title: Michael Franzese

text: Franzese was subpoenaed to testify at Walters' trial in March 1989, as Walters had invoked his name to frighten college athletes into signing management contracts, including Maurice Douglass. In exchange for his testimony, he was given immunity from prosecution in the Walters case. Walters was found guilty, fined $395,000 and given a sentence of 5 years with the judge in the case citing the importance of Franzese's testimony. After Walters conviction, Franzese was released from prison on parole after serving 43 months. In September 1990, Walter's conviction was overturned by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals citing a technicality.


title: Michael Franzese

text: On December 27, 1991, Franzese was sentenced in New York to four years in federal prison for violating the probation requirements from his 1989 release. Franzese had been arrested in Los Angeles on a tax fraud accusation and was sent back to New York for the probation hearing. In court, prosecutors complained that Franzese had only started paying the balance of his court-ordered restitution payments earlier that year. The prosecutor said that "Mr. Franzese has led the Government on a long, merry chase for a number of years," adding. “He gave us nothing of value about anyone in Cosa Nostra.


title: Michael Franzese

text: We essentially view him as a con man." Prosecutors said that Franzese was no longer considered by the government to be a federal cooperating witness because of his parole violations.


title: Michael Franzese

text: In 1990, Franzese was portrayed by Joseph Bono in the Martin Scorsese film "Goodfellas" (1990). While imprisoned in 1991, Franzese became a born-again Christian after he was given a Bible by a prison guard. He also spent time in solitary confinement.


title: Michael Franzese

text: In 1992, Franzese co-authored his first book, an autobiography, "Quitting the Mob". In the book, Franzese discusses his criminal activities, life with his father, and meeting his second wife, Camille Garcia.


title: Michael Franzese

text: He was released on November 7, 1994, retiring from the mob in 1995 by moving to California with his wife and children; the relocation was also a result of receiving multiple death threats and contracts on his life, including one approved by his father.


title: Michael Franzese

text: Since his release in 1994, Franzese has publicly renounced and denounced the life of organized crime, stating "I never glamorize my mob life. It's an evil life", and "I don't know one family that's part of that life [mob life] that hasn't been totally devastated". He has since become a motivational speaker for youth, at schools, prisons, and other venues. He also speaks at Christian conferences and churches, including Willow Creek Community Church, in 2016.


title: Michael Franzese

text: On July 23, 2002, while appearing on the HBO television program "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel", Franzese claimed that during the 1970s and 1980s, he persuaded New York Yankees players who owed money to Colombo loansharks to fix baseball games for betting purposes. The Yankees organization immediately denied Franzese's accusations.


title: Michael Franzese

text: In April 2013, a documentary called "The Definitive Guide To The Mob" was released by Lionsgate, with Franzese as commentator. Later in 2013, he appeared in "Inside the American Mob", a National Geographic documentary.


title: Michael Franzese

text: In March 2015, he appeared in a two-part documentary on the American Mafia with television presenter and reporter Trevor McDonald. He spoke about his wealth, but also the impact of being a member of the Colombo crime family had on his family, and that was why he turned away from organized crime.


title: Michael Franzese

text: Franzese hosted a stage musical, "A Mob Story", at the Plaza Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. The show opened in October 2018 and was created and directed by Jeff Kutash.


title: Michael Franzese

text: In 2019, Franzese became co-founder of a national franchise of pizza restaurants called "Slices Pizza". Slices serves Sicilian style square pizzas with ingredients sourced from Naples and Campania, with ovens from Venice. The franchise started in California, and includes five branches across the country including Dallas, Texas.


title: Michael Franzese

text: Franzese released an autobiographical biopic, "God The Father", in 2014, which was released in theaters across 20 cities in the United States. The film uses a combination of stock footage, animated recreations, as well as interviews to tell his life story. It cites religion as the motivation for Franzese changing his life.


title: Michael Franzese

text: In June 2020, Franzese started a YouTube channel. On his channel he tells stories about his past life, makes interviews and reviews mafia related films, television shows, and video games and analyzes their accuracy. His subscriber count exceeded 936,000 in September 2022.


title: Michael Franzese

text: Franzese is the author of seven books: "Quitting the Mob" (1992), "Blood Covenant" (2003), "The Good, the Bad and the Forgiven" (2009), "I'll Make You an Offer You Can't Refuse" (2011), "From the Godfather to God the Father" (2014), "Blood Covenant: The Story of the "Mafia Prince" Who Publicly Quit the Mob and Lived" (2018) and "Mafia Democracy" (2022).


title: Michael Franzese

text: Franzese has been married twice. Franzese lives in Anaheim Hills, California with his wife, Camille Garcia, and their seven children. Franzese met his current wife in 1984, while shooting the film "Knights of the City" in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. His wife, a Christian, also influenced him in his decision to leave the mob.


title: Michael Franzese

text: In 2010, Franzese's brother John Franzese Jr. testified against his father Sonny Franzese in a racketeering case after wearing a wire during conversations with his father. Michael described his brother as a "nobody in the mob life", and that his father felt "sick" that his son had "betrayed him like this". His father was sentenced to eight years in prison, and was released from prison in 2017 at the age of 100, dying three years later.


title: Jon Batiste

text: Jonathan Michael Batiste (born November 11, 1986) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, bandleader, and television personality. He has recorded and performed with artists in various genres of music (Stevie Wonder, Prince, Willie Nelson, Lenny Kravitz, Ed Sheeran, Roy Hargrove, and Mavis Staples), released his own recordings, and performed in more than 40 countries. Batiste regularly tours with his band Stay Human, and appeared with them nightly as bandleader and musical director on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" from 2015 to 2022.


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste also serves as the music director of "The Atlantic" and the Creative Director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. In 2020, he co-composed the score for the Pixar animated film "Soul", for which he received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Grammy Award and a BAFTA Film Award (all shared with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross). As of 2022, Batiste has garnered 5 Grammy Awards from 14 nominations, including an Album of the Year win for his album "We Are".


title: Jon Batiste

text: Jon Batiste was born in Metairie, Louisiana, in a Catholic family. He grew up in Kenner, Louisiana. Batiste is a member of a New Orleans musical dynasty, the Batiste family, that includes Lionel Batiste of the Treme Brass Band, Milton Batiste of the Olympia Brass Band, and Russell Batiste Jr. At the age of 8, he played percussion and drums with his family's band, the Batiste Brothers Band. At the age of 11, he switched to piano at his mother's suggestion. Batiste developed his piano skills by taking classical music lessons and transcribing songs from video games such as "Street Fighter Alpha", "Final Fantasy VII" and "Sonic the Hedgehog".


title: Jon Batiste

text: At 17, Batiste released his debut album "Times in New Orleans". He attended St. Augustine High School and New Orleans Center for Creative Arts with Trombone Shorty in New Orleans and graduated in 2004. He then went on to attend the Juilliard School, receiving a Bachelor of Music in 2008 and a Master of Music in 2011, both in jazz studies. While at Juilliard, he released his second album, "Live in New York: At the Rubin Museum of Art." By the end of 2006, Batiste had been a featured performer in South Africa, London, Lisbon, Spain, Paris and the United States.


title: Jon Batiste

text: In 2007, Batiste made his debut at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam at the age of 20, producing and performing his own show. He conducted music clinics, classes and workshops throughout the Netherlands in inner-city schools and underprivileged neighborhoods. He was invited to Carnegie Hall to produce and perform in his own show with six young musicians from the Netherlands. The performance concluded with a finale he composed for choir, jazz combo and orchestral instruments. In the following years, Batiste released a number of music projects including "Social Music" (2013), which spent over a month at the top of the Billboard and iTunes jazz charts; "The Late Show EP" (2016) with Stay Human; and a holiday album "Christmas with Jon Batiste" (2016). In 2017, he released the singles "Ohio" with Leon Bridges and Gary Clark Jr. as well as "Battle Hymn of the Republic" for "The Atlantic". Batiste's cover of "St. James Infirmary Blues" was nominated for a Grammy in 2019, in the category of Best American Roots Performance. Batiste's debut solo album "Hollywood Africans" was released by Verve Records in September 2018. "Don't Stop" served as the lead single. Leading up to the album release, he completed a Summer Festival tour across the U.S. with The Dap-Kings.


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste's notable career performances include a tribute to Chuck Berry and Fats Domino during the 60th annual Grammy Awards (performing alongside Gary Clark Jr.); the Kennedy Center Honors' tribute to Carmen De Lavallade; the Concert for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama; the National Anthem at the 2017 NBA All Star Game; and Opening Night of the 2017 US Open. He has curated the Global Citizen Advocacy Concert with Tom Morello and the Louis Armstrong Wonderful World Festival in Queens, N.Y.


