Richard T. Jones Hosts the 2026 Global Film Awards Tonight in Beverly Hills as DeVon Franklin and Oscar Winner Nick Vallelonga Lead a Red Carpet Spanning 30 Nations

The Authentic Global Film Festival brings purpose-driven cinema from roughly 30 countries to the Writers Guild Theater, with screenings from 10 AM, a red carpet at 5 PM, a panel at 6 PM, the awards from 7 to 9 PM and an after-party at 10 PM.

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — The Authentic Global Film Festival presents the 2026 Global Film Awards tonight, Thursday, November 5, at the Writers Guild Theater, 135 South Doheny Drive, with actor Richard T. Jones of ABC’s The Rookie serving as host. Screenings begin at 10 AM. The red carpet runs from 5 to 7 PM, a panel discussion begins at 6 PM, the awards ceremony runs from 7 to 9 PM, and the evening closes with the official after-party at 10 PM at N10, 8436 West 3rd Street, Los Angeles.

Producer and bestselling author DeVon Franklin, President and CEO of Franklin Entertainment, and two-time Academy Award winner Nick Vallelonga (Green Book) lead the arrivals, joined by actress and singer Demetria McKinney, Grammy-nominated producer Theron “Neff-U” Feemster, Ricco Ross, Richard Lawson, Zambian gospel artist Ephriam Mutalangue, WePlay Studios’ Max Bilonogov and more.

The 6 PM panel, hosted by Anabelle D. Munro, brings together Vallelonga, Franklin, Feemster, filmmaker Amanda “Kazzy” Cryer (Living UNDONE) and producer Joey Zhou, chairman of Los Angeles Beverly Arts, with a special message from Dr. Melody Garcia, founder and CEO of Soul Script Global.

More than 950 films from roughly 30 countries were submitted to this year’s festival, which runs November 5 through 7. AGFF champions films that promote peace, family, faith, diversity, inclusion and environmental stewardship, and gives a big-screen stage to underrepresented voices, including people of color, women, and the neurodiverse and disability communities.

“More than 950 filmmakers from around the world trusted us with their stories this year. Many of them have never seen their work on a big screen,” said Dr. Gershom Sikaala, Founder and Executive Director of the Authentic Global Film Festival. “Talent doesn’t depend on where you were born or how old you are, but opportunity too often does. I founded this festival to close that gap, and to prove that stories of hope belong in Hollywood.”

Media

Working media may request red-carpet credentials by emailing info@prstarpower.com with name, outlet, role and a link to recent coverage. Interviews with the host, talent and festival founder are available on the carpet from 5 to 7 PM. Photo, video and media alert details are posted in the official press room.

About the Authentic Global Film Festival

The Authentic Global Film Festival (AGFF) is a Beverly Hills film festival and awards dedicated to purpose-driven cinema from around the world. Founded by Dr. Gershom Sikaala, AGFF brings emerging filmmakers of every age together with Academy Award-winning talent through screenings, panels, workshops and the Global Film Awards.

Festival team: Dr. Gershom Sikaala, Founder; Carole Dorothy Joyce, Festival Director; Kara Williamson, Event Producer, Reveal Live! Entertainment; Dr. Melody Garcia, Director. Partners include Authentic TV, Ferrari, Coldwell Banker, New Century Builders, From the Heart Productions, Soul Script Global, Global Charity Initiative and 7 Genesis.

About PR STARPOWER

PR STARPOWER is a Los Angeles public relations firm representing talent, productions and events in entertainment, faith and culture. prstarpower.com

Disclosure: this release is issued by PR STARPOWER, which provides public relations for the festival. PR STARPOWER and Newswire Hollywood are sister companies; Newswire Hollywood is the festival’s official media partner. Newswire Hollywood’s editorial coverage is produced independently.

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Blue Wave Hits America: Democracy Stood, and Democrats Swept

Democrats took the House and the Senate, flipped governor's mansions from Texas to Georgia, and gave California its first Latino governor. For the business of entertainment, the Washington that regulates it just changed hands.

UPDATED Nov. 5: Keisha Lance Bottoms has won the Georgia governor's race after Republican Rick Jackson conceded, making her the first Black woman elected governor of any U.S. state. CNN projects Democrats flipped four more House seats. Two Senate races remain uncalled: in Mississippi, Democrat Scott Colom leads Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith by about 1,000 votes, with provisional and late absentee ballots still to count; in Alaska, Democrat Mary Peltola narrowly leads Sen. Dan Sullivan, and the count may take weeks. ABC News projects Democrats will control the Senate.

