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Korea Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
[Exclusive] Big Bang's T.O.P talks with CJ ENM for solo comeback
Industry source says rapper is considering several partners for solo album slated for late 2025 T.O.P, a former member of K-pop boy band Big Bang, is said to be in discussions with CJ ENM over a potential exclusive contract to support his solo career, according to an industry source Wednesday. The rapper spoke last month about his plans to return as a solo artist this year during a promotional interview with an international media outlet. He is currently not signed to any agency. 'T.O.P is in talks with CJ ENM for a solo contract, including plans for a new solo album scheduled for release in the second half of this year,' the source told The Korea Herald on condition of anonymity. 'But among global music distributors, CJ ENM is just one of several options he is considering.' CJ ENM is a major Korean entertainment company with music subsidiaries under its wing such as WakeOne Entertainment and Stone Music Entertainment. It also operates Lapone Entertainment, a joint venture with the Japanese conglomerate Yoshimoto Kogyo, known for producing K-pop groups with Japanese members. It remains unclear which specific label under CJ ENM is involved in the talks. When asked for comment, CJ ENM denied any such discussions. 'There have been no talks regarding an exclusive contract or comeback with T.O.P,' a CJ ENM official said. T.O.P parted ways with YG Entertainment in February 2022 after his exclusive contract ended, and in May 2023, he officially withdrew from Big Bang, stating he was entering a new chapter in his life. Since then, he has been pursuing solo activities independently — mostly acting. The rapper-turned-actor made his return to the screen last December in Netflix's 'Squid Game' Season 2, playing a former rapper named 'Thanos.' It marked his first major public appearance since receiving a suspended prison sentence in 2017 for marijuana use — a case that led to a hiatus from the entertainment industry and his eventual departure from Big Bang. In a local interview earlier this year, T.O.P publicly apologized for the controversy, signaling a desire to resume his career. 'For the past 10 years, I've only been going back and forth between my home and my music studio,' he said in January. 'I made a lot of songs. There's no exact release plan yet, but I do have something in mind for the near future." While he has yet to release any new music, fans have been anticipating a musical comeback. His most recent solo release was the single 'Doom Dada,' which dropped in November 2013. Meanwhile, Big Bang is set to mark its 20th anniversary next year. The iconic group first burst onto the K-pop scene in August 2006 and went on to become one of its most influential acts.
The Guardian
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
No Squid Game? Or Patrick Schwarzenegger? This year's biggest Emmy surprises
I don't know if you had the time or the energy to watch today's Emmy nominations on YouTube, but if you did – and you followed along with the comments in real time – then you will know that there was one glaring omission that has sent the entire world into a screaming tailspin of panic and terror. I am talking, of course, about Thanos from Squid Game. For some, Thanos – a purple-haired Konglish-spewing drug-addicted rapper played by the Korean performer T.O.P – was the standout actor of the entire year, in any genre or format. But not only was this a bad result for Thanos, it was a bad result for Squid Game altogether. A show that comprehensively did the numbers for Netflix found itself being locked out of all categories. Still, at least it finds itself in decent company; Black Doves, Netflix's other wildly entertaining genre series, also found itself snubbed. As was The Handmaid's Tale, which is admittedly a little less surprising, given the amount of heat it has lost in the years since it debuted. While we're on snubs, you have to feel sorry for Patrick Schwarzenegger. Pretty much everyone who showed their face on The White Lotus this year found themselves nominated as a supporting performer. And yet Schwarzenegger, who arguably went on the most dramatic emotional arc of the entire season, was left off the list. This is genuinely very sad, since he was perhaps the biggest find of the show this year. While we're here, Renée Zellweger didn't get nominated for Bridget Jones (which was released as a TV movie in the States), and I would have liked to see something for Imogen Faith Reid. If you haven't seen Good American Family, it's worth it for her performance alone. Her role required some incredible modulation – she's 28, yet for reasons too convoluted to explain, had to play a character who was simultaneously seven and 21 – and for sheer complication deserved a nomination at the very least. We should also probably pour one out for The Four Seasons and Poker Face. The former had a stacked cast, and yet Colman Domingo was the only nominated