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Entertainment July 4, 2017

Comics on Film: Can a 'Superman: Red Son' Movie Lead to More Alternate-Universe Spin-offs?

This week, a rather surprising rumor began to crop up surrounding the superhero film genre, particularly as it relates to the original superhero. At the movies, DC Comics’ icon and original superhero Superman has always been portrayed as the heroic standard-bearer of any film universe he occupies. Christopher Reeve basically defined the cinematic superhero when he first donned the red cape in 1978, and subsequent Supermen following Reeve have always shown us a character who was clearly and definitively heroic in his world.

However, with interactions on Twitter between prominent people in the movie business hinting at multiple pitches based on popular alternate-universe story Red Son, could we potentially see a new trend emerge, showing us alternate — and perhaps even unsettling — visions of the icons of DC Comics?

The Possibilities

As we detailed earlier this week, the revelation of apparent pitches regarding an adaptation of Superman: Red Son — the 2003 story reimagining the Man of Steel as a Soviet-raised overlord — has been pitched at least twice (that we know about) to the keepers of the character at Warner Bros. Pictures. Apparently, those pitches were passed up, but it should be at least partially encouraging to those with hopes of seeing an alternate take on popular superheroes just based on WB’s apparent receptivity in hearing the idea out in the first place, and on more than one occasion.

When first released as a prestige format 3-issue limited series, Superman: Red Son by writer Mark Millar (Marvel’s Civil War, Kick-Ass) and artist Dave Johnson (Batman: Black and White) was pretty revelatory. It was released under DC’s “Elseworlds” imprint, which was first designed to reimagine many of DC’s characters in situations and circumstances that are, sometimes, extremely different from what fans know. Another great Elseworlds tale includes JLA: The Nail, which presented the DC Universe in an almost identical way to the traditional DCU, except for one pivotal fact: when driving out in the county on a fateful day near Smallville, Jonathan and Martha Kent’s truck hit a nail, causing a flat tire. That resulted in them not finding a certain baby in a rocketship, leading to Kal-El’s far more protracted path to becoming Superman.

Another great one was Batman: Gotham by Gaslight, written by Brian Augustyn and illustrated by Hellboy creator Mike Mignola. Generally seen as the original Elseworlds story, it takes place in 1889, and Gotham’s most prominent citizen, Bruce Wayne, has been framed for a series of murders that were, in actuality, committed by none other than Jack the Ripper. So, Gotham by Gaslight features Batman vs. Jack the Ripper in 1889, which is fully as awesome as it sounds.

Of course, DC has released a plethora of Elseworlds stories that go far beyond their two most recognizable heroes, and if the movies are open to at least partial adaptations of those crazier sets of rules, then WB’s ability make more, varied movie experiences based on DC properties exponentially increases.

How Would Alternate Universe Films Fit into the DCEU?

Obviously, creating alternate universe stories may complicate aspects of the burgeoning DC Extended Universe, so the creation of Elseworlds stories would likely work best under the formula recently established by a rival studio on one of their biggest franchises.

With the release of Rogue One this past December, Disney showed the world that a series not necessarily tied to the main, ongoing narrative of a prime film series can absolutely work both critically and commercially. We know that the House of Mouse basically plans on releasing Star Wars movies until…well, forever, and given the expansive nature of DC Comics source material that WB has access to, there’s a nearly infinite well of material a larger-spanning film series can offer if they ever decided to think seriously about beefing up their line of DC movies even further by twisting their icons a little bit.

Of course, the most obvious difference between Elseworlds stories and the Star Wars spin-off films is that in the case of the latter, those films are all very much in-continuity with every other released Star Wars film. Making clear that potential Elseworlds films would be separate from the mainline DC Extended Universe likely wouldn’t be all that difficult, though. That name in and of itself, “Elseworlds,” does a pretty effective job in illustrating what the function of the story itself could be, and how movies under its banner could operate separately from the main films.

If a movie was titled, Superman: Red Son – An Elseworlds Story, then you could make clear to viewers everywhere that this wouldn’t encroach on the unfolding continuity that we’ve seen in the likes of Man of Steel, Wonder Woman, and the upcoming Justice League. Of course, this is all speculation on our part, but, as a comic book fan, it’s hard not to get excited at the mere possibility of seeing a Soviet Superman, or a 19th century Batman fully realized on the big screen.

Think about it, WB. It could be glorious.

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Business July 4, 2017

Kaspersky's Russian Roots Come Under Scrutiny

The Pentagon may soon be prohibited from using anti-virus software and other products from Kaspersky Lab. The Moscow-based company is alleged to have ties to the Kremlin, which Kaspersky denies.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Other than vodka, the Russian product most familiar to Americans is probably the antivirus software made by Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab. And the Pentagon might soon be prohibited from using any Kaspersky products. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have both just approved such a ban for the military. They cite ties to the Kremlin, which Kaspersky denies. NPR’s David Welna has our story.

