“She came to me one day and she said, ‘Mommy, why do all the other mothers come up to you and say, ’I cried'?” Dart recalls. “I said, ‘Well, Mommy wrote a story that makes people cry.’ She didn’t think that was so great.”

A lot of people, respectfully, disagree. That story was “Beaches,” which celebrates the deep bonds of female friendship as it traces the decades-long intertwined lives of two very different women, the messy Cee Cee Bloom and buttoned-up Bertie White.

“Women’s friends are the ones who get them through this life,” Dart says. “Husbands are great, but they ain’t your girlfriend, and they ain’t the one who’s going to take your call at four o’clock in the morning.”

“Beaches” became one of the great all-time cry-inducing stories even as it transcended mediums. It started as a novel, then a movie starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, a TV movie with Idina Menzel and Nia Long, an audiobook and now a Broadway musical.

Dart, 82, co-wrote the musical's story with Thom Thomas and supplied lyrics to songs by Mike Stoller, half the legendary songwriting team of Leiber & Stoller. “Beaches” stars Kelli Barrett as Bertie and Jessica Vosk as Cee Cee and comes to Broadway after a more than 10-year development period. It opens April 22.

‘We were one person’

Dart, who has been a regular at rehearsals, was buzzing after a recent run-through. She took note of how her husband — who has seen many performances — reacted. “I watched him from a few rows back pull his handkerchief out of his pocket. And I thought, ‘OK, we’re good. We got him, we got him.’”

Lonny Price, who directs the musical with Matt Cowart, says Dart is not precious about her creation and is always open to changes or fresh ideas.

“She’s an endless font for these characters,” says Price. “You’d think she would have expressed all there is to say about them, but she keeps finding new ways to express them and in humorous and dramatic and very useful ways for a libretto.”

Musical theater was Dart's first love, before she wrote for “The Sonny & Cher Show” and “Cher” and launched a career as a novelist. She started as a child actor in Pittsburgh, twice wrote the varsity musical with “Wicked” creator Stephen Schwartz at Carnegie Mellon University and graduated with a theater degree.

“Beaches” draws on the real-life close friendship Dart developed with her cousin, Sandy, who lived in Miami Beach. Their families would frequently visit each other and meet in Atlantic City or another beach, giving the fictional work its structure. Letters between visits kept the relationship alive.

Sandy married early, moved to Cleveland and had kids right away, following a more conventional path. Dart was an actor rising up through summer stock, then a writer chasing the arts. (There's a bit of Cher in Cee Cee, as there is some Dart.)

“We balanced each other out. What one lacked, the other made up for. So that was what kicked it all off,” Dart says. “I felt as though we were one person.”

At one point in her own life, Dart called Sandy in a panic — not even saying hello — to ask if she had ever had chickenpox. Her son had it now and Dart was pregnant — so the answer could endanger her unborn daughter. Sandy knew the answer.

“She said, ‘You have a pockmark on your left thigh.’ I said: ‘My husband doesn’t know that about me.’ And she says, ‘Honey, we’ve been married longer.’”

In the musical, Dart has given Bertie the song “My Best” with the lyrics: “When I am with her, it's as if we share one heart/And if I ever lost her I would fall apart.”

The musical, like the beloved film directed by Gary Marshall, traces the friendship sparked in Atlantic City in 1951 that's tested over the years by a love triangle, failed marriages, single parenthood and illness.

Cowart says it is a show that explores the often-intense friendships that women maintain: “I see that very much in the difference between my male friends and seeing my wife with her friends. It’s just a different level of closeness. It’s beautiful. It should be celebrated.”

‘The Wind Beneath My Wings’

The birth of “Beaches” wasn't always smooth, with Dart's literary agent initially finding metaphorical doors slammed in her face. “She tried to tell the story to publishers, and they said, ‘It’s not commercial. Who cares about two little girls who meet on a beach in Atlantic City?’”

