title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The narrative of the coven and Susie/Mother Suspiriorum's infiltration of it is underpinned by numerous historical incidents, including the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181, bombings, and numerous kidnappings perpetrated by the Red Army Faction, a Marxist group whose peak activity occurred in the autumn of 1977 in West Germany. These events occurred in the wake of "Vergangenheitsbewältigung", a period referring to Germany's national reflection on their culpability in World War II and the Holocaust, which "echoes constantly throughout" the film. While Goldberg has pointed out correlations between the coven's innerworkings and the national events occurring outside of it, others, such as Simon Abrams of "The Hollywood Reporter", view them as "surface-level parallels between historic signifiers" that "have the odd effect of subordinating those female-centered themes to a blandly familiar grab bag of sensationalistic headlines." Abrams concludes that the film offers "an underdeveloped, pseudo-Jungian understanding of how historical events kinda/sorta overshadow their protagonists' lives."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: A remake of "Suspiria" (1977) was announced in 2008 by director David Gordon Green, who had co-written a script with his sound designer. In 2007, Luca Guadagnino had convinced the original film's creators Dario Argento and Daria Nicolodi to allow him to option a remake of the film. Guadagnino subsequently offered the project to Green, who cast Isabelle Huppert, Janet McTeer, and Isabelle Fuhrman. Green described his screenplay as "operatic", adding, "I love Argento's film and we wrote a very faithful, extremely elegant opera ... I don't mean musical opera, but it would be incredibly heightened music, and heightened and very operatic and elegant sets." According to Green, financing conflicts resulted in the project being scrapped.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In September 2015, at the 72nd Venice Film Festival, Guadagnino announced plans to direct a "remake" of "Suspiria" with the four main actors of his film "A Bigger Splash", which had premiered at the festival. Guadagnino revealed that his version was to be set in Berlin circa 1977, and would have as its main theme "the uncompromising force of motherhood". Guadagnino has since said explicitly that the film is not a remake, but is instead an "homage" to the "powerful emotion" he felt when he first watched the original film:I was so terrified, but as always with something that terrifies you, I was completely pulled in. I think the process of how that movie influenced my psyche probably has yet to stop, which is something that happens often when you bump into a serious work of art like "Suspiria". I think the movie I made, in a way, [represents] some of the layers of [my] upbringing, watching the movie for the first time and thinking of it and being obsessed by it.Guadagnino said in 2018 that he felt "Suspiria" was his most personal film to date. The film was a co-production between the United States and Italy.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The screenplay was written by American writer David Kajganich, who had previously written Guadagnino's "A Bigger Splash", and developed the British television series "The Terror". Though Kajganich admitted to not being a fan of the original film, he agreed to write a screenplay for Guadagnino. On writing the film, Kajganich stated:


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Kajganich chose to set the film in Berlin in 1977the year the original film was releasedduring the series of terrorist events known as the "German Autumn". The film begins shortly after the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181, in order to hint at "larger thematic concerns," specifically the response of the youth of the era to the denial by their parents' and grandparents' generations of German culpability in World War II. Kajganich used the political tumult of the time as a means of contextualizing the central plot surrounding the Markos dance academy, "where an American is getting her education in a way in how a modern kind of fascism might look." For inspiration, Kajganich studied women's literature of the period, as well as the films of German contemporary filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and "listened to a lot of [German singer] Nico".


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Guadagnino was mostly interested in the witchcraft and solidarity among women aspects of Kajganich's script, themes which he said have been "perverted by the official history and the official religions as making a bargain with the devil. The witchcraft that I'm interested in also has a lot to do with what, psychoanalytically, is called the concept of the terrible mother, which you can see also in some religions, particularly in the Kali goddess." Retaining the dance academy locale, Kajganich proposed that the witches would transmit their spells via movement: "It makes total sense why a coven would hide in a dance company, because they could wield their influence in public ways, without the public realizing." Kajganich pitched this concept to Guadagnino early on, and shaped the screenplay using dance as a narrative through-line. Guadagnino was also enthusiastic in response to Kajganich's setting of the film, remarking: "Dario's movie was a sort of self-contained box of fleshy delicacies, which was not in relationship with the moment it was made. It was too much of an opportunity for me and David to actually say, 'It's 1977 – deal with it, let's make it the center of the story.'"