DAVID WELNA, BYLINE: Things began to look bad for Kaspersky Lab in the middle of a hearing that the Senate intelligence committee held in mid-May. Six intelligence agency chiefs sat at the witness table, and Florida Republican Marco Rubio had a question for all of them.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MARCO RUBIO: Kaspersky Lab software is used by, if not hundreds of thousands, millions of Americans. To each of our witnesses, I would just ask, would any of you be comfortable with Kaspersky Lab software on your computers?

WELNA: Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats was the first to answer.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

DAN COATS: A resounding no for me.

WELNA: Then National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

MICHAEL ROGERS: No.

WELNA: One by one, all six said no. For James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the chorus of no’s came as no surprise, given that the firm’s owner, Eugene Kaspersky, studied at a KGB cryptography institute.

JAMES LEWIS: And he still has a company that operates out of Moscow. So for an intelligence agency, those are going to be red flags.

WELNA: Lewis says his own suspicions about Kaspersky were piqued by a conversation with Russia’s ambassador to the U.N.

LEWIS: One day, he came up to me and he said, in Russia, we have saying that once you are a member of security service, you never leave. And I said, well, that’s not true in the U.S. And he said, well, it should be. And then he walked off. And as he was walking away from me, I thought, what did he just tell me about Eugene Kaspersky?

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Please put your hands together for Kaspersky Lab’s very own chairman and CEO, Eugene Kaspersky.

WELNA: A video that Kaspersky Lab posted last year on YouTube shows the company’s owner striding onto a stage in front of employees with its North American division. Kaspersky’s message to them was the world needs our products.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTUBE VIDEO)

EUGENE KASPERSKY: The world is vulnerable. It’s a dark age of the cybersecurity.

WELNA: Kaspersky Labs said its CEO was not available to talk to NPR, but his firm did issue a statement saying, quote, “it is completely unacceptable that the company is being unjustly accused without any hard evidence to back up these false allegations.” Over the weekend, Kaspersky told the Associated Press that reports were true that FBI agents had recently visited at least a dozen Kaspersky employees in the U.S. And while Kaspersky also acknowledged having former Russian spies on his staff to the AP, he denied any wrongdoing.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

KASPERSKY: The company stays on the bright side of the cybersecurities. So we do all the best to protect our customs. We stay in the bright side and never, never, never go to that dark side.

WELNA: Some who know the firm well hold it in high regard.

RICK HOLLAND: Kaspersky in the cybersecurity community has a very good name.

WELNA: That’s Rick Holland at Forrester Research. He tracked Kaspersky Lab for years.

HOLLAND: I know many people that work there. I know many Americans that work there, so they’re thought very highly of. But given the political climate, it’s kind of not surprising that you would see this come up again.

WELNA: And despite doubts about Eugene Kaspersky, cybersecurity expert Lewis has praise for his firm.

LEWIS: They make a good product. They do good research. I use some of their research myself. So there’s no question about the company or what it makes. There’s questions about where it happens to be headquartered.

WELNA: Do you use Kaspersky to safeguard your computer?

LEWIS: (Laughter) No.

WELNA: The Pentagon has not said whether it uses Kaspersky products, but the threat of a ban clearly has Eugene Kaspersky worried. He’s now offering to move more of his company’s research to the U.S. and even make its source code available for American officials to inspect. David Welna, NPR News, Washington.

MCEVERS: We should say Kaspersky Lab is among NPR’s financial supporters.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business July 3, 2017

New Jersey Budget Deal Reached Just In Time For July 4 Celebrations

New Jersey Senate President Steve Sweeney, left, and New Jersey Democratic Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, shake hands as they announce an agreement to end the New Jersey budget impasse Monday night in Trenton, N.J.

Mel Evans/AP

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Mel Evans/AP

Updated at 3:15 a.m. ET

The July 4 holiday weekend got off to a rough start for New Jersey residents and tourists wanting to enjoy the state’s beaches, but a budget deal in the state legislature late Monday paved the way for the beaches to reopen.

Gov. Chris Christie signed a $34.7 gillion budget agreement ending the impasse that led to a 3-day government shutdown.

When negotiators failed to reach a budget agreement by midnight Friday, Christie announced the impasse would force a partial government shutdown and close a lot of the state’s services including beaches, parks and the motor vehicle office.

The showdown was prompted partly by a rift between the Republican governor and Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto, a Democrat. Christie had demanded that the governor’s office be given more control over the state’s largest health insurer.

