Academy Awards executive producer and showrunner Raj Kapoor and executive producer Katy Mullan announced the latest batch of presenters for this year’s ceremony on Thursday.
Will Arnett, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Robert Downey Jr., Anne Hathaway, Paul Mescal and Gwyneth Paltrow are all set to take the stage at the 98th Oscars. The group of entertainers joins the previously announced lineup of presenters, which includes Adrien Brody, Javier Bardem, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Chase Infiniti, Mikey Madison, Demi Moore, Kumail Nanjiani, Maya Rudolph and Zoe Saldaña.
The 2026 Oscars will be hosted by Conan O’Brien for the second year in a row and are set to air live on ABC and Hulu from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles on Sunday, March 15, starting at 4 p.m. PT.
Fremantle has named Ben Crompton its new global head of entertainment.
Crompton joins Fremantle from NBCUniversal, where he was vp of international unscripted programming. Previous to that, he led the U.S. operations, as executive vp U.S., of Lime Pictures, the British production group behind such shows as Netflix’s Dance Monsters, MTV’s True Lies and ABC’s Who Do You Believe? He has also held senior creative and strategic roles at Warner Brothers in Australia, and Eyeworks and ITV Studios in the U.K.
Crompton will take up the new role later this month, reporting directly to Fremantle Global CEO Jennifer Mullin.
“It is a great honour for me to be joining Fremantle and to work with Jennifer and such a brilliant team,” Crompton said in a statement. “I have long admired Fremantle – a company known for creativity, innovation, and groundbreaking formats. I can’t wait to get started and collaborate with the exceptional talent across the Fremantle business.”
Crompton replaces Andrew Llinares, who stepped down last month after three years in the post.
“We are thrilled to welcome Ben to Fremantle,” said Mullin in a statement. “He is a business-minded leader with a deep understanding of the industry, not only from a development and production perspective, but also from a commercial and strategic viewpoint. I look forward to working closely with Ben and our hugely talented team at this extremely exciting time for our business – as we build on our successes and continue to push the creative boundaries together.”
The move follows a couple of key hires for Fremantle’s TV business last month, which saw the company add Jhamal Robinson as the new head of U.S. productions, both scripted and unscripted, and Emily Knight named the company’s senior vp of unscripted development. In a further shuffle in January, Christian Vesper stepped down as Fremantle’s CEO of Global Drama and Film after a decade in the job.
Fremantle, which is controlled by German broadcaster RTL Group, is one of the world’s leading independent production companies, with a portfolio of global formats including Masked Singer, The X Factor, and Got Talent. According to its own figures, the company last year delivered 345 commissions and 302 productions across 62 territories.
Candace Owens has never been subtle. The pundit and podcaster has spun dozens of unfounded conspiracy theories since her rise from communications director at Charlie Kirk’s conservative youth group, Turning Point USA, to become a far-right digital force with a podcast audience of some six million. But this week, with the launch of her multi-part video series Bride of Charlie, Owens has found what may be her most relentlessly destructive and, by the metrics, most popular campaign yet: a serialized takedown of Erika Kirk, the widow of the man who first gave her a national platform.
Briefly, here’s the backstory: On Sept. 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA and close ally of Donald Trump, was assassinated at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. He was shot in the neck by a single bullet fired from a nearby rooftop while speaking at an outdoor campus debate. A 22-year-old Utah man, Tyler James Robinson, surrendered to police the following day; he has since been charged with aggravated murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. The FBI says evidence indicates Robinson acted alone. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for May.
In the days after the assassination, TPUSA’s board appointed Erika Kirk — the now-widow, previously known more for her pageant background than any political leadership role — to take over as CEO, a move described as consistent with her late husband’s wishes. She quickly stepped into the spotlight: speaking at AmericaFest in December, appearing composed and camera-ready in a glittering sequined pantsuit before an elated AmericaFest crowd, posing in a replica of her late husband’s iconic “debate me” booth, and tossing memorial hats to adoring fans. In February, President Trump honored her at his State of the Union address, where she received a standing ovation from the assembled lawmakers. “Last year, Charlie was violently murdered by an assassin and martyred for his beliefs,” Trump told the chamber.