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste was cast in the HBO television series "Treme", appearing as himself in seasons 2, 3 and 4. He was also cast as T.K. Hazelton in director Spike Lee's film "Red Hook Summer" and composed and performed the Hammond B-3 organ music that was a part of the film score. Other film scores composed by Batiste include the television documentary "Duke 91 & 92: Back to Back" and the short film "Melody of Choice". He also appears in the films "Da Sweet Blood of Jesus" by Spike Lee and "Thrive" by Paul Szynol.


title: Jon Batiste

text: In 2005, Batiste began performing regularly in New York with his Juilliard peers, bassist Phil Kuehn and drummer Joe Saylor. He later added Eddie Barbash on alto saxophone and Ibanda Ruhumbika on tuba. Batiste named the band Stay Human, which draws its moniker from the belief that human interaction during a live musical performance can uplift humanity in the midst of the "plug in, tune out" nature of modern society. The band leads impromptu street performances, which Batiste calls "love riots". Notable artists were often seen accompanying Batiste, including Wynton Marsalis.


title: Jon Batiste

text: In 2011, Stay Human released the album "MY N.Y.", which was recorded in its entirety on New York City Subway trains, an idea that came to Batiste after questioning how to connect with people.


title: Jon Batiste

text: On April 22, 2017, the band played for the March for Science rally at the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.


title: Jon Batiste

text: In 2014, Batiste and Stay Human appeared on "The Colbert Report" to perform the group's single "Express Yourself", written and produced with Austin Bis.


title: Jon Batiste

text: On June 4, 2015, it was announced that Jon Batiste and Stay Human would serve as house band on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". The show premiered on CBS on September 8, 2015. On the show, Batiste and Stay Human have performed alongside Billy Joel, Will Smith, Wynton Marsalis, John Legend, Grace VanderWaal, and Nas.


title: Jon Batiste

text: On the August 11, 2022, episode, Colbert announced that Batiste had decided he would not be returning to "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", in order to "pursue personal and professional interests".


title: Jon Batiste

text: In June 2020, Batiste took part in the Juneteenth celebration in Brooklyn, New York with a day of protests, marches, rallies, and vigils to "celebrate, show solidarity, and fight for equal rights and treatment of Black people". Performing on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library, Batiste was joined by Matt Whitaker in a performance presented in partnership with Sing For Hope.


title: Jon Batiste

text: The 2020 Juneteenth took place during the protests following the murder of George Floyd, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, seen by some as connected to an increase in an awareness of racial injustice. When questioned as to the differences he sees in the present movement for change, and its connection to music, Batiste responded by saying: "...music has always been something that has had all of the different purposes of our life and our community and our healing and our unspoken painand the transmission of messages and the raising awareness of a condition of a people. [...] What's different now is that it's much more widespread in the support of changing the systemic oppression that's been going on for 400 years." He believes, "Now, it's more important than ever for us to be reintroduced to what our ancestors used music for, because it's been forgotten. [...] The world at large sees music as entertainment. It's never been that, at its root. It is that in one element of it, but the entire spectrum of music is far, far deeper and wide-ranging."


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste composed music for the 2020 film "Soul", collaborating with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. The trio went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Score and a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score among many other wins and nominations.


title: Jon Batiste

text: On March 19, 2021, Batiste released "We Are", his fifth solo studio album. Speaking to "Atwood Magazine", he described it as "a culmination of my life to this point" and "the most representative of where I'm at as a creative, and as an artist".


title: Jon Batiste

text: In July 2021, Batiste released a live EP, "Live at Electric Lady", performed in one day at Electric Lady Studios. The album was released exclusively to Spotify.


title: Jon Batiste

text: In October 2021 he made a surprise performance at night singing "Like a Prayer" in the streets of Harlem along with Madonna promoting the release of her concert film "Madame X".


title: Jon Batiste

text: At the 64th Grammy Awards, Batiste earned 11 nominations: eight for "We Are," and three for "Soul". Of the 11 nominations, Batiste won five awards including Album of the Year, becoming the first Black artist to win that award since 2008, when Herbie Hancock won for his album "".


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste is married to journalist and author Suleika Jaouad. On April 3, 2022, the couple revealed in an interview on "CBS News Sunday Morning" that they had been secretly married in February 2022.


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste cites among the artists who have most influenced his artistic and musical choices Mahalia Jackson, James Brown, Louis Armstrong, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, John Coltrane, Nina Simone, Miles Davis and Django Reinhardt. Interviewed by Forbes, Batiste explained the significance of jazz music:


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste was born into a family active in the struggle against racial segregation in the United States; his grandfather David Gauthier was president of the Louisiana Postal Workers Union, involved in the 1968 labor strike sponsored by the Memphis, Tennessee, Department of Public Works for higher wages and safer working conditions. The protest led to the presence of Martin Luther King Jr., where he delivered his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, the day before his assassination.


title: Jon Batiste

text: The singer is a supporter of civil rights, the fight against racism, participating publicly in numerous demonstrations, including the marches promoted by the Black Lives Matter movement. Following the murder of George Floyd in June 2020, Batiste organized peaceful protests in New York City against police brutality in the United States.


title: Jon Batiste

text: Through the single "We Are", he supports the Equal Justice Initiative of attorney and activist Bryan Stevenson. Batiste is also among the sponsors of several initiatives, including Innocence Project, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and The Legacy Museum.


title: Jon Batiste

text: Batiste has received several accolades, including being placed in the 2016 "Forbes" 30 Under 30 music list, and being named Grand Marshal of Endymion Parade in New Orleans in 2018.


title: Jon Batiste

text: He has been awarded the American Jazz Museum Lifetime Achievement Award, the Harry Chapin ASCAP Humanitarian Award and the Movado Future Legend Award. In May 2017, Batiste received an honorary degree from Salve Regina University for his musical achievements and contributions to Newport's 2014 International Jazz Day. In 2018, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best American Roots Performance for "Saint James Infirmary Blues". In 2020, he received two Grammy nominations: his album "Chronology of a Dream: Live at the Village Vanguard" was nominated for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album, and "Meditations" (with Cory Wong) was nominated for Best New Age Album.


title: Jon Batiste

text: In 2020 Batiste, along with Nine Inch Nails band members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, composed the score for the Disney and Pixar animated film "Soul". The three went on to win the Golden Globe, the Critics' Choice Award, the BAFTA Award, and the Academy Award for Best Original Score. Batiste's Oscar win made him only the second black composer to win an award in the category (after Herbie Hancock in 1987). In 2021, Batiste received 11 nominations and became the most nominated artist at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.


title: Jon Batiste

text: In 2022, Batiste won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. He was named in "Time" magazine's 2022 "Top 100 Most Influential People", in the Icons category. Batiste was featured on the 2022 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival's commemorative poster.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: The Banshees of Inisherin is a 2022 black tragicomedy film written and directed by Martin McDonagh. The film follows lifelong friends (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) who find themselves at an impasse when one abruptly ends their relationship; Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan also star. It reunites Farrell and Gleeson, who previously worked together on McDonagh's directorial debut "In Bruges" (2008).


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: "The Banshees of Inisherin" had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2022, where Farrell won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor and McDonagh won the Golden Osella for Best Screenplay. It was theatrically released in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and United States on 21 October 2022, by Searchlight Pictures. The film received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised McDonagh's screenplay and direction, Burwell's score, and performances of the cast. It was also named one of the best films of 2022 by the National Board of Review. The film received a leading eight nominations at the 80th Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy and Best Director.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: At the tail end of the Irish Civil War in 1923, on the fictional Irish isle of Inisherin, folk musician Colm Doherty abruptly begins ignoring his long-time friend and drinking buddy Pádraic Súilleabháin. Pádraic, though nice and well liked by the islanders, is too dull for Colm, who wishes to spend the remainder of his life composing music and doing things for which he will be remembered. Pádraic's life is destabilized by the loss of one of his few friends; as Pádraic grows increasingly distressed at the rejection, Colm becomes more resistant to his old friend's attempts to speak to him. Colm eventually gives Pádraic an ultimatum: every time Pádraic bothers him or tries to talk with him, Colm will cut off one of his own left fingers with a pair of sheep shears.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: Though Pádraic's caring sister Siobhán and troubled local boy Dominic attempt to defuse the pair's escalating battle, their efforts prove fruitless. After a drunken Pádraic confronts him in the pub and then attempts to apologise, Colm cuts off one of his fingers and delivers it to Pádraic. As the tensions worsen, local elder Mrs. McCormick warns Pádraic that death will come to the island soon. Meanwhile, Siobhán gently rebuffs Dominic's romantic advances; sick of life on the island, she moves to the mainland for a job in a library. Colm finishes writing a tune, which he entitles "The Banshees of Inisherin", and appears open to rekindling his friendship with Pádraic – until the latter reveals how he tricked one of his musician friends to leave the island. In response, Colm cuts off his remaining left fingers with the shears and throws them at the door of Padraic's cottage. Pádraic's beloved pet donkey Jenny is subsequently found dead, having choked on one of the fingers.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: A heartbroken Pádraic blames Colm for Jenny's death. In retaliation, he confronts Colm to tell him he will burn his house down the next day. Pádraic sets the house on fire, taking Colm's dog to safety. As Pádraic leaves he sees Colm sitting inside the burning building. The local policeman, Dominic's abusive father Peadar, goes to Pádraic's house. He is diverted away by Mrs. McCormick, who wordlessly leads him to Dominic's waterlogged corpse floating in the nearby lake. The next morning, Mrs. McCormick finds a chair next to one of the windows in Colm's burnt-out house. Pádraic, with the dog, finds Colm standing on the beach. Colm apologizes for Jenny's death and suggests destroying the house has ended their feud, but Pádraic informs his former friend that it only would have ended if he'd stayed inside the house. As Pádraic turns to leave, Colm thanks him for looking after his dog. Pádraic replies, "Any time."


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: In February 2020 Martin McDonagh was reported to have set his next directorial effort up with Searchlight Pictures, and it would see him reunite with his "In Bruges" stars Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell. In August 2021, Barry Keoghan and Kerry Condon were added to the cast.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: Principal photography began in August 2021 in Inishmore before moving to Achill Island later that month. Locations used on Achill include Cloughmore (JJ Devine's Pub), Purteen Harbour (O'Riordan's shop), Keem Bay (Colm Doherty's house), Corrymore Lake (Mrs. McCormick's cottage) and St. Thomas's Church in Dugort. Filming wrapped on 23 October 2021.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: "The Banshees of Inisherin" had its world premiere at the 79th Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2022, where it received a 15-minute standing ovation from the audience, the longest of that year's festival. It also screened at the Toronto International Film Festival that same month and was screened as the opening night film of the 31st Philadelphia Film Festival on 19 October 2022. It was theatrically released on 21 October 2022.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: The film was released on rental PVOD and made available to stream on HBO Max on 13 December 2022 and was released on Blu-ray and DVD on 20 December 2022 by 20th Century Studios Home Entertainment.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: The film was released on Disney+ as part of the Star content hub in selected regions on 14 December 2022, and 21 December 2022 in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The film was also released on Disney+ Hotstar in India on 14 December 2022.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: , "The Banshees of Inisherin" has grossed $8.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $10.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $19.1 million.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: In the film's opening weekend in the U.S. it made $184,454 from four theaters, for a per-venue average of $46,113, making it the second-highest grossing opener for a Fall 2022 platform release, behind "Till". The following weekend the film expanded to 58 theaters, making 535,170. The following weekend it expanded to 895 theaters, making $2.1 million and finishing seventh at the box office.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: On its first day on VOD in the United States, the film debuted at #8 on iTunes and was the second most-watched film on HBO Max.


