LOS ANGELES: Lucasfilm announced plans Tuesday for a new series of “Star Wars” films made by the team behind “Game of Thrones,” as it seeks to build on the lucrative sci-fi franchise.
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the smash-hit, Emmy Award-winning television series, will write and produce new films that are separate from the main Skywalker saga and the trilogy being developed by Rian Johnson, writer-director of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”
“David and Dan are some of the best storytellers working today,” Kathleen Kennedy, president of Lucasfilm, said in a statement.
“Their command of complex characters, depth of story and richness of mythology will break new ground and boldly push ‘Star Wars’ in ways I find incredibly exciting.”
Benioff and Weiss released a joint statement saying they had been dreaming of traveling to “a galaxy far, far away” since seeing the original movie in 1977.
“We are honored by the opportunity, a little terrified by the responsibility, and so excited to get started as soon as the final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ is complete,” they said.
Lucasfilm did not say how many movies would comprise the new series or announce release dates.
Disney boss Bob Iger said when Johnson’s trilogy was announced in November the “Star Wars” franchise had been “exceeding expectations” since the entertainment giant acquired Lucasfilm in 2012.
The two films from the main series under Disney’s charge — “The Force Awakens” (2015) and “The Last Jedi” (2017) — are among the top ten highest grossing movies of all time, with $2 billion and $1.3 billion respectively.
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (2016), the first of three scheduled spin-off movies, also made more than $1 billion, raising hopes for the success of the next, “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which opens in May.
Californian filmmaker George Lucas was 33 when he prepared to release his third feature — a far-fetched, slightly corny intergalactic saga of good and evil starring a sulky farm boy with daddy issues.
“Star Wars” has since grown into the most lucrative and influential movie franchise of all time, ingrained in a geek culture that gave rise to Silicon Valley and disruptive technologies.
The announcement sparked excitement — and some grumbling — among fans of “Game of Thrones,” one of the most popular and talked-about cable shows in history, which begins its final, six-episode season in 2019.
“I can’t wait for a graphic C-3PO/R2-D2 sex scene in a galaxy far, far away,” joked one Twitter user, a reference to the frequent racy love scenes and nudity for which “Thrones” has become infamous.
But not everyone was thrilled by the announcement, which once again underscored the lack of female or ethnic minority directors in the “Star Wars” universe, a marked contrast to the diversity Lucasfilm has promoted in front of camera.
“Still no sign of ever seeing any part of a galaxy long time ago and far, far away as conceived of by a woman or person of color,” tweeted film executive Franklin Leonard, who founded The Black List, a yearly publication featuring Hollywood’s most popular unproduced screenplays.
The announcement came as the Walt Disney Company issued its first earnings report since announcing six weeks ago that it would buy much of rival studio Fox’s film and television assets in a $52 billion deal.
The California-based entertainment giant reported first-quarter earnings — up to December 30 — of $1.89 per share, a 22 percent on-year rise, and revenue of $15.4 billion, just shy of the $15.5 billion analysts had been predicting.
“We’re excited about what lies ahead, with a robust film slate, the launch of our ESPN direct-to-consumer business, new investments in our theme parks, and our pending acquisition of Twenty-First Century Fox,” said Iger.
‘Game of Thrones’ creators to make new ‘Star Wars’ films
‘Game of Thrones’ creators to make new ‘Star Wars’ films
Rapper Werenoi, France’s biggest-selling music artist in recent years, dies at age 31
PARIS: Rapper Werenoi, France’s biggest-selling music artist in recent years, has died at the age of 31, his producer and record company said.
The artist, whose real name was Jérémy Bana Owona, was the number 1 album seller in France in 2023 and 2024 according to the ranking of the National Union of Phonographic Industry, which includes in-store and e-commerce sales as well as plays on streaming services.
“It’s with immense sadness that we’ve learned of Werenoi’s passing,” his record company Believe said on Instagram. “All our thoughts are with his family, loved ones, his team and everyone who knew him.”
“Rest in peace my brother, I love you,” his producer Babs posted on X.
French media report Werenoi died early Saturday in a Paris hospital. The cause of his death has not been made public.
