LONDON — Britain’s long and sometimes acrimonious divorce from the European Union ended Thursday with an economic split that leaves the EU smaller and the U.K. freer but more isolated in a turbulent world.
Britain left the European bloc’s vast single market for people, goods and services at 11 p.m. London time, midnight in Brussels, completing the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II. A different U.K.-EU trade deal will bring new restrictions and red tape, but for British Brexit supporters, it means reclaiming national independence from the EU and its web of rules.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose support for Brexit helped push the country out of the EU, called it “an amazing moment for this country.”
“We have our freedom in our hands, and it is up to us to make the most of it,” he said in a New Year’s video message.
The break comes 11 months after a political Brexit that left the two sides in the limbo of a “transition period” — like a separated couple still living together, wrangling and wondering whether they can remain friends. Now the U.K. has finally moved out.
It was a day some had longed for and others dreaded since Britain voted in a 2016 referendum to leave the EU, but it turned out to be something of an anticlimax. U.K. lockdown measures to curb the coronavirus curtailed mass gatherings to celebrate or mourn the moment, though a handful of Brexit supporters defied the restrictions to raise a toast outside Parliament as the Big Ben bell sounded 11 times on the hour.
A free trade agreement sealed on Christmas Eve after months of tense negotiations ensures that Britain and the 27-nation EU can continue to buy and sell goods without tariffs or quotas. That should help protect the 660 billion pounds ($894 billion) in annual trade between the two sides, and the hundreds of thousands of jobs that rely on it.
But companies face sheaves of new costs and paperwork, including customs declarations and border checks. Traders are struggling to digest the new rules imposed by the 1,200-page trade deal.
The English Channel port of Dover and the Eurotunnel passenger and freight route braced for delays as the new measures were introduced, though the pandemic and a holiday weekend meant cross-Channel traffic was light, with only a trickle of trucks arriving at French border posts in Calais as 2020 ended. The vital supply route was snarled for days after France closed its border to U.K. truckers for 48 hours last week in response to a fast-spreading variant of the virus identified in England.
The British government insisted that “the border systems and infrastructure we need are in place, and we are ready for the U.K.’s new start.”
But freight companies were holding their breath. Youngs Transportation in the U.K. suspended services to the EU until Jan. 11 “to let things settle.”
“We figure it gives the country a week or so to get used to all of these new systems in and out, and we can have a look and hopefully resolve any issues in advance of actually sending our trucks,” said the company’s director, Rob Hollyman.
The services sector, which makes up 80% of Britain’s economy, does not even know what the rules will be for business with the EU in 2021. Many of the details have yet to be hammered out. Months and years of further discussion and argument over everything from fair competition to fish quotas lie ahead as Britain and the EU settle into their new relationship as friends, neighbors and rivals.
Hundreds of millions of individuals in Britain and the bloc also face changes to their daily lives. Britons and EU citizens have lost the automatic right to live and work in the other’s territory. From now on, they will have to follow immigration rules and obtain work visas. Tourists face new headaches including from travel insurance and pet paperwork.
For some in Britain, including the prime minister, it’s a moment of pride and a chance for the U.K. to set new diplomatic and economic priorities. Johnson said the U.K. was now “free to do trade deals around the world, and free to turbocharge our ambition to be a science superpower.”
Conservative lawmaker Bill Cash, who has campaigned for Brexit for decades, said it was a “victory for democracy and sovereignty.”
That’s not a view widely shared across the Channel. In the French president’s traditional New Year’s address, Emmanuel Macron expressed regret.
“The United Kingdom remains our neighbor but also our friend and ally,” he said. “This choice of leaving Europe, this Brexit, was the child of European malaise and lots of lies and false promises.”
The divorce could also have major constitutional repercussions for the United Kingdom. Northern Ireland, which shares a border with EU member Ireland, remains more closely tied to the bloc’s economy under the divorce terms, a status that could pull it away from the rest of the U.K.
In Scotland, which voted strongly in 2016 to remain, Brexit has bolstered support for separation from the U.K. The country’s pro-independence First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted: “Scotland will be back soon, Europe. Keep the light on.”
Many in Britain felt apprehension about a leap into the unknown that is taking place during a pandemic that has upended life around the world.
“I feel very sad that we’re leaving,” said Jen Pearcy-Edwards, a filmmaker in London. “I think that COVID has overshadowed everything that is going on. But I think the other thing that has happened is that people feel a bigger sense of community, and I think that makes it even sadder that we’re breaking up our community a bit, by leaving our neighbours in Europe.
“I’m hopeful that we find other ways to rebuild ties,” she said.
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Associated Press writers Renee Graham in London and John Leicester in Le Pecq, France, contributed to this report.
This New Year’s Eve is being celebrated like no other in most of the world, with many bidding farewell to a year they’d prefer to forget.
From the South Pacific to New York City, pandemic restrictions on open air gatherings saw people turning to made-for-TV fireworks displays or packing it in early since they could not toast the end of 2020 in the presence of friends or carousing strangers.
As midnight rolled from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the Americas, the New Year’s experience mirrored national responses to the virus itself. Some countries and cities canceled or scaled back their festivities, while others without active outbreaks carried on like any other year.
Australia was among the first to ring in 2021. In past years, 1 million people crowded Sydney’s harbor to watch fireworks. This time, most watched on television as authorities urged residents to stay home to see the seven minutes of pyrotechnics that lit up the Sydney Harbor Bridge and its surroundings.
Melbourne, Australia’s second-most populated city, called off its annual fireworks show to discourage crowds. Officials in London made the same decision. And while the ball was set to drop in New York’s Times Square like always, police fenced off the site synonymous with New Year’s Eve.
Another of the world’s most popular places to be on December 31, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, pressed ahead with its revelry despite a surge of infections. Images of masked health care workers briefly lit up Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest tower, before fireworks exploded in the sky over the building. Tens of thousands of people flooded the streets and squares marked out for social distancing were largely ignored.
Still, the pandemic robbed the night of its freewheeling spirit. Authorities implemented a raft of anti-virus measures to control rowdy crowds in downtown Dubai. At luxury bars and restaurants, music blared and people drank, but dancing was strictly prohibited.
For some, the restrictions spoiled the fun.
“People come to Dubai because it’s open, but there are so many rules,” said Bashir Shehu, 50, who was visiting from Nigeria with his family. “We pray that next year we can celebrate with some real freedom.”
South Africans were urged to cancel parties and light candles to honor health workers and people who have died in the COVID-19 pandemic.
In many European countries, authorities warned they were ready to clamp down on revelers breaching public health rules, including nightly curfews in France, Italy, Turkey, Latvia, the Czech Republic, and Greece.
“No one will be on the streets after 10 p.m. (Athens) will be a dead city to make sure no more restrictions are imposed,” said Greece’s public order minister, Michalis Chrisohoidis.
France’s government flooded the streets with 100,000 law enforcement officers to enforce the nationwide curfew.
A few families gathered in Madrid’s sunny central Puerta de Sol square to listen to the rehearsal of the traditional ringing of the bells that is held at midnight. They followed the Spanish custom of eating 12 grapes with each stroke of the bells before police cleared the area that normally hosts thousands of revelers.
As the clock struck midnight, fireworks erupted over Moscow’s Red Square and the Acropolis in Athens, but the explosions echoed across largely empty streets as people obeyed orders to stay home.