For Owens, all of it carried a particular sting. During the formative years of the first Trump administration, she was one of the most visible faces of Turning Point USA — traveling extensively with Charlie Kirk, helping build the TPUSA brand. Her public identity was tightly intertwined with the organization’s rise. She served as communications director from 2017 to 2019, until, according to multiple reports, she was asked to leave following positive remarks she made about Adolf Hitler. Watching the institution pivot swiftly and decisively to a new steward — and one receiving presidential embrace — underscored how completely Owens had been cast aside.
In the weeks after the succession, Owens began raising pointed questions on her podcast about Erika Kirk’s conduct: Why was she mic’d during her visit to her husband’s casket? Why did TPUSA’s public events resume so quickly? Why did she seem, in Owens’ framing, already at peace with the loss? “We know everybody grieves differently,” Owens told her audience. “In my imagination, I just thought she would be more upset.”
In December 2025, former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly — who has since built her own conservative-leaning podcast audience and is friendly with both women — brokered a private in-person meeting in Nashville that lasted four and a half hours. Both women called it “productive.” The peace didn’t hold. Shortly after, Owens aired leaked audio she said had been recorded inside TPUSA roughly two weeks after Kirk’s death, capturing Erika Kirk congratulating her events team for pulling off the “event of the century” — AmericaFest, which drew 275,000 attendees — and cheering booming merchandise sales. Owens found the upbeat tone unconscionable. Erika Kirk had addressed the context directly in the recording itself: “My husband’s dead. Like, I’m not trying to be morbid, but he’s dead. And it puts life into perspective.” Kirk’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the leak. Her public response to Owens’ campaign had, up to that point, amounted to two words: “Just stop.”
Then came Bride of Charlie. The first hour-long episode dropped on Feb. 25, and what followed across subsequent installments is not a smoking gun, but an accumulating architecture of insinuation. Owens goes forensic on Erika Kirk’s biography, pointing to what she describes as inconsistencies: references to being raised by a single mother versus a clip of Erika on The Charlie Kirk Show saying her father “was a stay-at-home dad for a few years”; alleged discrepancies in her birthdate across legal documents; contested details about her pre-Charlie dating life. In episode two, Owens pivots into murkier territory, linking Erika’s childhood school to what she calls MK Ultra-adjacent figures, connecting her family peripherally to occult scholarship, and gesturing toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a Romanian church accused in a child trafficking scandal. Owens has not accused Erika Kirk of any criminal conduct. But the series’ cadence and sequencing all point toward a larger mystery yet to be revealed.
Erika Kirk wipes a tear as President Trump delivers his State of the Union. Getty
Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images
The series has also, predictably, become a vector for uglier content, which Owens does not herself state. After Owens highlighted yearbook photos of a young Erika Kirk with short hair, some followers began “transvestigating” — speculating about her gender identity based on childhood appearance, a transphobic online practice that has become a recurring weapon on the far right. Owens did not make this claim explicitly, but her framing and fan base did the rest of the work.
The backlash from within conservative media has been unusually sharp. Ben Shapiro, Daily Wire co-founder and one of the right’s most prominent voices, did not mince words. “As a person who doesn’t often use the adjective ‘satanic,’” Shapiro told his audience, “what Candace is doing right now is absolutely satanic to Erika Kirk.” He went further on another episode, calling Owens “a true vampire” and suggesting Erika Kirk “sue the living hell out of Candace Owens.” It should be noted that Shapiro was among the people who hired Owens to work at the Daily Wire, where she hosted the political talk show Candace from 2021 to 2024. Owens was fired from Daily Wire after reportedly months of tensions with Shapiro and controversy over comments she made that were considered antisemitic.
