Entertainment

Special to the Empire-Tribune .

Special to the Empire-Tribune .

NEW YORK (AP) — It was feast or famine at the Broadway box office as 2022 wound down, with eye-popping revenue for popular shows — including a staggering new Broadway record for “The Lion King” — not lifting all strugglers.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kirstie Alley, a two-time Emmy winner whose roles on the TV megahit “Cheers” and in the “Look Who’s Talking” films made her one of the biggest stars in American comedy in the late 1980s and early 1990s, died Monday. She was 71.

The lovely and magnetic young actor Emma Corrin certainly has a thing for characters who marry unwisely. We cringed when Corrin’s winsome, affection-starved Diana married Charles in “The Crown,” knowing the heartbreak that lay ahead.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Forty seven years after he took the stage at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles in a sequined-studded baseball uniform as the world’s biggest pop star, Elton John walked on to the same stage on Sunday night wearing a bedazzled Dodgers bathrobe, a uniform more fitting for a 75-year-old man on the verge of retirement.

NEW YORK (AP) — Tess Gunty’s “The Rabbit Hutch,” a sweeping debut novel set in a low-income housing community in Indiana, has won the National Book Award for fiction. The 30-year-old Gunty was among three writers nominated for their first published books.

This week’s new entertainment releases include an album by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, a documentary about how Mickey Mouse became beloved by children and adults and a cash machine for Disney’s growing entertainment empire, and Chris Hemsworth puts himself and his body to the test in National Geographic’s “Limitless.” One of Netflix’s biggest forays into the family film field is “Slumberland,” a $90-million fantasy adventure by “Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence. And Fox Nation’s four-part series marking the 150-year history of Yellowstone National Park has the appropriate host in Kevin Costner, star of the drama “Yellowstone.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Bono opened his book tour Wednesday night in what he called a “transgressive” mood, a little bit guilty for appearing on stage with three musicians who were not his fellow members of U2 and otherwise singing, joking and shouting out his life story to thousands of adoring fans at Manhattan’s Beacon Theatre.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Country star Alan Jackson will receive the CMA Willie Nelson Lifetime Achievement Award at the Country Music Association Awards in November.