From Berlin to Brussels, normally raucous celebrations were muted by the pandemic.
Even the British government, keen to celebrate the U.K.’s definitive split from the EU, ran ads imploring the public to “see in the New Year safely at home” amid a record number of newly confirmed cases.
In Scotland, which prides itself on Dec. 31 Hogmanay celebrations, the government detailed what it expected not to see.
“No gatherings, no house parties, no first-footing. Instead, we should bring in 2021 in our own homes with just our own households,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
Many around the world looked toward 2021 with hope, partly due to the arrival of vaccines that offer a chance of beating the pandemic.
“Goodbye, 2020. Here comes something better: 2021,” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
While there won’t be crowds in Times Square, the mayor pledged that the city, which has recorded over 25,000 deaths from the virus, would rebound next year.
More than 1.8 million deaths worldwide have been linked to the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.
Some leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, used their New Year’s address to thank citizens for enduring hardship during the lockdown and critize those who defied the rules. Others, like Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella, flew the flag for science, urging citizens to discard their fears about getting immunized against COVID-19.
“Faced with an illness so highly contagious, which causes so many deaths, it’s necessary to protect one’s own health and it’s dutiful to protect those of the others – family members, friends, colleagues,’’’ said Mattarella, 79.
In Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, where official fireworks and celebrations also were canceled to limit the rapid spread of the virus, police officers braced for what promised to be a long night.
Rio officials decided to seal off Copacabana, where millions of people dressed in white usually gather on the beach to marvel at fireworks and attend large concerts. This year, between 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. on Jan. 1, only local residents will be able to access the city’s iconic shore, authorities said.
In South Korea, Seoul’s city government canceled its annual New Year’s Eve bell-ringing ceremony in the Jongno neighborhood for the first time since the event was first held in 1953, months after the end of the Korean War.
New Zealand, which is two hours ahead of Sydney, and several of its South Pacific island neighbors that also have no active COVID-19 cases held their usual New Year’s activities.
In Chinese societies, the virus ensured more muted celebrations of the solar New Year, which is less widely observed than the Lunar New Year that in 2021 will fall in February. Initial reports about a mystery respiratory illness sickening people in the Chinese city of Wuhan emerged exactly a year ago.
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Jordans reported from Bonn, Germany, and Gatopoulos from Athens, Greece. AP reporters around the world contributed to this report.
When Julie’s boyfriend came home with a brand new iPhone for her at the end of the summer in 2019, Julie saw it as a peace offering—a sign that their relationship was on the mend.
A few weeks earlier, her boyfriend Steve had flown into a rage, trashing the apartment they shared, punching Julie in the face and breaking her nose. He’d smashed her phone when she tried to call for help. But now, here he was with a replacement phone, and despite Steve’s past behavior, Julie convinced herself the gift was a sign things would be alright. (Julie asked TIME to use pseudonyms for her and Steve to protect her privacy.)
She was particularly impressed that her boyfriend of two months had set up the new phone with her favorite apps and was encouraging her to get out and see friends.
“I had never been allowed to go out and enjoy myself,” says Julie, a 21-year-old living in London. “I thought it was a change in our relationship.”
The euphoria didn’t last. Six months later, as COVID-19 sent the U.K. hurtling into a lockdown, Julie found herself in a nightmare shared by untold numbers of domestic violence victims: trapped with an abuser who was exploiting the pandemic and using technology to control her every movement.
Abusers have long used tech to spy on victims, but the pandemic has given them greater opportunities than ever before. It’s much easier to get access to a partner’s phone to alter privacy settings, obtain passwords, or install tracking software when people are spending so much time together in close proximity. For couples not in lockdown together, abusers may feel a greater need to track their partners. Survivors have also reported that their abusers are surveilling them in an attempt to gather evidence of them breaking lockdown rules and using it against them.
Compounding the problem: it’s much harder for targets of abuse to escape as the fear of infection discourages them from moving in with relatives and friends or fleeing to shelters. And in-person counseling and other programs that serve people in abusive relationships who need help have been curtailed.
The problem of tech abuse pre-dates the pandemic, though data is limited. The U.K.-based organization Refuge, which assists domestic violence survivors, said in 2019 that around 95% of its cases involved some form of tech abuse ranging from tracking a partner’s location using Google Maps to downloading stalkerware and spyware apps on phones. In 2019, the U.S.-based National Network to End Domestic Violence found that 71% of domestic abusers monitor survivors’ device activities: 54% downloaded stalkerware onto their partners’ devices. A study published by the Journal of Family Violence in January 2020 found that 60–63% of survivors receiving services from domestic violence programs reported tech-based abuse.
Experts say that the pandemic has likely made the problem worse. In July, the antivirus company Avast said that after COVID-19 placed people around the world in lockdown, rates of spyware and stalkerware detection skyrocketed, increasing by 51% globally within a month of lockdowns being implemented in March. In June, the antivirus company Malwarebytes found that there was a 780% increase in the detection of monitoring apps and a 1677% increase in the detection of spyware since January. While anti-virus companies expected to see a small rise in the number of detected spyware apps due to improvements in their detection technology, the dramatic increase during lockdown was a red flag to them that abuse was increasing.
Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that anti-virus companies have good reason to warn that tech abuse is on the rise—it lets them portray themselves as solutions to a dangerous problem. “Having said that, this doesn’t mean stalkerware isn’t an increasing problem,” she says, “and that they aren’t the solution.” Domestic violence organizations have reported an increase in the number of reported tech abuse cases since the pandemic began in March, corroborating the findings of antivirus companies. Some survivors have reported stealth surveillance while others have been forced to share their locations with their abusers 24/7. Refuge reports that 40% of the 2,513 tech-abuse survivors who have sought their services since the pandemic began had also experienced sexual violence and 47% had been subject to death threats
“In lockdown, many of the women we supported were living with perpetrators of abuse, and we received countless reports of tech threats,” says Jane Keeper, the director of operations at Refuge.
One of those women was Julie.
When Julie, a hairdresser, met Steve on Tinder in June 2019, the connection was immediate. Within weeks, they were living together. And just weeks later, he began hitting her. Like many people in abusive relationships, Julie convinced herself that Steve would change, even as the violence became worse during their time together.
Then he gave her the new phone. Things seemed to improve, though Julie noticed that Steve was obsessed with making sure she always carried the phone with her and didn’t let the battery die. One evening a few weeks after he gave her the phone, Julie was on a cab ride home and received a text from Steve asking her to stop at McDonalds to grab dinner, telling her she would be passing one in five minutes. “How does he know what I’m doing?” Julie remembers thinking to herself.
She knew better than to ask him to explain. It would only make him angry. As months passed, Steve’s violent flare-ups returned, and Julie became increasingly concerned for her safety.
Finally in February 2020, Julie felt she could no longer handle the violence and controlling behavior. She contacted police, who put her in touch with Refuge, whose tech team assessed her phone.
“That’s when it clicked,” Julie says. “The phone was hacked.”
Getty Images
Steve had been using the new phone against Julie from the start. Among other things, he’d obtained her passwords to log into her social media accounts and had changed the privacy settings to track her location when she was out.
Such tactics instil fear in a person being abused; they know that if they change their phone’s settings, it will quickly become clear to the abuser. “So you just have to let it happen,” says Julie, who blocked Steve in February, only to have him find a way to access her accounts again later when they got back together.
