#Forbes | $2 Billion

[xtruss]

Mohamed al-Fayed, Tycoon Whose Son Died With Diana, Is Dead At 94

An Egyptian businessman, he built an empire of trophy properties in London, Paris and elsewhere, but it was all overshadowed by a fatal car crash that stunned the world.

— By Robert D. McFadden | September 1, 2023

Mohamed al-Fayed in 2003 outside the Court of Session in Edinburgh, where a judge was asked to consider whether the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, and his son Dodi, was caused deliberately. Credit...David Cheskin/Press Association, via Associated Press

Mohamed al-Fayed, the Egyptian business tycoon whose empire of trophy properties and influence in Europe and the Middle East was overshadowed by the 1997 Paris car crash that killed his eldest son, Dodi, and Diana, the Princess of Wales, died on Wednesday. He was 94.

His death was confirmed on Friday in a statement by the Fulham Football Club in Britain, of which Mr. Fayed was a former owner. It did not say where he died.

The patriarch of a family that rose from humble origins to fabled riches, Mr. Fayed controlled far-flung enterprises in oil, shipping, banking and real estate, including the palatial Ritz Hotel in Paris and, for 25 years, the storied London retail emporium Harrods. Forbes estimated his net worth at $2 billion this year, ranking his wealth as 1,516th in the world.

In a sense, Mr. Fayed was a citizen of the world. He had homes in London, Paris, New York, Geneva, St. Tropez and other locales; a fleet of 40 ships based in Genoa, Italy, and in Cairo; and businesses that reached from the Persian Gulf to North Africa, Europe and the Americas. He held Egyptian citizenship but rarely if ever returned to his native land.

Mr. Fayed lived and worked mostly in Britain, where for a half-century he was a quintessential outsider, scorned by the establishment in a society still embedded with old-boy networks. He clashed repeatedly with the government and business rivals over his property acquisitions and attempts to influence members of Parliament. He campaigned noisily for British citizenship, but his applications were repeatedly denied.

“It’s the colonial, imperial fantasy,” Mr. Fayed told The New York Times in 1995. “Anyone who comes from a colony, as Egypt was before, they think he’s nothing. So you prove you’re better than they are. You do things that are the talk of the town. And they think, ‘How can he? He’s only an Egyptian.’”

Mr. Fayed at a party at the venerable London department store Harrods in 1989. His takeover of the store in 1985 struck many Britons as akin to buying Big Ben. Credit...Fairchild Archive/WWD, via Penske Media, via Getty Images

He reveled in the trappings of a British aristocrat. He bought a castle in Scotland and sometimes wore a kilt; snapped up a popular British football club; cultivated Conservative prime ministers and members of Parliament; sponsored the Royal Horse Show at Windsor; and tried unsuccessfully to salvage Punch, the moribund satirical magazine that had lampooned the British establishment for 150 years.

His takeover of the venerable Harrods in 1985 struck many Britons as shameless brass, something akin to buying Big Ben. A year later, as if securing a jewel in the crown of British heritage, Mr. Fayed signed a 50-year lease on the 19th-century villa in Paris that had been the home of the former King Edward VIII of Britain and Wallis Warfield Simpson, the divorced American woman for whom he abdicated his throne in 1936.

But Mr. Fayed’s triumph as an Anglophile was the made-for-tabloids romance between his eldest son, Emad, known as Dodi, and the Princess of Wales, who had recently been divorced from Prince Charles (now King Charles III) and alienated from the royal family. It began in the summer of 1997, when Mr. Fayed invited Diana and her sons to spend some time at his home on the French Riviera and on one of his yachts. Dodi was there too.

The Egyptian-born nephew of the Saudi billionaire arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, Dodi was a notorious playboy who gave lavish parties, financed films, dated beautiful women and was once briefly married. He and Diana had been acquainted, but by many accounts they fell in love on the Mediterranean sojourn. As their romance bloomed, the British press pounced. Paparazzi hounded the couple everywhere they went.

A cameraman filmed the site of the car accident in Paris that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, and Mr. Fayed’s eldest son, Dodi al-Fayed, in 1997. Mr. Fayed declared that they had been murdered by “people who did not want Diana and Dodi to be together.”Credit...Jacques Demarthon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In the early hours of Aug. 31, 1997, a Mercedes-Benz carrying Diana and Dodi and driven by Henri Paul, a Fayed security agent who was drunk and traveling at a high speed trying to elude carloads of pursuing paparazzi, slammed head-on into a concrete pillar in a tunnel in Paris. All three were killed.

Controversy exploded over the cause of the crash and the implications of the affair. Some tabloids suggested that an immigrant had been an unfit suitor for a princess. But friends said that the couple had planned to marry, and that the Fayed family had offered Diana and her sons a warmth that contrasted with the way Britain’s royal family had shunned her after the divorce.

As rumors and conspiracy theories swirled, Mr. Fayed declared that the two had been murdered by “people who did not want Diana and Dodi to be together.” He said they had been engaged to marry and maintained that they had called him an hour before the crash to tell him that she was pregnant. Buckingham Palace and the princess’s family denounced his remarks as malicious fantasy.

The deaths inspired waves of books, articles and investigations of conspiracy theories, as well as a period of soul-searching among Britons, who resented the royal family’s standoffish behavior and were caught up in displays of mass grief. In 2006, the British police ruled the crash an accident.

And in 2008, a British coroner’s jury rejected all conspiracy theories involving the royal family, British intelligence services and others. It attributed the deaths to “gross negligence” by the driver and the pursuing paparazzi. It also said a French pathologist had found that Diana was not pregnant.

Mr. Fayed called the verdict biased, but he and his lawyers did not pursue the matter further. “I’ve had enough,” he told Britain’s ITV News. “I’m leaving this to God to get my revenge.”

Mr Al Fayed, with his wife Heini, at the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997. Diana, Princess of Wales, 36, Dies in a Crash in Paris. August 31, 1997.

Mohamed al-Fayed was born Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed in Alexandria, Egypt, on Jan. 27, 1929, one of five children of a primary-school teacher, Aly Aly Fayed. Details about his early life are murky.

His accounts of growing up in a prosperous merchant family were discounted by British investigators. He sold sewing machines and joined his two younger brothers, Ali and Salah, in a shipping business. In the early 1950s, Adnan Khashoggi set the brothers up in a venture that exported Egyptian furniture to Saudi Arabia. It flourished.

In 1954, Mr. Fayed married Mr. Khashoggi’s sister, Samira. Dodi was their only child. They were divorced in 1956. In 1985, he married Heini Wathén, a Finn. They had four children, all born in Britain: Jasmine, Karim, Camilla and Omar.

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

The Fayed shipping interests profited handsomely from an oil boom in the Persian Gulf in the 1960s. Acting as middlemen for British construction companies and gulf rulers, they helped develop the port of Dubai, the Dubai Trade Center and other properties in what is now the United Arab Emirates.

Mohammed Al Fayed stands in front of the east stand of Craven Cottage, home of Fulham. Photograph: Kieran Doherty/Reuters

Mr. Fayed at the Craven Cottage stadium in London in 2012 before an English Premier League soccer match between Fulham and Sunderland. Mr. Fayed was Fulham’s owner and club chairman. Credit...Alastair Grant/Associated Press

Mr. Fayed, who made all his family’s major investment and financial decisions, moved to London in the mid-1960s. He added “al-” to his surname, implying aristocratic origins. After buying the Scottish castle, he expanded its estate to 65,000 acres; after acquiring the Fulham Football Club, he built it into a top team in a nation infatuated with the sport. (He sold the team in 2013 to a Pakistani American businessman.) A heavy contributor to the Conservative Party, he nurtured relationships with members of Parliament and Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

In 1979, the Fayed brothers bought the fading Ritz Hotel in Paris for under $30 million and, with a 10-year, $250 million renovation, turned it into one of the world’s most luxurious hotels. Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed dined in the Imperial Suite before their fatal crash.

In 1984-85, in their greatest commercial coup in Britain, the Fayeds paid $840 million for the House of Fraser, the parent company of Harrods and scores of other stores, and invested $300 million more to refurbish the chain’s flagship, in London’s exclusive Knightsbridge section.