Others in conservative media, including Dan Bongino and Dave Rubin, followed Shapiro with similar language in condeming Owens for Bride of Charlie. The reaction prompted Owens’ camp to allege a coordinated campaign and float the theory that influencers were being paid to speak against her. A supposed leaked TPUSA internal memo directing staff to call Owens “evil” and “demonic” circulated widely; multiple fact-checks concluded it was fabricated. Because nothing shuts down an accusation of conspiracy thinking quite like a new conspiracy theory. (Before Erika Kirk, Owens had previously focused her energies on French President Emmanuel Macron’wife, Brigitte, over false and outlandish claims that Brigitte Macron was born male. She is now being sued by France’s first family.)
It is worth adding that Owens’ allegations about Charlie Kirk’s death itself go well beyond the Erika Kirk feud. In December, she claimed the assassination was an inside job involving TPUSA employees who “betrayed” Kirk, possibly with foreign help, and urged donors to pull funding from the organization. She has repeatedly questioned whether Tyler Robinson acted alone, implying Israeli government involvement — a theory consistent with the antisemitic throughline that has marked her commentary for years. The FBI has presented no evidence of a broader conspiracy in the Kirk murder.
Notably, TPUSA itself has not publicly commented on the series — even as its own website continues to host dozens of Owens’ old posts.
What is striking, watching the episodes unspool, is the production rhythm Owens has perfected. Raw archives give way to insinuation; insinuation yields a rhetorical question; the question hands off, without pause or preamble, to a sponsored read for a health supplement or financial product, with Owens cheerfully claiming she uses the item at home. Additional ads slot into the YouTube runtime. The tonal whiplash is, at this point, entirely the point. Outrage and revenue ride together. This is the system Owens has mastered: controversy generates attention; attention generates monetization; monetization sustains independence from any institution that might constrain her. She does not need TPUSA, or the Daily Wire, or any other platform. She is the platform.
The clash between Owens and the TPUSA establishment is not merely personal. It reflects a broader fracture between institutional conservatism — the kind that produces 501(c)(3) nonprofits overseeing $250 million operations and wins invitations to the State of the Union — and the personality-driven, grievance-fueled digital media economy that Owens inhabits and dominates. For the latter, fanning the flames of conflict is not a liability. It is a growth strategy.
Whether Bride of Charlie ultimately reshapes Erika Kirk’s public standing is anyone’s guess. What is clear is that Owens has serialized an internal conservative succession dispute into a multi-episode spectacle, and that her six million subscribers — not only the committed conspiracy faithful but also status quo conservatives, the politically ambivalent, and the simply curious — keep showing up for the next installment. The emotions she trafficks in resonate precisely because they do not require critical thinking or factual verification. They require only a willingness to be outraged and a single voice willing to do the thinking for you.
[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from The Beauty season one finale, “Beautiful Betrayal”]
For Anthony Ramos and Jeremy Pope, portraying their characters’ growing bond wasn’t much of a stretch. The two have been friends in real life for years, even attending college together at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
Their dynamic in the FX series, however, takes an unexpected turn. The Assassin (Ramos) is initially ordered by Byron — aka The Corporation (Ashton Kutcher) — to kill Jeremy (Pope). But as the season progresses, the pair begin to connect over their shared loneliness. The Assassin opens up about taking “The Beauty” after being severely injured, a decision that forced him to leave his family behind. Jeremy, meanwhile, is a “damaged incel desperate to feel seen and loved,” Pope explains below.
“What’s wild about watching [their relationship] is that, you know how you meet those people in your life where you feel like you’ve known them your whole life — you have that instant thing, right?” Kutcher tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Them having that and the influence it had on your character decisions — the way they masked it and then unveiled it — was a really pretty thing to watch.”
In the season’s later episodes, Dr. Diana (Ari Graynor) reveals her plan to stop Byron from expanding access to “The Beauty.” After realizing Byron doesn’t truly have his back, The Assassin joins her effort. Cooper (Evan Peters) then contracts the drug and transforms into a young boy. And in the finale that released Wednesday night, Diana and Byron’s sons reveal there is a reverse drug, and Cooper agrees to try it. But whether it worked is still to be known, since the episode and the season ends after Jeremy, The Assassin and Jordan (Jessica Alexander) stare in shock at whatever is the result.