Another form of tech abuse involves installing software on a device that enables someone to track and record everything, from text messages to phone calls. Steve had also done this with Julie’s phone.
Rebecca, 42, endured yet another form of tech abuse—involving a “smart” doorbell. Rebecca learned that her ex-husband was keeping tabs on her via the camera-equipped doorbell system on the London home where she lived with the couple’s children. (Rebecca asked that TIME use a pseudonym to protect her and her children’s privacy). But Rebecca feared taking the camera down. “He would tell me, ‘if you take those cameras down, you’re compromising the security of our children and I’ll report you to the police,’” she says.
So when the pandemic struck, Rebecca kept the cameras in place. In April, she says a neighbor saw Rebecca’s ex-husband beating her and called police. When officers arrived, the ex-husband told them he had video footage of Rebecca’s friend visiting her during the lockdown period, against coronavirus restrictions. “He used the doorbell to spy on what I was doing to try to get me in trouble with the police,” says Rebecca. (Police never followed up on the claims by Rebecca’s ex-husband that she was violating quarantine rules, she says.)
Many countries, including the U.K., have laws against stalking, but stalkerware apps themselves generally are not illegal unless it can be proved that they marketed themselves specifically to enable abuse. In the United States, for instance, only two stalkerware companies faced federal consequences between 2014 and 2019. One was ordered to shut down their application and pay a $500,000 fine. The other was barred from promoting their products.
Companies that market the software have a variety of means for dodging liability. Some avoid legal action by disguising themselves as parental surveillance applications. A stalkerware company that used to market itself as “Girlfriend Cell Tracker” now identifies as “Family Locator for Android,” according to Kevin Roundy, a researcher at NortonLifeLock, a cybersecurity company based in Tempe, Arizona.
“The application has the same functionality,” Roundy says. “It was clearly designed to covertly track a girlfriend but now is saying its purpose is to keep kids safe.” Part of the problem is that app stores allow these companies to market their products on their platforms: ‘Family Locator for Android’, for instance, remains available on Google Play Store.
Advocates say one solution would be to make it illegal for parental surveillance applications to operate in stealth mode, which leaves users of devices unaware they are being watched by an application downloaded onto their device without their knowledge. “It’s the stealth mode functionality of stalkerware that is extremely problematic and allows it to be misused,” says Galperin. “There is no reason whatsoever for companies not to have addressed this except that there is a market for it.”
Galperin says a big challenge of getting lawmakers interested in the problem is that cybersecurity debates orbit around questions of national security, not threats to individuals.
During the nearly one year they were together, Julie broke up with Steve at least once and even called the police on him to report the abuse. He was arrested, then released on bail, and the case was dropped. Eventually, the couple reunited—not unusual in abusive relationships, where victims are often driven by fear, financial dependence, and a genuine belief that they can fix the relationship.
But after the U.K. went into lockdown on March 23, Julie regretted letting Steve move back in with her. “It was his perfect scenario,” she says. “He could see and watch everything I was doing.”
Once, she sought refuge at a friend’s house. When she returned to the apartment, Steve poured bleach on her. “He said he could smell someone else on me,” Julie says. Finally in June, she broke up with Steve for good after again reporting his abusive behavior to police. They arrested Steve on domestic abuse charges, then released him on bail a few weeks later. Julie says she has not had contact with him since then.
Julie is now free from her previous relationship, but knows many others are not. And though the pandemic makes it more difficult for survivors to seek help, Diana Freed, a PhD candidate in Computing and Information Science at Cornell Tech who volunteers at the Clinic to End Tech Abuse, says it is crucial that survivors know there are still resources available to them. Her clinic, like many organizations, has made tech abuse services and information available online, offering webinars on how to disconnect from surveillance applications or leave toxic relationships.
For women like Julie and Rebecca, these services have been lifesaving during the pandemic. With the help of Refuge, Julie has secured all her devices and passwords as well as moved into a house with CCTV cameras installed outside. These services have helped her feel safe and secure. As the pandemic rolls on, Julie and Rebecca urge others not to delay seeking help.
“Because I can tell you,” Julie says, “it gets more dangerous when they start tracking you.”
(LOS ANGELES) — Dawn Wells, who played the wholesome Mary Ann among a misfit band of shipwrecked castaways on the 1960s sitcom “Gilligan’s Island,” died Wednesday of causes related to COVID-19, her publicist said. She was 82.
Wells died peacefully at a residential facility in Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll said. “There is so much more to Dawn Wells” than the “Gilligan’s Island” character that brought her fame, Boll said in a statement.
Besides TV, film and stage acting credits, her other real-life roles included teacher, motivational speaker and conservationist, Boll said.
Tina Louise, 86, who played Ginger the movie star, is the last surviving member of a cast that included Bob Denver as the title character; Alan Hale Jr. as the Skipper; Jim Backus and Natalie Schafer as wealthy passengers Thurston and Lovey Howell, and Russell Johnson, known as the Professor.
“I will always remember her kindness to me,” Louise said in a statement. “We shared in creating a cultural landmark that has continued to bring comfort and smiles to people during this difficult time. I hope that people will remember her the way that I do — always with a smile on her face.”
“Oh, this so sad. Bon voyage, Mary Ann,” Jane Lynch posted on Twitter.
“Two and a Half Men” star Jon Cryer tweeted that it was a “thrill” to meet Wells when she visited the show, adding, “She could not have been more lovely and gracious.”
Wells, a native of Reno, Nevada, represented her state in the 1959 Miss America pageant and quickly pivoted to an acting career. Her early TV roles were on shows including “77 Sunset Strip,” “Maverick” and “Bonanza.”
Then came “Gilligan’s Island,” a goofy, good-natured comedy that aired from 1964-67 that became an unlikely but indelible part of popular culture. Wells’ comely but innocent Mary Ann complemented Louise’s worldly Ginger, and both became innocuous ’60s TV versions of sex symbols.
Wells’ wardrobe included a gingham dress and shorts that modestly covered her belly button, with both costumes on display in Los Angeles at The Hollywood Museum.
TV movies spinoffs from the series followed, including 1978’s “Rescue from Gilligan’s Island,” but Wells also moved on to other TV guest roles and films including the 2002 vacuum cleaner salesman comedy “Super Sucker” with Jeff Daniels. She starred on stage in dozens of plays, including “Chapter Two” and “The Odd Couple.”
In 2013, she was honored by for her work with a Tennessee-based refuge, The Elephant Sanctuary.
To mark the 50th anniversary of “Gilligan’s Island.” Dawn wrote “A Guide To Life: What Would Mary Ann Do?” with observations about her character and the cultural changes that took place while she was stranded.
Two years ago, a friend launched a GoFundMe drive to help cover medical and other costs for Wells, although she protested she didn’t need the assistance. She did end up acknowledging her need and accepted more than $180,000 in donations.
“Wow! I am amazed at the kindness and affection I have received” in response to the fundraising drive, Wells said in a social media post at the time. She said a “dear friend” undertook it after a frank conversation.
She recounted musing to him, “’Where did the time go? I don’t know how this happened. I thought I was taking all the proper steps to ensure my golden years. Now, here I am, no family, no husband, no kids and no money.’”
Wells added in the post that she was grateful to her supportive fans and that her outlook remained positive.
Dawn is survived by her stepsister, Weslee Wells, Boll said.
