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Lionel Richie warns rising stars to embrace fans after bizarre Chappell Roan incident
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Lionel Richie knows the fame game can be a challenge, and issued a warning to rising celebrities after Chappell Roan faced backlash following a negative fan encounter.
During a sit-down with his son-in-law, Joel Madden, the Good Charlotte frontman admitted he hadn’t once heard his father-in-law complain about fans approaching him in public.
“I was invisible once,” Richie explained, before acknowledging that he has a difficult time ignoring fans. “They want to say something to you. And you can see it on their face. They want to say something. And for me to ignore them, would be the worst.”
RIO MAYOR BANS CHAPPELL ROAN FROM PERFORMING IN HIS CITY AFTER FAN INCIDENT CONTROVERSY

Lionel Richie warned celebrities about valuing fan support. (C Brandon/Redferns/Getty images)
He added, “Sometimes you meet the person you idolize the most, and you’re sorry you met them.”
The “All Night Long” singer said, “I made a promise to myself – I’m never going to be that. Never.”
Richie noted that star status isn’t for everyone.
“The thing that happens a lot of times is, I tell people when they get into the business, there’s one thing you didn’t calculate,” he said. “I hope you like people.
“Because if you don’t like people, here’s how it’s going to sound. You spend the first half of your career going, ‘Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me.’ And then you finally get famous. ‘Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me. Don’t look at me.’”
He added, “The universe gave you what you asked for. Now what is it about people that you don’t like, or you want to be famous and rich without the people? It doesn’t work like that. You have to be able to engage.”
While in town last week to perform at Lollapalooza Brazil, the “Pink Pony Club” singer allegedly directed security to scold his daughter after she spotted Chappell having breakfast at the hotel in São Paulo, according to professional soccer star Jorginho Frello.
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Chappell, 28, addressed the incident on Instagram stories and later denied the fan encounter after the “very upsetting” situation caught the eye of Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Cavaliere.
In a statement shared on X, Cavaliere said that Chappell was no longer welcome to perform in his city.
“I mean that as long as I’m in charge of our city — this young lady @ChappellRoan will never perform at Todo Mundo No Rio,” he wrote in a statement translated from Portuguese. “I doubt that Shakira would do that! By the way, @FrelloJorginho, your little one is already the guest of honor from the organization in May!”
The “Good Luck, Babe!” singer jumped on social media Sunday morning to explain her “half of the story” while lying in bed.
“I didn’t even see. I didn’t even see a woman and a child. No one came up to me. No one bothered me,” the musician confided to her followers while lying in bed. “I was just sitting at breakfast in my hotel, I think these people were staying at the hotel as well.”
“I did not ask the security guard to go up and talk to this mother and child. They did not come up to me. They weren’t doing anything.”

Chappell Roan was banned from performing in Rio after a negative fan encounter went viral online. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
She added, “I do not hate people who are fans of my music. I do not hate children. Like, that is crazy.”
“I am sorry to the mother and child that someone was assuming something, that you would do something and that if you felt uncomfortable, that makes me really sad. You did not deserve that.”
Jorginho, a midfielder for Campeonato Brasileiro Série A club Flamengo, wrote on Instagram stories that his family went through a “very upsetting situation” involving Chappell prior to her Lollapalooza Brazil set.
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He claimed online that his 11-year-old daughter was reprimanded by Chappell’s security for looking at the singer.
“The worst part is she didn’t even approach her,” he wrote. “She simply walked past the singer’s table, looked to confirm it was her, smiled, and went back to sit with her mum. She didn’t say anything, didn’t ask for anything.”

Chappell Roan denied her involvement in a fan encounter. (Valerie Macon/AFP via Getty Images)
Jorginho wrote that after his daughter walked by, “A large security guard came over to their table while they were still having breakfast and began speaking in an extremely aggressive manner to both my wife and my daughter, saying that she shouldn’t allow my daughter to ‘disrespect’ or ‘harass’ other people.”
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He added, “It’s sad to see this kind of treatment coming from those who should understand the importance of fans. At the end of the day, they are the ones who build all of this. I sincerely hope this serves as a moment of reflection. No one should have to go through this, especially not a child.”
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James Harden, Carmelo Anthony & the AI-Powered Hollywood Pivot

