Naomi Campbell Barred from Being Charity Trustee in England and Wales

British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
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Naomi Campbell Barred from Being Charity Trustee in England and Wales

British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)
British model Naomi Campbell cries after being awarded the 'Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres' (Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters) title at the French Ministry for Culture in Paris on September 26, 2024. (Photo by Anne-Christine POUJOULAT / AFP)

British supermodel Naomi Campbell has been barred from being a charity trustee in England and Wales for five years after the poverty charity she founded nearly two decades ago was deemed Thursday to have been “poorly governed” with “inadequate financial management.”
Following a three-year investigation into the financial activities of “Fashion for Relief,” the Charity Commission, which registers and regulates charities in England and Wales, said it had found “multiple instances of misconduct and/or mismanagement,” and that only 8.5% of the charity’s overall expenditure went on charitable grants in a six-year period from 2016.
For example, it said that thousands of pounds worth of charity funds were used to pay for a luxury hotel stay in Cannes, France, for Campbell as well as spa treatments, room service and even cigarettes. The regulator sought explanations from the trustees but said no evidence was provided to back up their explanation that hotel costs were typically covered by a donor to the charity, therefore not costing the charity, said The Associated Press.
Campbell, 54, said she was “extremely concerned” by the findings of the regulator and that an investigation on her part was underway.
“I was not in control of my charity, I put the control in the hands of a legal employer,” she said in response to a question from the AP after being named a knight in France’s Order of Arts and Letters at the country's culture ministry for her contribution to French culture. "We are investigating to find out what and how, and everything I do and every penny I ever raised goes to charity.”
The commission, which registers and regulates charities in England and Wales, also found that fellow trustee Bianka Hellmich received around 290,000 pounds ($385,000) of unauthorized funds for consultancy services, which was in breach of the charity's constitution. She has been disqualified as a trustee for nine years. The other trustee, Veronica Chou, was barred for four years.
“Trustees are legally required to make decisions that are in their charity’s best interests and to comply with their legal duties and responsibilities,” said Tim Hopkins, deputy director for specialist investigations and standards. “Our inquiry has found that the trustees of this charity failed to do so, which has resulted in our action to disqualify them.”
The charity, which was founded in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, was dissolved and removed from the register of charities earlier this year. On its website, which is still active, the charity said that it presented fashion initiatives and projects in New York, London, Cannes, Moscow, Mumbai and Dar es Salaam, raising more than $15 million for good causes around the world.
The charity had been set up with the aim of uniting the fashion industry to relieve poverty and advance health and education, by making grants to other organizations and giving resources towards global disasters.
The commission said that around 344,000 pounds ($460,000) has been recovered and that a further 98,000 pounds of charitable funds have been protected. These funds were used to make donations to two other charities and settle outstanding liabilities.  
“I am pleased that the inquiry has seen donations made to other charities which this charity has previously supported,” said the regulator's Hopkins.



‘Joker 2’ Stumbles at Box Office amid Poor Reviews from Audiences, Critics

Todd Phillips, from left, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix arrive at the premiere of "Joker: Folie a Deux" on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Todd Phillips, from left, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix arrive at the premiere of "Joker: Folie a Deux" on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
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‘Joker 2’ Stumbles at Box Office amid Poor Reviews from Audiences, Critics

Todd Phillips, from left, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix arrive at the premiere of "Joker: Folie a Deux" on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Todd Phillips, from left, Lady Gaga, and Joaquin Phoenix arrive at the premiere of "Joker: Folie a Deux" on Monday, Sept. 30, 2024, at TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