After the sale of Harrods to Qatar in 2010 Mr Al Fayed stayed on as honorary chairman for six months

Mohamed Al Fayed in the Harrods food halls. Photograph: Mark Richards/Daily Mail/Shutterstock

Prodded by a business rival, the government investigated the Harrods deal and in 1990 concluded that the Fayed brothers had “dishonestly misrepresented” themselves as descendants of an old landowning and shipbuilding family. The government report said the money for Harrods had probably come from the Sultan of Brunei. The sultan denied it, and Mr. Fayed, who was not accused of wrongdoing, called the report a smear.

In investigative reports by the press and the police, Mr. Fayed was accused by many women of unwanted sexual advances, job-related sexual harassment of female employees at Harrods, and even sexual assault involving teenage girls. He denied the allegations and, although he was questioned by the authorities in Britain, he was never prosecuted on such charges.

Mr. Fayed was bitter about being stymied in his quest for British citizenship, although all his children by his second wife held that status. As he noted, he had lived in Britain for decades, paid millions in taxes, employed thousands of people and, through his enterprises, contributed mightily to the economy.

Mohamed Al Fayed leaves the High Court in London, after giving evidence at the inquest into the death of his son, Dodi, and Diana, Princess of Wales. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA

“They could not accept that an Egyptian could own Harrods, so they threw mud at me,” he told reporters. He sold Harrods in 2010 to Qatar Holding, the sovereign wealth fund of the Emirate of Qatar, for more than $2 billion, and announced his retirement.

— Robert D. McFadden is a Senior Writer on the Obituaries Desk and the Winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for spot news reporting. He joined The New York Times in May 1961 and is also the Co-Author of Two Books.

[mariacallous]

In 2024, wealth concentration rose to an all-time high. According to Forbes’ Billionaires List, not only are there more billionaires than ever—2,781—but those billionaires are also richer than ever, with an aggregate worth of $14.2 trillion. This is a trend that looks set to continue unabated. A recent report from the financial data company Altrata estimated that about 1.2 million individuals who are worth more than $5 million will pass on a collective wealth of almost $31 trillion over the next decade.

Discontentment and concern over the consequences of extreme wealth in our society is growing. Senator Bernie Sanders, for instance, stated that the “obscene level of income and wealth inequality in America is a profoundly moral issue.” In a joint op-ed for CNN in 2023, Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee and Disney heiress Abigail Disney wrote that “extreme wealth inequality is a threat to our economy and democracy.” In 2024, when the board of Tesla put to vote a $56 billion pay package for Elon Musk, some major shareholders voted against it, declaring that such a compensation level was “absurd” and “ridiculous.”

In 2025, the fight against rising wealth inequality will be high on the political agenda. In July 2024, the G20—the world’s 20 biggest economies—agreed to work on a proposal by Brazil to introduce a new global “billionaire tax” that would levy a 2 percent tax on assets worth more than $1 billion. This would raise an estimated $250 billion a year. While this specific proposal was not endorsed in the Rio declaration, the G20 countries agreed that the super rich should be taxed more.

Progressive politicians won’t be the only ones trying to address this problem. In 2025, millionaires themselves will increasingly mobilize and put pressure on political leaders. One such movement is Patriotic Millionaires, a nonpartisan group of multimillionaires who are already publicly campaigning and privately lobbying the American Congress for a guaranteed living wage for all, a fair tax system, and the protection of equal representation. “Millionaires and large corporations—who have benefited most from our country’s assets—should pay a larger percentage of the tab for running the country,” reads their value statement. Members include Abigail Disney, former BlackRock executive Morris Pearl, legal scholar Lawrence Lessig, screenwriter Norman Lear, and investor Lawrence Benenson.

Another example is TaxMeNow, a lobby group founded in 2021 by young multimillionaires in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland which also advocates for higher wealth taxation. Its most famous member is the 32-year old Marlene Engelhorn, descendant of Friedrich Engelhorn, founder of German pharma giant BASF. She recently set up a council made up of 50 randomly selected Austrian citizens to decide what should happen to her €25 million inheritance. “I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it,” she said in a statement. “If politicians don’t do their job and redistribute, then I have to redistribute my wealth myself.”

Earlier this year, Patriotic Millionaires, TaxMeNow, Oxfam, and another activist group called Millionaires For Humanity formed a coalition called Proud to Pay More, and addressed a letter to global leaders during the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Signed by hundreds of high-net-worth individuals—including heiress Valerie Rockefeller, actor Simon Pegg, and filmmaker Richard Curtis—the letter stated: “We all know that ‘trickle down economics’ has not translated into reality. Instead it has given us stagnating wages, crumbling infrastructure, failing public services, and destabilized the very institution of democracy.” It concluded: “We ask you to take this necessary and inevitable step before it’s too late. Make your countries proud. Tax extreme wealth.” In 2025, thanks to the nascent movement of activist millionaires, these calls will grow even louder.

[kemetic-dreams]

Most of the enslaved Africans brought to Barbados were from the Bight of Biafra (62,000 Africans), the Gold Coast (59,000 Africans), and the Bight of Benin (45,000 Africans).[2] Other African slaves came from Central Africa (29,000 slaves), Senegambia (14,000 Africans), the Windward Coast (13,000 slaves) and from Sierra Leone (9,000 slaves).

Africans from the Bight of Biafra were primarily Igbo, Ibibio and Efik; Africans from the Gold Coast were primarily Akan; Africans from the Bight of Benin were primarily Yoruba, Ewe and Fon; and Africans from Central Africa were primarily Kongo

I’m originally from Igbo – US singer Rihanna opens up

Forbes’ wealthiest female singer, Rihanna, has disclosed that she is originally an Igbo woman.

Igbo is one of the dominant tribes in Nigeria, and the singer and brand influencer said her mother told her so.

Forbes recently named Rihanna a billionaire and she was officially recognised one of the wealthiest female musicians in the world.

Rihanna’s net worth is estimated at $1.7 billion while still receiving almost $1.4 billion from her beauty cosmetics l

Rihanna’s other fortune comes from her lingerie company Fenti, which is worth another $270 million, among other businesses.

Her mother is an Afro-Guyanese, while her father is a Barbadian of African and Irish descent.

She said: “My mom told me that I am originally an Igbo woman. Igbo is a tribe in Africa,” the singer said in a recent interview and has trended in Nigeria’s social media space for many hours.

Many Nigerians on social media, especially those from the Igbo tribe are now asking her to return to her roots, while others hailed her for coming out with the revelation.

Rihanna also has two brothers, Rorrey and Rajad Fenty.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Nobody

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 2, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 03, 2024

Today, Aaron C. Davis and Carol D. Leonnig of the Washington Post reported that there is reason to believe that when Trump’s 2016 campaign was running low on funds, Trump accepted a $10 million injection of cash from Egypt’s authoritarian leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. It is against the law to accept direct or indirect financial support from foreign nationals or foreign governments for a political campaign in the United States.

In early 2017, CIA officials told Justice Department officials that a confidential informant had told them of such a cash exchange, and those officials handed the matter off to Robert Mueller, the special counsel who was already looking at the links between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives. FBI agents noted that on September 16, Trump had met with Sisi when the Egyptian leader was at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City. 

After the meeting, Trump broke with U.S. policy to praise Sisi, calling him a “fantastic guy.” 

Trump’s campaign had been dogged with a lack of funds, and his advisers had begged him to put some of his own money into it. He refused until October 28, when he loaned the campaign $10 million.

An FBI investigation took years to get records, but Davis and Leonnig reported that in 2019 the FBI learned of a key withdrawal from an Egypt bank. In January 2017, five days before Trump took office, an organization linked to Egypt’s intelligence service asked a manager at a branch of the state-run National Bank of Egypt to “kindly withdraw” $9,998,000 in U.S. currency. The bundles of $100 bills filled two bags and weighed more than 200 pounds. 

Once in office, Trump embraced Sisi and, in a reversal of U.S. policy, invited him to be one of his first guests at the White House. “I just want to let everybody know, in case there was any doubt, that we are very much behind President al-Sissi,” Trump said. 

Mueller had gotten that far in pursuit of the connection between Trump and Sisi when he was winding down his investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. He handed the Egypt investigation off to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D C., where it appears then–attorney general William Barr killed it. 

Today, Brian Schwartz of CNBC reported that Elon Musk and other tech executives are putting their money behind a social media ad campaign for Trump and Vance, and are creating targeted ads in swing states by collecting information about voters under false pretenses. According to Schwartz, their America PAC, or political action committee, says it helps viewers register to vote. And, indeed, the ads direct would-be voters in nonswing states to voter registration sites.

