Celebrities draw crowds during Art Basel Miami
Kanye West was among the celebrities attending the glamorous Art Basel parties in Miami, Royalty, Real Housewives and the father of three Kardashian babies were among the celebrities who fanned out across Miami for a week of glamorous Art Basel parties toasting the world’s best artists.
Cardi B, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Travis Scott, Pharrell and Meek Mill performed. At Casa Tua’s private room, Leonardo DiCaprio hung out with U2’s Bono at a latenight karaoke party where Paris Hilton and Serena Williams danced to Beyonce’s “Formation.”
Art Basel Miami Beach, the prestigious extension of the annual contemporary art fair in Basel, Switzerland, officially opened Thursday.
Andy Serkis’ ‘Mowgli’ settles in at Netflix
To say Andy Serkis has been through the wringer with his adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” is a bit of an understatement. It was always going to be an ambitious project for a first-time director — dark, intense and more in the spirit of Kipling’s stories, with a big studio (Warner Bros.) behind it and a blockbuster budget, A-list talent to match. But five years ago, when he signed up to direct, Serkis didn’t know that Walt Disney Studios would soon be announcing its own live-action “Jungle Book,” which would beat his to theaters by more than two years and would become a nearly billion-dollar box-office sensation. And no one would have guessed that at the 11th-hour this summer, his own studio would sell his version to Netflix. “This wasn’t the easiest ride for anybody,” Serkis said. “It really did go through a massively long journey.”
Still, Serkis is excited that people are finally going to get to see his passion project. The Callie Kloves-written screenplay takes the Mowgli myth away from the sunny, toe-tapping Disney versions and back to Kipling’s original vision of the boy raised by wolves.
“There is nothing in it that is gratuitous. There is no violence that is gratuitous. It is the lore of the jungle, and there is violence and there is animal violence, but it is not overly gory and it’s not enjoying it in a salacious way. It’s truthful storytelling and totally represents the level of darkness that’s in the book,” Serkis said. “That’s what separates it from other versions.” Serkis sees the silver lining in making his film available to 117million Netflix subscribers in 190 countries.