Actor Financial News

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.The opening sequence of RJ Balaji’s Karuppu is all sparks and embers in a bichrome backdrop of red and black. It’s a nightmare in which a man gets assaulted by unknown assailants and a majestic rageful God descends to save him. The man, played by Indrans, jolts up in a train and looks at his daughter Binu (Anagha Ravi).

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.NEW DELHI: Actors long associated with iconic film roles are increasingly acquiring rights to older hits, betting that nostalgia-driven intellectual property can generate fresh value through remakes, sequels, streaming, licensing and franchise extensions in an overcrowded content market.Recently, actor Sanjay Dutt acquired the rights to his 1993 hit cthat he plans to reimagine along with Jio Studios and Aksha Kamboj’s Aspect Entertainment. In the past, stars like Shah Rukh Khan too have bought rights to older hits from original producers, reflecting a broader shift in how value is captured in the content economy.Khan has bought rights to older hits such as Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa and One 2 Ka 4 from original producers.For producers, selling rights can provide immediate liquidity, reduce risk and monetize legacy content that may otherwise remain underexploited.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Daniel Rice is a personal trainer in Los Angeles, a job that gives him a front-row seat to the physique coveted by today’s American man. Rice recalls the washboard abs of the ’90s; the athletic build of the early 2000s; the quest, in the 2010s, for tiny waists and huge biceps.Now “the guys all want thick thighs and a bigger butt,” he says.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.I thought only I knew. The Tamil actor Vijay, whom people have suddenly taken to calling Joseph Vijay after his political rivals revealed his full name, and who now heads the largest party in Tamil Nadu’s assembly, was my classmate in the third standard. It is a connection I made because I remember trivial things from childhood.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As part of a substantive change in rules, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has emphasized that only acting “demonstrably performed by humans” and “human-authored” writings will qualify for Oscar awards. The rules have been updated to address cases like that of an AI-generated version of the deceased actor Val Kilmer vying for an award.Note that AI usage in Oscar-nominated movies in 2024 and 2025 focused on augmentation—including voice cloning and enhancement and visual effects—rather than creation. For example, in The Brutalist, AI had enhanced actors’ Hungarian accents.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.East India has shown a dramatic shift to the right, with West Bengal voting decisively for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the country’s latest round of assembly elections.The Trinamool Congress, which was ousted from power in polls held under the shadow of a controversy over an electoral-roll revision, had for 15 years looked like a stable inheritor of the Marxist regime that ruled the state for the previous 34 years. Unable to differentiate itself from the leftist formation it had replaced, it could not withstand a robust BJP campaign. That Assam would go the BJP way was expected all along.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Nostalgia is paying off for Hollywood.“The Devil Wears Prada 2” opened to an estimated $233.6 million worldwide this weekend, driven largely by women eager to rejoin Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in the world of fashion journalism 20 years after the original movie. It grossed $77 million in the U.S.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.It’s odd to see Zach Galifianakis being sweet.A uniquely gifted comedian with significant acting range — from The Hangover movies to the Baskets TV series — Galifianakis has, in recent years, become known for the insulting and underprepared interviewer persona he puts on for his YouTube series Between Two Ferns. On it he asked Barack Obama how it felt to be the last black President (“Seriously?” Obama responded) and told Brad Pitt, “You play a lot of people that are Nazi hunters, which is weird to me.” “Why do you say that?”, Pitt asked.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.BENGALURU: Reliance Retail has acquired Anomaly Haircare, the global haircare label founded by actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas, as it accelerates its push into beauty and personal care.The dealincludes ownership of trademarks and digital assets with plans to scale the brand across India and global markets using Reliance’s omnichannel ecosystem, including its Tira platform, it said in a statement on Thursday.Mint unpacks why Reliance Retail is assembling a celebrity-led brand portfolio despite these companies reporting losses.Reliance Retail’s playbook has increasingly leaned on star power. The company had bought a majority stake in actor Alia Bhatt’s kidswear brand Ed-a-Mamma in July 2023.It acquired a 40% stake in celebrity stylist Manish Malhotra’s luxury ethnic wear brand MM Styles in 2021, and bought a majority stake in celebrity stylist Ritu Kumar’s label the same year.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Anthropic’s Mythos, a frontier artificial intelligence (AI) model, can outperform humans in detecting vulnerabilities across systems, including banks, telcos and utilities. While it can detect flaws faster and better than humans, global agencies warn it could be used as a potential cyberweapon too. Mint decodes.Claude Mythos or Mythos is US-based Anthropic's advanced AI model designed to handle complex cybersecurity tasks such as identifying bugs, analyzing systems and even generating exploits.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.THE US-IRAN conflict has revealed something that many outside observers—and perhaps even some within—had underestimated: Iran’s strategic doctrine of resilience is not just rhetorical. For years, terms such as the “resistance economy”, “distributed deterrence” and “self-reliance under pressure” were often dismissed, both abroad and domestically, as political language rather than strategic reality. Yet in the face of sustained confrontation with a vastly superior military and economic power, these ideas have proved coherent in practice.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.As actor Allu Arjun steps into the cinema exhibition business, joining southern stars like Mohanlal and Mahesh Babu, industry experts say the move signals a growing trend of film celebrities extending their influence beyond the screen.The trend is beginning to surface in the north as well, with actor Ajay Devgn owning a multiplex chain. Such moves, experts say, can improve the industry’s engagement with stakeholders by placing a creative voice at the helm, bolster brand recall and enhance distribution through better coordination and sharper audience feedback loops.However, the core realities of exhibition—a capital-intensive model with unpredictable returns—remain firmly in place.“For actors, it makes strategic sense because it allows them to participate across the film value chain—content, distribution, and exhibition.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Last week, Anthropic announced that its latest artificial intelligence (AI) model, Claude Mythos, was too dangerous to release. In testing, the company discovered that the model could unearth thousands of hitherto unknown security vulnerabilities in many of the software applications, operating systems and web browsers that the world depends on.