The New York Times reports:

“Mr. Christie had demanded that the insurer, Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield, turn over $300 million from its reserves, and refused to approve the entire budget without a separate Horizon bill.

“Last week, the state Senate, led by Mr. Christie’s ally Stephen M. Sweeney, passed such a bill. But the Assembly had refused to go along.

“After meetings on Monday with Robert A. Marino, the chief executive of Horizon, and conversations between the governor’s office and the leadership of both houses, a revised bill was crafted that the governor and legislative leaders found acceptable. Details of the Horizon bill were not immediately clear.”

PHOTOS: Christie, family soak up sun on N.J. beach he closed to public https://t.co/cK4Thptfdq

— The Star-Ledger (@starledger) July 3, 2017

Christie signed the budget measure early Tuesday morning.

This was New Jersey’s second government shutdown — the first happened in 2006.

Despite the shutdown, it was reported that the Christie family would still be spending the long weekend at the governor’s summer house at Island Beach State Park.

Asked about it by reporters, the governor responded: “I don’t know if it’s fair, but … my family doesn’t ask for any services while we are there.”

The story might have ended there if not for Gov. Christie and his family being photographed sunning themselves on the beach with no one around them.

The photos lit up social media and traditional news organizations.

In one of the most pointed headlines to come out of the beach brouhaha, the Asbury Park Presswrote, “Gov. Christie, get the h—- off the beach!”

The line references a directive issued by the governor in 2011, when Hurricane Irene was approaching.

“I saw some of these news feeds that I’ve been watching upstairs of people sitting on the beach in Asbury Park,” he said at a press conference then. “Get the hell off the beach in Asbury Park and get out. You’re done. It’s 4:30. You’ve maximized your tan. Get off the beach.”

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Health July 3, 2017

Without Medical Support, DIY Detox Often Fails

Because treatment for opioid addiction can be expensive and difficult to coordinate, some people may try detoxing on their own. It rarely works.

Maria Fabrizio for NPR

By the time Elvis Rosado was 25, he was addicted to opioids and serving time in jail for selling drugs to support his habit.

“I was like, ‘I have to kick this, I have to break this,’ ” he says.

For Rosado, who lives in Philadelphia, drugs had become a way to disassociate from “the reality that was life.” He’d wake up physically needing the drugs to function.

His decision to finally stop using propelled him into another challenging chapter of his addiction and one of the most intense physical and mental experiences he could have imagined: detoxing.

“The symptoms are horrific,” Rosado says.

There are recovery and treatment centers that can help people quit using drugs — in fact, it’s a multi-billion-dollar industry. But this help can be expensive, and waiting lists for state and city-funded programs are often extremely long.

So can detoxing on your own be the solution? In most cases, the answer is no.

In fact, a growing movement within the field of addiction medicine is challenging the entire notion of detox and the assumption that when people cleanse themselves of chemicals, they’re on the road to recovery.

“That’s a really pernicious myth, and it has erroneous implications,” says Dr. Frederic Baurer, president of the Pennsylvania Society of Addiction Medicine.

But at the time, Rosado says, he needed to end his “longtime love affair” with codeine. Like Oxycontin and morphine, it’s an opioid. In jail, these drugs were easily available, Rosado recalls, through friends and cell mates.

When he decided to stop, he didn’t ask for help from the jail’s clinic staff, who could have given him medicine for the withdrawal symptoms. Rosado says that, if he took anything, “in my head I was like, ‘I’m still using.’ That’s how I was seeing it.”

The first few hours were gradual, like the onset of the flu, he recalls. But then he started sweating and shaking, his heart raced and he started throwing up. About 12 hours in, Rosado says he was reminiscing about how pleasant food poisoning was compared to this. He says his stomach cramps felt like, “having Freddy Krueger inside you trying to rip his way out.”

Rosado couldn’t sleep; he lay on the cold floor, shivering. “I had days where I felt like I wished I was dead,” he says.

“My cellmate kept saying ‘Look at you! Use a bag or go to the nurse.’ “

Over the next week the intense symptoms slowly subsided. He was exhausted, depressed, irritable and sore.

Elvis Rosado detoxed on his own and was successful. Researchers say stories like his are rare.

Elana Gordon/WHYY

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Elana Gordon/WHYY

Then came the next phase: the temptation to slide back.

“It’s a battle,” Rosado says.

He remembers a voice in his head telling him it would be so much easier to give in. “Take something, take a little bit,” he remembers the voice saying.

Most people can’t tolerate detoxing from opioids without support or medications to ease the withdrawal symptoms, says Dr. Kyle Kampman, a psychiatrist who specializes in addiction at the University of Pennsylvania.

