American Idol star Jordin Sparks has suffered a setback in her first attempt to make a splash on Broadway. The season six winner has been forced to step away from the stage after injuring her hip this past weekend.
The Battlefield singer took a tumble this weekend while performing in the Broadway hit In The Heights. The hip injury, while not severe, is causing Jordin enough pain that she’ll have to sit out the next few performances.
Sparks debuted in the production in August and is expected to lead the cast until November 14. Though she’ll be taking the rest of the week off to heal, the 20-year-old is expected to bounce back quickly and return by week’s end.
The star signed on to the Tony Award winning musical back in May. She joined the production for a limited 12-week engagement at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on August 19.
While speculation as to who will be sitting at the judges’ desk next season on American Idol continues to heat up, former judge Simon Cowell has his own line-up to worry about.
The cranky Cowell is preparing to launch an American version of The X Factor, his talent competition that is already a massive hit all over the world in various international versions. His first order of business is putting together a panel of judges to select and grade contestants.
Now England’s Daily Mirror reports that California Gurls singer Katy Perry is a top contender for the spot after wowing Cowell with her stint as a guest judge on the U.K. version. The guest judge spot was apparently an audition for Katy on the American show.
“Simon wants to get the judging names signed, sealed and announced within six weeks,” a show insider tells The Mirror. “He wants at least one massive American star, someone who is known globally, plus one Brit and at least one authoritative male.”
An offer has reportedly already been made . “Katy was thrilled,” says the insider, “especially by the package which is said to be a $340,000-a-show deal.”
Apparently, Perry wasn’t the only American star to be considered. The source said, “Jennifer Lopez was a serious consideration as was her husband Marc Anthony. Mariah Carey’s other half, Nick Cannon, is also in the frame. But Katy really came on Simon’s radar after the Dublin auditions. She absolutely nailed it. She was a natural.”
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Canadian tween sensation Justin Bieber’s highly anticipated Madison Square Garden debut on Tuesday was a night of great music and huge surprises.
There were some concerns earlier in the week, after the sixteen-year-old sensation was forced to cancel a concert due to illness, that he might not be able to perform. But Bieber made it to the stage and held court for a star-studded show that thrilled fans in attendance.
Musical mega-stars Miley Cyrus, Usher, Sean Kingston, Ludacris and Boyz II Men all joined Bieber for a show that was captured in 3D for the Stratford, Ontario native’s first concert film.
The chart-topper hadn’t even hit the stage when buzz for the show began to reach stratospheric levels due to a tweet the pop star sent out prior to show time: “Tonight I perform with my heroes! MSG it’s almost time.”
Cyrus joined Bieber for a duet on his song Overboard while Ludacris popped by to drop his rap on Baby. Usher, Sean Kingston and Boyz II Men also took turns delighting the crowd with their surprise appearances.
By night’s end, Bieber had once again taken to Twitter to bask in the glow of a triumphant evening. “Tonight was history!” he wrote. “MSG in NYC sold out. Me, Usher, Ludacris, Miley Cyrus and last but never least Boyz II Men! I had a great time.”
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Former pro-wrestling superstar The Rock a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson started his Hollywood career by making action films like Walking Tall before transitioning into family pictures like The Tooth Fairy.
Now the buff charmer seems to have found a project that will let him do both.
The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Johnson is set to take over for Brendan Fraser in the upcoming sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, entitled Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.
Fraser was apparently set to return for the follow-up but couldn’t agree with the pic’s producers on a shooting schedule. Now the Mummy star is out and the former squared-circle grappler is in.
Young star Josh Hutcherson will be back for the sequel. He’ll reprise his role as teen explorer Sean Anderson in a story that will be loosely based on Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island and will feature Johnson as Anderson’s mother’s new boyfriend, who somehow gets entangled in the action.
Journey will be shot and released in 3D, as was the original, which grossed over $250 million back in 2008. The production is set to begin shooting in late October, just as soon as Johnson wraps The Fast and the Furious 5.
For the second year in a row, Forbes magazine has named Shia LaBeouf the most valuable star in Hollywood. The business magazine says that when it comes to dollars spent versus dollars earned, no one can touch LaBeouf for value.
“For every $1 studios spend on the 24-year-old actor his films return an average $81 of profit,” reports the influential magazine. LaBeouf’s roles in blockbusters such as the Transformers pics and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull have made him one of the biggest names in Hollywood, while his asking price has yet to approach that of long-time stars like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise.
Second place on the list goes to Alice in Wonderland’s Anne Hathaway. Forbes says that it’s because women in Hollywood tend to earn less than their male counterparts that half of the top 10 names on the list are female.
To make the list, Forbes first picked the top 36 moneymakers in Tinsel Town who have starred in at least three movies in the past five years. The mag then compared what the stars were paid versus what their movies made at the box office to determine how much those stars are worth.
Following Hathaway to round out the top five are Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, the invincible Iron Man Robert Downey Jr., and Cate Blanchett. A surprise in sixth place was The Switch’s Jennifer Aniston.
Though Aniston’s salary doesn’t approach that of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars, pics like The Bounty Hunter do well enough to make her name a valuable addition to the marquee.
Here are the top ten actors and their return on investment numbers:
1. Shia LaBeouf ($81)
2. Anne Hathaway ($64)
3. Daniel Radcliffe ($61)
4. Robert Downey Jr. ($33)
5. Cate Blanchett ($27)
6. Jennifer Aniston ($21)
7. Meryl Streep ($21)
8. Johnny Depp ($18)
9. Nicolas Cage ($17)
10. Sarah Jessica Parker ($17)
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Team Jacob may need to break out the pom-poms to support their hunk if a California RV dealer gets his wish. The truck salesman has declared that he wants to face-off against Twilight star Taylor Lautner in a push-up contest.