Below, Ramos and Pope discuss the season finale cliffhanger and the biggest questions facing their characters in a potential season two.
***
I’m aware that you two went to college together and have been friends for more than a decade. Did your friendship offscreen influence your unexpected friendship in the show?
ANTHONY RAMOS Yes. It made it tough in the beginning, because we’re supposed to act like we don’t know each other. It was very hard to do that at the top, but it made it really easy once when we get deeper into the season, especially in episode seven. We have that scene in the hotel where we both have these moments opening up about our backstories, and you get to know our characters on a deeper level with the monologue that Jeremy gives when he’s sitting down and talking about his dad, and then I give him the monologue when I talk about my son.
We get to unlock a new level of vulnerability between these two guys. Those scenes felt seamless, going from these guys who don’t know each other to getting vulnerable with one another because of how long we’ve known each other. And then there are the scenes where I’m singing to him in the car and we get to mess around. Then, the scene where we got the guy tied up and I’m hitting them and Jeremy’s there jamming out and we get to have that rapport while we’re also interrogating this guy — all of our relationship before made it a lot easier.
Jeremy Pope as Jeremy, Anthony Ramos as The Assassin in The Beauty.
Eric Liebowitz/FX
JEREMY POPE It’s a dream to work with family in anything. The things that came up towards the end for me, because there was a foundation and nuance of knowing each other, as artists, as friends, as boys — we were able to shatter a little bit of toxic masculinity. There’s a dynamic at play. [Anthony’s] playing a 60-plus-year-old man. I’m playing this incel, insecure, damaged person that’s needing to be seen and loved. We can be hardened when it comes to men on men, and how much we’re willing to open up and share. But I think we were able to really excavate and bring a layer of transparency and comfortability, and we have that in real life because we’ve seen each other through different seasons of our life and actually showing up for each other in real moments off camera.
So to have this moment where it is a lot of laughter and improv and singing and jokes, but then to lock into scenes that were about excavating the truth and the vulnerability of what’s at stake in this wild world that Ryan has created… I really pray and hope that people will be able to see themselves through these complex characters and find a moment of connection and truth. It made it a lot easier to look across the room at someone I really respect and love and care for, and open up myself.
Jeremy, you’ve worked with Ryan Murphy several times before, and many of the actors he works with tend to stick around in his work. What about you two make a great collaboration?
POPE Ryan is a friend first, and a collaborator and creative second. Ryan really champions artists; our nuance as artists and as humans. He sees us for what other collaborators maybe can’t see yet, whether it’s the type of character we want to play or world we’d love to explore. I remember he texted me, “You want to do something weird?” I was like, “Well, Ryan, everything you do is kind of weird, so how weird are we talking?” I meant that with love, and he knew it. When he sent this show, it was a bit darker than anything I’ve been asked to play. I thought that was interesting to bring the juxtaposition of how people perceive me and what this energy that I can possess or bring into this character. I have so much respect for someone who is willing to bet. He gave me my first TV show. He bet on me when I didn’t have any TV credits. Hollywood was my first Emmy nomination.
You both also executive-produced, so I wanted to know if it was always the plan to end the season on a cliffhanger with young Cooper trying to reverse “The Beauty” but not revealing if it worked. Did you ever shoot alternative versions of that final scene?
POPE We didn’t shoot an alternative. With Ryan, it’s really about the collaboration; he has a vision. As you’ve seen in a lot of his work, you can almost identify a Ryan show just based on the way it’s shot and looks. So there are always open conversations about where we want the story to go, where we hope the story will go. But with Ryan, it’s about trusting and soaring. You have to trust the visionary and the vision at hand, and know that he’s going to take you to the promised land. A lot of these scripts we were getting in real time as we were shooting and things were being revealed to us. I remember at one point we got episode 10, and we were like, “Is that the end?” Because we didn’t know, or we hadn’t heard about episode 11.