performer. And the latter, despite being a tremendous amount of fun, didn't get anything major at all. True, Cynthia Erivo was deservedly nominated for her incredibly showy guest spot as seven different credited characters, but Natasha Lyonne – whose central performance holds the entire show together – was snubbed. Similarly, the show wasn't nominated for best comedy. That said, since Poker Face is ostensibly a comedy but actually a murder mystery, this could be down to genre confusion. Speaking of which, The Bear was nominated an awful lot in the comedy categories again. However, let's not hold out too much hope for it. After all, backlash over whether it deserved to qualify as a comedy meant that it lost to Hacks last year. And this year it faces stiff competition from The Studio which, like Hacks, will curry favour with voters because it's about show business. However, unlike Hacks, it is consistently funny and legitimately ambitious. In total, The Studio received 23 nominations across the board. If you're involved in any other comedy show this year, it might be a good idea to stay at home come Emmy night. In all honesty, the same probably goes for the limited series categories and Adolescence. Netflix's virtuoso one-shot wonder is nominated for basically everything it qualified for, and surely Owen Cooper is destined to become the youngest ever winner in his category. We haven't mentioned Severance, which with 27 nominations has the most of any show this year, purely because everyone who was nominated was expected to be nominated. This is with one possible exception. A lot of the online prediction articles failed to mention Patricia Arquette. The fact that she was nominated for best supporting actress shouldn't be a surprise – the woman's ability to turn from eccentric to volcanic on a dime remains unparalleled – but within the context of snubs she absolutely deserves her place. Finally there are the anti-snubs; the nominees who probably didn't deserve to be there but were anyway. In truth, this year is essentially limited to Pedro Pascal, who found himself being nominated for best actor in a drama series. If you haven't seen The Last of Us look away now, but it's hard to fathom why Pascal was nominated in this particular category. Was he good? Yes, he was great. But he was also killed before the end of the second episode, which in terms of screen time puts him somewhere between a supporting actor and a guest star. Is it too late to swap him with Thanos?
Engadget
15-07-2025
- Science
- Engadget
Webb spots 'Infinity Galaxy' that sheds light on black hole formation
Discoveries keep pouring out of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Researchers observed an unusual cluster, which they dubbed the Infinity Galaxy. It appears to support a leading theory on how some supermassive black holes form. Although "Infinity Galaxy" sounds like a place Thanos would hang out, it merely describes its appearance. Two compact, red nuclei, each surrounded by a ring, give the cluster the shape of an infinity symbol. What's inside is more interesting. (After all, this is a much lower-res image than some of the eye candy the Webb telescope has yielded.) Researchers believe the Infinity Galaxy formed when two spiral galaxies (the nuclei in the image) collided. Between them lies a young supermassive black hole within an enormous cloud of gas. Supermassive black holes can range from hundreds of thousands of times the size of our sun to millions or billions of times its size. This one is about a million times as big. The Infinity Galaxy, overlaid with a contour map indicating the supermassive black hole (NASA / JWST) The Infinity Galaxy lends weight to the direct collapse theory of black hole formation. As you probably know, most black holes form when massive stars collapse. The presence of supermassive ones is harder to explain. One theory proposes that smaller black holes merge over time to form a supermassive one. The problem there is that some supermassive black holes formed soon after the Big Bang. So, scientists think some supermassive ones form instead from the collapse of gas clouds, much like the one we see here. The Infinity Galaxy may be the best evidence yet for that direct collapse hypothesis. One of the paper's lead authors summarized the findings. "By looking at the data from the Infinity Galaxy, we think we've pieced together a story of how a direct collapse could have happened here," Pieter van Dokkum wrote in a press release. "Two disk galaxies collide, forming the ring structures of stars that we see. During the collision, the gas within these two galaxies shocks and compresses. This compression might just be enough to form a dense knot, which then collapsed into a black hole." The team can't definitively confirm the theory from their current data. "But we can say that these new data strengthen the case that we're seeing a newborn black hole, while eliminating some of the competing explanations," van Dokkum added. "We will continue to pore through the data and investigate these possibilities."