Werenoi first became known to the French public in 2021 when he posted his song “Guadalajara” on YouTube and it was viewed hundreds of thousand times.
He released three albums, “Carré” in 2023, “Pyramide” the next year and “Diamant Noir” last month, making him one of the biggest names in French rap.
Several French rappers posted tributes on social media. French-Malian pop star Aya Nakamura, who featured on his second album, wrote : “Rest in peace my dude. A news that saddens me and courage to the loved ones especially.”
“He made a difference for the quality of his songs, his melodies and his punchlines,” singer Pascal Obispo, who had accompanied Werenoi on the piano at a 2023 Paris concert, told French newspaper Le Parisien.
Adidas, Puma family feud to be turned into TV series
CANNES: The bitter brotherly feud that sparked the creation of sports-shoe brands Adidas and Puma in the same small German town in the 1940s is to be turned into a television series with the help of family archives, its producers announced Sunday.
Hollywood-based film producer No Fat Ego is backing the project, which has the blessing of the family behind the Adidas empire founded by Adolf “Adi” Dassler.
It will delve into one of the most fascinating fraternal blow-ups in corporate history, which pitted Adi against his brother Rudolf (“Rudi“) who went on to create rival Puma.
The two men jointly ran a family-owned footwear company before falling out during World War II, with their post-conflict animus splitting their town of Herzogenaurach to this day.
Scriptwriter Mark Williams, behind the hit Netflix series “Ozark,” has been hired to lead the project and is currently going through Dassler family home videos and memorabilia to work on the story.
“Everybody knows the brands, but the story behind them is something we don’t really fully know,” Williams told AFP at the Cannes film festival.
One of the most sensitive areas — particularly for the reputations of the multi-billion-dollar footwear companies today — will be how the brothers are portrayed during the war period.
Both became members of the Nazi party in the 1930s, as was customary for the business elite at the time.
Rudi went to fight, however, and was arrested by Allied forces on his return to a defeated Germany.
“Adi stayed home and tried to keep the company alive,” Williams added.
Their factory was seized as part of the war effort and converted into a munitions plant.
The series promises to be a “Succession-type drama between the family” set over several generations, Williams explained, comparing it to the earlier hit HBO series.
The head of No Fat Ego, Niels Juul, who has produced Martin Scorsese’s most recent movies, said he was originally drawn to the story after learning about Adidas’s collaboration with legendary black American runner Jesse Owens.
Partly thanks to Adidas’s innovative spiked shoes, Owens became one of the stars of the 1936 Berlin Olympics which Hitler had hoped would showcase white German supremacy.
No Fat Ego intends to develop the series with full editorial independence before offering it to streaming platforms.
“We want to have the creative control, and Mark has to have absolute silence and quiet to do what he does,” Juul told AFP.
Iraq’s first filmmaker in Cannes says sanctions no piece of cake
CANNES: Hasan Hadi, the first filmmaker from Iraq to be selected for the prestigious Cannes Festival, said economic embargoes like those imposed in his childhood under Saddam Hussein did not work.
“Sanctions empower dictators,” he told AFP, as they concentrate scant resources in their hands and only make them “more brutal.”
“In the history of the world, there was no one time when they (imposed) sanctions and the president couldn’t eat.”
Hadi’s first feature film, “The President’s Cake,” has received very good reviews since premiering Friday in the Directors’ Fortnight section.
Cinema publication Deadline said it was “head and shoulders above” some of the films in the running for the festival’s Palme d’Or top prize, and “could turn out to be Iraq’s first nominee for an Oscar.”
The film follows nine-year-old Lamia after she has the misfortune of being picked by her school teacher to bake the class a cake for the president’s birthday, or be denounced for disloyalty.
It is the early 1990s, the country is under crippling UN sanctions. She and her grandmother — with whom she shares a reed home in Iraq’s southern marshlands — can barely afford to eat.
As they set off into town to hunt down unaffordable ingredients, with Lamia’s pet cockerel and their last meagre belongings to sell, the film plunges into the social reality — and everyday petty corruption — of 1990s Iraq.
