Entertainment

Adidas Cancels Ye and Ends a 10 Year Partnership

Published

2 years ago

2022-10-26

Adidas Cancels Rapper Ye Ending a 10 Year Partnership

Adidas has cancelled its partnership with rap artist Ye formerly known as Kanye West, saying it couldn’t survive a growing backlash over the rapper’s racist and antisemitic remarks.

The breakup will leave Adidas looking for another transcendent personality to help it compete with ever-larger rival Nike, but it will certainly cost Ye, as the rapper is now known, even more. The footwear business is the latest to cut relations with Ye, whose music career has dwindled as he courted controversy.

Adidas estimated that the move to halt production of its Yeezy line and discontinue payments to Ye and his firms would cost them up to 250 million euros ($246 million) in net income this year. Its stock dropped more than 2% on Tuesday.

“Adidas does not allow antisemitism or any other type of hate speech,” a spokesperson said in a statement released Tuesday. “Ye’s recent words and actions are reprehensible, hostile, and dangerous, and they go against Adidas values of diversity and inclusion, mutual respect, and justice.”

For weeks, Ye has made antisemitic remarks in interviews and on social media, including a tweet earlier this month declaring that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” a reference to the United States defence preparedness state scale known as DEFCON.

He was barred from using Twitter and Instagram.

Ye expressed regret in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman that was broadcast online Monday, describing his initial tweet as a mistake and apologizing to “the Jewish community.” An email sent to a Ye spokesman was not immediately responded to.

Despite prior problems involving his comments about slavery and COVID-19 vaccines, Adidas has stood by Ye. However, Ye’s antisemitic remarks resurrected the company’s own ties to the Nazi system, which it had tried hard to break. During WWII, Adidas facilities “manufactured supplies and weaponry for the Nazi regime, using slave labour,” according to the World Jewish Congress.

Jewish organizations said the decision to eliminate Ye was long overdue.

“I would have liked a clear statement earlier from a German corporation that was also involved with the Nazi government,” said Josef Schuster, President and head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews, the country’s main Jewish organization.

Adidas, whose CEO Kasper Rorsted is retiring next year, said it decided following a “thorough evaluation” of its association with Ye, whose talent agency, CAA, and fashion company Balenciaga had already dumped the rapper.

Some Adidas employees in the United States have expressed on social media the company’s silence in the hours leading up to the announcement. Despite the rising backlash, Allen Adamson, co-founder of marketing firm Metaforce, feels Adidas’ delay was “understandable.”

“The benefits are enormous in terms of the demographic it appeals to — younger, urban, trendsetters, and the size of the business,” Adamson said. “I’m sure they hoped against hope that he’d apologize and try to make things right.”

According to Morningstar analyst David Swartz in a Tuesday report, the impact of Yeezy sales will be greater than projected because the brand has discontinued production of all Yeezy products and ceased royalty payments.

Swartz forecasts Adidas revenues of $23.2 billion euros ($23.1 billion) this year, with the Yeezy brand accounting for 1.5 billion to 2 billion euros ($1.99 billion), or roughly 10% of the total. According to Swartz, the expensive brand accounts for up to 15% of the company’s net income.

According to Forbes, Adidas accounted for $1.5 billion of Ye’s net worth, which will drop to $400 million without the transaction, which includes his music catalogue, real estate, cash, and a share in ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s shapewear firm Skims.

Despite the rapper’s long-held belief that the magazine grossly undervalues his fortune, Forbes has announced that it will no longer include Ye on its list of billionaires.

In recent years, Ye has alienated even his most fervent followers. After the couple’s acrimonious divorce and disturbing posts about her subsequent connection with comedian Pete Davidson, everyone close to him, including Kardashian and her family, has stopped openly defending him.

Many Ye fans have been disappointed, according to Carl Lamarre, Billboard’s deputy director of R&B/Hip Hop, but the implosion of his commercial ventures has been painful to witness for those who appreciated the rapper’s ability to reach new heights of success outside of hip-hop.

“This is someone who might perhaps lay down the pattern for many next performers,” Lamarre added. “When you see someone graduate to his level of superstardom and transcend into business, into fashion, and touches that billionaire point, that’s tremendously aspirational for our community, for hip-hop, for African Americans.”

“But the same students, including myself, who were previously huge supporters, you want to defend him, but every day he gives you a reason not to,” Lamarre remarked.

The 24-time Grammy winner has been progressively losing his radio audience, and his streaming figures have also dropped marginally in the last month.

His airplay audience has dropped from 8 million in the week ending Sept. 22 to 5.4 million in the week ending Oct. 20, according to statistics provided by Luminate, an entertainment data and insights company whose data fuels the Billboard music charts.

