(SPOILERS AHEAD) Marvel Studios’ Eternals is now in theaters, and there’sboth a mid-credit scene and an after-credits stinger — but the latter left many fans scratching their heads.
Until now.
While it had previously been spoiled that Harry Styles officially entered the MCU as Eros in the mid-credits scene, exactly who was in the last clip was less clear.
The scene shows Kit Harington‘s Dane Whitman admiring a powerful family heirloom, the Ebony Blade, signaling his MCU future as the Avenger Black Knight. But he’s startled by an off-camera voice that warns, “Sure you’re ready for that, Mr. Whitman?”
The scene is reminiscent of Samuel L. Jackson‘s surprise appearance as Nick Fury at the end of 2008’s Iron Man, but sharp-eared fans knew the voice wasn’t Sam’s.
As it turns out, it belongs to two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali.
Director Chloé Zhao revealed to the website Fandom, “That was the voice of one of my favorite superheroes, Mr. Blade himself. Blade, Blade, Blade, yeah!”
It had been previously been revealed that Ali would be playing the Daywalker in a reboot of the franchise, picking up the stake from Wesley Snipes, who starred in three Blade films in 1998, 2002, and 2004.
According to Fandom, the “really cool” secret was even kept from Harington himself, who was fed the line on set by someone else.
“Chloé texted me about that a couple of weeks ago and it sort of blew my mind,” the Game of Thrones vet admitted. “I didn’t know that that would be the case, so it’s pretty exciting for me.”
Black Knight and Blade had worked together in a 2008-9 team-up in the pages of Marvel Comics.
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC Audio.
Vin Diesel extended an olive branch to Dwayne Johnson on Sunday, explaining why the latter needs to star in the final Fast and Furious movie.
Taking to Instagram, the actor wrote an impassioned post declaring that the best way to give the beloved franchise a satisfactory conclusion is for Johnson to return as Luke Hobbs. Sharing a photo of the two dressed as their franchise characters, Diesel urged, “My little brother Dwayne… the time has come. The world awaits the finale of Fast 10.”
Noting that his children call the former WWE star ‘Uncle Dwayne,” the actor continued, “The time has come. Legacy awaits. I told you years ago that I was going to fulfill my promise to Pablo. I swore that we would reach and manifest the best Fast in the finale that is 10!”
Diesel affectionately referred to the late Paul Walkeras “Pablo.” Walker played Brian O’Connor before his untimely death in 2013.
“I say this out of love… but you must show up, do not leave the franchise idle you have a very important role to play,” Vin pressed. “Hobbs can’t be played by no other. I hope that you rise to the occasion and fulfill your destiny.”
Johnson starred as Hobbs since 2011’s Fast Five through 2017’s The Fate of the Furious. He also starred in the 2019 cinematic spinoff Hobbs & Shaw.
While The Rock has yet to respond to Diesel’s invitation, he did previously state in a July interview with The Hollywood Reporterthat he has no interest in revisiting the role.
“I wish them well on Fast 9. And I wish them the best of luck on Fast 10 and Fast 11 and the rest of the Fast & Furious movies they do that will be without me,” he said at the time.
Marvel’s Eternals topped the weekend box office, debuting with an estimated $71 million in the U.S., despite tepid reviews.
Director Chloé Zhao‘s film, which boasts a large ensemble cast including Angelina Jolie, Salma Hayek, Gemma Chan, Richard Madden, Kumail Nanjiani, Lia McHugh, Brian Tyree Henry, Barry Keoghan, Don Lee, Harish Patel and Kit Harington, hauled in $161.7 million globally over the weekend — the second-largest worldwide debut of 2021, behind F9: The Fast Saga’s $163 million.
Marvel is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
Dune dropped to second place after spending two weeks at number one. The futuristic adventure, also available to stream on HBO Max, delivered an estimated $7.6 million, bringing its domestic total gross to $83.9 million. Dune added an estimated $246.5 million overseas, bringing its combined worldwide tally to $330.4 million.
Third place went to No Time to Die, which grabbed an estimated $6.2 million in its fifth week of release. The latest James Bond film has now earned $143.2 million domestically and $524.3 million abroad for a combined worldwide total of $667.5 million.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage pulled up at number four, delivering an estimated $4.5 million in its sixth week of release. Its domestic tally now stands at $197 million and $227.6 million overseas, bringing its global box-office total to $424.6 million.
