‘Tom & Jerry’ gives box office some life with $13.7M opening
NEW YORK (AP) — A not- so- distant recovery for movie theaters could be glimpsed Sunday, as Warner Bros.’ live- action- animation hybrid “Tom & Jerry” debuted with $ 13.7 million in ticket sales, the best domestic opening of the year.
The better- than- expected opening came despite just 42% of U.S. theaters being open, according to data firm Comscore. “Tom & Jerry” also played in 2,475 North American cinemas simultaneously as it did in the home, where it’s streaming on HBO Max for a month.
Yet “Tom & Jerry” still managed the second-best opening of the pandemic following Warner Bros.’ “Wonder Woman 1984,” which launched with $ 16.7 million in December while also landing on HBO Max. The next- closest debuts — “Tenet,” “The Croods: A New Age” — eked out about $ 10 million on
opening weekend.
“With half of theaters still closed, the pandemic still a threat, and ‘Tom & Jerry’ available at home, this is a very good opening,” said David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “Under normal circumstances, this weekend would comfortably be above $ 35 million -- a positive sign for the business and for theatrical’s pull over home entertainment.”
“Tom & Jerry” has also made $ 25.1 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $38.8 million, according to studio estimates. The film, directed by Tim Story and based on the characters created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, stars Chloë Grace Moretz.
Theaters in some crucial markets are also about to come on line. On Friday, New York City theaters will be allowed to open at 25%
capacity for the first time since they closed last March. Next week, Disney launches the animated “Raya and the Last Dragon” in theaters and on Disney+ for $30, not counting the subscription cost.
Though Warner Bros. was criticized by some for abandoning movie theaters when it announced plans to send all 2021 films to both HBO Max and cinemas, the studio is presently a lifeline to theaters. The studio’s films — including “The Little Things,” “Judas and the Black Messiah” and “Wonder Woman 1984” — accounted for roughly 80% of domestic ticket sales over the weekend.
Private rental bookings are helping the modest return of moviegoing. Family, friends and “pods” have booked an entire theater. Warner Bros. said “Tom & Jerry” has already seen more than 10,000 such bookings.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — With the floodgates set to open on another round of unemployment aid, states are being hammered with a new wave of fraud as they scramble to update security systems and block scammers who already have siphoned billions of dollars from pandemic-related jobless programs.
The fraud is fleecing taxpayers, delaying legitimate payments and turning thousands of Americans into unwitting identity theft victims. Many states have failed to adequately safeguard their systems, and a review by The Associated Press finds that some will not even publicly acknowledge the extent of the problem.
The massive sham springs from prior identity theft from banks, credit rating agencies, health care systems and retailers. Fraud perpetrators, sometimes in China, Nigeria or Russia, buy stolen personal identifying information on the dark web and use it to flood state unemployment systems with bogus claims.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating unemployment fraud by “transnational criminal organizations, sophisticated domestic actors, and individuals across the United States,” said Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the department’s criminal division.
The Labor Department inspector general’s office estimates that more than $63 billion has been paid out improperly through fraud or errors — roughly 10% of the total amount paid under coronavirus pandemic-related unemployment programs since March.
“We’re all learning that there is an epidemic of fraud,” said U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House’s powerful Ways and Means Committee. Brady said the $63 billion estimate “is larger than the entire budget of the Department of Homeland Security.”
“These are frightening levels of fraud,” he said.
California has been the biggest target, with an estimated $11 billion in fraudulent payments and an additional $19 billion in suspect accounts. Colorado has paid out nearly as much to scammers — an estimated $6.5 billion — as it has to people who filed legitimate unemployment claims.
Other estimates, according to AP reporting across the states, range from several hundred thousand dollars in smaller states such as Alaska and Wyoming to hundreds of millions in more populous states such as Massachusetts and Ohio.
The nationwide fraud has fed on twin vulnerabilities: a flood of jobless benefit applications since the pandemic began that has overwhelmed state unemployment agencies and antiquated benefit
systems that are easy prey for crafty and persistent criminals.
In Ohio, weekly first-time unemployment claims have ranged from 17,000 to more than 40,000 during the pandemic. But since late last month, those claims have topped more than 140,000 some weeks, with many of them believed to be fraudulent. The state has paid at least $330 million in fraudulent pandemic unemployment benefit claims.
Trying to catch so many bogus claims delays payouts to Ohioans who are legitimately in need of help. In the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington, Cynthia Sbertoli was receiving $228 a week after she was laid off in March from her job with a nonprofit that runs high school student exchange programs.
Her benefits were put on hold in January after she informed the state that someone had tried to use her identity in a scam to claim benefits. She thought the problem was resolved but has yet to see a renewal of her benefit checks, which she and her husband use to help pay for a son’s vision and auditory therapy.
“It’s just not a good way to take care of people,” said Sbertoli, 49.
In Indiana, Kentucky and Maryland, officials have said that for certain weeks in the new year at least two-thirds of the claims they received were classified as suspicious due to problems verifying identities. It’s not the first brush with serious fraud for Maryland. In July, officials said they’d discovered a massive criminal enterprise that had stolen more than $500 million in unemployment benefits.