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: Peter Bradshaw from "The Guardian" gave the film four out of five stars writing that "as a study of male loneliness and swallowed anger it is weirdly compelling and often very funny." Todd McCarthy from "Deadline Hollywood" wrote that the film was "a simple and diabolical tale of a friendship's end shot through with bristling humor and sudden moments of startling violence", he also praised Ben Davis's cinematography and Carter Burwell's score. David Ehrlich from "IndieWire" rated it B+, writing that "its constant undercurrent of humor affords the story's most pressing questions an appropriately ridiculous context, one that speaks to the absurdities of all existence". He also called it McDonagh's best work since "In Bruges".


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: Matthew Creith from "Screen Rant" noted the film's "demonstration of the metaphorical aspects of civil disobedience and internal protest between a set of individuals is remarkably hilarious." A reviewer in the "New York Times" wrote "The film was rapturously received here in Venice, earning a lengthy standing ovation and rave reviews". In a review for "Variety", Guy Lodge wrote "What begins as a doleful, anecdotal narrative becomes something closer to mythic in its rage and resonance: McDonagh has long fixated on the most visceral, vengeful extremes of human behavior, but never has he formed something this sorely heartbroken from that fascination."


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: A review in "The Hollywood Reporter" called the film "a ruminative ensemble piece that expertly balances the tragicomic with the macabre, inhabiting territory adjacent to McDonagh's stage work yet also sweepingly cinematic."


title: The Banshees of Inisherin

text: Writing in the "Boston Globe", Mark Feeney gave an unenthusiastic review, describing it as "a short story trying to be a novel" and calling the metaphor for the Irish Civil War "awfully flat-footed".


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Minority Report is a 2002 American science fiction action film directed by Steven Spielberg, loosely based on the 1956 short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. The film is set in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia in the year 2054, where Precrime, a specialized police department, apprehends criminals based on foreknowledge provided by three psychics called "precogs". The cast stars Tom Cruise as Precrime Chief John Anderton, Colin Farrell as Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer, Samantha Morton as precog Agatha Lively, and Max von Sydow as Precrime director Lamar Burgess. The film combines elements of tech noir, whodunit, thriller and science fiction genres, as well as a traditional chase film, as the main protagonist is accused of a crime he has not committed and becomes a fugitive. Spielberg characterized the story as "fifty percent character and fifty percent very complicated storytelling with layers and layers of murder mystery and plot".


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The film was first optioned in 1992 as a sequel to another Dick adaptation, "Total Recall" (1990), with Arnold Schwarzenegger set to reprise his role as Doug Quaid. But after "Total Recall" production company Carolco Pictures filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the project was reworked into a stand-alone project and started its development in 1997, after a script by Jon Cohen reached Spielberg and Cruise. Production suffered many delays due to Cruise's "" and Spielberg's "A.I." running over schedule, eventually starting in March 2001. During pre-production, Spielberg consulted numerous scientists in an attempt to present a more plausible future world than that seen in other science fiction films, and some of the technology designs in the film have proven prescient.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: "Minority Report" was one of the most anticipated films of 2002 due to the high-profile collaboration between Cruise and Spielberg, as well as a surge in blockbusters in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Upon its release, the film grossed over $358 million against a production budget of $102 million, becoming 2002's tenth most-successful film worldwide. Initial reviews were generally positive. Praise was given to Cruise's performance, Spielberg's directing, action sequences, and visual effects, though some criticism was focused on the runtime and the complexity of the plot that critics felt was too difficult for audiences. It was nominated for several awards. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Sound Editing, and eleven Saturn Award nominations, including Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Saturn Award for Best Music, winning Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction, Best Writing, and Best Supporting Actress.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Since its release, "Minority Report" has been critically re-evaluated and retrospective reviews have called it one of the best films for both Cruise and Spielberg and placed it among the best science fiction films of the 2000s. The film has been analyzed for its themes of free will versus determinism; the roles of preventive government in protecting its citizenry; media in a future state where technological advancements make its presence nearly boundless; the potential legality of an infallible prosecutor; and Spielberg's perennial theme of broken families. Along with several media including a , "Minority Report" was followed up by a television series of the same name in 2015, but was canceled in 2016 after one season.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: In 2054, the federal government plans to nationally implement the Washington, D.C. prototype "Precrime" police program. As three clairvoyant humans ("precogs") visualize an impending homicide, officers analyze their visions to determine the crime's location and apprehend the perpetrator before the crime occurs. The precogs—Agatha Lively and twins Arthur and Dashiell "Dash" Arkadin—lie in a shallow pool, under sleep-inducing drugs that deprive them of external stimuli. Their thoughts are projected onscreen and stored in a database. Would-be killers are imprisoned in a benevolent virtual reality state. Although Precrime has eliminated nearly all premeditated murders during its six-year existence, spontaneous crimes of passion or "red ball" killings give police only an hour or less to stop the murder.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Commanding officer John Anderton joined the Precrime program after his son, Sean, was kidnapped and never found. He is depressed, withdrawn, and addicted to a hard drug, neuroin, and his wife Lara has since left him. While the Department of Justice agent Danny Witwer audits the Precrime operation, the precogs predict that in 36 hours, Anderton will kill Leo Crow, a man whom Anderton has never met. Anderton flees, prompting a manhunt led by Witwer.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Anderton visits the Precrime founder, Dr. Iris Hineman, and learns that one precog occasionally sees a different future vision from the others, known as a "minority report". These discrepancies are reviewed and purged, as group precognition agreement is the foundation of the Precrime bylaws. However, the precogs retain their memories. Anderton also discovers that early neuroin users were predisposed to having mentally disabled children; many had precognitive abilities and were tested—often fatally—and three of whom were submitted to Precrime.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Anderton returns to Precrime and kidnaps Agatha, described by Hineman as the most clairvoyant Precog, shutting down the group-mind on which Precrime depends. Anderton and Agatha track Crow to a hotel room and find photos of children, including Sean; Anderton accuses Crow of killing Sean, but Crow claims he was hired to plant the photos. He wants Anderton to kill him so that his family can benefit from his death. When Anderton refuses, Crow kills himself in a similar manner to the Precog file.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Anderton fails to find a minority report within Agatha's mind, but discovers a memory of a murder from five years earlier. The victim was Agatha's mother, Anne Lively, who sold her daughter to Precrime while addicted to neuroin. After breaking her addiction, she tried to reclaim Agatha but was drowned by a hooded figure. Witwer simultaneously investigates the same case and learns that two attempts were made on Lively's life: the first was thwarted by Precrime, but the second one succeeded shortly after. Witwer reports his findings to the Precrime director, Lamar Burgess, who kills him without being detected since the Precog system is offline. Anderton is captured and imprisoned for the suspected murder of Crow and Witwer, and Agatha is reconnected to the system.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: During a banquet in Burgess's honor, Anderton—released from prison by Lara—contacts him and reveals the truth. Knowing that Precrime cannot function without Agatha, Burgess hired a neuroin addict to kill Anne Lively, and the attempt was stopped by Precrime personnel. Once they departed, Burgess killed Anne Lively in a manner identical to the first attempt. The vision of the actual murder was deleted by technicians as a misidentified "echo".


title: Minority Report (film)

text: After Agatha is returned to Precrime, a new Precrime report is generated, showing that Burgess will kill Anderton. The two meet and Anderton states the dilemma Burgess now faces: kill him and validate Precrime at the cost of his freedom, or spare him and see the program be discredited and shut down. Anderton states that Burgess can change his future since he now knows it. Burgess shoots himself and asks Anderton for forgiveness.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Anderton and Lara reconcile, with Lara becoming pregnant with another child. Precrime is abandoned and the prisoners are pardoned and released, though many remain under police surveillance. Agatha and the twins are moved to an undisclosed location to live in peace.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The cast also features Neal McDonough as Gordon "Fletch" Fletcher and Patrick Kilpatrick as Geoffrey Knott, Precrime officers, Jessica Capshaw as Evanna, Precrime's transport pilot, Jason Antoon as Rufus T. Riley, cyber parlor proprietor; Nancy Linehan Charles as Celeste Burgess, Lamar's wife; Victor Raider-Wexler as Attorney General Arthur Nash, Arye Gross as Howard Marks, Ashley Crow as Sarah Marks, David Stifel as Lycon, Anna Maria Horsford as Casey, Joel Gretsch as Donald Dubin, Tom Choi as Nick Paymen, Caroline Lagerfelt as Greta van Eyck and William Mapother (Tom Cruise's cousin) as a Hotel Clerk.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Cameron Diaz, Cameron Crowe, and Paul Thomas Anderson make uncredited cameo appearances as subway passengers.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Dick's story was first optioned by producer and writer Gary Goldman in 1992. He created the initial script for the film with Ron Shusett and Robert Goethals (uncredited). It was supposed to be a sequel to the 1990 Dick adaptation "Total Recall", which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, Carolco Pictures, the production company that produced the film, struggled to secure either funding or Schwarzenegger's interest to progress the project before its bankruptcy in 1995. While the remake rights were purchased by Miramax Films in 1997, Shusett and Goldman had removed the "Total Recall" elements from their script to develop it as a standalone film, "Minority Report".