Rounding out the top five is the animated feature Ron’s Gone Wrong, earning an estimated $3.6 million in its third week in theaters.
(NEW YORK) — Three Ivy League school campuses issued temporary evacuations Sunday afternoon after receiving bomb threats.
The incidents at Cornell, Columbia and Brown universities came two days after a similar threat took place at Yale University Friday.
The New York Police Department was called to Columbia’s campus around 2:30 p.m. and students and visitors were told to avoid the area, the school said on Twitter. About two hours later, the school announced that the threats “were deemed not credible by the NYPD and the campus buildings have been cleared for reoccupancy.”
Brown University’s officials said in a statement that officers were called in after a bomb threat was made over the phone. Then, at around 5:45 p.m., the school announced that investigators found no evidence of a credible threat.
“Buildings that had been evacuated are now reopened, and university operations have resumed as normal,” the school said in a statement.
Cornell University officials said a security perimeter was put into place around 4:10 p.m. as officers investigated the threats. Around 7:34, the school said there was no credible threat and reopened the campus.
“We are relieved to report that this threat appears to have been a hoax. A cruel hoax; but, thankfully, just a hoax,” Cornell representatives said in a statement.
Police closed down Yale’s campus and some local businesses for over four hours before they gave an all clear, ABC affiliate WTNH reported.
Police officers were still investigated the threats at Cornell and Brown Sunday evening.
Later Sunday night, the NYPD tweeted that the ordeal at Columbia was a “swatting incident,” and they will continue to investigate.
No devices have been found at any of the schools and investigators have not made any arrests.
(WASHINGTON) — In an angry conversation on his final day as president, Donald Trump told the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee he was leaving the GOP and creating his own political party — and that he didn’t care if the move would destroy the Republican Party, according to a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
Trump only backed down when Republican leaders threatened to take actions that would have cost Trump millions of dollars, Karl writes his upcoming book, Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.
The book gives a detailed account of Trump’s stated intention to reject the party that elected him president and the aggressive actions taken by party leaders to force him to back down.
The standoff started on Jan. 20, just after Trump boarded Air Force One for his last flight as president.
“[RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel] called to wish him farewell. It was a very un-pleasant conversation,” Karl writes in “Betrayal,” set to be released on Nov. 16.
“Donald Trump was in no mood for small talk or nostalgic goodbyes,” Karl writes. “He got right to the point. He told her he was leaving the Republican Party and would be creating his own political party. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., was also on the phone. The younger Trump had been relentlessly denigrating the RNC for being insufficiently loyal to Trump. In fact, at the January 6 rally before the Capitol Riot, the younger Trump all but declared that the old Republican Party didn’t exist anymore.”
With just hours left in his presidency, Trump was telling the Republican Party chairwoman that he was leaving the party entirely. The description of this conversation and the discussions that followed come from two sources with direct knowledge of these events.
“I’m done,” Trump told McDaniel. “I’m starting my own party.”
“You cannot do that,” McDaniel told Trump. “If you do, we will lose forever.”
“Exactly. You lose forever without me,” Trump responded. “I don’t care.”
Trump’s attitude was that if he had lost, he wanted everybody around him to lose as well, Karl writes. According to a source who witnessed the conversation, Trump was talking as if he viewed the destruction of the Republican Party as a punishment to those party leaders who had betrayed him — including those few who voted to impeach him and the much larger group he believed didn’t fight hard enough to overturn the election in his favor.
“This is what Republicans deserve for not sticking up for me,” Trump told McDaniel, according to the book.
In response, McDaniel tried to convince Trump that creating his own party wouldn’t just destroy the Republican Party, it would also destroy him.
“This isn’t what the people who depended on you deserve, the people who believed in you,” McDaniel said. “You’ll ruin your legacy. You’ll be done.”
But Trump said he didn’t care, Karl writes.
“[Trump] wasn’t simply floating an idea,” Karl writes in the book. “He was putting the party chairwoman on notice that he had decided to start his own party. It was a done deal. He had made up his mind. ‘He was very adamant that he was going to do it,’ a source who heard the president’s comments later told me.”
Following the tense conversion, McDaniel informed RNC leadership about Trump’s plans, spurring a tense standoff between Trump and his own party over the course of the next four days.
