
Deadline exclusively reports that Carl Anthony Payne II (Martin) will take on the lead role, with Acoryé White (Juanita, Under the Stadium Lights), Psalms Salazar (P-Valley), and Guxci (Night Games) also joining the cast.
Alestair Shu (Shelter), Graham Edmonds (S.W.A.T.), influencer Anushka Van Lent (When the Ringlights Dim), Jesus Venegas (Bosch Legacy), and Jolena Wu (Eiknuj) make up the film’s supporting cast.
The website reports that White and Patrycja Kępa, who will also co-direct the project under their Anchored Lens Productions banner, are co-writing the script for the film.
The synopsis for the film reads:
The Grove follows a soldier’s homecoming, which takes a dark turn when he forgets to take an experimental medication, triggering a deadly descent into animalistic madness. What was supposed to be a relaxing lake house getaway with friends becomes a fight for survival, testing the limits of love and sanity.
Production for the Grove begins in Atlanta in April, and the film will debut at the Dreamscape International Film Festival in September 2024.
Are you excited to learn more about The Grove? We are curious to see what Payne II brings to the film in a leading role capacity.
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 […]