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: On November 23, 2015, Guadagnino confirmed that Tilda Swinton and Dakota Johnson had been cast in the film and that shooting was scheduled to begin in August 2016, with release set for 2017. Johnson was asked to play the part of Susie Bannion while filming Guadagnino's "A Bigger Splash" (2015). After watching the original film, Johnson agreed to commit to the project. "I was obviously really invested—really invested in Luca as a person, collaborator, artist," Johnson said. "You just want to go on any adventure with him."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Swinton, a friend and frequent collaborator of Guadagnino who had also co-starred in "A Bigger Splash", was cast in three roles: Madame Blanc, the lead choreographer of the academy; Helena Markos, its decrepit matron; and Dr. Josef Klemperer, a psychologist who becomes embroiled in the coven. In the part of Klemperer, Swinton is credited as "Lutz Ebersdorf". Swinton stated that she modeled her portrayal of Madame Blanc after Martha Graham and Pina Bausch, who she felt embodied "the shape Madame Blanc cuts — her silhouette, her barefoot rootedness, the precise choreography of her relationship with cigarette after cigarette."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In October 2016, Chloë Grace Moretz was cast as Patricia Hingle, a student who goes missing from the academy, while Mia Goth was cast as Sara, another one of the academy's dancers. Moretz commented on her participation in the film: "It's unlike any other directing process I have ever been a part of...  Luca is Luca and there's kind of no mistaking it for anything else. He'll let you do the craziest stuff on screen and won't bat an eye, he'll tell you to go farther."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Also cast were European actresses Sylvie Testud, Angela Winkler, Fabrizia Sacchi, and Renée Soutendijk, each as matrons of the academy. Fashion models Małgosia Bela and Alek Wek appear in their feature film debuts as Susie's mother and another of the academy matrons, respectively. Jessica Harper, who played Suzy Bannion in the original film, also joined the cast as Anke Meier, the wife of Klemperer who disappeared during the Nazi invasion. Harper was asked to appear in the cameo by Guadaganino, but under the provision that she would be able to perform in German. To prepare, she took German classes at a Berlitz school.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The role of Dr. Josef Klemperer is portrayed by Swinton, although it is credited as played by an actor named Lutz Ebersdorf in the film and its promotional material, and the filmmakers maintained that Ebersdorf was a real psychoanalyst until a month after the film's premiere.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In March 2017, photographs of a seemingly old man spotted on the film's set were published online, identifying the man as Swinton in heavy prosthetic makeup. In February 2018, Guadagnino called the claim "complete fake news", saying that the man was not Swinton but in fact a German actor named Lutz Ebersdorf in his screen debut, who plays a psychoanalyst named Josef Klemperer in the film and is a psychoanalyst himself. IndieWire questioned the veracity of Guadagnino's statement because of Ebersdorf's suspicious IMDb profile and otherwise lack of online presence. The film's casting director and executive producer Stella Savino responded to IndieWire, saying, "the character of Dr. Klemperer has been played by Professor Lutz Ebersdorf, a psychoanalyst and not at all a professional actor." During a press conference following the film's September 1, 2018 premiere at Venice, Swinton read a letter purportedly written from Ebersdorf in lieu of his presence, which read: "I am a private individual who prefers to remain private ... Though I strongly suspect "Suspiria" will be the only film I ever appear in, I like the work, and I do not mind getting up very early."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Writing for "Vanity Fair", Joanna Robinson reported that when the film screened at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, on September 23, 2018, the audience was certain that the role of Klemperer was played by Swinton. Robinson speculated that the filmmakers wrote the role and cast Swinton in order for the film to have both an outsider's perspective and a narrative of female power. By September 2018, IMDb had deleted Ebersdorf's profile and credited Swinton as playing Klemperer under the alias "Lutz Ebersdorf".