The country went to the polls on Tuesday and sent a message that could not be misread. Democrats won control of the House of Representatives, according to projections by CBS News, ABC News and CNBC, and seized a majority in the Senate, as NBC News reported. It was a verdict on two years of tariffs, rising prices and a war in Iran, delivered by voters in states that Democrats had not carried in a generation.

The map turned blue in places it never does

In Texas, Democrat James Talarico defeated Republican Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate, according to the Associated Press. He becomes the first Texas Democrat elected to the Senate since 1988, ending the Republicans' 32-year statewide winning streak. On the same ballot, Democrat Gina Hinojosa unseated Governor Greg Abbott.

In Kansas, Methodist pastor Adam Hamilton beat Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, a fierce Trump loyalist, the first Democrat Kansas has sent to the Senate since 1932. In Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms won the governor's race, making her the first Black woman elected governor of any state in American history. In Ohio, Amy Acton defeated Vivek Ramaswamy. In Iowa, Rob Sand won the governorship.

NBC News reported that Democrats now hold a majority of the nation's governorships for the first time in 16 years, and full control of state government in Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Arizona's Katie Hobbs and Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro were re-elected, Shapiro by more than 20 points.

Hollywood's home state

California elected Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. health secretary, as its 41st governor and the first Latino ever elected to the office. With most precincts reporting early Wednesday, he led Republican Steve Hilton roughly 64% to 36%, according to the California Secretary of State. Results are certified by December 11.

Why the business behind the business should care

The new Congress will hold the gavels that oversee media mergers, trade policy and the tariffs that have hung over film and music production. The Senate confirms the regulators who approve or block the deals reshaping the studios. As of January, the people asking the questions at those hearings change.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become Speaker of the House when the new Congress is sworn in in January.

Some races are still being counted, including Senate contests in Alaska and Mississippi and dozens of House seats. Newswire Hollywood will update this story as they are called.

Sources: Associated Press race calls via NPR, CBS News, NBC News, CNBC, The Washington Post and the California Secretary of State. Results are preliminary and may change as counting continues.

Peter Rice takes charge of Netflix's content this week. Here is what he inherits

The former Disney television chief became Netflix's chief content officer on October 26, replacing Bela Bajaria and taking charge of a programming budget of roughly $20 billion, in the same month the company cut about 1,000 jobs.

Peter Rice started this week as the most powerful programming executive in streaming. Netflix named him chief content officer on October 15, effective Monday, October 26. He replaces Bela Bajaria, who had held the top creative job since January 2023 and had been with the company since 2016.

The job is the whole slate. Rice oversees Netflix's global content organization: scripted and unscripted series, film, and live events, according to CNBC. TheWrap puts the budget that comes with it at roughly $20 billion a year.

Who he is

Rice is a studio and network operator by trade. He ran Fox Searchlight and later held senior roles at 21st Century Fox. After Disney bought the Fox entertainment assets, he ran Disney's general entertainment content, overseeing its cable channels, news programming and live sports coverage, until Disney fired him in June 2022, as Deadline recalled in its report on the appointment. Before Netflix, he was head of ceremonies and content for the LA28 Olympics.

Co-CEO Ted Sarandos called him one of the most effective at-scale operators in the industry.

Why now

The change arrived with a cut. Bajaria's exit came as Netflix eliminated about 1,000 jobs, roughly 6% of its workforce, The Hollywood Reporter reported. Analysts quoted by TheWrap read the move as a back-to-basics turn toward film and television, after slowing engagement and new pressure from a Skydance-controlled Paramount-Warner Bros.

For the town, the practical question is simple. Every agent, showrunner and producer with a project in Netflix's pipeline now has a new top decision-maker, and a new boss's first months are when slates get reviewed. Newswire Hollywood will report the first greenlights and the first cancellations made on Rice's watch.

Sources: CNBC, Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter and TheWrap, linked above.

Freda Payne Set Hollywood on Fire

On VMAs weekend, with every camera in Los Angeles pointed at the Peacock Theater, the hottest ticket in the city was a sold-out jazz room on Sunset — and an 84-year-old legend in gold lamé who sang her heroes back into the room.

Freda Payne at Catalina Jazz Club, September 26, 2026. Photo by Terry Bryant / Newswire Hollywood

Black lace, cut to the floor. A red curtain behind her, a bass player in gold at her shoulder, and a microphone held the way only somebody who has done this for sixty years holds one.