After the publication of Dart's novel “The Boys in the Mail Room” in 1980 — a bestseller inspired about a quartet of trainees in a Hollywood studio mailroom who went on to big things — suddenly people wanted to go back to “Beaches.”

The Hollywood studio that turned the book into a movie wanted to change things — like some names and the illness that Bertie contracts — and Dart chose not to turn her story into a screenplay, on the advice of her husband, Stephen Dart.

“He said, ‘I think you should just write another book or write whatever you want, but don’t try and do their version of the story because you’ll never be happy.’ And he was absolutely right.”

The leap to the stage was immeasurably easy since Dart's love of musicals led her to include plenty of music in the novel, including “You'll Never Walk Alone” by Rodgers and Hammerstein and “I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise” by George Gershwin. The movie, of course, famously added the hit song “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which has made the transition to stage.

“Everybody loves that song. They identify it with the piece. So, it’s crazy not to use it,” she says. “I stay in a place in New York and the doorman said to me, 'How’s it going Mrs. Dart? You are using the song, aren’t you?'”

Dart says it's a privilege to be able to return to Cee Cee and Bertie: “Maturity changes things. That’s what gives me a better point of view about both of them.”

There's also a bit more Dart herself in the work, like the song “Real Woman,” which has the line, “You'll tell them if you're smart/It's all about the way you feel, woman/Whether a tough or genteel woman/What makes a real woman is her heart.”

Dart says she's thumbing her nose at anti-trans and anti-gay people with the song. “I don’t know if I would have been bold enough to put that into a show years ago. But I want to make that statement.”

Woods’ movements were slow and lethargic, he was sweating as he talked to deputies and told them he had taken prescription medication earlier in the morning, according to the incident report released by the Martin County Sheriff’s Office. Woods told deputies he had been looking at his phone and fiddling with the radio before he clipped a truck in front of him, the report said.

Deputies found two white pills, which were identified as the opioid hydrocodone used to treat pain, in his pocket, the report said.

When asked by a deputy if he took any prescription medications, Woods said, “I take a few.”

The golfer was traveling at high speeds on a beachside, residential road on Jupiter Island when his Land Rover clipped the truck and rolled onto its side, according to the sheriff's office, which noted Woods showed signs of impairment.

The truck had $5,000 in damage, according to the sheriff's report.

The truck driver and another person helped Woods out of his vehicle, with the golfer needing to climb out from the passenger side. Neither Woods nor the truck driver were injured.

During a field sobriety test, deputies noticed Woods limping and that he had a compression sock over his right knee. The golfer explained he had undergone seven back surgeries and over 20 leg operations and that his ankle seizes up while walking. Woods, who was hiccupping during the questioning, continuously moved his head during one of the sobriety tests and deputies had to instruct him several times to keep his head straight, the report said.

“Based on my observations of Woods, how he performed the exercises and based on my training, knowledge, and experience, I believed that Woods normal faculties were impaired, and he was unable to safely operate the motor vehicle,” the deputy wrote after the tests.

Woods, 50, is the most influential figure in golf and has become as recognizable as any athlete in the world. The first person of Black heritage to win the Masters in 1997, he has captivated golf fans with records likely never to be broken.

But his injuries kept him from accomplishing more, including those suffered in a 2021 car crash that damaged his right leg so badly he said doctors considered amputation.

At this latest crash, Woods agreed to a Breathalyzer test that showed no signs of alcohol, but he refused a urine test, authorities said. He was arrested and released on bail eight hours later.

Woods’ agent at Excel Sports, Mark Steinberg, has not responded to multiple messages seeking comment. No one from Woods’ camp or the PGA Tour -- he is on the board and is chairman of the committee reshaping the competition model -- have commented since his arrest.

Woods, who has been involved in many crashes over the years, is charged with driving under the influence, property damage and refusal to submit to a lawful test. He is scheduled for arraignment April 23. Online court records do not list an attorney for him.

Under a change to Florida law last year, refusing a law enforcement officer’s request to take a breath, blood or urine test became a misdemeanor, even for a first offense.