James Harden has spent more than a decade as one of basketball’s most mercurial superstars — an MVP, multiple-time scoring champion, 10-time NBA All-Star and one of the most inventive players of his generation. At his 2010s peak with the Houston Rockets, Harden turned step-back three-pointers and foul-drawing into an almost mathematical form of offensive domination, becoming both statistically unstoppable and endlessly polarizing. Few athletes of this era have generated more highlights, more debate or more internet discourse.
Now he may be trying to turn that persona into entertainment IP.
On March 5, Harden released an AI-generated basketball animation to his 11.9 million Instagram followers that focused on his life story, used his voiceover and had near Pixar-like character development. It was ambitious in a way celebrity content rarely is. Working with a leading AI studio, he created a short film that transformed his persona into a larger-than-life animated protagonist, remixing his NBA career into an anime-style mythology built for social media: oversized arenas, hyper-stylized basketball battles, emotional arcs, cinematic pacing. It felt less like a sponsored post than a test case for turning an active NBA player into a self-distributed entertainment universe — without waiting on Hollywood.
And people paid attention.
Fans online dissected every frame of the video, which was produced in under a week using AI-native production workflows. Some viewers praised the scale and speed of what had been created, comparing it favorably to Pixar characters. Others zeroed in on the flaws: Harden’s avatar occasionally appeared to shoot with the wrong hand, and the lettering on his jersey sometimes dissolved into visual nonsense. The reactions were split between fascination, skepticism, mockery and genuine curiosity, with one detractor blurting: “You rich bro, stop this.”
And yet, it’s undeniable that his engagement exploded. That tension — imperfect craft, massive speed, direct fan distribution — revealed how athletes can now build, test and own entertainment IP before Hollywood would have even scheduled the first general meeting.
Cecilia Shen, the founder and CEO of Utopai Studios who collaborated with Harden on this effort, says his anime clip became one of the highest-performing posts on the Cleveland Cavalier combo guard’s Instagram account, even though she wasn’t entirely aware that he was going to be posting this animation. “James went ahead and posted early, and I woke up that morning, and he just went ahead and posted the clip along with a fire emoji,” she recalls. Harden, 36, reportedly wanted to control his own brand, and has decided to keep making AI content for his fans. And so, just a few weeks later, he released his second anime, with the promise of delivering more on a consistent basis.
Now Carmelo Anthony is getting on board to develop original sports and entertainment IP entirely on his own terms by partnering with Utopai Studios. In addition, Anthony will be an investor in the company, and his first project, an anime-inspired property built around his cultural world, will roll out shortly as a recurring short-form series (like Harden’s). Shen says that it follows in a line of business strategy where athletes “should have control over their own IP.”
Below, I’ll get into what this creative intersection means for AI, athletes and Hollywood:
- How AI lets athletes turn persona into owned IP without waiting for a greenlight
- Why even LeBron James shows the stark financial limits of the athlete-as-media-mogul model
- The athlete-media Catch-22: Fame moves fast, Hollywood doesn’t
- Why James Harden’s rough AI anime may still be a distribution success
- How Carmelo Anthony fits into the new athlete-IP playbook
- The opportunity — and warning — this opens up for Hollywood
Don’t stop here
Unlock the full story — and the no-spin reporting Hollywood trusts
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Rocket League On Unreal Engine 6 Announced At Paris Major
During the ongoing 2026 Rocket League Championship Series Paris Major, Epic Games and Psyonix delivered on a major announcement they’d been building up to for weeks, with several professional players and onsite content creators alluding to the announcement over the past few days.
The future of Rocket League will be on Unreal Engine 6, something that’s been highly anticipated by players for years. Rocket League was originally developed on Unreal Engine 3, which has undoubtedly hampered the ability of Psyonix to update the game as regularly as they would probably have liked in recent years.
We got to see a brief clip of Rocket League running on UE6, and it looks damn near photorealistic. There’s no hint at when it’s going to be coming, though, so it could be a ways off.
Unreal Engine 3 doesn’t have many of the contemporary features that developers enjoy with modern engines, and it’s harder to train junior developers on an old engine when they’re more familiar with UE5. We’ve seen teams like Halo Studios and TT Games face similar struggles with old engines before eventually opting to switch to Unreal.
Though many are sure to be excited about the announcement, there are also some concerns. Primarily, players are worried that a new engine might meaningfully change how the game’s physics engine behaves. The core feel of Rocket League is intertwined with how the ball reacts when colliding with one’s car, and any change to those systems will cause a major shock wave in the community.
Still, Epic Games is responsible for both UE3 and UE5, so the chances of the port feeling worse than the original are low. Everyone is looking for the exact same game with shiny new visuals and more content, and that seems to be what Epic is going for.
The Paris Major Storms On
The announcement of Rocket League on UE6 came during the semi-finals of the Paris Major, an appropriate time to make such a massive announcement, given that the event is one of the game’s biggest ever.
The energy in Paris is electric, as three of the competing teams, Karmine Corp, Team Vitality and Gentle Mates, are French organisations and each reached the major’s final six. The fandom of these respective organisations is on full display on the streets of Paris, seen by many as the spiritual home of Rocket League esports.
With the next semi-final being contested by Karmine Corp and Team Vitality to see who will face Twisted Minds in the Grand Finals, the energy of Paris’ La Défense Arena remains frenetic.
Rocket League
- Released
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July 7, 2015
- ESRB
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E for Everyone: Mild Lyrics
- Developer(s)
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Psyonix
- Publisher(s)
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Psyonix
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Sabalenka, Swiatek, Svitolina… qui pour succéder à Coco Gauff à Roland-Garros ?
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