It’s Michael B. Jordan as Adonis Creed vs. Jonathan Majors as Damian in the Creed III trailer released Tuesday.
The adrenaline-pumping visual sees Adonis defending and carrying on the legacy of his former trainer Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and father Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) when Damian, a friend-turned-foe, threatens to take Creed’s top spot in the ring.
The film follows Adonis, who’s established a thriving career and family life, when boxing prodigy Damian resurfaces after a long prison sentence, eager to prove his status as “the best.” Adonis is forced to put his future on the line to battle Damian — a fighter with nothing to lose.
With a story written in part by Black Panther‘s RyanCoogler, Creed III marks Jordan’s directorial debut and his third acting gig as part of the Rocky x Creed franchise. Majors, one of the few main characters new to the film, plays alongside returning cast members Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashad and Wood Harris.
Prior to the trailer’s release, Jordan shared first-look poster images of the film, one of which features himself in the ring with the phrase “You Can’t Run…” etched in the corner. The other, which shows a ready-to-battle Majors, reads, “…From Your Past.”
The highly anticipated film was originally scheduled for release this November but will now hit theaters March 3, 2023.
Lewis Capaldi’s fans are rejoicing because the Scottish singer has confirmed his brand new album, Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent. That’s not all: he also unveiled his next tour.
On the music front, this upcoming work marks Lewis’ sophomore album, and it’s set to hit stores on May 19, 2023. “I don’t want to create a new sound for myself, or reinvent myself,” he said in a statement regarding his forthcoming effort. He added, “The songs I want to write are emotional songs, about love or loss.”
Lewis already released the emotional ballad “Forget Me,” which is rooted in a personal experience he had. “It’s about a breakup I went through where after a year, the only real contact I had with my ex was seeing her ‘post-me’ life play out on her Instagram,” Lewis explained. “I was at a point where I was feeling pretty miserable and she seemed like she was moving on and having the best time, thriving, and I hated it.”
He continued, “It seemed unfair to me that she appeared happy while I was hurting, and I was fearful she might have forgotten about me completely, so I wrote a song about it.” He just released an acoustic version of the heartbreak hit.
Fans can start pre ordering Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent on the official website. The album will also come in vinyl and CD format.
Additionally, Lewis unveiled his new headlining North American tour that kicks off March 30 at the Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville, Tennessee. The 22-stop tour covers major cities such as Toronto, Boston, Houston, Denver, Seattle, Phoenix and more before wrapping on May 11, 2023.
Ticket sales for the general public start Friday at 12 p.m. local time.
Arctic Monkeys have premiered a new song called “I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am,” a track off their upcoming album, The Car.
The tune is available now via digital outlets and is accompanied by a video filmed during AM’s recent one-off concert at the Kings Theatre in Brooklyn. You can watch that streaming now on YouTube.
“I Ain’t Quite Where I Think I Am” is the third cut to be released off The Car following “There’d Better Be a Mirrorball” and “Body Paint.” The album will arrive in full this Friday, October 21.
Arctic Monkeys will launch a full U.S. tour in support of The Car in August 2023.
Rising R&B star Coco Jones has new music on the way, and it’s expected to drop very soon.
The singer-songwriter recently teased the new track and release date for “ICU” on Instagram, followed by a post with the song’s actual drop date: October 21.
While she’s most known for her role as Hilary Banks on the hit Peacock series Bel-Air, Jones’ roots are in music. With the help of her mother, a singer, and football-player father, she began recording at the young age of 9.
“My dad got to wake up and live his dream his whole life,” she says in a bio on her official website. “That was kind of the upbringing that our parents wanted us to have: ‘Whatever you’re passionate about, as long as you work for it, we’ll support you. We’ll help cultivate that.'”
But for Jones, it was her acting that catapulted her rise to stardom. Throughout the first and only season of Bel-Air, the 24-year-old entertainer gained praise for her modernized, realist take on the role of Hilary.
“In this world of social media where everything’s pretend…she’s trying to convince people that what she brings to the table is enough,” she said in an appearance on The Tamron Hall Show. “And that’s like, the common Black girl struggle.”
“ICU” succeeds Jones’ recent singles “Love is War” and “Caliber; TeyanaTaylor directed the music video for the latter.
Elton John is currently embarking on his final tour, titled Farewell Yellow Brick Road, which is now the third highest-grossing tour in history.