Among states that have been hardest hit are those participating in the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program adopted by Congress last year. It has been a lifeline for out-of-work freelancers and gig workers who normally don’t qualify for unemployment insurance, but it’s also been a boon for criminals who use stolen identities to make claims. Nearly 800,000 of the 1.4 million claims Ohio has received through this program have been tagged for potential fraud.
Scams have been so widespread that the U.S. Department of Justice is setting aside money to hire more prosecutors. In New York alone, the Department of Labor says it has referred “hundreds of thousands of fraud cases” to federal prosecutors. The state says it has blocked $5.5 billion in fraudulent claims, while New Jersey says it’s prevented $2.5 billion from flowing into the hands of criminals.
Despite those efforts, a government watchdog agency says not enough states are taking the necessary steps to prevent fraud.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — At the end of 2020, California had lost a record 1.6 million jobs during the pandemic. Nearly a half-million people stopped even trying to look for work. Business properties saw their value plummet more than 30%.
But California’s bank account is overflowing. As of January, the state’s tax collections were $10.5 billion ahead of projections. By the end of the fiscal year on July 1, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Legislature could have a $19 billion surplus to spend.
It’s so much money that, for just the second time ever, the state is projected to trigger a state law requiring the government to send refunds to taxpayers.
Economic downturns usually put state governments in a bind, forcing them to cut services at a time when people need them most. That’s what happened a decade ago during the Great Recession when the housing market collapsed and the stock market tanked, creating a cascade of losses from the wealthy on down.
But this time, with the pandemic forcing the closure of bars, restaurants, theme parks, sporting events and small businesses, lower-wage workers bore the brunt of the losses while the wealthier worked from home. The economic losses started at the bottom of the income ladder and so far they haven’t made their way up to the top.
That’s put states like California, with a tax code that relies heavily on the rich, in a strange place. A year ago, state lawmakers thought this downturn would behave like other downturns. They cut spending, raised taxes on some businesses, borrowed money and pulled from the state’s savings account — all to prepare for having less money.
But the state’s revenues went up. And billions of dollars from the federal government, which paid for things like hotel rooms for the homeless and home-delivered meals for seniors, also softened the blow.
“This isn’t a recession that was driven by economic failures, this is a recession driven by a global pandemic,” said Chris Hoene, executive director of the California Budget and Policy Center. “It just has different structural elements to it.”
Unlike most states, California taxes capital gains — mostly money made from investments and stocks — the same as money made from wages and salaries. The result is 1% of the population accounts for nearly half of the state’s income tax collections.
That 1% had a pretty good year in 2020, financially speaking. The stock market is 16% above its pre-pandemic high in February 2020. A slew of California tech companies, led by Airbnb and Door Dash, debuted on the stock market last year, adding to the state’s population of millionaires and billionaires.
The Newsom administration projects Californians will earn $185 billion from capital gains — the most ever — resulting in $18.5 billion in tax revenue for the state.
“It does point to an overreliance of a very small population of taxpayers,” said David Kline, spokesman for the California Taxpayers Association, which favors limited taxation. “In general, you want a broad base of taxpayers at the lowest rate possible.”
But California’s windfall means it can increase spending at a time when many people can’t. Last week, Newsom signed off on $7.6 billion in new spending, including more than $2 billion in grants for struggling small businesses and $3.6 billion to send $600 one-time payments to nearly 5.7 million people.
Legislative leaders say they plan to pass another $2.3 billion in tax breaks for businesses in the coming weeks, bringing the state’s aid package to nearly $10 billion.
While California has more money, the pandemic has brought more expenses. Schools need more money to reopen after months of distance learning, a thorny subject that has split Newsom from the Democrat-controlled Legislature.
While employment has increased slightly in California for people who earn $60,000 a year or more, employment has dropped nearly 30% for people earning less than $27,000 per year, according to Opportunity Insights, an economic tracker based at Harvard University.
California’s economy has been buoyed by unemployment benefits, which Congress has expanded and extended multiple times. As of December, nearly 90% of people either unemployed or underemployed were receiving jobless benefits in California, according to new research from the California Policy Lab. That’s an increase from earlier in the pandemic, when only about half such people were getting benefits.
“The rather recent spurt in revenue growth that we’ve seen should in no way be taken to mean that California’s economy overall has recovered from the COVID-19 recession,” said H.D. Palmer, spokesman for the California Department of Finance. “Unfortunately, we’ve got a long way to go.”
Other states are also seeing revenue increases. Data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis shows state and local government revenue increased slightly in the third quarter of 2020 compared to the same time period in 2019. In addition to California, leaders in Maryland, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and North Carolina have either approved or are considering state-level coronavirus aid packages.
Some Republicans in Congress have used those numbers to argue against sending more aid to state and local governments. While states are doing better than expected, they still have less money overall than they would have had without the pandemic, according to Brian Sigritz, director of state and fiscal studies at the National Association of State Budget officers.
“We’ve seen states still have negative impacts on their revenues, but not to the extent that was predicted,” he said. “States aren’t out of the woods yet.”