While Trump, “morose in defeat and eager for revenge, plotted the destruction of the Republican Party … the RNC played hardball,” according to the book.
“We told them there were a lot of things they still depended on the RNC for, and that if this were to move forward, all of it would go away,” an RNC official told Karl.
According to the book, “McDaniel and her leadership team made it clear that if Trump left, the party would immediately stop paying legal bills incurred during post-election challenges.”
“But, more significant, the RNC threatened to render Trump’s most valuable political asset worthless,” Karl writes, referring to “the campaign’s list of the email addresses of forty million Trump supporters.”
“It’s a list Trump had used to generate money by renting it to candidates at a steep cost,” says the book. “The list generated so much money that party officials estimated that it was worth about $100 million.”
Five days after revealing plans that could have destroyed his own political party on that last flight aboard Air Force One, Karl writes, Trump backed down, saying he would remain a Republican after all.
Asked this week to respond to Karl’s book, both Trump and McDaniel denied the story.
“This is false, I have never threatened President Trump with anything,” McDaniel told ABC News. “He and I have a great relationship. We have worked tirelessly together to elect Republicans up and down the ballot, and will continue to do so.”
Trump, responding to the story, said, “ABC Non News and 3rd rate reporter Jonathan Karl have been writing fake news about me from the beginning of my political career. Just look at what has now been revealed about the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It was a made up and totally fabricated scam and the lamestream media knew it. It just never ends!”
Trump has long denounced news reports that he had considered starting his own party as “fake news.” In Karl’s final interview with the former president for his book, Trump claimed to not recall his conversation with McDaniel on Jan. 20, saying, “a lot of people suggested a third party, many people” — but that he himself had never even thought about leaving the GOP.
“You mean I was going to form another party or something?” Trump asked Karl incredulously. “Oh, that is bulls**t. It never happened.”
(WASHINGTON) — Three Muslim Americans subjected to FBI surveillance inside their places of worship will ask the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to allow a religious discrimination lawsuit against the agency to move forward despite government concern about national security.
Yassir Fazaga, a former imam at the Orange County Islamic Foundation, and Ali Uddin Malik and Yasser AbdelRahim, both members of the Islamic Center of Irvine, allege the government and its agents illegally targeted members of the faith communities solely because of their religion.
The FBI has acknowledged running a surveillance program at several Southern California mosques between 2006 and 2007 in a hunt for potential terrorists, but the Bureau has not publicly revealed the basis for its covert operation or directly addressed claims of religious bias.
“Can you be spied on because of where you worship?” said Hussam Ayhoush, executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is backing the plaintiffs. Muslims “deserve to feel comfortable practicing their faith with friends in the safety of mosques.”
The men say that the presence of an undercover government informant, who was asking about jihad and recording conversations, breached a sacred trust all Americans deserve when exercising religious freedom.
“I’m very angry. Privacy is very important,” said Fazaga. “To know the government is doing this makes me not just angry, but humiliated.”
None of the plaintiffs or the places of worship have been implicated in any known criminal activity or federal charges.
“We are hoping to shed light on the agency that continues to treat Muslims as second-class citizens … unlawfully targeting Americans on the basis of their religion,” Ayhoush said.
When the men sued the FBI in 2011, the agency invoked state secrets privilege to block the lawsuit from proceeding, insisting a trial would require the disclosure of sensitive evidence that could threaten national security.
The privilege shields information whenever the government believes “there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military [or other] matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged,” it says in court documents.
A federal district court sided with the FBI, but a panel of judges reversed that decision on appeal in favor of the Muslim men.
The appeals court said that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 allows a judge to evaluate secret evidence and determine whether the government can keep some or all of it secret.
The FBI rejects that view.
“The Executive Branch has the critical responsibility to protect the national security of the United States,” the Biden administration wrote in Supreme Court documents, defending the FBI. “The state-secrets privilege helps enable the Executive to meet that constitutional duty.”
Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA Law School professor who is arguing the plaintiffs’ case before the Supreme Court, said he hopes the justices will set limits on the government’s ability to keep secrets.
“The question is very simple: Will these people ever get a day in court, or can the government slam the door shut whenever they say they’re acting in the interest of national security?” Arulanantham said.
Ali Malik, who helped mentor the FBI informant in matters of Islamic faith — not knowing his true identity — said he was outraged after later learning about the government operation.