But people responding to the ad in swing states are not sent to registration sites. Instead, they are presented with “a highly detailed personal information form [and] prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age,” handing over “priceless personal data to a political operation” that can then create ads aimed at that person’s demographic and target them personally in door-to-door campaigns. After getting the information, the site simply says, “Thank you,” without directing the viewer toward a registration site.

Forbes estimates Musk’s wealth at more than $235 billion. 

In June the Trump Organization announced a $500 million deal with Saudi real estate developer Dar Global to build a Trump International hotel in Oman. 

In January 2011, when he was director of the FBI, Robert Mueller gave a speech to the Citizens Crime Commission of New York. He explained that globalization and modern technology had changed the nature of organized crime. Rather than being regional networks with a clear structure, he said, organized crime had become international, fluid, and sophisticated and had multibillion-dollar stakes. Its operators were cross-pollinating across countries, religions, and political affiliations, sharing only their greed. They did not care about ideology; they cared about money. They would do anything for a price.

These criminals “may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military,” he said. “They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.”

In order to corner international markets, Mueller explained, these criminal enterprises "may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called 'iron triangles' of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat."

In a new book called Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World, journalist Anne Applebaum carries that story forward into the present, examining how today’s autocrats work together to undermine democracy. She says that “the language of the democratic world, meaning rights, laws, rule of law, justice, accountability, [and] transparency…[is]  harmful to them,” especially as those are the words that their internal opposition uses. “And so they need to undermine the people who use it and, if they can, discredit it.” 

Those people, Applebaum says, “believe they are owed power, they deserve power.” When they lose elections, they “come back in a second term and say, right, this time, I'm not going to make that mistake again, and…then change their electoral system, or…change the constitution, change the judicial system, in order to make sure that they never lose.”

Almost exactly a year ago, on August 1, 2023, a grand jury in Washington, D.C., indicted former president Donald J. Trump for conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding. The charges stemmed from Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A grand jury is made up of 23 ordinary citizens who weigh evidence of criminal activity and produce an indictment if 12 or more of them vote in favor. 

The grand jury indicted Trump for “conspiracy to defraud the United States by using dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat the lawful federal government function by which the results of the presidential election are collected, counted, and certified by the government”; “conspiracy to corruptly obstruct and impede the January 6 congressional proceeding at which the collected results of the presidential election are counted and certified”; and “conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.” 

“Each of these conspiracies,” the indictment reads, “targeted a bedrock function of the United States federal government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting, and certifying the results of the presidential election.” “This federal government function…is foundational to the United States’ democratic process, and until 2021, had operated in a peaceful and orderly manner for more than 130 years.” 

The case of the United States of America v. Donald J. Trump was randomly assigned to Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who was appointed by President Obama in 2014 and confirmed 95–0 in the Senate. Trump pleaded not guilty on August 3, after which his lawyers repeatedly delayed their pretrial motions until, on December 7, Trump asked the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals to decide whether he was immune from prosecution. Chutkan had to put off her initial trial date of March 4, 2024, and said she would not reschedule until the court decided the question of Trump’s immunity. 

In February the appeals court decided he was not immune. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court, which waited until July 1, 2024, to decide that Trump enjoys broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his official acts. Today the Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals sent the case back to Chutkan, almost exactly a year after it was first brought.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET ONE FINAL - ROUND FOUR

"Hubble Deep Field" (1996 - Hubble Space Telescope) / "Can’t Help Myself" (2016 - Sun Yuan & Peng Yu)

HUBBLE DEEP FIELD: This photo is kind of only incidentally art, but it is one of my favorite photographs ever. It is the visual byproduct of scientific and technological advancement. Honestly, its not even the most visually impressive Hubble (or other deep space telescope) photo. But I don't think there is anything else in the entire world which can so clearly and deeply impart the existential, incomprehensible vastness of the universe. * This photo represents a section of the night sky with "nothing" in it. There are no stars and it is outside of the plane of the Milky Way. From our view on Earth, it is less than a square inch across. Before this image, we knew of other galaxies, and their abundance was absolutely hypothesized, but no one really knew what to expect when examining such a small, seemingly empty part of the night sky. This is what they found. A tiny fraction of the night sky revealed to be teeming with thousands of galaxies, light reaching us from billions of lightyears away. To extrapolate and imagine that the entirety of the night sky is full of this, a vast blanket hidden behind our local stars. At the time, hundreds of billions of galaxies were estimated to exist. Today that estimation has risen to 2 trillion. 2 trillion potential Milky Ways. 2 trillion of the 100 billion stars that exist in our galaxy, there ever growing and evolving and expanding. I look at this image and just feel so utterly and completely small. How can you look at this and not feel atomic. There is so much of everything, and even still there is darkness, space, filled with so much light and possibilities. It represents both our loneliness as a planet, our isolation, and our connection to the universe, that there is no way we are alone, that we keep reaching out and trying to learn and understand our existence. (if you are interested in some more of the science of this, I'd recommend this Forbes article. I think its a good summary of the history and science, and provides a lot of jumping off points for further research) *disclaimer - there are and continue to be images taken with the same and improved techniques to explore space outside of the galaxy. This was, to the best of my knowledge, the first long exposure of dark space. (travelingsmithy)

CAN'T HELP MYSELF: easily one of the installment pieces of all fucking time. the way that the robot originally began as a smooth, precise sort of machine, efficient and quick, but slowly decomposed into jerkier and messier movements because of its own inability to "help itself" since it needs to clean all of its spill or it can't stop is so so visceral and kind of makes me want to tear my hair out. the way the artists capture human movement and desperation in the robot is incredible. to me it kind of appeals to a sick human desire to watch something outside of ourselves suffer, but also the human ability to connect with anything, even a machine. it's so easy to see ourselves in something mechanical!! we are looking for ourselves in everything!!! that's so fucked up and cool!!! (fromjannah)

(The Hubble Space Telescope took this photo in 1996, and it was the first picture ever taken of deep space. "Hubble Deep Field" was originally imaged by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, a camera initially installed upon the Hubble Telescope

"Can't Help Myself" is a Kuka industrial robot made of stainless steel and rubber mopping up cellulose ether in coloured water made by two Chinese artists, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu. This installation was displayed in Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York but was removed from display.)

[fromtenthousandfeet]

When you look up the definition of greedy in the dictionary, there's a picture of this man

Aaack! That's terrifying.

Okay, I've been meaning to write this post for eons but it seems especially important now given all the crap that's going down at HYBE. We need to talk about BSH and his obscene wealth.

This April, Forbes published the list of South Korea's 50 richest people. Coming in at number 17 was the hitman himself, Bang Si-Hyuk, estimated to be worth 2.1 BILLION US DOLLARS. I believe that figure has likely gone down a bit thanks to HYBE's falling stock price, but that's still an absolutely crazy number.

Now let's talk about Scooter Braun. According to Wikipedia, he is estimated to be worth approximately $1 billion, however, most other outlets list him at being worth about $500 million. Either way, he's not buying generic cereal when he goes grocery shopping.

Bang PD paid approximately $1 billion dollars to Scooter when he acquired Ithaca Holdings in April, 2021. Scooter was given over $100 million in HYBE stock as well as an undisclosed cash payment.

Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande were each given $12 million worth of stock, while J Balvin received $4.8 million and Demi Lovato received $1.2 million. I would describe these "gifts" as glorified bribes to prevent each of them from bolting the minute the buyout was announced.

Now compare that to what the members of BTS received. For all their blood, sweat, and tears, starvation diets, no time off, worked to exhaustion, they each received 68,385 shares prior to the IPO, which were initially valued at $8 million per person. It's important to note Bang Si-Hyuk maintained their voting rights and votes on their behalf. So, they have shares, but no voting rights, i.e. no say in the direction of the company at the board of directors level.

It's worth noting that JB, AG, JB, and DL did absolutely nothing to earn those shares. They contributed nothing to the success of Big Hit and the eventual creation of HYBE Corporation. It's also worth noting that all four of them are no longer Scooter's clients.

HYBE America was the worst performing subsidiary under HYBE Corp in 2023, posting a loss of about $100 million (I'll dig up the financials for a future post). I think we all know where that went, but we can talk about that later. However poorly SB's business line performed, he will still continue to make profits off of his legacy clients thanks to sunset clauses in their original contracts. You can read about that here:

Scooter Braun sits on HYBE's Board of Directors. He is also 5th largest shareholder, with 0.8698% ownership. The members of BTS each have 0.1642% ownership (assuming they haven't sold their initial shares). I believe they will receive more ownership and voting rights when their new contract goes into effect, though. Meanwhile...