But, since the tour is far from over, Sir Elton may move up even higher on the list.
Billboardreports the three-year trek, which spans 257 stops, has sold 4.5 million tickets so far. That amounts to $661.3 million in revenue.
This is only the third tour in history to surpass the $600 million dollar mark. U2’s 360 Tour, which ran from 2009 to 2011, is the second-highest grossing tour of all time with a record $736.4 million. As for who the reigning champ is, that’s Ed Sheeran’s Divide Tour, which amassed $776.4 million between 2017 and 2019.
It is unknown at this time if or when Sir Elton will eclipse either act and take over the top spot.
As for this current tour, Sir Elton has been adding new stops after emerging from the pandemic-related delay on the entire touring industry. He played 29 dates in North America this spring, then flew across the pond to perform 19 stops in Europe and is now back in North America for another run that covers 30 shows.
On this current leg, Sir Elton has played roughly 20 of these stops, which has added $133.4 million more to his coffers following the sale of 830,000 tickets. Attendance for his shows is also up by a whopping 192 percent, averaging about 41,513 attendees per stop. The tour is set to conclude next summer.
Across his entire career, Sir Elton’s tours have amassed $1.7 billion and sold 19.1 million tickets. With that, he is the highest-grossing solo act of all time in the Billboard Boxscore’s eyes.
The worlds of country and rock collided when Axl Rose made a surprise appearance during Carrie Underwood‘s set at the Stagecoach Festival earlier this year for a performance of the Guns N’ Roses classics “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine.” Speaking with Rolling Stone, Underwood shares that the live collaboration was “years in the making.”
“I’ve been covering Guns N’ Roses my whole life, pretty much, and definitely onstage for the past 15 years at least,” Underwood says. “I had asked before if he would ever come sing, or if I could come to him somewhere. We had a couple almost maybes, where it almost maybe would have happened but for various reasons it wasn’t the right time.”
Leading up to her Stagecoach set, though, Underwood decided to send Rose an email explaining “the why and what he meant to me.”
“The way I learned how to sing was I would pick really hard vocalists to try to emulate, and [Rose’s] voice always mesmerized me,” Underwood says. “I was like, ‘How is he doing the things that he’s doing?’ So I told him all that…and he came!”
“We had rehearsals and everything went very smoothly,” she adds. “It was easy for all of us to be around each other. Hopefully, he had a good time.”
We’d guess that Rose, indeed, had a good time since Underwood later joined GN’R to perform “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Paradise City” during the band’s shows in London over the summer.
Underwood, meanwhile, continues to show GN’R love on her current tour, during which she’s covering “Welcome to the Jungle.”
Old Dominion is bringing the good vibes with their upcoming tour.
The five-piece band will set off on the No Bad Vibes Tour this spring, and they’re taking a team of up-and-coming country acts with them.
OD made the announcement during Whiskey Jam, a weekly live music showcase in Nashville, on Monday night. Frank Ray, Kassi Ashton, Shawn Austin and Greylan James were also part of Monday’s lineup, surprising the audience with the news that they will all be joining them on the road as openers.
The trek begins on January 19 in Evansville, IN and travels through the U.S. and Canada before wrapping on June 30 in Lake Tahoe, NV.
“At the #NoBadVibesTour, we want y’all to feel happy… like you can forget about whatever is bothering you or whatever’s weighing you down. Just come and hangout with us, and escape for a couple hours,” the band shares. “We can’t wait to see you! Hopefully you’ll walk out feeling a little lighter than when you walked in.”
Frank and Kassi will join the band for their U.S. dates, while Shawn, Greylan and Steven Lee Olson will be the opening acts for the shows in Canada.
Tickets go on sale on October 28 at 10 a.m. Visit OD’s website for a full list of dates.
(ALBANY, N.Y.) — Amazon workers at a warehouse in Albany, New York, voted overwhelmingly against unionization on Tuesday.
The union loss marks a second consecutive defeat at a U.S. Amazon facility for the Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, the worker-led labor organization behind the historic first-ever victory at an Amazon warehouse in New York City in April.
The result delivers a blow for the yearslong labor campaign that has brought union drives and worker protests to Amazon warehouses nationwide.
In the union election in Albany, 406 workers voted against unionization and 206 workers voted for it, a National Labor Relations Board official said after the vote count.
