tour plot summary

A detailed plot summary for everyone too scared to see Us

By atavia reed | mar 26, 2019.

If you’re too scared to see Us (fair), but still want to know what happens in Jordan Peele’s latest (also fair), read on.

The next trap door in Jordan Peele’s mind of horror is open, and with it comes one of the most thought-provoking horror movies of our generation. Us , a film of terror dripping with moments of hilarity and insanity, opened to both box office and critical success this weekend.

Here’s a detailed plot description of what critics are calling a colossal cinematic achievement.

Us opens on a wide shot of a television screen. The year is 1986, and a Hands Across America commercial plays.

Cut to Adelaide (Madison Curry), a young girl vacationing with her parents in Santa Cruz. While at a seaside carnival, her father plays a game and wins Adelaide a Michael Jackson “Thriller” shirt. She puts on the baggy shirt immediately and follows in her parent’s shadows as they head to the next attraction.

Her father, distracted by yet another game, fails to notice as she wanders into an abandoned funhouse of mirrors. The funhouse is dark, isolated, and silent enough for Adelaide to hear a tune she whistles echo around her.

She suddenly bumps into a mirror and realizes that she is back to back with another young girl. Adelaide turns slowly. The reflection doesn’t immediately turn. When she finally does, there’s something sinister in the posture and eyes of the face looking back. Adelaide’s eyes bulge in fear.

In 2019, Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) cruises along a long road with her husband, Gabriel (Winston Duke), and two children, Jason (Evan Alex) and Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph). After a pit stop at their summer home, the family heads to the beach in Santa Cruz, something, based on her demeanor, Adelaide isn’t quite comfortable with.

As the family draws closer to their final destination, a ghost from the past makes an appearance:

A man holding a sign reading “Jeremiah 11:11” was present when Adelaide first walked into the funhouse more than twenty years ago. This time, the same man is being pushed into the back of an ambulance, dead and bloody.

Shortly after, the Wilsons make their way to the beach to join the Tylers, a white, upper-class family. Their relationship is strained, held together by the fact that their daughters are close in age and the father’s constant rivalry.

When Adelaide looks up to check on her children, she notices Jason is missing, and, for a quick second, all hell breaks loose.

While on his way to the bathroom, Jason sees a man dressed in a long trench coat with blood dripping from his fingers. He’s an omen of evil against a sunny backdrop.

Jason returns from the bathroom undisturbed and stumbles into the arms of his frightened mother. The family, having had enough adventure for one afternoon, decide to settle in for the night.

Back at home, with the lights out and their children in bed, Gabriel and Adelaide return to their own bedroom, each with different intentions in mind. Gabriel is ready for action. Adelaide stares out the window, twitchy, nervous.

In a scene told from Adelaide’s reflection in her home’s window, we learn how, after her time in the funhouse, she stopped speaking. Her parents, struggling through a rough patch, wonder if their child has PTSD and, if so, what she saw that caused such a fright.

Adelaide tells Gabriel it’s time for them to go home. Things are lining up. If they stay any longer, the little girl in the mirror will come back.

Gabriel struggles to believe her story, but the couple is interrupted when Jason tells them there’s a family standing in their driveway.

Outside, masked in shadows, a family stands with hands interlocked. Gabriel, always the comic-relief, attempts to persuade the family to leave, first with insults, then with a bat.

The family isn’t having it. They storm into the home, breaking Gabriel’s leg on the way, and forcing the Wilsons into the living room.

The Wilsons stare in terror as four haunting reflections, each with a pair of golden scissors, take over their home.

Red, who is Adelaide’s “doppelganger,” begins to tell a story.

She describes how there once was a girl and she had a shadow. Anything the girl did, the shadow was forced to mirror in much worse circumstances. We learn that, as life is above, so it is below. When Adelaide ate good meals, Red ate raw rabbit. When Adelaide met Gabriel and fell in love, Red met Abraham, a brutal man she did not love, and was forced to be with him. When Adelaide needed a c-section, Red was forced to cut her child from her body with her own hands.

When asked who they are, Red smiles.

“We are Americans,” she croaks.

The Wilsons, in intense scenes set in the dark of the night, are forced to fight their counterparts for their lives. Gabriel must face Abraham on a boat he bought for the trip.  Jason is forced into a closet with a burned, fire-loving version of himself. Zora, a cross-country star, must run to save her life.

All the while, Adelaide and Red stare at one another. They are two reflections becoming one.

The Wilsons are able to escape their doppelgangers, Gabriel having to kill Abraham with his beloved boat to escape.

Not too far away, the Tylers prepare for bed in their luxurious home. Josh (Tim Heidecker), laid back and unsuspecting of what is happening just a couple of miles away, is jolted from his night of relaxation when his wife, Kitty (Elisabeth Moss), says she heard a noise outside.

In a blink, the Tylers’ home is been taken over by their doppelgangers. Unlike the Wilsons, they are not given a chance to fight back. Every member of the Tyler family is brutally stabbed with scissors.

The Wilsons, unaware of what has just happened to the Tylers, approach their residence in seek of refuge.

Adelaide is yanked from the arms of her family into the Tylers’ home by the doppelgangers, and once again, it is kill or be killed.

With better teamwork and coordination skills than any family would be expected to have after meeting their doppelgangers, the Wilson’s kill the murderous version of their friends and gather to figure out what is happening around the world.

They turn on the news and see that doubles across the US have come out of the tunnels and sewers to kill. Only the Wilsons seem aware at this point that they are doubles killing their other halves. As they kill, they join hands across America

Confident that the only way to survive is to drive to Mexico, Adelaide packs her family into the Tyler’s new car and heads towards what she hopes is a brighter future.

The world, however, is filled with death. Abandoned cars litter streets and dead bodies hang from windows. And just when they think they’ve made it to safety, they approach an abandoned car in the middle of the road. Jason’s doppelganger, who has been following the car the entire time with Red, takes a match and lights the car and himself on fire.

Adelaide, suddenly consumed, screams for the boy. Meanwhile, Red snatches Jason and takes him underground.

In one of the greatest showdowns of the film, Adelaide travels underground to save her child and kill Red once and for all.

When she finds Red at a chalkboard in a classroom, Red describes who the doppelgangers are once again. This time, she explains how they were created by an unknown power to control the above people and are called the Tethered. They are clones, but they are forced to share a soul. Eventually abandoned and left alone forever, they were driven to insanity.

Red describes the moment she and Adelaide crossed path at the funhouse, saying she couldn’t understand why Adelaide didn’t take her with her. Then, she describes the moment everything changed for the Tethered. We see flashes of Adelaide dancing on stage gracefully. Below, in the tunnels, Red mimics the moves perfectly, gliding across the floor with ease.

The other Tethered, upon watching Red dance, realized she is different. Red would be the one to bring them from the darkness of the tunnels to light. The Tethered prepared for years for their chance to seek revenge, in an event Red plans around her Hands Across America t-shirt to be called the Untethering.

Now, with Adelaide firmly in her grasp, Red plans to kill her and live the life she should have been given.

With “I Got 5 On It” by Luniz heightened to a terrifying crescendo in the background, Adelaide and Red fight for their lives. Adelaide, stabbed and wounded, can hardly keep up with Red as she uses her dance skills to dodge all attacks.

Adelaide, high on the adrenaline of survival, finally lands a life-taking blow, causing Red to fall to the ground. As Red fades away, she begins to whistle what sounds like the tune sung by Adelaide in the funhouse. Before she can finish, Adelaide strangles her to death, shutting her Tethered side up forever.

Adelaide finds Jason hidden in a locker. When his mother tries to look him in the eyes, Jason stares at her in bewilderment. She comforts him by telling him that they are safe.

Outside, Gabriel and Zora are ecstatic to reunite with their family.

All appears well. Then we’re gifted with another flashback.

We’re taken back to 1986, back to the funhouse where the horror started.

The sinister young girl in the mirror reaches out and grabs the girl on the outside by the neck. She drags the bewildered young girl underground to the tunnels, stealing her shirt and escaping above ground.

Perhaps the biggest twist of the entire film, it is revealed that Red was the happy, young girl stolen from her family, and living above ground is Red’s true Tethered half.

Back in 2019, Jason stares knowingly at his mother as she drives toward their new lives.

His mother, possibly aware of his attentiveness, smiles a bit.

Next. All your questions about Us, answered. dark

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, trolls world tour.

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If the original “ Trolls ” was about the uniting power of music, “Trolls: World Tour” is about the uniting power of bright colors and constant distraction. It is aggressive in its assault on the kiddie senses. Of course, no one comes to a non-stop movie like this for subtlety, but you also don’t necessarily expect to feel you like you dunked your head in a bucket of Skittles either. The operating aesthetic appears to be turning everything about the original movie up to 11, and it should work particularly well for kids who haven’t been able to leave the house in a few weeks, even if adults may find its “what if a bulk candy store were a movie” aesthetic exhausting. They may also wish it paused a beat every now and then to do something smarter or deeper instead of just skipping like a stone across the surface of the glittery pond. But it’s not really a movie for them. It’s a movie for the kids to watch after overdosing on Easter candy, and there’s something to be said for watching a movie this unapologetically bright in a world that feels pretty dark right now.

The stars of the original, Poppy ( Anna Kendrick ) and Branch ( Justin Timberlake ), are really just along for the ride in a film designed to shove as many new troll characters at young viewers as possible. It turns out there used to be six different musical tribes of trolls—Pop, Rock, Classical, Funk, Techno, and Country. Years ago, they each ran away with their once-united musical strings and formed their own neighboring societies, but now Rock, led by the aggro version of Poppy in Queen Barb ( Rachel Bloom ), is trying to take back all of the music for herself, rampaging across the troll kingdom and stealing the other five strings to form one guitar to rule them all. Poppy is first convinced that she can reason with Barb but she is soon caught up in the Rock Queen’s quest for power in ways that make her realize not everyone wants to sing along to Cyndi Lauper .

Of course, the plot here is really just an excuse to introduce kids to new kinds of trolls that can be spun off into their own toys and maybe even a Netflix original series. And it’s hard to be too Scrooge-like on a film that understands that the King and Queen of the Funk Troll tribe should legally be voiced by George Clinton and Mary J. Blige , or that gives Ozzy Osbourne the chance to voice the Patriarch of the Rock tribe. There’s strong voice work throughout “Trolls: World Tour” that also includes Sam Rockwell and Kelly Clarkson as Country Trolls. And Kendrick and Timberlake are immensely likable again, just as you'd expect. Unlike a lot of major animated blockbusters, no one here is phoning it in. They’re all on the same page, even if that page is basically “wooooooo!”

There are also admittedly some strong visuals at play throughout “Trolls: World Tour,” including settings that feel more inspired by stop-motion animation than modern computer-animated fare. It’s a film designed to keep viewers of all ages from drifting back to the real world in any conceivable way. Here’s a new kind of troll! A new world! A new song! A new voice you’re going to recognize! "Who Let the Dogs Out?"! This is one of the most hyperactive films ever made, and most people of a certain age won't really care that this hyper-speed doesn't really allow for enough humor or really depth of any kind. The final act tries for heart, of course, but it doesn’t really connect, and the film is surprisingly just not that funny. It’s too constantly busy to be funny. There are new trolls to meet and new places to go! No time for jokes!

Ultimately, it comes down to what one should expect from a film like “Trolls: World Tour.” Setting aside my own moral issues with a film in which the heroes sing LMFAO and the villains sing The Scorpions, I found myself legitimately asking myself how to judge “Trolls: World Tour.” Yes, it could have been funnier and it could have been smarter. Undeniably. But it often looks great, it often sounds great, and it achieves its main goal of delivering a sugar rush to a world in great need of some intense joy right now. How this pandemic is impacting children who feel their parents’ anxiety—as well as just miss the escape of seeing their friends at school every day—is a story that hasn’t really been written yet. If those kids can get a break from the scariness of the real world by dipping their head in a bucket of cinematic Skittles for 90 minutes, what harm could that possibly do?

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film credits.

Trolls World Tour (2020)

Rated PG for some mild rude humor.

Anna Kendrick as Poppy (voice)

Justin Timberlake as Branch (voice)

Rachel Bloom as Barb (voice)

James Corden as Biggie (voice)

Ron Funches as Cooper (voice)

Kelly Clarkson as Delta Dawn (voice)

Anderson .Paak as Prince D (voice)

Sam Rockwell as Hickory (voice)

George Clinton as King Quincy (voice)

Mary J. Blige as Queen Essence (voice)

Kenan Thompson as Tiny Diamond (voice)

Ozzy Osbourne as King Thrash (voice)

Co-director

• David P. Smith

Writer (story by)

• Jonathan Aibel
• Glenn Berger
• Maya Forbes
• Wallace Wolodarsky
• Elizabeth Tippet
• Nick Fletcher
• Theodore Shapiro

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Trolls World Tour

• View history

Trolls World Tour (also known as Trolls 2: World Tour or just Trolls 2 ) is a 2020 American 3D computer-animated musical comedy film, the sequel to the 2016 film Trolls , and the second film in the DreamWorks Trolls franchise. It was directed by Walt Dohrn with co-direction by David P. Smith , produced by Gina Shay , and written by Jonathan Aibel , Glenn Berger , Elizabeth Tippet , Maya Forbes and Wallace Wolodarsky . The film stars Anna Kendrick , Justin Timberlake , Rachel Bloom , James Corden , Ron Funches , Kelly Clarkson , Anderson .Paak , Sam Rockwell , George Clinton and Mary J. Blige .'

The film was first given a sneak preview at the Licensing Expo 2019. [6] Produced as the 38th full-length animated feature by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures, it was set to be theatrically released in the United States on April 10, 2020, [7] but due to the COVID-19 pandemic , it was released on digital platforms instead. It was later decided to release the movie on demand. As the pandemic receded, the film was released back in regular movie theatres.

It involves Poppy and Branch as they discover some new Troll tribes that represent the music genres aside from their own tribe. The film also focuses on an event named "Queen Barb's Rock World Tour", of which the title " Trolls World Tour " is a reference to.

The movie had a number of trademarks registered in addition, dated from 6/4/2019.

A sequel titled " Trolls Band Together " is set to be released in November 17, 2023 [8] , but official production and concept development remain ambiguous. [9] Justin Timberlake claimed in April 2020 that they wish to make a total of seven Trolls movies, which made a third Trolls movie highly likely. [10]

• 3.1 Main Voices
• 3.2 Additional Voices
• 3.3 Unused Voices
• 5.2 Software Usage
• 5.3 Character Development
• 5.4 Plot Changes/Scene Deletions
• 5.5 World Building
• 6.1 Promotional Songs
• 6.2.1 Movie
• 6.2.2 Ending Credits
• 6.3 Soundtrack
• 6.4 Cut/Deleted Songs
• 7 Success and Critical Response
• 8 Awards & Accolades
• 10.1 Trolls: Holiday in Harmony
• 10.2 Trolls: TrollsTopia
• 10.3 Home Video Releases
• 10.5 Toys & Games
• 10.6 Cosmetics
• 10.7 Food & Beverages
• 11 Etymology
• 12 Cultural References
• 13 Continuity
• 15 Taglines
• 16.1 Official Trailers
• 16.2 Music Videos/Credits
• 16.3 Movie Clips
• 16.4 Clip Compilations
• 16.5 Behind the Scenes
• 16.6 Interviews
• 16.7 International and TV Spots
• 16.8 Promotional Videos
• 16.9 How to Draw + Crafts
• 16.10 Commercials
• 17 References
• 18 External Links

It's all glitter and happiness in Troll Village until Queen Poppy and Branch make a surprising discovery - there are other Troll species beyond their own, each defined by a different genre of music. When a mysterious threat puts all the Trolls across the land in danger, Poppy, Branch, and their band of friends must embark on an epic quest through unfamiliar terrain to do the impossible: create harmony among the diverse Trolls to unite them against certain doom.

The movie begins at Techno Reef , where the Techno Trolls gather for a massive rave as their leader King Trollex is about to drop his latest song One More Time . After the song drops and the Techno Trolls enjoy their music, a shadow approaches in the distance.

King Trollex stops the party and approaches by himself. Queen Barb of the Rock Trolls greets him, and tells him to hand over the Techno String . When Trollex refuses to do so, she and her Rock Trolls attack. They send the Techno Trolls flying and destroy Trollex's DJ booth. To try and limit the damage and preserve his peoples' vibe, Trollex agrees to hand the String. Barb tells him that when she's done, they're all going to have the same vibe.

At Troll Village , Queen Poppy begins her morning routine and starts singing Trolls Wanna Have Good Times , the Trolls ' morning medley. During this, Branch starts to think about taking his and Poppy's relationship to the next level and states he just has to get the guts to tell her she is the one. He joins in the medley. During the medley, Poppy and her friends witness the birth of Tiny Diamond , Guy Diamond 's newborn son who turns out to be a Hip hop Troll . The medley continues as the Trolls now celebrate his birth.

At the end of the medley, Poppy and Branch see everyone off about their day. Branch then tries to talk to Poppy and tell her how he feels but he can't say the words, Poppy ends up revealing that she considers him a friend. The word "friend" echoes in his mind and he zones out. Trying to make up for it, the two try and high-five each other but fail, though Poppy then succeeds with Fuzzbert .

Their attention is turned to Biggie , who's being attacked by a bat . Poppy takes it away from him but now has it in her hair. Branch calms the bat down and attention is drawn to a message it was carrying. Poppy reads about a big event Queen Barb of the Rock Trolls is hosting and to bring the Strings. An anxious King Peppy takes the message from her and attempts to destroy it, but Branch calms him down. Peppy explains that other Trolls besides them exist, and they're called "Pop Trolls". This makes sense to them, and they all nod in agreement. Poppy wants to hear more about the other Trolls, but Peppy explains that they're very different from them, while Cooper takes note of Peppy's words about there being different Trolls. He causes the entire village to freak out when he says some don't understand the concept of "Hammertime".