Diarrhea and vomiting from withdrawal can make a person dehydrated, and that can lead to severe complications, even death in some cases. And Kampman worries about the big risks of patients trying to self-medicate to avoid these side effects or drug cravings.

“If you’re going to use the medications that a doctor would use to do detoxification, which might be methadone or buprenorphine, or even a blood pressure medicine like clonidine or sedatives, all those medications are dangerous,” says Kampman.

They can have adverse interactions with other drugs, and in the case of methadone, he says there is a possibility that a person could overdose without physician oversight.

But Kampman’s biggest concern when it comes to detoxing is the extremely low success rate.

“What bothers me most in thinking detox is adequate treatment is that we know that it just doesn’t work,” he says. “We have a long history of putting people into detox, followed by drug-free treatment that results in relapse in an overwhelming number of cases.”

And if the patient goes back to using, there’s a higher risk of overdose because their tolerance has gone down.

Addiction, Kampman says, isn’t something you can just flush out of your body. It’s a disease.

Three years ago, Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse told a Senate committee the same thing:

When people addicted to opioids first quit, they undergo withdrawal symptoms, which may be severe (pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, hypertension, tachycardia, seizures.) Medications can be helpful in this detoxification stage, easing craving and other physical symptoms that can often trigger a relapse episode. However, this is just the first step in treatment. Medications have also become an essential component of an ongoing treatment plan, enabling opioid-addicted persons to regain control of their health and their lives.

Dr. Frederic Baurer goes further, and suggests it’s best to abandon the whole notion of detox, period.

“I think the term detox has negative connotations,” said Baurer, who has been treating people with addiction for nearly three decades. He’s also been involved in a city-wide task force assessing the opioid epidemic in the region. He says the focus should be on a stabilizing treatment plan, not on detox.

Baurer is medical director at Kirkbride Center in Philadelphia, a recovery center that has an in-house detox unit of 21 beds. But, according to Baurer, the unit does a lot more than getting drugs out of a person’s system.

“It’s structured,” he says. Patients have reflection time. Their symptoms are monitored. They meet with counselors, come up with a long-term treatment plan, and, perhaps most importantly, they get medications like methadone to manage cravings. Some of the medications target the same receptors in the brain as other opioids, but they do it for a longer period of time, which reduces symptoms. Another option, Vivitrol, blocks opioid receptors, which inhibits the person’s ability to get high.

Baurer says there’s no one formula.

“We have to consider all the tools that are out there to support someone in getting well,” he says.

Elvis Rosado said he first developed his coping tools in jail. The bars protected him from the temptations of his old neighborhood and he found support groups and counseling.

Still, he may be one of the few who tried detoxing on his own and succeeded.

Since his release from jail, Rosado has gotten degrees in mental health and social services, and worked in treatment centers. He now leads overdose prevention efforts for Prevention Point Philadelphia, a nonprofit organization that provides prevention services across the region.

Rosado doesn’t think his detox approach is for everyone.

“If we don’t give individuals the time to start to have clear thoughts and put a plan together, getting the chemical out of their system —- you’re not doing them any favors,” he says.

Rosado also credits his own long-term success to a very specific conversation he had while he was still locked up. It came during a phone call with his girlfriend.

“She goes, ‘I’m pregnant, what are we going to do about it?’ And I said, ‘We keep it. We keep the baby.’ “

He recalls making a promise to himself in that moment to be a good father. And for him, at least, that worked. But, he says, his cellmate back in jail tried kicking the habit, too, and within months of being released, he relapsed and died of an overdose.

This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WHYY’s health show The Pulse and Kaiser Health News.

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Business July 2, 2017

Why Does The Electric Guitar Need A Hero?

Gibson and Fender, two of the biggest companies making guitars are in debt. One reason is declining sales in electric guitars and the waning popularity of guitar heroes in popular culture.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

This weekend, we asked you to hit us up on Twitter and let us know your favorite road trip songs. We’ll get to those in a few minutes. But first, we want to bring you a couple of stories about some new trends in music. For decades, one of the more defining sounds of American music has been the electric guitar.

(SOUNDBITE OF CHUCK BERRY’S “JOHNNY B. GOODE”)

MARTIN: The legends who played them, from Chuck Berry to Eric Clapton, inspired generations of would-be rockers. But now, electric guitar sales are down. And guitar heroes these days are harder to find. NPR’s Denise Guerra has this report.

DENISE GUERRA, BYLINE: For over a year, Geoff Edgers, arts reporter for The Washington Post, couldn’t shake a statistic out of his head.