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In October 2018, Swinton told "The New York Times" that Dr. Klemperer was played by Lutz Ebersdorf and Ebersdorf was played by her. When asked why she played Ebersdorf, she said, "for the sheer sake of fun above all...  The intention was never to fool anybody. The genius of [makeup artist] Mark Coulier notwithstanding, it was always our design that there would be something unresolved about the identity of the performance of Klemperer." Swinton asked the makeup department to make a prosthetic penis, which she wore during filming. Swinton wrote Ebersdorf's IMDb biography herself. Guadagnino stated in a subsequent interview in "Vulture" that several of the actors in the film believed Ebersdorf to be a real person, specifically Ingrid Caven, who was unaware it was Swinton in disguise until after filming wrapped.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: While some filming took place at the Palazzo Estense in December 2016, the central shooting location was the Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Varese, Italy, which served as the Markos Dance Academy. While in the film the hotel appears to be positioned in West Berlin along the Berlin Wall, the actual location of the building is on a remote mountaintop overlooking Varese.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Inbal Weinberg, the film's production designer, commented: "When we arrived in Italy, we went to scout for alternative places, because this was logistically going to be almost a nightmare... the hotel had so much going for it." Weinberg dressed the Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori's interiors with dressings and furniture from various decades to give it an "intentionally out-of-time feeling." German Bauhaus geometric designs were used for certain interiors, such as the carpets of Madame Blanc's apartment, while Modernist architecture served as a constant reference point. The Frankfurt kitchen, a mass-produced fitted kitchen introduced in 1926, was the basis for the matrons' kitchen design, as well as the Sonneveld House in Rotterdam. In designing the dancers' dormitories, Weinberg dressed them with posters from contemporaneous underground bands, and "plasticky" furnishings from the 1970s. Costume designer Giulia Piersanti selected vintage clothing from the period that was "colorful, but not necessarily bright." Many of the costumes in the film were purchased from a used clothing warehouse in Prato, Italy.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: For the film's climactic sabbath scene, the production used a loggia in the hotel, filling in its arches which were then meticulously covered with braided hair. "It was Luca's idea to use hair," said Weinberg. "We conceptually decided that the texture of the wall is the hair of victims." The process of weaving the artificial hair took the design crew weeks to complete.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Principal photography began at the Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Varese on October 31, 2016, with a production budget of $20 million. The shoot lasted approximately two months, concluding in December 2016, while the remainder of principal photography was finished in early 2017, concluding in Berlin on March 10, 2017. Approximately two weeks were spent in Berlin, during which filming of the street and U-Bahn sequences took place, as well as those occurring at the police station, which was shot in an abandoned office building in Mitte. The scenes of Klemperer at his dacha were shot in suburban Berlin.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The filming conditions at the Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori were described as uncomfortable by the cast and crew, as the film was shot in the winter months and the hotel was inefficiently heated with gasoline space heaters. The hotel, which had been abandoned for several decades, had been adorned with cellular towers on the rooftop; Guadagnino recalled a "constant signal coming from the antennas that made all of us very weak and tired," while Johnson stated "there was electricity pulsating through the building, and everyone was shocking each other." She retrospectively commented that the filming process "fucked me up so much that I had to go to therapy". She later expanded on this statement, saying that the filming process "was not traumatic" and instead "the most fun and the most exhilarating and the most joyful that it could be...  [but] when you're working sometimes with dark subject matter, it can stay with you and then to talk to somebody really nice about it afterwards is a really nice way to move on from the project." Harper, who worked on the film for only several days but was present during portions of the shoot, likened the locale to a "haunted house... It was cold and dark and scary...  which was kind of appropriate, but not ideal shooting circumstances." The production's first assistant director broke his leg early into the shoot after falling on one of the sets.