ALU has filed 27 charges of illegal conduct undertaken by Amazon over the course of the labor campaign, including the violation of agreed-to election rules with threats to fire workers who planned to serve as election observers, the union said in a statement on Monday.
“Despite all the union-busting and unfair labor practices, we recognize that a union election is just one step in a much longer struggle,” Sarah Chaudry, a worker at the warehouse in Albany, also known as ALB1, told ABC News in a statement.
“I will continue to fight for my fellow workers’ rights until we have our union at ALB1 and until all Amazon workers secure their right to a union,” Chaudry said.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement to ABC News in July, the company expressed its general opposition to union campaigns.
“Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union. They always have,” Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said. “As a company, we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees. Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work.”
The Albany facility, where about 800 workers were eligible to vote, has the highest injury rate of almost 30 Amazon warehouses in New York state, according to an analysis of government data published in May by the left-leaning National Employment Law Project.
The warehouse experienced about 22 injuries per 100 workers between 2020 and 2021, the NELP report found.
ALU, an independent union initially fueled by fundraising on a GoFundMe page, carried out a monthslong organizing campaign at Amazon’s 6,000-employee warehouse on Staten Island that proved to be one of the most significant labor victories in the U.S. in recent decades.
After the union victory, Amazon filed objections with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to overturn the outcome, including allegations that NLRB officials showed a favorable bias toward the workers and that union leaders bribed colleagues in an effort to win their support.
In September, a hearing officer for the National Labor Relations Board recommended that the vote should stand. A final ruling has not been handed down.
The union election in Albany marked the third union vote at an Amazon warehouse for the ALU this year. In May, the ALU lost a union election at a warehouse on Staten Island.
Actor Daniel Craig has been bestowed a royal honor also earned by his former alter-ego, James Bond.
No, it’s not a license to kill: At a ceremony at Windsor Castle Monday, Craig was presented with The Order of St. Michael and St. George, “the same honour held by his character James Bond,” the Royal Family’s official Instagram points out.
However, in Craig’s case, it wasn’t for saving the world from a super villain; it was “in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film and theatre.”
The Royals posted a photo of Craig bowing to receive the medal from the Queen’s daughter Anne, the Princess Royal. “We’ve been expecting you…,” the post noted.
Officially, the honor “recognises service in a foreign country, or in relation to foreign and Commonwealth affairs, for example the work of foreign-service officers and diplomats,” according to the official website of the British Royal Family.
Craig’s now-wrapped tenure as a fictitious member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service allowed him to have some real-life interaction with the late Queen Elizabeth II. In character as Bond, he took part in a sketch with the beloved monarch as part of the opening ceremonies to the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
(UVALDE, Texas) — A teenager was arrested in Uvalde, Texas, in connection to a threat they allegedly made to carry out a shooting at Uvalde High School, the school district said.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District sent an email to faculty and parents on Tuesday morning stating the individual made the threat via social media, which was reported on the bullying prevention app STOPit.
“The Uvalde PD working in conjunction with Texas Department of Public Safety investigators located and arrested the juvenile last night,” the email reads.
Uvalde Police Department’s Lt. Javier Martinez confirmed the arrest of a male high school student on Monday evening, but told ABC News, “He was threatening another student. He wasn’t threatening to shoot the school.” He provided no further comment, stating only that “DPS is working the incident with our assistance.”
The Uvalde Police Department told ABC News in a statement Tuesday that a 16-year-old was taken into custody on felony terroristic threat charges. The suspect, who won’t be identified because they are a minor, admitted to police they threatened another juvenile over social media, according to the police department.
The Uvalde school district and Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately return ABC News’ requests for comment.
In the email sent to faculty and parents, the district said it immediately notified law enforcement of the report of the threat received via the app. The UCISD website states, “STOPit allows you to privately report bullying going on at school. Throughout the school year, students from any campus will be able to use this app to report dangers, threats, and bullying they may be experiencing.”
“We understand that this message may cause additional stress for some of you, however we believe it is important to communicate these situations when they occur. We will continue to work with state and local law enforcement agencies to help keep our students and staff safe,” the email to faculty and parents says.
The threat came just shy of five months after the school shooting at the district’s Robb Elementary which resulted in the deaths of 19 students and two teachers. The community has been on edge since, as bombshell details of the shooting have emerged amid the prolonged investigation, which many families say has yet to provide the accountability and transparency victims’ they continue to plead for.