RAMOS Yeah, we didn’t know until the end.
Pope, Evan Peters as Cooper and Ramos in The Beauty.
FX
POPE So we were on the journey of trusting and knowing that he has a vision: he’s going to take this series to the place he wants to take it, ultimately, at the care of what these characters need and what makes the most sense. So that is collaborating with Ryan on The Beauty. He’s going to allow you to imbue all that you can into these complex characters. But at the end of the day, you’re going to read the script and be on the edge of the page, just like, hopefully, the audience is when they’re watching the series.
In a potential season two, do you think your characters would take the reserve “Beauty” shot? Or do you think they’re too comfortable enjoying the benefits it’s given them?
RAMOS That’s a good question. I don’t know if he’d go back. I think he’s too far down the road.
POPE We might have lost my man, Jeremy, on this one. I think he is feeling it in new ways. So I don’t know if he would want to reverse it. I want to believe there’s a turn in him, but my man is loving the highlights, the private jets, the double-breasted blazers. It’s hard to come back from that.
The Beauty.
Philippe Antonello/FX
Since many of Ryan Murphy’s shows are anthologies or limited series, but this one seems ongoing, were there early conversations about how many seasons this show might have? And was there an overall arc planned for your characters?
POPE When Ryan called me, he just told me scale. He’s like, “This is a very big show — we’re going international.” He hadn’t done anything this expensive or big in a minute and he hadn’t been international since Eat Pray Love. So he was just talking about the scale and the world-building of it all, that there would be all these side characters and main characters coming together. Ashton and I didn’t really even work together in this season, so it leads you to, well, that surely has to happen. I think, if anything, it was less about the number of seasons, but how large this vision was. I think he knows when it’s a limited series and it’s a beginning, middle and end, but this one wasn’t a period, it was a comma.
In a much-needed win for Pixar’s core mission to provide original storytelling, Hoppers is positioned to deliver the iconic animated studio its biggest opening in nearly a decade for a non-franchise title. Conversely, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s new film, inspired by the 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein, is in danger of being jilted at the altar.
Disney is forecasting a global debut of $88 million for Hoppers. The last time a Pixar original did so well was Coco in 2017. In North America, tracking suggests it could open anywhere from $36 million to $40 million, with room for upside. It’s also expected to come in leaps and bounds ahead of Gyllenhaal’s The Bride!, which Warner Bros. believes will open in the $16 million to $18 million range domestically and roughly $38 million-plus globally, although decidedly mixed reviews could ding the $80 million film. (It goes without saying that the two movies couldn’t be more different.)
Hoppers has the advantage of hitting theaters in the wake of Disney Animation’s mega-blockbuster Zootopia 2, which provided further evidence that there’s still a huge appetite for family fare in the post-pandemic era if a film resonates with moviegoers. Pixar’s movies were also once famous for attracting adults without kids; Hoppers is earning the kind of rave reviews from critics that could see those fans return (Zootopia 2, which has earned north of $1.86 billion globally to rank as the top-grossing Hollywood animated pic of all time, also attracted general audiences).
As of late Wednesday, Hoppers‘ critics score on Rotten Tomatoes was 97 percent, one of the highest in years for Pixar. Audience reactions from early access screenings have been similar, with moviegoers also applauding the film’s creativity and humor.
In the comedy-adventure, animal lover Mabel (Piper Curda) seizes an opportunity to use a new technology to “hop” her consciousness into a life-like robotic beaver and communicate directly with animals. As she uncovers mysteries beyond anything she could have imagined, Mabel befriends a charismatic beaver named King George (Bobby Moynihan), and must rally the entire animal kingdom to face a major, imminent human-threat: smooth-talking local mayor Jerry Generazzo (Hamm). The ensemble voice cast also features Kathy Najimy, Dave Franco, Meryl Streep, Eduardo Franco, Aparna Nancherla, Tom Law, Sam Richardson, Melissa Villaseñor, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Steve Purcell, Ego Nwodim, Nichole Sakura, Karen Huie and Vanessa Bayer.
