• Sean "Diddy" Combs is on trial for racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
• 50 Cent used the trail as an opportunity to reignite their decadeslong feud.
• On Wednesday, 50 Cent made fun of Diddy and Jay-Z's friendship.

With Sean "Diddy" Combs on trial over charges including racketeering and sex trafficking, 50 Cent has been gleefully fanning the flames of their two decadeslong feud.

The trial is separate to a civil lawsuit filed by Diddy's ex partner Cassie in November 2023, accusing him of rape, sexual assault, and human trafficking (which she said was settled for $20 million). Diddy has denied the allegations.

The beef between the two rappers kicked off publicly in 2006 when 50 Cent released a diss track called "The Bomb," which accused Diddy of knowing who shot and killed The Notorious B.I.G. in 1997.

Since then, the pair have taken numerous jabs at one another. In 2010, Diddy described 50 Cent as a "hating ass crap" after he became the manager of Rick Ross in 2009 — another rapper who 50 Cent had beef with.

Here are some key moments from the beef, and who else has become tangled up in it.

50 Cent joked about Diddy and Jay-Z's friendship

On Wednesday, 50 Cent shared an Instagram post showing photos of Jay-Z and Diddy over the years.

"Friends till the end, Jay you still there? We blew up Kid cudi's car to show him who's the BOSS! LOL," 50 Cent wrote in the caption speaking as Diddy.

Cassie's 2023 lawsuit against Diddy claimed that he was responsible for blowing up Kid Cudi's car. In her testimony during Diddy's ongoing trial, Cassie said she admitted to Diddy she cheated on him with Kid Cudi in 2011.

50 Cent commissioned a documentary about Diddy soon after Cassie filed her lawsuit

After Cassie filed her November 2023 lawsuit, by December 50 Cent's production company had started work on a documentary about the allegations.

50 Cent later posted a clip from the documentary featuring the Bad Boy Records rapper Mark Curry, alleging that Diddy spiked girls' drinks at parties.

50 Cent confirmed to Variety in September 2024 that he's making the documentary for Netflix. It's unclear when it will be released.

A representative from Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about the documentary.

50 Cent taunted Diddy when he was arrested

When the details of a federal indictment emerged, alleging that law enforcement seized narcotics and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil and lubricant during raids on Diddy's mansions in March 2024, 50 Cent wasn't silent for long.

He wrote on X: "Here I am keeping good company with @DrewBarrymoreTV and I don't have 1,000 bottles of lube at the house."

50 Cent made fun of Diddy after the authorities raided his mansions

50 Cent also taunted Diddy when federal officers raided his properties. In a since-deleted Instagram post from March 2024, he shared a screenshot of a TMZ article about the raids and wrote: "Now it's not Diddy do it, it's Diddy Done. They don't come like that unless they got a case."

Page Six reported at the time that 50 Cent also posted a screenshot of Diddy's two sons, Justin and King Combs, in handcuffs, but that post was also deleted.

In the caption, Page Six reported he wrote: "Shit just got real. The Fed's in all the cribs, damn they got the kids in cuffs."

In December 2024, Diddy posted a statement on X that read: "Let me be absolutely clear: I did not do any of the awful things being alleged. I will fight for my name, my family, and for the truth."

Representatives for 50 Cent and Diddy did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

• The rights to "Sinners" will revert to the film's director, Ryan Coogler, in 2050.
• Veteran entertainment and technology attorney Jonathan Handel explained how Coogler could cash in.
• "He's definitely betting that it will have value in 25 years," Handel said.

After years of making films based on existing IP like Marvel comics and Apollo Creed, Ryan Coogler finally made an original movie. It could pay dividends for the rest of his life.

The unique terms of Coogler's deal with Warner Bros. for his genre-bending vampire movie "Sinners" give the 38-year-old filmmaker ownership of the movie in 25 years, putting him in rare company with the likes of auteurs like Jim Jarmusch and Quentin Tarantino, both of whom have landed similar deals.

And with "Sinners" becoming a box office sensation — it's brought in over $200 million domestically, making it the second-highest-grossing North American release in 2025 — Coogler could have his hands under a moneymaking faucet.

"He's making a lot of money off it now and has the potential to make money 25 years from now through ownership," Jonathan Handel, a veteran entertainment and technology attorney with the law firm Feig Finkel, told Business Insider. "But he's rolling the dice."

Will that gamble pay off, and how, exactly, could Coogler make or lose money on the deal?

Though Handel hasn't seen the contract between Coogler and Warner Bros., he used his decades of experience negotiating contracts for directors and stars to walk us through some scenarios to explain what could happen when Coogler regains the rights to "Sinners."

Deals like Coogler's come with creative control — but they're not a blank check

There are various ways a filmmaker can come to own their own work. Some use a tactic known as a "negative pickup," in which the filmmaker finds the financing and makes the movie on their own, then sells the finished project to a studio, which distributes it and does the marketing.

M. Night Shyamalan did this with Universal for the 2019 thriller "Glass," and most recently, Francis Ford Coppola did it with Lionsgate for "Megalopolis" (the difference between the two is that Coppola retained copyright of the movie).

Others self-distribute, side-stepping a studio or distributor and footing the bill for the entire release. For instance, Steven Soderbergh launched Fingerprint Releasing for the run of his 2017 heist movie "Logan Lucky," while Taylor Swift made deals directly with theater chains for the release of her Eras Tour concert movie in 2023.

But it's exceedingly rare to get a studio to agree to give the rights of one of its movies back to the filmmaker after some period of time.

Many of the auteurs who enjoy this perk got their start on the independent film scene, where the practice was more common. Jim Jarmusch has pushed to own most of his films, while Quentin Tarantino owns "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" because he made a deal with Sony that grandfathered him into the rights deal he'd had since the "Pulp Fiction" days with Harvey Weinstein at Miramax Films.

Creatively, the deal was something Coogler said he needed. He previously told Business Insider that his only motivation for the deal was to emphasize the film's themes of Black ownership, as the two main characters, both played by Michael B. Jordan, set out to own a juke joint in the Jim Crow South before things take a bloody turn.

Handel noted that by pushing for ownership in 2050, Coogler is literally and symbolically betting on himself, and the prospect that "Sinners" will still be in the public consciousness two-plus decades from now.

"Coogler would have gotten more money up front if he hadn't pushed for ownership," he said. "You have to give something to get something in negotiation. So he's definitely betting that it will have value in 25 years."

Coogler could score a major licensing deal if new technology changes how we consume movies after 2050

According to Handel, Coogler could really cash in if there's a major shift in the way we watch movies after he regains the rights to "Sinners."

For example, if we suddenly watch movies on an immersive 3D platform and "Sinners" is owned by Coogler, he could earn millions by landing licensing agreements to view the film in that format.

However, if that technology becomes the streaming of tomorrow before the rights to "Sinners" revert to Coogler in 25 years, the director could miss out, either because Warner Bros. could choose not to convert the title to that platform, or because of something called a "holdback," in which terms are agreed upon in which Coogler can't exercise aspects of the copyright for a certain period of time.

"In this instance, WB might do a holdback where there can be no new version created within five years of the rights reverting," Handel said.

Though this is only a hypothetical, Handel said it's an example of the level of complexity that could be in the contract Warner Bros. and Coogler signed.

Even if Coogler doesn't have the rights to 'Sinners' sequels, he could still cash in

The ending of "Sinners" hints at a potential franchise, and 25 years from now, Coogler would be in control to do whatever he wants in building that out. But chances are, Warner Bros. would want a sequel — maybe even more than one — a lot sooner than 2050.

When that moment comes, a lot of questions about payout will depend on who has the sequel rights. Reps for Coogler and Warner Bros. did not respond to a request for comment about who holds those rights.

Even if Coogler doesn't have the rights to the sequels, Handel said he would still benefit. Coogler would still presumably have profit participation on any sequels, as he did on the first movie, and if Warner Bros. wanted to do any kind of box set 25 years from now, they would have to make a deal with Coogler to have the first movie involved.

"He's got the upper hand, because if I'm Warners and I own the other pictures, I have to go to Ryan and do a deal with him," Handel said.

So, how much money could Coogler make once the "Sinners" rights revert to him? Reports from Matthew Belloni at Puck put that figure at about $1 million a year, based on the predictions of Hollywood insiders who focus on movie libraries and licensing deals. But Handel isn't confident that any figure can be put on the deal as of now.

"To contend that you can make a prediction like that is fantasy land," he told BI, noting that there are too many unknown variables to predict what Coogler could earn from "Sinners" 25 years in the future.

What he is sure of is that Coogler's deal has left the rest of Hollywood interested and intrigued: "The high-level directors are having conversations with their representatives about this."

• Patricia Clarkson made her screen debut in the hit 1987 movie "The Untouchables."
• Director Brian De Palma decided to extend Clarkson's role, which meant she got paid more.
• "That extra month helped me out," Clarkson said. "I mean, I had student loans to pay."

Brian De Palma knew Patricia Clarkson had potential — and one small decision he made ended up being "a godsend" to her in her early career.

As a recent graduate of Yale School of Drama with just one Broadway credit to her name, Clarkson came to De Palma's hit 1987 crime thriller "The Untouchables" with little experience but a lot of potential. So De Palma decided to extend Clarkson's small role playing Catherine Ness, the wife of Kevin Costner's character Eliot Ness, to add a shot of her character to the film's climactic courtroom scene.

"I was set to be done, and Brian decided that I had to be in the courtroom scene," Clarkson told BI. "So he told Paramount, 'Look, I guess we'll have to hold Patti for a month because we're not shooting the courtroom for another month.'"

At the time, Clarkson was making scale — the minimum rate a union actor can be paid on a set (she said the rate at the time was "maybe $1,000"). Even so, De Palma extending her work ended up being "a godsend."

"That extra month helped me out," Clarkson said. "I mean, I had student loans to pay, I was living in New York. It was a saving grace, and it was all because of Brian De Palma."

Clarkson would find acclaim in the decades that followed, earning two Emmy wins playing Sarah O'Connor on the HBO series "Six Feet Under," receiving an Oscar nomination for "Pieces of April," and starring in a slew of memorable movies ranging from "Shutter Island" to "Easy A." Her new movie, "Lilly," a biopic about the activist Lilly Ledbetter, is in theaters now.

By the mid-1990s, Patricia Clarkson's career had reached new heights — literally.

"I got flown first class to Vancouver!" Clarkson, 65, recalled to Business Insider of shooting the 1995 fantasy adventure movie "Jumanji." "Things were going well."

A bigger paycheck for a small role in a blockbuster starring Robin Williams was Clarkson's first real taste of being in the big leagues, something she'd dutifully worked towards since her breakout role as the wife of Kevin Costner's character Eliot Ness in Brian De Palma's 1987 hit "The Untouchables."

Life was good — until suddenly, it wasn't. By 1997, the worked had dried up.

"I was starting to struggle," Clarkson said. "That's when 'High Art' came into my life and changed everything."

The independent romantic drama, in which Clarkson played Greta, the German heroin-addicted girlfriend of photographer Lucy (Ally Sheedy), who's entangled in a love affair, was the darling of the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. The role opened up the world of independent film to Clarkson, garnering her her first nomination for an Independent Spirit Award and paving the way for her to become a fixture in indie film for the rest of her career.

Since then, Clarkson has become one of the most dependable character actors on both the big and small screens. She won two Emmys playing Sarah O'Connor on the acclaimed HBO series "Six Feet Under," earned an Oscar nomination for "Pieces of April," and scared the hell out of audiences in Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" (and the HBO miniseries "Sharp Objects").

Now, she's returning to her indie roots playing the eponymous lead in "Lilly," a biopic on Lilly Ledbetter, whose landmark win against her employer, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co., for gender pay discrimination was a major moment in the fight for fair and equal pay in America.

"What was important to me was to see this woman as just an ordinary mother and woman who kind of rises from the ashes," Clarkson said of the role.

Thanks to independent film, Clarkson has done the same.

In our latest "Role Play" interview, Clarkson looks back on her big break, battling with Harvey Weinstein over her awards season run for "The Station Agent," and her "spicy era" starring in romantic dramas.

On her career beginnings and how Brian DePalma got her paid extra on 'The Untouchables'

Business Insider: Your first screen credit is quite impressive, playing Kevin Costner's wife in Brian De Palma's "The Untouchables." Tell me about that audition process. 

Patricia Clarkson: I was out of Yale several months, and I had just gotten my first Broadway job, "House of Blue Leaves," and then I go in to read for "The Untouchables" with the legendary casting director Lynn Stalmaster.

I went in kind of dressed as Southern glamorous. I had my hair done, makeup, pretty sexy dress. Lynn said to me he thought Brian De Palma would like me, but he said, "Don't look like this. Put on a simple dress and no makeup." I was like, No makeup? So I did. I had very long hair at the time and had this dress that tied in the back, and maybe a touch of lipstick. I came in and I was supposed to do my lines with a reader, but Brian said, "I'm going to read with you." He liked the juxtaposition of me in this "Little House on the Prairie" dress and my deep voice. We started talking, and I made him laugh, and he was just lovely to me. So I went right to Chicago and met Kevin Costner because he was already there preparing, and I got the job. 

And then right when you thought you were done with the job, Brian surprised you with something. 