The revelations that tumble from that truth-or-dare-style drinking game badly test a young couple in Kristoffer Borgli's baffling “The Drama,” which wastes two of the planet's most gorgeous people and will surely get everyone involved in trouble for using a current American tragedy as a plot point.

Robert Pattinson and Zendaya star as Charlie Thompson and Emma Harwood, a genteel, engaged couple in Boston — he's a museum curator and she's a literary editor — whose relationship is upended when she reveals a dark secret from her past.

That secret shakes Charlie's love for his intended, messes with work, affects his performance in bed and prompts him to spiral out, overacting at every step. Of course, it dents his desire to get married. Can he ever see his love in the same way again?

“Can we just forget about it?” she asks him. “I don't want you to fixate on this.” But he can't help it: He has visions, gets paranoid, watches friends — including a brilliant Alana Haim — run away.

“The Drama” is billed as a “sexy, contemporary romantic comedy” but the only accurate word in that description is “contemporary.” The on-screen chemistry between Pattinson and Zendaya is more sibling-like — even before the revelation — and this is nowhere near a ha-ha rom-com like “Anyone But You.” Not many romantic comedies have projectile vomiting and bloody wounds.

How well you really know someone is legitimate grounds to explore in a romantic drama, but writer-director Borgli has stumbled by making a wedding satire while putting a finger into a societal raw gash that's never something to use as a relationship test, which here is — spoiler alert — a school shooting.

It turns out Emma, as a bullied 15-year-old, planned a school assault with her dad's shotgun but never went through with it. She even became an anti-gun advocate, but no matter. “She's obviously not the person you thought she was,” says a friend.

The Norwegian Borgli, whose script namechecks French filmmaker Louis Malle and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, could have picked any subject to attempt to unmoor this couple — an affair, some pyromania, a minor felony, even an egregious dine-and-dash — but he picked a planned mass murder. And in a semi-comedy, or at least a cringe-comedy. It's too much to ask of this couple — or this movie.

Zendaya has been promoting “The Drama” by wearing something old, something new and something borrowed. She's trolling us that she might be already married to Tom Holland. But, again, she's also promoting a movie with an attempted school shooting.

Borgli leaves clues that his would-be couple are in trouble right from the beginning. In the first scene, Charlie spots Emma at a coffee shop and fibs about loving the book she's reading, establishing lying at the basis of their relationship. We then watch them navigate the wedding-industrial complex, with visits to photographers and florists, mining humor from the weirdness of freelance wedding DJs and a very aggressive dance instructor. The fact that the couple emitted few sparks when they were in love compounds the lack of investment when that love collapses.

And yet the topic of school shootings — so cavalierly introduced — won't go away. Borgli makes it almost a laugh line — in one scene, Charlie tosses Emma's “Coffee or I'll Shoot” mug into the trash. But the writer-director has miscalculated badly. Maybe he's trolling America but “The Drama” is clearly the worst thing he’s ever done.

“The Drama,” a A24 release that hits movie theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language, sexual content and some violence.” Running time: 104 minutes. One star out of four.

If she had worries, they were mainly about the delivery and whether it might affect her voice.

“But as soon as they were born, everything changed,” she said.

After more than a decade of nearly constant travel from one opera house to another, building her career, she was never away from her infant sons over the summer for more than two hours at a time.

“Just to go to the grocery store or something,” she said. The idea of then taking them away from home to travel for work seemed “insane. And to be away from them for rehearsals and performances!”

Yet looming over her was a November deadline to start rehearsals in Barcelona, Spain, for Richard Wagner’s "Tristan und Isolde,” one of the pinnacles of the repertory for a dramatic soprano. And then she was due to fly to New York for a different production of the same opera at the Met.

“I told my husband many times, I don’t know if I can actually emotionally do this, or if I want to,” she said. “I was like, ‘Why do I sing?’ And he said, this is not the time to make that decision. We couldn’t have this discussion every day because it drove me mad and it drove him mad.”