The group breaks down to Poppy and The Snack Pack members. Peppy explains that in the beginning, everything was boring until a Troll made a note that caught everyone's attention. This was the start of the Trolls love for music and they took six Strings, one for each type of music: Techno, Funk, Classical, Country, Hard Rock and Pop. Then over time, arguments broke out over their differences leading to arguments. The Tribes' elders decided it was best each Tribe took a string and go their separate ways, and ever since the Tribes have been isolated from each other.

Peppy shows them the String, which he explains has a lot of power. Peppy wants to run and hide while Poppy wants to go meet Barb, whom she thinks is trying to unite the Trolls again. Peppy and Poppy get into a row over what is best. Later that night, Poppy goes to sneak out in Sheila Balloon , but is caught by Branch. Cooper hears them talking and watches from a nearby bush. Poppy unties the balloon and starts to float away. Branch is unable to just let her go, so he jumps into the balloon. After they leave, Cooper realizes one of the Trolls looks just like him; he leaves Pop Village to find them.

The next morning, Barb leaves the Ocean and arrives onshore singing Crazy Train . She nips into her Angler Bus and shows off the Techno String. She places it into her guitar, converting it to the Rock String's power. As she sits down, she thinks her father King Thrash is missing, but it turns out that he's just in the toilet. As he leaves, she explains to the senile old Troll the plan to get the Strings and play the Ultimate Power Chord. The Old King goes to do the Rock hand gesture, but needs Riff 's help to finish it.

Poppy and Branch try to fly the balloon, but the manual is big and Poppy tries to learn without it, which leads Sheila to tell her to stop. They discover Biggie has stowed away on the Balloon, hidden under the cotton candy Poppy brought with her, since Mr. Dinkles was attracted to it. Poppy explains they're going to help Barb unite the Trolls.

As they approach Symphonyville , they discover that Barb has already arrived ahead of them and everything is in ruins. Pennywhistle , the sole survivor, tells them that Barb took their string from Trollzart and all the Classical Trolls , leaving nothing left behind - they lost everything. Poppy comes to the realization Barb wants to destroy all music. Biggie freaks out over this, so Poppy does a Pinky Promise that no matter what she will protect him.

Meanwhile, as they leave the mountains, Barb's bat "Debbie" returns to her owner, carrying a reply from Poppy and having been given a makeover to the horror of Barb herself. Barb reads Poppy's message saying she hopes to be best friends with Barb, but Barb doesn't understand how someone can be friends as it takes years to form a friendship. Just then, a glitter bomb goes off in Barb face, and Barb has a rant about Pop music. When her father starts to sing the Pop song from the message, Barb has had enough and brings in the Bounty Hunters Chaz the Smooth Jazz Troll , Tresillo and his reggaeton Trolls , The K-Pop Gang and The Yodellers . She explains that she plans to make Rock the dominant music, but will spare whoever brings her Queen Poppy and let them have a tiny territory, stressing to Tresillo when he comments on the size that's the offer. Only the Yodellers didn't show to the meeting, but Barb is confident they'll bring in Poppy as she burns Poppy's message.

The Pop Trio arrive at Lonesome Flats , home of the Country Trolls . At first, there is no one around, but high noon hits and the mayor, Delta Dawn , appears singing Born to Die , which brings out all the Country Trolls. Poppy comments that the song is sad. Branch likes it, but Poppy thinks they don't know that music is supposed to make them happy. Delta feels sorry for the trio as they "look like they were beaten up by a rainbow", and isn't bothered by them. Poppy attempts to cheer them up by singing a medley that covers all the most important songs. Soon the three find themselves alone as the Country Trolls hide from their music.

Delta throws the three in jail for "Crimes against music". When Poppy warns Delta about Barb, Delta isn't worried about her. Poppy has to face that some Trolls don't want to have fun and Branch tries to cheer her up. They begin "plan B", and Branch and Biggie start to dig their way out with the intent to return home. Hickory abruptly shows up and busts the trio out. They escape on the Jail door as Delta, Clampers Buttonwillow , Growley Pete and a number of other Country Trolls give chase.

The four Trolls ride over the edge of a ravine to escape Delta. After falling into the river below, Delta is annoyed that they escaped. The four Trolls survive the fall into the river, with Mr. Dinkles being pulled back from a near-death experience by Biggie. Branch has questions as to why their new friend helped. Hickory explains he didn't think it was fair they rushed to discriminate against the Pop Trolls. He builds them a boat to make getting to the Funk Trolls faster.

During the river journey, Branch wonders in mistrust about Hickory, but Poppy is fine with him and wonders if Branch is questioning her judgement. As the Trolls settle for the evening, Chaz attacks. The three Pop Trolls are put under a trance and when they snap out of it, they're tied up. Hickory kicks Chaz off the boat, thus saving them as he put gumdrops in his ears to block out the noise of Chaz's smooth jazz music. Biggie freaks out as it's clear Poppy cannot keep them safe, thus breaking her Pinky Promise. He leaves to head back to Pop Village.

Meanwhile, Cooper is lost in the desert and tries to drink from a mirage. He snaps out as he's taken by a strange force.

On the river, Hickory sings I Fall to Pieces and confronts Branch over his obvious feelings for Poppy. Branch notes he tried to tell her how he felt about her but failed. Hickory notes of the two of them that Branch is doing all the listening, thus she may not even hear him right now. They come across a large object in the sky and are taken by a bubble beam, with Branch and Hickory landing hits on each other as they try to fight it.

The three arrive in the flying city of Vibe City , and are greeted by a Funk Troll whom they think is Cooper. He turns out to be Prince D , Cooper's twin brother. Cooper introduces them to King Quincy and Queen Essence , his parents. When D states he's half-Hip Hop, Poppy questions her map, which D comments is likely out of date. Branch notes it still has Disco on it. When Poppy speaks about how they're all alike, Quincy states they're not. Poppy suggests to combine their efforts, with Quincy stating that they'll do anything but that.

They then reveal the true history of the Strings. Prince D sings It's All Love (History of Funk) and explains that in the past, what broke the Tribes up was the Pop Trolls themselves. The Pop Trolls stole the six strings to play only remixes of all the other music. The other Trolls finally got their Strings back, but the damage was done and everyone no longer trusted that this wouldn't happen again, so they split.

When the song finishes, Quincy and Essence explains that denying their differences would be denying who the truth of who they are. Poppy comments they hadn't thought about this. The alarm goes off and the Funk Trolls prepare for battle as Rock has arrived. Cooper sends his friends on their way to protect them, despite Poppy's plea to let them help. As the trio leaves, the Funk Trolls are plunged into darkness as Riff pulls the plug on their lights.

As the trio float away from Vibe City, they see the Rock Trolls arriving and Poppy wants to go back. Branch finally puts his foot down and tells Poppy its time to go home. Poppy defends herself as wanting to prove she is a good queen, but Branch points out a good queen listens and she has not been, not to her father, not to Biggie, not to Quincy and not even to him. He has backed her up throughout the journey even when she was wrong. He replies he heard back there that differences do matter - like them.

As their bubble lands and bursts, the two have a fight and Branch leaves for home and abandons Poppy, stating as he departs that she's the most important person to him right now. Sad, Branch begins to sing Perfect For Me , a song in the vein of the Country Trolls' sad style. Poppy joins in despite them being far apart at this point. When Branch finishes the song, The K-Pop Gang arrive and capture him. They demand he takes them to Poppy, but Tresillo and his Reggaeton Trolls interfere. The two groups can't live without their music and dance off against each other for Branch. Branch stops them and makes a proposal.

Poppy meanwhile reflects on her thoughts with the String. She puts it away when Hickory arrives, but in her despair at the situation accidentally pulls it out in front of Hickory. It is then revealed Hickory, along with his brother Dickory have been pretending to be a Country Troll together to get close to Poppy. Dickory tries to take the String while Hickory attempts to help Poppy. Their yodelling grabs Barb's attention, and Poppy is snatched by Carol and another Rock Troll. Dickory hands Barb the Pop String and Barb confronts her worry, commenting on how short Poppy is compared to her and how she didn't know why she was worried about her. As the two interact, Barb reveals she has already attacked Pop Village.

Biggie arrives at the village, and finds the surviving members of The Snack Pack. They make costumes and attempt to break into the Rock Trolls' home to rescue Poppy. During their intrusion though, Sid Fret and another Rock Troll catch them. The group convinces them that they're also Rock Trolls, but this lands them into Barb's backup band. Smidge comments "We're screwed".

Elsewhere, Barb brags to Poppy about how she's basically won and asks if Poppy enjoys being Barb's best friend as a mockery of Poppy's earlier message, Poppy comments they are not friends. Barb reflects that as a Queen she's used to hearing people, telling her what she wants to hear and not really being friends. She puts the Pop String in the guitar and comments she'll play the Ultimate Power Chord, then Poppy will see what happens.

On stage, Barb sings Barracuda while The Snack Pack pretends to play along in fear, while Peppy and the Funk twins are hurried forward to the front. When attention is drawn to them, Biggie smashes a guitar shouting "Barracuda" and it seems to get attention off of them. Barb then introduces the Trolls to their former leaders, calling Pop "the worst of all". As Barb goes to play the Ultimate Power Chord and hit Poppy with the power of her guitar, she is hit with the balloon manual as Shelia Balloon appears carrying Branch, the K-Pop Gang and the Reggaeton Trolls. This proves to be a temporary setback as Barb begins to play again. Branch swings over to Poppy and throws himself in the way, where he was a large boulder falls to the ground. When it smashes open, Branch has been converted into a Rock Zombie.

Barb is hooked up to an Angler Bus and flies around the stage converting the other leaders into Rock Zombies. She turns back to Poppy who has opened her cage, she gets Branch to use his mullet to grab her and then hits Poppy with the Power Chord. At first it appears as though Poppy is converted, Barb hands her the Guitar so she can convert Peppy and the Funk Twins, the final members of the leaders' family, but Poppy turns to face Barb. Poppy used gumdrops to protect herself from Barb's Power Chord. Poppy tells Barb that she won't let anyone else be converted. Riff interrupts and speaks up against Barb, questioning how anyone could know they're cool if they all look the same, as some of the Rock Trolls see Poppy and Riff's point of the outlook and agree.

Poppy also tells Barb that a good queen listens and that real harmony takes a lot of different voices. She proceeds to destroy the guitar, snapping the Strings and reverting Branch, Queen Essence, King Quincy, Trollex, Delta Dawn and Trollzart, and her Rock Zombie appearances back to their normal selves. However, every Troll becomes grey in the process as the music fades from every Troll present, and with them the Trolls have lost all music, including rock. When Poppy goes to make sure Branch is okay after he was reverted from his Rock Zombie form, Barb witnesses in horror that the Strings have been destroyed as they fade away. Barb then puts the blame on Poppy, stating history has repeated itself with Pop ruining everything once again. Depressed, the Trolls take a moment to let it sit and face the fact that their music is gone, but Cooper feels a beat within him as he realizes that music is still in his now-glowing pink heart.

As Cooper uses a microphone to amplify the rhythmic heartbeat for everyone to hear, his brother Prince D begins to make a hook beatboxing sound as he joins in, with all the other Trolls witnessing this. Queen Essence notes that her sons are making music; Delta Dawn feels the beat with her lit-up heart as she begins to clap and stomp her feet along to the melody, who then turns to her Country Trolls who also join in. The beat continues as everyone's hearts light up while the Trolls begin a simple background harmony in unison. Essence states Barb can't take their music from them, while Quincy states that while it all started with the Strings, it now comes from within themselves. As the other Troll tribes vocalize melodically with all their hearts lit, Trollex says the music comes from their experiences, Delta adds their lives, and Essence adds their culture; Trollzart simply calls the harmony beautiful. Poppy finally understands the thing she hasn't grasped about differences, knowing Barb can't take away the music that is within all of them.

Now knowing that differences matter after all, Poppy steps forward and begins singing the song Just Sing . She's soon joined by Branch, both becoming the first to regain their colors. Barb asks Thrash what's happening, to which he replies that she must let everyone be what they want to be, as he plays music and regains his colors too. As Poppy and Branch continue singing, the other Tribe leaders join one by one; every Troll slowly recolors as they join in, until Barb is the sole remaining grey Troll. Near the end of the song, Barb finally joins, as she plays her guitar in which she recolors, her hair becoming rainbow-colored as she accepts other Trolls' music with the help of her father . Poppy's hair also colors up with rainbow colors, with the Trolls now united at last.

The song ends with all leaders standing side by side and an united Troll Kingdom. When Poppy said to Peppy that she should've listened to what he had to say and not run off, they settle their differences on the earlier row and he take pride in raising a strong and self-confident daughter, proclaiming himself as a "genius" parent. Meanwhile, Poppy tells Barb now she isn't forcing her and she'd like to be friends with her and Barb finally agrees. In the meantime, Branch concurs with Poppy and confesses his love to her, to which she states back she loves him too; the pair finally do a connected high-five, which begins their relationship as more than just friends. As the camera pans out, the pair can be seen kissing.

Back at Pop Village, Poppy tells the new version of Troll history on how their ancestors were wrong to young Trolls from each Tribe. She's joined by Branch as she says you can't harmonize alone. The two depart and the Pop Village celebration begins. The leaders of the Trolls interact, have fun, and Prince D and Branch sing Don't Slack . During the party, Cloud Guy meets a female cloud; they propose and then have a family. The song ends with Poppy and Branch riding into the sky, Debbie following them.

In the closing mid-credits scene, King Gristle Jr. and Bridget appear, having missed the Trolls' party.

Main Voices

• Anna Kendrick as Queen Poppy
• Justin Timberlake as Branch
• Rachel Bloom as Queen Barb
• James Corden as Biggie
• Ron Funches as Cooper
• Kelly Clarkson as Delta Dawn
• Anderson .Paak as Prince Darnell
• Sam Rockwell as Hickory
• George Clinton as King Quincy
• Mary J. Blige as Queen Essence
• Kenan Thompson as Tiny Diamond
• Kunal Nayyar as Guy Diamond
• Aino Jawo as Satin
• Caroline Hjelt as Chenille
• J Balvin as Tresillo
• Flula Borg as Dickory
• Ester Dean as Legsly
• Jamie Dornan as Chaz
• Gustavo Dudamel as Wolfgang Amadeus Trollzart
• Ozzy Osbourne as King Thrash
• Anthony Ramos as King Trollex
• Karan Soni as Riff
• Charlyne Yi as Pennywhistle
• Yeri as Kim-Petit
• Irene as Baby Bun
• Seulgi as Gomdori
• Wendy as Wani
• Zooey Deschanel as Bridget
• Christopher Mintz-Plasse as King Gristle Jr.
• Kevin Michael Richardson as Mr. Dinkles
• Walt Dohrn as Cloud Guy , Metal Mr. Dinkles , Fuzzbert , King Peppy and Smidge

Additional Voices

• Walt Dohrn as the Announcer, the Country Music Baby and the Country Music Farmer
• David P. Smith as the Country Music Rooster, the Desert Sun, the Eighth Goat, Licky Bug and the Scrapbook Troll
• Kevin Michael Richardson as the Mr. Dinkles God, Growley Pete and Sid Fret
• Da'Vine Joy Randolph as Bliss Marina and Sheila Balloon
• Justin McElroy as Techno Beat Drop Button , the Tumbleweed and Skyscraper
• Griffin McElroy as the Country Music Tear and Skyscraper
• Travis McElroy as the Hard Rock Tear and Skyscraper
• Betsy Sodaro as Clampers Buttonwillow
• Marcella Lentz-pope as Carol
• Berenice Amador as Marimba
• Jamila Hache as Tambora

Unused Voices

The following are the voice actors either mentioned by DreamWorks or related to the movie who were thought or meant to appear. They're listed to confirm their status:

• Chance the Rapper was meant to have had a voice role, which was announced in November 2019. However, his name isn't featured in the movie's credits. [11] It was later confirmed he was meant to have originally done the role of Prince D. [12] Chance was announced at the same time as Sam Rockwell in May 2018. [13]
• Gwen Stefani was cited by early reactions to be returning as DJ Suki . However, DreamWorks never confirmed her name in any related promotional material themselves. No information has since appeared to confirm if she was ever in the voice cast. [14] To date, the only evidence that Stefani was meant to return is the Stylin' DJ Suki doll. In addition, Trolls: TrollsTopia , whose first season was originally complete and ready to release 5 days after Trolls World Tour 's release, features DJ.

On February 28, 2017, Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Animation announced a sequel to Trolls , with Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake reprising their respective roles as Poppy and Branch. [15]

In May 2017, podcasters The McElroy Brothers began campaigning for roles in the film via a podcast titled "The McElroy Brothers Will Be in Trolls 2". Following the campaign's success, DreamWorks confirmed in September 2018 that the brothers would make cameo appearances in Trolls World Tour . [16]

The film saw the additions of Sam Rockwell, Chance the Rapper, Anthony Ramos, Jamie Dornan, Karan Soni and Flula Borg to the cast in May 2018. James Corden, Icona Pop, Ron Funches, and Kunal Nayyar were also announced to reprise their roles. [17] On June 12, 2018, the film was retitled as Trolls World Tour . [18] In October 2018, it was confirmed that Kelly Clarkson had joined the cast, and will perform an original song. [19]

In June 2019, along with promotional posters, new cast members have been announced, which include J Balvin, Mary J. Blige, Rachel Bloom, George Clinton, Ester Dean and Gustavo Dudamel. [20] In June 20, 2019, the film's first official trailer was released online and on the DreamWorksTV's official YouTube channel. A second trailer was released on November 15, 2019.