Yes! This was a very supporting part, so I was set to be done, and Brian decided that I had to be in the courtroom scene. He wanted to have one close-up of me in the courtroom. So he told Paramount, "Look, I guess we'll have to hold Patti for a month because we're not shooting the courtroom for another month." And it was a godsend.

I was making scale, I was an unknown, but that extra month helped me out. I mean, I had student loans to pay, I was living in New York. Despite it being scale, which back then was maybe $1,000, it was more money than I had. It was a saving grace, and it was all because of Brian De Palma. 

On her path to indie film and sparring with Harvey Weinstein

After "High Art," you had become something of an indie darling: "Pieces of April," "The Station Agent," and "All the Real Girls" all had their world premieres at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. But during the filming of any of that, did you ever question your choices, say, sitting in a station wagon all day making "Pieces of April" or hanging out by a train station doing "The Station Agent"? 

No. These were gifts. They were remarkable films, and I knew it. I didn't know Tom McCarthy, who made "The Station Agent." He knew Bobby [Cannavale] and Pete [Dinklage], but he didn't know me, though he wrote the part for me. So I read it and I couldn't say yes fast enough. We struggled to get it made, it was $500,000 to make. We made "Pieces of April" for something like $200,000, but it was such a beautiful part, and Peter Hedges, the director, made me a better actor. So did Tom.

These were parts that required so much of me. A lot of myself is in these parts, a lot of my own life's struggles and traumas. But also joy. I mean, can you imagine being on a set all day with Peter Dinklage and Bobby Cannavale? It doesn't get better than that. It was truly a labor of love, those movies. But it was glorious. 

Being a fixture in independent film in the 2000s, you crossed paths with Harvey Weinstein, whose Miramax Films released "The Station Agent." He wanted to campaign you for award season in the supporting actress category despite you being the lead in "The Station Agent." At the same time, United Artists head Bingham Ray was doing a supporting actress campaign for you on "Pieces of April." Tell me about the battle with Harvey.

I hate false categories. I hate when actors put themselves in false categories. I think that's something that needs to be addressed by the Academy. Too often it happens. When you are supporting, you should be truly a supporting player, and when you're the lead, you have to step up and go into a harder category.

I was the lead in "Station Agent," so I said, "No, Harvey, I'm not going into supporting, I'm going in supporting for 'Pieces of April' because I'm definitely supporting in that. Katie Holmes is clearly the lead of that film." I was not going to betray Bingham. So I went up against Harvey, and he told me I'd never work again. Well, na, na, na, na, naaa. [Laughs.]

Did it get uglier than that?

Oh, yes. Threatening. It got very ugly. Some people hoped I'd switch categories but I wasn't going to. They didn't understand that I would be a shit to do that. It would have been dishonest and wrong. And I had the greatest moment of my career when the SAG awards came out and I was nominated for best actress in "The Station Agent" and best supporting for "Pieces." 

You then got the Oscar nomination for "Pieces of April." Going through all of that with Weinstein, was that motivation to take the role of New York Times editor Rebecca Corbett in "She Said"?

Oh yeah. I don't talk about it much because of the women who were abused by him physically and deeply emotionally. This was patter to me, what I went through with Harvey. It was still difficult and terrible what he did to me, but compared to so many women who went through so much more, it was odd to talk about it. But, yes, of course, it was a motivation to do "She Said." Of course it was. 

On spending hours inside a cave shooting Martin Scorsese's 'Shutter Island' and the role she still wishes she'd gotten

I believe working with Martin Scorsese on "Shutter Island" was quite memorable, right?

[Laughs.] Oh, I shot quite some time in that cave scene. But it was a scene that you dream of as an actor working with arguably the greatest American director. It was just me and Leo [DiCaprio], that doesn't get any better.

I remember, I was shooting the Woody Allen movie "Whatever Works" at the same time. I left Woody to go shoot with Marty. And I remember, Woody was like, "He better get you back here." A car picked me up from the set of "Whatever Works" in New York City, where we were shooting by the UN, and drove me to Boston. And I'm in that cave, and we did so many takes, I didn't know if I would ever see light again. [Laughs.] 

But Marty is glorious because he just lets you play. Every suggestion you have, he loves and he wants you to try it. He's the emblem of greatness. When your heroes don't disappoint, it's always the greatest time of your life. 

From 2008 to 2009, there was a brief Patti Clarkson spicy era with you in romantic starring roles in "Elegy" and "Cairo Time"—

Oh, and I loved my spicy era! I mean, I often play downtrodden women, but in life I'm actually spicy. I'm New Orleans. I love my tight dresses and my high heels. And I still do. So doing those two movies, I hope those aren't the last time doing those.

Going to Cairo, I fell in love with that city and the people. I have such beautiful memories, and it was so much fun playing a romantic leading woman. It was sexy and fun. And with "Elegy," I started that shoot naked on top of Sir Ben Kingsley. No better way to start the day! 

Is there a role you most regret passing on, or one you still wish you'd gotten?

Early on, I lost quite a few parts. I went out to be opposite Tom Hanks in "Big." I didn't get cast, but I would have loved to have been in that.

You have to learn with rejection. There is always rejection in this industry. No matter how high you soar, someone is always going to try to bring you down to Earth. And sometimes down to hell, which happened to me a few times.

But you have to pull yourself back up, and I've had remarkable friends and family and some great men in my life who have really lifted me through some dark times in this industry. Thank god the light has been much stronger than the dark.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"Lilly" is in theaters now.

More from this series

• David Duchovny had a very specific idea for how to make his 'Zoolander' cameo funny
• Patricia Arquette has a message for anyone looking for 'Severance' spoilers
• Carol Kane thought Gene Wilder was 'out of his mind' when he asked her to do a comedy with him

• Rian Johnson's "Poker Face" returns for season 2 on Peacock with Natasha Lyonne solving mysteries.
• Johnson explained to Business Insider how he recruits a star-studded guest cast each season.
• Johnson plans to take on an original movie after the release of Netflix's "Wake Up Dead Man."

When it comes to murder, Rian Johnson knows what elements make up the perfect crime.

The writer-director has spent the last six years immersed in the whodunit genre, surrounding Daniel Craig's Southern dandy detective Benoit Blanc with a cast of quirky suspects in two "Knives Out" movies (a third is out this fall), and refining the procedural format for streaming with Peacock's "Poker Face" starring Natasha Lyonne.

"The murder mystery genre has served me well," Johnson told Business Insider with a giggle in the days leading up to the season two premiere of "Poker Face" on Thursday.

The series, which stars Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a mystery-solving former casino worker on the run from the mob, uses the case-of-the-week format to feature all manner of zany scenarios acted out by a star-studded cast of guest stars. This season, Charlie must do everything from work as an extra on a B-movie set at a mortuary run by Giancarlo Esposito to find the killer among quadruplets all played by Cynthia Erivo.

The series' familiar procedural format helps keep the show grounded, so Johnson can encourage the "Poker Face" writers to come up with outlandish scenarios for each episode.

"To me, having a show like this, it would be sad if you just cranked out a version of the same thing every time," Johnson said. "It's an engine to drive batshit crazy ideas that you might not get made otherwise. That, to me, is the fun part."

Johnson knows the value in keeping things creatively interesting. That's why he plans to take a break from the whodunit genre and start a new project after his latest "Knives Out " installment "Wake Up Dead Man" hits Netflix this fall.

"It's a completely different thing," Johnson told BI of his next idea. (And no, it's not a return to "Star Wars.") "It's a little scary, but in a fun way."

Below, Business Insider spoke with Johnson about turning crazy ideas into "Poker Face" episodes, casting actors via a group chat, and why he hopes "Wake Up Dead Man" gets played in as many movie theaters as possible — despite Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos' calling movie theaters "outdated."

Business Insider: Each "Poker Face" episode this season feels like a mini movie. While watching, I wondered if there's an archivist on the show who has encyclopedic knowledge of everything that's happened, simply just to make sure not to repeat a bit or the way someone was murdered.

Rian Johnson: Yeah, it's me [laughs]. In terms of what we've done in the previous season, I mean, if you talk to someone who has done "Law and Order" where they are on their 89th season and 300 episodes, they would laugh at us. But we have some of the writers' room assistants do research. So that is one element of it.

What does a proposed "Poker Face" story need for you to consider it for an episode?

We definitely have a blue sky day where people just pitch, "What about a baseball episode?" and others, and that's really fun because you also get to know the writers in the room, because everyone is pitching their own pet ideas. And then the reality is you pick a horse at some point and say, "Okay, let's develop this thing," and then the real work happens, which is hashing out the show and the structure.

Charlie is not a cop; it's not her job to do these things. By necessity, you have to find a way in for her with every episode. And that means you have to develop a relationship, you have to have an emotional investment. With "Poker Face," it's something that you actually really need to make the episode tick. So finding ways to do that every week without it feeling like it's repeating itself, finding different relationship dynamics, finding different ways in — the connection Charlie has with the killer or the person killed — that ends up being one of the biggest challenges of the writing. 

A perfect example is the first episode of season two, which you directed. In it, Charlie meets Cynthia Erivo's character while working at an apple orchard. Was that something not used in the last season?

No, the orchard setting was fresh. I think part of it came from we were shooting in New York, and we were like, "What's around there? Oh, an apple orchard. That will be ideal!" But that's also a fun element of it. It harkens back to the "Columbo" thing or more "Quantum Leap," every episode zooming into a microcosm fishbowl of a world. Episode 1 came from the notion of all these false starts. We could have had a "Poker Face" episode set in a haunted house hayride or a parking garage, but those pesky gunmen keep chasing Charlie.

Are you personally involved in selecting the guest stars?

Yeah. The casting process for the main guest stars is a text thread with me, Natasha, Tony Tost, the showrunner, and our casting directors. Sometimes it's just me and Natasha bouncing back and forth ideas of friends that we want to text. So it's a very fun, personal, and chaotic process because we're casting the show week to week. 

So it's a lot of figuring out if schedules are going to fit.

But there's also an element that's also, "I was out the other night at dinner and I ran into so and so. Do you think they'd want to be in this episode that starts shooting on Monday?" There's a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants element to it, which is fun and terrifying. It's amazing to get to the end of the season after that process and look back and see the roster that we've gotten. 

Has an actor you've gone out to for the show ever declined because they're holding out for a role in a "Knives Out" movie?

[Laughs] Not to my knowledge. If that has happened, they have not given that reason to me. But also being in one doesn't preclude you from being in the other. And these are very different processes casting both. We cast as we're shooting with "Poker Face." And we started shooting that halfway into the "Wake Up Dead Man" shoot. 

So someone you cast in a "Knives Out" movie could show up in a "Poker Face" episode, and vice versa?

Absolutely. Most of the people in this season I would cast in a heartbeat in a "Knives Out" movie. 

After "Wake Up Dead Man," have you thought about what you'll do next?

Actually, I have a whole movie in my head that I just have to write, which makes it sound easy, but it won't be. I'm hoping to take the summer and dig into that. It is not a Benoit Blanc movie, it's not a murder mystery, it's a very different genre. It's an original. So, I'm hoping to dive into that.

So, not taking a trip back to a galaxy far, far away?

Not for this next one. 

Recently, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos spoke at the Time100 Summit and said this of the state of theatrical releases: "Folks grew up thinking, 'I want to make movies on a gigantic screen, and have strangers watch them, and play in the theater for two months, and people cry, and sold-out shows.' It just doesn't happen anymore. It's an outdated concept." Do you agree with him?

Obviously I don't, because I love movies. I love going to see movies. But, also, I have a feeling talking to Ted, it would be a different thing than one quote taken and kind of tossed at me in this context. So I don't want to phrase this as I'm having a proxy discussion with Ted right here.

But, I will say, disconnected from that, I think theatrical is not going anywhere. With the success of Ryan [Coogler]'s movie, "Sinners," and the "Minecraft" movie, I think we've seen if you put a movie people want to see in the theaters, they are going to show up for it. That experience of being in a full house and having that experience is so important. It's something that I love and I want more of in the world. 

I'm sure you've had discussions with Ted yourself about theatrical within the Netflix bubble. Daniel Craig has gone on record saying it saddened him how "Glass Onion" was released in so few theaters. Do you hope "Wake Up Dead Man" will be shown on more screens?

We'll see. We're going to push for all we can get. I want this in as many theaters for as long as possible. I love Ted, I love working with Netflix. They have been absolutely wonderful partners. We're going to push for everything we can get in terms of theatrical with it because I want as many people as possible to see it in that form. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

The first three episodes of "Poker Face" are now streaming on Peacock, with new episodes dropping weekly on Thursdays.

• Patricia Clarkson said she had a "very ugly" interaction with Harvey Weinstein during her 2003 Oscar campaign.
• Clarkson was the lead in "The Station Agent" but said she faced pressure from Weinstein to change categories.
• Her experience with Weinstein motivated her to take a role in the 2022 #MeToo movie "She Said."

In the early 2000s, Patricia Clarkson's career was an embarrassment of riches. Three of her films premiered at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival, two of which, "The Station Agent" and "Pieces of April," would go on to find acclaim during award season.

But Clarkson told Business Insider that acclaim would be accompanied by "threatening" from then-Miramax Film head Harvey Weinstein, who, after an argument with the actor, promised she would never work again.