Focus, and the fear of failing

In the end, a sense of obligation won out over any impulse to quit. And once in Barcelona, Davidsen found that the need to focus on mastering the role proved a welcome distraction from her personal turmoil.

”My fear of failing in this role was so big. I had to put my energy there,” she said. “Since I had not been singing for so long, and it’s a role that some people have been waiting for, that was pressure on top of these other things. So I decided to do my job rather than dwelling on my emotions.”

Any fear evaporated once the Barcelona production opened. The reviews were rapturous, with critics proclaiming her a worthy successor to Kirsten Flagstad and Birgit Nilsson, widely considered the two greatest Isoldes of the 20th century.

In New York, the response has also been euphoric from audiences and most critics — and from her fellow singers.

Ryan Speedo Green, the bass-baritone who sings the role of her husband, King Marke, is downstage facing the audience while she stands far behind him singing the “Liebestod,” the aria that ends the opera.

“To be on stage with her at that moment… I get goose bumps every time,” he said. “The purity of the sound, the feeling and understanding.… After the last note, I’m in tears. If I had to sing after that I’d be a wreck.”

Keeping commitments but taking fewer new roles

Now, as Davidsen nears the end of her run at the Met, she sounds more energized than exhausted, not like a singer contemplating giving up her career or even putting it on hold.

“When I left home I felt that I wanted to give up. I thought, this makes no sense,” she said. “It does make more sense now, maybe because the curtain has gone up a bit.”

She knows that other female singers have struggled with similar issues, though many of them had children earlier in their careers than Davidsen, who recently turned 39.

She said that for now she intends to honor appearances she’s already committed to but will be more sparing in undertaking new assignments.

“I don’t want to keep filling up,” she said. “I used to work all the time, and I don’t think I will do that.”

Still, a busy spring lies ahead. There’s a recital in Santa Monica, California; a concert version of Verdi’s “Macbeth” in Copenhagen; and then a multi-city Schubert song recital tour with her accompanist, pianist James Baillieu. For some of that travel, she’ll leave the twins with her husband.

“That will be the first time, but it will be only three days, so I should be able to do it,” she said.

Two major productions are already on her calendar for next season: opening the Met in “Macbeth,” and debuting as Brünnhilde in Wagner’s “Die Walküre” at the Salzburg Easter Festival. In future years, she’s also scheduled to sing Brünnhilde in Wagner’s complete “Ring” cycle at the Met. And after that, Peter Gelb, the company’ s general manager, said he plans to bring her back in the “Tristan” production.

An unexpected addition to her calendar

Meanwhile, her stay in New York is lasting a bit longer than originally planned. After all seven scheduled performances of “Tristan” sold out, she agreed to add an eighth, even though it means repeating the grueling role (the opera lasts more than five hours including intermissions) on a short turnaround. Her April 2 performance won’t end until after 11:30 p.m., and the added one begins at noon on April 4.

"I asked Lise if she would be willing to do it on 36 hours of rest,” Gelb said. “And she said, ‘I just rehearsed it back-to-back with orchestra, so why not?’”

“It’s so exciting,” Davidsen said of the added performance. “Maybe I’ve lost my sanity or something. I have no idea how I’m going to do it. I’m just going to rest as much as I can and hope it will work.”

The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences on Tuesday is announcing the nominees, the result of more than 13,000 entries from over 70 countries. The Associated Press got an early look.

Webby nominations went to social media teams behind such political figures as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, while Kendall Jenner’s Super Bowl tongue-in-cheek Fanatics Sportsbook ad “Bet on Kendall,” about her bad luck dating athletes, earned three nods. Jenner will go head-to-head in the category of best viral PR campaigns with Sweeney, who offered her bathwater for fans to lather up with in a limited-edition soap made by Dr. Squatch.

The dozens of Webby awards are broken up into eight big categories, including games, podcasts, website and mobile sites, video and film, apps and software, AI, and advertising, media and PR.

Winners will be announced April 21. An awards ceremony hosted by Josh Johnson, a correspondent and writer for “The Daily Show,” will be held May 11 in New York.