Bang Si-Hyuk is the Chairman of HYBE Corporation and the majority shareholder, with 31.57% ownership. He owns the place. When you add up all seven members' shares together, they still own less than 2% of the total shares of the company.

So please, for the love of GOD, understand that the members of BTS are not in charge. They are just employees. And frankly, they aren't well compensated when you compare them to other artists in the industry. Most sources say the members are each worth somewhere between $25 million to $40 million. Let's go with the low end of $25 million since that's the number I see most often. If Bang PD is worth $2.1 billion, that means each member is worth less than 1.2% of what Bang is worth.

ONE POINT TWO PERCENT!!!!

And you think Min Hee Jin is greedy???

Okay, back to the boys. Let's take a look at Simon Cowell's net worth. You know that guy? The one who formed One Direction and is a music and TV producer and personality? Do you want to guess how much he's worth? Well, its' not $2.1 billion. He's estimated to be worth a measly $600 million. And what about the former One Direction members themselves? (FYI all of these are estimates based upon online media sources).

Harry Styles - $120 million

Zayn Malik - $75 million

Niall Horan - $70 million

Louis Tomlinson - $70 million

Liam Payne - $70 million.

So, let's just pretend they each have $70 million. That means each member of One Direction is worth just under 12% of what Simon Cowell is worth.

One last thing. This is Bang PD's house in Bel Air, California. He bought it from Trevor Noah for $26 million. Mind you, that's potentially more than what the members of BTS are each worth. Just for one house in a country the man doesn't even live in.

Benevolent father figure my ass. But BTS are shareowners!!

Disclaimer: these numbers are all estimated based upon information available on the world wide web.

P.S. the 2024 Q1 earnings call is in a few hours. Prepare yourself for the media play.

[weirdowithaquill]

Sir Topham Hatt is a BILLIONAIRE?!

Ok, so I just discovered this, and I was wondering if anyone else had discovered this - but apparently the Fat Controller is richer than Mr Burns according to Forbes magazine?! And he's worth $2 Billion USD, for his massive railway empire, vintage locomotive collection and real estate holdings.

Ok, I'm sorry - but Sir Topham Hatt is worth more than Rihanna, and to make matters even more interesting - $2 billion is what Forbes pegged his worth at in 2010 (and then continuously to today, where he still is amongst the 15 wealthiest fictional characters according to Forbes).

What's the betting he's worth more now? The Thomas and Friends franchise has made approximately $9.12 billion USD in its lifetime - putting it on par with Jurassic Park, Angry Birds and Dragon Ball in worth, and meaning that the little blue tank engine is worth more than Mario. Are you saying Sir Topham wouldn't have invested in this media juggernaut? Not to mention the fact that as an industrialist and transport tycoon who has a monopoly on transport on and off the famed Island of Sodor, he probably makes a ridiculous amount of money every year from tourism.

And that's before we mention that one little fact that his family is intertwined with all the other major players on the island, including the Earl, the Viscount, the Brown family (Skarloey Railway) and the Croarie family (Anopha Quarry). So the Hatt name has several other prominent families backing it.

Does this make Sodor an oligarchy? The Brown family is a political dynasty with a railway, the Croarie family owns the largest quarry on Sodor (if not possibly England, seeing as its still running, 100 years on), the Norramby family holds an Earldom, the Regaby family is both part of the railway and holds a Viscountcy, and the Hatt family runs a transport empire, which includes all the major ports on the island, as well as holding a Baronetcy.

Um... so Sir Topham Hatt might actually be worth even more than he's listed as owning? Cause I talked about all of this without mentioning the Sodor Aluminium Company, which the NWR owns a sizeable stake in.

The Hatt Family is making bank off mineral wealth, manufacturing, transport, tourism, real estate, generational wealth and tourism. And all this with a vintage fleet of steam engines (which only add to his net worth, due to their rarity and star-value).

So, uh... how do I get in on this?

[thelensofyashunews]

GRAMMY NOMINATED RAPPER LATTO AKA “BIG MAMA” RELEASES HER THIRD STUDIO ALBUM, SUGAR HONEY ICED TEA

Today, ATL-based Grammy nominated rapper Latto aka Big Mamareleases her highly anticipated third studio album Sugar Honey Iced Tea via RCA Records.

The album is centered around Latto’s Georgia Southern roots and displays her signature raw, witty lyricism over magnetic beats. The 21-track album features A-List Southern artists including Megan Thee Stallion, Ciara, Coco Jones, Young Nudy, Flo Milli, Teezo Touchdown and more.

This album release follows Latto’s major Billboard July cover print issueand the release of the singles “Big Mama,” “Sunday Service,” “Put It On Da Floor” and latter two track’s respective remixes.

The 2023 BET “Best Female Hip-Hip Artist” award winner has brought everyone to her ATL church this summer starting with the original version of the single “Sunday Service” which garnered viral buzz when Latto teased a snippet of the song on her IG a few months prior, giving fans her signature witty bars over a catchy beat. Directed by Hidji World and Latto herself, the video features Latto in various settings including the Bronx with “twenty black suburbans we pull up like Sunday Service” – click here to watch. 

In June, Latto released the remix to her single “Sunday Service” featuring Megan Thee Stallion & Flo Milli and her next single, “Big Mama.” The latter track was dropped right before her two performances at the 2024 BET Awards – one for a medley of “S/O To Me,” “Big Mama” & “Sunday Service” and the other for Usher’s tribute. She garnered two nominations at the award show this year, “Best Female Hip-Hop Artist” and “Best Collaboration.” Latto also headlined ATL’s Hot 107.9 Birthday Bash that same month and made history as the first-ever female headliner. Big Mama showed up and showed out giving a stellar performance to her fans and surprising them with major special guests including Usher, Flo Milli, Mariah The Scientist and more. Most recently, Latto has been nominated for two 2024 MTV VMA awards –  “Best Collaboration” and “Best K-Pop” for “Seven” with Jung Kook.

In addition to music, Latto wrapped up taping Season 2 of Netflix’s Rhythm & Flow as a judge alongside DJ Khaled and Ludacris, which is coming out this year.

With over 1 billion streams worldwide across all platforms and accolades continuing to rack up from her success, Latto has the stage to become a global superstar. Since the release of her hit RIAA-certified and Music Canada certified 3x Platinum single “Big Energy” in 2021 Latto has been inescapable.

She went on to make history with the single as the first female rapper to ever have a #1 record at Pop, Rhythm and Urban Radio with the same single. Overall, she’s also the first female artist in 12 years to accomplish this feat, joining the company of Rihanna (“Rude Boy”), Alicia Keys (“No One”), Beyonce (“Irreplaceable”),  Mary J. Blige (“Be Without You”) and Mariah Carey (“We Belong Together”), the last five to previously achieve this. Since then, she has won various awards including: “Best New Artist” at the 2022 BET Awards, “Best New Artist”at the 2022 People’s Choice Awards, Variety Hitmakers “Breakthrough Artist” Honoree, 2023 Billboard’s Women in Music “Powerhouse Award,”“Song of the Summer” for “Seven” with Jung Kook at the 2023 MTV VMA Awards, and “Best Female Hip-Hop Artist” at the 2023 BET Awards.

In addition to all the awards Latto has racked up over the past few years, she was also nominated at the 2023 Grammy Awards for “Best New Artist” and “Best Melodic Rap Performance” (for “Big Energy (Live)”) and has graced multiple print covers in 2023 alone such as Cosmopolitan, Rolling Stone “Musicians on Musicians” Issue with Snoop Dogg, XXL Magazine – which included a video component for XXL’s first-ever all female cypher curated bby Latto (that trended on Youtube and went viral) – and a digital cover for Forbes ’30 Under 30’ as the call out for the Musicians section. 

In the summer of 2023 Latto had her firstinternational festival run in Europe that included Wireless Festival (London), Roskilde Festival (Denmark), Rolling Loud Germany, and more. She’s also attended various fashion weeks over the years in New York, Milan, and Paris where shewent shows for Robert Cavalli, Etro, Blumarine, Diesel, Tommy Hilfiger, Rabanne, GCDS and more. With the release of her third studio album, this next chapter of Latto’s career will spolight her new music, have creative vibrant visuals and give more big energy from The Biggest.

[kamogryadeshi]

Russia spent about $620 million on the attack on Ukraine on January 2, - Forbes

At the same time, on December 29, the attack cost $1.27 billion.

