Category: Entertainment

Theater owners have good reason to scream for joy as the Scream 7 prepares to open in theaters this weekend.

From Spyglass and Paramount, the slasher pic is expected to open to at least $40 million, which would mark the best three-day launch of the year to date. Tracking is more bullish, with the National Research Group projecting $45 million. If the leading firm is right, that would also mark the top opening of the franchise ahead of Scream VI, which launched to $44.4 million in March 2023, not adjusted for inflation. It is targeting a $60 million global launch.

The pic sees Neve Campbell return to the iconic series in the role of Sidney after sitting out Scream VI because of a salary dispute after appearing in every film up to that point.

Kevin Williamson, who wrote the script for the original Scream, Scream 2 and Scream 4, directs the seventh installment. The story follows Sidney as she returns to her hometown with her daughter (Isabel May), who soon cross paths with a new Ghostface killer. The girl is named Tatum, the same name of Rose McGowan’s character in the 1996’s Scream who was murdered.

A trailer released in March focused on Ghostface targeting Sidney and Tatum, with Sidney teaching her daughter the rules of surviving the brutal killer. Another ad played during the Super Bowl, underscoring how important the franchise is to David Elllison and his new regime at Paramount.

In addition to Campbell, original star Courteney Cox returns as reporter Gale Weathers.

Spyglass fully produced the movie, with Paramount co-financing half of the net $45 million budget. If all goes well, it will be the first hit for the studio since Ellison arrived last August.

Additionally, Scream 7 marks the first installment to screen in Imax. It is also playing across all other premium formats.

Scream launched in 1996 with the late Wes Craven going on to direct three sequels known for skewering horror genre tropes. In 2022, the fifth film reinvented the franchise under the direction of directing team Radio Silence, with Campbell, Cox and David Arquette returning alongside a crew of new actors.

They followed it up with Scream VI, which in 2023 became the franchise’s top grossing movie, grossing $108.4 million domestically and $166.6 million globally

While Campbell’s return marks a highly anticipated moment for fans, two stars of the revival films Scream (2022) and Scream VI will not be back. Melissa Barrera was fired from Scream 7 because of her social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war. Jenna Ortega had already left the film voluntarily before the firing, though it was not made public until after. Christopher Landon, who was set to direct the horror sequel, also exited amid intense fan backlash after Barrera’s firing, despite not being the one to fire the actress.

Other franchise stars returning include David Arquette as Dewey Riley, completing the legacy trio alongside Sidney and Gale. Matthew Lillard, one of the original co-Ghostface killers, is coming back as Stu Macher, as well as Scott Foley, Scream 3‘s Ghostface Roman Bridger — Sidney’s half-brother. Siblings Chad and Mindy, played by Mason Gooding and Jasmin Savoy Brown are also in Scream 7.

Newcomers to the franchise include May, Michelle Randolph, Joel McHale, Anna Camp, Mckenna Grace, Ethan Embry, Mark Consuelos, Jimmy Tatro, Celeste O’Connor, Asa Germann and Sam Rechner.

When President Donald trump delivers his State of the Union address to Congress tonight, the audience will be filled with high-profile media personalities, both old and new.

That includes David Ellison, the CEO of Paramount, who is seeking to pry Warner Bros. Discovery away from Netflix in a blockbuster deal; and Erika Kirk, who will be attending as Trump’s guest.

It also includes Nick Shirley, the controversial conservative creator whose expose of Minneapolis childcare centers sparked an entire news cycle in right-leaning media; and Kevin O’Leary, the Shark Tank host and Marty Supreme surprise.

Only Kirk, the widow of the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was murdered last year, is attending a guest of the president. Ellison is attending as a guest of Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC); while O’Leary is attending as a guest of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL). Shirley is attending as a guest of Rep. Peter Stauber (R-MN).

While there are plenty of more widely-expected guests attending (NASA astronauts, the family of Jesse Jackson, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein), the media-heavy guest list underscores how the political landscape is increasingly being shaped by new power centers, from digital natives like Kirk and Shirley to new era moguls like Ellison.

Ellison, of course, is in the midst of trying to steal WBD from Netflix, with the company telling investors Tuesday that it was warming to Paramount’s sweetened bid, which leans heavily on its confidence that it can get the deal through regulatory approvals.

Attending the SOTU as a guest of one of the most powerful Republican senators may underscore Ellison’s confidence in getting a deal done.

In 2024, Republican candidate Heather Lappin lost out on the Pima County sheriff’s seat to incumbent Democrat Chris Nanos, the man currently in charge of finding Nancy Guthrie, by 481 votes in a recount. More than 487,000 people voted in the election, making the margin of victory less than 0.1 percent.