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Novelist Jon Cohen was hired in 1997 to adapt the story for a potential film version that would have been directed by Dutch filmmaker Jan de Bont. Meanwhile, Cruise and Spielberg, who met and became friends on the set of Cruise's film "Risky Business" in 1983, had been looking to collaborate for ten years. Spielberg was set to direct Cruise in "Rain Man", but left to make "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade". Cruise read Cohen's script, and passed it onto Spielberg, who felt it needed some work. Spielberg was not directly involved in the writing of the script, though he was allowed to decide whether the picture's screenplay was ready to be filmed. When Cohen submitted an acceptable revision, he called Cruise and said, "Yeah, I'll do "this" version of the script." In that version, Witwer creates a false disk which shows Anderton killing him. When Anderton sees the clip, his belief in the infallibility of the precogs' visions convinces him it is true, therefore the precogs have a vision of him killing Witwer. At the end, Anderton shoots Witwer and one of the brother precogs finishes him off, because Witwer had slain his twin. Spielberg was attracted to the story because as both a mystery and a film set 50 years in the future, it allowed him to do "a blending of genres" which intrigued him.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: In 1998, the pair joined "Minority Report" and announced the production as a joint venture of Spielberg's DreamWorks and Amblin Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Cruise's Cruise/Wagner Productions, and De Bont's production company, Blue Tulip. In exchange for directing "The Haunting", Spielberg offered to take over directing duties on "Minority Report" while De Bont was busy with post-production for "Twister". Spielberg however stated that despite being credited, De Bont never became involved with the film. Cruise and Spielberg, at the latter's insistence, reportedly agreed to each take 15% of the gross instead of any money up front to try to keep the film's budget under $100 million. Spielberg said he had done the same with name actors in the past to great success: "Tom Hanks took no cash for "Saving Private Ryan" but he made a lot of money on his profit participation." He made this agreement a prerequisite:


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Production was delayed for several years. The original plan was to begin filming after Cruise's "" was finished, but that film ran over schedule, which also allowed Spielberg time to bring in screenwriter Scott Frank to rework Cohen's screenplay. John August did an uncredited draft to polish the script, and Frank Darabont was also invited to rewrite, but was by then busy with "The Majestic". The film closely follows Scott Frank's final script (completed May 16, 2001), and contains much of Cohen's third draft (May 24, 1997). Frank removed the character of Senator Malcolm from Cohen's screenplay, and inserted Burgess, who became the "bad guy". He also rewrote Witwer from a villain to a "good guy", as he was in the short story. In contrast to Spielberg's next science fiction picture, "War of the Worlds", which he called "100 percent character" driven, Spielberg said the story for "Minority Report" became "50 percent character and 50 percent very complicated storytelling with layers and layers of murder mystery and plot." According to film scholar Warren Buckland, Cohen and Frank apparently did not see the Goldman and Schusett screenplay, but instead worked on their own adaptation. Goldman and Schusett, however, claimed the pair used a lot of material from their script, so the issue went through the Writer's Guild arbitration process. They won a partial victory; they were not given writing credits, but were listed as executive producers. The film was delayed again so Spielberg could finish "A.I." after the death of his friend Stanley Kubrick. When Spielberg originally signed on to direct, he planned to have an entirely different supporting cast. He offered the role of Witwer to Matt Damon, Iris Hineman to Meryl Streep, Burgess to Ian McKellen, Agatha to Cate Blanchett, and Lara to Jenna Elfman. Streep declined the role, Damon opted out, and the other roles were recast due to the delays. Spielberg also offered the role of Witwer to Javier Bardem, who turned it down.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: After "E.T.", Spielberg started to consult experts, and put more scientific research into his science fiction films. In 1999, he invited fifteen experts convened by Peter Schwartz and Stewart Brand to a hotel in Santa Monica for a three-day "think tank". He wanted to consult with the group to create a plausible "future reality" for the year 2054 as opposed to a more traditional "science fiction" setting. Dubbed the "think tank summit", the experts included architect Peter Calthorpe, author Douglas Coupland, urbanist and journalist Joel Garreau, computer scientist Neil Gershenfeld, biomedical researcher Shaun Jones, computer scientist Jaron Lanier, and former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) architecture dean William J. Mitchell. Production designer Alex McDowell kept what was nicknamed the "2054 bible", an 80-page guide created in preproduction which listed all the aspects of the future world: architectural, socio-economic, political, and technological. While the discussions did not change key elements in the film, they were influential in the creation of some of the more utopian aspects, though John Underkoffler, the science and technology advisor for the film, described it as "much grayer and more ambiguous" than what was envisioned in 1999. Underkoffler, who designed most of Anderton's interface after Spielberg told him to make it "like conducting an orchestra", said "it would be hard to identify anything [in the movie] that had no grounding in reality." McDowell teamed up with architect Greg Lynn to work on some of the technical aspects of the production design. Lynn praised his work, saying that a "lot of those things Alex cooked up for "Minority Report", like the 3-D screens, have become real."


title: Minority Report (film)

text: "Minority Report" was the first film to have an entirely digital production design. Termed "previz", as an abbreviation of previsualization (a term borrowed from the film's narrative), production designer Alex McDowell said the system allowed them to use Photoshop in place of painters, and employ 3D animation programs (Maya and XSI) to create a simulated set, which could be filled with digital actors then used to block out shots in advance. The technology also allowed the tie-in video game and special effects companies to cull data from the previous system before the film was finished, which they used to establish parameters for their visuals. When Spielberg quickly became a fan, McDowell said "It became pretty clear that [he] wouldn't read an illustration as a finished piece, but if you did it in Photoshop and created a photorealistic environment he focused differently on it." "Minority Report" was the last live-action visual effects job for PDI/DreamWorks which became DreamWorks Animation shortly afterwards. PDI/DreamWorks primarily worked on the Spyder sequences and visual effects supervisor Henry LaBounta took inspiration from deep sea jellyfish: "Their tentacles have these bioluminescent little lights that kind of run through their tentacles and that just looks so cool. So I got back to the studio and talked to the artists and I said, ‘We’re gonna do some radiating jellyfish bioluminescent lights on the bottom of this spider, and try that.’"


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Filming took place from March 22 to July 18, 2001, in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Los Angeles. Film locations included the Ronald Reagan Building (as PreCrime headquarters) and Georgetown. The skyline of Rosslyn, Virginia is visible when Anderton flies across the Potomac River. A quick shot of Indian Field Creek, which crosses the Colonial Parkway in Yorktown, Virginia, is seen as John takes Agatha to his wife's house. During production, Spielberg made regular appearances on a video-only webcam based in the craft services truck, both alone and with Tom Cruise; together they conferred publicly with Ron Howard and Russell Crowe via a similar webcam on the set of "A Beautiful Mind" in New York.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The location of the small, uncharted island in the last shot of the film is Butter Island off North Haven, Maine in the Penobscot Bay.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Although it takes place in an imagined future world of advanced technology, "Minority Report" attempts to embody a more "realistic" depiction of the future. Spielberg decided that to be more credible, the setting had to keep both elements of the present and ones which specialists expected would be forthcoming. Thus Washington, D.C. as depicted in the movie keeps well-known buildings such as the Capitol and the Washington Monument, as well as a section of modern buildings on the other side of the Potomac River. Production designer Alex McDowell was hired based on his work in "Fight Club" and his storyboards for a film version of "Fahrenheit 451" which would have starred Mel Gibson. McDowell studied modern architecture, and his sets contain many curves, circular shapes, and reflective materials. Costume designer Deborah L. Scott decided to make the clothes worn by the characters as simple as possible, so as not to make the depiction of the future seem dated.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The stunt crew was the same one used in Cruise's "Mission: Impossible 2", and was responsible for complex action scenes. These included the auto factory chase scene, filmed in a real facility using props such as a welding robot, and the fight between Anderton and the jetpack-clad officers, filmed in an alley set built on the Warner Bros. studio lot. Industrial Light & Magic did most of the special effects, while PDI/DreamWorks was responsible for the Spyder robots. The company Pixel Liberation Front did previsualization animatics. The holographic projections and the prison facility were filmed by several roving cameras which surrounded the actors, and the scene where Anderton gets off his car and runs along the Maglev vehicles was filmed on stationary props, which were later replaced by computer-generated vehicles.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Like most film adaptations of Dick's works, many aspects of his story were changed in their transition to film, such as the addition of Lamar Burgess and the change in setting from New York City to Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Northern Virginia. The character of John Anderton was changed from a balding and out-of-shape old man to an athletic officer in his 40s to fit its portrayer and the film's action scenes. The film adds two stories of tragic families; Anderton's, and that of the three pre-cogs. In the short story, Anderton is married with no children, while in the film, he is the divorced father of a kidnapped son, who is most likely deceased. Although it is implied, but unclear in the film whether Agatha is related to the twin pre-cogs, her family was shattered when Burgess murdered her mother, Anne Lively. The precogs were intellectually disabled and deformed individuals in the story, but in the film, they are the genetically mutated offspring of drug addicts. Anderton's future murder and the reasons for the conspiracy were changed from a general who wants to discredit PreCrime to regain some military funding, to a man who murdered a precog's mother to preserve PreCrime. The subsequent murders and plot developed from this change. The film's ending also differs from the short story's. In Dick's story, Anderton prevents the closure of the PreCrime division, however, in the movie Anderton successfully brings about the end of the organization. Other aspects were updated to include current technology. For instance in the story, Anderton uses a punch card machine to interpret the precogs' visions; in the movie, he uses a virtual reality interface.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The main theme of "Minority Report" is the classic philosophical debate of free will versus determinism. Other themes explored by the film include involuntary commitment, the nature of political and legal systems in a high technology-advanced society, the rights of privacy in a media-dominated world, and the nature of self-perception. The film also continues to follow Spielberg's tradition of depicting broken families, which he has said is motivated by his parents' divorce when he was a child.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The score was composed by regular Spielberg collaborator John Williams, who inspired Bernard Herrmann's musical work in the film; Instead of focusing on the science fiction elements, he made a score suitable for the film noir, including the use of female singer in the some sequences, and emotional themes, which Williams considered unusual for that genre. Several classical pieces, including Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8 ("Unfinished Symphony"), Haydn string quartet (Op. 64, No. 1), Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 ("Pathétique"), were implemented in the score, though Williams said that the choices of using classical pieces were made by the studio.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Besides composing, Williams conducted the score, with orchestration by John Neufeld and vocals by Deborah Dietrich. The music was released on June 18, 2002 by DreamWorks Records in CD, vinyl and cassettes, and re-issued by Geffen Records in mid-2014 for streaming media and download. The full score as heard in the film, was released into a 2-disc "expanded edition" in 2019, which was marketed by La-La Land Records, along with several alternate and unused tracks as bonus material.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: "Minority Report" is a futuristic film which portrays elements of a both dystopian and utopian future. The film renders a much more detailed view of its future world than the book and contains new technologies not in Dick's story. From a stylistic standpoint, "Minority Report" resembles Spielberg's previous film "A.I.", but also incorporates elements of film noir. Spielberg said that he "wanted to give the movie a noir feel. So I threw myself a film festival. "Asphalt Jungle". "Key Largo". "The Maltese Falcon"." The picture was deliberately overlit, and the negative was bleach-bypassed during post-production. The scene in which Anderton is dreaming about his son's kidnapping at the pool is the only one shot in "normal" color. Bleach-bypassing gave the film a distinctive look; it desaturated the film's colors, to the point that it nearly resembles a black-and-white movie, yet the blacks and shadows have a high contrast like a film noir picture. The color was reduced by "about 40%" to achieve the "washed-out" appearance. Elvis Mitchell, formerly of "The New York Times", commented that "The picture looks as if it were shot on chrome, caught on the fleeing bumper of a late '70s car."