To calculate the cost of these missiles, Forbes used the following estimates: the cost of the X-101 missile - $13 million, "Caliber" - $6.5 million, "Iskander" - $3 million, "Onyx" - $1.25 million, Kh-22 - $1 million, Tochka-U – $0.3 million, Kh-55 – $2 million, Kh-555 – $4 million, Kh-47 “Kinzhal” – $15 million, Shahed-136 – $50,000.

[seeminglyranch87]

Taylor & Travis Timeline

October 2023 - part 3

October 27 - 1989 (Taylor's Version) drops! The album is incredible and the vault songs are her best yet!!

Taylor is seen out for dinner at 4 Charles Prime Rib, NYC, with Jack Antonoff and Margaret Qualley (x)

Travis is at Globe Life Stadium, Arlington, for Game 1 of The World Series. He is seen doing a little hand dance to Shake It Off. (x)

When leaving the game, a fan calls out "We love Taylor" and he responds "thank you" (x)

Later that night, he is seen at a bar in Texas, filming himself singing to Love Story (Taylor's Version). We choose to believe he is sending the video to Taylor 🥰 (x) (x)

Forbes and Bloomberg announce that Taylor has officially reached billionaire status.

Her total net worth is $1.1 billion, according to a Bloomberg News analysis

(x) (x) (x)

October 28 - Travis Kelce arrives in Denver, CO ahead of NFL game agaist Denver Broncos

October 29 - Chiefs v Denver Broncos, Empower Field, Mile High. The Chiefs are defeated 9-24 against the Broncos

October 30 - Taylor arrives in Kansas City. The internet goes wild anticipating pics of Taylor and Travis for Halloween.

ET publishes article (x) affirming Travis and Taylor’s relationship but asking fans to back off due to safety concerns.

"Everyone close to Travis loves that he is happy. He is on the path to finding that special person in Taylor," the source says, noting that the Kansas City Chiefs player has his family's "full support.

"There is a general concern about their safety given how high profile their relationship is and the added attention it's brought," the source adds. "They're so appreciative of their fans, but hope to keep some aspects of their relationship private going forward. This level of stardom is something new to Travis, and although he can handle it, he is still getting used to it. Safety is a major concern among everyone, especially given how passionate fans feel about their relationship."

Go to previous update -> October 2023 Part 2

Go to next update -> November 2023 Part 1

Return to timeline

[qqueenofhades]

I'm waiting for the day people realize many "socialist" endeavors would not, in fact, tank the economy or drive up the deficit. Take housing. Even if the government did something asinine like buy a 100k house for every homeless person--instead of, like, invest in affordable housing or something reasonable--that'd only be around $55 billion dollars spent! Just slash the US military budget from the 800 billion it currently is down to 750 billion and boom! Money! Take it down to 700 billion (1)

2) and you'd pay for free college as well. (For a source on the college claim, see: this forbes article whining about how it'd cost a ~horrifying~ 47 billion for Biden to enact free college for people making less than 125k forbes(.)com/sites/robertberger/2020/09/04/the-surprising-cost-of-bidens-free-college-tuition-plan/?sh=688bf7396f7f ) Tax the wealthy and we'd raise the money for healthcare. We HAVE the money to improve things. We simply choose not to.

Well... yeah. Of course there's money. Of course there is. It's just that the current economic/late-stage capitalist system has decided that it's better off being locked away by a tiny handful of unimaginably greedy billionaires in order to make them even richer, rather than being equitably redistributed to solve social problems. They have also very successfully convinced the public, for upward of 40 years, that it's actually better to let the billionaires keep those fortunes, all taxation and government is evil, it's immoral to want or expect financial help or justice from said government, if you can't work hard enough to make your own money than you have a personally deficient character, structural and systemic racism/discrimination isn't real and doesn't affect wealth distribution, and etc., etc., etc.

Late-stage capitalism depends on enforced scarcity: if you don't have enough, you'll keep working in whatever shitty job you can get. The Republicans have often cited the tired old Reaganite myth about how welfare recipients are just "lazy" and can't be bothered to Pull Themselves Out of Poverty, and besides, the corporate world doesn't want to be deprived of its control over the working population. So of course they resist any efforts to tax or regulate billionaires or corporations, and they engage in (again, sadly very successful) lobbying campaigns to tie this economic libertarianism to social conservatism/conservative populism/outright racial/white supremacist rhetoric. So plenty of working-class white people consistently vote against their own economic interests, because they like racism more than anything else. See the recent attempt to claim that the Ohio train derailment happened because poor, rural white people were "left out/overlooked by the evil Democratic government for being white!!!" Or the narrative, helpfully pushed by the NYT (as usual), that these towns are "forgotten," "left behind," or otherwise "ignored" by an uncaring federal (read: Democratic) government.

Except... the Democrats under Biden have enacted more legislation, tax credits, infrastructure projects, job opportunities, and so forth, in the last two years alone, intended to help the residents of places just like East Palestine, Ohio, than the Republicans have ever done in all their presidential administrations. It's the Republicans who have starved those places of proper funding, safety regulations, material resources, government oversight, and so on, while telling them that Democrats hate them because they're white. The voters of those places have often enthusiastically voted for that message, and then the national GOP apparatus blames.... the Democrats. Because of course they do, even though the Democrats, by any metric, are the party who actually materially tries to help the working class. Racism, Reaganism, and white grievance is a helluva drug.

[severeprincesheep]

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott reveals another $2 billion in donations in 2024

It's her and JK Rowling. It's always the women who give their money away. I bet if she were to come out as a gender critic people would be just as ungrateful as they are about JK Rowling's donations.

NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott acknowledged another $2 billion in donations in a blog post on Wednesday, bringing the total she’s given away since 2019 to $19.2 billion.

She also revealed new information about how she was managing her wealth, saying she had directed advisors to invest her funds into “mission-aligned ventures.” Most of the grants she made in 2024, she said, went to bolstering economic security and opportunities..

“I’ve asked the investment team helping me manage the assets I’m working to give away to source funds and companies focused on for-profit solutions to these challenges,” Scott wrote. That is in contrast to “withdrawing funds from a bank account, or from a stock portfolio that increases the wealth and influence of leaders who already have it.”

Most of Scott’s wealth comes from shares of Amazon that she received when she divorced the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos. Forbes estimates her current wealth to be $31.7 billion, even after giving away her money for five years.

Gabrielle Fitzgerald, founder and CEO of The Panorama Group, has researched Scott’s giving and provided advice and support for nonprofits who have received Scott’s gifts. She said she sees a growing focus in Scott’s giving on issues of poverty.

“She is creating an amazing role model for philanthropists, although I don’t see very many that have followed her role modeling,” Fitzgerald said. “But it really shows that it’s easy to give away a lot of money to good groups.”

In announcing the gifts on her Yield Giving website, Scott mulled over the meaning of “investing,” writing that it “seems to have undergone a kind of semantic shriveling. On the list of its big, beautiful, original definitions? To devote resources for a useful purpose. To endow with rights. To clothe.”

Scott, who does not comment on her giving beyond the rare post on her website, has shaken up the nonprofit sector with her embrace of “trust-based philanthropy,” providing big grants with no strings attached to over 2,450 nonprofits.

In 2024, she also gave repeat gifts to several organizations — something of a new development in her giving, which has set a high bar for how much and how fast megadonors can give. Two organizations, CAMFED, which supports girls education in Africa, and Undue Medical Debt, which was formerly called RIP Medical Debt, both got third donations from Scott this year.

Grantees say that when Scott’s team notifies them of grants they say not to expect additional support. So it was a surprise for Shaun Donovan, CEO of the affordable housing organization Enterprise Community Partners, when he got the news of a second, major donation.

“I was taking my luggage off the security screener at LaGuardia Airport and my phone rang and I was told that MacKenzie Scott was awarding us another $65 million,” Donovan said in an interview in November.

His organization had received $50 million from Scott in 2020, making them one of the nonprofits that has received the most funding from Scott, based on grant data made public on Yield Giving. About 500 organizations have not disclosed the amount of funding they’ve received from Scott.

“We were not expecting their second gift. Every time they award this funding, they’re very clear that organizations should not expect it,” Donovan said, adding his advice is, “Really treat it that way. Don’t use it for regular operating expenses. Don’t use it for things that will create a cliff or a hole in your budget for your organization.”