Enter the new year with mindfulness with the debut of Netflix’s newest original series, Headspace Guide to Meditation. The animated show focuses on the benefits of mediation, while providing real-life techniques and guided practices for you to try at home. It’s available to stream starting January 1.
Documentary lovers will have plenty to stream this month. Cultural commentator Fran Lebowitz offers up her signature sardonic wit in a new Netflix Original documentary series Pretend It’s a City, directed by Martin Scorsese. In the new show, releasing on January 8, Lebowitz gives a riotously opinionated guide to New York City, with topics ranging from tourists to the subway. Also debuting this month is Rudy Valdez’s We Are the Brooklyn Saints, a four-part Netflix Original doc series that centers on a youth football program in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York, as well as Surviving Death, a new original series that explores the possibility of an afterlife.
Those looking for an educational (but by no means boring) experience this month should consider a History of Swear Words. With this in-depth, expletive-ridden and outrageously funny series hosted by Nicholas Cage, the origins of common profanities are explored by experts in etymology, pop culture, historians and entertainers. It debuts on January 5.
Here’s everything new on Netflix this month—and everything set to leave the streaming platform.
Here are the Netflix originals coming to Netflix in January 2021
Available January 1
Dream Home Makeover, season 2
Headspace Guide to Meditation
The Minimalists: Less Is Now
Monarca, season 2
What Happened to Mr. Cha?
Available January 2
Asphalt Burning (Børning 3)
Available January 5
Gabby’s Dollhouse
History of Swear Words
¡Nailed It! México, season 3
Available January 6
Ratones Paranoicos: The Band that Rocked Argentina
Surviving Death
Tony Parker: The Final Shot
Available January 7
Pieces of a Woman
Available January 8
Charming
The Idhun Chronicles: Part 2
Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons, season 5
Lupin
Mighty Little Bheem: Kite Festival
Pretend It’s a City
Stuck Apart (Azizler)
Available January 11
CRACK: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy
Available January 13
Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer
Available January 15
Bling Empire
Carmen Sandiego, season 4
Disenchantment: Part 3
Double Dad (Pai Em Dobro)
Outside the Wire
Available January 19
Hello Ninja, season 4
Available January 20
Daughter From Another Mother (Madre solo hay dos)
Spycraft
Available January 21
Call My Agent!, season 4
Available January 22
Blown Away, season 2
Busted!, season 3
Fate: The Winx Saga
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, season 2
So My Grandma’s a Lesbian! (Salir del ropero)
The White Tiger
Available January 23
Love (ft. Marriage and Divorce)
Available January 26
Go Dog Go
Available January 27
Penguin Bloom
Available January 29
Below Zero (Bajocero)
The Dig
Finding ‘Ohana
We Are: The Brooklyn Saints
Here are the TV shows and movies coming to Netflix in January 2021
Available January 1
17 Again
30 Minutes or Less
Abby Hatcher,season 1
Blue Streak
Bonnie and Clyde
Can’t Hardly Wait
Catch Me If You Can
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Cool Hand Luke
The Creative Brain
The Departed
Enter the Dragon
Gimme Shelter
Good Hair
Goodfellas
Gothika
The Haunted Hathaways, seasons 1-2
Into the Wild
Julie & Julia
Mud
Mystic Pizza
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Eddie Murphy: Raw
Sex and the City: The Movie
Sex and the City 2
Sherlock Holmes
Striptease
Superbad
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
Available January 5
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
LA’s Finest, season 1
Available January 10
Spring Breakers
Available January 11
The Intouchables
Available January 12
Last Tango in Halifax, season 4
Available January 13
An Imperfect Murder
Available January 15
Henry Danger, seasons 1-3
Hook
Kuroko’s Basketball, season 1
The Magicians, season 5
Penguins of Madagascar: The Movie
Pinkfong & Baby Shark’s Space Adventure
Available January 16
A Monster Calls
Radium Girls
Available January 18
Homefront
Available January 20
Sightless
Available January 27
Accomplice
Available January 31
Fatima
Here’s what’s leaving Netflix in January 2021
Leaving January 1
Bloodsport
Leaving January 3
QB1: Beyond the Lights, season 2
Leaving January 4
Mara
Leaving January 5
The Monster
Leaving January 7
The Tudors, seasons 1-4
Leaving January 8
Mary Poppins Returns
Leaving January 14
Haven, seasons 1-5
The Master
Leaving January 15
A Serious Man
Dallas Buyers Club
Waco: Limited Series
Leaving January 16
Friday Night Tykes, seasons 1-4
Leaving January 20
Fireplace 4K: Classic Crackling Fireplace from Fireplace for Your Home
Fireplace 4K: Crackling Birchwood from Fireplace for Your Home
Start off the new year with the thrilling last season of Vikings, which begins streaming on Amazon Prime Video on December 30. Ahead of watching the final 10 episodes, viewers can catch up on the last six seasons, also available on the platform, following the epic adventures of these Nordic raiders and explorers of the Dark Ages.
Oscar, Golden Globe, and Emmy-winning actress Regina King makes her directorial debut with the Amazon Original movie One Night in Miami, a feature based on the Kemp Powers stage play of the same name, that imagines a fictional meetup between Malcom X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown, and Sam Cooke. It begins streaming on January 15.
Other Amazon Original projects hitting the streaming platform this month include Herself, an intimate drama about a single mother looking to create a home for her and her two young children, and Flack, a new series starring Academy Award winner Anna Paquin, that centers on the trials and tribulations of a crew of celebrity publicists.
Those looking for a cozy movie night this winter are in luck; there are plenty of both new releases and old favorites joining the platform this month. The Tiffany Haddish-fronted comedy Like a Boss begins streaming on January 1, while cult classics like A Night at the Roxbury and St. Elmo’s Fire will be available to watch starting this month.
Here are all the series and movies available on Amazon Prime Video this month.
Here are the new Amazon Prime Video originals in January 2021
Available January 8
Herself
Available January 15
One Night in Miami
Available January 22
Flack
Jessy and Nessy
Available Early 2021
The Great Escapists
Here are the movies streaming on Amazon PrimeVideoin January 2021
Available January 1
1900
A Night At The Roxbury
Arachnophobia
Bloody Sunday
Broken Arrow
Brothers
Chaplin
Cloverfield
Coneheads
Confessions Of A Shopaholic
Donnie Brasco
Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb
Escape From Alcatraz
Eve’s Bayou
Face/Off
Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell
Girl Most Likely
Good Luck Chuck
Gun Duel In Durango
Gunfight At The O.K. Corral
In & Out
Jazz
Kiss The Girls
Last Of The Mohicans
Legion
Like A Boss
Love The Coopers
Major League
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Peggy Sue Got Married
Places In The Heart
Premonition
Pride
Push
Regarding Henry
Ride Out For Revenge
Salt
Signed, Sealed, Delivered
Signs
Soul Food
St. Elmo’s Fire
Starman
Star Trek Beyond
The Brass Legend
The Brothers Mcmullen
The Cooler
The Devil’s Own
The Firm
The Interview
The Legend Of Bagger Vance
The Longest Yard
The Peacemaker
The Quick And The Dead
The Sons Of Katie Elder
The Town
The Truman Show
Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys
Vampire In Brooklyn
Virtuosity
Walking Tall
War
When A Man Loves A Woman
Where Hope Grows
Wonder Boys
Available January 6
Mighty Oak
Available January 7
Gretel & Hansel
Available January 8
The Silencing
Available January 11
The Rhythm Section
Available January 18
Alone
Available January 29
Chick Fight
Mortal
Here are the TV shows streaming on Amazon Prime Video inJanuary 2021
Available December 30
Vikings, season 6B
Available January 1
Ancient Civilizations of North America, season 1
Baby Looney Tunes, season 1
Beecham House, season 1
Bringing up Bates, season 1
Changing Body Composition through Diet and Exercise, season 1
HONG KONG — Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai has had his bail revoked after prosecutors succeeded in asking the city’s highest court to send him back to detention.