Freda Payne is eighty-four years old. She walked out on Sunset Boulevard on Saturday night and took the room.

That is the photograph. That is also the review, and everything after this is elaboration.

Hollywood has not stopped talking about it since.

This was not a tribute show. This was testimony.

The distinction is the whole evening. A tribute show is a singer doing impressions of the dead. Freda Payne Portrays and Honors Legendary Ladies of Song, which sold out Catalina Jazz Club on Saturday night, was a woman singing about people she had stood next to — who had frightened her, taught her, been kind to her when she was young and nobody yet.

Ella Fitzgerald. Sarah Vaughan. Dinah Washington. Lena Horne. Nancy Wilson. Peggy Lee. Gloria Lynne. Dakota Staton. Eartha Kitt.

Nine women. She knew a good many of them. You could hear it in every bar.

Donald B. Welch built the room she needed

Credit where the evening starts. Donald B. Welch — playwright, director, producer — wrote and directed this, presented it under the Don B. Welch banner, and had the idea in the first place. He and Payne have been friends for years. It was Welch who pushed.

Here is what Welch understood, and what most producers of this kind of show never work out: the star's memory is the material. He did not build a revue and hire Freda Payne to front it. He built a frame around what she already carried, then got out of the way.

And he staged it properly. Costume changes. Scene work. Actors. A table, two martinis and a candle for the Eartha Kitt sequence. Dancers for “Fever.” This is a produced piece of theatre with a band in it, not a cabaret set with patter between numbers, and the difference is money and craft on the stage where an audience can see it.

The Fever

Peggy Lee's song, in gold lamé, on Payne's own birthday weekend, with two dancers brought up onto the stage. Red light coming down like heat.

She does not hurry it. That is the thing to understand about the number and about the woman. There is no scramble in it, no proving. She lets the bass walk, lets the room lean in, and plays the whole thing at exactly the tempo she wants.

That is not an artist paying respects to a legend. That is an artist reminding a room that she is one.

The house came apart. Not polite-jazz-club applause — the other kind, the kind that arrives before the last note has cleared and does not stop when it should.

The songs, and where they came from

She opened with “How High the Moon” — Ella's, by way of Ella in Berlin — and Payne is scrupulous about the credit: the song is a standard, but Ella's reading is the one carved in stone.

• “How High the Moon”Ella Fitzgerald
• “I Wish You Love”Gloria Lynne
• “The Late Late Show”Dakota Staton
• “Body and Soul”Sarah Vaughan
• “Guess Who I Saw Today”Nancy Wilson
• “Fever”Peggy Lee

The Dakota Staton number is where the evening cracked open. “The Late Late Show” sent Payne back sixty-odd years in four bars, and afterwards she could still walk you there:

You cannot rehearse that. A sixteen-year-old at Idlewild, allowed into the matinee and not the midnight show, hearing Dakota Staton and deciding something permanent about her own life. That girl was on the Catalina stage on Saturday, inside a woman in gold lamé.

The ones she knew

Sarah Vaughan she met, and came to know. She describes the voice the way a musician would, not a fan:

She sang “Body and Soul” for Sarah, with the caveat that Sarah did everything.

Lena Horne got the sharpest read of the night. Known for her beauty, Payne said, her class, her style — and then, without a breath: “She wasn't a pussycat kind of a woman. She was like, don't mess with me, buddy.” Tough. And of all of them, the most beautiful.

Nancy Wilson got “Guess Who I Saw Today,” the only possible choice, and Payne knows exactly why: “The moment you hear her voice, you know it's Nancy Wilson.”

Then Dinah Washington, who Payne met young and was frightened of.

Washington died at thirty-nine. Payne says it flatly and moves on, which lands harder than dwelling on it ever could.

Thomasina Gross does not do an impression of Eartha Kitt

Thomasina Gross opened the show and walked off with a considerable piece of it. Payne's own description is the one to use, because watching it, it is simply accurate:

Spot on is right, and it is the hardest note in the show to hit. Eartha Kitt is the most imitated woman in American entertainment and almost every imitation is a cartoon — the purr, the rolled vowels, the punchline. Gross plays the spine: the poise, the cool, the danger sitting underneath the flirtation. Leopard print, black opera gloves, and not one wink at the audience.

The table scene is the proof. Anybody can put on the wig. Playing Eartha Kitt seated, still, doing almost nothing, and holding a room that size — that is acting, and Gross can do it. She does not send Eartha Kitt up. She stands her back up.

