Adele’s ’25’ reaches diamond status
Adele’s comeback album “25” has reached diamond status in less than a year.
“25” was released last November and features the hits “Hello” and “Send My Love (To My New Lover).” Adele received a plaque for her top-selling achievement at Madison Square Garden in New York on Monday night after performing a whopping six shows at the venue.
The Recording Industry Association of America awards diamond plaques to albums and songs that reach 10 times platinum status. That once was the equivalent of selling 10 million albums or songs but has changed since the RIAA began incorporating streaming from YouTube, Spotify and other digital music services.
So far, “25” has sold more than 9 million copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music. Adele’s 2011 album, “21,” also reached diamond status.
Scorsese film to get Oscar eligibility release
Martin Scorsese’s “Silence,” a historical drama about faith in feudal Japan, will open in time to qualify for the Academy Awards.
Paramount Pictures said Monday that “Silence” will open in limited release Dec. 23 with a nationwide expansion to follow sometime in January.
Whether the film, a decades-long passion project for Scorsese, would be ready in time for release this year had been a major question mark in Hollywood’s awards season. Scorsese’s last two feature films, “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Hugo,” collected a total of 16 Oscar nominations.
“Silence,” which stars Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson, is based on Shusaku Endo’s 1966 novel. It’s about two Portuguese Jesuit missionaries traveling to 17th-century Japan to spread Christianity and find their missing mentor.
Molly Ringwald to do ‘Terms’ on stage
“The Breakfast Club” star Molly Ringwald will return to a New York stage in an adaptation of another classic 1980s film — “Terms of Endearment.”
59E59 Theaters said Monday that Ringwald will star in the bittersweet story of a mother and daughter that was turned into an Oscar-winning film by James L. Brooks. Performances begin Oct. 29.
Ringwald, who starred in the films “Pretty in Pink” and “Sixteen Candles,” is no stranger to the stage, having been on Broadway in “Cabaret” and “Enchanted April.” Off-Broadway, she has been in “Modern Orthodox,” “How I Learned to Drive” and “Tick, Tick … Boom!”
Variety to host conference on diversity
Variety will host a conference of film executives and stars to discuss solutions to Hollywood’s lagging record in diversity.
The conference, which Variety is to announce Monday, will include keynote conversations with Donna Langley, chairman of Universal Studios, and Pharrell Williams. The singer-producer is co-composing the score for the upcoming “Hidden Figures,” a film about African-American mathematicians working for NASA in the early 1960s.
Dubbed “Inclusion,” the conference is to be held Nov. 1 in Beverly Hills, California. It will include a number of panels focused on finding ways to support underrepresented groups in film and television.
Stage version of ‘Frozen’ gets new director
Some changes are coming in the kingdom of Arendelle: Tony Award-winning director Michael Grandage has been officially unveiled to helm the upcoming stage musical “Frozen.”
Alex Timbers, a two-time Tony Award nominee who directed “Peter and the Starcatcher,” ”Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,” ”The Pee-Wee Herman Show” and “Rocky” on Broadway, had been initially tapped to direct “Frozen” but left this summer.
Grandage won the Tony Award for his direction of “Red,” John Logan’s acclaimed drama about painter Mark Rothko. His recent Broadway work include “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” “Hughie” and “Evita.”