Leading up to the 2004 Academy Awards, Weinstein had been plotting an Oscar campaign for Clarkson's performance in "The Station Agent." The low-budget indie starred Clarkson opposite then-unknowns Peter Dinklage and Bobby Cannavale as a trio of outsiders who build a friendship at an abandoned New Jersey train station.

Though Clarkson was clearly the movie's female lead, Clarkson said Weinstein wanted her to enter the easier-to-win best supporting actress category. Clarkson pushed back.

"I hate when actors put themselves in false categories," Clarkson told BI when asked about sparring with Weinstein. "I think that's something that needs to be addressed by the Academy. Too often it happens. When you are supporting, you should be truly a supporting player, and when you're the lead, you have to step up and go into a harder category. I was the lead in 'Station Agent,' so I said, 'No, Harvey, I'm not going into supporting.'"

There was added motivation for Clarkson to campaign in the lead category that year: She was already getting a best supporting actress Oscar campaign from United Artists for her other movie, "Pieces of April," in which she played a mother trying to reconnect with her estranged daughter, played by Katie Holmes.

"I'm definitely supporting in that," Clarkson recalled. "Katie Holmes is clearly the lead of that film. So I went up against Harvey, and he told me I'd never work again."

Clarkson said she stood her ground despite Weinstein threatening her. "It got very ugly," she added.

An attempt to contact Weinstein, who is serving a 16-year sentence on sexual assault charges, was not successful. Weinstein's rep had no comment.

Ultimately, Clarkson got an Oscar nomination for "Pieces of April" in the best supporting actress category — but she never forgot that encounter with Weinstein.

It was one of the reasons she wanted to play New York Times editor Rebecca Corbett in the 2022 movie "She Said," which recounted The New York Times' 2017 investigation that exposed Weinstein's history of abuse and sexual misconduct against women.

Clarkson told BI she doesn't talk about the incident with Weinstein often, adding that many women were emotionally and physically abused by him more severely.

"This was patter to me, what I went through with Harvey. It was still difficult and terrible what he did to me, but compared to so many women who went through so much more, it was odd to talk about it," she said. Asked directly about if the incident motivated her to pursue "She Said," she replied emphatically. "Of course it was a motivation to do 'She Said.' Of course it was."

A New York jury convicted Weinstein of sex crimes in 2020 and sentenced him to 23 years in prison. A retrial of his case is currently underway after New York's highest court overturned his conviction last year.

He remains in jail serving a 16-year sentence, as his California conviction on three sexual assault charges still stands. In both cases, Weinstein pleaded not guilty and maintained that all sexual encounters were consensual.

• All the "Twilight" movies are available on Netflix this month.
• So are horror movies like "Smile" and "Heart Eyes."
• The Oscar-nominated animated movie "The Wild Robot" is also available to stream.

This month, get out the tissues and watch one of the best movies of last year, "The Wild Robot." Or give yourself a scare watching "Smile." After that, you can binge all the "Twilight" movies for a palate cleanser.

Here are the best movies on Netflix in May.

"Burn After Reading" (May 1)

This dark comedy from Joel and Ethan Coen revolves around two dimwitted gym employees played by Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt who believe they've stumbled across classified government documents when, in fact, they are the memoirs of an ex-CIA analyst played by John Malkovich.

George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Richard Jenkins, and J.K. Simmons also star.

"Constantine" (May 1)

While "Constantine" received mixed reviews upon its 2005 release, it's gained a cult following in the years since.

Keanu Reeves plays John Constantine, who has the ability to communicate with angels and demons. Rachel Weisz, Shia LaBeouf, Tilda Swinton, Djimon Hounsou, and Peter Stormare also star.

"Crazy, Stupid, Love" (May 1)

If you're in the mood for a rom-com, you can't go wrong with this one.

Steve Carell plays Carl, who experiences a mid-life crisis when his wife (Julianne Moore) asks for a divorce. Carl soon connects with ladies' man Jacob (Ryan Gosling), who decides to help Carl pick up women.

However, Jacob meets his match when he meets Hannah (Emma Stone) and falls for her.

Marisa Tomei, Kevin Bacon, and Josh Groban also star.

"The Lego Movie" (May 1)

This outlandish comedy from Phil Lord and Christopher Miller stars Chris Pratt as a Lego figure whose bland life is interrupted when he's told he's the key to the resistance to overthrow the evil Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell).

Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Liam Neeson, Channing Tatum, Alison Brie, and Charlie Day also lend their voices.

"Past Lives" (May 1)

Celine Song's feature directing debut earned best picture and best original screenplay nominations at the 2024 Oscars. The drama follows two childhood friends (played by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo) who reconnect in New York City.

All the "Twilight" movies (May 1)

Get ready for a major binge this weekend. Every single movie in the "Twilight" saga is available on the streamer.

Go back and rewatch the journey of Bella and Edward, which catapulted Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson to superstardom.

"Heart Eyes" (May 8)

This horror focuses on a psychopathic killer who sports glowing red heart eyes and searches for victims every Valentine's Day.

"Smile" (May 14)

Need more horror? Check out this box office sensation that follows a therapist who, after witnessing a gruesome suicide, begins to experience frightening occurrences all involving people having eerie smiles.

"The Wild Robot" (May 24)

One of the best movies of 2024, this animated movie stars Lupita Nyong'o voicing a robot named Roz who, after being shipwrecked on an island, begins to befriend the wildlife that inhabit it.

But things get complicated when the company that created Roz comes to the island to reclaim her.

• Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos called movie theaters an outdated concept at the Time100 Summit.
• The "Knives Out" director Rian Johnson disagrees, saying the theatrical experience is important.
• For the next "Knives Out," he'll push for "everything we can get in terms of theatrical," he told BI.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos recently cemented his feelings about the state of the movie theater business, calling it an "outdated concept" while speaking at the Time100 Summit. But not all filmmakers who work with the streaming giant share the sentiment.

While speaking with Rian Johnson during the promotion of the second season of his Peacock series, "Poker Face," Business Insider asked the writer-director, who's behind Netflix's popular "Knives Out" movie franchise, whether he agreed with Sarandos' comments.

"Obviously, I don't, because I love movies. I love going to see movies," Johnson said. "But also, I have a feeling talking to Ted, it would be a different thing than one quote taken and kind of tossed at me in this context. So I don't want to phrase this as I'm having a proxy discussion with Ted right here."

Still, Johnson was adamant that people want to see movies in theaters. "I think theatrical is not going anywhere," he said, pointing to the box office success of Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" and Jared Hess' "A Minecraft Movie."

"I think we've seen if you put a movie people want to see in the theaters, they are going to show up for it, and that experience of being in a full house and having that experience is so important," he added. "It's something that I love and I want more of in the world."

Netflix has long been focused on releasing movie titles on streaming for its global subscribers. This has led to movies like the 2024 Millie Bobby Brown starrer "Damsel" and the 2021 Ryan Reynolds-Dwayne Johnson action movie "Red Notice" logging hundreds of millions of views on the service.

"We're in a period of transition," Sarandos said at the Time100 Summit of the state of theatrical releases. "Folks grew up thinking, 'I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them and play in the theater for two months and people cry and sold-out shows.' It just doesn't happen anymore. It's an outdated concept."

But Netflix does own movie theaters: Los Angeles' Bay Theater and New York's Paris Theater, which are key for the streamers' award season titles, as they are required to have theatrical runs for consideration. The streamer has also given select other titles theatrical play, like Johnson's 2022 "Knives Out" movie, "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," though it was released on only about 700 screens. And Greta Gerwig's coming "Narnia" movie for the streamer is set for an Imax run before it hits Netflix on Thanksgiving.

For his part, Johnson hopes the next "Knives Out" chapter, "Wake Up Dead Man," which he says will be released in the fall, will be in more theaters than "Glass Onion."

"I want this in as many theaters for as long as possible," he told BI, adding that he loves working with Netflix and that they have been great partners. "We're going to push for everything we can get in terms of theatrical because I want as many people as possible to see it in that form."

Netflix didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

• David Fincher and Brad Pitt are making a sequel to Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood."
• Tarantino, who wrote the sequel, agreed to let Fincher and Pitt continue the story of Cliff Booth.
• Steven Soderbergh says Fincher and Pitt are always looking for projects to work on together.

When the news broke that David Fincher would be teaming with his "Fight Club" star Brad Pitt to make a sequel to Quentin Tarantino's acclaimed 2019 movie "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" for Netflix, many didn't believe it to be true. (The news also broke on April Fools' Day, which didn't help.)

Director Steven Soderbergh was one of the few who knew it to be true. As a good friend of Fincher's, he knows how close Fincher and Pitt are.

"I think they're always on the lookout for something to do together," Soderbergh told Business Insider in a recent interview, referring to Fincher and Pitt. "So this was, it sounds like, an unusual set of circumstances where Quentin decided he didn't want to do it and Brad asked him, 'Can I show it to David?' and he said sure, and David read it and said, 'Let's do it.'"

However, Soderbergh admits there is one aspect of the news that did shock him.

"What's surprising is Quentin's agreeability," he said.

The theory around Hollywood is that Tarantino, who has stated that he plans to retire after making his next movie, which will be the tenth of his career, didn't want to end on a sequel.

Tarantino's sequel script to "Once Upon a Time..." focuses on Pitt's character Cliff Booth. Along with 1999's "Fight Club," Pitt and Fincher have worked together on 1995's "Se7en" and 2008's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

"Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" stars Leonardo DiCaprio as TV star Rick Dalton, who's struggling to keep his career afloat in the changing landscape of Hollywood in the late 1960s. Pitt plays Cliff Booth, Dalton's longtime stuntman and best friend. Pitt's performance won him a best supporting actor Oscar.

Little is known about the sequel outside of the fact that the plot is focused on Booth, and that DiCaprio could return as Dalton in a cameo role.

Given that he's friends with Fincher, did Soderbergh know about him taking on the sequel before the news broke?

"I was aware, but I was also very cognizant that this was a newsworthy piece of information," Soderbergh said. "Actually, I was surprised it took that long for the story to come out. But it's happening, and it's happening soon." 

Steven Soderbergh has spent his career making movies that go against the grain.

He's made indie gems ("Sex, Lies, and Videotape," "The Girlfriend Experience"), off-kilter crime thrillers ("Out of Sight," "The Limey), movies that bring nuance to real-life issues ("Erin Brockovich," the Oscar-winning "Traffic,") and too-real disaster movies that have become even more relevant in retrospect ("Contagion"). When he did play the studio game, as he did with the "Ocean's Eleven" and "Magic Mike" franchises, his movies were made with such originality that you'd wonder why Hollywood hasn't made more like them. (Answer: there's only one Soderbergh.)

It's a career that few can match when it comes to diversity and volume: 2025 marks the ninth time in Soderbergh's career that he's had two movies released in the same year.

But Soderbergh has hit a snag lately. While both of his last two movies, "Presence" and "Black Bag," garnered positive to downright glowing reviews from critics —"Black Bag" is tied with his feature debut "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" as his best-reviewed movie ever, with a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes — lackluster performance at the box office resulted in both leaving theaters quickly.

Both were right in Soderbergh's sweet spot, combining a high-end concept (a twisty ghost story, a twisty spy story) with name actors (Lucy Liu, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender) on a small or relatively economical budget ($2 million and $44 million, respectively). This kind of movie has historically been a winning formula for Soderbergh, one in which everyone recoups on their investments, allowing him to go make another one (or two) the next year.

But as audiences have stopped showing up to movie theaters in droves and big-budget franchises have became the draw when they do, it's become increasingly difficult for a mid-budget movie to succeed. And Soderbergh's latest batting average has shown that even he might struggle to revive the genre.

Seeing "Black Bag" disappear from most theaters in just three weeks (it's now available on Video on Demand and hits Peacock on May 2) has Soderbergh questioning his future as a storyteller.

"It's not fun to spend a lot of time and effort on something that just occupies zero cultural real estate," Soderbergh told Business Insider. "That's not why any filmmaker wants to make movies. You want as many people to see them as possible. I've really got to think deeply about what kind of material I can find that I'm excited by and has the potential to draw a bigger audience than the last two movies."

One thing's for certain: the prolific filmmaker will keep going against the grain to find it.

In Business Insider's latest Director's Chair interview, Soderbergh has a frank discussion about the future of movie theaters, his never-made "Logan Lucky" prequel, and why he's not surprised David Fincher is making a sequel to Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood."

Business Insider: Before we get into the specifics of the movie itself, give me your Monday morning quarterbacking of what the theatrical run of "Black Bag" was like. You made it for $44 million and it took in $36 million worldwide.

Steven Soderbergh: It was frustrating. The people we needed to come out didn't come out. And unfortunately, it's impossible to really know why. My concern is that the rest of the industry looks at that result and just goes, "This is why we don't make movies in that budget range for that audience because they don't show up." And that's unfortunate, because that's the kind of movie I've made my whole career. That middle ground, which we all don't want to admit is disappearing, seems to be really disappearing.

I mean, it's the best-reviewed movie I've ever made in my career, and we've got six beautiful people in it, and they all did every piece of publicity that we asked them to do and, you know, this is the result. So it's frustrating. 

I think it was on 2,000-plus screens for three weeks. In your eyes, did you want more runway, or did Focus Features do what it had to do?