There is no love lost between Lappin and her former boss, and you can count Lappin among those who believe Sheriff Nanos is currently bungling the Guthrie kidnapping case, which may soon be a murder case. Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Lappin, a former Nanos lieutenant (literally — that was her rank), had nothing nice to say about America’s Sheriff.

“He is a tyrant,” Lappin says. “He tries to be super charming. Like when he did his quote [at the Guthrie press conference], ‘I’m not used to people hanging on my every word and trying to hold me accountable.’ And then he put his hands on his hips because he was trying to be cute. Nobody thinks you’re cute. You’re a 72-year-old man, nobody thinks you’re cute.”

OK, so maybe some of Lappin’s grievances are a little petty. But not all of them.

After her loss, Lappin says she asked to be transferred to another county department — any of them. The request was denied and she eventually relocated to Phoenix, a one-hour, 40-minute drive from Tucson, where she found new employment.

It’s been a ride. After challenging him for the sheriff’s post, Lappin claims Nanos transferred her to a corrections role at the Pima County Adult Detention Center. Lappin had no corrections experience (but 20 years as a cop on the street), and by then, the jail was a very bad place to be — even for jail.

“We had an exorbitant amount of jail death because Nanos decided to come in and fire corrections officers only for not getting the COVID vaccine,” Lappin says. “They didn’t fire deputies, they only fired corrections officers.”

Nanos lost an election for sheriff in 2016 amid a RICO investigation. He won in 2020. The same year, COVID-19 began to kill inmates, but so did the realities of a small staff, Lappin says. “[The inmates] were literally kept in these rooms, just getting food,” she adds. “That’s it — no exercise, no nothing.”

It was also difficult for the remaining corrections officers to monitor drugs coming into the prisons, she says.

In a few years, Lappin would face those challenges, the consequence of being on the ballot opposite Nanos, she contends. Her new work was hard and unfamiliar, and her nights weren’t a whole lot better than her days. Lappin says she was the target of 13 internal affairs investigations in just six months, each allegedly an effort for Nanos to discredit his political opponent.

Nanos also attempted to “intimidate” Lappin at campaign events, she claims. “He sent his two female captains to my campaign events to try to intimidate me,” Lappin says. “He’s like a mafioso, that’s what he’s like.”

“Right now, our focus is on this investigation and serving the victims and this community. Political commentary distracts from this active investigation, and it is unfortunate,” Sheriff Nanos tells THR when asked for comment on the accusations in this story. “My focus remains on justice and transparency.”

Nanos has recently sat for interviews with select media on the ground in Tucson. He has tussled with some of the conservative outlets.

After Nanos won by a razor-thin margin, Lappin says, “He just kept coming after me.” The result of the efforts was an administrative leave for Lappin, where she says she was basically put under “house arrest.” She sued for $2 million.

Now, Lappin is trying to not talk about the Guthrie case — but she did criticize the sheriff’s work. (Lappin declined to comment on plans to run for Pima County sheriff in 2028, though she says she can from an eligibility standpoint.)

Earlier this month, Nancy Guthrie, the elderly and infirm mother of Today show co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, was violently taken from her home in Tucson, Arizona. More than three weeks into the investigation, law enforcement, which now includes the FBI, have no real leads.

“A lot of the Guthrie case is just consequences of his really bad decision making, the years of decimating his units,” Lappin says. “Three of our best homicide detectives, probably in [all of] southern Arizona, were removed from Homicide because they supported me [in the election].”

One popular criticism of Nanos, who to his credit has taken much of it head on, is a reported rift between his office and the feds. It is not entirely clear who has primary jurisdiction as the details of the crime remain so unknown. Lappin says she would have handled the case differently.

“Why didn’t you become the support agency and give this to the FBI? They have the resources. They can bring in the hundreds and hundreds of people that command those tip lines. He’s trying to do that with 395 deputies — we don’t have the resources,” Lappin says.

In our phone call, I informed Lappin of the latest beat of the ongoing Nancy Guthrie case: a $1 million reward “for any information that leads to her recovery,” as Savannah Guthrie laid out in a Tuesday video. An individual close to the family told THR the Guthries wanted the reward out there on day one, but law enforcement discouraged the idea in an effort to prevent fake tipsters.

“[Nanos’] ego doesn’t let him make the decision to give it up because he thinks it’s going to make him look bad,” Lappin says. “When you put your own ego and your own [image] to the public over the health and safety of an 84-year-old woman, then that’s a problem.”

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Gavin Newsom‘s new memoir has shot to the top of the bestsellers charts just hours after its release online.

Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery is billed as an “intimate and poignant account of identity, belonging, and the defining moments that inspired a life in politics,” and the book comes amidst speculation that the California Governor is considering a 2028 presidential run.

Released Feb. 24, Newsom’s book is currently at the top of Amazon’s political biographies chart and in the Top Five of the site’s bestselling memoirs chart as of this writing.