GEOFF EDGERS: About 10 years ago, there were about a million and a half electric guitars sold a year. And last year, it was down to about a little over a million. So, you know, 500,000 fewer new guitars being sold, that struck me as dramatic.

GUERRA: That fact inspired him to spend a better part of a year to find out, what’s happened to the electric guitar? He’s talked to the big players in the industry, from the guitar makers – Gibson and Fender – to some guitar-playing legends, sellers and even spent time at the “School of Rock.” He’s found several reasons for the decline – over-production and new technology that can make a guitar sound without a guitar. But the biggest factor, Edgers says, is the lack of a modern day guitar hero.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUITAR)

EDGERS: What I found is a dramatic shift in the sort of role that the electric guitar plays in popular culture, not only in sales but just in, like, life.

GUERRA: Everyone’s definition of a guitar hero is different but only one really matters for retailers. Do they have the power to get people to go out and buy a guitar?

(SOUNDBITE OF GUITAR)

GUERRA: This is Jennifer Batten. She played lead guitar for Michael Jackson’s world tours in the ’80s and ’90s. She says the guitar hero of that era was Eddie Van Halen.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

JENNIFER BATTEN: He was the most innovative, had the most unique sound. He was the first one to have a really wacky paint job on his guitar and having one-piece overalls that were red and black and white. It was just so in your face and special.

GUERRA: The electric guitar was the coolest accessory any kid could have, and Van Halen wasn’t without company. There was Jimi Hendrix…

(SOUNDBITE OF JIMI HENDRIX’S “VOODOO CHILD”)

GUERRA: …Stevie Ray Vaughan…

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GUERRA: …Santana.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GUERRA: Nearly all guitar heroes of that era were men.

(SOUNDBITE OF GUITAR)

GUERRA: Jennifer Batten’s own guitar hero was a dude – Jeff Beck. He inspired her so much, she enrolled in the Guitar Institute of Technology in Los Angeles.

BATTEN: I didn’t realize till the class began that I was the only woman in the whole school. At that time, there was 60 students total – 59 guys and me.

GUERRA: That appears to be changing. Women could be the new hope for the electric guitar. That’s according to Luis Peraza of Atomic Guitar in Maryland. He’s been selling new and used guitars for 24 years. And about five years ago, he started noticing a trend.

LUIS PERAZA: There’s a lot of young women playing guitar and a lot of parents that like taking their kids to, like, these rock schools and camps.

GUERRA: Down the aisle, I found Anna Lachtichinina and Nick Duque testing out some models. Both are in their early 20s. I asked them if they can name any guitar players today with Van Halen-like status.

ANNA LACHTICHININA: There’s not really, like, prominent ones. You know what I mean?

NICK DUQUE: Super famous right now? I mean, I – oh, God. That’s a really hard question.

GUERRA: Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post reporter, says this sort of response really scares the guitar industry.

EDGERS: You know, the electric guitar is not going to go away completely, but you have to ask where it’s going to bottom out.

GUERRA: And that’s why the industry is desperate for a hero. Denise Guerra, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Entertainment July 2, 2017

Marvel Buzz: 'Spider-Man' Sequel Timeline Revealed, Six Mystery 'X-Men' Movies Scheduled Through 2021

In one week, audiences will finally get to see the spectacular new reboot of everyone’s favorite wallcrawler. And in anticipation of Spider-Man: Homecoming, we’re hearing more about the future of Spidey in the MCU through his next team-up with the Avengers and his next solo feature. That and the latest from the Marvel-based X-Men movieverse below.

Spider-Man: Homecoming 2 Continues Right After Avengers 4

Marvel is very interested in direct continuations right now. Spidey’s new movie begins immediately after the events of Captain America: Civil War. I hear that Avengers: Infinity War picks up immediately after the events of Thor: Ragnarok. And now comes word that Spidey’s next movie (let’s call it Spider-Man: Homecoming 2 for now) will begin immediatly following the end of Avengers 4. Here’s what Homecoming producer Amy Pascal :

I don’t know anything about it or what it’s about. I know who the villain is, but that’s it. They don’t let me read anything because I’m so bad at keeping secrets.

So he believes it’s just him. That villain, by the way, we also all know already to be Thanos. Holland also seems to know enough to not need to spoil anything because the hype is so huge. He continues:

Infinity War needs no teasing. That movie literally needs no teasing. It’s going to be the biggest movie of all time. Believe me: no one is ready for this movie.

Avengers: Infinity War arrives in theaters on May 4, 2018.