Lai had been granted bail on Dec. 23 after three weeks in custody on charges of fraud and endangering national security. His appeal hearing is slated for Feb. 1.
The court said Thursday that it was “reasonably arguable” that the previous judge’s decision was erroneous and that the order of granting bail was invalid.
Lai was charged with fraud on Dec. 3 for allegedly violating the lease terms for office space for the Next Digital, the media company he founded. He was later charged again on Dec. 12 under the sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces and endangering national security.
Lai is among a string of pro-democracy activists and supporters arrested by Hong Kong police in recent months as authorities step up their crackdown on dissent in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story is below:
Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai appeared in court Thursday as prosecutors asked the city’s top judges to send him back to detention after he was granted bail last week on fraud and national security-related charges.
If the prosecutors succeed, Lai will be detained until his next court appearance on April 16. Prior to being granted bail, Lai had been held in custody for nearly three weeks.
He is among a string of pro-democracy activists and supporters arrested by Hong Kong police in recent months as authorities step up their crackdown on dissent in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
He was charged with fraud on Dec. 3 for allegedly violating the lease terms for office space for the Next Digital, the media company he founded. He was later charged again on Dec. 12 under the sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing on suspicion of colluding with foreign forces and endangering national security.
Lai, who was ordered to remain under house arrest as part of his bail conditions, left his home on Thursday morning in a black Mercedes. He entered the Court of Final Appeal without making any comments to supporters and media, many of whom swarmed the tycoon as he made his way into the courtroom.
Other bail conditions included surrendering his travel documents and a ban on meeting with foreign officials, publishing articles on any media, posting on social media and giving interviews.
His court appearance comes after Chinese state-owned newspaper People’s Daily posted a strongly worded commentary on Sunday criticizing a Hong Kong court for granting bail to Lai, stating that it “severely hurt Hong Kong’s rule of law.”
The People’s Daily said that it would not be difficult for Lai to abscond, and called him “notorious and extremely dangerous.” It also warned that China could take over the case, according to Article 55 of the national security law which states that China can “exercise jurisdiction over a case concerning offence endangering national security.”
Hong Kong’s judiciary on Tuesday uploaded a 19-page judgment on its website, laying out the reasons why High Court Judge Justice Alex Lee had granted Lai bail. Lee said that he was satisfied that there was no flight risk in Lai’s case, and noted that Lai was willing to have his movements monitored if it had been a feasible option.
On Tuesday, Lai resigned as chairman and executive director of Next Digital, which runs the Apple Daily newspaper, according to a filing made to the Hong Kong stock exchange. He did so “to spend more time dealing with this personal affairs” and confirmed that he had no disagreement with the board of directors, the filing said.
CANBERRA, Australia — This New Year’s Eve is being celebrated like no other, with pandemic restrictions limiting crowds and many people bidding farewell to a year they’d prefer to forget.
Australia will be among the first nations to ring in 2021 because of its proximity to the International Date Line. In past years 1 million people crowded Sydney’s harbor to watch fireworks that center on the Sydney Harbor Bridge.
Authorities this year are advising revelers to watch on television. People are only allowed in downtown Sydney if they have a restaurant reservation or are one of five guests of an inner-city apartment resident. People won’t be allowed in the city center without a permit.
Some haborside restaurants are charging up to 1,690 Australian dollars ($1,294) for a seat, Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Wednesday.
Sydney is Australia’s most populous city and has its most active community transmission of COVID-19 in recent weeks.
Melbourne, Australia’s second-most populous city, has cancelled its fireworks this year.
“For the first time in many, many years we made the big decision, difficult decision to cancel the fireworks,” Melbourne Mayor Sally Capp said.
“We did that because we know that it attracts up to 450,000 people into the city for one moment at midnight to enjoy a spectacular display and music. We are not doing that this year,” she added.
New Zealand, which is two hours ahead of Sydney, and several of its South Pacific island neighbors have no COVID-19, and New Year celebrations there are the same as ever.
In Chinese societies, the Lunar New Year celebration that falls in February in 2021 generally takes precedence over solar New Year, on Jan. 1. While celebrations of the Western holiday have been growing more common in recent decades, this year will be more muted.
Beijing will hold a countdown ceremony with just a few invited guests, while other planned events have been cancelled. And nighttime temperatures plunging to -15 Celsius (- 5 Fahrenheit) will likely discourage people from spending the night out with friends.
Taiwan will host its usual New Year’s celebration, a fireworks display by its capital city’s iconic tower, Taipei 101, as well as a flag-raising ceremony in front of the Presidential Office Building the next morning. The island has been a success story in the pandemic, registering only 7 deaths and 700 confirmed cases of COVID-19.
Hong Kong, with its British colonial history and large expatriate population, has usually seen raucous celebrations along the waterfront and in bar districts. For the second year running, however, New Year’s Eve fireworks have been cancelled, this time over coronavirus rather than public security concerns.
Still roiled by its coronavirus outbreak, Hong Kong social distancing regulations restrict gatherings to only two people. Restaurants have to close by 6 p.m. Live performances and dancing are not allowed. But crowds still throng shopping centers.
In Japan, some people skipped what’s customarily a chance to return to ancestral homes for the holidays, hoping to lessen health risks for extended families amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Rural restaurants saw business drop, while home deliveries of traditional New Year’s “good luck” food called “osechi” boomed.
Emperor Naruhito is delivering a video message for the new year, instead of waving from a window with the imperial family as cheering crowds throng the palace.
Train services that usually carry people on shrine visits overnight Dec. 31, as well as some countdown ceremonies, have been cancelled.
Meiji Shrine in downtown Tokyo, which attracts millions of people every year during New Year holidays and is usually open all night on New Year’s Eve, will close its doors at 4 p.m. on Dec. 31 this year, the shrine announced on its website.
In South Korea, Seoul’s city government has cancelled its annual New Year’s Eve bell-ringing ceremony in the Jongno neighborhood for the first time since it first held the event in 1953, months after the end of the Korean War.
The event, in which citizens ring a large bell at a traditional pavilion when the clock strikes twelve, drew an estimated 100,000 people and was broadcast live.
Authorities in eastern coastal areas say they’ll close beaches and other spots where hundreds of thousands of people typically gather on New Year’s Day to watch the sunrise.
The southeastern city of Pohang says it instead plans to broadcast live the sunrise at several beaches under its jurisdiction on its YouTube channel on Jan. 1.
Earlier this week, South Korea’s central government said it will ban private social gatherings of more than five people and shut down ski resorts and major tourist spots nationwide from Christmas Eve until Jan. 3 as efforts to bring a recent viral resurgence under control.
____
Associated Press journalists Huizhong Wu in Taipei, Taiwan, Raf Wober in Hong Kong, Mary Yamaguchi and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo, and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
BEIJING — China has given conditional approval to a coronavirus vaccine developed by state-owned Sinopharm.