No. I think they did everything right. Going any wider wasn't going to solve the problem, obviously. They spent the money. I liked the campaign. They were incredibly supportive. I had a good experience with them making the movie. Everything went right except that people just didn't show up. 

The way the theatrical window has been shortened since COVID, is Hollywood programming audiences to stay at home?

I don't know. Again, how do you tease out the kind of data that you need to answer that question? Obviously, the topic that never goes away and never will go away is windowing. How do you determine — if people that were aware of "Black Bag" and had some interest in it, if they knew it was going to be 45 or 60 days before it showed up anywhere else, would they have gone? Or did it not matter? We don't know. That's the problem. 

And that becomes the $100 million question. People know it's out because of the marketing, so are they saying to themselves, "Well, I'm going to wait to see that at home?" But here's the thing, Steven: Then they're watching on PVOD, and they would be paying as much at home as they did in the theater in that case. 

Well, all I can tell you is Focus told me they will break even on this movie. I was worried. I don't like losing people's money. 

Especially when you want to work with them again. 

Yeah. But when I talked to [Focus Features chairman] Peter Kujawski the Monday after we opened he said, "We'll get out." Unfortunately, the people who write about the movie business aren't privy to how all of that downstream revenue works precisely, and that's why things are perceived as not turning a profit when actually they turn out to be profitable. He told me, "We're fine."

But I won't know if any of that is true until I start getting statements, and then I'll be able to see how that world looks. I'll see exactly what they spent on P&A and as the PVOD numbers come in. So by the end of the year, I'll be able to tell if the movie turned a profit, and if so, how. And that's good information. 

Right. Because that's going to dictate how you want to move forward in regards to the kind of movies you want to make. 

Yeah. It's really not fun when someone asks you, "What are you working on?" and you go, "Oh, I just made this thing," and they go, "Oh, did that come out?" You get tired of that. 

Let's talk a little about what actually happens in "Black Bag." The ending of George and Katherine embracing in bed confirmed for me that the events in the movie are very much a twisted foreplay for them. Was that how it was always written?

It went through a couple of variations of the same idea. It was written initially to be in the bedroom. Then, while we were shooting it, I thought I wanted to do a version where he's making a meal for her because this cooking thing is also very intimate and very much part of their ritual. And then I saw that and it was okay. And I said, I want to go back to the version in the bedroom, but I said to [screenwriter] David [Koepp], I think the reason that I was moving it out of the bedroom was because it was missing just a tiny bit of a button and I couldn't articulate exactly what it was. David said, "I think I know what you mean."

He sent me back a variation of the original version in the bedroom, but it had Katherine asking about the money, and that was the little thing, because it's a quiet runner through the movie that she's money-obsessed. That's when I was like, "That's it."

After "The Christophers" do you know what you want to make next? What has the release of "Black Bag" made you feel?

I don't know. We're finishing "The Christophers" now. Nobody has seen it. It's a single-source, independently financed movie. So I think the most likely course is it will premiere at a festival. Which one? I don't know. But beyond that, I don't know. I've got to figure that out. I'm agnostic in terms of where it shows up, theatrical versus streaming. But you can't keep making the same mistake over and over again. 

Do you have to go back to the epic route? Do you have the endurance, the heart, the willpower to do something like "Che" again?

Physically, I do. Psychologically, though, it's really got to be something that deserves that kind of treatment and doesn't feel like Oscar bait. 

Is there anything you're developing currently that would have the potential like that at all?

No. It does require an aspect of the grandiosity gene, you've got to think about yourself a certain way to want to go out and do those things. That is not my default mode. I have to work myself up to that because I don't have that kind of sense of my place. 

If I hadn't made "Che," I don't think I would have made "The Knick," which I think is the last epic thing that I've done. "Che" was good for me in that sense. But knowing what goes into that, it has got to be something that I feel really electrified by, and those are just hard to come by. Then you've got to cast Timothée Chalamet. 

Your wife, Jules Asner, wrote the screenplay for your 2017 movie, "Logan Lucky." When are you two going to stop messing around and give us a sequel?

Oh, she's working on stuff. 

But is she working on another "Logan Lucky"?

Well, we talked about it, but when that movie didn't perform well we had to put it away. We had it all set up. We had everybody willing. We were going to do the story of how Daniel Craig's character Joe Bang got into prison. We were going to do that whole story of how things got all fucked up. But you've got to have a hit movie if you want to make a sequel. 

So you had the cast attached?

Everybody wanted to do it. The story was pretty funny.

But can you admit that since that movie opened, it has had a second life through streaming?

Yeah, and this is why I'm desperate for Warner Bros. to license "The Knick" to Netflix, because I think "The Knick" on Netflix would really go over well. 

Would that mean you've thrown your hat back in with doing another season of "The Knick"?

No. I don't think there's any going back to that. 

What else is your wife working on?

Rebecca Blunt [Jules Asner's pen name] and I have a very professional relationship, and you're never supposed to ask a writer how it's going. 

Are you as surprised as we are that David Fincher is going to do a "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" sequel?

No, because of Brad [Pitt]. I think they're always on the lookout for something to do together, and so this was, it sounds like, an unusual set of circumstances where Quentin decided he didn't want to do it and Brad asked him, "Can I show it to David?" and he said sure, and David read it and said let's do it. That seems to be what happened. That's not surprising at all. What's surprising is Quentin's agreeability. 

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"Black Bag" is available On Demand and digital rental. It will be available to stream on Peacock starting May 2.

• Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian launched Proximity Media in 2018.
• Proximity Media produces films, documentaries, and podcasts, like "Judas and the Black Messiah" and "Space Jam: A New Legacy."
• Proximity's "Sinners" had a record-breaking opening weekend.

There was a time when the only person who believed in Ryan Coogler was his wife, Zinzi.

Back in the early 2000s, when Coogler was playing football at Saint Mary's College of California, he began thinking about life beyond the gridiron and whether becoming a storyteller could possibly be his next passion. He was told that if he were serious, the first thing he had to do was get the software that all scribes in the business use to write their stories: Final Draft.

But barely surviving off the scholarship money he had, he couldn't afford it.

"She bought it for me," Coogler told Business Insider over a video chat while sitting next to Zinzi, who gave a shy smile in response.

Five movies and two Oscar nominations later, it turned out to be money well spent, as Coogler has become one of Hollywood's top visionary filmmakers.

But he's not stopping there.

Alongside Zinzi Coogler and producer Sev Ohanian, the trio launched the production company Proximity Media in 2018, which handles everything from feature films to documentaries and podcasts.

Their efforts helped bring the 2021 best picture Oscar nominee "Judas and the Black Messiah" to the screen. They also teamed with LeBron James for the remake of "Space Jam" in 2021 and launched the popular podcast "In Proximity."

The three formed a close bond in the 2010s when Ohanian was Ryan's classmate at USC (Zinzi and Ryan, who have known each other since they were teens, married in 2016). There was even a time when Ohanian was sleeping on the Cooglers' couch while they were making Coogler's debut feature, "Fruitvale Station," in 2013. Five years later, the three went into business for themselves, forming Proximity.

"We were young people trying to make it in this business before we started the company," Coogler said. "We are a company that was built on that feeling of not being taken seriously because of our age and constantly being told we're doing it wrong because we want to do right by people. That has been the common theme; it's a blue-collar aspect."

That blue-collar approach has become the company's guiding light. While many production companies led by Hollywood heavyweights are locked into first-look deals at a studio, Proximity has taken the less-traveled path and is a free agent in the business. This has led to them being busy all over town, working with Marvel Studios on the upcoming "Black Panther" spin-off series "Ironheart" and landing Coogler's latest directing effort, "Sinners," at Warner Bros. following a heated bidding war.

"When we know we're doing something right, it's often when we can approach things unconventionally and not necessarily industry standard," Ohanian said.

But Proximity isn't focused on just the moving image. Under the leadership of Oscar-winning composer and longtime Coogler collaborator Ludwig Göransson, the company was behind the soundtracks for "Creed III" and "Judas and the Black Messiah," the latter of which earned an Oscar nomination for best original song. The company will also be releasing the "Sinners" soundtrack. Meanwhile, Paola Mardo is heading its audio division, Proximity Audio, focused on continuing to grow the Webby Award-winning "In Proximity" podcast.

"We have had Jordan Peele and Michael B. Jordan sit across from Ryan, but the pie in the sky is to keep having those intimate and in depth conversations about how we do what we do, to just give perspective on the many different things it takes to put something on screen for audiences to enjoy," Zinzi Coogler said.

With a staff of around 25, the founders describe Proximity as a scrappy working environment fueled by the underdog mentality from which the company was born. They often hire people who, like them, once had little to no industry experience, just a drive to work in the business. This has led to Proximity's much-sought-after paid internship program.

"At any given time, there are brilliant young filmmakers and podcast makers that are in and out of our company getting college credit and getting paid to learn," Ryan Coogler said. "It has gotten to the point that some of these people have gone on to be assistants to major Hollywood players."

"Sinners" shows off the fruits of Proximity's labor. The genre-bending thriller, written and directed by Coogler and produced by the Cooglers and Ohanian, had the biggest opening weekend for an original movie since the pandemic, making $48 million domestically. In addition to handling the soundtrack, Proximity also used its podcast "In Proximity" to give a deeper insight into the movie and its themes, with its latest episode featuring a conversation between Coogler and Göransson.

"Our first goal was to make a film that would be very music-oriented if not a full-blown musical, and I think with 'Sinners' we've accomplished that," Ohanian said.

While "Sinners" is poised to continue its success at the box office, there's plenty more in the pipeline at Proximity. An adaptation of the New York Times bestselling novel "California Bear" and an adaptation of the graphic novel series "A Vicious Circle" are both in development. They're also in production on an as-yet-unannounced docuseries following the success of "Stephen Curry: Underrated," which was released by Apple TV+ in 2023.

I ask Zinzi if she ever imagined that buying Ryan Final Draft would lead to all this.

"Not at all," she said softly. "I mean, we grew up with parents who had very practical jobs. I had zero expectations. I just knew it was something that he was very interested in and curious about."

• Steven Soderbergh's movie "Black Bag" underperformed, earning $37 million on a $44 million budget.
• Soderbergh, who's known for mid-budget dramas, is frustrated by the film's lackluster reception.
• He is hesitant to make epic films again, citing the need for genuine inspiration.

Following the lackluster box office performance of his latest mid-budget spy thriller, "Black Bag," Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh is contemplating his next move.

The director behind acclaimed films like "Traffic," "Erin Brockovich," "Out of Sight," and the "Ocean's Eleven" franchise has made nearly every type of movie imaginable, but he's always felt most comfortable doing a modestly budgeted drama. But the performance of "Black Bag," which brought in $37 million on a $44 million budget, has the filmmaker reconsidering how he fits into today's moviemaking landscape.

"The people we needed to come out didn't come out," Soderbergh told Business Insider of the "Black Bag" box office numbers. "And unfortunately, it's impossible to really know why."

"My concern is that the rest of the industry looks at that result and just goes, 'This is why we don't make movies in that budget range for that audience, because they don't show up,'" he continued. "And that's unfortunate, because that's the kind of movie I've made my whole career. That middle ground, which we all don't want to admit is disappearing, seems to be really disappearing."

The fact that a sexy spy thriller starring Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, and Pierce Brosnan that's Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes couldn't pull in an audience is particularly confounding to Soderbergh.

"I mean, it's the best-reviewed movie I've ever made in my career, and we've got six beautiful people in it, and they all did every piece of publicity that we asked them to do, and this is the result," he said. "So it's frustrating."

Asked if he would ever return to making epic movies like 2008's "Che," his two-film biopic starring Benicio del Toro as the revolutionary Che Guevara, Soderbergh wasn't against it, but he had one caveat.

"It's really got to be something that deserves that kind of treatment and doesn't feel like Oscar bait," he said.

Soderbergh said he currently has nothing in the works that he would characterize as an epic and explained why.

"It does require an aspect of the grandiosity gene; you've got to think about yourself a certain way to want to go out and do those things. That is not my default mode," he said. "I have to work myself up to that because I don't have that kind of sense of my place."

Still, he enjoys making epic films when it's the right move. It even led to the creation of one of his most beloved television series.

"If I hadn't made 'Che,' I don't think I would have made 'The Knick,'" which I think is the last epic thing that I've done," Soderbergh said of his acclaimed 2014 Cinemax series starring Clive Owen as a surgeon pushing the boundaries of medicine in 1900s New York.

"'Che' was good for me in that sense. But knowing what goes into that, it has got to be something that I feel really electrified by, and those are just hard to come by," he continued. "Then you've got to cast Timothée Chalamet."

"Black Bag" will be available to stream on Peacock starting May 2.

• Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" topped the box office last weekend, earning $63.5 million worldwide.
• "Sinners" outperformed expectations, surpassing "Minecraft" at the domestic box office.
• Warner Bros. marketed "Sinners" as an event, with 45% of earnings from large-format screens.

It was a big weekend for fans of original movies.

Ryan Coogler's deep South vampire movie "Sinners" pulled off an Easter weekend win over "Minecraft," taking in $48 million at the domestic box office and $63.5 million worldwide.

Going into the weekend, many in the industry forecast "Minecraft," the hit blockbuster based on the popular video game, to win out for a third straight weekend with "Sinners" coming in second place. But the thriller, starring Michael B. Jordan in dual roles, overperformed to take the top spot and dethrone "Minecraft," which brought in $40.5 million.