Hoppers is directed by Daniel Chong, with Nicole Paradis Grindle producing and Mark Mothersbaugh providing the original score. The pic will play across 4,000 theaters in North America, including 400-plus Imax screens, 1,000 premium large-format screens and more than 2,200 3D screens. Overseas, it opens in 81 percent of markets, with staggered releases planned for Japan (March 13), China (March 20) and Australia (March 26).
While Pixar has good reason to be hopeful, no one is envying the position Warner Bros. and Gyllenhaal are in as The Bride! prepares to walk down the aisle. The R-rated, gothic romance made headlines on Wednesday, both for earning tepid reviews and for comments Gylleenhal made on a podcast saying she was asked by Warners movie studio chiefs Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca to remove some of the film’s more violent scenes (she also gave a shout out to Abdy for “understanding me”).
The Bride!, starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale, draws inspiration from the 1935 film The Bride of Frankenstein. The cast also includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Penélope Cruz and Annette Bening.
“In James Whale’s 1935 gothic horror masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein, the title character played so indelibly by Elsa Lanchester screams and hisses but otherwise has no dialogue, and yet she has endured as an iconic movie-lore figure for almost a century,” writes THR‘s David Rooney in his review. “In Maggie Gyllenhaal’s aggressively punky reconsideration of the reanimated monster spouse, she becomes a laborious study guide for a Feminism 101 class, emphatically indicating points on sexual violence, consent, bodily autonomy and female power. She even yells ‘Me too!’ late in the film.”
The Bride! marks Gyllenhaal’s second directorial outing after the acclaimed, award-winning indie drama The Lost Daughter, starring Olivia Colman and Buckley. All three women were nominated for a slew of awards by various orgs, including Oscars noms for best adapted screenplay (Gyllenhaal), best actress (Colman) and best supporting actress (Buckley). This year, Buckley is nominated for an Oscar for best actress for her performance in Hamnet.
Abdy and De Luca are coming off a remarkable winning streak that has earned them major points and goodwill, culminating with two of their movies, Sinners and One Battle After Another, being front-runners in the Oscar race for best picture (Hamnet is another).
The Bride! will play in more than 3,200 theaters in North America, and will also have a footprint in Imax and other premium formats.
SWSW revealed a plethora of keynotes and featured sessions for the 2026 innovation, music and film & TV conferences, plus artists and showcases for the music festival lineup for the 40th edition of the festival taking place on March 12-18, on Wednesday.
Demi Moore, Keke Palmer, Bob Odenkirk, Andy Cohen, Jane Fonda and Serena Williams are among the speakers slated to partake in SXSW‘s innovation, music and film & TV conferences.
Additional speakers announced on Tuesday include Gavin Newsom, Jorma Taccone, Naomi Ackie, Phil Schiller, Poppy Liu, Riz Ahmed and Taylour Paige.
Artists who have been added to the music festival include Alanis Morissette, Benny the Butcher, Ella Langley, Ingrid Andress, Jack Johnson & Hermanos, Gutiérrez, St. Vincent (DJ Set), Ty Dolla $ign, Vic Mensa and ZHU; while BIGSOUND, HYBE’s Sin Silencio and Sony Music U.S. Latin were added as showcase presenters.
“SXSW has always been the ultimate convergence of culture and innovation, but this announcement takes it to a new level. Between the business moguls, the political giants, and the entertainment legends our team has assembled, the collective star power coming to SXSW might actually be visible from space,” said Greg Rosenbaum, svp of programming at SXSW. “With our new format this year, the collaboration and crossover between our Conferences and Festivals has never been stronger. Get ready for seven action-packed days in Austin.”
The comedy festival shared three additions on Wednesday, including a taping of Bill Burr’s TheMonday Morning Podcast; Devon Walker and Alex English with their standup show DAD; and Dropoutwith Improv Does A Pretty Flower.