The vaccine is the first one approved for general use in China.
Chen Shifei, the deputy commissioner of China’s National Medical Products Administration, said at a news conference Thursday that the decision had been made the previous night.
The vaccine is an inactivated, two-dose vaccine from the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, a subsidiary of state-owned conglomerate Sinopharm. The company announced Wednesday that preliminary data from last-stage trials had shown it to be 79.3% effective.
Sinopharm is one of at least five Chinese developers that are in a global race to create vaccines for the disease that has killed more than 1.8 million people.
The Beijing Institute vaccine is already under mass production, though officials did not answer questions about current production capacity.
“Production capacity is a dynamic and continuous process,” said Mao Junfeng, Vice Director of the Department of Industry of Consumer Products of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all but shut the door Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s push for $2,000 COVID-19 relief checks, declaring Congress has provided enough pandemic aid as he blocked another attempt by Democrats to force a vote.
The GOP leader made clear he is unwilling to budge, despite political pressure from Trump and even some fellow Republican senators demanding action. Trump wants the recent $600 in aid increased threefold. But McConnell dismissed the idea of bigger “survival checks” approved by the House, saying the money would go to plenty of American households that just don’t need it.
McConnell’s refusal to act means the additional relief Trump wanted is all but dead.
“We just approved almost a trillion dollars in aid a few days ago,” McConnell said, referring to the year-end package Trump signed into law.
McConnell added, “if specific, struggling households still need more help,” the Senate will consider “smart targeted aid. Not another firehose of borrowed money.”
The showdown between the outgoing president and his own Republican Party over the $2,000 checks has thrown Congress into a chaotic year-end session just days before new lawmakers are set to be sworn into office.
It’s one last standoff, together with the override of Trump’s veto of a sweeping defense bill, that will punctuate the president’s final days and deepen the GOP’s divide between its new wing of Trump-styled populists and what had been mainstay conservative views against government spending.
Trump has been berating the GOP leaders, and tweeted, “$2000 ASAP!”
President-elect Joe Biden also supports the payments and wants to build on what he calls a “downpayment” on relief.
“In this moment of historic crisis and untold economic pain for countless American families, the President-elect supports $2,000 direct payments as passed by the House,” said Biden transition spokesman Andrew Bates.
The roadblock set by Senate Republicans appears insurmountable. Most GOP senators seemed to accept the inaction even as a growing number of Republicans, including two senators in runoff elections on Jan. 5 in Georgia, agree with Trump’s demand, some wary of bucking him.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the $600 checks would begin to go out Wednesday. Congress had settled on smaller payments in a compromise over the big, year-end COVID relief and government funding bill that Trump reluctantly signed into law. Before signing, though, Trump demanded more.
For a second day in a row, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tried to force a vote on the bill approved by the House meeting Trump’s demand for the $2,000 checks.
“What we’re seeing right now is Leader McConnell trying to kill the checks — the $2,000 checks desperately needed by so many American families,” Schumer said.
With the Georgia Senate runoff elections days away, leading Republicans warned that the GOP’s refusal to provide more aid as the virus worsens could jeopardize the outcome of those races.
Georgia’s GOP Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are trying to fend off Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in runoff elections that will determine which party has the Senate majority. The two Republicans announced support for Trump’s call for more generous checks.
“The Senate Republicans risk throwing away two seats and control of the Senate,” Newt Gingrich, the former congressional leader, said on Fox News.
McConnell has tried to shield his divided Republicans from a difficult vote. On Wednesday he suggested he had kept his word to start a “process” to address Trump’s demands, even if it means no votes will actually be taken.
“It’s no secret Republicans have a diversity of views,” he said.
Earlier, McConnell had unveiled a new bill loaded up with Trump’s other priorities as a possible off-ramp for the stalemate. It included the $2,000 checks more narrowly targeted to lower-income households as well as a complicated repeal of protections for tech companies like Facebook or Twitter under Section 230 of a communications law that the president complained is unfair to conservatives. It also tacked on the establishment of a bipartisan commission to review the 2020 presidential election Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden.
If McConnell sets a vote on his bill, it could revive Trump’s priorities. But because the approach contains the additional tech and elections provisions, Democrats and some Republicans will likely balk and it’s unlikely to have enough support in Congress to pass.
No additional votes on COVID aid have been scheduled at this point. For McConnell, the procedural moves allowed him to check the box over the commitments he made when Trump was defiantly refusing to sign off on the big year-end package last weekend. “That was a commitment, and that’s what happened,” he said.
Liberal senators, led by Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who support the relief boost are blocking action on a defense bill until a vote can be taken on Trump’s demand for $2,000 for most Americans.
Sanders thundered on the floor that McConnell should call his own constituents in the GOP leader’s home state of Kentucky “and find out how they feel about the need for immediate help in terms of a $2,000 check.”
Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida, among the party’s potential 2024 presidential hopefuls, also pushed in the president’s direction. Hawley is also leading Trump’s challenge Jan. 6 to the Electoral College result tally in Congress.
Other Republicans panned the bigger checks, arguing during a lively Senate debate that the nearly $400 billion price tag was too high, the relief is not targeted to those in need and Washington has already dispatched ample sums on COVID aid.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., tweeted that “blindly borrowing” billions “so we can send $2,000 checks to millions of people who haven’t lost any income is terrible policy.”
Considered a longshot, Trump’s demand gained momentum at the start of the week when dozens of House Republicans calculated it was better to link with most Democrats than defy the outgoing president. They helped pass a bill raising the payments with a robust two-thirds vote of approval.
As Trump’s push fizzles out, his attempt to amend the year-end package — $900 billion in COVID-19 aid and $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies through September — will linger as potentially one last confrontation before the new Congress is sworn in Sunday.
The COVID-19 portion of the bill revives a weekly pandemic jobless benefit boost — this time $300, through March 14 — as well as the popular Paycheck Protection Program of grants to businesses to keep workers on payrolls. It extends eviction protections, adding a new rental assistance fund.
Americans earning up to $75,000 will qualify for the direct $600 payments, which are phased out at higher income levels, and there’s an additional $600 payment per dependent child.
LONDON — Lewis Hamilton is now a “Sir” as well as a seven-time Formula One champion.
Hamilton received a knighthood Wednesday as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s New Year’s honors list, which also recognized British performers, politicians, public servants and people outside the limelight who worked to defeat the coronavirus and its devastating impacts.
Hamilton, who secured his seventh F1 title last month to equal Michael Schumacher’s record, has said his recent success was partly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. The 35-year-old race car driver took the knee on the grid and wore anti-racism slogans during the season.
Hamilton told the BBC last week that “it was a different drive than what I’ve had in me in the past, to get to the end of those races first so that I could utilize that platform” against racism.
Supporters have suggested Hamilton would have been knighted sooner if not for his tax status. Hamilton’s knighthood was awarded in the “overseas” section of the honors list because he lives in low-tax Monaco.
His tax affairs made news in 2017 when the Paradise Papers leak showed he avoided paying more than $4 million in taxes on a private jet registered in the Isle of Man, a tax haven.
Motorsport U.K. Chairman David Richards said Hamilton’s tax status had been “totally misunderstood” and that the racing champion was among the 5,000 highest taxpayers in the U.K.