Alongside Timberlake, Clarkson, .Paak, Blige and Clinton, songs were provided by Chris Stapleton and SZA.

On March 7, 2019, trademarks were placed on Trolls World Tour for books and magazines , clothing , toys, games and playthings , entertainment and prerecorded videos .

The film's third and final trailer was released online on March 7, 2020.

In an interview with Walt Dohrn, he noted that as soon as the film was over, the crew had been bittersweet about its completion, as they wanted to work on the sequel straight away. [21]

A note related to the development cycle of the film is that at the time Trolls: The Beat Goes On! was dealing with the Party Crashers storyline arch. There was a consequence of the film's production on the story arc, which caused a temporary pause at one point. This was because of Trolls World Tour being supposed to introduce new Troll Tribes, which limited what Trolls: The Beat Goes On! could do with the Party Crashers storyline. [22]

The marking custom animation to promote the film was provided from Minimo VFX & Jellyfish Pictures , who would do the animation for Spirit Untamed and have produced assets for The Boss Baby: Family Business and The Bad Guys .

Trolls World Tour was digitally released on video streaming platforms on April 10, 2020. The movie was also released in Digital HD on June 23, 2020, and on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD on July 7, 2020. The movie was also available to stream on the streaming service Peacock. [23]

Development

The main theme of Trolls World Tour is "differences" and how different people lead very different lives. As a result, some of the underlining themes are much darker and sinister than in Trolls . [24] The intention, however, was not to start out as purposely making a movie on cultural appropriation from the start. [25]

Each Tribe represents a different music, and thus a different culture and race of Trolls. Although they're all "Trolls", they're not all the same. Each Troll Tribe has its own look, behavior and music genre preferences, as well as reactions to life in general. The Trolls' music is used as a means to represent cultures getting along with each other, which is a reference to real-life cultures and their problems.

The main reactions to each Troll culture are represented by the two Queens Barb and Poppy. They have very extreme, but opposing points of views on their world. Poppy's inability to comprehend things that don't fit in her worldview results in her being unable to understand just how different they are; she experiences a culture shock when meeting other Trolls. Poppy wants to save them all, but her issues with understanding the different cultures get in the way. Meanwhile, Barb doesn't care, as she puts value of her own over the others, and thus wants to take away what they have and failing to understand how differences make things more interesting. While Poppy believes different music should unite the Trolls, Barb thinks that divides them, and the only way to get them united is all of them sharing the same music genre. As the film goes on, the differences of the different Trolls put strain even on the basics of Poppy's relationships, and even Branch questions their friendship when he finally speaks against her.

Barb's own campaign for world domination leaves her convinced she's correct, and the actions of her and her Rock Trolls are somewhat zealous. This referenced the fact that the writers had grown up among the Rock culture of the 1980s, where wearing something like a Judas Priest shirt would have made the wearer say "This is who I am."; this formed the basis of how the Rock Trolls acted. [25]

Some of the comments that Trolls make in the film are also real-life comments. It's common for Rock and Metal fans to criticize modern music, such as claiming that EDM is "not real music", while citing Rock and Metal as examples of real music. Likewise, Classical can be viewed as "boring" to many. All of Barb's comments during her temper tantrum at Poppy are real criticisms towards Pop music. Genres under the classification of "Techno" are often criticized as unreal music because of their lack of actual instruments, mostly relying on machines to do all the work, which results in just "bleeps and bloops". Meanwhile, sad songs are often criticized for being depressing, such as those exampled by Born to Die , as some people prefer music that's uplifting and gives good feelings. These criticisms the Trolls make at each other's music are a reflection of actual music fans and their criticisms at fans of other genres; it's used to reflect how people criticize others living against their own.

Smaller themes include history being written by the winners, as the Pop Trolls of the past hadn't accurately recorded their own involvement in the initial splitting of the Tribes. This was apparently kept in the script from early throughout production, as a means of showing a teenager growing up and realizing that what they had learned from their parents and culture was fake. The realization to the characters was real and powerful. [25]

Another small theme was making promises, such as the Pinky Promise when Poppy can't actually see it through.

For Barb and the Rock Trolls, their disdain towards Pop Trolls is a form of "ancestry shaming", wherein current living individuals are treated based on their ancestors' actions.

Though made in passing comment as a joke, the fact Disco Trolls may have once existed and have since gone extinct has also been noted as one of the many other darker tones of the movie, as it implies that entire subcultures of Trolls have disappeared over time.

Software Usage

The film was made and rendered using DreamWorks own software rending engine, as DreamWorks uses its own in-house software.

The fuzz was generated afterwards using an effect in MoonRay Render. [26]

The data for the production of the film was exchanged via a partnership with NetApp solutions, DreamWorks has been using this software for over 20 years, as it provides a number of services including cloud file exchange and storage for their files. The service had to provide DreamWorks with access to 1,200TB of file storage space and used nearly half a billion files, of which all were to be accessible and used by the creators of the movie. [27]

The hair of each Troll was created with several new tools, including ImportDrawOver and SketchCurve to render each curve of hair, along with another tool named Z-Depth Push , which was developed to handle positive and negative Z-depths relative to the camera. The movie made use of a number of custom cameras in conjunction with these tools to capture the right angles and depth. SketchCurve was used for scenes where hair was wrapped around targets, such as the scene where Poppy captures Debbie in Pop Village. Z-Depth Push allowed the rendering of the Strings whenever they were placed on Barb's guitar to be rendered in the correct 3D space. Certain stylers were modified to accomodate to the new features, such as Barb's mohawk transformation near the end of Just Sing , which used the Kink , Clump and Contract stylers. Funk Troll characters, mainly King Quincy and Queen Essence , needed a custom CurveJiggle tool to aid their rendering, handle the many individual segments and layers for their bodies, and control the bouncing in their movement. The Reggaeton Trolls had a handling different to that of other Trolls in order to help with their mesh and movements. [28]

A reading software was also developed, which read the data without allowing copying of it, improving rendering speed and using up less processing in the making. Overall, the movie was a more technically advanced than Trolls , and used some of the most advanced rendering tools at the time for its fur and fuzz details. [29]

Character Development

Impact of Technology on Character Development

Due to the changes in technology, a simple port of old model designs from Trolls wasn't completely possible. The team also made adjustments to Poppy's facial design. Just to make her eyes bigger changed a lot, especially as Walt Dohrn and David P. Smith are traditional artists. The characters in Trolls World Tour have more flexibility in their models, and move more like traditional cartoon characters rather than modern CGI ones. [21] The crew had to work with a lot of new models and import a lot of old ones into the new software. [30]

It was mentioned that a lot of scenes were fully animated, but to create a "snap" effect, frames were deleted to get a smooth yet instant effect. [31] Another cheat in scenes is when Poppy high-fives Branch after "Just Sing"; though she appears to motion many steps, she only took 5 in reality. The illusion of distance was created using zooming effects and glares. [32] The decision was made to turn off blur after the early trailers, which the film greatly benefitted from. [33]

Character Changes

The following Trolls had their names changed:

• Queen Essence was originally named "Mama Bootsy".
• Riff was going to be named "Spyke".
• Chaz was originally named "Jax the Smooth Jazzer".
• In addition, the name "Carol" was originally assigned for a child Rock Troll, who was later renamed Amp . "Carol" was later given to an adult Rock Troll .
• Clampers Buttonwillow was originally named "Chompers".
• Tadd was originally called "Coral Blush"; all the merchandise carried this name except The Art of DreamWorks Trolls World Tour which was never given a full release.

Tadd and his family weren't green, but instead both his father and him were blue while his mother was pink. Bliss Marina was also a generic blue Random Troll . Likewise, King Trollex had a green hoop around his neck and some slight color changes. The Techno Trolls were meant to be semi see-through, which is still referenced in some merchandise. " Crunch " was a name given to a Rock Troll, who appears to have been switched for Sid Fret late into development.

Concept art for Cooper at all stages of his life was created, but never used. His brother Prince D at one point looked more like him, just with a golden cap, a blue goatee, and golden rings in his dreads. In the final movie version, Darnell doesn't have a cap at all, has less gold rings in his hair and completely lacks a goatee. Also, the Funk Trolls were meant to be ruled by a single giant King. In the movie, Cooper met a pair of Jazz birds , which went through a number of design changes. In concept art, he met actual Trolls, dressed in a classy manner. [34]

King Thrash looked more like his voice actor Ozzy Osbourne at one stage, as seen in a cut scene animatic.

Ancient Trolls resembling cavemen were also conceptualized, but not used in the film either.

In concept art as well, the K-Pop Trolls looked very different to their final film versions, while the Reggaeton Trolls remained mostly the same. Some of the rejected concepts for the K-Pop Trolls included both male and female Trolls. They also had a more oriental appearance. [35]

Barb's face is particularly unique among the Trolls. Part of the "The Sound of Silence" scene was meant to test out how she would interact with Poppy and that her assets were working. Her head was initially so large that it caused issues with her face and had to be scaled down by 10%. [30]

Characterization

The movie brings to question Poppy's character from the first film, addressing the issue of what makes a good leader. In Trolls and Trolls Holiday , Poppy was shown to do her own thing and not to listen to Branch. Finally, this comes to a head when it causes her problems as Queen, as she fails to hear what others have to say. When Hickory joins her group of travelling friends, he makes it worst by telling her what she wants to hear and thus causing her to further ignore Branch and Biggie who are travelling with her. She pursues her quest even though it's going badly, and her people and friendships are strained as a result. Later, Poppy's inability to listen is used against Barb when Barb was forced to acknowledge or ignore Riff when he spoke up against her plans, as Poppy throws the lesson she has had to learn at Barb.

Branch's character was carried over from the first movie, and he has growing feelings for Poppy. Originally, he pair would have been more aware of the reaction to them both denying a relationship with each other. Instead, Poppy remained ignorant of the Branch's feelings for most of the movie.

Plot Changes/Scene Deletions

The storyline's plot begun with the writers asking how to make their world bigger, and they played with the idea of there being other kinds of Trolls that specialize in music. Some ideas were brainstormed, which had both big and small "troll-town" ideas. The idea of the Pop Trolls being a secondary villain in Trolls World Tour had been taken from the idea that people didn't know The Beatles and Elvis Presley had taken ideas from other singers before them. [25] The plot was written over the course of 3 years after the basis was sorted. [21]

Another issue the movie faced was repeating themselves, especially with plot and gags. While it's fine that Guy Diamond farted glitter in the first film, repeating this joke was avoided in the second. [21]

In early promotional material released before the movie itself did, Barb's reason for going after the Strings was because she was jealous the Pop Trolls' popularity and success, and wanted to end their dominance. This was changed at some point before the movie's release, but references to this can be found in very early 2020 merchandise. The Strings weren't always part of the movie's plot, and early concepts just had the Rock Trolls destroying everything and leaving it in ruins, so that Rock would be left the only genre standing strong.

The true history of the Strings was changed significantly. This is tied in with the earlier "Pop being dominant" reason for Barb embarking her World Tour in the first place. The Strings' original plot made it into the Trolls World Tour: The Junior Novelization , due to how late changes to the film were being made. Just Sing also makes references to the altered plot that only makes sense for the original version of the Strings' history.

Chris Heltzel had added to his gallery some storyboards for the movie out of Lonesome Flats, with some segments having multiple possible directions on how they could play out. At one point, the introduction of Delta Dawn was very different: the Country Trolls were busy going about their day when Hickory ran into town to report on the destruction of the Classical Trolls' home after being sent to investigate. Delta would confirm she too had been sent an invitation like Poppy, and would comment she knew it was a set up, ordering the protection of their String, indicating the Strings were in the plot by this revision. The song was different, and instead of Born To Die she sung about how they had prepared for this day their entire lives, and Barb wouldn't be allowed to commit a crime. A Country Troll is still born during the song, but comes from an adult's tail end and not the hair on their head. The Trolls are then shown forming a barricade using cacti. The song is said by Poppy to be serious and intense instead of sorrowful and empathic as displayed in Born To Die; Branch still likes the song despite this. The Country Trolls are then seen training; Delta ends the song unarming her Banjo with the Country String and placing it in a jar for safekeeping. When Poppy goes to talk to Delta, Delta mistakes the Pop Trolls for Rock Trolls; Poppy manages to correct Delta, but Delta doesn't believe a team-up is the best idea, as the Country Trolls have the home field advantage. The storyboard ends as Poppy goes to sing the most important songs in the history of music. [36]

The escape from Lonesome Flats was also slightly different, with a group of Tumbleweeds joining in the chase. Originally, the Pop Trolls and Hickory escaped by Hickory halting, causing those chasing them to fall off the cliff. An alternative version, of which a variant was used in the final movie, had Branch freeing himself from the mustache lasso, getting flung towards the others and knocking the group off the cliff; Hickory tries to make it to the other side but fails.

Based on a toy with a design from the Hasbro Small Figurines "bobblehead" set, Poppy was meant to befriend Carol at one point, then depicted as a child. Her prototype "child" design, later made into the separate character of Amp , can be seen in the Trolls World Tour Look and Find book, along with many elements that were changed late into the movie's development. Other elements can also be seen in the Hasbro Tiny Dancers series.

In another storyboard supplied by Chris Heltzel, Peppy was shown to be lecturing Guy Diamond on how to raise Tiny Diamond; he exampled Poppy's confident and independence, deciding that he had been a fool to raise her to be like that. Guy notes down that Tiny should n't think anything but like his own self. Peppy explains Poppy is out there without a clue of what she's up against and Guy notes Tiny should never leave the village. Additionally, any hopes and dreams should be discouraged. Throughout this the view switches between Guy and Peppy's talk and Tiny, who progressively grows frustrated with doing things like his father's way. The trio are interrupted from the talk with the sound of Rock music, as the Rock Trolls arrive to Pop Village bursting through the doors of the library. In the supplied board, multiple possible introductions were shown of Barb meeting the trio. The storyboard ends with her demanding the string before she has to act up.

Deleted Scenes

The movie originally begun with Poppy singing The Sound of Silence , with Barb interrupting her to do a guitar solo. At one point, she stage-back-slides along the ground. This led into the main movie with Poppy asking "Who was that?", as seen in the first Trailer. A lot of Barb's introduction animation was later used for when Poppy appears to have been turned into a Rock Zombie. A cut version of this was referenced by a real-life enactment of the scene before production. This scene was mostly a test of how Barb and Poppy would interact with each other as well. [30]

The cut scene of King Trollex removing the Techno String from Techno Beat Drop Button

The Techno string was originally held in Techno Beat Drop Button ; the scene of King Trollex removing the string and giving it to Barb was cut from the movie.

There was originally a birth scene of Guy Diamond actually going to push his son out, with Branch reminding him to remember the procedure while Poppy telling him that he doesn't need any training and all he needs is have room for hugs, while other Snack Pack members like Biggie and Smidge are panicking. [37]

A deleted scene involved Cooper talking with his reflection in a mirror regarding his own destiny, before embarking his journey.

The trip with Branch and Poppy in Sheila Balloon was meant to have a Can You Feel It? musical number. The number depicted all the other Trolls from Poppy's "Pop" perspective as different but all "Pop-like" to her, and was meant to show how far Poppy's ideas of the other Trolls were removed from reality. In the actual movie, Poppy's lack of understanding how the other Trolls were different was toned down due to this scene's removal. The reason the scene was removed was because the developers had to make a decision between adding songs and moving the plot forward. They originally wanted more songs in the movie than what there ended up being. [38]

In an early cut scene animatic, Barb didn't hire Bounty Hunters. She instead stopped off a diner where unpopular genres of Trolls ended up playing to a empty crowd, and hired several of them to get her Poppy. The Mariachi Sisters , Little Miss Polka and The Barbershop Boys were all cut from the movie, and were among the types of Trolls that didn't make it into the movie's final version as a result.

Another concept for the Bounty Hunters also was revealed by Jeremy Bernstein, in which he went for a "dusty meeting" approach. [39]

Concept art depicts Cooper being with Poppy, Branch and Biggie when they arrive at Lonesome Flats , which shows that he wasn't originally going to be doing a solo journey. [40]

In later versions, Cooper is removed by the time the group arrived at Lonesome Flats. The plot is also adjusted so Poppy, Branch and Biggie also met Hickory first before meeting the Country Trolls, who then took them to Lonesome Flats .

In the storyboard, Poppy, Branch and Biggie would have made a joke at the Lonesome Flats jail. It involved them stating that if they stayed any longer, they would end up like "the skeleton family", with the skeletal remains of two adult Trolls and a child being pointed to. [41]

Biggie would be gone by the time where the Queen of Pop song would have been played in the movie.

In early scripts, the Funk and Rock Trolls had a music battle. [42] Poppy was also supposed to get lost in a "Funky forest". [43]

References to a "Funky Poppy" design is seen in early promos. Topps Trolls cards for the film still reference this cut design. Branch, Biggie and Mr. Dinkles also have Funk designs in the set; the presence of Biggie's design indicates that a possible plot change happened with him, and the Funk Trolls' string may have been taken sooner than in the original plot.

There was going to be a song named Cloud 9 , which was set to play when Cloud Guy became a father and looked after his three children .

The outfits that The Snack Pack wore to infiltrate the Rock Trolls originally resembled more closely to Hard Rock, rather than their final Rock 'n' Roll-themed designs in the movie. Once again, the Tiny Dancers (with Smidge being seen in her original outfit) and the "Trolls World Tour Look and Find" book show the original designs.

World Building

Each part of Troll Kingdom has a different look. Volcano Rock City is made of leather and denim. Lonesome Flats resembles a quilt. Vibe City uses neon lights and vinyl record references. Techno Reef uses LED and crochet .