Gregory Abbott Jr. hosted, and knew exactly what the night was

Gregory Abbott Jr. hosted and announced. He introduced Thomasina Gross, he introduced his mother, and he carried the room between numbers with the ease of a man who has been standing in the wings of rooms like this his entire life.

Payne made a point of it twice in conversation afterwards, unprompted — the second time cutting herself off mid-sentence to make sure he got his due. Anyone who has watched a parent watch their child work will know exactly what that sounded like.

The band was not decoration

Josh Nelson was musical director from the piano, and Payne's verdict is unqualified — there are a lot of good pianists, and he is one of the best. It shows in arrangements that never once let the evening slide into lounge. Chris Colangelo on bass, holding the low end like a man with nothing to prove. Ricky Woodard on saxophone — the Ricky Woodard, as Payne put it, and anybody who has spent a night in a Los Angeles jazz room knows the definite article is doing real work there. Marcello Carelli on drums, playing the room rather than the kit.

Actors Terryl DaLuz and Kyrel Jaundoo filled out the staging, with Chuka Aruh and Mi-cha-El Wat as escorts.

The room, and the weekend

Stefanie Powers came out. So did Loretta Devine. And they were nowhere near the only ones.

Look down any row at Catalina on Saturday and you were looking at a face you knew — screen actors, recording artists, directors, industry people who do not go out on a Saturday unless the night is worth it. Nobody worked the room, because everybody in the room was somebody. They had come to watch, not to be watched, which in this town is the highest compliment an audience can pay a performer.

Now consider the timing, because it is the whole story. This was VMAs weekend. Every camera in Los Angeles was pointed downtown at the Peacock Theater. Every publicist in the city was working a carpet. Madonna was opening a show for the first time in twenty-three years across town.

And the hottest ticket in town — the one that sold out, the one that filled with famous people who could have been anywhere — was a jazz room on Sunset Boulevard, where a woman in gold held a sold-out room's undivided attention with a standard written in 1940.

That is not nostalgia. That is the market telling you something.

What a birthday looks like

Payne turned a year older on September 19, one week before the show. From the stage she said she was blessed to see another year and still be working, thanked God for it, and turned to the women being honoured that night.

Dinah Washington, one of the women honoured that night, was thirty-nine when she died. That is the whole sentence.

Freda Payne opened her new birthday year with a sold-out house on Sunset Boulevard, in gold, singing her heroes back into the room, with her son calling her name.

She set the town on fire. There is no other way to file it.

Next

Payne sails at the end of October aboard Holland America, performing on a cruise out of Fort Lauderdale to Puerto Rico and back, on a bill that also carries Darlene Love and Wayne Newton.

And Legendary Ladies of Song should not stop here. On Saturday's evidence this is a touring production — a real one, with a book, a company and a star who can carry a far bigger house than this one. Somebody with a theatre and a chequebook was almost certainly sitting in that room. They should move.

If it comes back around, do not wait for the review. It sold out this time, and it will sell out faster next time.

Quotations are from an interview with Freda Payne conducted by Newswire Hollywood following the performance. All photographs by Terry Bryant, Newswire Hollywood staff. © Newswire Hollywood — reproduction by permission only.

More on Freda Payne ›  ·  Press kit ›

Freda Payne Sets Hollywood on Fire With a Sold-Out Catalina Jazz Club Triumph

At 84, the legend is still standing and still stopping shows. Newswire Hollywood calls the night one of the finest in Los Angeles this season.

LOS ANGELES — Freda Payne is eighty-four years old, and on Saturday night she was still standing, still singing and still stopping the show.

Freda Payne Portrays and Honors Legendary Ladies of Song played to a sold-out Catalina Jazz Club, 6725 Sunset Boulevard, on September 26, 2026, one week after her birthday and on the weekend of the MTV Video Music Awards. Newswire Hollywood’s Music Desk has published its review, “Freda Payne Set Hollywood on Fire,” along with a full photographic report of the evening.

The production was written and directed by Donald B. Welch and presented by Don B. Welch. Payne honored nine women who shaped American song: Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Gloria Lynne, Dakota Staton, Lena Horne, Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington and Eartha Kitt.

A night Hollywood is still talking about

Payne’s program included “How High the Moon,” “I Wish You Love,” “The Late Late Show,” “Body and Soul,” “Guess Who I Saw Today” and “Fever,” the last of which she sang in gold lamé with two men brought up onto the stage.

“The idea of doing a show honoring the legendary ladies of song and jazz was brought to me by my dear friend Donald B. Welch,” said Payne. “All these ladies were some of my favorite singers back when I started wanting to be a professional singer.”