Newsom has made headlines in recent months both for squaring off with Donald Trump and for his grand plans to halt Hollywood’s so-called “filming exodus.” The Governor has pledged to return television and movie production to California, signing a bill last year that would double the state’s tax incentives for film and TV projects from $330 million to $750 million annually. Still, Newsom has faced his fair share of detractors — even from Hollywood insiders — on issues outside of the industry.

In October, Joseph Gordon Levitt said the Governor was “too scared” to veto legislation that would have banned companies from making AI chatbots available to people under the age of 18 (Newsom attributed his decision to the bill’s “broad restrictions,” though he did sign a law that requires platforms to remind users they are interacting with a chatbot and not a human, as well as prevent the promotion of self-harm content). Halle Berry, meantime, criticized Newsom in December for vetoing a menopause bill she backed, adding that, “That’s okay, because he’s not going to be governor forever, and the way he has overlooked women… he probably should not be our next president either.”

The new book was written too late to respond to the criticisms, but nevertheless seeks to position Newsom as an underdog, who took up baseball as a way to deal with his family dysfunction and his long time struggles with dyslexia. The running theme throughout Newsom’s memoir: This is just a guy who has lived his whole life trying to make his home state proud.

“Born in San Francisco, his parents divorced at a young age, and his childhood was spent being tugged between two worlds: his mother worked three jobs in order to care for her children while his father, a close friend of the Getty family, brought Newsom into San Francisco society, a world of wealth and connections,” reads a book description. “The dissonance was frustrating, and made all the more difficult because of undiagnosed dyslexia, but the vantage point was valuable: he inherited his mother’s perseverance and his father’s reverence of California, not only its wildness, but its opportunity.”

For what it’s worth, Newsom has never lived outside of California — something that has both endeared him to locals and left him open to critique from potential voters in the rest of the country. The 58-year-old also memorably saw off a GOP-led recall effort in 2021.

For Newsom, “the California Dream” is what keeps him going, the publishers’ notes say. “His great-great-grandfather, a cop, walked a beat in San Francisco, where almost 150 years later, Newsom would be elected as mayor, running on the values instilled in him by his family history: that California’s open arms must continue to extend to each new generation,” a description reads.

Of course the book chronicles Newsom’s entire political career, including his time as Mayor of San Francisco, where he issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples, more than ten years before the Supreme Court made same-sex unions legal. The book also lauds his “bold efforts” to “counter climate change, improve mental health care, and enhance gun safety.”

As the book description states, Newsom’s memoir is a “deeply resilient California story of identity, belonging, and the defining moments that inspired a life in politics.”

Read and buy Gavin Newsom’s new memoir here.

Paramount president Jeff Shell improperly disclosed specific details about the timing, cost and structure of the public company’s $7.7 billion media rights deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship almost a month before its August 2025 announcement — that’s the allegation of leaked confidential data that an outside law firm is now investigating, The Hollywood Reporter has learned. The SEC is also now reviewing a related whistleblower complaint.

UFC parent TKO Group Holdings’ stock price surged 10 percent following news of the Paramount pact.

The reporting party is R.J. Cipriani, a high-stakes gambler with a documented history as a federal whistleblower. He’s been in settlement negotiations with Shell over a dispute involving consultation services. He declined to comment.

Both men have shared the same attorney: noted Hollywood power lawyer Patricia Glaser, who no longer reps Cipriani.

When asked for comment, Glaser said in a statement, “we were presented with a draft complaint riddled with clear errors of fact and law and the threat that it would be filed, but if he makes the mistake of going ahead with it, we will strongly respond.”

The Shell investigation surfaces at a sensitive time for Paramount, which on Feb. 23 sweetened its politically charged bid to purchase larger competitor Warner Bros. Discovery — and, in the process, elbow out Netflix. The streaming giant previously entered a $82.7 billion deal for WBD. Shell is said to have notified Paramount once he learned of the whistleblower’s draft complaint.

In 2023, Shell was terminated from his previous top job as NBC Universal’s CEO over allegations of inappropriate conduct involving a CNBC correspondent. Yet he found resurrection in Paramount owner David Ellison, who elevated Shell to his current post from an interim perch with private equity firm RedBird Capital Partners, which helped Ellison’s Skydance Media acquire the studio.

Cipriani is a colorful figure whose exploits as a high roller and government whistleblower have included battles with a Las Vegas casino behemoth as well as an international drug lord. He told THR in September 2025 that a Mark Wahlberg-produced Amazon Prime docuseries about the latter saga, Cocaine Quarterback, portrayed him in a false light. Cipriani has said he’s been in development on a scripted project about the risky business that is his life. The working title is Jackpot, which is the codename the FBI conferred on him.