The organizations with the most nods include Google with 46, PBS with 29, Apple with 23, The Walt Disney Company with 23, NBCUniversal with 22 and Netflix with 22.

Hot sauce vodka, a dead owl and some things even stranger

Some of 2025's out-of-left-field products were recognized for their virality, including Absolut’s Tabasco-flavored vodka, cough drop maker Ricola offering a limited-edition scarf infused with its “signature Swiss alpine herbs” and two that leaned on a classic French pastry — Panera Bread’s Croissant Clutch handbag and Lidl’s Eau de Croissant fragrance.

The language-learning app Duolingo once again managed to grab attention with the faked death of its beloved mascot owl, Duo. That campaign — which prompted Dua Lipa to wittily respond on X with “Til’ death duo part” — was nominated for best PR campaign and best use of earned media. Lipa, herself, is in the running for her own Webby after Apple chronicled a full day on her Radical Optimism tour.

The finale of “Stranger Things” was a cultural phenomenon last year and its promotion, including a mobile scavenger hunt where users tapped a 20-sided die to enter the Upside Down, earned three nods. Speaking of scavenger hunts, Google Maps and Spotify were used in a nominated campaign for Bad Bunny fans to find track titles from his album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos.”

A Los Angeles billboard featuring Curry got a nomination for going viral because it looks like he's shooting the moon, while fellow NBA star LeBron James' commercial for Amazon, showing him considering different post-basketball careers like barber and lounge singer, grabbed a nod for best collaboration.

The awards are selected by the academy, while the Webby People’s Voice Award is voted on by fans around the world. Voting for that award is open until April 16.

Music videos, the Timmies and feeding MrBeast

The music video for “Luther” by Kendrick Lamar and SZA is up against Sabrina Carpenter's “Tears,” Rosalía's “Berghain,” Little Simz's “Young’” and Claude's “C’est La Vie,” which competed at the Eurovision Song Contest. Lamar won last year's music video Webby for “Not Like Us.”

Two-time Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch nabbed two nominations for delivering dramatic readings of Amazon customer reviews for the second chapter of its “Five Star Theater” campaign. Blackpink’s Lisa is also nominated for leading a troupe of professional ballerinas and dancers in an ad for NikeSKIMS, which triggered countless recreations on TikTok. Global girl group Katseye earned a nod for their Gap “Better in Denim” commercial.

Dwayne Johnson's surprise visit to the Apalachee High School football team after a school shooting got a nomination in the best long-form video category. Lady Gaga answering fan questions on Spotify about the making of her album “Mayhem” was nominated for best events and livestream social campaign.

Food content creator Nick DiGiovanni earned two nominations, for putting MrBeast through culinary boot camp — a post that got more than 71 million views — and for cooking for animals, including a lion. MrBeast earned his own nod with the animated short series “MrBeast Lab.”

The folks behind a Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest that attracted thousands of people, including Chalamet himself, were recognized, while Chalamet's ad for Cash App — co-starring a giant prickly-looking tropical fruit — was nominated under the branded entertainment short-form video and film.

Bieber broadcasting the behind-the-scenes preparations for his Coachella headlining set live on Twitch was nominated for community engagement, while Sonic’s ad starring Terry Crews teaching acting for athletes earned one for best long-form branded entertainment.

Podcasts, tangling with TSA and who said I love you first?

Nominations for best feature podcast host went to “Good Hang with Amy Poehler,” “Next Question with Katie Couric,” “The Mel Robbins Podcast,” “Reclaiming with Monica Lewinsky” and “Baby, This is Keke Palmer.”

Palmer’s podcast was also nominated in the interview or talk show category for entertainment and culture, alongside “Thanks Dad with Ego Nwodim,” “All There Is with Anderson Cooper,” “Office Ladies” and “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard.”

On the sports side, the podcasts nominated are: “Pablo Torre Finds Out,” “All the Smoke,” “New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce,” “Bussin’ With the Boys” and “7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony.”

