Archives March 2025

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday he was appointing Fox News host Laura Ingraham and Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo to the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. In February, weeks after taking office, Trump fired the center’s president, replaced the board of trustees and named himself chairman of the organization.

The moves represented a takeover by Trump of a cultural institution that is known for its signature Kennedy Center Honors performances and is home to the National Symphony Orchestra and the Washington National Opera. “This completes our selection,” Trump said on social media after announcing the appointments of Ingraham and Bartiromo.

During his first term in office, Trump declined to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors, considered the top award for achievement in the arts. In December, at the last show attended by former President Joe Biden, the center’s leaders made clear Trump was welcome to come in the future.

Earlier this week, the hit musical “Hamilton” canceled its run at the center after Trump’s takeover.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) Trump said last month special U.S. envoy Richard Grenell will serve as the interim executive director of the center. Since taking office on January 20, Trump, a Republican, has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants and top officials at agencies in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.

In an odd case of history repeating itself, these are the exact same two awards that The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers won in 2003, having also been nominated for five Oscars. This similarity now has fans excited about the prospect of Dune 3, reportedly set to begin production this summer, winning Best Picture just like Return of the King did in 2004. The third Lord of the Rings film won a record 11 Oscars that night, an honor it co-holds with Titanic and Ben-Hur.

The theory about Dune 3‘s potential future triumph has been put forward by The Big Picture podcast host, Sean Fennessey, who wrote on X/Twitter on Sunday (2 March) that the identical twins were “something to keep in mind”. Dune fans have since been enthused by this factoid. One person tweeted: “Trust the process. We will be there for them.

A second fan said: “If Dune: Messiah doesn’t pull a Return of the King, the Academy has failed us all.” A third noted: “If Villeneuve manages to turn Dune Messiah into a crowd-pleasing blockbuster, he deserves more than an Oscar. Perhaps a Nobel prize.”

One thing that could prevent Dune 3‘s victory, however, is the fact that the film will be an adaptation of Frank Herbert’s second book, Dune Messiah, which proved quite divisive among fans of the series.The second novel is set 12 years after the events of the first book, with Paul Atreides still serving as Emperor of the Known Universe having unleashed the Fremen’s deadly jihad on the galaxy, leaving billions dead.

Atreides, though, begins to realize that despite his position he has become powerless to stop the excessive religious violence that he has authorized. The novel also sees a bigger role for Paul’s sister, Alia, who was briefly played by Anya Taylor-Joy in the previous film. It also curiously welcomes the return of the previously dead Duncan Idaho, who was played by Jason Momoa in the first film.

The book was previously loosely adapted in the miniseries, Children of Dune, produced by the Syfy channel in 2003. Dune 3 is expected to be released in cinemas in December 2026 for contention in the 2027 Academy Awards.

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