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Spielberg preferred film to the then-emerging digital video format, and opted to create the film's look photochemically. Cinematographer Janusz Kamiński shot the film with high-speed film in Super 35 format (which requires an additional enlarging process) to increase the overall grain, having been told by Spielberg to create "the ugliest, dirtiest movie" he'd ever shot. The film's camera work is very mobile, alternating between handheld and Steadicam shots, which are "exaggerated by the use of wide angle lenses and the occasional low camera angle" to increase the perception of movement according to film scholar Warren Buckland. Kamiński said that he never used a lens longer than 27mm, and alternated between 17, 21, and 27mm lenses, as Spielberg liked to "keep the actors as close to the camera as possible". He also said, "We staged a lot of scenes in wide shots that have a lot of things happening with the frame." The duo also used several long takes to focus on the emotions of the actors, rather than employing numerous cuts. Spielberg eschewed the typical "shot reverse shot" cinematography technique used when filming characters' interactions in favor of the long takes, which were shot by a mobile, probing camera. McDowell relied on colorless chrome and glass objects of curved and circular shapes in his set designs, which, aided by the "low-key contrastive lighting", populated the film with shadows, creating a "futuristic film noir atmosphere".


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Buckland describes the film's 14 minute opening sequence as the "most abstract and complex of any Spielberg film." The first scene is a distorted precog vision of a murder, presented out of context. The pace of the film is sped up, slowed, and even reversed, and the movie "jumps about in time and space" by intercutting the images in no discernible order. When it ends, it becomes clear that the scene was presented through Agatha's eyes, and that this is how previsions appear to her. Fellow scholar Nigel Morris called this scene a "trailer", because it foreshadows the plot and establishes the type of "tone, generic expectations, and enigmas" that will be used in the film. The visions of the pre-cogs are presented in a fragmented series of clips using a "squishy lens" device, which distorts the images, blurring their edges and creating ripples across them. They were created by a two-man production team, hired by Spielberg, who chose the "layered, dreamlike imagery" based on some comments from cognitive psychologists the pair consulted. In the opening's next scene, Anderton is "scrubbing the images", by standing like a composer (as Spielberg terms it), and manipulating them, while Jad assists him. Next the family involved in the murder in Agatha's vision is shown interacting, which establishes that the opening scene was a prevision. The picture then cuts back to Anderton and the precogs' images, before alternating between the three. The opening is self-contained, and according to Buckland acts merely as a setup for numerous elements of the story. It lasts 14 minutes, includes 171 shots, and has an average shot length of five seconds as opposed to the 6.5 second average for the entire film. The opening's five-second average is attained despite "very fast cutting" in the beginning and ending, because the middle has longer takes, which reach 20 seconds in some instances. Spielberg also continues his tradition of "heavily diffused backlighting" for much of the interior shots.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The summer of 2002 was expected to be competitive at the global box office due to the high number of franchises, blockbusters, and star-studded projects. Many of the films released were expected to provide escapism for Americans in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks that occurred in New York City in 2001.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Spielberg typically keeps the plot points of his films closely guarded before their release, and "Minority Report" was no different. He said he had to remove some scenes, and a few "F-words" to get the film's PG-13 rating. Following the disappointing box office results of Spielberg's "A.I.", the marketing campaign for "Minority Report" downplayed his role in the movie and sold the film as a Cruise action thriller.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Tom Rothman, chairman of the film's co-financier Fox Filmed Entertainment, described the film's marketing strategy thus: "How are we marketing it? It's Cruise and Spielberg. What else do we need to do?" The strategy made sense; coming into the film, Spielberg had made 20 films which grossed a domestic total of $2.8 billion, while Cruise's resume featured 23 films and $2 billion in domestic revenues. With their combined 30% take of the film's box office though, sources such as "BusinessWeek"'s Ron Grover predicted the studios would have a hard time making the money needed to break even. Despite the outward optimism, as a more adult-oriented, darker film than typical blockbusters, the studio held different box office expectations for the film than they would a more family friendly film. "Entertainment Weekly" projected the film would gross $40 million in the US in its opening weekend, and "Variety" predicted that the high concept storyline would not appeal to children and would render it a "commercial extra-base hit rather than a home run."


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The world premiere of "Minority Report" took place in New York City on June 19, 2002. An online "popcorn cam" broadcast live from inside the premiere. Cruise attended the London premiere the following week, and mingled with thousands of adoring fans as he walked through the city's Leicester Square. It debuted at first place in the U.S. box office, collecting $35.677 million in its opening weekend, ahead of "Lilo & Stitch". "Forbes" considered those numbers below expectations, as they gave the film a small edge over "Lilo & Stitch", which debuted in second place ($35.260 million). "Lilo & Stitch" sold more tickets, but since much of the film's attendees were children, its average ticket price was much lower. The film opened at the top of the box office in numerous foreign markets; it made $6.7 million in 780 locations in Germany its opening weekend, and accounted for 35% of France's total box office weekend office gross when it collected $5 million in 700 theaters. In Great Britain, "Minority Report" made $36.9 million in its first three days. It went on to make $5.9 million in the UK, ranking number one at the box office, beating "Spider-Man". "Minority Report" had the country's third-highest opening for a Steven Spielberg film, behind "Jurassic Park" and its successor "". The film then made $6.2 million in Italy in its first ten, $815,000 in its 75 location opening weekend in Belgium, and $405,000 in an 80 theater opening weekend in Switzerland. Meanwhile, in Turkey, it made $307,822 from 64 screens, achieving the third-highest opening for any 20th Century Fox film in the country, after "" and "Titanic". The BBC felt the film's UK performance was "buoyed by Cruise's charm offensive at last week's London premiere." "Minority Report" made a total of $132 million in the United States and $226.3 million overseas.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: DreamWorks spent several million dollars marketing the film's DVD and VHS releases. The campaign included a released by Activision, which contained a trailer for the movie's DVD. "Minority Report" was successful in the home video market, selling at least four million DVDs in its first few months of release. The DVD took two years to produce. For the first time, Spielberg allowed filmmakers to shoot footage on the set of one of his films. "Premiere"-award-winning DVD producer Laurent Bouzereau, who would become a frequent Spielberg DVD collaborator, shot hundreds of hours of the film's production in the then-new high-definition video format. It contained over an hour of featurettes which discussed various aspects of film production, included breakdowns of the film's stunt sequences, and new interviews with Spielberg, Cruise, and other "Academy Award-winning filmmakers". The film was released on a two-disc Blu-ray by Paramount Pictures (now the owner of the early DreamWorks library) on May 16, 2010. It included exclusive extras and interactive features, such as a new Spielberg interview, that were not included in the DVD edition. The film was transferred from its "HD master" which retained the distinctive grainy appearance.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: A video game based on the film titled "" was developed by Treyarch, published by Activision and released on November 18, 2002, for Game Boy Advance, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox. It received mixed reviews.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "Minority Report" received 90% positive reviews based on 254 critics and an average rating of 8.20/10. The site's critical consensus is, "Thought-provoking and visceral, Steven Spielberg successfully combines high concept ideas and high octane action in this fast and febrile sci-fi thriller." The website listed it among the best reviewed films of 2002. The film also earned an 80 out of a possible 100 on the similar review aggregating website Metacritic based on 37 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Most critics gave the film's handling of its central theme (free will vs. determinism) positive reviews, and many ranked it as the film's main strength. Other reviewers felt that Spielberg did not adequately tackle the issues he raised. The film has inspired discussion and analysis, the scope of which has been compared to the continuing analysis of "Blade Runner". This discussion has advanced past the realm of standard film criticism. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek fashioned a criticism of the Cheney Doctrine by comparing its preemptive strike methodology to that of the film's PreCrime system.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Richard Corliss of "Time" said it's "Spielberg's sharpest, brawniest, most bustling entertainment since "Raiders of the Lost Ark"". Mike Clark of "USA Today" felt it succeeded due to a "breathless 140-minute pace with a no-flab script packed with all kinds of surprises." Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" praised the film's visuals, and Todd McCarthy of "Variety" complimented the cast's performances. Film scholar Warren Buckland recommended the film, but felt that the comedic elements—aside from Stormare's lines—detracted from the plot and undermined the film's credibility.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Several critics used their reviews to discuss Spielberg and analyze what the film signified in his development as a filmmaker. Andrew O'Hehir of the online magazine "Salon" expressed excitement over the atypically hard edge of the movie. "Little Steven Spielberg is all grown up now ... into of all things a superior film artist ... It's too early to know whether "Minority Report", on the heels of "A.I.", marks a brief detour in Spielberg's career or a permanent change of course, but either way it's a dark and dazzling spectacle." J. Hoberman of "The Village Voice" said it is "the most entertaining, least pretentious genre movie Steven Spielberg has made in the decade since "Jurassic Park"." Randy Shulman of "Metro Weekly" said that "the movie is a huge leap forward for the director, who moves once and for all into the world of adult movie making." Roger Ebert called the film a "masterpiece" and said that when most directors of the period were putting "their trust in technology", Spielberg had already mastered it, and was emphasizing "story and character" while merely using technology as a "workman uses his tools". Ebert eventually named the film the best film of the year. David Edelstein of "Slate" echoed the positive sentiments, saying "It has been a long time since a Spielberg film felt so nimble, so unfettered, so free of self-cannibalizing." Jonathan Rosenbaum, then of the "Chicago Reader", was less convinced. Though he approved of the film, he derided it in his review as a superficial action film, cautioning audiences to enjoy the movie but not "be conned into thinking that some sort of serious, thoughtful statement is being delivered along with the roller-coaster ride."