A note from Payne printed on the evening’s running sheet reads: “I am so blessed to see another year and still be working. I thank God for that.”

Cast and company

Special guest Thomasina Gross opened the show as Eartha Kitt, a portrayal Payne called “spot on.” The evening was hosted and announced by Payne’s son, Gregory Abbott Jr. Actors Terryl DaLuz and Kyrel Jaundoo appeared, with Chuka Aruh and Mi-cha-El Wat as escorts.

The band was led by musical director and pianist Josh Nelson, whom Payne called “one of the best,” with Chris Colangelo on bass, Ricky Woodard on saxophone and Marcello Carelli on drums.

In the house

Stefanie Powers and Loretta Devine were among the guests in a room that also held many other familiar faces from the industry.

Photographs and video

Photographs by Terry Bryant, Newswire Hollywood, are available for editorial use with credit. Performance video: youtu.be/MsRGnm458fo · youtu.be/Iu58ZFcRw6Q · youtu.be/mISIKPyYvig.

Upcoming

Payne performs aboard Holland America at the end of October 2026, sailing from Fort Lauderdale, Florida to Puerto Rico and back, on a bill that also includes Darlene Love and Wayne Newton.

About Freda Payne

Freda Payne is a singer and actress whose career spans six decades, best known internationally for “Band of Gold.” Her memoir, Band of Gold: A Memoir, is available now. More on Freda Payne, her memoir and her appearances at her official website, fredapayne.net.

About Newswire Hollywood

Newswire Hollywood is an entertainment news organization in Los Angeles covering film, television, music, fashion, deals and the business of the industry.

This release is issued by Newswire Hollywood. Its independent review of the performance is published separately.

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Taylor Swift extends her Video of the Year record, Madonna wins seven and takes Artist of the Year

Taylor Swift won Video of the Year for a sixth time, a record nobody else is near. Madonna returned to the stage after twenty-three years and walked off with seven. Snoop Dogg hosted from the Peacock Theater.

Madonna opened the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday night — her first performance at the ceremony in twenty-three years — and left it the evening's biggest winner, with seven trophies including Artist of the Year for Confessions II.

The night's single largest prize went elsewhere. Taylor Swift took Video of the Year for “The Fate of Ophelia,” extending a record that is already hers alone. It is her sixth in the category, after “Bad Blood” in 2015, “You Need to Calm Down” in 2019, “All Too Well: The Short Film” in 2022, “Anti-Hero” in 2023 and “Fortnight” in 2024. She thanked Dolly Parton from the stage.

Madonna had arrived as the most-nominated artist of the evening with thirteen, a career high, across Video of the Year, Artist of the Year and Song of the Year. Snoop Dogg hosted.

Snoop Dogg hosted.

The carpet

Arrivals ran long and ran loud. Taylor Swift, Charli XCX, Tyla, Adam Lambert and Troye Sivan worked the line. Chuck D and Flavor Flav came through together. Lisa Rinna arrived in an ivory gown with a sculpted bust, a thigh-high slit and fabric draped off one shoulder, the train doing most of the talking.

Newswire Hollywood does not hold a wire licence for last night's red carpet photography, and we do not publish images we have not licensed. The portraits above are freely licensed images of the artists who walked the carpet, each credited to its photographer and licence. Carpet photography will run here when it is licensed, not before.

The winners

Video of the Year — Taylor Swift, “The Fate of Ophelia.” Her sixth, and a record only she holds.

Artist of the Year — Madonna, for Confessions II, the sequel to her 2005 album. Seven awards in all, more than anyone else on the night.

Best Director — Taylor Swift, “Opalite.”

Best Pop — LISA, “Dream,” featuring Kentaro Sakaguchi.

Best Hip-Hop — Cardi B featuring Kehlani, “Safe.”

Artist Director Honors — Taylor Swift, the inaugural recipient of a category created this year, which MTV describes as recognising work that builds interconnected narratives, cinematic worlds and recurring details across a body of work. Swift premiered the video for “Patient Zero” during the broadcast. She came in with eleven nominations.

Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award — Nirvana.

What the night was actually about

The VMAs have spent a decade being written about as a show looking for a reason to exist. The answer this year was not a format change. It was Madonna on the stage that built her, twenty-three years on, walking off with seven — not a tribute, a sweep.

But the record that moved belongs to Taylor Swift, who now has six Video of the Year wins and no one else within reach. Two eras of the same show, holding the two biggest prizes on the same night.