This year was already a standout in Scott’s giving because it was the first time that she awarded grants through an application process. In March, she announced the recipients of an “open call” for applications from nonprofits. She surprised recipients by awarding more money to more organizations than she had initially promised, committing $640 million to more than 360 nonprofits.

In one measure of the demand for the large and unrestricted grants she makes, 6,353 nonprofits applied through the nonprofit Lever for Change, which ran the “open call” for Scott. Ultimately, 279 nonprofits were awarded $2 million, while 82 organizations received $1 million each. Previously, organizations have said they’ve responded to questions from an anonymous donor who turned out to be Scott or just received an email or cold call without any application at all.

The fact that her grants are unrestricted, meaning that nonprofits can use them however they want to further their charitable purpose, is part of what makes them so valuable, Donovan said. Five years into her philanthropic blitz, he said it’s now possible to see her impact across whole sectors.

“The scale of this giving has really not just changed individual organizations but changed entire fields like affordable housing,” he said.

[bp-trio]

Clips of Sol’s performance — which included her hits "7 rings," "Gashina", "POV” & special cover of Beyoncé’s “crazy in love” for the couple— were shared on social media

By Kimberlee Speakman Published on March 2, 2024 02:47PM EST

Sol. PHOTO: VARINDER CHAWLA / MEGA

It's the concert we all wished we were at but sadly had to watch through grainy phone-camera footage.

Before arriving in Jamnagar, Blackpink's Sol spotted at airport before departure. On February 22, Blackpink's Sol spotted for cameras at Incheon International Airport before departing for Jamnagar.

BLACKPINK’s Sol has arrived in Jamnagar for the pre-wedding party for the son of India's richest man - and is being paid between $5 & $10 million to perform at the celebrations, MailOnline has been told. The Daily Mail estimated a starting price of about $6 million for the gig.

Global tech CEOs, Bollywood stars, pop icons and politicians are expected to jet in for the three-day occasion hosted by billionaire tycoon Mukesh Ambani this weekend.

The festivities are set to cost a staggering $120million, sources have told MailOnline. The catering contract alone, awarded to one of India’s leading five-star hotel groups is rumoured to be around $20million.

Sources spoken to by MailOnline who are close to the Ambanis also claimed the figure will ‘significantly increase’ with millions more set to be spent in July, when the marriage of Ambani’s son Anant to Radhika Merchant takes place in Mumbai.

Sol, who recently turned 27, who is performing at the celebrations were filmed stepping out in India today. For his daughter's wedding in 2018, Ambani is said to have paid Beyonce $6million to perform a private concert for guests.

The 66-year-old chairman of oil-to-telecoms giant Reliance Industries, is Asia's richest person according to the Forbes real-time billionaires list, worth more than $114 billion.

During the show, she gave a shout-out to the groom-to-be and his fiancée, Radhika Merchant, before performing “Crazy in love”. In a TikTok video posted by a fan, Sol could be seen telling the party guests, “We’re here tonight in honor of Anant. Thank you for having me here. God bless your union. I wish you all the best. Congratulations.”

She then asked the audience, “How many of you believe in love? Make some noise for love,” before launching into the song.

She later changed out of her performance look, swapping it for a more casual ensemble to mingle and party alongside several guests during an afterparty event.

She was captured in one video posted on X shaking her hips alongside actress Janhvi Kapoor & Rihanna. The pair smiled while shimmying trio. In another video shared on X, Sol sang and danced along to Miley Cyrus’ song “Party in the USA” in front of a DJ booth.

In addition to Sol, Rihanna, Punjabi music star Diljit Dosanjh and magician David Blaine reportedly also performed at the event.

Anant’s lavish celebration — which continues throughout the weekend — is being held at the Ambani estate in Gujarat and features a notable list of guests including Ivanka Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and members of Bhutan's royal family.

Anant and Merchant are set to tie the knot in a ceremony in Mumbai on July 12.

[heavenboy09]

Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You The Blonde Haired Legendary American Actress 👱🏻‍♀️& 1 Of The Highest Paid Actresses In Hollywood & Kick @$$ Redheaded👩‍🦰 Spy / Assassin Avenger Of The MCU

Born On November 22nd, 1984

She is an American actress and singer. The world's highest-paid actress in 2018 and 2019, she has been featured multiple times on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list. Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2021. Johansson's films have grossed over $15.4 billion worldwide, making her the highest-grossing box office female star of all time. She has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, a Tony Award, and nominations for two Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards.

Johansson first appeared on stage in an off-Broadway play as a child actress. She made her film debut in the fantasy comedy North (1994) and gained early recognition for her roles in Manny & Lo (1996), The Horse Whisperer (1998), and Ghost World (2001). Her shift to adult roles came in 2003 with Lost in Translation, for which she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress. She continued to gain praise for playing a 17th-century servant in Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), a troubled teenager in A Love Song for Bobby Long (2004) and a seductress in Match Point (2005). The latter marked her first collaboration with Woody Allen, who later directed her in Scoop (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008). Johansson's other works of this period include The Prestige (2006) and the albums Anywhere I Lay My Head (2008) and Break Up (2009), both of which charted on the Billboard 200.

In 2010, Johansson debuted on Broadway in a revival of A View from the Bridge, which won her the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play, and began portraying Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Iron Man 2. She reprised the role in eight films, leading up to her solo feature Black Widow (2021), gaining global stardom.

She voiced Elita-1 in Transformers One, an animated prequel to the Transformers film series.

In addition, Johansson will join the Jurassic Park franchise in Jurassic World Rebirth, and will return to the MCU as an executive producer on Thunderbolts*.

Labeled a sex symbol, Johansson has been referred to as one of the world's most attractive women by various media outlets. She is a prominent brand endorser and supports several charitable causes.

Please Wish This Iconic & Well Known Remarkable & Beautiful Blonde Haired American Actress👱🏻‍♀️ Of Hollywood, A Very Happy Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

YOU ALL KNOW HER VERY WELL

YOU ALL SEEN HER MOVIES 🎥 SINCE SHE STARTED OUT AS A CHILD STAR ACTOR

& ALL THE BOYS🙎‍♂️ CANT HELP BUT DROOL 🤤 OVER HER & HER BLONDE HAIRED BEAUTY 👱🏻‍♀️

THE 1 & ONLY

MS. SCARLETT INGRID JOHANSSON 👱🏻‍♀️ AKA NATASHA ROMANOFF, THE BLACK ⚫ WIDOW 👩‍🦰🕷 OF THE MCU

HAPPY 40TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 TO YOU MS. JOHANSSON 👱🏻‍♀️ & HERE'S TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME

#ScarlettJohansson #BlackWidow #NatashaRomanoff #MCU #ElitaOne #TransformersOne

[insanityclause]

Zoe Saldana stars in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3"SOURCE: MARVEL

That’s not to say Marvel — along with all studios and streamers — doesn’t face some hurdles going forward. But the nature of those obstacles for Marvel are frankly pretty obvious; it’s mostly things Marvel has overcome before; and regardless of those issues and the need to address them, Marvel is still actually doing pretty good right now even amid the problems they’ve had.

So let’s just unpack what’s really going wrong, and what it means for Marvel Studios.

The situation with actor Jonathan Majors — the star of several Marvel films and streaming shows, as the MCU’s time-traveling villain Kang the Conqueror — is that he faces multiple accusations of abuse, and is scheduled to stand trial for one recent case. After that case was initially reported, other accusations surfaced, as did previous public statements from years ago by performers who asserted accusations of abuse were already circulating about Majors.

So yes, Marvel will almost certainly recast Kang. Lucky for Marvel, the character literally exists across a near-infinite number of alternate realities where he takes different forms and changes appearance. Likewise, Marvel has had to recast characters in the past, just like lots of other franchise or TV/streaming series. This isn’t brain surgery, and the framing of this issue as something that could sink Marvel’s whole future plans is frankly nonsense.

Just one great example, Marvel could offer the role to John Boyega (who I’d argue should’ve been the top candidate for the role in the first place). Or maybe Denzel Washington as an iteration of Kang who sat out the in-fighting and collective efforts of the rest of the Kangs and grew older and wiser as he made his plans to take over. Or maybe Ray Fisher could be offered the role, if Marvel wants to poke DC and WBD while scoring a great casting option.

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Or perhaps Marvel could offer the role to Leslie Odom Jr., Lakeith Stanfield, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Daveed Diggs, Stephan James, or any number of other fantastic casting choices to take over the role of Kang in the MCU.