As with the Trolls film, many of the landscapes had real-life model counterparts to help with visualization. The ancient ancestors of the Trolls as depicted by Peppy were created in real life with actual textiles and materials before being photographed for use in the movie. [44]

A lot of focus was put onto the overall world to make it bright and fuzzy. Due to the amount of fuzziness there were concerns with rendering. The team relied on VFX supe Matt Baer who figured out the best way to render all the fuzz seen in the movie and overall, Trolls World Tour was an improvement over Trolls . The team wanted to focus on balancing visual story telling. In addition, a lot of trust was put into the creative decision. In turn, Trolls World Tour did a things that had never been done before. So finding the right production team for the job was also important. [45]

The fuzziness and fur of the world was a important focus for the movie and the concert scenes alone were some of the fuzziest ever made. Each scene required much processing power from computer software to render the scenes, lighting was one of the first focusing points of any scene and how it reacted to all the fur and fuzz. Each fur or clump of hair was rendered in a curve that was distinct and rendered at multiple levels to create layers of depth, while being overseen by traditional artists during the process. As a result, scenes in Trolls World Tour were significantly more in-depth and detailed then Trolls before it, with some scenes having over a million curves. [29]

One big balancing act that needed to be handled is the idea of handling dazzling and overwhelming. While the production had to reference the culture of each music genre, it was hard to avoid stereotypes. One of the challenges was turning one Troll Tribe into 6. [46]

Trolls World Tour was allowed to go near water, whereas they had forbidden Trolls to do so. The biggest challenge of the entire movie had been the scale of the project and world building. [21]

The crew often used fabrics in real life to see how it would look in the Trolls' world. For the Rock Trolls, their world is made of silk, leather, denim and fishnets. Its look was created by having fabric blown by a fan to see how it looked. The lava is made of satin fabric. The Country Trolls' world is made of quilted fabrics, burlap, denim, and gingham, and their rivers were formed with gossamer fabric. The cliffs were rendered as stacks of blankets on top of one another. The mountains in the Classical Trolls' world were meant to look as if they were made of rococo-brocade fabric and satin-cord-trimmed; Machu Picchu was used as reference for their shape. They also looked at the wigs and ended up creating a look with a bit of silliness to it by accident. Vibe City was inspired by 1970s LP art, with gold, silver and purple coloration placed into the background. Techno Reef was made to look like a macramé dance club world with lasers, and was inspired by nautical ropes. All of the production team's departments had to come together to make its scene happen. [47]

The DreamWorks Trolls twitter account ran a series of Tweets under the tag of "#TrollsArtTuesday" showing concept art. [48]

The movie's plot takes place over the course of approximately 3 days, with the sunlight in each part of the day being monitored. [49]

The music was based on the 6 main genres featured in the movie: Funk, Pop, Rock, Techno, Classical and Country. Each Tribe started out with a song each. Music demos were made over the course of the 3-year production by Ludwig Göransson and Joseph Shirley. Musicians enjoyed their music coming to life within the movie. The more challenging part was when it came to the movie's original songs. [21] Justin Timberlake described exploring all the new styles of music as exciting and a little daunting. [50]

In 2021, the song " Just Sing " won the "Hollywood Music In Media Award for Best Original Song, Animated Feature". [51]

Promotional Songs

• Crazy Train
• Rock You Like a Hurricane
• Trolls Just Wanna Have Good Times
• One More Time
• Just Sing (Oreo commercials)

Movie Songs

• The Other Side (instrumental and choirs)
• One More Time - Anthony Ramos
• Rock You Like A Hurricane - Rachel Bloom
• Trolls Wanna Have Good Times - Anna Kendrick , Justin Timberlake , James Corden , Ester Dean , Aino Jawo , Caroline Hjelt , Kenan Thompson & the Pop Trolls
• U Can’t Touch This - MC Hammer
• Pop Muzik - Joseph Shirley
• Crazy Train - Rachel Bloom
• Born to Die - Kelly Clarkson
• Hocus Pocus - Focus
• Trolls 2 Many Hits Mashup - Anna Kendrick , Justin Timberlake , James Corden & Walt Dohrn
• Leaving Lonesome Flats - Dierks Bentley
• I Fall to Pieces - Sam Rockwell
• Move On Up - Curtis Mayfield
• Atomic Dog World Tour Remix - George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Anderson .Paak & Mary J. Blige
• It's All Love (History of Funk) - George Clinton , Anderson .Paak & Mary J. Blige
• Perfect For Me - Justin Timberlake & Anna Kendrick
• Russian Roulette - Red Velvet
• Mi Gente - J Balvin & Willy William
• Yodel Beat - Ludwig Göransson
• Rainbow, Unicorns, Everything Nice - Walt Dohrn & Joseph Shirley
• Barracuda - Rachel Bloom & James Corden
• Just Sing (Trolls World Tour) - Justin Timberlake , Anna Kendrick , James Corden , Kelly Clarkson , George Clinton , Mary J. Blige , Anderson Paak , Rachel Bloom , Kenan Thompson , Anthony Ramos , Red Velvet , Aino Jawo , Caroline Hjelt & Sam Rockwell

Ending Credits

• Don't Slack - Anderson Paak & Justin Timberlake
• The Other Side - SZA & Justin Timberlake
• Rock N Roll Rules - HAIM & Ludwig Göransson

See Trolls World Tour: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack .

Cut/Deleted Songs

• Can You Feel It?
• Master of Puppets [52]
• Title Unknown
• Queen of Pop [53]

Success and Critical Response

Due to the money Trolls made previously in cinemas, releasing Trolls World Tour on VOD was considered a ludicrous risk, as the franchise was at this point worth $700 million. However, a contribution to the discussion was that 3 of the trailers received 150 million views. It was estimated that 9-12 million views for the release onto home cinema would result in a $200 million revenue upfront, which was expected to cover the film's costs. The cost of production was $90 million for the movie, and $30 million for P&R. [54]

Instead, the digital release of Trolls World Tour resulted in it making more money in less than a month than Trolls did in 5 months. [55] This was far better than predicted; it was able to compete with Sonic the Hedgehog and Frozen II , and held onto the no.1 film spot for several weeks after its inital release, taking the spotlight from those films. [56] The film was later nominated for Best Movie of 2020 and Best Family Movie of 2020 at the People's Choice Awards . [57] In the UK, the film was a chart topper, grabbing the no.1 spot for 7 weeks (though not consecutively). [58]

In April 2020, Timothoy Donohoo of CBR proposed the reason both Trolls and Trolls World Tour were successful was because they had a level of Nostalgia factor, due to the Troll dolls having been around since 1959. In comparison, the rivalling movie UglyDolls had failed because it was a newcomer with only recent success. While the Troll dolls had waned in popularity since the 1990s, 50 years of nostalgia gave the way for Trolls to succeed, but the lack of such a factor led UglyDolls down the path of failure at the box office. Another factor was though many of the UglyDolls cast could sing, Trolls had used actors that could perform and thus had established reputations of being able to also act. [59]

According to a report, 80% of all sales from VOD is profit for studios versus the theaters, which is at 50% of that profit. A factor in the success of Trolls World Tour was the lack of competition. Another factor is the fact it was released during the COVID-19 pandemic, with Slashfilm claiming that "it dropped just when families needed something to distract their stir-crazy kid". [60]

In June 2020, the HollyWood Reporter had a much more critical response to the film's success, and claimed that while Trolls World Tour had made $100 million back at the time, it was still in the red due to development cost, boasting that it may never make back the money. Promotion of the film had cost $35 million. While the experiment with Trolls World Tour worked out, they didn't think it was enough to repeat the experiment with bigger franchises such as the upcoming Fast & Furious movie F9 , due at a later date. The film had also sparked worry among its stars that they wouldn't be paid for their contributions, due to it being unreleased at the in the cinemas at that point. On advantage, Universal had kept that the VOD release was a bigger profit. [61]

The cinema industry attempted to make people react negatively to Trolls World Tour , only for it to make $100 million on digital sales alone. The COVID-19 pandemic resulting in cinemas to close started a slide for AMC Theatres. In October 2020, Disney would follow suit and push to release its own movies on Disney+, leading AMC to announce that if ticket prices didn't raise it would face liquidation in 2021. In addition, it faced being stuck with an outdated film stock. Trolls World Tour is now considered a turning point in the spiral for the company. [62]

UPI France was one of the countries largely unaffected by NBCUniversal's decision to feature the film on VOD, and allowed the film a wide release in France due to French cinema rules being different to that of other countries. [63]

In December 2020, an artical by GQ Magazine noted why Trolls World Tour had been the most important film of 2020 for Universal. This was owed to its impact on cinemas when it skipped a cinematic release. Trolls World Tour was the first of several films to recieve that treament, the others that followed were The King Of Staten Island , The Invisible Man and Emma all causeed by the Covid-19 Pandemic since Cinemas were now empty and unable to attract an audience for these films. In addition, the argument about paying $15 per head was brought into question as custom could just pay a single price and watch the same blockbuster at home. Additional notes included how convient things had gotten. The next note was that it was not 2010 and the experience of watching something at home was a different experience now. TV sets were now bigger and more easy available, with the added bonus of being able to pause the screen when a friend or family member needed to make use of the toilet during the movie. While the Cinemas called out the move, it was pondered if that was now the end of the cinematic experience. There was some cost in revenue from a lack of focused control over Cinema tie-in merchandise. 2021 would see a several services such as Disney+ . They did not believe the impact would last one year and more would follow, since Cinemas needed big name bucks to stay alive if they could not attract them this would be over with the eventual possible destruction of Cinemas. [64]

In 2021, it was reported that due to both Trolls World Tour and The Croods: A New Age , DreamWorks thrived in 2020 despite the pandemic, and Trolls World Tour alone grossed nearly $350 million worldwide, $80 million of which within 6 weeks. Meanwhile, The Croods: A New Age had reeled in $160 million. This is without DreamWorks' serial TV animation success taken in mind, as the company was also now looking into adult TV media in the near future. [65]

Overall, Trolls World Tour made $43 million worldwide from cinema releases, and $48 million on DVD and Blu-Ray sales, in addition to its VOD revenue by February 2021, being most successful in France and Austrilia. By July 2023, it had made $54,237,879 on home market sales. [66]

While it's unknown how much the actors were paid, it was expected that Justin Timberlake would earn a 7-figure number in back-pay salary. [67]

Geeks Under Grace reviewer Tyrone Barnes gave the film an overall positive review, claiming that it had a sense of déjà vu. However, he noted that it felt like a cut-down version of Avengers: Infinity War , which came out two years before Trolls World Tour . [68]

Awards & Accolades

• When Barb shouts "Rockers!" at Trollex, her right hand clips through her head and behind her ear as she does the Rock gesture.
• When Poppy says the line "Bring your string to the biggest party the world has ever seen", in the invite it can be seen that it actually says "Bring your own string to the biggest party the world has ever seen". Poppy skipped the word "own".
• During Just Sing , sometimes Rock Trolls while headbanging will move their hair through other Trolls.
• Also during Just Sing, all members of The Snack Pack except Poppy and Branch disappear from the stage by the end.
• Sometimes, The K-Pop Gang 's reflective outfits will reveal parts of the skybox area which isn't rendered. This is difficult to see and happens so fast the viewer won't see it particularly well unless the screen is paused.
• When Queen Poppy was brushing her teeth with the lollipop, The teeth become white in the next scene.

Related Media & Merchandise

Compared to Trolls , Trolls World Tour has had much greater amounts of merchandising overall. Part of this can be put down to the movie's success, and can also be contributed to the number of trademarks held related to this movie. In addition to the 5 trademarks for "Trolls World Tour", a number of characters have been trademarked. These include Growley Pete, Tiny Diamond and Delta Dawn.

The movie highly benefited from its release at home rather than the cinema. [74] Its success is put down to a positive response and good marketing. Due to the fact it was no longer being released in cinemas, the marketing of the movie had to change suddenly and without much notice. Companies distributing merchandise were forced to change their approach, as they were no longer selling merchandise for a cinema-related film. [75]

Companies had different approaches to the marketing of the movie.

Trolls: Holiday in Harmony

Trolls: Holiday in Harmony is a TV special based upon the events of Trolls World Tour which was released in November 26, 2021 on NBC. It's a spiritual successor to Trolls Holiday .

Trolls: TrollsTopia

Trolls: TrollsTopia is a television series based on the film that involves the Trolls' everyday events of the tribes residing in the city. 7 seasons of the series have been streamed on Hulu and Peacock throughout from November 19, 2020 to August 11, 2022.

Home Video Releases

The DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD releases of Trolls World Tour were released on July 7, 2020, while the Digital HD version was released on June 23, 2020.

There were several buyer options, including:

• The Walmart version of the Dance Party edition included the DVD, Blu-Ray and downloadable options, plus a special pair of Funko keyrings of Queen Poppy and Branch. This version was sold exclusively in the United States. [77]
• The Target version included a digital version of the artbook The Art of DreamWorks Trolls World Tour . [78]
• A Blu-ray 3D version.
• A 2-movie release with Trolls included.
• A collectible steelbook that was only available at Best Buy. [79]
• "Dance! Dance! Dance! Collection" Blu-ray and DVD which includes Trolls and Trolls Holiday .
• A 3-movie release edition which includes Trolls and Trolls Band Together .

The "Trolls World Tour: Dance Party Edition" includes 2 movie versions, the normal theatrical version and the movie with Dance Party Mode. The edition also comes with bonus features and extras, which includes:

• " Tiny Diamond Goes Back To School " Animated Short
• Trolls Village
• Symphonyville
• Lonesome Flats
• Volcano Rock City
• Techno Reef
• Intros by Director Walt Dohrn, Producer Gina Shay and Co-director David P. Smith
• Cooper’s Destiny
• Let’s Go Save the World
• Bicycle Built for Two
• Meet the Bounty Hunters
• Making New Friends
• Trolls Perfect Harmony
• Opening Act
• The Other Side
• Don't Slack
• It's All Love
• Theatrical Trailers (Digital HD only)
• Feature Commentary with Director Walt Dohrn, Producer Gina Shay and Co-director David P. Smith

The Trolls World Tour: The Junior Novelization was released on March 24th 2020. This is the adapted book version of the film written by David Lewman who also had written Trolls: The Junior Novelization and Trolls Holiday: The Junior Novelization . He also wrote the Big Golden Book and Little Golden Book retellings of the story.

The Trolls Magazine also begun updated its title and publication to the movies new release.

Similar to Trolls book The Art of DreamWorks Trolls , The Art of DreamWorks Trolls World Tour was created with behind the scenes information. However, the book was never sold and is only available on e-bay currently as only Employees of DreamWorks and others involved in the movie recieved a copy of the book.

Toys & Games

Starting from January 2020, Trolls World Tour had much more merchandise to offer before and after release of the movie itself, and toys and games were released throughout 2020 by various companies. The amount was notable compared to the amount for Trolls in 2016 and 2017 and by 3 months more Merchandise had been produced overall for the movie then Trolls had seen in its first year.

Hasbro updated their small range figurines to include Trolls World Tour toys (though this range was noted for its issues related to quality during this period), as well as the medium range (a new line of fashion dolls were produced) and many new feature dolls . A new toy line Tiny Dancers was created. As exampled with the Tiny Dancers, one of the notable issues with merchandise for the movie is the inconsistency between product and final movie character designs, of which this series best examples. Both King Trollex and Prince D have their early designs.

Top Trumps released a Trolls World Tour deck that is compatible with the past Trolls deck. Other games were made by companies and Topps Trolls had a collectable trading card game.

Wow Stuff also produced a number of figurines as did Funko and LEGO Sets were made for Trolls.

In August 2020, a doll related to the movie, known as " Giggle and Sing Poppy ", was removed. It was removed from shelves a short time after released into stores due to the placement of the button that activated its functions. The removal was based on concerns of it was inappropriate. [80]

As with Trolls , PÜR produced promotional cosmetic sets as a tie-in with the movie in their PÜR X TROLLS range. Compared to their Trolls lineup, the promotion was much larger, with an entire lineup of cosmetics being produced.

China Glaze also released a nail polish collection based on the film.

Food & Beverages

Cakebites did a special promotion for the movie featuring two cakes, one for Pop Trolls and the other for Rock Trolls . Funables also ran a promotion as did TostaRica . Lay's ran a promotional tie-in with their "Poppables" range across the various flavours, while SeaBrook also did a promotion for their own crisps.

MacDonald 's also did a Happy Meal promotion with a number of toys could be collected.

The title of the movie is a play on words. While it references Barb's "Rock World Tour", it also acts as a quick guide or "world tour" of the various locations within Troll Kingdom .

In Japan, the movie was titled Trolls Music☆Power .

It was originally announced as Trolls 2 , with a number of countries have later gone on to use a variant of that title.