Set that beside a posthumous Vanguard for Nirvana, a Dolly Parton tribute from Kacey Musgraves, and a George Michael tribute from Raye, sombr and Teddy Swims, and it was a night that spent much of its running time looking backward. Whether that reads as reverence or as hedging is the thing worth arguing about this morning.

Read our preview of the ceremony ›

VMAs return to Los Angeles Sunday: Madonna opens after 23 years, Snoop Dogg hosts, Nirvana takes the Vanguard

The 2026 MTV Video Music Awards air live from Los Angeles on Sunday. Madonna leads all nominees with thirteen and opens the show. Taylor Swift receives a newly created honor, and premieres a video during the broadcast.

The 2026 MTV Video Music Awards air live from Los Angeles on Sunday, September 27, from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. Eastern — 4:30 to 6:30 Pacific — on CBS, simulcast on MTV and streaming on Paramount+.

Snoop Dogg hosts. Madonna opens the show, her first VMAs performance in twenty-three years, and arrives as the night's most-nominated artist with thirteen.

Those two facts sit oddly well together. The VMAs spent the last decade being written about as a show in search of a reason to exist, and the fix, this year, is not a new format. It is the two performers most associated with the ceremony's own mythology, back on the stage that made them.

Nirvana receives the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. Taylor Swift takes the inaugural MTV VMA Artist Director Honors, a category created this year, and the video for her single “Patient Zero” premieres during the broadcast.

The performance roster runs to Raye, Sienna Spiro, Lisa of Blackpink, Gunna, Shaboozey and GENER8ION. Kacey Musgraves performs a tribute to Dolly Parton. Raye, sombr and Teddy Swims honour George Michael.

Two tributes and a posthumous Vanguard is a lot of looking backward for a show built on what is next. Whether that reads as reverence or as hedging is the question Sunday actually answers.

Newswire Hollywood covers the ceremony and the carpet.

Usher and Chris Brown take SoFi Stadium tonight, night two of three in Los Angeles

The co-headlining R&B Tour runs 33 stadium dates across North America. Los Angeles gets three of them — last night, tonight, and a return in November.

Usher and Chris Brown play SoFi Stadium tonight, the second of three Los Angeles dates on their co-headlining R&B Tour.

The run is thirty-three stadium shows across North America. It opened June 26 at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver and closes December 11 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, with stops in Detroit, Chicago, Toronto, Las Vegas, Houston and Miami in between. Las Vegas took two nights at Allegiant Stadium earlier this month.

Los Angeles gets three: Friday, last night, tonight, and a return to SoFi on November 15.

Three stadium nights in one market is the part worth noting. Stadium R&B was, for most of the last twenty years, treated as a contradiction — the genre filled arenas and the stadium was reserved for rock, country and pop. Two artists splitting a bill to fill SoFi three times says that assumption has quietly expired.

The tour donates one dollar from every ticket sold to the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, in a partnership with Global Citizen supporting access to education for children worldwide.

It makes for a crowded Los Angeles weekend: SoFi tonight, and the VMAs across town on Sunday.

Paramount settles with 12 state attorneys general to save its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery takeover

The deal survives a lawsuit that could have killed it — at the cost of a film-output floor, a promise to run the two studios separately, and an FCC ruling that clears the merged company to be 49.5% foreign-owned.

Paramount's owners have made a series of concessions to a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general, resolving a lawsuit that had put the company's $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery in real jeopardy.

The settlement still has to be approved by a judge. If it is, Paramount will be bound to operate Warner Bros. Studios and Paramount Pictures as separate businesses — for now — and to a hard floor on how much it makes. Together the two studios must release at least 30 films a year for the next two years, rising to 32 a year for the three years after that, or face a financial penalty.

That output floor is the part of this worth watching. The standard fear when two major studios combine is not that prices go up; it is that the slate goes down, and the number of films that get made and the number of people employed making them quietly contracts. The attorneys general appear to have negotiated directly against that outcome rather than against the merger itself.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta was explicit that settling is not the same as blessing the deal. The agreement, he said, was not a vote of support for the merger but "a strong solution that protects competition and consumers."

The settlement lands days after a separate and arguably larger decision. On September 18 the Federal Communications Commission approved an enormous infusion of foreign capital to finance the transaction. The merged company would be 49.5% owned by foreign interests, among them the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

The FCC went further than the deal as structured requires, ruling that foreign ownership of the company could run as high as 100%. Paramount has said those stakes will be silent, non-voting shares.