Cardi B’s rollout for her album “Am I The Drama?” — including a stunt in which she sold her album for $9.99 and incense on a street in Harlem — got two nominations. The short film Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco did called “I Said I Love You First” earned one, too, as did Gomez's Rare Beauty line.

Science communicator and new mom Emily Calandrelli earned a Webby nomination after tangling with the TSA over her breast pump and stored milk, spawning #HandsOffOurMilk. Former “Saturday Night Live” cast member Bowen Yang and actor Matt Rogers got a nod after discussing the Olympics with “Sesame Street” characters for the NBC Olympics podcast “Two Guys, Five Rings.”

The Eurovision Song Contest Asia 2026 has confirmed artists from at least 10 countries across Asia competing: Thailand, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, Laos, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. More are expected to join before the finale in November.

“As we mark the 70th anniversary of the Eurovision Song Contest, it feels especially meaningful to open this next chapter with Asia, a region rich in culture, creativity and talent,” Martin Green, the director of the contest, said in the announcement Tuesday.

Bangkok is the perfect city to host the contest because it “has always been a place where cultures come together, where music fills the air, and where celebration is part of everyday life,” said Chuwit Sirivajjakul, a representative of the Thailand Tourism Authority.

The main gala, run by the European Broadcasting Union, draws more than 100 million viewers every year.

This year's main competition with 35 competing countries is scheduled to be held in Vienna in May. Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain are boycotting due to discord over Israel’s participation.

The contest strives to put pop music before politics but has repeatedly been embroiled in world events. Russia was expelled in 2022 after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It also has been roiled by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, stirring protests outside the venues and forcing organizers to clamp down on political flag-waving.

Similar tensions could emerge in Asia. Thailand and Cambodia engaged in deadly border clashes twice last year.

The New Jersey rocker released “Streets of Minneapolis” in late January amid the nationwide outcry over the shooting deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal officers. On Tuesday night, the Boss and the E Street Band are expected to perform it when they take the stage at Target Center to kick off the “Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour.”

“This tour is going to be political and very topical about what’s going on in the country,” Springsteen told the Minnesota Star Tribune in an interview published Wednesday. “Minneapolis and St. Paul, that was the place that I wanted to begin it, and I wanted to end it in Washington.”

Springsteen told a New York City audience on March 23, during a 30th anniversary celebration for the independent news program “Democracy Now!,” that his tour will head next to Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, “two other cities where they had to deal with ICE, ICE’s terror.” It ends May 27 in Washington, D.C., where he said he’ll have a few choice words for the White House.

“Streets of Minneapolis” was one in a series of tributes released by international artists and countless local performers as thousands of Minnesotans took to the streets. Springsteen played a solo version Saturday during the national flagship “No Kings” rally at the state Capitol in St. Paul.

“This past winter, federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis,” Springsteen told a crowd estimated by the Minnesota State Patrol to be 100,000 people. “Well, they picked the wrong city. The power and the solidarity of the people of Minneapolis, of Minnesota, was an inspiration to the entire country. Your strength and your commitment told us that this is still America, and this reactionary nightmare, and these invasions of American cities will not stand.”

The gritty video that Springsteen released for “Streets of Minneapolis” captured a city under siege by 3,000 federal officers, which President Donald Trump's administration called its largest immigration enforcement action anywhere in the country.

“We’ll take our stand for this land/And the stranger in our midst/We’ll remember the names of those who died/On the streets of Minneapolis,” Springsteen sang.

The video shows masked and armed agents in tactical gear, including the face of the operation, Greg Bovino, who was pulled out of Minneapolis amid the backlash and is preparing to retire. It also shows 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, wearing a bunny hat and Spider-Man backpack, surrounded by immigration officers, whose photo stirred outrage around the world.

And it also showed the makeshift memorials that sprang up where Good and Pretti were killed, interspersed with clips of the final moments of the two as they confronted officers. It climaxes with video of thousands of residents who filled the streets of Minneapolis as they chanted “ICE Out!”