And on the podcast side, Vox Media has announced the talent lineup and schedule for its third annual podcast stage at the Hilton Austin from March 13-15, which will feature Jonathan Glazer, Lisa Kudrow, Mark Cuban and Spike Jonze, among others.
Paramount may have won the battle for Warner Bros. Discovery, but President Donald Trump continues to bet on the financial stability of Netflix.
As Paramount sought to pry Warner Bros. away from the streaming giant, Trump was adding more Netflix bonds to his personal portfolio, financial disclosures released by the White House on Wednesday show.
The disclosures show that President Trump bought between $600,000 and $1.25 million worth of Netflix debt in January, adding to the $500,000 to $1 million in Netflix bonds that he purchased in December, shortly after Netflix’s megadeal for Warners was announced.
The Netflix buys were just two of dozens of purchases and sales disclosed by the President on Wednesday. The filing was signed by Trump on Feb. 26, but the purchases were made on Jan. 2 and Jan. 20.
Notable: While the December disclosure also showed Trump acquiring bonds from Warner Bros. Discovery, the new disclosure does not include any WBD debt. It does however show purchases of bonds from SiriusXM, also valued at between $600,000 and $1.25 million.
Trump also acquired municipal bonds, and corporate bonds from companies like General Motors, Occidental, Boeing, and Coreweave, among many others. His last full-year financial disclosure, which covered 2024, shows that he also held a modest (five figure) amount of Netflix stock.
A White House official tells The Hollywood Reporter that the President’s investments are meant to replicate established indexes, and that “neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold. All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers.”
Still, the acquisition of Netflix debt amid the Warners fight adds a layer of intrigue to the whole thing, especially because Netflix’s deal fell apart as CEO Ted Sarandos was in Washington D.C. for a White House visit. According to Axios, Sarandos’ meeting with Trump and chief of staff Susie Wiles was canceled at the last minute due to a last-minute scheduling conflict.
Netflix subsequently opted not to raise its bid for Warners, effectively ending its pursuit of the company. Axios reported that Trump and Sarandos connected by phone later that evening, after Netflix made the decision to back away from the deal.
Netflix, of course, walked away from the deal with a $2.8 billion break-up fee, and an investment grade credit rating (unlike both Warners and Paramount).
Trump does, however, have an ongoing financial relationship with Warner Bros.
Trump’s last full-year financial disclosure included a payment from Warners totaling $333.31. It was a residual check, for cameo appearances he made in the 2002 romantic comedy Two Weeks Notice, and the sitcoms Suddenly Susan and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
Mike Myers is set to receive a special award at the upcoming Canadian Screen Awards in May.
The Canadian comedian and Hollywood star, known for classic roles like Wayne Campbell, Austin Powers, Dr. Evil and Shrek, will pick up the Icon Award, the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television said on Wednesday.
Myers, who’s a U.S. citizen, in April 2025 appeared alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in a TV ad (pictured above) where he wore a jersey that read “Never 51,” in response to U.S. president Donald Trump’s 51st state taunts against Canada. Myers, a Saturday Night Livealum, also returned to the NBC sketch comedy series to wear a “Canada is not for sale” T-shirt.
Other special prize winners include the Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism going to popular Canadian sportscaster Hazel Mae, the Changemaker Award being presented to maxine bailey, executive director of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre, and the indie movie Mile End Kicks, directed by Chandler Levack, receiving the Sustainable Production Award.
The honorary awards will be handed out at the Canadian Screen Awards, which includes a gala live ceremony on May 31. The Academy, which organizes the national film and TV awards, this year struck a deal to see a consortium of Canadian broadcasters partner to simultaneously broadcast the final prize-giving for the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards from Toronto.
Actor and comedian Andrew Phung will host the CSAs’ 14th edition this year. Nominations for the Canadian awards show will be unveiled on March 25.
In what may be his most famous performance, Bale starred as Patrick Bateman in the 2000 original film, and at the premiere of his movie The Bride! on Tuesday, Bale reacted to the news of a new adaptation.