The film centers on Jordan portraying identical twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, who start up a Mississippi juke joint only to find it all unravel on opening night when a trio of vampires show up.

Some took to social media to downgrade the win for "Sinners," pointing out that with its $90 million-plus budget, it's still in the red. Others felt the movie was getting its high praise only because it was directed by the guy behind the "Black Panther" franchise.

Still, Warner Bros., which released "Sinners" (as well as "Minecraft"), went much farther to make the movie a hit than leaning on its director's name recognition.

"Sinners" is a box office hit because Warner Bros. made it an "event."

When Coogler originally came up with the idea for "Sinners," he was thinking very low budget.

"I thought we were going to shoot it on Super 16mm," Coogler told Business Insider ahead of the film's release. "I thought it was going to be a down-and-dirty movie."

That all changed when the director took a trip to Mississippi, where the movie would be set, and realized it had to be "epic and mythic." Then Warner Bros. put the cherry on top.

"An executive at Warner Bros. reached out and asked if I considered large format," said Coogler, referring to having the movie released for IMAX and other large format screens. "And he was asking from a business sense, seeing how complicated it's become to convince folks to come out of their house and watch something that's original."

"As soon as he said that, it unlocked something in me," the director continued. "It was the missing link to what the movie needed."

Coogler didn't just make a story for the biggest screens; he shot on IMAX cameras, which led to the movie having IMAX 70mm screenings, the first movie to have that kind of special treatment since Christopher Nolan's Oscar-winning best picture, "Oppenheimer."

Warner Bros. built the movie up as an event so that you had to see it — not just on the big screen but on the biggest one you could find.

It resulted in 45% of the opening weekend domestic gross for "Sinners" coming from premium large-format screens. Twenty percent of that was from IMAX alone, the highest ever for a horror movie shown in that format.

Coogler's "Sinners" will not only turn a profit but will hopefully prove to the industry that audiences want more than just adaptations, sequels, and remakes when they go to the movies.

A $60 million-plus opening weekend is in no way a disappointment

Yes, "Sinners" does have a big budget, but to put it simply, you have to spend money to make money, particularly when trying to get an original movie out to a wide audience.

And "Sinners'" overperformance domestically and taking in $63.5 million worldwide isn't just a step in the right direction for Warner Bros. toward profitability; it's a giant leap forward.

If "Sinners" were a major blockbuster based on an existing IP, taking in $60 million-plus worldwide would be a huge disappointment. But getting audiences out in droves is a gargantuan task for an original movie.

Warner Bros. executives must be doing backflips this morning. "Sinners" had the biggest opening for an original movie since the pandemic, passing Jordan Peele's thriller "Nope" ($44.3 million). That 2020 film went on to make over $100 million at the domestic box office and $171 million worldwide.

Warner Bros. has one more weekend to earn big before Marvel's "Thunderbolts*" opens May 2. That's more than enough time for the movie to come close or even surpass its $90 million budget at the worldwide box office.

And if Warner Bros. is smart, it will keep the movie in theaters into the summer, as last weekend clearly showed that audiences want original story options at their multiplex.

Ryan Coogler has dazzled audiences with big-budget Marvel movies (the "Black Panther" franchise), introduced a new generation to the Rocky Balboa saga ( "Creed," "Creed II"), and painted a devastatingly human portrait of a real-life tragedy ("Fruitvale Station"), but his newest film unlocks his true potential.

Coogler's fifth feature, "Sinners," marks the first time the director is working with a completely original concept, and it's an ambitious, genre-hopping ride worthy of all the early praise (the film has a 99% on Rotten Tomatoes as of publication).

The film, which Coogler also wrote, tells the story of identical twin brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan), who leave their posts as muscle in the 1930s Chicago underworld and return to their home state of Mississippi to run a juke joint. Everything is going according to plan on opening night, with top-notch blues musicians and smooth tasting hooch, until a trio of vampires shows up and turns everything upside down.

But even as the movie veers sharply from period piece to vampire flick (blood-sucking included), in Coogler's hands, "Sinners" is more than a thrilling genre movie. With eye-popping cinematography of the Mississippi Delta, a moving score from Coogler's longtime collaborator Ludwig Göransson, and subplots focusing on religion and the generational influence of the blues, "Sinners" is chock-full of well-executed big ideas. It's Hollywood filmmaking on an epic scale — and the secret sauce is that it's grounded in a personal, heartfelt story.

In the latest interview in Business Insider's "Director's Chair" series, Coogler discusses how the project came to be, what led to the movie's memorable music sequence, and what motivated him to make a deal with Warner Bros. so he'll one day own the rights to "Sinners."

Business Insider: You've spoken about "Sinners" being a love letter to your grandfather and uncle. How did you go from celebrating family to vampires and the blues?

Ryan Coogler: I never knew my grandfather. He died shortly after my parents got married. He was from Mississippi. Born there, raised there. Then he moved to Oakland and married my grandmother who was from Texas. My grandmother had two little sisters and one of her younger sisters married a man who was from Mississippi, a different part, and that was my Uncle James.

My Uncle James, for a large portion of my life, was the oldest male member of my family. What he loved to do was three things: listening to Delta Blues music, he loved drinking all types of whiskey, and he loved the San Francisco Giants, watching them on TV and listening to them on the radio. So if you went and spent time with him he was doing one or all three of those things.

I loved my uncle. I associate that music with him. He passed away in 2015, and after that, I oftentimes found myself playing blues records to remind myself of him. And that act of listening to that music and feeling he was there with me is kind of what inspired the period setting and the blues. And that is why the movie is so personal. 

It's so personal, in fact, that you made a deal with Warner Bros. to get the rights to the film in 25 years. The reason for that is because this is a story of what Smoke and Stack do at the start of the movie — open a juke joint in the Jim Crow South. The idea of Black ownership motivated you, correct?

Yeah. That was the reason for that ask. That was actually the only motivation.

Do you have the rights to any of your other movies? Is this a first time for you?

No. It's the first time.

Do you want to continue owning the rights to your movies going forward?

No. It was this specific project.

One of the movie's most memorable moments is a sequence where everyone is dancing in the juke joint, and suddenly, past, present, and future musical influences of the blues appear — a guitarist playing an electric guitar, a DJ on turntables, ancient chants. How long had you been thinking about doing that?

It was in the original script, but the specifics of it, the nature of it, I came up with while I was writing. So it existed in every form of the screenplay but it was a concept that came to be. Like, it wasn't in the outline. I was writing the script, and I was listening to the music, trying to conjure a time, and thinking how I would use that music. I would think about my uncle and wonder what my uncle was thinking of when he was listening to it. 

Was that sequence always ambitious from the start?

The ambition evolved as I was researching it and digging into it. I realized the epic nature of the story as I researched it. At first, I thought it was small. As I researched and dug into blues music and how it was developed and why, when I got to Mississippi and stood on some plantations, that's where the form was born. These people whose parents were enslaved and were living in back-breaking societal conditions created an art form that was so incredible that it transcended the planet. We are still making incarnations of that music. And so my mind kind of blew up and I saw the movie showing that creation. 

There was a report that the post-production process on "Sinners" was longer than usual because you shot on film and there aren't many film labs left.

That's not the whole reason. We wanted to make film prints but we also wanted to make the movie in the best way possible. We actually did this fast. 

Are you concerned about shooting on film going forward? There are definitely fewer labs than there were 10 or even five years ago.

There are enough filmmakers who believe in the format that I have faith. I actually hope there's a resurgence. My first movie, "Fruitvale Station," was shot on film. It was shot on Super 16mm, so the format has always mattered to me. And I was so happy to get back to it. But with the epic nature of the story, I was also happy to shoot large format. 

I was going to ask about shooting on IMAX. Was that something you thought about doing back in the script stage?

No. When I first came up with the concept of "Sinners" I thought we were going to shoot it on Super 16mm. I thought it was going to be a down-and-dirty movie. 

Oh, so originally "Sinners" had a grimy, dirty South feel?

Exactly, bro. But this was before I went to Mississippi and really learned about the story I was telling. During that time I realized the story has to be epic and mythic. That's when an executive at Warner Bros. reached out and asked if I considered large format. And he was asking from a business sense, seeing how complicated it's become to convince folks to come out of their house and watch something that's original. So he was thinking about it from that side. But as soon as he said that, it unlocked something in me. It was the missing link to what the movie needed. 

I mean, America is a fucking beautiful landscape. It's gorgeous, and the natural landscapes totally dictate the people you are interacting with. The Mississippi Delta felt that way. It is the single most African place I've ever been to that wasn't Africa in terms of the feeling that I had. The epic feel of that flat pastoral landscape. You stand in some of the places in the Delta and it's so flat you felt you could see the Earth bending on the horizon. 

Are you hooked on shooting on IMAX cameras going forward?

I loved the experience. I think it's something I could see myself definitely doing in the future. It's incredibly addictive.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

"Sinners" is in theaters now.

• More than 817,000 people moved out of California from 2021 to 2022, per most recent census data. 
• It's not just regular people: Celebrities have left Los Angeles for places like Texas and Florida.
• Here are 20 celebrities who left LA — plus where they chose to move to and why. 

California is the US state with the most people moving out, with about 817,000 leavers between 2021 and 2022, according to the most recent census data.

A higher cost of living plus the increased threat of wildfires have people choosing other places across the country.

And while regular people ditch the Golden State, several celebrities, who can typically afford to live wherever they want, have also decided California is no longer the place for them.

Singer-turned-talk show host Kelly Clarkson traded Los Angeles for New York City post-divorce for in 2022, while actor Sylvester Stallone said earlier this year that he and his family are "permanently" vacating California for South Florida.

Popular moving destinations for Californians include Arizona, Florida, and Texas. And some have chosen different countries completely.

People have told Business Insider recently that reasons for leaving LA and California include high taxes, expensive home prices, and challenging social and political conditions. Some celebrities remain tight-lipped when sharing moves of their news, simply saying they're looking for a fresh start. Other high-profile actors, however, admit that the fast-paced, stressful scene in Hollywood can be another motivation.

Los Angeles, in particular, is experiencing an exodus of wealthier people in search of places where their money goes further.

Take Gus Lira, a managing partner at a private jet charter company, who had a condo in Malibu overlooking the ocean. California taxes were wearing him down, so he decided to move to Nevada.

"For me, really the main reason, and for many of the people that I know, is just taxes," Lira told Business Insider in January. "You can't get ahead when you get $100 and they take $60."

Business Insider compiled a list of 20 celebrities — some in celebrity couples — who left California for greener pastures, presented in alphabetical order by last name. We tried to include both where they moved to and why they left LA.

Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake left LA to shield their kids from the glare of the paparazzi.

The power couple has dealt with the paparazzi for most of their professional careers. But they had enough of their kids also having to endure it.

Since 2018, Biel, Timberlake, and their two kids have lived predominantly at their properties in Tennessee and Montana.

"You get hammered on the East Coast. You kind of get hammered on the West Coast. That's why we don't really live there anymore," said Biel in a May 22 episode of SiriusXM's "Let's Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa," seemingly referring to her former home of LA. "We're just trying to create some normalcy for these kids."

Dean Cain left LA for Las Vegas because of the "incredible taxation" and "horrible regulations for business" in California.

Dean Cain, best known for playing Clark Kent/Superman in "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," was fed up with how things were run in California.

The actor split for Vegas last year.

"It's the most ridiculous large government, incredible taxation, horrible regulations for business," he told Fox News Digital in 2023. "Very anti-business."

Cain said California's personal income tax felt especially high.

"I moved to Las Vegas. I live in Nevada now," he added. "I have 10 times as nice a house. I'm not kidding. Ten times as nice a house as I had in Malibu. The house is absolutely stunningly built. Gorgeous, beautiful. Everything is brand new."

Kelly Clarkson didn't just move from LA to New York — she took her daytime talk show with her.

Kelly Clarkson felt she had a new lease on life when she moved to New York City last year.

After finalizing her divorce from ex-husband Brandon Blackstock in 2022, she didn't just take her kids east. She also brought "The Kelly Clarkson Show" — it started taping in New York in season 5.

"I was very depressed for the last three years — and maybe a little before that, if I'm being honest. I think I really needed the change," the Grammy winner told People. "I needed it for me and my family as well. My kids are thriving here. We're just doing so much better, and we needed a fresh start."

Jesse Eisenberg

Actor and director Jesse Eisenberg took the pandemic as an opportunity to leave Los Angeles. Eisenberg, his wife, and their son packed up an RV and drove to his wife's hometown of Bloomington, Indiana.

"We have driven cross-country a lot, but we thought it would be prudent to isolate in an RV instead of stopping at hotels," Eisenberg told The Hollywood Reporter.

Initially, Eisenberg moved to Indiana to help take care of his late mother-in-law after she got sick and also help out at a domestic violence shelter where she worked.

But Eisenberg was happy to be in Indiana.

"I've lived in Indiana for a decade on-and-off and that's where I feel the most comfortable," Eisenberg told CBS News in February. "I'm not somebody who wants to surround myself in an industry that just feels kind of unstable."

Walton Goggins

"The White Lotus" star Walton Goggins and his wife Nadia Conners moved to New York's Hudson Valley during the pandemic in 2021. But, he told Architectural Digest in February, the move was less about California, and more about New York.