Fox Schedules Six More Unknown X-Men Universe Movies

While not part of the MCU, the Marvel Comics-based X-Men franchise is starting to rival its spiritual cousin as a hugely successful cinematic universe, with audiences and critics. Therefore, we can anticipate a lot more mutants in mainline series sequels and spin-offs starring other popular characters, like Deadpool. Fox, the studio behind this growing mega-franchise, has just announced release dates for six more features. We don’t know what they are, but here’s how the X-Universe is looking through 2021:

April 13, 2018: New Mutants (now co-starring Alice Braga in place of exiting Rosario Dawson)

June 1, 2018: Deadpool 2

November 2, 2018: X-Men: Dark Phoenix

February 14, 2019: TBA

June 7, 2019: TBA

November 22, 2019: TBA

March 13, 2020: TBA

June 26, 2020: TBA

October 2, 2020: TBA

March 5, 2021: TBA

We can assume at least one of those is another Deadpool sequel, and maybe that long-delayed Gambit movie will finally happen. Could we see a Stark sisters reunion through this franchise with X-Men‘s Sophie Turner and New Mutants Maisie Williams eventually meeting? Could we be seeing a new Wolverine make his debut in one of these, or could fans possibly go the next four years without their favorite razor-clawed X-Man?

and

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Sports July 2, 2017

NBA: Free Agency, Steph Curry And More

The Golden State Warriors Steph Curry just signed a $200 million deal — the largest in league history. NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Washington Post columnist Jerry Brewer about the latest in NBA.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Let’s talk basketball for a few minutes. Sure, you’re probably watching baseball or tennis or NASCAR or cycling right now, but this is the time of year when the business side of hoops kicks into high gear. This weekend marked the start of free agency. That means that players who are eligible for free agency are signing huge contracts. The Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry just signed a $200 million deal, the richest in league history.

But here’s a thing that’s also getting a lot of attention, some players are taking less money to play for teams they prefer, teams that they think can better set them up for championship contention. Think LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami. Jerry Brewer just wrote about this for The Washington Post where he’s a columnist, and he’s with us now via Skype. Jerry Brewer, thanks so much for speaking with us.

JERRY BREWER: Thanks for having me.

MARTIN: So first, let’s talk about the money because the numbers seem staggering. How is it that players are able to command such high salaries?

BREWER: Well, when the NBA did their new television deal, it was a mega-billion-dollar deal. And salary is a function of revenue, so the salary cap in the NBA has shot up. It was $70 million in 2015. It’s shot up to 94 for the 2016-’17 season. And now for the ’17-’18 season, it’s going to go up to 99 million. So salaries are rising because the salary cap is going up.

MARTIN: But you also pointed out in your column that money isn’t everything for these players. I mean, for example, that, you know, Los Angeles Clippers just traded Chris Paul – their star point guard – to the Houston Rockets. He actually took less money to play for what he hopes might be the latest super team. And I just want to read a line from your column.

You said, (reading) the modern NBA superstar is the most powerful genre of athlete in American professional team sports history. Those elite players have it all – the riches, the platform, the influence, the savvy about the league’s business and the audacity to use everything for their own good no matter the consequences. The latter two things, the know-how and the nerve, frighten and intrigue at once. It’s an uneasy feeling because it’s unfamiliar.

Uneasy to who?

BREWER: I think it’s uneasy for fans who would like there to be a little more competitive balance. I think it’s uneasy for – definitely owners. The NBA has a super-max system now that they’re trying to do something where if you have a star, you can pay him more to stay with you than to take less to go. But the stars are saying, you know what? That’s very nice that you’re offering me $42 million a year. Let me think about it.

Which is just unprecedented. These guys make so much money off the court in terms of shoe deals and endorsements, so they have a lot of power because they have the power to say no and change a system which is designed for the guy to just take the most money and be happy.

MARTIN: Is the issue here for fans that if just a few teams would command all of the attention that that somehow would be bad for the league on the whole?

BREWER: That is the argument. I mean, what’s the point in following a league for six months of regular season and two months of the playoffs just when we know that it’s going to be Cleveland and Golden State again? I would argue, though, that the intrigue of the NBA has never been about widespread parity. It’s always been about super teams and dominance.

It’s interesting now, though, the difference is is that it’s not just big-market team doing the dominating. It is Golden State, which went 40 years without a championship before they put this team together. It’s Cleveland, which has had a really tough run until LeBron James came. It’s not just about the market anymore, it’s about which organizations are going to have the competence to help me reach my goals.

MARTIN: That’s Jerry Brewer. He’s a columnist for The Washington Post. We reached him via Skype. Jerry, thanks so much for speaking with us.

BREWER: Anytime.

(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN TESH’S “ROUNDBALL ROCK”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health July 2, 2017

Health Care Questions Enter Virginia Governor's Race

Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie is getting questions about health care on the campaign trail. His Democratic rival, Ralph Northam, is also making it a campaign issue.

