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The year of the 'lega-sequel': What 'Gladiator II' and 'Twisters' say about Hollywood

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The year of the 'lega-sequel': What 'Gladiator II' and 'Twisters' say about Hollywood

It’s been 24 years since audiences first saw Ridley Scott’s vision of the brutality of Rome’s Colosseum. Twenty-eight years since they chased an F5 tornado with Helen Hunt. Thirty-six years since they said a certain bio-exorcist’s name three times.

But this year, all three properties have made, or will make, a comeback to theaters with sequels. And so far, these decades-later legacy sequels — or “lega-sequels” — have helped boost a box office still recovering from the pandemic and fewer big titles due to last year’s dual Hollywood strikes.

Why belatedly add chapters to a seemingly long-finished story? For one, audiences love nostalgia, and seeing actors return to their original roles (or, in some cases, a fresh new cast in familiar modes) can be a powerful box-office draw. An added bonus — advancing an established and successful story is relatively low-risk.

“That’s just an easy shortcut — and it’s not even a bad thing,” said Amanda Ann Klein, professor of film studies at East Carolina University. “Reusing these same stories is a good way to sort through everything that’s out there.”

Scott’s “Gladiator II” from Paramount Pictures is the latest sequel to return after a decades-long hiatus. So far, the film is tracking for a solid opening weekend with a projected haul of $66 million, according to forecasting site Box Office Theory. The movie hits theaters Nov. 22, alongside the highly anticipated “Wicked.”

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If its lega-sequel predecessors are any indication, “Gladiator II” could be bound for box-office success.

This summer’s “Twisters,” released by Universal Pictures, grossed nearly $371 million worldwide and is the sixth highest grossing film domestically so far this year, according to film performance tracker Box Office Mojo. The film didn’t even return key original cast members like Hunt or Bill Paxton, though there are callbacks to the original “Twister.” Instead, young stars Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones lead the cast.

In the fall, Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” burst from its grave, grossing almost $451 million worldwide, and ranking fourth in this year’s domestic box office. The film continued the story of Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz, now an adult, and returned Michael Keaton to his eponymous role of Beetlejuice.

Some of the main actors’ high visibility on Netflix may have helped the film appeal among younger viewers, including Ryder on “Stranger Things” and Jenna Ortega in “Wednesday.”

For studios, there’s a major upside to bringing back beloved films. Familiar intellectual property has already been tested with audiences, in the same way that films based on video games, comic books or novels have a built-in base.

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“It’s a continuum of there’s this IP you can mine, you’re thinking about how you can tap into both older audiences and newer audiences in a risk-averse environment, while still exploring genres that are relatively safe,” said Alisa Perren, director of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries at University of Texas at Austin.

Then, in the new film, you tap into what audiences remember fondly and show off.

For “Twisters,” that was the special effects that made the tornadoes look realistic. For “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” it was the practical effects, which made extensive use of prosthetics, puppets and some stop-motion animation.

There’s also something comforting for audiences in seeing familiar faces on the screen, like Tom Cruise in 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” which returned to the flyboy’s story after a 36-year hiatus, or Will Smith and Martin Lawrence in 2020’s “Bad Boys for Life,” which came 17 years after the franchise’s last installment.

But getting the right people together in one place is often a tall order, and could be why some of these films arrive decades after the last one.

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“These legacy series, they’re big-screen movies, they deserve to come back,” said David A. Gross, who publishes the FranchiseRe movie industry newsletter. “It’s a question of the prime movers, the director, the star. There are so many heavy pieces that have to be lifted and put into place, and if one of them isn’t ready, then it’s going to have to wait.”

A long interval between film installments doesn’t always matter to audiences. When a sequel returns four years or less after its last airing, it typically has a 17% lower opening than the previous film, Gross said. Sequels that come back after more than four years tend to open down 19% compared to the prior movie, he said. That’s a negligible difference, Gross said, and means that films don’t need to be held — or sped up — before they’re ready.

Also, a successful prior film doesn’t always guarantee a win for a long-returning sequel.

“Blade Runner 2049” brought back Harrison Ford in his replicant-hunting role after 35 years but flopped at the box office. The Eddie Murphy-led “Coming 2 America” — which came in 2021, 33 years after the original — brought back many of its cast members but was limited to a streaming audience after its original theatrical distributor, Paramount Pictures, sold the film to Prime Video due to the pandemic. (Former Times film critic Justin Chang said at the time that the film “exists in its predecessor’s shadow.”)

It all points to the power of known titles in an increasingly tough market for films. Superhero movies are no longer a surefire win at the box office, and so-called mid-tier films costing about $50 million to $100 million have become more scarce.

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“In the attention economy … anything that gives you an advantage in terms of differentiating yourself,” Perren said. “It’s so hard to cut through.”

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Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

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Nike to Cut 1,400 Jobs as Part of Its Turnaround Plan

Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.

In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”

“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”

Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.

In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.

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The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.

“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.

Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.

The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.

Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.

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Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.

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Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

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Senate committee kills bill mandating insurance coverage for wildfire safe homes

A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.

The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.

The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.

The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.

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It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.

However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.

Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.

Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.

“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.

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In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”

The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.

“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.

Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.

Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.

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Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.

The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.

But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.

Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.

A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.

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“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .

Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.

Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.

Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.

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How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

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How We Cover the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.

Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.

But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.

While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.

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“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.

It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”

Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.

“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.

The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.

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Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.

Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”

Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.

Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.

“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”

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For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.

“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”

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