Cooper Noriega, a popular TikTok creator who had more than 1.7 million followers on that app, died on Thursday, in Burbank, Calif. He was 19 and his demise drew an outpouring of grief across social media.
25.05.2022 - 21:21 / deadline.com
Inspiration can come from the most unanticipated places, like walking the dog in the park or buying a soft pretzel at the mall. For Morgan Cooper, it came in 2019 while driving down Route 71 in Kansas City, Missouri. Heading home after shooting a low-budget beauty commercial, Cooper concocted a plan to turn ’90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air into a gritty short film, with Will Smith’s iconic character reimagined as an unlucky Philly teen who gets caught with a gun during a playground brawl. Rather than face a certain future behind bars, his Uncle Phil works some attorney magic and arranges for Will to start over in the wealthy Southern California neighborhood where he would attend an elite private school.
Filmed in eight days with hometown actors and locations in Kansas City and Burbank, the three-and-a-half-minute potboiler was never meant to serve as a grassroots resume for a gig in Hollywood; Morgan just wanted to have some fun. “I built my career on staying focused on what I could control, and not getting too fixated on the result,” recalls Cooper, now 30. “But I knew the idea was special. I knew it had immense potential to be big.”
Within a day of uploading the film to YouTube, Cooper heard from Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook production company, which used it as the basis for Peacock’s Bel-Air—now the most streamed original series on the streamer. “Honestly, I’m not a fan of reboots,” says Cooper, who was named an executive producer and director on the series that earned an immediate two-season pickup. “But when there is an honest reimagined take, like The Dark Knight, now that’s somebody taking something and really making it his own. There aren’t a ton of things like that that come from a really sincere
Cooper Noriega, a popular TikTok creator who had more than 1.7 million followers on that app, died on Thursday, in Burbank, Calif. He was 19 and his demise drew an outpouring of grief across social media.
Gone too young. TikTok star Cooper Noriega has died, Us Weekly confirms. He was 19.
Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and MediaNo mere documentary can capture the turbulent life story of “America’s mayor.”In order to do justice to the rise and fall of Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani, director Jed Rothstein had to invent a new genre. The result, “Rudy! A Documusical,” weaves in musical performances by Broadway actors with archival footage from Giuliani’s metamorphosis from top prosecutor to New York City mayor and hero of 9/11 to his sad final act as Donald Trump’s cable news henchman and chief purveyor of election lies.“Rudy is this very unique and mercurial character,” says Rothstein.
The first photos from Bradley Cooper’s “A Star is Born” follow-up are here.
Andy Dick will not be charged in connection with an alleged sexual battery in California after law enforcement said the alleged victim stopped cooperating with an investigation, Fox News Digital has learned. "At this point, the victim is not cooperating with the investigation. So that obviously makes it difficult to continue to investigate the case," a spokesperson for the Orange County Sheriff said Friday.
When the Cannes Film Festival lineup was announced on April 14, Twitter positively exploded with excitement over the news that Lee Ji-eun would make her Riviera debut with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker in Competition. The Korean actress, singer and songwriter—popularly known as IU—has a legion of fans, including 26 million followers on Instagram, and has been described as a national treasure at home. She may now be well poised for crossover success with her first commercial film.
The emergence of Isabel May as the lead in Taylor Sheridan’s frontier epic series 1883 is such an unlikely discovery story that it still has the actress trying to come to grips with a star-making turn that should factor in the Emmy race.
Courtney Love is backtracking after weighing in on the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation lawsuit after Love said some videos in which she commented on the public trial appeared to "accidentally" leak online. In a recent social media post shared to Instagram on Saturday, Love, 57, is seen walking her dog in a short video clip, however, it’s what the Hole frontwoman wrote in the post’s lengthy caption that caught the attention of her followers.
Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs have been around the media business long enough to resist the temptation to overreact to Netflix’s latest travails. Even though their emerging investment firm, Candle Media, owns two key Netflix suppliers—CoComelon production company Moonbug Entertainment and Fauda producer Faraway Road—they don’t seem too concerned that Netflix may topple from its perch. (And at press time, the previously unthinkable scenario has become a lot more, well, thinkable.)
Special purpose acquisition companies—known as SPACs—have been all the rage in the world of investment for the last two years, and they’ve made a mark in the media space, but is the trend slowing down?
Long before he became a premier storyteller for Paramount+, Taylor Sheridan was a journeyman actor who struggled to support his family. The older he got, the more he found himself descending on the call sheet. What should have been a welcome burst of momentum — playing Deputy Chief David Hale on Sons of Anarchy — turned out to be the final dose of humiliation that led him to change horses. An ask for a decent raise was the thing that compelled Sheridan to begin writing scripts. Sheridan was several seasons into playing what he believed to be a pivotal role in the SAMCRO universe, but the studio suits didn’t seem to share his assessment.
The rise of streamer content has created anxiety for talent and their reps, because of models that require ownership of a project in perpetuity. Because product starts on a streaming site and then never leaves, there is no chance of backend windfalls. Just look at the creators and cast of Squid Game to see what that can mean: a billion-dollar property for Netflix, embarrassingly tiny paydays for the artists who made it, and little hope of making up the shortfall in subsequent seasons.
It has been nearly two years since a group of the best and brightest young agents and partners told their bosses they were stepping away from their million-dollar salaries to follow former eOne strategy officer and CAA television veteran Peter Micelli and be the founding partners of a new management company, Range Media Partners.
With the motion picture business shifting almost exclusively to franchises over the past decades, screenwriters are increasingly put through the wringer as they find themselves replaced and replaced again throughout protracted development processes. It’s a punishing road that can be demoralizing for writers who have often spent months pitching for an open writing assignment. But as more and more streamers look to add content to their film slates, screenwriters are finding new opportunities to flip the script.
If Abigail Disney had listened to her financial advisers growing up, the heiress would have concentrated on one thing above all else: getting even richer.
Sentencing has been set for June 1, with Cooper facing up to 12 years in prison. He is being held without bail after the judge called him a flight risk. Cooper has been free on a $5-million bond.
In 2021, the Cannes film festival programmed movies from an unprecedented number of women and people of color, more than in any other year. Director Julia Ducournau won the Palme d’Or for her film Titane, becoming only the second woman to do so. This win gave people hope that maybe change was coming from the white, male-dominated festival.
A few years ago, as filmmaker Roger Ross Williams contemplated founding his own production company, he experienced a Field of Dreams kind of vision: “If you build it, they will come.”
When Marina Ovsyannikova stormed the live broadcast of Russia’s flagship news program on March 14 to protest Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it was a valiant moment that quickly reverberated across the world. The journalist and editor spent six seconds holding a sign saying, “No war, they are lying to you,” on the Kremlin-controlled TV Channel One where she worked.