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Republicans in Congress are worried about the political consequences of their proposed health care legislation, but they aren’t the only ones. The Republican running for governor of Virginia is now facing lots of questions about health care, too. Here’s NPR’s Sarah McCammon.

SARAH MCCAMMON, BYLINE: A barbershop in downtown Richmond was the setting for a forum on opioid addiction hosted by a local radio station Friday night. Republican candidate Ed Gillespie, who’s white, addressed a mostly black audience sitting on sofas in salon chairs in a small upstairs loft as men sat for haircuts and beard trims below. Gillespie promised to look for bipartisan solutions to the addiction crisis facing the country.

ED GILLESPIE: I am constantly listening, always looking for new ideas and always looking for them everywhere.

MCCAMMON: Gillespie is running in one of the few high-profile races of 2017. In the governor’s race, he’s up against Virginia’s lieutenant governor, Democrat Ralph Northam. Gillespie won last month’s Republican primary by just a few thousand votes, beating back a surprisingly strong challenger who’d styled himself after President Trump.

He’s now trying to appeal to moderates as well as conservatives in a state that’s become increasingly friendly to Democrats over the past couple of decades. As he was wrapping up his remarks, a woman stepped forward to ask Gillespie about the health care bills before Congress. Lawmakers are still negotiating how to fund treatment for opioid addiction.

GILLESPIE: I look forward to following up. Thank you for letting me join you here this evening.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Sorry, do you support Donald Trump’s health care repeal, then? Because it guts funding for opioid and addiction problems.

GILLESPIE: A lot of my friends are working to get that fixed.

MCCAMMON: The woman followed up before being cut off by the moderators. The Republicans nationally campaigned on repealing the Affordable Care Act in 2016. Gillespie has been met with pushback on the idea from Virginia voters at campaign events across the state. He’s repeatedly responded by outlining goals like reducing premiums and making sure Virginia doesn’t lose out on federal funding because of its refusal to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

On Thursday night, Susan Mariner of Virginia Beach was among several protesters who stood outside a Gillespie fundraiser in Norfolk. She says she’s concerned about government estimates that millions of people will lose insurance under the Republican proposals.

SUSAN MARINER: I think that’s unconscionable. And I absolutely want Gillespie to come out and let me know how he stands on this issue. I think that voters need to understand where he stands.

MCCAMMON: At a press conference last week, Democrat Ralph Northam, himself a physician, called on Gillespie to denounce the repeal effort.

(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)

RALPH NORTHAM: It is devastating for the Commonwealth of Virginia. And if he’s not willing to denounce the plan, I would ask, why does he support the current plan?

MCCAMMON: Northam says the Republican plans would cost Virginia more than a billion dollars in lost Medicaid funds over the next decade. Outside the barbershop in Richmond, Gillespie criticized Northam, who said the Affordable Care Act needs improvement, for supporting a system that Gillespie says isn’t working. Asked by reporters about the proposals before Congress, he declined to take a position.

GILLESPIE: And we don’t know what’s in the bill before the Senate right now. Senators don’t know what’s in the bill before the Senate right now. They’re in recess, trying to rework it. So we’ll see what comes out.

MCCAMMON: Stephen Farnsworth, a political scientist at the University of Mary Washington, says the sooner the health care debate is over, the better for Ed Gillespie.

STEPHEN FARNSWORTH: It’s very difficult for any politician to support a plan that takes something away from people.

MCCAMMON: With Republicans in control of Washington, he says, how they handle issues like health care will inevitably reflect on Republicans running for office back home. Sarah McCammon, NPR News, Richmond.

(SOUNDBITE OF TYCHO’S “SPECTRE”)

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health July 1, 2017

What You Should Know About The Senate Health Care Bill

Kaiser Health News Chief Washington Correspondent Julie Rovner gives the latest news on the Senate health care bill.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Now for an update on the latest Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the Senate would not be able to vote on a bill before the July Fourth recess, which means Republicans are still fighting for votes among their own members to pass it since Democrats have made clear that none of them will. On Friday, Republicans began talking about making some big changes.

We wanted to know what those could be, so we called Julie Rovner once again from Kaiser Health News to tell us what she knows. Julie, thanks so much for joining us once again.

JULIE ROVNER: Always a pleasure.

MARTIN: So if you could just set the table for us for people who may not have been following this, what were the objections of the holdouts, the senators who made it clear that they would not vote for the bill that the leadership put forward?

ROVNER: On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office came out with its estimate of the bill. And it found that it would leave 22 million more people without health insurance at the end of 10 years. And I think there were some moderates who were unhappy about some of the cuts in the bill, and that kind of sent them fleeing. At the same time, you have a lot of conservatives who didn’t like the bill from the beginning. They think it didn’t repeal enough of the Affordable Care Act.