"Silent and non-voting" is a meaningful legal distinction and a thinner practical one. A shareholder with half the capital and no vote still has the standing that comes with being the reason the lights are on. Whether that shapes what a combined Paramount-Warner greenlights, and what it declines to greenlight, is not a question a merger condition can answer in advance.

Newswire Hollywood is following the judicial approval and will report the ruling when it lands.

Zach Cregger's 'Resident Evil' opens to a franchise-best $108 million

The video-game adaptation posts the biggest opening the series has ever had, and a long-dead 'World War Z' sequel comes back to life with Brad Pitt returning and Edward Berger directing.

Zach Cregger's Resident Evil opened to $108 million on September 22, the largest opening in the franchise's history.

The number matters beyond the one title. Video-game adaptations spent two decades as the genre Hollywood could not crack, and the correction has been so complete that a franchise-best opening for a series this old now reads as ordinary rather than as a surprise. Cregger arrives from original horror rather than from studio franchise work, which is increasingly the profile studios are hiring against for this kind of material.

A day earlier, on September 21, a sequel to World War Z was confirmed to be alive again after years in development limbo. Brad Pitt returns, and Edward Berger is set to direct.

Berger is a pointed choice. His recent work sits at the prestige end of the business rather than the large-scale-action end, and hiring him for a zombie tentpole suggests the sequel is being positioned as something other than a straight retread of the 2013 original.

Both stories run against the same backdrop as this week's other headline: a $111 billion consolidation working its way through the courts, with a negotiated floor on how many films get made. A franchise-best opening is a good week. A settlement that has to specify a minimum slate is a comment on the decade.

Toronto opens with 'Being Heumann,' Sian Heder's follow-up to 'CODA'

The 51st Toronto International Film Festival began September 10 with the world premiere of a biopic on disability rights activist Judy Heumann, from the director whose last film won Best Picture.

The Toronto International Film Festival opened its 51st edition on September 10 with Being Heumann, a biopic of disability rights activist Judy Heumann directed by Sian Heder. The world premiere played at Roy Thomson Hall, the festival's traditional opening-night venue, kicking off a ten-day run through September 20.

It's a notable follow-up: Heder's previous film, CODA, won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2022 — one of the rare festival breakouts to carry a fest premiere all the way to the top Oscar. That track record is a large part of why Being Heumann was chosen to open a festival that has become one of the industry's key markets for acquisitions and awards-season positioning.

Who Judy Heumann was

Heumann was one of the central organizers of the disability rights movement in the United States, a role that included leading the 1977 sit-in at a San Francisco federal building that helped force regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act — a foundational moment for disability civil rights that predates the Americans with Disabilities Act by more than a decade. The film stars Ruth Madeley in the title role.

Why it matters for the festival

Toronto's opening-night slot is a closely watched signal for the fall festival circuit — it's often the first real marker of which films are being positioned for awards attention heading into January through March. A director coming off a Best Picture win opening the festival puts real weight behind that positioning, and buyers and press at Roy Thomson Hall on opening night are effectively getting the first public read on how the film plays with an audience.

Newswire Hollywood's calendar desk is tracking the rest of the festival's premiere slate through the 20th — see what else is on the calendar.

'The Odyssey' breaks IMAX's all-time box office record

Christopher Nolan's epic has grossed $289 million in IMAX alone, passing Avatar's $270 million record, on its way to $1.627 billion worldwide — the highest-grossing R-rated film in history.

"The Odyssey," released in July 2026, has become the highest-grossing IMAX release of all time, taking in $289 million through the format worldwide and surpassing "Avatar's" longstanding $270 million record. The film also posted the highest second-weekend IMAX gross ever recorded, at $48 million — an unusual hold that points to strong word-of-mouth rather than a front-loaded opening.

Globally, the film has grossed $1.627 billion, making it the highest-grossing R-rated film in box office history — a category previously dominated by franchise action and horror titles, not adaptations of a 3,000-year-old epic poem.

Why the number matters beyond the headline

IMAX's business model depends on a small number of tentpole releases converting premium-format tickets into outsized revenue relative to a film's total footprint in theaters. A record this size, on an R-rated title with adult-skewing marketing rather than a four-quadrant franchise release, is a data point studios and exhibitors will study closely heading into next year's slate decisions — R-rated event filmmaking has been a harder sell to greenlight than franchise IP for most of the last decade.

Newswire Hollywood's Deals Desk will keep tracking how this record shapes studio greenlighting decisions through the rest of awards season.

Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell sue Anthropic over song lyrics in AI training data

Thirty-five music publishers allege Claude was trained on copyrighted lyrics obtained by scraping and torrenting, seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work.

Thirty-five music publishing companies, including Sony Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, filed a copyright complaint against Anthropic in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on August 28, 2026. The suit alleges large-scale scraping, torrenting, and downloading of copyrighted musical compositions to train Anthropic's Claude AI models, without permission from the rightsholders.

The complaint names specific songs the publishers say were used without authorization, including "Eye of the Tiger," "September," "Uptown Funk," "Hallelujah," Taylor Swift's "Paper Rings," and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You." The publishers allege Claude reproduces copyrighted lyrics in its outputs — the core claim underlying the suit.

What's being sought

The publishers are seeking statutory damages of up to $150,000 for each work found to have been willfully infringed, plus up to $25,000 for each instance of alleged removal or alteration of copyright management information. With tens of thousands of works reportedly at issue, industry coverage has characterized the potential exposure as running into the billions.

The context that matters

This isn't Anthropic's first copyright fight over AI training data. The company agreed to a $1.5 billion settlement with a group of authors and publishers earlier over allegations involving pirated books used in training — one of the largest payouts of its kind to date. This new suit brings the same basic legal theory into the music publishing world, where the stakes for entertainment industry dealmaking are direct: song rights are core assets for every major label and publisher this outlet covers.

Sources: TechCrunch, Music Business Worldwide.

Freda Payne returns to Catalina with a tribute to the women who built the songbook

The two-time Grammy nominee brings Legendary Ladies of Jazz to Hollywood on September 26 — eight singers, one night, a career that has quietly touched nearly all of them, and her son hosting.

There is a particular kind of Los Angeles evening that only happens in a room small enough to hear the band breathe. Catalina Jazz Club on Sunset has been staging them for decades. On Saturday, September 26, it hosts one of the few artists in American music who can credibly claim to have shared stages, studios and mentors with the very women she is about to honor.

Freda Payne returns to Catalina with an all-new show, Legendary Ladies of Jazz, presented by Don B. Welch Productions. The premise is simple and the execution is not: one evening spent inside the catalogs of Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington, Peggy Lee, Dakota Staton, Gloria Lynne, Lena Horne and Ella Fitzgerald.

Why she is the right person to do this

Most tribute shows are acts of admiration from a distance. This one is closer to memoir.

Payne was identified as a talent at thirteen by Berry Gordy, years before Motown became shorthand for an era. Quincy Jones produced her first jazz album in 1963, After the Lights Go Down Low and Much More, when she was barely out of her teens. She spent formative years on the road with Duke Ellington, Pearl Bailey and Lionel Hampton — an apprenticeship that no conservatory has ever managed to replicate.

The wider public knows her, inevitably, for Band of Gold, the 1970 record that became one of the defining vocal performances of its decade and earned her a Grammy nomination. What the hit tends to obscure is that the jazz career came first and never stopped. Her Broadway credits include Jelly's Last Jam, Sophisticated Ladies and Blues in the Night. She has continued to work steadily, recently appearing as a featured guest on Jeff Goldblum's jazz release and turning up on late-night television.

She is not interpreting a tradition she studied. She is singing songs she learned in the rooms where they were made.

The room and the company

Catalina has long functioned as an insider venue in a city that does not lack for stages. Payne's nights there have historically drawn a particular crowd — Berry Gordy, Smokey Robinson, Thelma Houston and the late Quincy Jones have all turned up over the years, which tells you something about how she is regarded by people who have no obligation to be impressed.

For this show, Payne's son, Gregory Abbott Jr., hosts — born on his mother's birthday in 1977, during her marriage to singer Gregory Abbott, and a rare public appearance alongside her. Thomasina Gross appears as special guest with a segment devoted to Eartha Kitt. Musical direction comes from Josh Nelson, leading a five-piece band.

The venue is billing it as more theatrical event than concert, and the structure supports that reading: eight distinct vocal personalities, staged across an evening, held together by a performer who can move between them without impersonating any of them.

Practical notes

Doors open at 7pm with dinner service, and the show begins at 8:30. The evening is all ages. Tickets run from roughly $62 to $72, available through the venue and through TicketWeb. Payne has historically stayed after her Catalina performances for signings and photographs, and books and recordings are typically available at the show.

A single night, eight catalogs, and a singer who was in the room for a great deal of it. Hollywood does not offer many evenings like this anymore. It is worth showing up for.