Cultural References

• The scene where the Rock Trolls emerge from the ocean after destroying Techno Reef is a reference to the Mad Max chase scene.
• When Poppy, Branch, Biggie and Hickory are about to fall into the river out of Lonesome Flats, they briefly float in midair. This is likely based on the common classic cartoon logic rule of "gravity does not work until you look down", which was made infamous by the Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner cartoons.
• The One More Time scene is likely a reference to the opening of Daft Punk's movie Interstella 5555 , a visual adaptation of the song's album Discovery . Similarly to the Trolls World Tour scene, the opening involves an alien planet in which a band plays at a concert, only for a human military force to invade and kidnap the band. The fact that the military force brainwashes the band and makes them look like humans is also a parallel to Barb's goal of converting all non-Rock Trolls to Rock music.
• Queen Barb's "punk rock" design is a classic Troll Doll design for the Good Luck Trolls . There have been several Punk Trolls since the 70s, including one famous one by Russ.
• "It still has Disco on it" implies that there once was Disco Trolls for there to be a significant genre reference, but it mostly notes the cultural joke of "Disco is dead". The event that often said to have "killed Disco" is the Disco Demolition Night explosion, which caused a cultural backlash and riots.
• The Pop Trolls alternation of the history of tribes, is a nod to real world historic events, where people embellished the events. This was especially true for battles, where the victor recorded events in their favour.
• The way Trolls were divided by DreamWorks in previous Trolls media was by family, the classifications of which were " Guru ", " Giant ", " Rainbow ", etc; for example, Branch and Poppy were in the "Rainbow" family. These terms were dropped after Trolls World Tour 's announcement, and Trolls became identified by their Tribe instead of their family.
• The 2D-animated TV series are generally not considered canon to the franchise's overall storyline, but this is still a roughly accurate setting for how long since Trolls the movie takes place. [81]
• Trolls: Holiday in Harmony happens only a short time after Trolls World Tour . [81] Tiny Diamond states he is 1 month old in Trolls Band Together .
• Trolls Band Together would invalidate Trolls: TrollsTopia s plot as it took place just 1 month after Trolls World Tour .
• Trolls World Tour marked a shift in character development and handling. One such example is seen in The Snack Pack , who was the main focus of Trolls -era media. However, in both Trolls: Holiday in Harmony and the 2D animation Trolls: TrollsTopia , stories were written that featured few members, with Trolls: TrollsTopia only featuring the group together in a major role in the series first episode and Trolls: Holiday in Harmony only showing Poppy, Branch, Legsly, Tiny Diamond and Guy Diamond.
• The time from Trolls to Trolls World Tour is less than 1 year with its related special Trolls: Holiday in Harmony taking place only a short time after the events of Trolls World Tour .
• The events of the film actually lead to John Dory confirming Branch was still alive and part led to John tracking Branch down and are partly responsible for the events of Trolls Band Together being able to occur.
• The events related to Floyd , in regards to Velvet and Veneer 's rise to fame at Mount Rageous actually are taking place as Trolls World Tour is happening, as Floyd's capture occurred 1 month before Trolls World Tour and 2 months prior to Trolls Band Together .
• The movie also explains why the Pop Trolls had to rescue themselves from the Troll Tree despite there being other Tribes. Its due to their involvement with the Strings - no one was going to rescue them.
• The rule was also referenced often as a running gag in Trolls: The Beat Goes On! , and later in Trolls: TrollsTopia .
• It has more deleted scenes and cut songs than the first movie .
• The moment where Poppy and Branch hug and kiss is zoomed out, which is meant to be a bonus for fans paying attention. [83] [84] [85] DreamWorks had not decided to answer if the Poppy and Branch pairing is official until " Trolls Band Together ". [86]
• The plot of the movie from the start of Barb's Rock World Tour to Just Sing takes place over the course of 3 nights and 3 days. The day and night cycle was actually noted on the storyboard, including evening and morning sun.

Official Trailers

Music Videos/Credits

Movie Clips

Clip Compilations

Behind the Scenes

International and TV Spots

Promotional Videos

How to Draw + Crafts

Commercials

• ↑ https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/trolls-world-tour-review-anna-kendrick-justin-timberlake-1234570986/
• ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/as-a-virus-upends-hollywood-may-never-be-a-return-normal-1286691
• ↑ https://variety.com/2020/film/news/trolls-world-tour-streaming-theatrical-window-future-1234573263/
• ↑ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/why-hollywood-is-sticking-with-movie-theaters-and-not-streaming.html
• ↑ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt6587640/
• ↑ https://www.licensingsource.net/view-our-licensing-expo-2019-picture-gallery/
• ↑ D'Alessandro, Anthony. "... ‘Trolls 2’ Moves To Spring 2019 – Update" . Deadline . Published October 4, 2017. Updated December 6, 2017. Retrieved June 12, 2018.
• ↑ https://twitter.com/Trolls/status/1462854754153820161
• ↑ https://twitter.com/KevanShorey/status/1249406969804292096
• ↑ https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/9355124/justin-timberlake-trolls-movies-sequels/
• ↑ https://www.nme.com/news/chance-the-rapper-joins-trolls-2-cast-2312657
• ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/CD0SRmQj5pF/?igshid=1lw06uwqie4g1
• ↑ https://deadline.com/2018/05/sam-rockwell-chance-the-rapper-trolls-2-animated-movie-1202387559/
• ↑ https://kakuchopurei.com/2020/03/12/trolls-world-tour-review-kkp/
• ↑ https://variety.com/2017/film/news/trolls-2-announced-april-2020-dreamworks-animation-1201998983/
• ↑ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mcelroy-brothers-will-be-in-trolls-world-tour/id1240927514
• ↑ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/chance-rapper-joins-cast-trolls-2-1110763
• ↑ https://www.animationmagazine.net/features/new-details-revealed-about-dreamworks-trolls-sequel/
• ↑ https://deadline.com/2018/10/kelly-clarkson-trolls-2-perform-original-song-1202476507/
• ↑ https://www.awn.com/news/dreamworks-animation-reveals-21-posters-and-cast-trolls-world-tour
• ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 21.4 21.5 https://www.awn.com/animationworld/walt-dohrn-talks-trolls-world-tour
• ↑ https://jimmortensen.tumblr.com/post/628619921782374400/since-beat-gose-on-is-done-and-you-no-longer-are
• ↑ https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Trolls-World-Tour-(2020)#tab=summary
• ↑ https://www.looper.com/201091/things-only-adults-noticed-in-trolls-world-tour/
• ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 25.3 https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-features/trolls-world-tour-music-criticism-990498/
• ↑ https://twitter.com/KevanShorey/status/1251183867941105664
• ↑ https://www.netapp.com/blog/trolls-world-tour-technology/
• ↑ https://research.dreamworks.com/research_library/hair-effects-in-trolls-world-tour/
• ↑ 29.0 29.1 https://research.dreamworks.com/research_library/organizing-the-fuzziest-concerts-for-trolls-world-tour/
• ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 https://twitter.com/KevanShorey/status/1256363844500205568
• ↑ https://twitter.com/KevanShorey/status/1251165147713769480
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• ↑ https://twitter.com/NickTyson/status/1249886874224582656
• ↑ http://www.avnergeller.com/twt/u1rlv36cgvuedwwoi5jbl2f1dqrl85
• ↑ http://www.avnergeller.com/twt/op478vrrovenunfokzjd3v2foo0s9a
• ↑ https://www.chrisheltzel.com/
• ↑ https://www.instagram.com/reel/CjHVFCvjMPo/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
• ↑ https://twitter.com/jon_magram/status/1277010857285742596
• ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/CNLvdJXjE2w/
• ↑ https://twitter.com/Dreamworks/status/1207073070386561024
• ↑ https://twitter.com/Dreamworks/status/1209564267382337536
• ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/B-2gmHfjOZn/
• ↑ https://www.instagram.com/p/B_LVVr-DP-N/
• ↑ https://twitter.com/Trolls/status/1207072793696669696
• ↑ https://www.cartoonbrew.com/sponsored-by-dreamworks-animation/how-the-colorful-musical-environments-of-trolls-world-tour-were-created-200574.html
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• ↑ https://twitter.com/Le_Mans_66_VF/status/1229938262938181632/photo/1
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• ↑ https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/10/13/did-disney-just-hammer-the-last-nail-in-amcs-coffi/
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• ↑ https://variety.com/2021/film/news/dreamworks-trolls-world-tour-croods-new-age-1234946338/
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• ↑ https://cinemaaudiosociety.org/cinema-audio-society-nominations-for-the-57th-annual-cas-awards-for-outstanding-achievement-in-sound-mixing-for-2020/
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• ↑ https://deadline.com/2021/03/ves-awards-nominations-2021-visual-effects-society-mandalorian-tenet-soul-1234704513/
• ↑ https://kidscreen.com/2020/05/27/trolls-world-tour-changes-its-marketing-tune/
• ↑ https://marketing.twitter.com/na/en/success-stories/trolls-world-tour-twitter-case-study
• ↑ https://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/1135629-trolls-world-tour-digital-blu-ray
• ↑ https://www.walmart.com/ip/Trolls-2-World-Tour-Walmart-Exclusive-with-FUNKO-Pop-Keychains-Blu-ray/732316851
• ↑ https://www.walmart.com/ip/Trolls-World-Tour-Target-Exclusive-Blu-Ray-DVD-Digital-NEW/712437620
• ↑ https://twitter.com/Trolls/status/1277681695748227073
• ↑ https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/06/business/hasbro-removes-trolls-doll-poppy-button-trnd/index.html
• ↑ 81.0 81.1 https://twitter.com/theitz/status/1464986148401344512
• ↑ Trolls World Tour will be released on VOD the same day will be playing in theaters
• ↑ https://twitter.com/KevanShorey/status/1250068883547004931
• ↑ https://twitter.com/KevanShorey/status/1255379110257401856
• ↑ https://twitter.com/KevanShorey/status/1248745007441268736

External Links

• Official website
• DreamWorks Animation Wiki: Trolls World Tour
• Trolls World Tour on Wikipedia
• 3 Queen Poppy

• By Any Other Name
• Wish You Were Here
• The Book of Two Ways
• A Spark of Light
• Small Great Things
• Off the Page
• Leaving Time
• The Storyteller
• Between the Lines
• Sing You Home
• Over The Moon
• House Rules
• Handle With Care
• Change of Heart
• Wonder Woman
• Nineteen Minutes
• The Tenth Circle
• Vanishing Acts
• My Sister's Keeper
• Second Glance
• Perfect Match
• Salem Falls
• Plain Truth
• Keeping Faith
• Picture Perfect
• Harvesting the Heart
• Songs of the Humpback Whale

Jodi Picoult

Read an excerpt »

The Mad Honey Book Club Kit includes: Authors’ note, Discussion questions, Playlist, Recipes, and Resources for LGBTQ+ young people, parents, and allies,

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• Bookshop.org
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Signed copies!

Signed editions of MAD HONEY hardcover are available at independent stores listed here , and also at Barnes & Noble and BAM .

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United Kingdom

• Waterstones (Signed edition)
• Amazon.co.uk

New Zealand

Mad honey –co-written with jennifer finney boylan., ⭐ a good morning america book club pick ⭐ ⭐ people magazine’s book of the week ⭐.

A soul-stirring new novel about what we choose to keep from our past, and what we choose to leave behind , from the New York Times bestselling author of Wish You Were Here and the bestselling author of She‘s Not There.

Heart-pounding and heartbreaking. This collaboration between two best-selling authors seamlessly weaves together Olivia and Lily’s journeys, creating a provocative exploration of the strength that love and acceptance require. The Washington Post

Mad Honey is in development for a series/film.

MAD HONEY Book Tour »

“MAD HONEY has all of the things: alternating narratives, suspense, courtroom drama, and a love story at its core. It’s about authenticity, identity, and it explores the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become our true selves.”

—Jodi Picoult

Olivia McAfee knows what it feels like to start over. Her picture-perfect life—living in Boston, married to a brilliant cardiothoracic surgeon, raising a beautiful son, Asher—was upended when her husband revealed a darker side. She never imagined she would end up back in her sleepy New Hampshire hometown, living in the house she grew up in, and taking over her father's beekeeping business.

Lily Campanello is familiar with do-overs, too. When she and her mom relocate to Adams, New Hampshire, for her final year of high school, they both hope it will be a fresh start.

And for just a short while, these new beginnings are exactly what Olivia and Lily need. Their paths cross when Asher falls for the new girl in school, and Lily can’t help but fall for him, too. With Ash, she feels happy for the first time. Yet at times, she wonders if she can trust him completely . . .

Then one day, Olivia receives a phone call: Lily is dead, and Asher is being questioned by the police. Olivia is adamant that her son is innocent. But she would be lying if she didn’t acknowledge the flashes of his father’s temper in him, and as the case against him unfolds, she realizes he’s hidden more than he’s shared with her.

Mad Honey is a riveting novel of suspense, an unforgettable love story, and a moving and powerful exploration of the secrets we keep and the risks we take in order to become ourselves.

Read an excerpt »

Praise for Mad Honey

Gripping . . . This timely and absorbing read will make readers glad these two powerful writers decided to collaborate. Booklist (starred)

A spellbinding yarn . . . atmospheric . . . riveting . . . Overall, it’s a fruitful collaboration. Publishers Weekly

Compelling . . . A well-paced story that highlights several timely issues, with a stimulating courtroom trial that makes it worth reading. Kirkus Reviews

One of the best books of the year PopSugar

Jodi Picoult And Jennifer Finney Boylan On How A “Magical” Dream Turned Into A Book Project

Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan’s novel Mad Honey is out now, so they answered our questions about how they came to co-write a book together, becoming closer through the process, and the books they feel strongly about.

MAD HONEY book tour photos: US and Canada

AU - NZ jacket

Jodi Picoult is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 28 novels, including Mad Honey , Wish You Were Here , The Book of Two Ways , A Spark of Light , Small Great Things , Leaving Time , The Storyteller , Lone Wolf , Sing You Home , House Rules , Handle with Care , Change of Heart , and My Sister's Keeper , and, with daughter Samantha van Leer, two young adult novels, Between the Lines and Off the Page .

Picoult lives in New Hampshire with her husband. They have three children.

Jodi talks about

An excerpt mad honey, december 7, 2018.

From the moment I knew I was having a baby, I wanted it to be a girl. I wandered the aisles of department stores, touching doll-size dresses and tiny sequined shoes. I pictured us with matching nail polish—me, who’d never had a manicure in my life. I imagined the day her fairy hair was long enough to capture in pigtails, her nose pressed to the glass of a school bus window; I saw her first crush, prom dress, heartbreak. Each vision was a bead on a rosary of future memories; I prayed daily.

As it turned out, I was not a zealot . . . only a martyr.

When I gave birth, and the doctor announced the baby’s sex, I did not believe it at first. I had done such a stellar job of convincing myself of what I wanted that I completely forgot what I needed. But when I held Asher, slippery as a minnow, I was relieved.

Better to have a boy, who would never be someone’s victim.

MOST PEOPLE IN Adams, New Hampshire, know me by name, and those who don’t, know to steer clear of my home. It’s often that way for beekeepers—like firefighters, we willingly put ourselves into situations that are the stuff of others’ nightmares. Honeybees are far less vindictive than their yellow jacket cousins, but people can’t often tell the difference, so anything that stings and buzzes comes to be seen as a potential hazard. A few hundred yards past the antique Cape, my colonies form a semicircular rainbow of hives, and most of the spring and summer the bees zip between them and the acres of blossoms they pollinate, humming a warning.

I grew up on a small farm that had been in my father’s family for generations: an apple orchard that, in the fall, sold cider and donuts made by my mother and, in the summer, had pick-your-own strawberry fields. We were land-rich and cash-poor. My father was an apiarist by hobby, as was his father before him, and so on, all the way back to the first McAfee who was an original settler of Adams. It is just far enough away from the White Mountain National Forest to have affordable real estate. The town has one traffic light, one bar, one diner, a post office, a town green that used to be a communal sheep grazing area, and Slade Brook—a creek whose name was misprinted in a 1789 geological survey map, but which stuck. Slate Brook, as it should have been written, was named for the eponymous rock mined from its banks, which was shipped far and wide to become tombstones. Slade was the surname of the local undertaker and village drunk, who had a tendency to wander off when he was on a bender, and who ironically killed by drowning in six inches of water in the creek.

When I first brought Braden to meet my parents, I told him that story. He had been driving at the time; his grin flashed like lightning. But who, he’d asked, buried the undertaker?

Back then, we had been living outside of DC, where Braden was a resident in cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins and I worked at the National Zoo, trying to cobble together enough money for a graduate program in zoology. We’d only been together three months, but I had already moved in with him. We were visiting my parents that weekend because I knew, viscerally, that Braden Fields was the one.

On that first trip back home, I had been so sure of what my future would hold. I was wrong on all counts. I never expected to be an apiarist like my father; I never thought I’d wind up sleeping in my childhood bedroom once again as an adult; I never imagined I’d settle down on a farm my older brother, Jordan, and I once could not wait to leave. I married Braden; he got a fellowship at Mass General;we moved to Boston; I was a doctor’s wife. Then, almost a year to the day of my wedding anniversary, my father didn’t come home one evening after checking his hives. My mother found him, dead of a heart attack in the tall grass, bees haloing his head.

My mother sold the piece of land that held our apple orchard to a couple from Brooklyn. She kept the strawberry fields but was thoroughly at a loss when it came to my father’s hives. Since my brother was busy with a high-powered legal career and my mother was allergic to bees, the apiary fell to me. For five years, I drove from Boston to Adams every week to take care of the colonies. After Asher was born, I’d bring him with me, leaving him in the company of my mother while I checked the hives. I fell in love with beekeeping, the slow-motion flow of pulling a frame out of a hive, the Where’s Waldo? search for the queen. I expanded from five colonies to fifteen. I experimented with bee genetics with colonies from Russia, from Slovenia, from Italy. I signed pollination contracts with the Brooklynites and three other local fruit orchards, setting up new hives on their premises. I harvested, processed, and sold honey and beeswax products at farmers’ markets from the Canadian border to the suburbs of Massachusetts. I became, almost by accident, the first commercially successful beekeeper in the history of apiarist McAfees. By the time Asher and I moved permanently to Adams, I knew I might never get rich doing this, but I could make a living.

My father taught me that beekeeping is both a burden and a privilege. You don’t bother the bees unless they need your help, and you help them when they need it. It’s a feudal relationship: protection in return for a percentage of the fruits of their labors.

He taught me that if a body is easily crushed, it develops a weapon to prevent that from happening.

He taught me that sudden movements get you stung.

I took these lessons a bit too much to heart.