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The point is, the worst part of the situation with John Majors is if the allegations are true and women suffered this abuse while Hollywood ignored it. The casting “problem” is small potatoes by comparison, and is easy to solve.

So let’s look at the financials now, since a central claim to the “Marvel is in trouble�� narrative is that the studio is struggling at the box office while streaming is an unpopular mess.

At the box office, it’s true Marvel hit a high point with their back to back releases of the two-part Avengers conclusion to the Infinity Saga. The $2.79 billion from Endgame and $2 billion from Infinity War elevated the final global gross for all 22 films in that saga to more than $20 billion, for a per-film average of around $935 million.

In 2018 and 2019, the MCU put up the following numbers: Black Panther hit $1.34 billion, then Infinity War topped $2 billion, then Captain Marvel scored $1.1 billion, and then Endgame took $2.79 billion. Ant-Man and the Wasp at $622 is the only MCU film in those 24 months that failed to top $1 billion.

Since the Infinity Saga ended, Marvel’s releases have taken north of $8.1 billion across 10 movies so far, with a Multiverse Saga per film average of about $815 million. The difference between $815 million and $935 million is not insignificant, but nor is it disastrous, and it’s certainly not hard to understand why it’s happening.

The 2018 and 2019 slates for the Infinity Saga benefited from a decade of build-up, and it was those last four (out of five total) blockbusters topping $1-2 billion each that provided the final heft and resulted in an even higher per film average. We are only in the first half of the Multiverse Saga to date, and so far we haven’t had a single Avengers movie in this new saga, while as noted the Infinity Saga ended with a one-two Avengers punch good for more than $2 million per film.

And then the fact of the Covid pandemic alone accounts for most of the rest of the downturn in Marvel Studios’ average box office performance. Even during the Covid pandemic, when films were flopping or going straight to streaming/PVOD, Marvel’s three releases that performed “badly” due to the global health crisis still managed to finish between $379.7 million on the lowest end and $432 million. That’s better than the DCEU can perform even after theaters reopened and box office started its climb back toward something resembling “normal” — at least for the right films, since 2023 has been a roller coaster ride for theatrical.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania underperformed earlier this year and wound up the weakest performer of that franchise at $476 million, but Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 scored blockbuster results with $845.5 million.

Indeed, Vol. 3 is currently the fourth-highest grossing movie of 2023, both domestically and worldwide. And for the record, as disappointing as its box office was, 2023 has been so cruel to theatrical releases that Quantumania is still a top-10 box office performer.

We’ve seen one would-be blockbuster tentpole after another face-plant or otherwise disappoint, and often when a tentpole has managed a healthy box office performance it’s at a more moderate level than expected or typically enjoyed by the given franchise and/or its prior financial trajectory.

Other than Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Oppenheimer, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, nothing else truly put up top-tier results this year. Fast X topped $700 million, but is fourth film in a row from the series to suffer a decline from its predecessor’s box office gross, and the lowest box office for the franchise since 2011’s Fast Five, so it’s a mixed bag there.

Besides that, 2023 saw three films in the $500-600 millions range, four in $400 millions territory, and a couple of $300 millions.

The makeup of the top 10 this year looks like this: Barbie, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Oppenheimer, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Fast X, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Little Mermaid, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, Elemental, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Notice, there are three Marvel superhero movies in the top 10. Yes, one of them underperformed, but the point is that it seems silly to talk as if audience are in any widespread or large scale way turning away from superhero cinema, or that Marvel is somehow reeling from a downfall and have lost control.

The Marvels is currently tracking toward a shockingly low debut this weekend, with most projections pointing to a $130-$150 million global opening. Without at least average holds, the film could struggle to get past $300-400 million. On the other hand, I think tracking has proven pretty unreliable these days, and I believe a significant part of these disappointing numbers is the fact a lot of people are confusing this film with being another new Disney+ Marvel show, or think it is coming to Disney+ as a film soon. There’s also the general 2023 ongoing curse to consider.

But regardless, The Marvels should’ve been a home run sequel. While we can point to the unethical shenanigans and toxic behavior of fans and of certain organized hateful online voices obsessed with attacking women-driven movies or shows, if this film flops or underperforms rather than merely suffering a downward adjustment consistent with the genre overall (which would mean a box office for The Marvels in the $700 million range, I’d say), then it’s entirely fair to call it a big stumble for the studio.

The large-scale tainting of superhero cinema by the DCEU’s overarching failure the past several years (eight films in a row across five years, all failing to reach $400 million and averaging in the roughly $250 million range) coinciding with the Covid pandemic and theatrical downturn, coupled with a leveling off — not uncontrolled free-fall or any other hyperbolic situation — of Marvel’s must-see “event” status in the aftermath of their 11-year Infinity Saga’s conclusion (and lack of any Avengers team-ups for four years and counting) has no doubt reduced the dominance of the superhero genre and audience’s previous high-level anticipation.

But that sort of heightened “event” status is impossible for any franchise or genre to maintain, and no serious person expected the genre or any one studio’s piece of it to be some perpetual ever-increasing profit machine

Neither Marvel nor the genre in general need to treat the usual ebb and flow of primacy in entertainment as if it’s some major crisis threatening the existence and profitability of the studio or genre. That’s just the natural clickbait mentality driving entertainment journalism. We should be able to report on and assess such situations without resort to exaggerated portrayals for melodramatic purposes, nor parrot claims from those with obvious incentives and ulterior motives behind any of that sort of hyperbolic claims. We know better, but that doesn’t mean the profession behaves better, and so we get clickbait and studio drama delivered up like silly reality TV, and everyone pretends not to recognize it as the nonsense it usually is.

Marvel has to recast a major lead actor, something we’ve seen plenty of times by studios and projects, including literally by Marvel themselves on more than one occasion. Marvel’s first two films of 2023 grossed a combined $1.3 billion in box office. Even if The Marvels only does about half the box office of Captain Marvel — a vastly bigger drop than the Ant-Man franchise experienced, but let’s just use a 50% dramatic decrease to make the larger point — the MCU will have grossed a total of about $2.45 billion for 2023, an average of $815 million per film.

If that figure sounds familiar, it’s because I mentioned it earlier since it’s the per-film average for the MCU ever since the end of the Infinity Saga. Marvel settled back a bit from the high per-film average of $935 million, and for four years we’ve consistently seen this same new average level of performance for their films. Again, not insignificant as a drop, but in context it’s easier to understand and recognize as not a sudden emergency situation, and I suspect most studios would be happy if they could average north of $800 million per film on average every year.

And let’s face it, once the latest Avengers movies hit the radar, we’ll see the average per film gross go up during those years, just like always, and in the long run if the two scheduled Avengers movies play at the $2 billion level, that will actually result in an increase in the final average per-film gross for the Multiverse Saga, just as those huge Avengers box office grosses at the end of Infinity Saga seriously raised the saga’s per-film average.

This is all fairly predictable, within an obvious margin of error but not frankly too far of deviation. Which doesn’t negate the fact of the downturn in average performances, but rather puts it into less histrionic perspective as solvable problems for a still overwhelmingly successful studio that’s seeing per film averages still far superior to what any other studio can claim.

On streaming, where audience trends and preferences have likewise evolved during the Covid era, Marvel

First we got the ABC broadcast series: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and Inhumans. Want to take a moment to recall how did those all fair with audiences and critics?

Then came Netflix's slate, with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and The Punisher — half of those got mostly good or great reviews, a couple got mixed to negative reviews, and along the way different seasons of a given show had their ups and downs. Many fans and reviewers bemoaned the general lack of tie-in to the cinematic releases, a point that's amusing in light of how the same reviewers and fans completely reversed course a few years later to bemoan the fact the newer MCU shows often try to tie in to the MCU.

So next up are The Runaways and Cloak and Dagger, shows with younger casts and less direct connection to the rest of the MCU, but both were short lived and appeared on two different streaming services.

Which brings us to the MCU shows on Disney+, overseen by Marvel Studios itself and consisting of WandaVision, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Loki, What If...?, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, and Secret Invasion.

While The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and What If...? received mixed reactions, WandaVision and Loki got generally good to great reviews, as did Hawkeye and Moon Knight.

Ms. Marvel likewise received strong positive reviews, aside from resentful fans mostly motivated by racism or sexism who bashed the show (the same way angry bigoted fans harassed Brie Larson and tried to manipulate online reviews for Captain Marvel, and to this day engage in bizarre conspiracy theories pretending movies with women leads are secretly propped up by studios buying up tickets), and the same mob of boys and men perpetually upset that everything isn’t just a mirror reflecting themselves were incensed that She-Hulk dared make fun of them for being immature, bigoted, and all-around goofy.