So by the time Senator McConnell was thinking he might be able to go to the floor, he was at least nine votes short. So what he said was OK, let’s sort of go back behind closed doors and see if we can work some of this out, get something to the Congressional Budget Office to re-score while everybody’s home on break and vote when we come back. But they left Friday without any obvious progress.

MARTIN: Tell us a bit more, if you would, about the proposals that they seem to be considering.

ROVNER: One of the problems that the moderates were having is the cuts to the Medicaid program for people with low incomes. There are two kinds of cuts to Medicaid. They are a phase-out of the expansion that was in the Affordable Care Act for people who have slightly more money – they’re still poor but slightly more money. Then there is a very deep cut to the base Medicaid program that serves 73 million people.

One of the specific things that the moderates were unhappy about is that about 30 percent of all opioid treatment goes through the Medicaid program. So they were worried that people would be cut off, couldn’t be treated for their substance abuse problems. And so Senator McConnell was looking at putting some more money back for that, but even then, some of the moderates, particularly Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, said she still wasn’t very happy.

MARTIN: One of the things you were telling us earlier is that this is a very difficult thing to thread the needle because all the things that bring the moderates on board are exactly the kinds of things that the conservatives don’t want and vice versa. So is there any effort being made to bring more of the conservatives onboard?

ROVNER: What the conservatives really want is to repeal the insurance regulations part of the Affordable Care Act. Which the problem with that is that they’re doing it through a special budget process that lets them pass a bill with only 50 votes, but you’re not allowed to do things in that bill that aren’t directly impacting the federal budget. And most people assume that those are things that you can’t do in this kind of budget bill. So it’s very difficult to give the conservatives what they want because otherwise if they did, they would need Democratic votes, which they’re not going to get.

MARTIN: Well, you know, to that end, is there any indication that Republicans will try to reach out to get Democratic support? I mean, Democrats have been very vocal about the fact that they were kept out of the process. So is there any strategy that includes them?

ROVNER: Well, interestingly, we started to hear sort of Tuesday, Wednesday from Republicans who are actually using what I call the R word which is repair rather than repeal and replace. Those are things that the Democrats would be happy to participate in. And there was a lot of suggestions by a few Republicans that, you know, maybe we should sit down with some of the Democrats. We could find some things that we agree on.

What Democrats have said is that they’re not going to sit down, though, until the Republicans take the repeal off the table and take the big Medicaid cuts off the table. Of course, it’s those big Medicaid cuts that is keeping some of those conservatives on board, so it really is a very difficult needle for the Senate majority leader to thread.

MARTIN: That’s Julie Rovner. She’s the chief Washington correspondent for Kaiser Health News, has been covering health policy for quite some time. Julie Rovner, thank you so much for joining us.

ROVNER: Anytime.

Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Business July 1, 2017

Organizer Of Failed Bahamas Musical Festival Arrested, Charged With Fraud

The man who was the main organizer of the failed Fyre Festival in the Bahamas earlier this year has been arrested by authorities and charged with wire fraud for allegedly bilking investors in his company, Fyre Media, which promoted the event.

Billy McFarland was arrested by federal agents at his Manhattan home on Friday.

The New York Times writes:

“A criminal complaint unsealed on Friday detailed the case, which relies heavily on misrepresentations of financial information to people who invested in Fyre Media — whose main business was a website that let people book celebrities for special events — and a subsidiary, Fyre Festival LLC.

“According to the complaint, sworn to by Brandon Racz, a special agent with the F.B.I., at least two people invested about $1.2 million in the two companies, and in communications with these investors in 2016 and 2017, Mr. McFarland repeatedly overstated Fyre Media’s revenue from bookings and his own wealth.”

In a statement released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Acting Manhattan U.S. Attorney Joon Kim said: “As alleged, William McFarland promised a ‘life changing’ music festival but in actuality delivered a disaster. McFarland allegedly presented fake documents to induce investors to put over a million dollars into his company and the fiasco called the Fyre Festival. Thanks to the investigative efforts of the FBI, McFarland will now have to answer for his crimes.”

NPR’s Laurel Wamsley wrote in April: “In a promo video posted in January full of frolicking models, the Fyre Festival promised (in seemingly random order) ‘the best in food, art, music and adventure / once owned by Pablo Escobar / on the boundaries of the impossible / Fyre is an experience and festival / A quest / to push beyond those boundaries.'”

Soon after, the festival co-organizers, McFarland and rapper Ja Rule, were hit with a $100 million suit filed by a disgruntled festival-goer.

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