On the day of my father’s funeral, and years later, on the day of my mother’s, I told the bees. It’s an old tradition to inform them of a death in the family; if a beekeeper dies, and the bees aren’t asked to stay on with their new master, they’ll leave. In New Hampshire, the custom is to sing, and the news has to rhyme. So I draped each colony with black crepe, knocked softly, crooned the truth. My beekeeping net became a funeral veil. The hive might well have been a coffin.

BY THE TIME I come downstairs that morning, Asher is in the kitchen. We have a deal, whoever gets up first makes the coffee. My mug still has a wisp of steam rising. He is shoveling cereal into his mouth, absorbed in his phone.

“Morning,” I say, and he grunts in response.

For a moment, I let myself stare at him. It’s hard to believe that the soft-centered little boy who would cry when his hands got sticky with propolis from the hives can now lift a super full of forty pounds of honey as if it weighs no more than his hockey stick. Asher is over six feet tall, but even as he was growing, he was never ungainly. He moves with the kind of grace you find in wildcats, the ones that can steal away a kitten or a chick before you even realize they’ve gone. Asher has my blond hair and the same ghost-green eyes, for which I have always been grateful. He carries his father’s last name, but if I also had to see Braden every time I looked at my son, it would be that much harder.

I catalog the breadth of his shoulders, the damp curls at the nape of his neck; the way the tendons in his forearms shift and play as he scrolls through his texts. It’s shocking, sometimes, to be confronted with this when a second ago he sat on my shoulders, trying to pull down a star and unravel a thread of the night.

“No practice this morning?” I ask, taking a sip of my coffee. Asher has been playing hockey as long as we’ve lived here; he skates as effortlessly as he walks. He was made captain as a junior and reelected this year, as a senior. I never can remember whether they have rink time before school or after, as it changes daily.

His lips tug with a slight smile, and he types a response into his phone, but doesn’t answer.

“Hello?” I say. I slip a piece of bread into the ancient toaster, which is jerry-rigged with duct tape that occasionally catches on fire. Breakfast for me is always toast and honey, never in short supply.

“I guess you have practice later,” I try, and then provide the answer that Asher doesn’t. “Why yes, Mom, thanks for taking such an active interest in my life.”

I fold my arms across my boxy cable-knit sweater. “Am I too old to wear this tube top?” I ask lightly.

“I’m sorry I won’t be here for dinner, but I’m running away with a cult.”

I narrow my eyes. “I posted that naked photo of you as a toddler on Instagram for Throwback Thursday.”

Asher grunts noncommittally. My toast pops up; I spread it with honey and slide into the chair directly across from Asher. “I’d really prefer that you not use my Mastercard to pay for your Pornhub subscription.”

His eyes snap to mine so fast I think I can hear his neck crack. “What? ”

“Oh, hey,” I say smoothly. “Nice to have your attention.”

Asher shakes his head, but he puts down his phone. “I didn’t use your Mastercard,” he says.

“I know.”

“I used your Amex.”

I burst out laughing.

“Also: never ever wear a tube top,” he says. “Jesus.”

“So you were listening.”

“How could I not?” Asher winces. “Just for the record, nobody

else’s mother talks about porn over breakfast.”

“Aren’t you the lucky one, then.”

“Well,” he says, shrugging. “Yeah.” He lifts his coffee mug, clinks

it to mine, and sips.

I don’t know what other parents’ relationships are like with their

children, but the one between me and Asher was forged in fire and, maybe for that reason, is invincible. Even though he’d rather be caught dead than have me throw my arms around him after a winning game, when it’s just the two of us, we are our own universe, a moon and a planet tied together in orbit. Asher may not have grown up in a household with two parents, but the one he has would fight to the death for him.

“Speaking of porn,” I reply, “how’s Lily?”

He chokes on his coffee. “If you love me, you will never say that sentence again.”

Asher’s girlfriend is tiny, dark, with a smile so wide it completely changes the landscape of her face. If Asher is strength, then she is whimsy—a sprite who keeps him from taking himself too seriously; a question mark at the end of his predictable, popular life. Asher’s had no shortage of romantic entanglements with girls he’s known since kindergarten. Lily is a newcomer to town.

This fall, they have been inseparable. Usually, at dinner, it’s Lily did this or Lily said that.

“I haven’t seen her around this week,” I say.

Asher’s phone buzzes. His thumbs fly, responding.

“Oh, to be young and in love,” I muse. “And unable to go thirty seconds without communicating.”

“I’m texting Dirk. He broke a lace and wants to know if I have extra.”

One of the guys on his hockey team. I have no actual proof, but I’ve always felt like Dirk is the kid who oozes charm whenever he’s in front of me and then, when I’m gone, says something vile, like Your mom is hot, bro.

“Will Lily be at your game on Saturday?” I ask. “She should come over afterward for dinner.”

Asher nods and jams his phone in his pocket. “I have to go.” “You haven’t even finished your cereal—”

“I’m going to be late.”

He takes a long last swallow of coffee, slides his backpack over his

shoulder, and grabs his car keys from the bowl on the kitchen counter. He drives a 1988 Jeep he bought with the salary he made as a counselor at hockey camp.

“Take a coat!” I call, as he is walking out the door. “It’s—”

His breath fogs in the air; he slides behind the steering wheel and turns the ignition.

“Snowing,” I finish.

DECEMBER IS WHEN beekeepers catch their breath. The fall is a flurry of activity, starting with the honey harvest, then managing mite loads, and getting the bees ready to survive a New Hampshire winter. This involves mixing up a heavy sugar syrup that gets poured into a hive top feeder, then wrapping the entire hive for insulation before the first cold snap. The bees conserve their energy in the winter, and so should the apiarist.

I’ve never been very good with downtime.

There’s snow on the ground, and that’s enough to send me up to the attic to find the box of Christmas decorations. They’re the same ones my mother used when I was little—ceramic snowmen for the kitchen table; electric candles to set in each window at night, a string of lights for the mantel. There’s a second box, too, with our stockings and the ornaments for the tree, but it’s tradition that Asher and I hang those together. Maybe this weekend we will cut down our tree. We could do it after his game on Saturday, with Lily.

I’m not ready to lose him.

The thought stops me in my tracks. Even if we do not invite Lily to come choose a tree with us—to decorate it as he tells her the story behind the stick reindeer ornament he made in preschool or the impossibly tiny baby shoes, both his and mine, that we always hang on the uppermost branches—soon another will join our party of two. It is what I want most for Asher—the relationship I don’t have. I know that love isn’t a zero-sum game, but I’m selfish enough to hope he’s all mine for a little while longer.

I lug the first box down the attic stairs, hearing Asher’s voice in my head: Why didn’t you wait? I could have carried it down for you. Glancing through the open door of his bedroom, I roll my eyes at his unmade bed. It drives me crazy that he does not tuck in his sheets; it drives him just as crazy to do it, when he knows he’s just going to crawl back in in a few hours. With a sigh, I put the box down and walk into Asher’s room. I yank the sheets up, straightening his covers. As I do, a book falls to the floor.

It’s a blank journal, in which Asher has sketched in colored pencil. There’s a bee, hovering above an apple blossom, so close that you can see the working mandible and the pollen caught on her legs. There’s my old truck, a 1960 powder-blue Ford that belonged to my father.

Asher has always had this softer side, I love him all the more for it. It was clear when he was little that he had artistic talent, and once I even enrolled him in a painting class, but his hockey friends found out. When he messed up doing a passing drill, one of them said he should maybe stop holding his stick like Bob Ross held a brush, and he dropped art. Now, when he draws, it’s in private. He never shows me his work. But we’ve also gotten college brochures in the mail from RISD and SCAD, and I wasn’t the one to request them.

I flip the next few pages. There is one drawing that is clearly me, although he’s captured me from behind, as I stand at the sink. I look tired, worn. Is that what he thinks of me? I wonder.

A chipmunk, eyes bright with challenge. A stone wall. A girl— Lily?—with her arm thrown over her eyes, lying on a bed of leaves, naked from the waist up.

Immediately, I drop the book like it’s burning. I press my palms against my cheeks.

It’s not like I didn’t think he was intimate with his girlfriend; but then again, it’s not like we talked about it, either. At one point, when he started high school, I proactively started buying condoms and leaving them very matter-of-factly with the usual pharmacy haul of deodorant and razor blades and shampoo. Asher loves Lily—even if he hasn’t told me this directly, I see it in the way he lights up when she sits down beside him, how he checks her seatbelt when she gets into his car.

After a minute, I mess up Asher’s sheets and comforter again. I tuck the journal under a fold of the linens, pick up the pair of socks, and close the door of the bedroom behind me

I hoist the Christmas box into my arms again, thinking two things: that memories are so heavy; and that my son is entitled to his secrets.

BEEKEEPING IS THE world’s second-oldest profession. The first apiarists were the ancient Egyptians. Bees were royal symbols, the tears of Re, the sun god.

In Greek mythology, Aristaeus, the god of beekeeping, was taught by nymphs to tend bees. He fell in love with Orpheus’s wife, Eurydice. When she was dodging his advances, she stepped on a snake and died. Orpheus went to hell itself to bring her back, and Eurydice’s nymph sisters punished Aristaeus by killing all his bees.

The Bible promises a land of milk and honey. The Koran says paradise has rivers of honey for those who guard against evil. Krishna, the Hindu deity, is often shown with a blue bee on his forehead. The bee itself is considered a symbol of Christ: the sting of justice and the mercy of honey, side by side.

The first voodoo dolls were molded from beeswax; an oungan might tell you to smear honey on a person to keep ghosts at bay; a manbo would make little cakes of honey, amaranth, and whiskey, which, eaten before the new moon, could show you your future.

I sometimes wonder which of my prehistoric ancestors first stuck his arm into a hole in a tree. Did he come out with a handful of honey, or a fistful of stings? Is the promise of one worth the risk of the other?

WHEN THE INSIDE of the house is draped with its holiday jewelry, I pull on my winter boots and a parka and hike through the acreage of the property to gather evergreen boughs. This requires me to skate the edges of the fields with the few apple trees that still belong to my family. Against the frosty ground, they look insidious and witchy, their gnarled arms reaching, the wind whispering in the voice of dead leaves, Closer, closer. Asher used to climb them; once, he got so high that I had to call the fire department to pull him down, as if he were a cat. I swing my handsaw as I slip into the woods behind the orchard, twigs crunching underneath my footsteps. There are only so many trees whose feathered limbs I can reach; most are higher than I can reach on my tiptoes, but there’s satisfaction in gathering what I can. The pile of pine and spruce and fir grows, and it takes me three trips to bring it all back across the orchard fields to the porch of the farmhouse.

By the time I’ve got my raw materials—the branches and a spool of florist wire—my cheeks are flushed and bright and the tips of my ears are numb. I lay out the evergreens on the porch floor, trimming them with clippers, doubling and tripling the boughs so that they are thick. In the Christmas box I carried down earlier is a long rope of lights that I’ll weave through my garland when this step is finished; then I can affix the greenery around the frame of the front door.

I am not sure what it is that makes me think something is watching me.

All the hair stands up on the back of my neck, and I turn slowly toward the barren strawberry fields.

In the snow, they look like a swath of white cotton. This late in the year, the back of the field is wreathed in shadow. In the summertime, we get raccoons and deer going after the strawberries; from time to time there’s a coyote. When it’s nearly winter, though, the predators have mostly squirreled themselves away in their dens—

I take off at a dead run for my beehives.

Before I even reach the electric fence that surrounds them, the smell of bananas is pungent—the surest sign of bees that are pissed off. Four hives are sturdy and quiet, hunkered tight within their insulation. But the box all the way to the right has been ripped to splinters. I name all my queen bees after female divas: Adele, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Whitney, and Mariah. Taylor, Britney, Miley, Aretha, and Ariana are in the apple orchard; on other contracts I have Sia, Dionne, Cher, and Katy. The hive that has been attacked is Celine’s.

One side of the electric fence has been barreled through, trampled. Struts of wood from the hive are scattered all over the snowy ground; hunks of Styrofoam have been clawed to shreds. I stumble over a piece of broken honeycomb with a bear print in it.

I narrow my eyes at the dark line where the field turns into forest, but the bear is already gone. The bees would have killed themselves, literally, to get rid of their attacker—stinging until it lumbered away.

It’s not the first time I have had a bear attack a hive, but it’s the latest it has ever happened in the beekeeping season.

I walk toward the brush near the edge of the field, trying to find any remaining bees that might not have frozen. A small knot seethes and drips, dark as molasses, on the bare crotch of a sugar maple. I cannot see Celine, but if the bees have absconded there is a chance she is with them.

Sometimes, in the spring, bees swarm. You might find them like this, in the bivouac stage—the temporary site before they fly off to whatever they’ve decided should be their new home.

When bees swarm in the spring, it’s because they’ve run out of space in the hive.

When bees swarm in the spring, they’re full of honey and happy and calm.

When bees swarm in the spring, you can often recapture them, and set them up in a new box, where they have enough room for their brood cells and pollen and honey.

This is not a swarm. These bees are angry and these bees are desperate.

“Stay,” I beg, and then I run back to the farmhouse as fast as I can.

It takes me three trips, each a half mile across the fields, skidding on the dusting of snow. I have to haul out a new wooden base and an empty hive from a colony that failed last year, into which I will try to divert the bees; I have to grab my bee kit from the basement, where I’ve stored it for the winter—my smoker and hive tool, some wire and a bee brush, my hat and veil and gloves. I am sweating by the time I am finished, my hands shaking and sausage-fingered from the cold. Clumsily, I grab the few frames that can be salvaged from the bear’s attack and set them into the brood box. I sew some of the newly broken comb onto the frames with wire, hoping that the bees will be attracted back to the familiar. When the new box is set up, I walk toward the sugar maple.

The light is so low now, because dusk comes early. I see the motion of the bees more than their actual writhing outline. If Asher were here, I could have him hold the brood box directly below the branch while I scoop the bees into it, but I’m alone.

It takes several tries for me to light a curl of birch bark to ignite my smoker; there’s just enough wind to make it difficult. Finally, a red ember sparks, and I drop it into the little metal pot, onto a handful of wood shavings. Smoke pipes out of the narrow neck as I pump the bellows a few times. I give a few puffs near the bees; it dulls their senses and takes the aggressive edge off.

I pull on my hat and veil and lift the same handsaw I used on the evergreen boughs. The branch is about six inches too high for me to reach. Cursing, I lug the broken wooden base of the old frame underneath the tree and try to gingerly balance on what’s left of it. The odds are about equal that I will either manage to saw down the branch or break my ankle. I nearly sob with relief when the branch is free, and carry it slowly and gently to the new hive. I give it a sharp jerk, watching the bees rain down into the box. I do this again, praying that the queen is one of them.

If it were warmer, I’d know for sure. A few bees would gather on the landing board with their butts facing out, fanning their wings and nasonoving—spreading pheromones for strays to find their way home. That’s a sign that the hive is queenright. But it’s too cold, and so I pull out each frame, scanning the frenzy of bees. Celine, thank God, is a marked queen—I spy the green painted dot on her long narrow back and pluck her by the wings into a queen catcher, a little plastic contraption that looks like those butterfly clips for hair. The queen catcher will keep her safe for a couple of days while they all get used to the new home. But it also guarantees that the colony won’t abscond. Sometimes, bees just up and leave with their queen if they don’t like their circumstances. If the queen is locked up, they will not leave without her.

I let a puff of smoke roll over the top of the box, again hoping to calm the bees. I try to set the queen catcher between frames of comb, but my fingers are stiff with the cold and keep slipping. When my hand strikes the edge of the wooden box, one of the worker bees sinks her stinger into me.

“Mother fucker .” I gasp, dancing backward from the hive. A cluster of bees follow me, attracted by the scent of the attack. I cradle my palm, tears springing to my eyes.

I tear off my hat and veil, bury my face in my hands. I can take all the best precautions for this queen; I can feed the bees sugar syrup and insulate their new brood box; I can pray as hard as I want—but this colony does not have a chance of surviving the winter.They simply will not have enough time to build up the stores of honey that the bear has robbed.

And yet. I cannot just give up on them.

So I gently set the telescoping cover on the box and lift my bee kit with my good hand. In the other, I hold a snowball against the sting as a remedy. I trudge back to the farmhouse. Tomorrow, I’ll give them the kindness of extra food in a hive-top feeder and I’ll wrap the new box, but it’s hospice care. There are some trajectories you cannot change, no matter what you do.

Back home, I am so absorbed in icing my throbbing palm that I don’t notice it’s long past dinnertime, and Asher isn’t home.

THE FIRST TIME it happened, it was over a password.

I had only just signed up for FaceBook, mostly so that I could see pictures of my brother, Jordan, and his wife, Selena. Braden and I were living in a brownstone on Mass Ave while he did his Mass General fellowship in cardiac surgery. Most of our furniture had come from yard sales in the suburbs that we would drive to on weekends. One of our best finds came from an old lady who was moving to an assisted living community. She was selling an antique rolltop desk with claw-feet (I said it was a gryphon; Braden said eagle). It was clearly an antique, but someone had stripped it of its original finish, so it wasn’t worth much, and more to the point, we could afford it. It wasn’t until we got it home that we realized it had a secret compartment—a narrow little sliver between the wooden drawers that was intended to look decorative, but pulled loose to reveal a spot where documents and papers could be hidden. I was delighted, naturally, hoping for the combination to an old safe full of gold bullion or a torrid love letter, but the only thing we found inside was a paper clip. I had pretty much forgotten about its existence when I had to choose a password for FaceBook, and find a place to store it for when I inevitably forgot what I’d picked. What better place than in the secret compartment?

