{"id":416175,"date":"2026-04-25T02:10:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T02:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416175\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T02:10:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T02:10:10","slug":"why-sydney-sweeney-won-and-michael-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/416175\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Sydney Sweeney Won and ‘Michael’ Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWON: Sydney Sweeney<\/a>: Sure, her cameo was cut<\/a> from The Devil Wears Prada 2. Yes, she has many media and social media scolds in a tizzy over her racy scenes in Euphoria, which is hot garbage this season. Also, nobody can stop talking about her in the HBO show \u2014 even though she co-stars with Zendaya, arguably the hottest actress on the planet right now. And she\u2019s back as the face of American Eagle, in a far more clearly non-racist jeans campaign this time, after boosting their sales last year. Oh, and Christy \u2014 her boxing biopic that was mocked by Sweeney\u2019s detractors for bombing at the box office \u2014 just hit No. 1 on HBO Max<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\n\tLOST: David Zaslav<\/a>: How is this remotely fair? Warner Bros. shareholders approved the Paramount merger that Zaslav worked tirelessly to put together for so many months, yet 82 percent voted against<\/a> rewarding the man most responsible with some modest compensation for his efforts. He was only expecting upward of $886 million, one of the largest golden parachutes in history. What more does Zaslav have to do to prove himself? Go to the office of every Warner shareholder and lay them off, too? Do you have any understanding of the costs, crew salaries, and maintenance of your average super yacht?<\/p>\n

\n\tWON: Curry Barker<\/a>: You may not have heard of him \u2014 yet. But Barker is a 25-year-old TikTok sketch comedy guy who has suddenly become a highly sought-after writer-director \u2014 even though his first theatrical release, Obsession, doesn\u2019t come out until next month. Just in the last few days, he landed A24\u2019s reimagining<\/a> of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and another film he just wrapped for Jason Blum, Anything But Ghosts, sold to Focus Features<\/a> (Barker also gets to star in that one). Sorry industry veterans reduced to lugging lumber at Home Depot<\/a>: If AI doesn\u2019t replace us, Gen Z surely will. <\/p>\n

\n\tLOST: Michael<\/a> Critics: Critics have been very tough on Antoine Fuqua\u2019s Michael Jackson biopic about a singer who definitely did not molest young boys despite admitting to letting them<\/a> sleep in his bed as a 40-year-old man. He was just a delicate and sensitive artist, OK? It\u2019s your fault that you don\u2019t understand a powerful pop star\u2019s need to spoon other people\u2019s 10-year-olds. With only 38 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, many reviewers claim that \u2014 aside from various omissions about Jackson\u2019s legacy \u2014 the film is a boring, paint-by-numbers effort (a few critics, like ours, were much more positive<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\n\tTaj Jackson has pushed back online, writing, \u201cSorry media, u don\u2019t get to control the narrative anymore of who Michael Jackson truly was. The public gets to watch this movie \u2026 they will decide for themselves.\u201d If the Jackson family really wanted to let fans decide for themselves about the singer\u2019s legacy, the estate wouldn\u2019t have pushed HBO to de-platform its documentary about Jackson\u2019s alleged sins, Leaving Neverland, on a legal technicality. Speaking to THR, the documentary\u2019s director wearily claimed<\/a> that fans going to see the feel-good Michael, \u201cdon\u2019t care that he was a child molester.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDon\u2019t care\u201d indeed: Michael is tracking to earn at least $80 million for a potential record-opening weekend for a music biopic. This fawning film is going to be huge and critics \u2014 and the parts of Jackson\u2019s story that his fans don\u2019t want to think about \u2014 can\u2019t stop it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WON: Sydney Sweeney: Sure, her cameo was cut from The Devil Wears Prada 2. Yes, she has many…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416176,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,1928,12480,93,61,60,75812,2124],"class_list":{"0":"post-416175","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-curry-barker","10":"tag-david-zaslav","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-michael","15":"tag-sydney-sweeney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416175"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416175\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}