“Whoever wants to give it a shot, give it a pop,” he told The Hollywood Reporter when asked if he had any young actors in mind for his role. “I loved making it with [director] Mary Harron so many years back, fantastic memories of it all. Bold choice of anyone to try to do a — I don’t know if they’re doing a remake or what, I don’t know anything else about it. But all the best to ’em, I like brave people.”
A new Patrick Bateman has not yet been cast, but Guadagnino teased the upcoming movie at CinemaCon last year. It is said not to be a remake of the Bale film, following an investment banker who lived a double life as a serial killer, but rather a new take on author Bret Easton Ellis‘ 1991 novel of the same name. Scott Z. Burns is writing the script. “We are really working hard to bring to the screen a new adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho, a book that I deeply love that is something that influenced me so much,” Guadagnino said at the time.
Several members of the original American Psycho team have also previously reacted to the new adaptation news, with co-star Matt Rott noting, “It feels like a business venture more than anything else, but being that it’s based on a book, there can be multiple interpretations, so why not? I think they have their work cut out for them, for no other reason than Christian’s performance is exceptional.”
Producer Chris Hanley added, “Everybody’s calling me, going like, ‘How stupid to make [American Psycho].’ I’m not like that. Luca is a great director. He’s never made a bad movie.”
Demi Lovato and Keke Palmer are realizing just how much they have in common as fellow child stars, including some not-too-positive experiences.
During a recent conversation on theBaby, It’s Keke Palmer podcast, the two stars reflected on the challenges of growing up in the entertainment industry at a young age. Palmer led the Nickelodeon sitcom True Jackson, VP as a teen, and Lovato starred in the Camp Rock movies on Disney Channel and the sitcom Sonny with a Chance.
“I became the breadwinner of my family just by proxy. You know what I mean? It’s just what happened,” Palmer recalled. “They had to help with my career and we’re seeing money that we never had seen. That stress for me, especially not being able to process it, was a big triggering point. And then never wanting to be sad or make anybody feel bad about it because I don’t want them to be stressed. And then not having a lot of time to have fun and be a kid.”
Lovato knew exactly where The ‘Burbs actress was coming from. “I actually had this mantra that was like, if you’re going to work me like an adult, I’m going to party like an adult. And I got into some bad stuff at a young age,” she said, referring to her past struggle with substance abuse.
Despite being teens, they both agreed that other people their age couldn’t relate to their lifestyle and working adult hours, leading them to seek connection with people much older.
“I found myself dating. I’m 15, why was my boyfriend 20?” Palmer recounted. “We were trying to find outlets, though, and a way to process this.”
Lovato replied, “Why was my boyfriend 30? … Nobody our age could understand. But then you look back in hindsight — when I turned 30, I was like, ‘That’s not OK.’”
Palmer remembered thinking these age-gap relationships were “normal in my mind” at the time because “you’re mature for your age,” but now realizes how inappropriate they were.
“The moment when you realize, and you get to the age of a lot of people that were around you and doing stuff, it’s almost a mental break that can happen,” she said. “Because you realize, ‘You were taking advantage of me.’ ‘Oh, I was being exploited.’ At 15, I’m thinking, ‘My boyfriend’s older, because I’m doing an older job … This is the way it is.’ It seemed normal in my mind.”
The Nope actress later shouted out Hilary Duff’s new song, “Mature,” from her recently released album, Luck … or Something. “I love the Hilary Duff song that she came out with,” Palmer said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, shit, we all had the same damn life.’ People kept telling us, ‘You’re so mature for your age!’”
Duff, who also starred on Disney Channel growing up in Lizzie McGuire, recently told Glamour that her track “Mature” was “about a relationship that I had … with someone older than me, and that was not illegal, but inappropriate when you have this much time removed from it.”
Lovato related to Duff’s song, telling Palmer that she also wrote a single, titled “29,” about turning the age of her ex-boyfriend at the time they started dating when she was a teen. It was released in 2022. Lovato is now married to songwriter Jordan “Jutes” Lutes.