“When I found out my government spied on me because of my faith, I felt betrayed … by the very institution meant to defend the Constitution of the U.S.,” Malik said. “I’m suing the FBI to protect them and their children. The government must be held accountable for violating our religious freedom.”
The Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision in the case by the end of June 2022.
Roddy Rich is stepping up to help those affected by the tragedy that occurred at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld Festival on Friday that left eight attendees dead and hundreds of others injured.
In an Instagram Story on Saturday, the “Late At Night” rapper announced, “Please have the families of those who we lost yesterday reach out. I’ll be donating my net compensation to the families of this incident #Pray4Houston.”
Scott also issued a statement on Saturday offering his full support to authorities and pledged his commitment to “working together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.”
As more information regarding the devastating events of Astroworld come out, so have the lawsuits.
Kherkher Garcia, LLP filed a lawsuit and announced in a Facebook post on Sunday, “We represent a concertgoer who was trampled by an uncontrolled crowd and seriously hurt.” According to court documents obtained by ABC News, they are representing Manuel Souza.
Renowed civil rights Attorney Ben Crump, who is already representing concertgoer Noah Gutierrez, is expected to be taking on more clients in the Astroworld aftermath.
Crump said in a statement Sunday night, “We are hearing horrific accounts of the terror and helplessness people experienced — the horror of a crushing crowd and the awful trauma of watching people die while trying unsuccessfully to save them.”
He added, “We will be pursuing justice for all our clients who were harmed in this tragic and preventable event.”
Roddy Ricch is donating his net compensation from Astroworld Fest to the families of those who passed away pic.twitter.com/3TlJdvdyMR
NEWS ALERT: @AttorneyCrump has issued a statement & is representing victims in the aftermath of the Travis Scott Astroworld concert, including 21-year-old Noah Gutierrez who described a scene of chaos and desperation. pic.twitter.com/Tfo5EA4mVL
(LONDON) — The U.S. is reopening borders to vaccinated travelers on Monday after 20 months of being closed to many countries, including the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, India, South Africa and most of Europe.
After a number of stops and starts, President Joe Biden announced the date for the resumption on Oct. 25.
“I have determined that it is in the interests of the United States to move away from the country-by-country restrictions previously applied during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the White House said in a statement.
Many travelers communicated their excitement at the news, some prepping for their big trip back weeks in advance. A group of Twitter users is even planning on celebrating together in London’s Heathrow Airport Monday morning before their flight.
The travel ban was first put into place by former President Donald Trump in March 2020, briefly lifted when he left office, then reinstated by Biden.
Many couples communicated their frustration and despair online, rallying around the Twitter hashtag #LoveIsNotTourism.
Christin Bell and Josh Hague met in the summer of 2019, when Bell was traveling from her hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana, to England. They would travel back and forth across the Atlantic every six weeks to see each other, but found themselves separated by the travel ban.
“[Initially we thought] this is just temporary, because at first it was,” Bell told ABC News. “This is going to be 60 days and then we’ll be through it. Well, 60 days quickly turned into two years and we struggled.”
As the U.K. relaxed its travel restrictions, Bell was allowed to visit Hague six months later, but he was still forbidden from coming to the U.S., unless he spent two weeks quarantining in a country not included in the travel ban, such as Turkey or Mexico, something that was not possible for them financially.
“Americans could travel pretty much wherever they wanted. Yet, family members of Americans could not travel, and that was extremely frustrating,” said Bell.
In January, as the COVID vaccine was distributed on both sides of the Atlantic, the ban was kept in place, with the Biden administration stating concerns about the delta variant.
“With the pandemic worsening and more contagious variants spreading, this isn’t the time to be lifting restrictions on international travel,” White House press secretary Jen Paski said in January.
Many speculated that Biden might lift the ban after the G-7 conference during the summer, but the White House reiterated their position in July 2021, despite mounting international pressure.
“The American travel ban on Europeans felt much more arbitrary and also allowed for much less exceptions. … It reinforced the feeling that the American passport is stronger than the European passports,” Celia Belin, a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings Institution, told ABC News.
On Oct. 20, in the midst of a spat with France over a submarine contract with Australia, the Biden administration announced it was lifting the ban on vaccinated travelers.
“[The announcement] came on the back of a very difficult summer transatlantically for Joe Biden,” Belin told ABC News.