title: Minority Report (film)

text: Andrew Sarris of the "New York Observer" gave the film a negative review in which he described the script as full of plot holes, the car chases as silly, and criticized the mixture of futuristic environments with "defiantly retro costuming". The complexity of the storyline was also a source of criticism for Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times", who considered the plot "too intricate and difficult to follow". Rosenbaum and Hoberman both referred to the titular minority report as a "red herring". More positive reviews have seen it similarly, but referred to it as a "MacGuffin".


title: Minority Report (film)

text: The film earned nominations for many awards, including Best Sound Editing at the 75th Academy Awards (lost to ""), and Best Visual Effects at the BAFTAs. It was nominated for eleven Saturn Awards including Best Actor for Cruise, Best Supporting Actor for von Sydow and Best Music for Williams, and won four: Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Spielberg, Best Writing for Frank and Cohen and Supporting Actress for Morton. It was nominated for two Visual Effects Society Awards in the categories of "Best Effects Art Direction in a Motion Picture" and "Best Compositing in a Motion Picture". It also won the BMI Film Music Award, the Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the Empire Awards for Best Actor for Cruise, Best Director for Spielberg and Best British Actress for Morton. Ebert listed "Minority Report" as the best film of 2002, as did online film reviewer James Berardinelli. The film was also included in top ten lists by critic Richard Roeper, and both reviewers at "USA Today".


title: Minority Report (film)

text: In 2008, the American Film Institute nominated this film for its Top 10 Science Fiction Films list. Roger Ebert eventually called it one of his favorite films of the 2000s. Likewise, "The Washington Post" picked "Minority Report" as one of the 23 best films from 2000 to 2018.


title: Minority Report (film)

text: On September 9, 2014, it was announced that a follow-up television series had been given a pilot commitment at Fox. Max Borenstein wrote the script and served as executive producer alongside Spielberg, Justin Falvey and Darryl Frank. The series was envisioned to be set 10 years after the film, and focused on a male precog who teams up with a female detective to find a purpose to his gift. On February 13, 2015, Daniel London and Li Jun Li joined the cast. On February 24, 2015, Laura Regan was cast as Agatha Lively, replacing Samantha Morton, who was said to have been offered to reprise the role. In March 2015, Stark Sands and Meagan Good landed the lead roles with Sands playing the role of Dash, one of the male precogs, and Good playing Lara Vega, a detective haunted by her past, who works with Dash to help him find a purpose for his gift, Li Jun Li plays Akeela, a CSI technician, Daniel London reprised his role as Wally the Caretaker from the original film and Wilmer Valderrama was cast as a police detective. The show was picked up to series by Fox on May 9, 2015, and made its broadcast debut on September 21, 2015, but was cancelled on May 13, 2016.


title: Tom Bateman (actor)

text: Thomas Jonathan Bateman (born 15 March 1989) is a British actor, best known for his roles on the historical fantasy drama series "Da Vinci's Demons" (2013–2015), and in the film "Murder on the Orient Express" (2017) and its sequel "Death on the Nile" (2022).


title: Tom Bateman (actor)

text: Bateman was born in Oxford, Oxfordshire, to a working-class family. He has 12 siblings, including a twin brother named Merlin.


title: Tom Bateman (actor)

text: Bateman studied drama at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), where he appeared in a production of "Much Ado About Nothing" with Catherine Tate and David Tennant. He later joined Kenneth Branagh's company at the Garrick Theatre, where he acted alongside Judi Dench in "The Winter's Tale".


title: Tom Bateman (actor)

text: Since 2017, Bateman has been in a relationship with actress Daisy Ridley, whom he met on the set of "Murder on the Orient Express".


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Zachary Knight Galifianakis (born October 1, 1969) is an American actor and comedian. He appeared in "Comedy Central Presents" special and presented his show "Late World with Zach" on VH1.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis has starred in films including "The Hangover" trilogy (2009–2013), "Due Date" (2010), "The Campaign" (2012), "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)" (2014) and "Masterminds" (2016). He has also voiced characters in animated films such as "Puss in Boots" (2011), "The Lego Batman Movie" (2017), "Missing Link" (2019), "Ron's Gone Wrong" (2021) and "The Bob's Burgers Movie" (2022).


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis currently hosts the Funny or Die website talk show "Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis". He starred in the FX series "Baskets" and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2017.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Zachary Knight Galifianakis (; , ) was born in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, on October 1, 1969. The son of community arts center owner Mary Frances (née Cashion) and heating oil vendor Harry Galifianakis. His mother is of Scots-Irish and English descent, while his paternal grandparents were Greek immigrants from Crete. He was baptized in his father's Greek Orthodox faith. He has a younger sister, Merritt, and an older brother, Greg. His cousin is "Washington Post" cartoonist Nick Galifianakis, while his uncle, also named Nick Galifianakis, is a politician. Galifianakis attended Wilkes Central High School, and subsequently attended North Carolina State University, where he majored in communications. While in college, he worked at a public access station. He taught a waltz class in 1991 where he crossed paths with Mary J. Blige.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: After his television debut "Boston Common", Galifianakis joined "Saturday Night Live" for two weeks. He has stated "I worked on "Saturday Night Live" for two weeks, and Britney Spears was the host one week when I was doing it. Wrote a sketch, Will Ferrell was going to play a bodyguard to her belly button, and we were going to shrink Will down to fit into a belly button. ...she just stared at me after I explained it to her. And then she finally goes 'Yeah that's funny.'" Galifianakis co-starred in the film "Out Cold", and had small roles in "Corky Romano", "Below", "Bubble Boy", "Heartbreakers", "Into the Wild", "Super High Me", "Little Fish Strange Pond" and "Largo".


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: In September 2001, he appeared in an episode of "Comedy Central Presents". It included a stand-up routine, a segment with a piano, and a cappella group The Night Owls (introduced as his "12 ex-girlfriends") singing "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles while he made jokes. In 2002, he hosted his own VH1 talk show called "Late World with Zach". It featured many of his friends and regular performers from the LA comedy and music venue Largo where he appeared frequently during this time period. One episode featured Largo regulars Jon Brion and Rhett Miller as musical guests. He played Davis in the Fox drama series "Tru Calling". He appeared many times on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" and played Frisbee in "Reno 911!".


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis played Alan Finger on the Comedy Central show "Dog Bites Man", a fake news program that caught people during candid moments thinking they were being interviewed by a real news crew. He also guest-starred in the episode of the Comedy Central show "The Sarah Silverman Program" as Fred the Homeless Guy. He also had a recurring guest role as a doctor on the animated Adult Swim show "Tom Goes to the Mayor" and appeared in several episodes of "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" in a recurring role as Tairy Greene. In 2006, Galifianakis appeared in Fiona Apple's music video for the song "Not About Love", where he is seen lip-syncing the lyrics to the song. A year later, Kanye West employed Galifianakis and indie rock musician Will Oldham for similar purposes in the second version of the video for his song "Can't Tell Me Nothing". In June 2006, Galifianakis released the single "Come On and Get It (Up in 'Dem Guts)", a comedic hip-hop dance song which features Apple's vocals.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn and Maria Bamford, are the four Comedians of Comedy, a periodic packaged comedy tour in the style of The Original Kings of Comedy and the Blue Collar Comedy Tour. They chose to perform at live rock clubs as opposed to comedy clubs to try to reach a different audience. Much of the tour was taped and has been featured in both a short-lived TV series on Comedy Central and a full-length movie that has appeared at SXSW and on Showtime. On February 22, 2008, he made an appearance on the "". He interviewed various members of the "Jackass" cast. Galifianakis starred in first leading role in the independent film "Visioneers" which premiered in 2008. The film which was released on direct-to-DVD. That same year, Galifianakis appeared in a web video series of advertisements for Absolut vodka, along with Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, creating a parody of the "Golden Girls" in which one has a deep anger issue, breaking the fourth wall in exasperation and outright violence on the set. He also completed the pilot "Speed Freaks" for Comedy Central.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Zach's 2006 stand-up concert film "Zach Galifianakis Live at the Purple Onion" was one of the first original programs from Netflix.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis has a series of videos on the Funny or Die website titled "Between Two Ferns With Zach Galifianakis" where he conducts interviews with popular celebrities between two potted ferns. He has interviewed Jimmy Kimmel, Michael Cera, Jon Hamm, Natalie Portman, Charlize Theron, Bradley Cooper, Carrot Top, Conan O'Brien, Andy Richter, Andy Dick, Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Sean Penn, Bruce Willis, Tila Tequila, Jennifer Aniston, Will Ferrell, Samuel L. Jackson, Tobey Maguire, Arcade Fire, Justin Bieber, Brie Larson, David Letterman, former President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Brad Pitt. His interview style consists of typical interview questions, bizarre non sequiturs, awkward product endorsements and sometimes inappropriate sexual questions and comments. Galifianakis won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Program as a producer of the show at the 66th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis played Alan Garner in the hit comedy "The Hangover" and earned the MTV Movie Award for the Best Comedic Performance. He was also prominently advertised in subsequent films that featured him in supporting roles, such as "G-Force", "Youth in Revolt" and "Up in the Air".