"We weren't running away from Los Angeles," he said. "We were running toward something."

"The pandemic opened windows of self-perception and possibility," he added. "It was an opportunity to do something different, not to start over from scratch but to change, to evolve."

Goggins, who was raised in Georgia, chose to live in a 1920s home upstate that resembles a hunting lodge — with an abundance of wood paneling and wood flooring — instead of the glitzy surroundings of Los Angeles.

John Goodman left LA in the late '80s.

John Goodman figured out a long time ago that Los Angeles wasn't for him and has been living in New Orleans since the late 1980s.

Like many, the Emmy winner first visited Crescent City to party. In the late 1970s, he showed up with his fraternity pals. A few years later, as an actor, he was shooting the movie "Everybody's All-American" alongside Dennis Quaid, Jessica Lange, and Timothy Hutton when he met his future wife, Anna Beth. He's been attached to the city ever since.

"I used to come down here every time I'd get a few dimes to rub together, and it felt like I was missing something unless I was here," he told "Today" in 2023. "I consider myself very lucky to be here."

Josh Harnett has been living in the English countryside since the pandemic. He left Hollywood after dealing with a stalker.

The actor recently gained renewed attention thanks to movies like "Oppenheimer" and "Trap," but don't expect to find him hanging out on the Sunset Strip. Since the pandemic, he's ditched LA for the English countryside.

Harnett and his wife, British actor Tamsin Egerton, have lived in Hampshire since COVID hit, bringing up their four kids. He's living in the UK on a marriage visa, so he can only leave the country for work 180 days a year.

After spending his early career in the Hollywood spotlight, Harnett told The Guardian he loves the village country life where "nobody cares" who you are.

"This is all brand new to me," he said. "I never would have expected it. And time passes quickly. With four children, you have so much to do. In a way, less is happening. But more of the important stuff is happening."

Being outside Hollywood is also safer for Hartnett. He told The Guardian that when he lived in LA, he had experiences with stalkers.

"People showed up at my house. People that were stalking me," he said. "A guy showed up at one of my premieres with a gun, claiming to be my father. He ended up in prison. There were lots of things. It was a weird time. And I wasn't going to be grist for the mill."

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban moved to Tennessee to be closer to the country music scene.

A year after Nicole Kidman tied the knot with country-music star Keith Urban, the two got the heck out of LA.

In 2007, they moved to Nashville, where the Australian Oscar winner dove headfirst into Urban's world.

"That country-music community is a very warm community," she told People in 2016. "It's very protective. Keith's been a part of it for decades now. It's his home, it's our home."

Eva Longoria and her family split time between Mexico and Spain.

The star and producer made the decision a few years ago to move out of Los Angeles.

She now splits her time between Mexico and Spain. She told Marie Claire in 2024 that she left Hollywood behind because it felt like that "chapter in my life is done now."

While recently on "Live with Kelly and Mark," Longoria said she loves traveling to the Andalucía region of Spain to enjoy the small beach bars and restaurants.

Matthew McConaughey headed to Texas to help his family.

A few years before the McConaissance led to Matthew McConaughey's best actor Oscar win, he and his wife Camila Alves fled Hollywood for his home state of Texas.

The two settled in Austin in 2012 after buying a 10,800-square-foot mansion. According to a profile in Southern Living, it was initially because of a "family crisis," as he needed to help his mother and two brothers. That led to the couple deciding to stay put to raise their three children there.

"Ritual came back," McConaughey said of being back in Texas. "Whether that was Sunday church, sports, dinner together as a family every night, or staying up after that telling stories in the kitchen, sitting at the island pouring drinks and nibbling while retelling them all in different ways than we told them before."

Glen Powell moved to Texas after making it big in LA.

Glen Powell left Los Angeles and returned to his home state of Texas in 2024.

Powell, who had a breakout role in "Top Gun: Maverick," has lived in Los Angeles for more than 15 years, but told The Hollywood Reporter that he's done enough in Hollywood and he feels he can now live elsewhere. "It's like I've earned the ability to go back to my family," he said.

Not only does living in Texas allow Powell to be closer to family, but he's also finishing his degree at the University of Texas.

"I think this is going to be good for my head, heart, and soul," he said.

Amanda Seyfried headed to upstate New York for a taste of the simple life.

With movies like "Mean Girls" and "Mamma Mia!" in her filmography, you would think Amanda Seyfried would want to lay her head down somewhere glamorous.

But she actually prefers life on a farm.

Seyfried spends most of her time on a farm in the Catskills, a mountain range north of New York City, told Architectural Digest reported in 2023. in 2023 that that she purchased in 2014.

"It's insane how much I can feel so accomplished and successful here without having to be in a successful movie," she told The New York Times in 2020.

Sylvester Stallone wanted a new start in Florida.

After decades of living in Los Angeles — including in his first dingy apartme.nt on Balboa Boulevard, which would become the inspiration for his iconic character Rocky Balboa — Sylvester Stallone packed up and left town in 2023.

This was first revealed in early 2024, during season two of his reality series "The Family Stallone".

"After a long, hard consideration, your mother and I have decided, time to move on and leave the state of California permanently, and we're going to go to Florida," Stallone said. "We're going to sell this house."

Stallone and his wife, Jennifer Flavin, gave multiple reasons for the relocation, including the desire for a fresh start after their children moved out of the family home.

Rod Stewart went back to his roots in England.

The legendary rocker decided that at 79 years old, it was time to stop traveling across the pond.

Last year, he put his sprawling 38,500-square-foot Beverly Hills property, which he has lived in since 1975, on the market.

Selling the home is bittersweet for Stewart: "I don't want to sell it, and the kids don't want me to sell it either," Stewart told People. "There's too many fond memories. I've lived [in LA] since 1975, and I adore the place."

But he said he's making England a more permanent home since wrapping up his latest world tour and Las Vegas residency last year.

Hilary Swank moved to a Colorado ski town.

The Oscar winner is loving her new life in the mountains of Telluride, Colorado, on 168 acres with five rescue dogs.

She and her husband, Philip Schneider, bought the land in 2016, broke ground in 2018, and finally completed the home in 2020.

A year later, she put her LA home on the market and has been living it up in the great outdoors.

"I have been looking for land since I was in my mid-20s," Swank told Architectural Digest in 2022. "I find nature to be my happiest place, and animals are my other happiest place. And to be with both of them is everything to me."

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively left LA after just six months of dating.

When you know, you know. After less than a year of dating, Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively packed up their stuff and left Hollywood for the suburbs of New York City.

In 2012, after six months of dating, the couple bought a $2.3 million home in Pound Ridge, New York.

"We don't live in LA. We live on a farm in New York," said the "Deadpool" star in a 2015 interview. "And we don't lead a wild and crazy life. It's not that hard. It's not a big deal."

Julia Roberts hasn't lived in LA for decades.

The Oscar winner realized many years ago that Los Angeles wasn't for her.

Roberts moved to a 32-acre ranch in Taos, New Mexico, in 1995.

The "Pretty Woman" star told Oprah back in 2003 that in New Mexico, everything is "clear."

"Around here, I come and go like it's nothing," she said. "Los Angeles is such a town of show business, and I'm a terrible celebrity. I find it difficult — it's the beast that must be fed."

Eric Stonestreet left Hollywood for Kansas City to get away from the "douchebaggery" of the business.

"Modern Family" star Eric Stonestreet did not mince words when he explained why he's been living in Kansas City since the acclaimed show ended after 11 seasons in 2020.

In a September interview with long-form interview journalist Graham Bensinger, he said a big reason he left LA was to get away from all the fake people in Hollywood.

"What I realized it does is it highlights everything great about our business, the entertainment business," the actor said on what it's like to no longer live in LA. "And it highlights all the douchebaggery of our business. It amplifies it. Because I'm here, I'm dealing with people from here, and I'm going into the store and having all these authentic, real moments, and then I go to Hollywood, and you're reminded of some of the types of people that you deal with."

James Van Der Beek moved his family out of LA after he and his wife renewed their vows in Austin.

In 2020, James Van Der Beek and his wife Kimberly renewed their wedding vows for their 10th anniversary in Austin, Texas.

A year later, they moved their six kids from LA to Austin, where they now live on a 36-acre property.

"We wanted to get the kids out of Los Angeles," Van Der Beek told Austin Lifestyle in 2021. "We wanted to give them space and we wanted them to live in nature."

Mark Wahlberg moved his family to Las Vegas for a "fresh start."

Boston-born Mark Wahlberg set out to LA years ago to make it as an actor. Over his career, he realized he rarely stayed there to make any of his movies. So, in 2022, he packed up and moved his family to Las Vegas.

He told The Talk in October 2022 that in Nevada his four kids can more easily pursue their hobbies, including golfing, riding horses, and playing basketball.

"We came here to just kind of give ourselves a new look, a fresh start for the kids, and there's a lot of opportunity here," Wahlberg told The Talk. "I'm really excited about the future."

• JC Lee, the daughter of comic book legend Stan Lee, spoke out for the first time to Business Insider.
• She denied previous allegations of abusing her parents, Stan and Joan Lee.
• "They are all lies," JC Lee told BI. "I never did it."

JC Lee wants to set the record straight.

The daughter of Stan Lee, the comic book legend behind some of the Marvel Comics' most memorable characters, has been framed for years as a villain in her father's story; the spoiled, impossible child who exploited him, then failed to protect him in his final years. There was even an accusation that she physically abused Stan and her mother Joan.

But according to JC, 75, it was all "a lie."

Marking the first time JC has spoken on the record about her life as the heiress to her father's Marvel empire, she vehemently denies that she ever hit her parents.

"I never ever touched my parents," she told me as I sat in her house in the Hollywood Hills last summer.

Months after her mother died at the age of 95 in 2017, stories began appearing in the press that painted a dire picture of Stan's life, including accusations that his closest confidants were fleecing him.

In 2018, The Hollywood Reporter presented a particularly unflattering portrait of JC, describing hysterical demands for money and a "powder-keg relationship" with her father. The story included an allegation that JC attacked her parents in 2014 after she discovered that her new Jaguar was actually leased in her father's name.

According to the story, JC violently grabbed Joan's arm and slammed Stan's head against the back of a chair. The Hollywood Reporter was provided photos of a bruise on Joan's arm. The Lees did not go to the authorities because they felt their daughter was in a fragile state.

JC says she took the advice of the people around her not to make a public denial at the time of the accusation.

"You think I haven't regretted it to this day?" she said. "They are all lies. That photo is insane. I never did it."

JC, who can be volatile and prone to fly off the handle, concedes that she often screamed at her parents, usually over money, but it never got physical. Five people BI spoke with who were close to Stan at the time said they never saw JC commit any physical abuse.

"They were equally abusive, the way they screamed at each other," said James MacLean, JC's former assistant and business partner who spent many hours in the house with the Lees. "But then it would be like, 'Let's sit down and have dinner.' That was their relationship."

Stan Lee died on November 12, 2018 after collapsing at his home. JC, arriving for a visit with her father, pulled into his driveway just as he was being loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. "They wanted to do all these terrible things to his body to see if they could bring him back," she says. "I said no. He appeared to be gone."

In the span of a year, JC lost her mother and father, who were also her best friends. Since then, though she's tried to get her own projects off the ground, including a T-shirt line and a Stan Lee board game, she's been unable to capture the same success her father had. She also believes the confidants who were around in Stan's final years took everything after his death.

"I feel these people have taken my life, and they're eating off gold utensils and I'm eating off plastic," she said.

Read BI's full story on JC Lee here.

• Ryan Coogler's "Sinners," starring Michael B. Jordan, has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• "Sinners" features Jordan as twin brothers battling vampires.
• The film was shot with IMAX cameras, and will be shown in select theaters worldwide in enhanced IMAX 70mm.

Ryan Coogler's latest movie, "Sinners," in which Michael B. Jordan plays identical brothers who face off against evil vampires, has become a critical sensation: it currently has a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

If you're going to check out the movie when it hits theaters this Friday, consider seeing it in IMAX 70mm.

The movie marks the first to be shot using IMAX cameras since Christopher Nolan's best picture winner "Oppenheimer," and like that movie, Coogler's thriller will get the full large-format treatment. Ten theaters in the world will show the movie in IMAX 70mm, which provides a more immersive and higher quality picture than regular IMAX digital projection.

Below are all the theaters showing "Sinners" in IMAX 70mm.

United States

Arizona Tempe, AZ - Harkins Arizona Mills 18 & IMAX

California Irvine, CA - Regal Irvine Spectrum & IMAX

Los Angeles, CA - Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood & IMAX (Early Access on 16th)

San Francisco, CA - AMC Metreon 16 & IMAX (Early Access on 16th)

Florida Fort Lauderdale, FL - Autonation IMAX Theater

Indiana Indianapolis, IN - Indiana State Museum IMAX Theatre

New York New York, NY - AMC Lincoln Square 13 & IMAX (Early Access on 16th)

Texas Dallas, TX - Cinemark Dallas & IMAX

Canada

Ontario Woodbridge, ON - Cineplex Cinemas Vaughan

United Kingdom

London, UK - BFI IMAX

• Katy Perry joined Gayle King and Lauren Sánchez on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket.
• She sang the Louis Armstrong song "What a Wonderful World" while on board.
• Perry emphasized the flight's focus on collective energy and future women in space.