During the same time period, the popularity of his tracks on streaming on-demand fell from 97 million to 88.2 million, a 9% decrease.

Since 2016, when Ye was hospitalized in Los Angeles for what his team described as stress and tiredness, Ye has gained a reputation for stirring up trouble. He had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; it was later revealed.

He has stated that slavery was a choice and referred to the COVID-19 vaccine as the “mark of the beast.” Earlier this month, during Paris Fashion Week, Ye was slammed by the woke on Twitter for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to the show and dressing models in the same style.

Ye attempted to buy Parler, a conservative social network with no gatekeeper, after being suspended from Twitter and Facebook.

On Tuesday, the fashion, music, and garment industries distanced themselves from Ye.

Foot Locker announced a break with the Yeezy brand and the removal of Yeezy Adidas sneakers from its shelves and online sites.

Gap has stated that it will remove Yeezy Gap merchandise from its stores and close yeezygap.com.

According to Universal Music Group, which owns the Def Jam label, Ye’s music and merchandise contracts expired last year. The MRC studio stated on Monday that it is cancelling a full documentary about the rapper.

A Vogue representative stated on Tuesday that the magazine and its global editorial director, Anna Wintour, have no plans to work with Ye again after his recent controversial words and behaviour.

Jewish organizations have warned about the rapper’s remarks, which come from growing antisemitism. Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, who hailed Adidas’ decision to drop Ye on Tuesday, claimed his group had documented a tripling of anti-Jewish harassment, vandalism, or violence since 2015.

“We are currently dealing in a context where antisemitism is empirically on the rise,” Greenblatt added. “When people with significant platforms give antisemitism and other forms of bigotry license, it creates an environment in which these kinds of acts have a degree of permission they might not have had previously.”

Lamarre stated that he recognized Ye’s mental health and personal concerns but that it is even more necessary to halt and evaluate providing him with a platform for his hateful words.

VOR News

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Gladiator II Rakes in $87 Million in Weekend Debut

Published

5 days ago

2024-11-18

Geoff Brown

Despite not playing in theaters in the United States, Canada, and China until this coming Friday, Gladiator II earned $87 million over the weekend, which is the best foreign opening for a Ridley Scott film to date.

Last week, the picture premiered in 63 countries, including the UK, and grossed $11.4 million from 722 theatres. Particularly impressive was its performance in France, where it raised $10.3 million from 729 outlets.

But this one is a little weaker compared to February’s smash hit sequel, Dune: Part Two, which grossed $97 million worldwide in its opening weekend. At the same time, Deadpool & Wolverine made $233 million for Disney, while Inside Out 2 for Pixar grossed $140 million.

The Fall Guy, an action comedy starring Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, earned $36.7 million in its opening weekend worldwide, while Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga earned $30 million.

Last Monday, King Charles III attended a screening of Gladiator II in London, capping off a weeks-long worldwide press tour for the film’s cast and production. A Mexican biscuit brand, Rome’s public transportation system, and a German bank VR are just a few multinational brands it has teamed up with to boost its visibility.

In Australia, dessert merchant Oliver Brown offered a special edition of pistachio-heavy puds and drinks dubbed the Emperor’s Collection. The Gladiator II salted caramel latte is available at French Coffee Shop, a business in Paris.

After poor statistics for Venom: The Last Dance and The Rock’s comedy Red One, which premiered worldwide last week, fans hope that Scott’s delayed sequel can lift the global box office for the last month and a half of the year.

Some are predicting a Barbenheimer-style struggle for the top spot in the US box office when Gladiator II and the highly anticipated musical Wicked premiere on the same day, even though double-bill events are unlikely to be very popular.

Gladiator Star Russell Crowe Honored in Rome

Gladiator Star Russell Crowe Honored in Rome

Entertainment

Blizzard’s Remastered Versions Of Warcraft 1 And 2 Are Now Available On PCs.

Published

1 week ago

2024-11-13

Salman Ahmad

Image credit: Blizzard Entertainment

(VOR News) – It has been said by Blizzard that it does not intend to remake Warcraft 1 and 2 since the company believes that these games are “just not that fun any longer.”

When the corporation first made this declaration, it has been almost exactly eight years since it was delivered.

However, the firm has only recently made the news that it will be doing precisely that, and as part of the celebrations for Warcraft’s 30th anniversary, both of the remastered versions are now available to play. The celebrations did not start until today.

The public first played Warcraft in 1994.

This game played a significant role in Blizzard’s rise to the top of the competition. In the year that followed, Warcraft 2 was hastily created in order to suit the requirements of the burgeoning fanbase that the first Warcraft had established.