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis starred in the HBO series "Bored to Death" and hosted "Saturday Night Live" on March 6, 2010 during the show's 35th season, during which he shaved his beard mid-show for a sketch, and closed the show wearing a fake one. He hosted again on March 12, 2011 and shaved his head this time, in a Mr. T-like hairstyle, which was allegedly supposed to be used for a sketch that never aired due to time constraints.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: In 2010, he starred in several films, including "Dinner for Schmucks", "It's Kind of a Funny Story", and "Due Date". On October 29, 2010, while debating marijuana legalization on the show HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher", Galifianakis appeared to have smoked marijuana on live television; host Bill Maher denied that it was real marijuana in an interview with Wolf Blitzer during an episode of "The Situation Room". In 2011, he reprised his role for "The Hangover Part II", which was set in Thailand and voiced Humpty Dumpty in "Puss in Boots". Galifianakis starred alongside Will Ferrell in Jay Roach's 2012 political comedy "The Campaign". He received critical praise for his performance in the 2014 film "Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)", in which he starred with Michael Keaton, Emma Stone and Edward Norton. In 2017, Galifianakis voiced The Joker in "The Lego Batman Movie".


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: In January 2014, Galifianakis and his "Night of a Thousand Vaginas" co-star Sarah Silverman announced their intention to raise $20,000 to help fund the Texas Abortion Fund, part of a nationwide network of funds set up to assist women in obtaining abortions in states whose legislatures had placed restrictions on the practice. The fundraiser was set up in response to the passage of Texas H.B. 2, which established several restrictions that forced a majority of the state's abortion clinics to close.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis befriended Marie "Mimi" Haist, a homeless woman in her 80s who was living in a Santa Monica laundromat for 18 years, and bought her an apartment across the street from the laundromat. The story was revealed in the 2015 documentary "Queen Mimi".


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: In August 2012, Galifianakis married Canadian charity worker Quinn Lundberg at the UBC Farm in Vancouver. They have two sons together: one born on September 7, 2013 (Galifianakis skipped the premiere of his film "Are You Here" to attend the birth) and another born on November 7, 2016.


title: Zach Galifianakis

text: Galifianakis has a house in Venice, Los Angeles and previously lived in Brooklyn. Galifianakis owns a farm in Sparta, North Carolina, and splits his time between the farm and his work. He said, "My farm is a place that I get to think clearly and pretend to know what I am doing." He also resides in an island in British Columbia, Canada.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Wembley Stadium (branded as Wembley Stadium connected by EE for sponsorship reasons) is a football stadium in Wembley, London. It opened in 2007 on the site of the original Wembley Stadium, which was demolished from 2002 to 2003. The stadium hosts major football matches including home matches of the England national football team, and the FA Cup Final. Wembley Stadium is owned by the governing body of English football, the Football Association (the FA), whose headquarters are in the stadium, through its subsidiary Wembley National Stadium Ltd (WNSL). With 90,000 seats, it is the largest stadium in the UK and the second-largest stadium in Europe.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Designed by Populous and Foster and Partners, the stadium is crowned by the Wembley Arch which serves aesthetically as a landmark across London as well as structurally, with the arch supporting over 75% of the entire roof load. The stadium was built by Australian firm Multiplex at a cost of £798 million (£ billion today). Two partially retractable roof structures over the east and west ends of the stadium can be opened to allow sunlight and aid pitch growth.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: In addition to England home games and the FA Cup final, the stadium also hosts other major games in English football, including the season-opening FA Community Shield, the League Cup final, the FA Cup semi-finals, the Football League Trophy, the Football League play-offs, the FA Trophy, the FA Vase and the National League play-offs. A UEFA category four stadium, Wembley hosted the 2011 and 2013 UEFA Champions League Finals, eight games at UEFA Euro 2020 (including the final and both of the semi-finals) and hosted the final of the UEFA Women's Euro 2022. It will stage the 2024 UEFA Champions League Final. The stadium hosted the Gold medal matches at the 2012 Olympic Games football tournament. The stadium also hosts rugby league's Challenge Cup final and music concerts. The stadium also hosted NFL London Games until 2019 and was also the temporary home of Premier League football club Tottenham Hotspur between August 2017 and March 2019, while White Hart Lane was being demolished and their new stadium was constructed.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: In 2014, Wembley Stadium entered into a six-year sponsorship agreement with mobile provider EE Limited, under which it provides technology and infrastructure services for the venue. Under the agreement, the facility is officially referred to as "Wembley Stadium connected by EE".