Katy Perry spent the morning as an astronaut. But while she sailed through space on a 10-minute flight, she reminded the all-female crew that she's a singer, too.

On Monday, Perry, Gayle King, and Lauren Sánchez were among the star-studded crew members who took a flight to space on Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin rocket. During the flight, a faint sound of someone singing was audible on the live stream.

After the 10-minute flight, King revealed that Perry was singing "What a Wonderful World." Perry explained why she chose to sing the Louis Armstrong classic.

"I've covered that song in the past," she said. "Obviously my higher self is steering the ship. I had no clue I'd one day decide to sing a little bit of that in space."

King said that she and other crew members, which along with Sánchez included bioastronautics research scientist and civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, former NASA rocket scientist Aisha Bowe, and film producer Kerianne Flynn, wanted Perry to sing one of her hits like "Roar" or "Firework," but Perry declined, saying the moment was "not about me."

"It's not about singing my songs," she said. "It's about a collective energy and making space for future women. It's about this wonderful world that we see right out there and appreciating it. This is all for the benefit of Earth."

JC Lee, the only child of the Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee, recently sought the help of a Santa Barbara medium to talk to her parents.

JC had always thought of Stan and Joan Lee as her best friends, the only people who'd ever truly believed in her. Her father, the cocreator of dozens of iconic superheroes, including Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, and the Fantastic Four, called her his "greatest creation." But ever since Stan's death in 2018, and her mother's death a year earlier, JC's efforts to continue her father's legacy and forge ahead with her own projects had stalled. For six years she'd been mired in never-ending legal battles to regain control of her father's name and likeness while making little progress on her own dreams: her art, a new superhero franchise, producing a Broadway musical of her father's life.

Now in her mid-70s, JC needed her parents' counsel as desperately as ever. Even if it was only for a fleeting moment, through a shaky connection to the afterlife.

As JC tells it, she could feel her mother's spirit in the room. But it was her father who spoke to her. "Forgive me for the mess I've left you," he said. It was, she thought, a reference to the sad final years of his life, when the small circle of advisors around Stan was accused of cutting him off from the world and draining his money. "You are creative, you matter," he assured his daughter. "Just do it."

JC weeps from the memory, as she often does when she talks about her parents. The voice from beyond captured a familiar dynamic between her and Stan: the prolific, world-conquering father — the man who created a comic book "universe" that has all but subsumed the movie industry — urging his child to make something of her own, to see something through. It was advice, throughout her life, that she had experienced as both a birthright and a burden.

JC recounts the seance to me not long after we first meet, at her home in the Hollywood Hills. She had invited me to visit with the promise that she was ready to share her story for the first time. Since her father died at age 95, JC has been widely portrayed as a villain in the Stan Lee story: the spoiled, impossible child who exploited her father, and then failed to protect him in his final years. In the months before his death, Stan said he was surrounded by "unscrupulous businessmen, sycophants, and opportunists" — and JC had done nothing to stop it.

Now, like her dad in his later years, JC is alone. Her family is mostly gone, and she's fallen out with her many famous friends. Her circle has grown small, and the people who surround her and keep her company have business ties to her or her father. I wonder if JC's story is one of history repeating itself. Others, I learn, have similar worries.

"The main thing JC inherited from her father is she has a real knack for surrounding herself with con men," says Jonathan Bolerjack, one of Stan's closest confidants in his final months who's known JC for years. "They both have this uncanny ability to be very trusting and yet find themselves surrounded by the worst people."

JC is acutely aware of being cut off from the world, after having existed for so many years in the shadow of, and at the mercy of, powerful men: not only her father, but a string of boyfriends, business associates, advisors. "No one knows I'm alive," she tells me. "I don't talk. I'm ruled by the men. That's the bottom line." She can't understand how she got here — how her father's wealth and fame and creative energy have eluded her.

"I want it all," she says. "I have none of it."

JC's gated property sits on half an acre of land, surrounded by towering palm trees. Inside, though, the house feels strangely devoid of life. What passes for interior design is mostly Marvel kitsch. The marble-floored entryway boasts not one but three lifesize models of Spider-Man.

Pages of her own artwork are scattered everywhere. They're lovely — abstract, wavy designs sketched in colored pencil and crayon. She's uncomfortable with the idea of putting her drawings and paintings up for sale, treating them more as items to be stored than creations to be displayed. In the garage, there are stacks upon stacks of paintings she has done over the decades. Even more, she tells me, are gathering dust in her parents' home up the road.

As she shows me around the house, her two dogs, Duchess and Rodent, follow at our heels. There's a screening room, a pool, and a sauna. When she ushers me into what she calls the master bedroom, I wonder if I misheard: The room has no furniture to speak of, not even a bed. The master bathroom has no sink. Seeing my puzzlement, JC explains that there was a leak a few years ago that nearly ruined the place, and ever since she's been sleeping in a guest room in the back of the house. She doesn't know why there aren't any sinks in the bathroom.

Similarly, the many projects that consume her remain stuck in the concept phase. Most of them, which speak to JC's immediate preoccupations, don't seem to hold much commercial appeal. She has an idea for a board game, for instance, where the goal is to figure out who holds the copyright to her father's name. She calls it "Where Is Stan Lee?" The Broadway musical she wants to create about Stan's life, meanwhile, focuses not on the golden age of Marvel, but on the sad, final years before his death. "I think it's Shakespearean," she tells me.

Another preoccupation is money. JC doesn't seem to know how much of it she has, or how long it will last. She charges everything to an Amex card. I can't tell if she has willingly outsourced the details of her finances to others, or if whoever is holding the purse strings is deliberately keeping her out of the loop.

As we talk, two friends of JC's keep a close watch on us. Jesse Gargiulo, her close companion and hairdresser for over 30 years, serves as something of an unofficial spokesman. He looks like a 1970s TV star, with thick black hair, a deep California tan, and an easygoing demeanor.

The other is Eymun Talasazan, who is visibly annoyed at my presence. Tall and well-built, he's clearly the alpha of the three. When I arrived, he seemed reluctant to shake my hand; I find out later he had no idea I was coming. Talasazan's father owned an antique business that JC's mother liked to patronize, and Talasazan, who dabbles in real estate, was the listing agent for one of Stan's properties in 2015. He tells me he doesn't want to be in the story, but he makes a point of leaning in close and instructing me to make sure that JC comes out looking good.

After a few hours, JC tells me she isn't feeling well and suggests I come back in a few days. Gargiulo sees me out.

"Just another day in paradise," he says.

For as long as Joan Celia Lee can remember, she wanted to be like her dad.

When JC was born in 1950, Stan already had a successful career writing for Timely Comics, which later would be renamed Marvel. Her mother, Joan Boocock, was a British hat model and actor. JC was known as "Little Joan" to her mother's "Big Joan" — a distinction that grew funnier as JC became the taller of the two.

When JC was 3, her newborn sister died. Stan and Joan channeled their grief into becoming overprotective parents to JC. "I was cross-eyed. I wore glasses. I was a bit of a misfit. I was too skinny," JC tells me. "For a while, my father would bring home a milkshake every day to get me to gain weight. I got a lot of animals." When a chimpanzee on roller skates appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show," Stan cried out, "We'll get that chimp!" But when the family went to fetch their new pet, it immediately made a pass at Big Joan. "It grabbed her bosom," JC recalls. "It was horny." Stan had a change of heart. "No monkey," he announced. Instead, JC wound up getting a parrot that spoke Spanish.

In 1961, with the release of "The Fantastic Four," Stan became a full-fledged celebrity. The elder child of Jewish immigrants, he had imagined his way to fame, creating a world of superheroes that became a signature of American culture. From an early age, JC yearned to follow in his footsteps. "I've always been terribly ambitious," she says. "I wanted to get involved in Marvel and in Stan's world, but I wasn't a writer and I wasn't an artist, so what was I going to do?"

Thinking she might pursue a career onstage, she enrolled at the Professional Children's School in New York City, which catered to child actors and dancers. One of her classmates, Lorna Luft, the daughter of Judy Garland, remembers JC as a free spirit. "She was so stunning, and so pretty, and so nice," she says.

Luft recalls visiting the Lees at their cottage in Hewlett Harbor and seeing Stan at work at an easel by the pool. "All of a sudden, the pool filter made this bubbling noise, and he went, 'Oh, Jesus!' I asked, 'Are you OK, Mr. Lee?' And he said, 'Yeah, but in my mind it was a sea monster!'"

"I thought, OK, he's a little strange," Luft recalls. "I didn't know what he did for a living."

As Stan's success grew, the pampering of JC became more lavish. "My daughter is not sensible and cautious, and I am not sensible and cautious," Joan would say. "We just spend his money gleefully." JC describes her attitude toward personal finance in similar terms. "My lifestyle is extravagant," she tells me, "because my father was Stan Lee and his wife was a great diva and elegant and first class all the way."

Though she shared a name with her mother, JC's personality was closer to Stan's. "They're both overwhelming people," Larry Leiber, Stan's 93-year-old brother, tells me. "They both have a strong presence."

As she grew older, JC had trouble finding her way. "I was supposed to be a debutante," she says. "But I had two passionate parents." She enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, but dropped out after a year. She did some modeling, and her parents set her up in an apartment across the hall from theirs. At one point Stan got her a job at Marvel as a receptionist. "We didn't know what to say to her," says Roy Thomas, a writer at Marvel who later succeeded Stan as editor. "She was the boss' daughter, so you're kind of wary you'll say the wrong thing." His impression was that "Stan was getting her something to do to stay busy."

It lasted only a few months. Trading her father's New York for her mother's England, JC moved to London and dived head-first into the 1970s glam scene of Kings Road. With her big hair, false lashes, and hot pants, she looked like Barbarella, the classic sci-fi heroine played by Jane Fonda. She tried to get a foot into the movie business, landing a job as a personal assistant to the English actor Max Wall on Terry Gilliam's film "Jabberwocky." She also got occasional work taking photographs of the famous people she encountered for Celebrity, a magazine founded by her father.

"I knew everything that was happening with everyone in town at night," she says. "I had great stories and had a good time."

One night at a bar, she found herself sitting next to Eric Clapton. When she introduced herself as Joan C. Lee, Clapton replied: "What are you, a tax accountant? That's the worst name I've ever heard." He suggested an improvement: JC Lee. The name stuck.

In London, JC dated Isaac Tigrett, a cofounder of the first Hard Rock Cafe, in the city's fashionable Mayfair district. According to JC, Tigrett and his partner Peter Morton, heir to Morton's steakhouse chain, cooked up Hard Rock's name and iconic logo in her apartment. "I'm really a phenomenal muse," she says. The fact that she never received what she viewed as proper credit for Hard Rock's success left her feeling bitter. (Tigrett did not respond to a request for comment.)

JC and Tigritt eventually got engaged, and the course of her life appeared to be set: She would accompany her husband on his ride to stardom, just as Big Joan had been there for Stan. But the relationship didn't last. When JC returned home to America, she was in such bad shape that Stan took her to a psychiatrist. "Broadway wasn't waiting for my dancing; modeling wasn't waiting for me," she says. "My parents took me in."

The dynamic between father and daughter was on full display in 1979, when Stan and JC appeared on a Father's Day episode of the daytime show "Midday with Bill Boggs," alongside Paul Sorvino with his daughter Mira, the future Oscar-winning actor. The host asked JC what she did for a living. "At the moment I'm pursuing an acting career," she replied. "But it's moving a little bit faster than I can catch it." Dressed like Stan, in a cream sports coat and dark sunglasses, she was asked which of her father's creations was her favorite. "Me," she replied.

By the 1980s, Stan had moved the family out to Los Angeles; the poor kid from New York City was now the publisher of Marvel Comics and was starting to act as a Hollywood executive. Thomas, the Marvel editor, remembers visiting the Lees and being shocked when Stan suddenly appeared and began roller-skating across "these nice marble floors."

JC, now in her 30s, had followed her parents out west and was continuing to enjoy the fruits of Stan's labors. One of her confidants was the celebrity photographer Harry Langdon, whose father was a star of the silent screen. He could relate to the difficulties Joan was experiencing from having a famous parent. "Stan wanted her to be creative," he recalls.

The trouble was that JC didn't want to part with any of her works. For her, they seemed to possess a sort of talismanic power — something intensely personal that was not meant to be shared with others. Langdon recalls JC selling one piece for about $75,000, only to later ask for it back. "She missed her artwork," he says.

Though by all accounts a devoted and loving family man, Stan grumbled constantly about JC's spending. "I don't think my daughter has ever read a comic book in her life, and I doubt that my wife has," he told Rolling Stone in 1971. "They get very bored if I even discuss the subject. All they want is the paycheck every week."

JC didn't like being dependent on her father. "No one wanted me to work," she tells me. "I think I was their pet." In a home video shot in the late 1980s, she speaks of her desire to play a bigger role at Marvel. "I wouldn't mind helping contribute," she tells Stan.

"The only way you can help contribute is to stop spending so much money," he responds. "That would be the greatest contribution."

As JC tried to find a place for herself, her social circle began to change. By the late 1990s, Langdon noticed that the arty bohemian parties she'd been known for hosting now featured well-dressed corporate types, who soon "overrode" JC's older friendships. "She got acquainted with some people that were a little more business-oriented," he recalls. "They were trying to make sure she was provided for in the future, in case something happened to her father."