“Joker: Folie à Deux” is the No. 1 movie at the box office, but it might not be destined for a happy ending.
In a turn of events that only Arthur Fleck would find funny, the follow-up to Todd Phillips’ 2019 origin story about the Batman villain opened in theaters nationwide this weekend to a muted $40 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, less than half that of its predecessor. The collapse was swift and has many in the industry wondering: How did the highly anticipated sequel to an Oscar-winning, billion-dollar film with the same creative team go wrong?
Just three weeks ago, tracking services pegged the movie for a $70 million debut, which would still have been down a fair amount from “Joker’s” record-breaking $96.2 million launch in Oct. 2019. Reviews were mixed out of the Venice Film Festival, where it premiered in competition like the first movie and even got a 12-minute standing ovation, The Associated Press reported.
But the homecoming glow was short-lived, and the fragile foundation would crumble in the coming weeks with its Rotten Tomatoes score dropping from 63% at Venice to 33% by its first weekend in theaters. Perhaps even more surprising were the audience reviews: Ticket buyers polled on opening night gave the film a deadly D CinemaScore. Exit polls from PostTrak weren’t any better. It got a meager half star out of five possible.
"That’s a double whammy that’s very difficult to recover from," said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “The biggest issue of all is the reported budget. A $40 or $50 million opening for a less expensive movie would be a solid debut."
“Joker: Folie à Deux” cost at least twice as much as the first film to produce, though reported figures vary at exactly how pricey it was to make. Phillips told Variety that it was less than the reported $200 million; Others have it pegged at $190 million. Warner Bros. released the film in 4,102 locations in North America. About 12.5% of its domestic total came from 415 IMAX screens.
Internationally, it's earned $81.1 million from 25,788 screens, bringing its total global earnings estimate to $121.1 million. In the next two weeks, “Joker 2” will also open in Japan and China.
Second place went to Universal and DreamWorks Animation's “The Wild Robot,” which added $18.7 million in its second weekend, bringing its domestic total to nearly $64 million. Globally, it's made over $100 million. Warner Bros.' “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" took third place in weekend five, Paramount's “Transformers One” landed in fourth and Universal and Blumhouse's “Speak No Evil” rounded out the top five.
The other big new release of the weekend, Lionsgate's “White Bird,” flopped with just $1.5 million from just over 1,000 locations, despite an A+ CinemaScore.
Overall, the weekend is up from the same frame last year, but “Joker's” start is an unwelcome twist for theater owners hoping to narrow the box office deficit.
Phillips and star Joaquin Phoenix have said they aspired to make something as “audacious” as the first film. The sequel added Lady Gaga into the fold, as a Joker superfan, and delved further into the mind of Arthur Fleck, imprisoned at Arkham and awaiting trial for the murders he committed in the first. It’s also a musical, with elaborately imagined song and dance numbers to old standards. Gaga even released a companion album called “'Harlequin,” alongside the film.
In his review for The Associated Press, Jake Coyle wrote that “Phillips has followed his very antihero take on the Joker with a very anti-sequel. It combines prison drama, courthouse thriller and musical, and yet turns out remarkably inert given how combustible the original was.”
The sequel has already been the subject of many think pieces, some who posit that the sequel was deliberately alienating fans of the first movie. In cruder terms, it’s been called a “middle finger.” But fans often ignore the advice of critics, especially when it comes to opening their wallets to see revered comic book characters on the big screen.
“They took a swing for the fences,” Dergarabedian said. “But except for a couple of outliers, audiences in 2024 seem to want to know what they’re getting when they’re going to the theater. They want the tried and true, the familiar.”
It has some high-profile defenders too: Francis Ford Coppola, who last week got his own D+ CinemaScore for his pricey, ambitious and divisive film “Megalopolis,” entered the Joker chat with an Instagram post.
“@ToddPhillips films always amaze me and I enjoy them thoroughly,” Coppola wrote. “Ever since the wonderful ‘The Hangover’ he’s always one step ahead of the audience never doing what they expect.”
“Megalopolis,” meanwhile, dropped a terminal 74% in its second weekend with just over $1 million, bringing its total just shy of $6.5 million against a $120 million budget.
Deadline editor Anthony D’Alessandro thinks the problem started with the idea to make the Joker sequel a musical. “No fan of the original movie wanted to see a musical sequel,” he wrote on Saturday.
The first film was also divisive and the subject of much discourse, then about whether it might send the wrong message to the wrong type of person. And yet people still flocked to see what the fuss was about. “Joker” went on to pick up 11 Oscar nominations, including best picture and best director, and three wins. It also made over $1 billion and was the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, until this summer when Marvel's “Deadpool & Wolverine" took the crown.