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Wembley was designed by architects Foster + Partners and HOK Sport (now Populous) and with engineers Mott Stadium Consortium, who were a collection of three structural engineering consultants in the form of Mott MacDonald, Sinclair Knight Merz and Aurecon. The design of the building services was carried out by Mott MacDonald. The construction of the stadium was managed by Australian company Multiplex and funded by Sport England, WNSL (Wembley National Stadium Limited), the Football Association, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and the London Development Agency. It is one of the most expensive stadia ever built at a cost of £798 million in 2007, and has the largest roof-covered seating capacity in the world. Nathaniel Lichfield and Partners was appointed to assist Wembley National Stadium Limited in preparing the scheme for a new stadium and to obtain planning and listed building permission for the development.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The all-seater stadium is a bowl design with a capacity of 90,000, protected from the elements by a sliding roof that does not completely enclose it. The stadium's signature feature is a circular section lattice arch of 7 m (23 ft) internal diameter with a 315 m (1,033 ft) span, erected some 22° off true, and rising to 133 m (436 ft). It supports all the weight of the north roof and 60% of the weight of the retractable roof on the southern side. The arch is the world's longest unsupported roof structure.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: A platform system was designed in order to temporarily convert the stadium to athletics use, but its use would decrease the stadium's capacity to approximately 60,000. No athletics events (track and field) have taken place at the stadium; the conversion for athletics use was a condition of part of the lottery funding the stadium received, but to convert it would take weeks of work and cost millions of pounds. Instead, with the awarding of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games to London in 2005, the London Olympic Stadium has been used for major athletics events since 2012.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The initial plan for the reconstruction of Wembley Stadium was for demolition to begin before Christmas 2000, and for the new stadium to be completed some time during 2003, but this work was delayed by a succession of financial and legal difficulties. In 2004, London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Brent Council also announced wider plans for the regeneration of Wembley, taking in the arena and the surrounding areas as well as the stadium, to be implemented over two or three decades. Demolition officially began on 30 September 2002, with the Twin Towers being dismantled in December 2002.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Delays to the construction project started as far back as 2003. In December 2003, the constructors of the arch, subcontractors Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company of Darlington, warned Multiplex about rising costs. Cleveland Bridge withdrew from the project and were replaced by Dutch firm Hollandia, with all the attendant problems of starting over. 2004 also saw errors, most notably a fatal accident involving carpenter Patrick O'Sullivan for which construction firm PC Harrington Contractors were fined £150,000 in relation to breaches of health and safety laws.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: In October 2005, Sports Minister Richard Caborn announced: "They say the Cup Final will be there, barring six feet of snow or something like that". By November 2005, WNSL were still hopeful of a handover date of 31 March, in time for the cup final on 13 May. However, in December 2005, the builders admitted that there was a "material risk" that the stadium might not be ready in time for the final. In February 2006 these worries were confirmed, with the FA moving the game to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: On 20 March 2006, a steel rafter in the roof of the new development fell by , forcing 3,000 workers to evacuate the stadium and raising further doubts over the completion date which was already behind schedule. On 23 March 2006, sewers beneath the stadium buckled due to ground movement. GMB Union leader Steve Kelly said that the problem had been caused by the pipes not being properly laid, and that the repair would take months. A spokesman for developers Multiplex said that they did not believe this would "have any impact on the completion of the stadium", which was then scheduled to be completed on 31 March 2006.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: On 30 March 2006, the developers announced that Wembley Stadium would not be ready until 2007. All competitions and concerts planned were to be moved to suitable locations. On 19 June 2006, it was announced that the turf had been laid. On 19 October 2006 it was announced that the venue was now set to open in early 2007 after the dispute between the Football Association and Multiplex had finally been settled. WNSL was expected to pay around £36m to Multiplex, on top of the amount of the original fixed-price contract. The total cost of the project (including local transport infrastructure redevelopment and the cost of financing) was estimated to be £1 billion.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: For the new stadium the level of the pitch was lowered. During excavation of the new playing field, mechanical diggers unearthed a buried obstruction: the concrete foundations of Watkin's Tower, a failed attempt to construct a rival to the Eiffel Tower in London. Only the base of the tower was ever built before being abandoned and demolished in 1907; the site was later used as the location for the first Wembley Stadium.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The new stadium was completed and handed over to the FA on 9 March 2007. The official Wembley Stadium website had announced that the stadium would be open for public viewing for local residents of Brent on 3 March 2007, however this was delayed by two weeks and instead happened on 17 March.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: While the stadium had hosted football matches since the handover in March, the stadium was officially opened on Saturday 19 May, with the staging of the 2007 FA Cup Final. Eight days before that on Friday 11 May, the statue of Bobby Moore had been unveiled by his former England team-mate Sir Bobby Charlton outside the stadium entrance, as the "finishing touch" to the completion of the stadium. The twice life-size bronze statue, sculpted by Philip Jackson, depicts England's 1966 World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore, looking down Wembley Way.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The pitch size, as lined for association football, is long by wide, slightly narrower than the old Wembley, as required by the UEFA stadium categories for a category four stadium, the top category.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: In a period after the completion of the new Wembley, the pitch came into disrepute. It was described as being "no good" and "not in the condition that Wembley used to be known for" by Slaven Bilić before a game between England and the team he managed, Croatia, in November 2007. The pitch was cut up during the game, which was blamed by some as the reason England did not qualify for UEFA Euro 2008. The Football Association admitted in April 2009, after the FA Cup semi-finals, that improvements were needed to the Wembley pitch, after criticism of the surface by coaches Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and David Moyes.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: In March 2010, the surface was relaid for the tenth time since opening. In April 2010, the pitch was again criticised following the FA Cup semi-finals, during which the players found it difficult to keep their footing and the surface cut up despite the dry conditions. The then Tottenham Hotspur boss, Harry Redknapp, labelled it a "disgrace" after his side's semi-final defeat to Portsmouth. After the 2010 FA Cup Final, Chelsea captain John Terry said, "The pitch ruined the final. It's probably the worst pitch we've played on all year. It was not good enough for a Wembley pitch." The stadium was then relaid with a Desso GrassMaster semi-artificial pitch, ahead of the 2010 community shield game between Chelsea and Manchester United. Michael Owen, who previously criticised the pitch for causing him injury, said that it was much improved.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Wembley has been used for American football matches in the National Football League's International Series. Tottenham Hotspur hosted Manchester City in a Premier League match on 29 October 2018, a day after Wembley hosted the Philadelphia Eagles and Jacksonville Jaguars. Due to the short turnaround, faded gridiron markings and the NFL logo were clearly visible on the pitch along with worn grass along the centre of the pitch and the touch-lines. Tottenham were forced to hold the match at Wembley due to construction delays to their new ground. Despite the pitch's condition, UEFA allowed a Champions League leg to be played at Wembley on 9 November 2018 with Tottenham hosting Dutch side PSV Eindhoven.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The stadium roof has an area of , of which is movable. The primary reason for the sliding roof was to avoid shading the pitch, as grass demands direct sunlight to grow effectively. The sliding roof design minimises the shadow by having the roof pulled back on the east, west and south. Angus Campbell, the chief architect, also said that an aim was for the pitch to be in sunlight during matches played between 3 pm and 5 pm from the beginning of May to the end of June, when the FA and World Cups would be played. However, it was mentioned during live commentary of the mid-May 2007 FA Cup Final that the pitch was in partial shade at the start at 3 pm and also during the match.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The stadium roof rises to above the pitch and is supported by an arch rising above the level of the external concourse. With a span of , the arch is the longest single-span roof structure in the world.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The Australian firm Multiplex, which was the main contractor on Wembley Stadium, made significant losses on the project. In an attempt to recoup some of those losses, the firm initiated a number of legal cases against its sub-contractors and consultants. The largest of these – the largest construction claim in UK legal history – was a claim for £253 million against the structural engineering consultants Mott MacDonald.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: In preliminary hearings the two architecture practices which worked for Multiplex on the project were ordered to allow Multiplex access to their records for them to build a case. The practices, Foster + Partners and Populous, estimated the costs of providing access and answering Multiplex's queries at £5 million. Mott MacDonald issued a counter-claim for unpaid fees of £250,000.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The dispute between Multiplex and Mott MacDonald was settled out of court in June 2010, ahead of a January 2011 trial. The terms of the settlement not disclosed, but it was reported that Multiplex "would not be out of pocket".


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Multiplex also took the original steel contractor, Cleveland Bridge, to court claiming £38 million compensation for costs resulting from Cleveland Bridge withdrawing from the project. Cleveland Bridge, in turn, claimed up to £15 million from Multiplex. The case was resolved in September 2008 with Cleveland Bridge ordered to pay £6.1 million in damages and 20% of Multiplex's costs, after the court found against Cleveland Bridge. The judge criticised both sides for allowing the case to reach court, pointing out that total costs were £22 million, including £1 million for photocopying. Multiplex's ultimate bill is estimated to be over £10 million. In 2007, Multiplex also contested a claim from its concrete contractor, PC Harrington, that Multiplex owes £13.4 million to PC Harrington.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: In April 2018, Shahid Khan, the owner of Fulham F.C. and the Jacksonville Jaguars, put forward an offer to purchase Wembley Stadium from the FA. The deal included not only the purchase of the stadium, but also providing the FA full rights to keep control of the Club Wembley business. On 18 July 2018, a parliamentary select committee was held to discuss the possible sale, with evidence being given by former player, Gary Neville, and Katrina Law of the Football Supporters' Federation. The offer was withdrawn on 17 October 2018.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Given the ownership of the stadium by the Football Association (the governing body of English football), the English national football team is a major user of Wembley. In 2007, the League Cup final moved back to Wembley from Cardiff following the FA Cup final and FA Community Shield. Other showpiece football matches that were previously staged at Wembley, such as the Football League promotion play-offs and the Football League Trophy final, have returned to the stadium. In addition, the Conference National (now National League) play-off final is held at Wembley since 2007, and the FA Women's Cup final since 2015.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The new Wembley was a significant part of the plan for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London; the stadium was the site of several games in both the men's and women's football tournaments, with the finals being held there. The FA offices at Wembley Stadium, with social areas and boardroom, were designed by architects Gebler Tooth – who were also responsible for Team GB House at the London 2012 Olympics.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Additionally, the Rugby League Challenge Cup Final returned to Wembley Stadium in 2007, and the stadium also hosted both semi-finals of the 2013 Rugby League World Cup. Wembley was one of the 13 venues for the 2015 Rugby World Cup.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Tottenham Hotspur agreed with the operators (Wembley National Stadium Ltd) to use the stadium for all of their European fixtures during the 2016–17 season, before using the stadium for the entire 2017–18 season. They also played most of their home games of the 2018–19 season at Wembley and continued until April 2019 when they moved to their new stadium.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Wembley Stadium has a series of annual events that under normal circumstances are hosted at Wembley every year. These events cover the sports of football, rugby league and American Football.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The first match at the stadium was a game played behind closed doors between Multiplex and Wembley Stadium staff. The first game in front of spectators was between the Geoff Thomas Foundation Charity XI and the Wembley Sponsors Allstars on 17 March 2007. The Geoff Thomas Foundation Charity XI won 2–0 (scorers Mark Bright and Simon Jordan). The first official match involving professional players was England U21s vs Italy U21s on 24 March 2007, which finished 3–3. Official attendance was 55,700 (although all of the 60,000 tickets that were made available were sold in advance). The first player to score in a FIFA-sanctioned match was Italian striker Giampaolo Pazzini after 28 seconds of the same game; he also scored the first hat-trick at Wembley. The first English player to score in a full-scale match was David Bentley with a free kick in the same game.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The first club game, competitive game, and cup final held at the new Wembley took place on 12 May 2007 when Kidderminster Harriers met Stevenage Borough in the FA Trophy final. Kidderminster striker James Constable was the first player to score a goal in a final at the new Wembley. Kidderminster became the first team to play at both the old and new stadium. Stevenage Borough were the first team to win a final at the new Wembley beating Kidderminster 3–2, despite trailing 2–0 at half time. The first players to play at both the old and new Wembley Stadiums were Steve Guppy (for Stevenage Borough) and Jeff Kenna (for Kidderminster Harriers). Ex-England international Guppy is also the first player to win a final at both stadia (with Wycombe Wanderers and Leicester City in the old Wembley, then Stevenage Borough in the new one). Ronnie Henry is the first ever player to lift a competitive club trophy at the new Wembley.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The first penalty save and first red card came in the Conference National playoff final between Exeter City and Morecambe. The penalty was saved by Paul Jones of Exeter City from Morecambe striker Wayne Curtis. The red card was given to Matthew Gill of Exeter for a headbutt on Craig Stanley of Morecambe.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The first Football League teams to play at Wembley in a competitive fixture were Bristol Rovers and Shrewsbury Town in the 2007 Football League Two play-off Final on 26 May 2007. Shrewsbury Town became the first league team to score at Wembley via a Stewart Drummond goal, they also the first league team to have a player sent off, in this case – Marc Tierney


title: Wembley Stadium

text: Bristol Rovers won the game 3–1 in front of 61,589 which was a stadium record until the Championship play-off final two days later when Derby County beat West Bromwich Albion 1–0 to become the first team at the new stadium to win promotion to the FA Premier League.


title: Wembley Stadium

text: The first FA Cup Final at the new Wembley (between Manchester United and Chelsea) was on 19 May 2007, with a crowd attendance of 89,826. Chelsea won 1–0 with a goal by Didier Drogba, making him the first player to score in the FA Cup Final at the new Wembley – the first male player to score in four separate FA Cup Finals. Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Čech also became the first goalkeeper not to concede a goal in a competitive game at Wembley. Chelsea were the last winners of the cup final at the old Wembley and the first winners at the new.