As the US-Iran war enters a fragile two-week ceasefire, with no clear endgame in sight, one may well ask how and why the world has reached this situation. Wars are rarely accidents.At their core, they are bets, and can hence be viewed through the lens of risk—not in a vague rhetorical sense, but by means of rigorous psychological analysis of the kind that forms part of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Prospect Theory, particularly its four-fold pattern of risk attitudes.This framework maps human behaviour into four quadrants based on whether an outcome involves gains or losses and whether its probability is high or low.

Masaan, is now backing theatre productions, Adarsh Gourav will soon be seen in a docu-series titled The Tribal Voice, while Ridhi Dogra will feature in a travel series for National Geographic Channel.Industry experts say that for film actors, the shift toward theatre, documentaries and other formats is both creative and strategic. Cinema is inherently project-driven, so these avenues allow actors to stay engaged between releases while continuing to build their craft.From a brand perspective, diversification helps actors evolve from being seen purely as performers to more rounded creative voices.

Mint India Investment Summit held in Mumbai last week.Backed by Zerodha founders' investment vehicles Rainmatter and Gruhas, SuperYou is a modern Indian health and nutrition brand. Co-founded by actor Ranveer Singh and entrepreneur Biyani in late 2024, the brand is focused on fermented yeast-based, high-protein snacks and supplements.“The opportunity to start and find PMF (product-market-fit) with consumers is better than ever before.

Ram Lakhan have failed to take off, while Tiger vs Pathaan—a much-hyped spy film starring Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan—has been deemed unviable for now by Yash Raj Films.In contrast, Tamil cinema continues to mount such collaborations with tighter budgets and stronger studio backing, often anchored in compelling storytelling.Trade experts say such ensemble projects are a near-guarantee at the box office, as combined fan bases drive theatrical footfalls and ensure recovery through ancillary rights.“Financially, assembling two major Hindi film stars can dramatically inflate production economics before filming even begins. Actor remuneration in Bollywood is structured around either large upfront fees or profit participation models.

The Beatles, the move underscores a long-standing reality: the Hollywood game remains fairly hard for Indian stars to crack.While the American entertainment industry appears inclusive and casts diverse faces, the resources and effort required to audition and secure a talent agency to represent them are beyond the reach of many Indian actors.“One reason may be simply lack of access. Another is that many actors are doing very well here; they have a strong run of films, they're surrounded by their people, they're celebrated, they're treated a certain way,” said Harikrishnan Pillai, chief executive officer (CEO) and co-founder, TheSmallBigIdea, a digital marketing agency.

OTT (over-the-top) content and other entertainment options for audience attention, promotional campaigns have become a central part of a film’s release strategy, often with actors contractually required to participate.A recent dispute in the Malayalam film industry has brought that shift into focus. The Kerala Film Producers’ Association (KFPA) has asked actor Biju Menon to pay a compensation of about ₹15 lakh to cover the alleged loss incurred by the producer of his movie Nadanna Sambhavam, after the actor allegedly failed to appear for promotions as required under his contract.Queries sent to the actor on Saturday requesting a comment remained unanswered.

Anthropic’s latest complaint against three Chinese labs is a warning sign for Silicon Valley: Don’t expect to earn too much from the competitive edge your model gives you. Companies from the developing world will line up to swim across your moat, if they can—and neither the US government nor your lawyers will be able to help you. As the music industry and Big Pharma could tell them, nobody will eliminate your rivals, you have to accommodate them.The company says it has pretty solid evidence that DeepSeek, MiniMax and Moonshot ran “industrial-scale campaigns” to “illicitly extract” the capabilities of its own model, Claude.

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Despite the unexpected box office success of some small and mid-budget films, their lead stars are yet to gain social media visibility or see traction from brands. Actors who have featured in controversial but successful films such as The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story or those like Sunny Deol making a comeback via hits Gadar 2 and Border 2 prove that box office success and brand or social media traction are not necessarily linked.