The challenge by Brent McMahon, owner of McMahon’s RVs in Irvine, California, is intended to settle a lawsuit filed against him by the 18-year-old dreamboat. Cinematical reports that the contest would be for the $40,000 for which Lautner has sued McMahon.
The legal dispute began when Lautner accused the dealer of failing to provide the $300,000 dressing room trailer he’d ordered. When the RV did show up, the teen idol was disappointed to find it wasn’t made to his specifications. He reportedly claimed to have suffered “emotional distress.”
After Lautner filed suit for $40,000, McMahon responded by issuing the push-up challenge. McMahon says if the buff Lautner wins, he’ll give the full 40 grand as a donation to the Children’s Hospital of Orange County.
The move is clearly something of a publicity stunt and Lautner’s legal team wasn’t thrilled with what they are calling a “facetious” suggestion. Nonetheless, the Twilighter’s camp has indicated that if the money goes to the hospital, the suit could be dropped.
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Black Crowes rocker Chris Robinson has bashed country sweetheart Taylor Swift, seemingly without provocation.
According to Starpulse, Robinson was speaking to Nylon Guys magazine when he ripped into 20-year-old Swift. He said, “I find it embarrassing that adults are like, ‘Taylor Swift is very talented.’ She’s not. She might be cute, but she’s horrible.”
The rocker apparently said he doesn’t enjoy most contemporary music because it’s overproduced on computers and lacks depth. He explains, “They have stylists who dress them, they make records with producers who play a chord into the computer and it all comes out the same… When you have computers doing it all for you… there’s no individuality. Singing isn’t always about being on key; it’s about emotionality.”
Robinson and the Black Crowes split up in 2002 and reunited in 2005 — during the hiatus, he worked on solo projects. The band released an acoustic album, Croweology, on August 3.
Taylor just released the video for the single, Mine, from her upcoming album, Speak Now.
It’s been almost a year since Kanye West stormed the stage at the MTV VMAs to interrupt Taylor’s Best Video acceptance speech and inform the audience that, in his opinion, Beyonce had (say it with us) “one of the best videos of all time…of ALL TIME!”
Edmonton officials are mad at Lady Gaga after she made light of the accidental defacement of a sign at Rexall Place, posting it on her Twitter page. But could the exposure be a good thing?
According to CTV, the Alejandro hitmaker spotted the sign while her crew was setting up at Rexall Place for her sold out concert on Friday, August 27. The sign bore the words “Oil Country” in reference to Edmonton’s reputation as the “Oil Capital of Canada.” Unfortunately, the “o” in “country” had been removed to make room for a spotlight. So…
Gaga posted the image with the caption “Holy mother of laughter.” Edmonton’s mayor Stephen Mandel didn’t see the humour and, according to CTV, said: “Some things are disgusting and you shouldn’t have to say they’re disgusting. I think it demeans them more than anything else.”
But not everyone is so outraged. And CTV reports that some see the exposure as a good thing for the Western city. Gaga was recently named one of Time magazine’s most influential artists and has more followers on Twitter than any living person.
Walter Schwabe, who heads Fusedlogic, a social media engagement firm, told CTV, “I looked at the picture recently and it’s just topped 170,000 views and so most marketing firms would look at that and go, ‘wow that’s a lot of exposure’.”
“Lady Gaga has the highest amount of followers on twitter….She’s got an audience, and it’s an audience you need to respect.”
Lindsay Lohan is ready to fight. For her career.
The troubled young Hollywood starlet says that she knows she’s made mistakes but that she is “a damn good actress” who wants a return to the incredible career she once had.
“I want my career back,” LiLo tells Vanity Fair in the current issue of the magazine. “I know that I’m a damn good actress, and it’s been my passion since I was a child, and I know that when I care about something, I put 100% and more into it.”
The interview took place last month, just before the 24-year-old star headed off to the big house to do her time stemming from parole violations that followed a 2007 DUI arrest.
USA Today and the New York Post published excerpts from the interview on Tuesday. In them, Lohan admits to her irresponsibility, but says that a lack of structure in her life led to her making a lot of bad choices.
“I was irresponsible,” she admits. “I didn’t have any structure…I think a lot of it was because when I was doing my first slew of movies, it was very go-go, and I had a lot of responsibility, and I think just the second I didn’t have [structure] anymore — I was 18, 19 — with a ton of money.”
Lohan also takes a swipe at her infamous father, tabloid magnet and notorious meddler Michael Lohan. “I think if anyone should be looked at medically it’s him,” she says. “He has such a big chemical imbalance at this point because of all the things he’s done to himself.”
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A lot of people, it would be safe to say, prefer to see George Clooney in front of the camera than behind it. However, it’s starting to seem as though the Hollywood superstar prefers things the other way around.
Though he continues to star in big budget, high profile films like the upcoming The American, the Ocean’s 11 star is also fond of directing films such as his 2005 hit Good Night, and Good Luck.
Now New York Magazine’s Vulture reports that Clooney is preparing to shoot Farragut North, an adaptation of an off-Broadway play about political insiders working on a presidential campaign.
Clooney is reportedly reaching out to his Hollywood friends to cast the project with such top-of-the-line talent as Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti and Star Trek’s Chris Pine. Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio were also both set to join the cast until their schedules got in the way.
The formerER doc is reportedly also trying to recruit Evan Rachel Wood and Marisa Tomei to join the project.
Beau Willimon, a former Democratic party operative who worked on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential bid, wrote the original play and the screenplay based on his experiences on the campaign trail.
Farragut North, which will be financed independently, is set to begin shooting in February.
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