Additionally, the company has just disclosed that they will be remastering the games, and these remasters will contain a variety of additions to the traditional real-time strategic action that is included in the games.

The initial stage of these enhancements to the development process consists of a new collection of hand-drawn pictures that may be toggled on and off in real time. The artistic style of the originals has been said to be completely captured by these photos, according to the assertions made.

Specifically, Blizzard has implemented “modern controls” for Warcraft 1, which include the option to move with a right click, the ability to pick bounding boxes, and a faster progression rate.

These features are all present in the Warcraft game.

The alterations that have been made include these, however they are not the only ones. It is important to note that these changes have been introduced in addition to the user interface and user experience enhancements that have been implemented throughout both games.

Tool tips, health bars, mission decision screens, and increased unit selection are some of the enhancements that have been introduced in this version of the game. As an additional feature, the multiplayer mode that was included in the first version of Warcraft 2 is still included in the remastered version of the game.

As an additional point of interest, each and every one of the legacy custom maps is entirely compatible with the new edition and may be played in the same capacity.

Despite the fact that there is currently no information regarding whether or not Warcraft 1 Remastered and Warcraft 2 Remastered will eventually be made available on other markets, both of these remastered versions of the game are currently available for purchase on Battle.net for personal computers at prices of $9.99 and $14.99, respectively.

Both of these versions of the game are remastered versions of the original game. A Battle Chest bundle is also available for purchase, and it can be purchased for the price of $39.99. All of the titles that have been remastered are included in this bundle, in addition to Blizzard’s Warcraft 3: Reforged, which has been met with a considerable deal of criticism.

Blizzard has been making continual efforts to improve the game ever since it was first made available to the public in the year 2020.

This is despite the fact that the game was met with poor reviews practically immediately after it was released. An entirely new upgrade, version 2.0, is currently being made available to all gamers without delay.

One of the numerous enhancements to the quality of life that are included in this is “much, much more,” in addition to a wide range of options for personalizing the hockey experience within the game and a new ladder.

In addition to the high-definition versions of all of the older Warcraft assets, these upgrades also include new environments and lighting, a redesigned user interface, and a variety of other enhancements.

SOURCE: EG

Entertainment

Yellowstone Season 5 Part 2 Returns Without Kevin Costner

Published

2 weeks ago

2024-11-11

Geoff Brown

Yellowstone is finally returning for the second half of its fifth season without Kevin Costner

Yellowstone will finally return for the second half of its fifth season. We have a lot to speak about, such as recalling what is going on in this program, Kevin Costner’s departure, and whether or not season 5, part 2, will truly end Yellowstone.

Season 5 Part 1 ended on a cliffhanger—we could be in for a full-fledged Dutton family civil war—and we’ve been waiting for nearly two years.

A quick recap: nothing changes from how this program usually goes, except it’s a little more intense. Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) despised Jamie Dutton. Jamie Dutton (Wes Bentley) despised Beth Dutton.

That has always been the case since childhood trauma, but now things have escalated. Their father, John Dutton (Kevin Costner), is now Montana’s Governor, and Jamie, who should be his top legal thinker, is played by a group of local businessmen known as Market Equities.

Anyway, Jamie and Beth are attempting to kill each other, and John appears to be leaning toward Beth’s side.

Given Kevin Costner’s public exit from the program, part 2 of season 5 will be especially noteworthy. Long story short, he departed to make his Horizon films and never returned.

So, how will Yellowstone pick up the tale without John? That much is unknown, which adds to the season’s appeal!

Of course, our other characters continue to do what they do. Rip (Cole Hauser) is doing his Rip thing. Kayce (Luke Grimes) oversees the ranch. His wife, Monica (Kelsey Asbille), is still grieving the loss of their unborn son.

But we do have some high stakes to pick up—and they will begin on Sunday, November 10th, whether Kevin Costner appears on screen or not.

Another twist: While we believed season 5 would conclude the Yellowstone story, part 2 is in the works.

There have also been suggestions that Yellowstone could return for a sixth season, starring Cole Hauser and Kelly Reilly as Rip and Beth. Hmm, certainly!

Yellowstone’s fifth season, part 2, will air each episode of the truncated half-season on Sunday nights at 8:00 PM EST.

The episodes will then be shown on linear TV, Hulu with Live TV, or the Paramount Network website and app for those with a cable subscription. The premiere will also re-air on CBS at 10:00 p.m. EST.

Yellowstone season 5, part 2, will consist of six episodes, the first of which is currently accessible to watch and stream. That implies the series might end with five more episodes of Western family drama.