Those cozying up to JC may have believed there was money to be made from having the ear of Stan Lee's daughter. But her father's creative genius didn't always translate into great business sense. In 1998, as Stan prepared to exit day-to-day operations at Marvel, he signed a contract that set him up with an annual salary that would cap at $1 million a year for life, stock options, and 10% of the profits from any movies that used Marvel characters he had helped create.

That last clause, had he held on to it, would have been a gold mine. In 2002, "Spider-Man," starring Tobey Maguire, became a box office sensation, grossing over $825 million worldwide. But when Stan didn't receive his promised 10%, he sued. In a settlement signed in 2005, Stan agreed to drop the profit-share agreement in exchange for a one-time lump sum of $10 million.

For Stan, who was in his 80s, it must have seemed like a generous deal. Instead, he had given away the keys to his kingdom. The Marvel Cinematic Universe went on to become the world's highest-grossing film franchise. By the time of Stan's death, his comic book creations had raked in close to $30 billion at the box office — including six of the 20 highest-grossing movies of all time.

Since Stan didn't own the iconic Marvel characters he helped create, he was forced to keep working into his 90s to maintain his lifestyle. Most of his money came from trying to cash in on his name. In 1999, he formed Stan Lee Media, followed by POW Entertainment. Both quickly descended into scandal, accused of mismanagement and ripping off investors.

JC tried launching a few ventures of her own, including a jewelry line and a brief foray as a recording artist. But her most successful projects were those that relied on her father's name. She published a photo book, "Stan Lee's Love Story: It's All About Love," and launched a company selling "I Love Stan" T-shirts at comic conventions for $20 a pop. But according to James MacLean, her partner in the enterprise, JC lost interest in the business when she learned they would have to recoup their initial investment before she would see any profits.

"When that happened she stopped supporting the T-shirt," MacLean says. "Any time her dad did something, there was always a lot of cash around, so that was her expectation."

A devastating blow arrived in 2017, when Big Joan suffered a stroke and died at the age of 95. JC had lost her best friend at the very moment her father's wealth was drying up. Arguments over money between JC and Stan were starting to escalate into full-scale shouting matches, and Big Joan had been the only one who could defuse the tension. "It was a very difficult and sad time," MacLean says.

Eight months later, stories began appearing in the press that painted a dire picture of Stan's life, including accusations that his closest confidants were fleecing him. The Hollywood Reporter presented a particularly unflattering portrait of JC, describing hysterical demands for money and a "powder-keg relationship" with her father. The story included an allegation by Bradley Herman, Stan's former business manager, who accused JC of attacking her parents in 2014, after she discovered that her new Jaguar was actually leased in her father's name. As the argument escalated, Herman alleged, JC had violently grabbed Big Joan's arm and slammed Stan's head against the back of a chair. Herman provided The Hollywood Reporter with photos of a bruise on Big Joan's arm, but said the Lees had told him not to go to the authorities because their daughter was in a fragile state.

JC, who can be volatile and prone to fly off the handle, concedes that she often screamed at her parents, usually over money, but she vehemently denies hitting them. "I never ever touched my parents," she tells me. "It was a lie." Five people I spoke with who were close to Stan at the time told me they never saw JC commit any physical abuse. "They were equally abusive, the way they screamed at each other," MacLean recalls. "But then it would be like, 'Let's sit down and have dinner.' That was their relationship."

With Big Joan gone, Stan grew increasingly isolated. By 2018, the people in his inner circle had been driven out. That August, a few months before Stan's death, he obtained a restraining order against his new business manager, Keya Morgan, who was later charged with stealing from his client. (The case was dismissed after a jury failed to reach a verdict.) One of the world's greatest artists was abandoned and alone, with only his daughter by his side.

One day Bolerjack, a long-haired comic book fan who had been part of Stan's entourage on the convention circuit for years, got a call from JC. In the background, he could hear Stan calling out, "Is that Hairspray?" — the nickname Stan had given him. Bolerjack, who hadn't seen his friend in months, rushed over to the house. The comic book icon looked to have aged a decade.

"He sat me down and said: 'I've made a lot of bad decisions with people lately and I keep getting betrayed. I just need you to help me,'" Bolerjack tells me, choking up at the recollection. "He looked at me and he said, 'Please don't let me down.'"

For the last six months of Stan's life, Bolerjack showed up nearly every afternoon, and earlier on weekends, to stay with Stan until late in the evening. "When you have just an old man, a guy that you love, who is just so battered by things and asks you to please don't let him down — that's such an emotionally weighted request that I took it very seriously," says Bolerjack. Most of the time, Stan would sit on his couch and look out at his pool, seemingly haunted by the past.

JC remembers her father's final days as filled with regret. "The whole time he was sitting on the couch, he never had any peace," she says. "He was worried about me. Were there any happy moments at the end? Absolutely not. I wish there was."

On November 12, 2018, Stan Lee collapsed at his home. JC, arriving for a visit with her father, pulled into his driveway just as he was being loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. "They wanted to do all these terrible things to his body to see if they could bring him back," she says. "I said no. He appeared to be gone."

Stan was pronounced dead from a heart attack. For the first time in her life, Little Joan, the sole heir to what remained of Stan's empire, was truly on her own.

Before my second visit to JC's house, I stop by Stan and Joan's home in the exclusive Bird Streets neighborhood of the Hollywood Hills. Imagining the Xanadu of a comic titan — Leonardo DiCaprio is a neighbor — I instead find the place in a state of disrepair. The house is missing siding, and Big Joan's once meticulous landscaping is overgrown. Incongruously, two pristine cars sit in the driveway. I wonder who is using Stan's oasis as a parking lot.

When I get to JC's house, I find her in the same spot as before, sitting at the end of the couch and sipping a Heineken. I notice that a chair with worn green fabric has been brought into the room. JC tells me it was a favorite of Stan's, and invites me to sit in it.

Since her father's death, JC tells me, she's been frozen out by those who control her father's legacy. Her stake in the Stan Lee Universe, now controlled by a company called Kartoon Studios, is less than 5%. At one point, JC reached out to Kartoon about being more involved in the business, but those conversations ultimately disintegrated.

"My father is supporting everyone," JC says. "I feel these people have taken my life, and they're eating off gold utensils and I'm eating off plastic."

Andy Heyward, the founder and CEO of Kartoon, had a relationship with Stan that dated back to the 1980s. He recalls Stan's "constant" complaints about JC's spending and considers her spoiled. "I would not want to be in any more state of business with her than we currently are, where she is a passive participant," he tells me. "At some point, for all of us, we can't just go on through life saying we're a victim of whatever made us the way we are. At some point, you're an adult, and you've got to take responsibility for who you choose to be and how you live your life."

JC has made other attempts to gain control of Stan's empire. After his death, she sued POW in federal court, claiming her father's business partners had misled him about deals that signed away the rights to his name and likeness. In 2020, a judge dismissed her lawsuit as "frivolous" and ordered her to pay $1 million — though that sanction was later tossed out by a higher court. In 2023, JC sued POW again, arguing that the Lee Trust, which she controls, should have a greater share in the company. The case is pending.

The lawsuits strike those who know her as another sign of her lifelong desire to win her father's approval. "She just really wanted to know Stan was proud of her," Bolerjack says. "She wanted to make her dad proud."

Despite her legal setbacks, JC remains buzzing with ideas, but short on allies. As I sit with her, she is once again accompanied by Gargiulo, her longtime friend, and Talasazan, who she tells me is serving as an informal financial advisor. Talasazan seems as grumpy about my presence as he was on my first visit. With him is a friend who, I learn later, was the one who'd parked the vintage cars in Stan's driveway.

Like many of those who circled around Stan before his death, both Gargiulo and Talasazan have made efforts to involve themselves in Lee's business empire. Toward the end of Stan's life, JC set up a meeting so Gargiulo could pitch her father on a superhero movie he hoped to produce with JC. As Gargiulo recounts it, Stan looked at him and put his hand on Gargiulo's knee.

"Look, is this going to help my daughter?" he asked.

"Of course," Garguilo assured him.

"OK, that's all I wanted to make sure of," Lee said. He gave the project his blessing, but nothing ever came of it.

Talasazan, for his part, has been trailed by controversy. In 2018, he made headlines when he took the R&B artist The Weeknd to court, alleging that the artist's Marvel comic book "Starboy," based on his chart-topping album of the same name, had been Talasazan's idea. (He dropped the lawsuit a year later). In 2021, a court issued a default judgment against Talasazan for defrauding a teenager and ordered him to pay $633,380. Another lawsuit against him, which is still pending, alleges that he failed to repay more than $300,000 in loans — including legal fees to fight the previous case.

MacLean, JC's partner in the T-shirt business, recalls Talasazan as an aggressive salesman while Stan and Joan were still alive. "He would bring stuff from his dad's, a carload of antiques, and be like, 'Oh, Mrs. Lee, this is so nice.' She was in a lot of pain and on a lot of medication and she would buy a lot of antiques." There were so many pieces, JC tells me, that parts of the family home wound up looking like a furniture warehouse.

Gargiulo is worried that Talasazan is taking advantage of JC. He says Talasazan has been gutting Stan and Joan's house and putting the contents in a loft in downtown Los Angeles. "You can't watch somebody you really care about be abused by people," Gargiulo says. "Eymun just screams at JC about doing what has to be done and 'signing these papers.' I would say, 'There's no reason to scream at her.' There's something not right here."

JC acknowledges that Talasazan sometimes screams at her, but she brushes it off as his "passionate Persian way." At one point, she interrupts a voicemail message she's leaving me to take a call from Talasazan on another phone, and I can overhear him swearing at her. "Just shut your mouth!" he yells.

JC tells me that Talasazan convinced her to list her home for sale last year for $8.8 million. "I need the money," she says. He's also helping her assemble a new team of lawyers and business partners to reclaim her father's empire. She's never met them, but Talasazan has assured her they are "bona fide billionaires" who are "going to help me with retrieving my money." She's unclear on precisely how they — and Talasazan — stand to benefit from supporting her cause.

"Eymun, when I call him, he's at the computer and he's working endlessly," she says. "It's men things. I don't understand a lot of this. He does."

Gargiulo tells me that my visit contributed to a rift between him and Talasazan, who warned him to stop bringing people to the house. Otherwise, Talasazan told him, "you're out — you're not going to be part of this anymore."

"I'm not a part of anything," Gargiulo says he responded. "She's my friend."

Talasazan arranged a time to speak with me, but then stopped responding to my calls and texts. When I tell JC that her current situation feels eerily similar to what her father went through, she ponders for a moment. "I would be dead in the water if not for E," she says of Talasazan. "If you want to find imperfect, you can always find it."

The reality is, like many heiresses, JC really never had a shot at a normal life. When you're born into a famous family, as Lorna Luft tells me, "you inherit the fame." JC also appears to have inherited the worst aspects of both her parents — her mother's penchant for spending money, and her father's poor judgment about making it. As her father was during his latter years, she is largely alone, cut off from friends and family. She speaks on the phone from time to time with her uncle, Stan's brother Larry, who still lives in Manhattan. "I'm sad that we weren't close," Larry tells me. "I'm glad we're able to talk now because she wants family. At my age, I can't come to California and slay dragons. But I do care about her."

Speaking with Stan's brother brought me back to my final visit with JC. As I sat across from her in Stan's favorite chair, I thought about how many times he must have sat on the same worn green fabric, looking across at his daughter, worried about what would become of her, his little girl who had never truly managed to find her way in the world. He tried to give her everything, and he left her with next to nothing. For JC, the privilege he provided her is inseparable from the pain she has suffered.

"I had a wonderful life," she tells me. "And I knew I'd pay a price for it."

Jason Guerrasio is an entertainment correspondent at Business Insider.

• Blumhouse will feature new tech from Meta during screenings of 'M3GAN' for its Halfway to Halloween Film Festival.
• Moviegoers can interact with a M3GAN chatbot via their phones while the movie plays.
• The festival will take place over three consecutive weeks beginning April 30.

Blumhouse, the acclaimed production company dedicated to scaring the heck out of moviegoers, is showcasing new tech that will enhance the experience of seeing one of its hit titles.

The company announced on Wednesday that for its second annual Halfway to Halloween Film Festival, it will be screening its 2022 release "M3GAN" with new tech from Meta, which will allow moviegoers to use their phones as a "second screen" in theaters while the movie is playing.

More specifically, the technology, called Movie Mate, will allow those who attend the special screening to interact with a M3GAN chatbot during the movie on their phones. They will also be sent exclusive content like trivia and behind the scenes facts — all in real time while the movie is running.

"The 'M3GAN' in-theatre Movie Mate is a first-to-market moviegoer experience," Omar Zayat, group lead in entertainment, tech, travel & gaming, and auto at Meta said in a press release. "We are happy to introduce filmgoers to it by way of Instagram Direct and Click-to-Messenger Ads."

The festival will take place one night over three consecutive weeks at theaters nationwide, with "M3GAN" being shown on April 30. Other Blumhouse hits included are "Annabelle" (May 7) and "Ma" (May 14).

Only the "M3GAN" showings will feature the Movie Mate tech, with the goal of hyping up the release of "M3GAN 2.0," which hits theaters June 27.