We had initially bought the antique desk so that Braden could study at it, but when we realized that his laptop was too deep for the space, it became decorative, tucked in an empty space at the bottom of the stairs. We kept our car keys there, and my purse, and an occasional plant I hadn’t yet murdered. Which is why I was so surprised to find Braden sitting in front of it one evening, fiddling with the hidden compartment.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He reached inside and triumphantly pulled out the piece of paper. “Seeing what secrets you keep from me,” he said.

It was so ridiculous I laughed. “I’m an open book,” I told him, but I took the paper out of his hand.

His eyebrows raised. “What’s on there?” “My FaceBook password.”

“So what?”

“So,” I said, “it’s mine.”

Braden frowned. “If you had nothing to hide, you’d show it to me.”

“What do you think I’m doing on FaceBook?” I said, incredulous. “You tell me,” Braden replied.

I rolled my eyes. But before I could say anything, his hand shot

out for the paper.

PEPPER70. That’s what it said. The name of my first dog and my birth year. Blatantly uninspired; something he could have figured out on his own. But the principle of the whole stupid argument kicked in, and I yanked the page away before he could snatch it.

That’s when it changed—the tone, the atmosphere. The air went still between us, and his pupils dilated. He reached out, striking like a snake, and grabbed my wrist.

On instinct, I pulled back and darted up the stairs. Thunder, him running behind me. My name twisted on his lips. It was silly; it was stupid; it was a game. But it didn’t feel like one, not the way my heart was hammering.

As soon as I made it to our bedroom I slammed the door shut. Leaning my forehead against it, I tried to catch my breath.

Braden shouldered it open so hard that the frame splintered.

I didn’t realize what had happened until my vision went white and I felt a hammer between my eyes. I touched my nose and my fingers came away red with blood.

“Oh my God,” Braden murmured. “Oh my God, Liv. Jesus.” He disappeared for a moment and then he was holding a hand towel to my face, guiding me to sit on the bed, stroking my hair.

“I think it’s broken,” I choked out.

“Let me look,” he demanded. He gently peeled away the bloody cloth and with a surgeon’s tender hands touched the ridge of my brow, the bone beneath my eyes. “I don’t think so,” he said, his voice frayed.

Braden cleaned me up as if I were made of glass and then he brought me an ice pack. By then, the stabbing pain was gone. I ached, and my nose was stuffy. “My fingers are too cold,” I said, dropping the ice, and he picked it up and gently held it against me. I realized his hands were trembling and that he couldn’t look me in the eye.

Seeing him so shaken hurt even more than my injury.

So I covered his hand with mine, trying to comfort. “I shouldn’t have been standing so close to the door,” I murmured.

Finally, Braden looked at me, and nodded slowly. “No. You shouldn’t have.”

I HAVE SENT a half dozen texts to Asher, who hasn’t written back. Each one is a little angrier. For someone who seemingly has no trouble interrupting his life to text his girlfriend and Dirk, he has selective communication skills when he wants to. Most likely he was invited to eat dinner somewhere and didn’t bother to tell me.

I decide that as punishment, I will make him clean up the evergreens still strewn across the porch, since my bee-stung hand hurts too much for me to finish stringing the garland.

On the kitchen table is a small bundle of newspaper, which I carefully unwrap. It was placed in the decoration box by mistake, but it belongs in the one with our Christmas ornaments. It’s my favorite—a hand-blown glass bulb in swirls of blue and white, with a drippy curl of frozen glass at the top through which a wire has been threaded for hanging. Asher made it for me when he was six, after we left Braden behind in Boston, and I got a divorce. I had a booth at a county fair that fall, selling honey and beeswax products, and an artisanal glassblower befriended Asher and invited him to watch her in her workshop. Unbeknownst to me, she helped him make an ornament for me as a gift. I loved it, but what made it truly magical was that it was a time capsule. Frozen in that delicate globe was Asher’s childhood breath. No matter how old he was or how big he grew, I would always have that.

Just then my cellphone rings.

Asher. If he’s not texting, he knows he’s in trouble.

“You better have a good excuse,” I begin, but he cuts me off. “Mom, I need you,” Asher says. “I’m at the police station.” Words scramble up the ladder of my throat. “What? Are you all right?”

“I ...I’m ...no.”

I look down at the ornament in my hand, this piece of the past. “Mom,” Asher says, his voice breaking. “I think Lily’s dead.”

Off the Grid: Sally breaks down USA TODAY's daily crossword puzzle, Period Piece

There are spoilers ahead. You might want to solve today's puzzle before reading further! Period Pieces

Constructor: Emma Lawson

Editor: Jared Goudsmit

What I Learned from Today’s Puzzle

• HINDU (48A: Like Ugadi and Holi) Ugadi, also known as Samvatsarādi, is the first day of the year (i.e. New Year's Day) according to the HINDU calendar. This year Ugadi falls on April 9 of the Gregorian calendar. Ugadi is celebrated by HINDUs in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Goa. Holi, also known as the "festival of spring," is a HINDU festival celebrating the end of winter and the arrival of spring. Like Ugadi, the date of Holi is set by the HINDU calendar. Holi was celebrated on March 24 and 25 this year. I learned about Ugadi today, but since the clue provided two examples, I was able to successfully fill in the answer because I am familiar with Holi as a HINDU festival.
• ACT (50A: ___ your wage (do only the work you're paid to do)) "ACT your wage" is new to me, but its meaning is fairly inferable. The phrase refers to the idea of sticking firmly to your job description (what you're paid to do), and not taking on extra tasks.
• CREE (64A: Mandy Gull-Masty's heritage) Mandy Gull-Masty is a member of the CREE First Nation of Waswanipi. She is the current Grand Chief of the CREE Nation, and is the first woman to hold that position.
• LAURA (2D: Olympic gymnast Zeng) LAURA Zeng represented Team USA in rhythmic gymnastics at the 2016 and 2020 (held in 2021) Summer Olympics. LAURA Zeng announced her retirement from competitive rhythmic gymnastics in January 2022. She is currently a student at Yale University, and a staff reporter for the student newspaper, Yale Daily News , where she writes a bi-monthly column called "Ask an Olympian."
• LEE (5D: Actor Pace) LEE Pace portrayed Thranduil the Elvenking in The Hobbit trilogy movies: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013), and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). He also played the role of Ronan the Accuser in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies, Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and Captain Marvel (2019).
• LOTUS (18D: Flower in yeonkkot-cha) Yeonkkot-cha is LOTUS flower tea. It can be made using a fresh whole LOTUS flower, or dried petals.

Random Thoughts & Interesting Things

• DODO (16A: Extinct bird) The DODO was a flightless bird that lived on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. DODOs have been extinct since the 1600s. Their extinction was a result of being hunted by sailors and invasive species, as well as destruction of habitat.
• PURPLE RAIN (17A: Prince song with a colorful name) Prince's song, "PURPLE RAIN," is the title track of his 1984 album. The album is the soundtrack for the 1984 movie – also titled PURPLE RAIN – that starred Prince. The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2011. I imagine I'm not the only one that ended up with an earworm from this clue and answer. "PURPLE RAIN, PURPLE RAIN..."
• NAS (23A: "Rodeo" singer Lil ___ X) "Rodeo" is a 2019 song by Lil NAS X and Cardi B. A remix of "Rodeo" was released in 2020; that version was by Lil NAS X, and featured the rapper NAS. Lil NAS X and NAS performed "Rodeo" at the Grammy Awards ceremony the day before their remix was released.
• LOBE (35A: Part of the ear of the brain) This is a fun clue! The earLOBE is the lower portion of the outer ear. In the brain, the LOBEs are the different zones, such as the frontal LOBE or the occipital LOBE.
• BREW (37A: Prepare rooibos) Rooibos is a red tea made from the leaves of the rooibos plant. Rooibos is naturally caffeine-free.
• LEA (40A: Comic DeLaria) LEA DeLaria is a comedian, actress, and jazz singer. DeLaria integrates musical performance into her comedy, and has released several jazz albums. LEA DeLaria played the role of Carrie "Big Boo" Black on the TV series,  Orange is the New Black . In 2022, LEA Delaria appeared on Broadway in the play POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive .
• WARSAW (43A: Polish city where Chopin's heart is buried) Well, isn't this an intriguing clue? Frédéric Chopin (1810-1849) was a Polish composer. He spent the last half of his life living in Paris, France, which is where he died. Most of Frédéric Chopin's body is buried at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. However, by his request, his doctor removed his heart after he died and preserved it in alcohol. His sister smuggled his heart into Poland, where it is in a crypt in the Church of the Holy Cross in WARSAW.
• POET (59A: Writer such as Mahmoud Darwish) Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) was regarded as a Palestinian national POET. I learned about Mahmoud Darwish from the May 18, 2022 puzzle that had a clue referencing one of Mahmoud Darwish's published collections of poetry, State of Siege.
• IDITAROD (8D: Annual Alaskan sled dog race) The IDITAROD Trail Sled Dog Race is held each year in early March. The race's route goes from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.
• NOLA (30D: The Crescent City, for short) New Orleans, Louisiana –NOLA, for short – is a city of many nicknames: The Crescent City, The Big Easy, The City That Care Forgot, The City of Yes, and Hollywood South.
• CAPED (51D: Like Batgirl, costume-wise) This answer made me think of the character Edna Mode, the fashion designer in the movie The Incredibles , who is famously anti-CAPE .
• WES (60D: "Red Eye" director Craven) Red Eye is a 2005 thriller movie directed by WES Craven. The movie revolves around an assassination plot by a terrorist on a red-eye flight from Dallas, Texas to Miami, Florida.
• HRT (61D: Regimen that might involve estrogen (Abbr.)) HRT stands for hormone replacement therapy. 

Crossword Puzzle Theme Synopsis

• PURPLE RAIN (17A: Prince song with a colorful name)
• PUTTER AROUND (28A: Do a little of this and a little of that)
• EXCHANGE RATE (45A: Number of euros to the dollar, e.g.)
• WEATHER APP (60A: Download that offers forecasts)

Each theme answer contains a PERIOD of time in the form of the hidden word ERA: PURPL E RA IN, PUTT ER A ROUND, EXCHANG E RA TE, WEATH ER A PP.

It took me a little while to catch on to the theme of today's puzzle, providing for a nice "Aha!" moment. I appreciate that the word ERA occurs across a word break in each theme answer, and that each possible split, ER-A and E-RA, is represented twice. Thank you, Emma, for this terrific puzzle.

For more on USA TODAY’s Crossword Puzzles

• USA TODAY’s Daily Crossword Puzzles
• Sudoku & Crossword Puzzle Answers

Screen Rant

Taylor swift's perfect the eras tour movie sequel was revealed 5 years ago.

The perfect sequel to Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour movie can be modelled after one project that was first announced almost five years ago.

• The Eras Tour brought Taylor Swift the biggest year of her career, with record-breaking success and new accomplishments.
• Swift should follow up The Eras Tour concert movie with a documentary similar to her 2020 release, Miss Americana, which took fans behind the scenes of her Reputation Stadium Tour and the making of her album Lover.
• A potential documentary following The Eras Tour and her new album The Tortured Poets Department could also delve into Swift's sensationalized personal life and serve as a career retrospective.

The perfect sequel idea for Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour dates back to one announcement from five years ago. Since the beginning of The Eras Tour on March 17, 2023, Swift has had the biggest year of her career. Not only did she embark on a record-breaking world tour and release The Eras Tour concert movie that broke box office and streaming records, but she also dropped two re-recorded Taylor's Version albums, won countless awards including two Grammys, entered her most high-profile relationship in years, and became an NFL darling (or, for some embittered football fans, an enemy).

Now that The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version) is officially streaming on Disney+, her focus can shift to the release of Swift's next album, The Tortured Poets Department , on April 19, 2024. Swift first announced the album during her Grammys' acceptance speech for Best Pop Vocal Album on February 4, revealing that she'd been keeping it a secret for two years. TTPD releases just a few weeks before Swift goes back on The Eras Tour on May 9, creating the perfect timeline for a follow-up film to The Eras Tour movie, for which Swift already created the template years ago.

Taylor Swift's Next Album Sets Up A New Eras Tour Movie Cameo That Would Make Up For Cutting HAIM

Taylor swift's best the eras tour movie follow-up is a miss americana-style documentary, swift released the miss americana documentary after the reputation stadium tour concert movie.

As a follow-up to The Eras Tour movie, Swift should release a documentary similar to Miss Americana , which included behind-the-scenes footage of Swift's 2018 Reputation Stadium Tour and showed the creation and rollout of her next album Lover. Swift began writing and recording Lover after wrapping up The Reputation Stadium Tour on November 21, 2018. A month later, Swift released Taylor Swift: Reputation Stadium Tour concert movie on Netflix on New Year's Eve. Swift first announced the release of Miss Americana on November 14, 2019, a week shy of a year from the end of The Reputation Stadium Tour.

Just like she did with Miss Americana after the Reputation movie, Swift should follow up The Eras Tour movie with a documentary showing the behind-the-scenes of the tour and the process of making The Tortured Poets Department. Unlike the Reputation movie, all three versions of The Eras Tour movie were released while Swift was simply on hiatus from touring. However, if Swift released a documentary after wrapping up The Eras Tour in December 2024, it would follow a similar release timeline as Miss Americana, which came out more than a year after the Reputation movie and five months after Lover.

While Miss Americana covered a lot of ground, Swift would have even more to break down in a post-Eras Tour documentary.

There's One Perfect Way To Make Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour 2 Happen On Disney+

The eras tour movie's behind the scenes documentary potential is way bigger than reputation, swift has even more to cover in an eras tour documentary.

Along with taking viewers behind the scenes of the Reputation Stadium Tour and the making of Lover, Miss Americana also served as an intimate and in-depth look at Swift's interior life in the wake of her famous phone call scandal with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian which resulted in her disappearance from public life and eventual comeback. Swift unpacked how she " had to deconstruct an entire belief system, toss it out and reject it " after her fall from grace. She also discussed her private relationship with then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn as well as her breaking her political silence in 2018.

Since The Eras Tour is a celebration of all of Swift's musical eras, a documentary could also serve as a career retrospective.

While Miss Americana covered a lot of ground, Swift would have even more to break down in a post-Eras Tour documentary. In addition to her record-breaking world tour and Album of the Year win at the Grammys, Swift's personal life has received more attention than ever due to her breakup with Alwyn, fling with The 1975's Matty Healey, and new relationship with Chiefs' player Travis Kelce. Although Travis Kelce does not appear in The Eras Tour movie , it would make sense for the NFL star to be part of a documentary chronicling the time when the power couple started dating.

Swift's Album of the Year win for Midnights at the 2024 Grammys marked her fourth win after Fearless in 2010, 1989 in 2016, and folklore in 2021, breaking the record for most Album of the Year wins by any artist.

Taylor Swift's 8 Documentaries & Concert Movies, Ranked (Including Eras Tour)

Since The Eras Tour is a celebration of all of Swift's musical eras, a documentary could also serve as a career retrospective in which Swift looks back at how far she's come since debuting in 2006. This would provide the perfect opportunity to delve into Scooter Braun's controversial purchase of her masters and her subsequent re-recording project. A Miss Americana -style documentary is Swift's best bet at a successful Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour sequel that is distinct enough from the concert movie but still related, while also providing a holistic view of her life and world domination during the tour.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is a film rendition of the colossal worldwide event that sees the legendary pop star hit the stage in a specially curated film event. Performing the hits of her over seventeen-year career in music, The Eras Tour highlights Taylor Swift and her team as they put on a show of a lifetime.

• Roger Daltrey on the Way Out
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• Smashing Pumpkins Tour
• Top 30 Fools Songs
• Bach on Skid Row Situation

The Beatles, ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ – Film Review

Going into the last quarter of 1967, the Beatles couldn’t get any bigger. Their masterwork, ‘ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ,’ pretty much changed the way pop music was made, sounded and consumed. They had transcended the rock ‘n’ roll ghetto, entering the final phase of a career that glided past pop music’s boundaries and into a wide-open realm of exploration and experimentation.

They were on top of the world, and nobody wanted, or could, tell them no. Which is how and why their third movie, ‘Magical Mystery Tour,’ came to be over two weeks in September of 1967. Conceived as a daylong travelogue, in which the Fab Four accompany a busload of family and friends to the sea, the 53-minute film was a kaleidoscopic-colored, and mostly improvised, trip into the overeager egos of the Beatles.

Each member gets his spotlight: John Lennon romping on the hillside during a musical interlude featuring ‘I Am the Walrus’; Paul McCartney (the driving force behind the project) ruminating on ‘The Fool on the Hill; George Harrison tripping out to ‘Blue Jay Way’; and Ringo Starr bickering with his aunt (played by an actress) for the duration of the tour.

But most of the movie is filled out by that tedious bus ride. Just to show you how desperate the filmmakers were for material, somebody plays an accordion and everyone else sings along. There's also bizarre sketches featuring the quartet dressed as magicians and a dreamlike love-story vignette that doesn’t include any of the Beatles.

‘Magical Mystery Tour’ originally aired on British television on Dec. 26, 1967, and bombed, proving that the Beatles were fallible after all. It’s easy to see why: The movie is a mess – incoherent, unfunny and an example of ego and authority running rampant and unchecked. It only comes to life during the musical numbers, especially the great ‘I Am the Walrus’ sequence, a music video before there was such a thing.

The restored DVD and Blu-ray includes a stellar soundtrack remix, ensuring that the movie’s watchable moments sound terrific. Extras include interviews with McCartney, Starr and some of the cast and crew, as well as commentary by McCartney, who readily admits that ‘Magical Mystery Tour’ isn’t one of the Beatles’ best moments. We couldn’t agree more.

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The Bizarre Chinese Murder Plot Behind Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’

Lin Qi, a billionaire who helped produce the science-fiction hit, was poisoned to death by a disgruntled executive. His attacker now faces the death penalty.