In other honors, veteran comic actress Sheila Hancock was made a dame, the female equivalent of a knight, in recognition of her six-decade career. Acclaimed makeup artist Pat McGrath, dubbed the “most influential makeup artist in the world” by Vogue, also received a damehood.
There was a knighthood for cinematographer Roger Deakins, a 15-time Academy Award nominee who has won Oscars for “Blade Runner 2049” and “1917.”
Actress Lesley Manville, an Oscar nominee for “Phantom Thread,” was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE. Actor Toby Jones, whose credits include voicing the character of Dobby in two “Harry Potter” movies, was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire or OBE, as was writer Jed Mercurio, creator of the TV detective series “Line of Duty.”
Veteran footballers Jimmy Greaves and Ron Flowers were made Members of the Order of the British Empire, or MBEs, after a long-running campaign to ensure every surviving member of the team that won England the 1966 World Cup receives an honor.
The queen’s honors are awarded twice a year, in late December and in June, when the monarch’s birthday is observed. The awards acknowledge hundreds of people for services to community or British national life. Recipients are selected by committees of civil servants from nominations made by the government and the public.
Greta Westwood, chief executive of nursing charity the Florence Nightingale Foundation, received a CBE for her work highlighting the mental-health toll of the pandemic on front-line workers. Others honored for their work during the pandemic include research scientists, statistical modelers, engineers and onesie manufacturer Katherine Dawson, who received an OBE for making scrubs for medics when supplies were short.
In descending order, the main honors are knighthoods, CBE, OBE and Member of the Order of the British Empire, or MBE. Knights are addressed as “sir” or “dame,” followed by their name. Recipients of the other honors have no title, but they can put the letters after their names.
There is growing criticism of the honors’ evocation of the British Empire, the legacy of which has been debated anew amid campaigns against racism and colonialism around the world.
The education spokeswoman for the opposition Labour Party, Kate Green, who has an OBE, recently called the titles of the honors “offensive and divisive.”
The British government said there are no plans to change the titles.
The chef’s hats were never going to arrive at the actors’ houses on time. In early December, Seaview Productions announced that they would transform a viral TikTok phenomenon intoRatatouille: The TikTok Musical,a professional production featuring veteran performers like Wayne Brady and Tituss Burgess, in just under a month. Musicals, even virtual ones, typically take months, if not years, to produce. And with the holidays looming, Seaview couldn’t ship microphones, green screens or tiny rat ears to the cast in time to record their scenes.
“Our costume consultant, Tilly Grimes, looked through the actors’ closets over video chat,” says producer Greg Nobile, who produced Jeremy O. Harris’ Tony-nominatedSlave Playand the Jake Gyllenhaal starrer Sea Wall/A Life. “We just asked, ‘Do you have gray?’ ‘Do you have makeup so you can put whiskers on your face?’ ‘Can you make those mittens look like rat’s feet?’ The point was to really lean into the aesthetic of TikTok which is totally frenetic and DIY.”
Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical,which audiences will be able to stream through TodayTix on Jan. 1 for anywhere from $5 to $50 to benefitthe Actors Fund, represents a merger between two stratified creative spheres: The New York establishment and digital upstarts. As theaters closed around the world this spring due to COVID-19, professionals and theater kids alike turned to TikTok as a creative outlet. The Gen Z-centric social media platform, which lets users create one-minute videos, proved a more accessible arena than the Great White Way.
It started when Emily Jacobsen, a 26-year-old schoolteacher from Hartsdale, N.Y., posted a squeaky-voiced a capella ode to Pixar character Remy the Ratto TikTok in October. The ballad, which Jacobsen composed while cleaning her apartment, went viral. Other users employed the platform’s “duet” feature to add new background music or melodies, choreograph dances, and build panoramas of a moving stage. One even designed a fake Playbill. “TikTok is uniquely suited for collaborations,” says RJ Christian, a 21-year-old New York University student and composer. “A video can be re-contextualized and repurposed and passed around, die and come back to life in a different way.” TikTok had laid out all the pieces for aRatatouillemusical. Someone just had to put them together.
One of the West End’s most promising young directors, Lucy Moss, 26—who will become the youngest woman ever to direct a Broadway show whenSix, her smash hit pop musical about the Tudor queens,migrates from London to New York next year—stepped up. She will stitch together 10 songs adapted from TikTok creations and two new numbers written by the show’s music director Daniel Mertzlufft, who has previously written music for The Late Late Show with James Cordon. Theformidable cast and crew includes Adam Lambert, Tony-winner André De Shields, Ashley Park from Emily in Paris and Dear Evan Hanson’s Andrew Barth Feldman, as well asa choir and a 20-piece all-female, primarily-POC orchestra called the Broadway Symphonetta. Moss describes the first-ever TikTok musical as “a Zoom reading that drank 20 Red Bulls.” Here’s how it all came together.
Ratatouillewasn’t obvious source material for a 2020 viral hit. The movie came out 13 years ago. And even then, the story of a plucky young rat who dreams of becoming a Michelin-star chef wasn’t a guaranteed success. Rats in a kitchen are a tough sell, even if they’re animated to be fluffy and adorable. The movie earned the adoration of film critics for its heartwarming story and foodies for its fidelity to the restaurant kitchen experience. (Thomas Keller served as a consultant on the film, and Anthony Bourdain declared it the best movie ever made about the food world.) Still, in the history of Pixar content, franchises likeToy Storyand existential dramas likeInside Outtend to overshadowRatatouille.
But the film debuted in 2007, just when Gen Z was at peak Disney content consumption.Ratatouilleholds a nostalgic sway over the same generation that’s now addicted to TikTok. The story has also found a foothold this year among a new crop of home cooks whose ranks have been growing over the course of the pandemic.At the beginning of quarantine, people stuck at home began producing cooking videos on TikTok—sometimes beautiful montages, sometimes ironically staged videos of kitchen mishaps—to the tune of “Le Festin” from the movie’s soundtrack.
And its themes have resonated specifically with the theater kid subsection of TikTok. “To be honest, when I saw it as a kid, I wasn’t a big fan,” says Jacobsen. “It was only as an adult when the story’s themes about creativity and collaboration really began to click for me.”
Remi the Rat is gifted with a perfect palette, but his family is content to nibble on garbage. Worse still, whenever he enters a restaurant kitchen in his hometown of Paris, cooks leap onto their stations screaming “rat!” The culinary world seems utterly inaccessible to him simply because of his station in life. He eventually teams up with Linguini, a hopeless line cook in desperate need of Remi’s direction. Remi crawls under Linguini’s chef’s hat and puppeteers him to great fame.
Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley, who run a Brooklyn-based theater company called Fake Friends and made a splash with theircritically-acclaimed virtual productionof their playCircle Jerkthis fall, co-wrote the book forRatatouille: The Musical. They connect Remi’s struggle to that of young creatives trying to earn fame on TikTok. “It’s a great marriage of form and content,” Breslin says. “Ratatouilleis about a young chef or artist who wants to make a name for himself in the world and only has a few tools to do that. But he has a great amount of ambition and talent and succeeds in the face of the establishment. He forges a new path, which makes a lot of sense with what’s going on with TikTok right now.”
Jacobsen, a die-hard Disney fan, read obsessively about the new attractions planned for the company’s theme parks, including aRatatouilleride. She dreamed of wandering through a crowd once again and sitting next to strangers on a rollercoaster. Caught up in that flight of fancy, she began to write: “Remy, theRatatouille, the rat of all my dreams / I praise you, ohRatatouille, may the world remember your name.”