Belin added that lifting the ban, which only applies to vaccinated travelers, still excludes many countries where the vaccine is not yet easily available or recognized by the U.S. The administration is also working through a backlog of visas, which were halted during the ban.
“The day that the ban lift was announced … we just looked at each other and cried with joy that it was finally ending,” said Bell.
Bell and Hague got engaged the day before the ban was lifted, and are now planning their wedding in the U.S.
“We can actually go forward and plan our life together instead of sitting in this excruciating limbo,” Bell said.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 754,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 68.3% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Nov 08, 8:52 am
US reopens borders to vaccinated travelers
The U.S. reopened borders to vaccinated travelers on Monday after 20 months of being closed to many countries, including the United Kingdom, Brazil, China, India, South Africa and most of Europe.
In January, as the vaccine was distributed on both sides of the Atlantic, the ban was kept in place, with the Biden administration stating concerns about the delta variant.
On Oct. 20, the Biden administration announced it was lifting the ban on vaccinated travelers.
The ban, which only applies to vaccinated travelers, still excludes many countries where the vaccine is not yet easily available or recognized by the U.S.
Nov 08, 8:04 am
Global COVID-19 cases top 250 million in under 2 years
The worldwide number of people who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 surpassed 250 million on Monday, according to a count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
The United States, India and Brazil account for about a third of the recorded cases, Johns Hopkins data shows.
The grim milestone came as some countries in Eastern Europe, including Russia, Ukraine and Greece, grapple with record levels of newly reported cases.
The pandemic began less than two years ago after the virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.
Nov 08, 6:46 am
Biden administration urges schools to provide COVID-19 shots, info
The Biden administration sent letters to superintendents and principals across the United States on Monday, urging them to set up COVID-19 vaccination clinics inside their elementary schools.
“Parents rely on their children’s teachers, principals, school nurses, and other school personnel to help keep their students safe and healthy every school year,” U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona wrote in the letters. “We need your help now more than ever to continue to protect our communities and our children.”
They also asked the school leaders to distribute information “from trusted sources” about COVID-19 vaccines to all families with children ages 5 to 11, and to host community engagements with parents in partnership with local pediatricians and “other trusted medical voices” in the community.
“The communications you issue — in languages accessible to your parents — will be critical in helping families learn more about the vaccine,” Becerra and Cardona wrote.
The letters went out on the same day that first lady Jill Biden and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy plan to visit an elementary school in McLean, Virginia, that was used as one of the first sites in the country to begin administering the polio vaccine in 1954.
School officials would not be responsible for handling COVID-19 vaccines or giving shots to students. Instead, they would partner with a local vaccine provider already administering shots, such as a pharmacy or community health clinic.
The schools would be allowed to use federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan to offset any costs with providing the space and organizing the vaccine drive.
If Elle King can take home the CMA for Musical Event of the Year for “Drunk (And I Don’t Wanna Go Home)” with Miranda Lambert on Wednesday night, she’ll have a matching set.
Back in 2016, the “Ex’s & Oh’s” hitmaker took home the trophy for her chart-topping duet with Dierks Bentley, “Different for Girls,” and it was the beginning of an eye-opening experience for the rocker.
“I had had a really hard, mildly traumatic experience at the Grammys,” she recalls. “And I’d been nominated for two Grammys, and someone stepped on the back of my gown, and it ripped all the way up to my belly button. And we had to beg somebody to stitch me up right before they’re about to announce who won the award.”
Fast-forward to her subsequent appearance on the CMA Awards with Dierks, which left her a little bit dumbfounded — in a good way.
“I’m backstage at the CMAs,” she remembers, “and everyone has their dressing room doors open, and Luke Bryan is like, ‘Hey Elle, you want a drink?’ and putting his arm around me.”
“And everyone was genuinely kind and inviting and warm,” Elle continues, “and I was like, ‘Well, I think this is pretty fun.'”
“The rowdier I was,” she adds, “the more people like, amped it up. They know how to get down. And that’s when I was like, ‘Well, country’s more rock ‘n’ roll than rock ‘n’ roll.'”
To say Elle’s a favorite in the Musical Event category is an understatement. She was also nominated last year for “Fooled Around and Fell in Love,” which Miranda cut with her tour mates.
Tune in to see if Elle wins, as her backstage buddy Luke hosts the 55th CMA Awards Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