There's no love lost between Springsteen and Trump, who have long feuded. During his European tour last year, Springsteen slammed the Trump administration as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous,” and denounced Trump as an “unfit president” leading a “rogue government” of people who have “no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.”

Trump, in turn, has called Springsteen a “dried out prune of a rocker.” In a social media post, the president once wrote, “Never liked him, never liked his music or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — just a pushy, obnoxious JERK,” he wrote on social media.

Springsteen has long emphasized socially conscious music, which brings up another Minnesota connection. In 1984, when he released his album “Born in the U.S.A.,” with its title cut, an often-misunderstood lament of a disillusioned Vietnam veteran, he kicked off his tour in St. Paul.

The Grammy-winning star said Monday that she will perform 10 shows at Paris La Défense Arena from Sept. 12 through Oct. 14, marking a major milestone after years away from touring due to the rare neurological disorder she disclosed in 2022.

In an emotional video message delivered from beneath the Eiffel Tower on her 58th birthday, Dion thanked fans for their support during her health challenges and said she feels “strong” and “excited” to return to the stage.

“Over the last few years, every day that’s gone by, I’ve felt your prayers and support,” she said. “This year, I’m getting the chance to see you, to perform for you once again in Paris.”

The shows, titled “Celine Dion Paris 2026,” will feature her catalog of hits in English and French. The production is being developed with creative director Willo Perron.

Dion has largely stepped back from performing since canceling her Courage World Tour as her condition progressed. She made a brief but widely watched return at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics, performing atop the Eiffel Tower.

With nearly 260 million albums sold worldwide, Dion remains one of the bestselling and most decorated artists in pop music history, known for hits including “My Heart Will Go On” and “Because You Loved Me.”

Artist presale registration for the Paris shows runs through April 2, with ticket access beginning April 7.

The La Defense Arena has a capacity of 40,000 spectators and was one of the venues used for the Olympics.

The original Jennifer's Body, directed by Karyn Kusama, starred Megan Fox as the titular Jennifer, a cheerleader who becomes a man-eating demon after a ritualistic sacrifice, and Amanda Seyfried as her best friend Needy, who uncovers the horror. Released nearly two decades ago, the film initially received mixed reviews and underperformed at the box office but has since gained a devoted following as a queer-coded horror staple. Fans and critics have praised its subversive take on female friendship, teenage sexuality, and horror tropes, often highlighting its appeal to LGBTQ+ audiences through its sapphic undertones and empowered female leads.

Cody's confirmation aligns with prior teases from the cast and crew. Amanda Seyfried has repeatedly hinted at a sequel during recent press tours, stating, “We’re making another one And I’m not doing without .” She made these comments to her Jennifer's Body co-star Adam Brody in a Variety Actors on Actors interview. Director Karyn Kusama also confirmed last autumn that she knows “some of the bones of” the story for the potential follow-up. Both Fox and Seyfried have indicated interest in returning for the project.

At the premiere of Forbidden Fruits, a project where Cody served as producer, she reflected on her experience writing the original film while discussing the sequel. Cody described the writing process for the sequel as unique, teasing that she has been "fully unleashed" to craft the story. This development follows years of fan campaigns and online discussions elevating the film's status, particularly within LGBTQ+ communities where it is celebrated for its bold portrayal of female desire and monstrous femininity.

The announcement has sparked enthusiasm among fans, with social media buzzing about the potential return of the film's iconic queer subtext. Jennifer's Body has been retrospectively analyzed for its resonance with transgender people and others in the LGBTQ+ community, who see parallels in themes of bodily transformation and societal rejection. Critics note that the sequel could further explore these elements in a modern context, building on the original's cult legacy. No release date or studio attachment has been confirmed yet, but Cody's active involvement signals serious progress.

This project adds to Cody's recent horror ventures, including Lisa Frankenstein, underscoring her affinity for genre storytelling with strong female characters. As development continues, the sequel holds promise for delivering fresh horror with affirming representations that continue to captivate diverse audiences.