Composer Mertzlufft had come to TikTok for distraction too. He first created his account back in February but rarely opened the app until the pandemic hit. “Those first few days of quarantine, all the news was just so bad everywhere,” he says. “I would open Facebook, and it would be upsetting. I would open Twitter, and it would be upsetting. I found TikTok was the only place where I could actually find some escapism and not think about how terrible the world is for a little bit.” After finding Internet fame composingAvatar the Last Airbender: The TikTok MusicalandGrocery Store: The Musicalfor TikTok, Mertzlufft ran across Jacobsen’s song. He gave it “the full Broadway treatment,” adding an orchestration and what sounded like a choir to accompany Jacobsen’s song: In fact, it was just Mertzlufft and his friend recorded 15 times over.
Other songs written for various scenes and characters in the movie flooded the platform, including several from Christian, the NYU student, who initially started creating content for TikTok in hopes of pulling himself out of a pandemic-induced rut. He felt that because there was a one-minute limit on the videos, creations for TikTok were low stakes. “For full length songs, for them to be good, you need about three good ideas,” he says. “But with a TikTok song, you really only need one.”
As his following grew into the tens of thousands, he began to invest more time and effort into his songs, particularly a series of ballads he wrote for the imaginedRatatouillemusical. Christian would sing in character, wielding pots and pans if he was playing one of the chefs or donning a scarf to mimic the pretentious food critic from the film Anton Ego: “Creators I really admire started following me back, and I was like, oh hello! And the songs started succeeding outside of TikTok. At that point, I started calling myself a TikTok creator.”
In the two-and-a-half months since Jacobsen, Mertzlufft, and Christian posted theirRatatouillevideos, more than 250 million people have engaged withRatatouille Musicalcontent on TikTok. That caught the attention of Broadway. With theaters closed and the Tony Awards postponed, Jeremy O. Harris was biding his time byfalling down the rabbit hole of theater TikTok when he saw the viral “Ratatousical” and alerted Nobile. Nobile jumped on it, recruiting all three creators and dozens more professionals and young TikTok content creators to all collaborate on the production.
Now New York and London theater veterans have largely taken over the work of creating a cohesive performance from the disparate contributions on TikTok, but Jacobsen says Seaview has been in constant consultation with her and the original creators to make sure the play stays true to their original vision. In the meantime, the TikTok creators have started up a group chat to keep one another updated on the musical’s progress and toss around various rat-related puns. “Honestly I was surprised Disney gave the greenlight,” says Jacobsen. “Everything has gone way better than I could have ever imagined. I’ve left most of the work to the true professionals but you may see me pop up in a few surprise special ways.”
Disney has a storied history on Broadway. Adaptations of movies likeThe Lion King, FrozenandAladdinmake billions of dollars in ticket sales, even more than the original films earn in cinemas. The company drove the“Disney-fication” of Times Square, spurring the transformation of the once seedy neighborhood into a technicolor tourist trap, for better or worse. Nobile , who works outside the Disney machine, believed that transforming an already-popular TikTok musical into a real production, would be an obvious win: The show would have a built-in audience of hundreds of millions of people.
Nobile has long worried that Broadway will become hamstrung by its own financial and geographical restrictions: The audience is limited, and so is the talent pool. “How do we make radical inclusion more sustainable? Our office has been working on how to develop new audiences and how to find new creative voices beyond just the students at Juilliard,” he says. “A viral musical on TikTok was doing both without even trying.”
He called up Thomas Schumacher, the longtime head of Disney Theatrical, for permission to put on a performance if Disney didn’t have anything in the works. “From my vantage point, we’re in this horrible moment when Broadway has been shut down longer than it ever has in the course of history,” Nobile says, “and we need to be innovative about the ways we create on the other side of this.” Disney has historically been precious about its IP, but Schumacher gave his blessing.
Nobile immediately called Breslin and Foley who, coming offCircle Jerk, were better equipped than most playwrights to navigate the virtual stage. One week later, they sent him a treatment of the material which turned into the musical’s book. Mertzlufft, who is acting as music supervisor, was writing background music for dialogue he hadn’t seen yet. Within two weeks of Seaview’s announcement, an orchestra was recording in various studios. “I would argue that’s the fastest a Broadway-quality show has ever been put together,” says Mertzlufft. He was up until 3 a.m. on Christmas morning with the orchestrator, music director and mixer for the production, mixing the sound over a Zoom call. They sent the final edition of the finale song—a mashup that brings all the undercurrents from songs throughout the show—to Jacobsen soon after. “I don’t know if it’s exhaustion or joy or both, but the tears started rolling when I heard all these different disparate pieces coming together,” she says.
Casting went quickly given how few productions there are to occupy actors’ time. The play will be live-action, and the actors recorded their performances in isolation in their homes. Andrew Barth Feldman, who has been told all his life he “looks like that guy fromRatatouille,” will play the role of Linguini to Titus Burgess’ Remy. It can be unsettling to film scenes alone.
“I actually have this Remy stuffed animal that I must have bought when I was a kid on a trip to Disney World in 2007 or 2008,” says Barth Feldman. “I was having trouble connecting with the dialogue, so I put him on the ground and delivered the whole scene to him.”
Moss, who lives in England, works until odd hours of the night to communicate with her largely American-based team and pull all these disparate parts together into a cohesive piece of art. The process has been one of trial and error. “We spent loads of time coming up with zany ways to solve the perspective problem,” says Moss, referring the a conundrum that has puzzled TikTok and old Broadway hats alike.Ratatouillethe movie stars a rat-sized rat and human-sized human. On the stage, it’s difficult to imagine how to convey that scale, especially considering Remi spends much of the movie under Linguini’s chef’s hat. Moss and her team considered some of the suggestions offered up by TikTok’s creatives: puppets, multi-level stages with rats above and humans below, gigantic props that could be carried on the stage whenever the story shifted to Remi’s perspective. “And after all that we realized that we didn’t have time to film on a stage and besides a bit of camera angle stuff, we don’t really have to deal with that problem,” Moss says.
Fans shouldn’t get their hopes up forRatatouilleto find its way to an actual stage once the pandemic is over. Disney and Seaview have made it abundantly clear that this is a one-time project designed to raise enough money to keep Broadway afloat during the COVID-19 crisis. Disney has no plans to officially adapt it. Perhaps it would be too challenging to create a musical from a narrative film rather than one with songs already built-in, likeFrozen.Maybe the irony of showcasing singing rats in the middle of Times Square doesn’t fit with the Disney brand.
But TikTok musicals may still have a place on Broadway. Nobile, a powerful Broadway producer, considers this musical a new pipeline of talent. “We’re now in conversations with a 17-year-old artist in Colorado who is writing songs for this and a young girl in New Zealand who is working on the production—people we probably never would have been able to find otherwise,” he says. “Now we have the opportunity to ask them, ‘What else do you want to make? How can we do stuff together beyond this?’”
And while Moss herself will have her hands full when Broadway reopens andher musicalSixbids for a Tony. But she and the others working onRatatouille: The Musicaldon’t think that the end of the pandemic means the end of Broadway’s collaboration with TikTok. “Just from conversations I have been having in the last month, some producers are getting excited by the idea of a TikTok musical because it creates its own audience in a sense,” says Moss. “People have a stake in it and want to see it happen.”