The Guardian
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
No Squid Game? Or Patrick Schwarzenegger? This year's biggest Emmy surprises
I don't know if you had the time or the energy to watch today's Emmy nominations on YouTube, but if you did – and you followed along with the comments in real time – then you will know that there was one glaring omission that has sent the entire world into a screaming tailspin of panic and terror. I am talking, of course, about Thanos from Squid Game. For some, Thanos – a purple-haired Konglish-spewing drug-addicted rapper played by the Korean performer T.O.P – was the standout actor of the entire year, in any genre or format. But not only was this a bad result for Thanos, it was a bad result for Squid Game altogether. A show that comprehensively did the numbers for Netflix found itself being locked out of all categories. Still, at least it finds itself in decent company; Black Doves, Netflix's other wildly entertaining genre series, also found itself snubbed. As was The Handmaid's Tale, which is admittedly a little less surprising, given the amount of heat it has lost in the years since it debuted. While we're on snubs, you have to feel sorry for Patrick Schwarzenegger. Pretty much everyone who showed their face on The White Lotus this year found themselves nominated as a supporting performer. And yet Schwarzenegger, who arguably went on the most dramatic emotional arc of the entire season, was left off the list. This is genuinely very sad, since he was perhaps the biggest find of the show this year. While we're here, Renée Zellweger didn't get nominated for Bridget Jones (which was released as a TV movie in the States), and I would have liked to see something for Imogen Faith Reid. If you haven't seen Good American Family, it's worth it for her performance alone. Her role required some incredible modulation – she's 28, yet for reasons too convoluted to explain, had to play a character who was simultaneously seven and 21 – and for sheer complication deserved a nomination at the very least. We should also probably pour one out for The Four Seasons and Poker Face. The former had a stacked cast, and yet Colman Domingo was the only nominated performer. And the latter, despite being a tremendous amount of fun, didn't get anything major at all. True, Cynthia Erivo was deservedly nominated for her incredibly showy guest spot as seven different credited characters, but Natasha Lyonne – whose central performance holds the entire show together – was snubbed. Similarly, the show wasn't nominated for best comedy. That said, since Poker Face is ostensibly a comedy but actually a murder mystery, this could be down to genre confusion. Speaking of which, The Bear was nominated an awful lot in the comedy categories again. However, let's not hold out too much hope for it. After all, backlash over whether it deserved to qualify as a comedy meant that it lost to Hacks last year. And this year it faces stiff competition from The Studio which, like Hacks, will curry favour with voters because it's about show business. However, unlike Hacks, it is consistently funny and legitimately ambitious. In total, The Studio received 23 nominations across the board. If you're involved in any other comedy show this year, it might be a good idea to stay at home come Emmy night. In all honesty, the same probably goes for the limited series categories and Adolescence. Netflix's virtuoso one-shot wonder is nominated for basically everything it qualified for, and surely Owen Cooper is destined to become the youngest ever winner in his category. We haven't mentioned Severance, which with 27 nominations has the most of any show this year, purely because everyone who was nominated was expected to be nominated. This is with one possible exception. A lot of the online prediction articles failed to mention Patricia Arquette. The fact that she was nominated for best supporting actress shouldn't be a surprise – the woman's ability to turn from eccentric to volcanic on a dime remains unparalleled – but within the context of snubs she absolutely deserves her place. Finally there are the anti-snubs; the nominees who probably didn't deserve to be there but were anyway. In truth, this year is essentially limited to Pedro Pascal, who found himself being nominated for best actor in a drama series. If you haven't seen The Last of Us look away now, but it's hard to fathom why Pascal was nominated in this particular category. Was he good? Yes, he was great. But he was also killed before the end of the second episode, which in terms of screen time puts him somewhere between a supporting actor and a guest star. Is it too late to swap him with Thanos?
Gizmodo
13-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The Fantastic Four Were Too OP For the Infinity Saga
One of the big draws of next week's Fantastic Four: First Steps is seeing Marvel's First Family in the retrofuturist Earth-828. They're Earth's only heroes in that dimension, and before Galactus shows up, it sounds like they've done a pretty good job protecting the planet. They might even be too good at it, which is why they're in their own universe to begin with. During a recent MovieWeb interview, director Matt Shakman discussed how the Four were made 'in this time of optimism during the space race, [where] people were dreaming of stars,' so it made sense to put them in a dimension inspired by the decade their comics began publication. But he also admitted the universe's other purpose: it got the team away from Thanos and the larger Infinity Saga. Had they been in the MCU version of Earth-616 with the other superheroes, he said they'd have easily helped 'solve the problem.'So instead of contorting a reason for them not to be in the earlier movies, a la Eternals, it was deemed easier to give them their own, separate Earth. Lest you think this is just Shakman glazing the team he's in charge of, previous MCU projects like What If…? and Doctor Strange 2 have shown alt-universe heroes seemingly taking care of Thanos more efficiently than the 616 Avengers did. Sure, this is Marvel working around their former rights issues with Fox, but it's also easy to imagine the Fantastic Four really would've significantly lightened the Thanos load for our heroes, since Reed's one of the smartest people ever and Susan's a powerhouse all her own. Once the Fantastic Four have settled properly into the MCU after everything in the two Avengers movies gets sorted out, we might see how they adjust to no longer being the only superheroes in town and how that changes the way they operate. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