The near-total trade and financial embargo imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait “demolished the moral fabric of society,” Hadi said.
It sent the country “hundreds of years back.”
The filmmaker said he did not taste cake until he was in his early teens, after the US-led invasion in 2003 toppled Saddam and sanctions were lifted.
Instead, with processed sugar and eggs out of reach, there was “date cake” — whose main ingredient was squished dates, sometimes with a candle on top.
“As a kid you’re sad that you’re not getting your cake,” he said. But as you grow up, you realize what your parents must have gone through to put food on the table.
“Not only my family, but all of these people had to sell literally everything,” he said. “There were people that were even selling their door frames.”
Hadi and his team shot the film entirely in Iraq.
It beautifully captures the ancient wetlands in the south of the country, listed as a World Heritage Site since 2016 and reputedly the home of the biblical Garden of Eden.
Saddam drained them in the 1990s, trying to flush out rebels hiding in the reeds.
But after the US-led invasion, authorities opened up the valves and the wetlands flourished again — even if they are now threatened by climate change.
Hadi said he chose the location partly to make the point that “the marshes stayed and Saddam went away.”
To re-create the Iraq of his youth, Hadi and his crew paid close attention to detail, amassing vintage clothes and bringing a barber on set to trim the hair and moustaches of everyone down to the extras.
They scouted out the best locations, shooting one scene in a small eatery reputed to have been frequented by Saddam himself.
They chose non-actors to play ordinary Iraqis under the ever-present eyes of the president in posters, pictures frames and murals.
Hadi said hearing US President Donald Trump say recently that he planned to lift sanctions on Syria after Islamists toppled president Bashar Assad last year was “amazing.”
“I don’t think the sanctions helped in any way to get rid of Bashar, but definitely empowered him to kill more people, and torture more people,” he said.
Austria wins Eurovision crown with JJ’s song Wasted Love
BASEL, Switzerland: Austria won the Eurovision Song Contest 2025 in Swiss host city Basel on Saturday, with the country’s first victory since bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst won in 2014.
Operatic singer JJ won ahead of Israel in the world’s biggest music competition, which was watched by more than 160 million people across the world.
The win was Austria’s third in the competition, following Conchita’s success and Udo Juergens’ victory in 1966.
JJ, a 24-year-old from Vienna, combined elements of opera, techno and high-pitched vocals in his song Wasted Love, winning the hearts of the professional juries and telephone voters.
Switzerland won the right to host Eurovision after Swiss rapper and singer Nemo won last year’s contest in Malmo, Sweden.
Fans traveled from across Europe and beyond to Basel, with 100,000 people attending Eurovision events in the city, including the final.
Eurovision, which stresses its political neutrality, has also faced controversy again this year due to the war in Gaza.
Israel’s entrant, Yuval Raphael, was at the Nova music festival during the October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
Pro-Palestinian groups urged the European Broadcasting Union to exclude Israel over Gaza, where more than 50,000 people have been killed in the ensuing offensive by Israel, according to local health officials.
Around 200 protesters mounted a demonstration in Basel on Saturday evening.
Spanish public broadcaster RTVE also showed a message before the start of the Eurovision show saying “When human rights are at stake, silence is not an option. Peace and Justice for Palestine.”
Man badly hurt by falling palm tree at Cannes film festival
- The Asian man, believed to have been attending the festival, was badly injured
- A sudden gust of wind brought the tree down
CANNES: A man was seriously hurt after a palm tree fell onto him at the Cannes film festival on Saturday.
The Asian man, believed to have been attending the festival, was badly injured, firemen who treated him at the scene said.
A sudden gust of wind brought the tree down near the Palais des Festivals on the Croisette esplanade overlooking the Mediterranean, an AFP journalist at the scene said.
The accident happened as the American movie “Eddington,” starring Joaquin Phoenix, Emma Stone and Pedro Pascal was being shown.
The Croisette was crowded with festivalgoers when the tree fell, witnesses said.
“There was a terrible gust of wind and I heard a cry,” said Marthy Fink from Luxembourg.