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Like its predecessor, "Suspiria" was shot on 35mm film stock. Cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom, who had previously worked on Guadagnino's "Call Me by Your Name" (2017), shot the film exclusively on Kodak Vision3 500T 5219, without correction filters. To achieve a 1970s-style effect, the film uses slow motion and numerous camera zooms typical of the period, including recurrent use of snap zooms.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In contrast to the original, Guadagnino's film uses primary colors sparingly. He described the film's look as "winter-ish, evil, and really dark." According to Guadagnino, the decision not to use primary colors was made in accordance with the film's bleak setting amidst Germany on "the verge of a civil war". Rather than using lavish color like Argento did in his original film, Guadagnino stated he and Mukdeeprom "went for a different take. Dario Argento and let's face it, Luciano Tovoli, his wonderful D.P., they decided to go for an extremely expressionistic way of decoding horror, which started from the work of Mario Bava. The way in which they made those colors — not just simple gels in front of lights, they were using velvet and they were really sculpting the light — [that] has influenced filmmakers for so long. I think everything that could have been said through that style has been said."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In opting for a more muted color palette, the filmmakers used cinematographer Michael Ballhaus's work in the films of Rainer Fassbinder as reference points, as well as the work of modernist artist Balthus, which Guadagnino felt "created such uncanny eeriness and fear". The compositions, costumes, and set design were all crafted with this in mind, and prominently feature browns, blacks, blues, and greens.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Makeup artist Mark Coulier, who had previously worked on several Clive Barker film adaptations such as "Nightbreed" (1990) and "Candyman" (1992), served as the film's makeup effects coordinator. The bulk of the special effects featured in the film were achieved via practical methods. According to Coulier, the death sequence of Olga, and the final sabbath scene were the most demanding in regard to special effects. For the former, a prosthetic arm, leg, broken ribs, and a protruding dental cast were created for actress Elena Fokina (Olga), allowing her to appear as though the bones in her limbs, abdomen, and jaw were being crushed and broken. Fokina, a professional dancer and contortionist, achieved the majority of the contortions herself, while her actual arm and leg were removed from the footage in post-production via digital processing. In conceiving Olga's broken arm, Coulier was inspired by a stunt performed by Ronny Cox in "Deliverance" (1972), in which he dislocated his own shoulder in the film.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The witches' sabbath that serves as the climax of the film was technically complicated due to Swinton's portrayal of three roles, each of which required their own unique and extensive makeup effects, as well as full-body prosthetics. Additional prosthetics were created to achieve the disfigured appearance of Patricia, as well as the disembowelment of Sara. "We had so many other makeup effects and full-body prosthetics going on," Coulier recalled. "We had Chloë Moretz in her dead-Patricia makeup, we had the intestines being pulled out, we had all sorts of stuff. It was a big challenge, and we had about 20 people on set, all applying makeups for that long sequence." The wound which Susie tears open on her chest in the climax was also achieved with prosthetics, though it was digitally enhanced in post-production.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Unlike the original film, which, though set at a ballet academy, featured very little on-screen dancing, Guadagnino's "Suspiria" uses dance as a key plot device. Congruous to the period in which it is set, contemporary dance was a central influence on the dance style depicted in the film. Kajganich commented that German expressionist dancers Mary Wigman and Pina Bausch were specific influences on his conceptualization of the dance routines. While writing the screenplay, Kajganich shadowed choreographer and dancer Sasha Waltz to gain further insight into the technicalities of the profession. The work of Isadora Duncan was also an influence.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Damien Jalet choreographed the elaborate dance sequences in the film. Guadagnino hired him after seeing a live performance of Jalet's "Les Médusées" ( ""The bewitched""), at the Louvre. Incidentally, Jalet had drawn inspiration from Argento's "Suspiria" when choreographing "Les Médusées". Jalet subsequently used "Les Médusées" as the basis for the film's six-minute climactic dance sequence called "Volk". For the last sabbath scene, Jalet said :"We wanted to go from something pretty technical, mathematical, with a certain sense of elegance to something where the body becomes wilder and more and more distorted,” Jalet commented. "The scene described something very chaotic, but I felt we needed to create something still very ritualized." Indonesian dance also served as a reference point for the sequence, which features movements that are "staccato, with harsh stops and starts, and an arm styling that is both intimate—in moments when the dancers hold on to each other—and harshly linear."