By David Pierson

Lin Qi was a billionaire with a dream. The video game tycoon had wanted to turn one of China’s most famous science-fiction novels, “The Three-Body Problem,” into a global hit. He had started working with Netflix and the creators of the HBO series “Game of Thrones” to bring the alien invasion saga to international audiences.

But Mr. Lin did not live to see “ 3 Body Problem ” premiere on Netflix last month, drawing millions of viewers.

He was poisoned to death in Shanghai in 2020, at age 39, by a disgruntled colleague, in a killing that riveted the country’s tech and video-gaming circles where he had been a prominent rising star. That colleague, Xu Yao, a 43-year-old former executive in Mr. Lin’s company, was last month sentenced to death for murder by a court in Shanghai, which called his actions “extremely despicable.”

The court has made few specific details public, but Mr. Lin’s killing was, as a Chinese news outlet put it, “as bizarre as a Hollywood blockbuster.” Chinese media reports, citing sources in his company and court documents, have described a tale of deadly corporate ambition and rivalry with a macabre edge. Sidelined at work, Mr. Xu reportedly exacted vengeance with meticulous planning, including by testing poisons on small animals in a makeshift lab. (He not only killed Mr. Lin, but also poisoned his own replacement.)

Mr. Lin had spent millions of dollars in 2014 buying up copyrights and licenses connected to the original Chinese science-fiction book, “The Three-Body Problem,” and two others in a trilogy written by the Chinese author Liu Cixin. “The Three-Body Problem” tells the story of an engineer, called upon by the Chinese authorities to look into a spate of suicides by scientists, who discovers an extraterrestrial plot. Mr. Lin had wanted to build a franchise of global television shows and films akin to “Star Wars” and centered on the novels.

Mr. Lin would eventually link up with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the television series “Game of Thrones,” to work on the Netflix project. Mr. Lin’s gaming company, Youzu Interactive, which goes by Yoozoo in English, is no stranger to the HBO hit; its best-known release is an online strategy game based on the show called “Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming.”

Mr. Lin’s fate would change when he hired Mr. Xu, a lawyer, in 2017 to head a subsidiary of Yoozoo called The Three-Body Universe that held the rights to Mr. Liu’s novels. But not long afterward, Mr. Xu was demoted and his pay was cut, apparently because of poor performance. He became furious, according to the Chinese business magazine Caixin.

As Mr. Xu plotted his revenge, Caixin reported, he built a lab in an outlying district of Shanghai where he experimented with hundreds of poisons he bought off the dark web by testing them on dogs and cats and other pets. Caixin said Mr. Xu was both fascinated and inspired by the American hit TV series “Breaking Bad,” about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who teaches himself to make and sell methamphetamine, eventually becoming a drug lord.

Between September and December 2020, Mr. Xu began spiking beverages such as coffee, whiskey and drinking water with methylmercury chloride and bringing them into the office, Caixin reported, citing court documents. The report’s details could not be independently confirmed.

Calls to Yoozoo and the Shanghai court went unanswered. Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“The plot is as bizarre as a Hollywood blockbuster, and the technique is professional enough to be called the Chinese version of ‘Breaking Bad,’” Phoenix News, a Chinese news outlet, said last month.

According to a story by The Hollywood Reporter in January, Mr. Benioff said the killing was “certainly disconcerting.” “When you work in this business, you’re expecting all sorts of issues to arise. Somebody poisoning the boss is not generally one of them,” he was quoted as saying.

Police arrested Mr. Xu on Dec. 18, 2020, the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said on its official WeChat account as it announced the verdict and sentencing. Mr. Xu reportedly declined to confess to the crime and did not disclose what poison he had used, complicating doctors’ efforts to save Mr. Lin’s life.

The court said that Mr. Xu had plotted to poison Mr. Lin and four other people over an office dispute. Its post included a picture of a bespectacled Mr. Xu in the courtroom wearing an oversized beige cardigan surrounded by three police officers. The statement said more than 50 people, including members of Mr. Xu’s and Mr. Lin’s family, attended the sentencing.

The Three-Body Universe, the Yoozoo subsidiary, did not respond to a request for comment, but its chief executive, Zhao Jilong, posted on his WeChat account, “Justice has been served,” according to Chinese state media.

Before his untimely death, Mr. Lin was something of a celebrity in the world of young Chinese entrepreneurs. He had built his fortune in the early 2010s, riding a wave of popularity for mobile games. His bid to popularize Mr. Liu’s novels was a rare attempt to export Chinese popular culture — something that has eluded China as its government yearns to wield the same soft power the United States commands with its movies, music and sports stars.

Six years after “The Three-Body Problem” was first published in 2008, an English version translated by Ken Liu was released to widespread acclaim. The book won the Hugo Award, a major science-fiction prize, for best novel. It counted Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg among its fans.

While Netflix is not available in China, “3 Body Problem” has still set off a backlash among Chinese viewers who have been able to access the platform by using virtual private networks, or who have seen pirated versions of the show. Users on Chinese social media expressed anger that the Netflix adaptation Westernized aspects of the story, and said the show sought to demonize some of the Chinese characters.

Even the People’s Liberation Army’s propaganda wing has weighed in on the series. In an editorial published on Saturday on its website, China Military Online, it called the Netflix series an example of American “cultural hegemony.”

“It can be clearly seen that after the United States seized this popular intellectual property with its superpower strength, it wanted to transform and remake it,” the editorial said. “The purpose was to eliminate as much as possible the reputation of modern China.”

Li You contributed research.

David Pierson covers Chinese foreign policy and China’s economic and cultural engagement with the world. He has been a journalist for more than two decades. More about David Pierson

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キスマイ、3大ドームツアー詳細決定＜会場・日程一覧＞

4/3(水) 12:47 配信

【モデルプレス＝2024/04/03】Kis-My-Ft2が3日、公式X（旧Twitter）にて、初夏に開催する3大ドームツアー「Kis-My-Ft2 Dome Tour 2024 Synopsis」の詳細を発表した。 【写真】キスマイ、3大ドームツアーロゴが斬新 ◆キスマイドームツアー詳細決定 投稿では「ツアー詳細決定」と記し、6月8日の大阪・京セラドーム公演を皮切りに、9月8日の愛知・バンテリンドーム ナゴヤ（ナゴヤドーム）公演までの日程を発表している。 Kis-My-Ft2は、新体制初の全国アリーナツアー「Kis-My-Ft2 -For dear life-」にて3大ドームツアーの開催を発表。同時に2024年初夏に通算10枚目となるオリジナルアルバムを発売することも明かしていた。（modelpress編集部） ◆「Kis-My-Ft2 Dome Tour 2024 Synopsis」詳細 大阪：京セラドーム大阪 6月8日（土） 開演17：00 6月9日（日） 開演16：00 東京：東京ドーム 7月5日（金） 開演18：00 7月6日（土） 開演18：00 7月7日（日） 開演18：00 愛知：バンテリンドーム ナゴヤ（ナゴヤドーム） 9月7日（土） 開演17：00 9月8日（日） 開演16：00 情報：https://www.johnnys-net.jp/page?id=consta&artist=17 【Not Sponsored 記事】

• キスマイ藤ヶ谷太輔・玉森裕太、退所や活動休止…事務所内の動きに本音も
• キスマイ藤ヶ谷太輔が激痩せ「小鹿のようにゲッソリ」
• キスマイ宮田俊哉、北山宏光の退所を「受け止めることができず」何度も食事へ
• 【写真】キスマイ千賀健永、衝撃のマスク姿
• 【写真】キスマイ玉森裕太、色気放出

アクセスランキング（エンタメ）

俳優・橋爪淳、大腸がんを公表「命を繋いで頂きました」　大河ドラマ『光る君へ』は第13回で退場

２４年前朝ドラ「オードリー」再放送　ネット早くも震え上がる「地獄朝ドラ」「ホラー朝ドラ」

LE SSERAFIM カズハ、&TEAMのKと突然の文春砲…HYBEが交際を否定

ヒロミ　夜中に人気俳優から食事誘われ…断った数時間後に送られてきた写真に衝撃「凄いでしょ!?」

加護亜依“反社と海外旅行”報道の真相明かす「後で写真を見たら…」「そのママ友が悪いですよね」

雑誌アクセスランキング（エンタメ）

配信者コレコレ、松本人志からの性加害を訴える女性に直撃　約12万人が視聴

大谷翔平　真美子さんも入会可能な手厚い「メジャー夫人会」の「驚愕の年会費」

「未練ありそう？」羽生結弦の元妻・末延麻裕子さんがインスタでフォローした相手にファン深読み

小栗、窪塚の裏で『GTOリバイバル』に登場しなかった26年前に“ちょい役”出演の「超売れっ子俳優」

「高級焼肉店でこっそりと…」LE SSERAFIM日本人メンバー・カズハ(20)が身長186cm、6歳上のイケメンアイドルと真剣交際「個室デート」

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• 2 Last Stop

Girls’ Last Tour

In the far future, humanity is virtually extinct and life on earth has all but come to an end. Two surviving humans, Chito and Yuuri, travel through the frozen, deserted ruins on their motorbike, trying to find food, fuel, and shelter, with the vague goal of making it to the “top levels” of the once-vast, thriving city. While the two of them grabble with the day-to-day survival, they contemplate what hope…or even purpose…they still have to exist in such a bleak, dying world.

So I’m glad a show like Girls’ Last Tour got animated. I used to be that girl who reviewed a lot of bleak sci-fi, but lately I feel like a lot of what I’ve taken on and watched has been on the fluffier, happier side, and some of that has had to do with my own mental health and needing to spend time with uplifting stuff. Sometimes, though, I need to watch a show like Girls’ Last Tour : it’s beautifully made, often hilarious, and poignant. But it’s also profoundly sad in a way that’s not always easy to describe, and you need to consider that before you watch it.

Often funny, sometimes cute, ultimately profoundly sad in my opinion, this is a spectacular if difficult series. — Nicoletta Christina Browne

Recommended Audience: The subject matter hints at war and widescale destruction and loss of human life; in the course of the show itself, there’s one violent scene of weapons destroying an (unpopulated) part of the city and leaving it in flame, and another scene that leads in an artificial intelligence getting violently destroyed. The girls also bathe naked in a few episodes, but I’d really hesitate to call it “fan service” with the way it’s drawn. Probably older kids could handle this, although I don’t know if it’d appeal to them.

TV & Movies

We Were The Lucky Ones Is Based On A Bestselling WWII Novel

It ends with a message of hope.

Hulu’s We Were the Lucky Ones is based on Georgia Hunter’s 2017 book of the same name, and it's rooted in her real-life family history about surviving the Holocaust. As Hunter explains in the book, her grandfather didn’t talk much about his experience during World War II. However, she learned pieces of his past following his death in 1993 and decided to put the Kurcs’ story to paper.

“I remember walking in and feeling like I was stepping back in time, and I just started crying,” Hunter told People of seeing the show’s set for the first time. “I felt like my ancestors were there with me.”

Here’s a plot summary of We Were the Lucky Ones, which begins on the eve of Passover in 1939 and follows the children of Poland-based Sol and Nechuma Kurc as the war takes them in different directions.

Addy Flees Europe

Addy (the author’s real-life grandfather) is 25 years old and living in France when he receives word from his mom not to come home for Passover due to worsening conditions. When war begins, he is ordered to join the French Army. However, he is able to procure a visa to Brazil and meets a woman, Eliska, en route. They’re briefly engaged but break up shortly after arriving in their new home, after which Addy meets an American woman, Caroline, with whom he starts a family.

Mila & Felicia Have A Harrowing Escape

While Mila’s husband, Selim, is away fighting with the Polish army, she lives in German-occupied Poland with her daughter, Felicia. One day, while performing forced labor, Mila seizes an opportunity for her and Felicia to escape a massacre. Mila temporarily sends her daughter to a convent for safety, and they reunite before the end of the war.

Genek & Herta Welcome A Son In Siberia

Genek, the eldest Kurc sibling, and his wife Herta are unwittingly expecting a child when they’re sent to a Siberian labor camp. They have their son, Jozef, there, before moving on as Genek signs up for the Polish army. In Palestine, Genek is treated by an army doctor who turns out to be the long-lost Selim.

Halina & Adam Bring The Family Together

Halina, the youngest of the Kurcs, is instrumental in procuring shelter for her siblings and parents during the war. She is imprisoned for four months, but her husband, Adam, helps track down their missing family members in her absence.

Jakob & Bella Find Love

Jakob and Bella are neighbors and childhood sweethearts who marry at the start of the war. They survive a harrowing bombing in Warsaw and soon welcome a son, Victor. While the rest of their family plans to convene in Italy before meeting Addy in Brazil, Jakob and Bella head to Chicago after the war.

The Kurcs Reunite

In early 1946, Addy receives a telegram that his family is well and alive. He arranges for them to reside in Brazil, and as soon as they procure visas, they reunite as a family for the first time since before the war.

We Were the Lucky Ones ends with a real-life epilogue from Hunter, explaining that much of the family remained in Brazil. Jakob and Bella (real name Maryla) stayed in Illinois, while Addy’s family settled in New England and welcomed more children — including the author’s own mother.

• Cast & crew

Back to Black

The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time. The life and music of Amy Winehouse, through the journey of adolescence to adulthood and the creation of one of the best-selling albums of our time.

• Sam Taylor-Johnson
• Matt Greenhalgh
• Marisa Abela
• Eddie Marsan
• Jack O'Connell
• 1 Critic review

• Amy Winehouse

• Mitch Winehouse

• Blake Fielder-Civil

• Cynthia Winehouse

• Janis Winehouse

• Raye Cosbert

• Nick Shymansky

• A & R Manager

• Aunt Melody

• Perfume Paul

• CID Officer

• Uncle Harold

• Island Records Senior Executive

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Weather Synopsis

Weather Synopsis – March 26, 2024

James Murakami

Low level, on-shore flow prevailed today in southern California. Along with a coastal eddy circulation, marine layer clouds were abundant in most areas west of the mountains (most persistent in San Diego County where some areas of drizzle/light rain fell early). High pressure aloft will build into the region tomorrow. It’ll help weaken the on-shore flow and should make the marine layer shallower. However, the computer models aren’t predicting any defined, off-shore flow (some northerly winds in some areas but not of lengthy duration). The marine layer may remain well defined, and low clouds may occur in the coastal plain in the early morning hours (might stay out of most coastal valleys but not certain). Any warming tomorrow (compared with today) should be minor in most areas (modest warming where northerly winds reach the ground).

The aforementioned high pressure will weaken and slide off to the southeast on Thursday. On-shore flow should pick up in strength again. An approaching, large trough of low pressure will also bring varying amounts of high clouds into the Southland (wet weather expected over much of northern California and briefly possible as far south as western Santa Barbara County). The weather should look gloomier down here on Friday as the trough become more established off the northern California coast. Though still a few days away, the vast majority of models have been projecting a significant, spring storm for the state (actually comprised of multiple “waves”…starting in the northwest corner of California tomorrow). Rain is likely to reach San Luis Obispo/Santa Barbara Counties by Friday evening. There is even a chance that some light showers will develop in L.A. County by late evening. It’s almost a certainty that it will be a wet weekend in southern California (not necessarily continuously throughout). Much cooler than normal weather is a virtual certainty (origins in the Gulf of Alaska). However, details of the expected wet weather remain to be hammered out.

The upcoming storm system will be a semi-“cut-off” low pressure (hasn’t developed yet). As with may such circulations, numerical models infrequently handle the predicted course of storm poorly. That is, predicted duration, strength, and areal coverage may not necessarily verify as the models predict. As it stands right now, an accompanying cold front should pass through L.A. County sometime Saturday morning. A period of very heavy rain should occur in most areas. Numerous showers are expected to follow for the remainder of the day and evening. Some areas may be more consistently wet than other areas…especially near/adjacent to coastal facing foothills and mountains. The weather should also be breezy for a time (interior sections starting as early as Thursday when on-shore flow picks up substantially).

Showery weather, including some thunderstorms are expected on Sunday (some chance of isolated thunderstorms on Saturday but more uncertain). Where the greatest activity (i.e. heavy intensity rain showers) occurs will depend on course the aforementioned, “cut-off” low pressure takes on Easter. There is a chance that most or all of those heavy showers will fall to the south and east of L.A. County (“cut-off” center taking a more southern route). What showers occur in L.A. County may occur just in the morning hours (possibly early morning). It’s still too early to say with any real confidence what the weather will be like that day. At the least, there should be much less wind compared with Saturday.

Except for possible instability showers Monday afternoon (mostly over/adjacent to the mountains), that day should be a mostly dry day in the lowlands. The “cut-off” low pressure should be on its way out of the Southland by late Monday afternoon. Storm totals for the period beginning late Friday through Monday should range in the 2 to 3.5 inch range in the lowlands away from the mountains (impressive for spring, let alone a winter storm). Twice as much rain could fall in areas up against coastal facing mountain slopes. Snowfall at the local resorts (~ 6000 feet) may be in the one to two feet range (snow levels mostly at or above 6000 feet until late Saturday…falling to 5000 feet by Sunday). These numbers assume the model consensus holds up. If the “cut-off” center stays too far off the coast or makes landfall well south of L.A., totals should be much lower (maybe less than an inch rain in the L.A. Basin).

Dry and warmer weather should return for Tuesday. If some models are right predicting a marginal, off-shore flow, slightly warmer than normal weather can be expected (Tuesday/Wednesday next week). More seasonal weather should prevail for the remainder of next week (possible return of marine layer clouds in the coastal plain). Some model solutions show a rain threat by the subsequent weekend (another weekend?!), but that’s far from certain at this time.

Next issued forecast/synopsis should be on Thursday, 28 March.