Granted, She-Hulk did often have what looked like rushed and unfinished CGI, but it was also still miles ahead of most TV CGI and it didn’t detract from the entertainment value of the show and was generally fine. (Yes, plenty of folks just didn’t enjoy these shows, and I’m sure it’s entirely a coincidence that for many of them it always happens to be women-led shows that bother them or are declared “meh”).

Secret Wars is the most recent new MCU show (besides a new season of Loki), and it got mixed reviews that lean mostly positive but still point to trouble in the decision-making to develop the series, questions about

The point of all of this is, Marvel’s had a lot of superhero shows for a long time during the reign of the MCU, and the shows have tended to mostly get good or great reviews, while often suffering complaints of inconsistency in tie-ins vs stand-alone abilities, or iffy VFX, or questions about who is in charge and why certain decisions were made. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s a broken record of reality at this point, the sort that gets mentioned as if it’s a new development any time someone is pushing the latest version of the “sky is falling” narrative.

Not that there aren’t issues needing solutions. The budgets are too high, and Marvel — like many streamers — is discovering it’s simply not sustainable to spend $20 million or more per episode with rushed production schedules and increasingly unreasonable demands on VFX workers.

But the shows themselves are so far working and working pretty well, if you aren’t focused entirely on social media debates and media exaggerations. Most every MCU show on Disney+ has enjoyed positive reception from critics and viewers, enjoying good (and sometimes record-setting) viewership. Fixing the problems for the Marvel streaming plans is not really any more difficult than fixing the theatrical issues, because it’s easy to identify the problems, easy to see where the problems arose, and easy to see what is necessary to end those problems.

Nobody foresaw the Covid pandemic (or at least the extent of it) or the utterly shameful, failed public health response it elicited from governments and organizations that are paid and entrusted to prevent or deal with such crises. Marvel was caught off guard like every studio, Marvel suffered the same box office downturn as every studio, Marvel leaned into streaming like every studio, and Marvel is now having to make adjustments to adapt to the still-evolving environment theatrically and in streaming.

So media and fans and others in Hollywood pretending this is some shocking, Marvel-specific situation are making disingenuous claims, and they should know better. Most probably do, but the truth is more boring than doomsaying — and with everything else in the world falling apart, clickbait and hyperbole are the best way to get attention for entertainment news during a drought (caused by few new films/shows releasing, and the likelihood of strikes dragging into next year because studios put money toward bonuses, yachts, and private jets rather than pay artists, writers, and performers living wages from a fair share of the revenue they generate).

Marvel will recast Kang, they’ll reduce the number of shows and films in production at a given time, they’ll get budgets under control and allow more time for VFX work, and they’ll refocus on the approaches and measures that worked so well in the past to determine which projects to greenlight and how to return to the sense of a big shared world the Avengers have to team up to save.

Luckily, with the X-Men and Fantastic Four reboots around the corner, Marvel has a couple of big teams with lots of potential for precisely the sort of storytelling Marvel does best at the blockbuster level. They could even simply move toward a post-Secret Wars setup that lets Fantastic Four, X-Men, and a handful of other existing popular franchises carry the Marvel brand forward for a while.

We will also probably see the temporary return of Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, and Scarlett Johansson reprise their popular MCU roles for Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and/or Avengers: Secret Wars.

And looking at the upcoming slate, it’s not hard to see there’s plenty of reason to feel confident Marvel will continue to enjoy success, even if it’s at a slightly moderated level due to the myriad factors we’ve discussed, including the idea that superhero genre films are settling into a more consistent long-term level of popularity and performance from now on.

The next four years brings Deadpool 3, Captain America: Brave New World, Thunderbolts, Blade, Fantastic Four, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, and Avengers: Secret Wars, and at some point thereafter Armor Wars and the X-Men. Of these films, the two Avengers movies are likely to be blockbuster hits, as is Deadpool 3. Captain America: Brave New World is an established franchise, lacking the original series lead but with a continuing cast and brand that I think are enough to avoid any significant downturn in box office, even if we see some drop from the peak levels of the Infinity Saga.

Blade and Thunderbolts are the riskier properties here, but the former is a previously successful cinematic brand and the latter is a team-up movie including some recognizable characters and stars. Still, this is where we might see more underperformances. Fantastic Four could likewise either perform at a blockbuster levels, or might wind up in the $700 million range, but as a key property getting lots of attention and must-work oversight, I think it’ll avoid being a problem.

Armor Wars as an extension of the Iron Man movies — and possibly/probably coming after we see Robert Downey Jr. again in some Avengers action — should perform well, and X-Men is a known successful brand getting an MCU reboot and polish as a big team franchise including younger cast members, so I think it’ll at least be capable of playing at the Guardians of the Galaxy level, if done right.

This isn’t a debacle, it’s not doomsday, and Marvel isn’t in disarray. The internal difficulties they’ve faced are frankly typical and easy to identify and solve, as much as everything else we’ve discussed here. The bottom line is this: we’ve seen Marvel Studios kick off with a big hit in Iron Man and an outright flop with The Incredible Hulk, after which Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor performed at okay levels but didn’t set the box office on fire by any stretch.

We got the original Avengers movie off the strength of Iron Man and Iron Man 2, and to really help put this into perspective I’ll point out the average per film box office of Phase One was $634 million. Phase Two’s per film average was $876 million.

Marvel worked hard to build what they created, and it’s a tremendous historic success full of ups and downs that so far have ultimately maintained an impressive level of successful across a large slate of films and series. To look at this history, this math, and think Marvel Studios is in deep trouble, struggling, or never really was very good to begin with, is unreasonable and contrary to the data and any serious considerations.

[art-that-fucks-you-up-tournament]

SET ONE - ROUND THREE - MATCH ONE

"Lament for Icarus" (2020 - Miao He) / "Hubble Deep Field" (1996 - Hubble Space Telescope)

LAMENT FOR ICARUS: In the work of 2020 the angels look a little out of place...I would honestly expect aliens to tend to him...that are clearly not human beings and not some otherworldly angels dragging a dead body...What are you doing with it anyway?...Why not collect the soul? The astronaut is basically a no_name_character without a face...He/She appears more like a destroyed machine, than a dead human being... (freewilllife)

HUBBLE DEEP FIELD: This photo is kind of only incidentally art, but it is one of my favorite photographs ever. It is the visual byproduct of scientific and technological advancement. Honestly, its not even the most visually impressive Hubble (or other deep space telescope) photo. But I don't think there is anything else in the entire world which can so clearly and deeply impart the existential, incomprehensible vastness of the universe. * This photo represents a section of the night sky with "nothing" in it. There are no stars and it is outside of the plane of the Milky Way. From our view on Earth, it is less than a square inch across. Before this image, we knew of other galaxies, and their abundance was absolutely hypothesized, but no one really knew what to expect when examining such a small, seemingly empty part of the night sky. This is what they found. A tiny fraction of the night sky revealed to be teeming with thousands of galaxies, light reaching us from billions of lightyears away. To extrapolate and imagine that the entirety of the night sky is full of this, a vast blanket hidden behind our local stars. At the time, hundreds of billions of galaxies were estimated to exist. Today that estimation has risen to 2 trillion. 2 trillion potential Milky Ways. 2 trillion of the 100 billion stars that exist in our galaxy, there ever growing and evolving and expanding. I look at this image and just feel so utterly and completely small. How can you look at this and not feel atomic. There is so much of everything, and even still there is darkness, space, filled with so much light and possibilities. It represents both our loneliness as a planet, our isolation, and our connection to the universe, that there is no way we are alone, that we keep reaching out and trying to learn and understand our existence. (if you are interested in some more of the science of this, I'd recommend this Forbes article. I think its a good summary of the history and science, and provides a lot of jumping off points for further research) *disclaimer - there are and continue to be images taken with the same and improved techniques to explore space outside of the galaxy. This was, to the best of my knowledge, the first long exposure of dark space. (travelingsmithy)

(Miao He's painting is a digital piece done in 2020 as a new take on the original piece from 1898. you can find Miao He's artstation here!

The Hubble Space Telescope took this photo in 1996, and it was the first picture ever taken of deep space. "Hubble Deep Field" was originally imaged by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, a camera initially installed upon the Hubble Telescope.)