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Aside from Johnson and Goth, all of the actresses in the on-screen dance scenes were professional dancers. Johnson trained extensively in the year leading up to the shoot to achieve the body type and technique of a dancer, spending two hours each day training at a dance studio in Vancouver while filming "Fifty Shades Freed" (2018). She trained in various forms of dance ranging from ballet to contemporary dance, as her character is that of a formally untrained, yet broadly proficient, dancer. Johnson also studied the work of Wigman, and listened to various musical acts of the 1970s, such as The Carpenters, Jefferson Airplane, and Nina Simone, artists she felt would have informed her character's instinctive movements. In the early autumn of 2016, roughly two months before the shoot began, both Johnson and Goth began rehearsing the film's choreography on location in Varese for six to eight hours per day.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Radiohead singer Thom Yorke composed the score, his first feature film soundtrack. It features the London Contemporary Orchestra and Choir and Yorke's son Noah on drums. He initially refused the offer, but accepted after months of requests from Guadagnino. Much of the score was completed prior to the film shoot, giving Guadagnino the opportunity to play it on set during filming.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Yorke cited inspiration from the 1982 "Blade Runner" soundtrack, musique concrète artists such as Pierre Henry, modern electronic artists such as James Holden, and music from the film's 1977 Berlin setting, such as krautrock. He said: "There's a way of repeating in music that can hypnotise. I kept thinking to myself that it's a form of making spells. So when I was working in my studio I was making spells. I know it sounds really stupid, but that's how I was thinking about it." The soundtrack was released on October 26, 2018 by XL Records.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In promotion for the film, a scene was screened during a luncheon at the 2018 CinemaCon in Las Vegas, Nevada, in April 2018. It was reported that the footage was so intense it "traumatized" those present. The scene presented was that in which Olga is contorted and mangled via movements made during Susie's improvisational dance. Peter Sciretta of "SlashFilm" described the scene as "very gruesome and hard to watch. This film will make most people feel uneasy." In May 2018, Videa acquired Italian distribution rights to the film.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: "Suspiria" held its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on September 1, 2018. It opened in a limited release in Los Angeles and New York on October 26, 2018. Guadagnino held an exclusive Q&A session during the film's opening weekend in Los Angeles. Limited screenings began on Halloween night in various U.S. cities, including Dallas, Denver, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Springfield, and Tempe. The U.S. release expanded to a total of 311 screens on November 2, 2018. It was released in the United Kingdom by Mubi on November 16, 2018. It was released in Italy on January 1, 2019.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: "Suspiria" was released in the United States on digital platforms on January 15, 2019, and on Blu-ray on January 29, through Lionsgate. The digital and Blu-ray releases include three behind-the-scenes featurettes. , the film has made $1.1 million in Blu-ray sales.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: "Suspiria" grossed a total of $179,806 during its opening weekend playing at the ArcLight Hollywood and Regal Union Square in Los Angeles and New York, respectively. This marked an average of $89,903 per screen, the highest screen-average box office launch of the year. Upon its expansion the following week, the film grossed $964,722 between November 2 and November 4, ranking number 19 at the U.S. box office. The film had closed on December 20 after it grossed $5,169,833 internationally, and $2,483,472 in the United States, making for a worldwide gross of $7,653,305. In 2020, Guadagnino said "Suspiria" had "made absolutely nothing. It was a disaster at the box office."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The critical responses to "Suspiria" were strongly polarized upon its release. Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" stressed that "polarizing" served as "too tame a word" to describe the reactions to the film. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""Suspiria" attacks heady themes with garish vigor, offering a viewing experience that's daringly confrontationaland definitely not for everyone." On Metacritic, the film has an average weighted score of 64 out of 100, based on 56 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Commenting on the horror elements of the film, Andrew Whalen of "Newsweek" deemed it "a powerful and dread-inducing experience even before it reveals itself to be not just an arthouse exploration of a horror aesthetic." He also compared the body horror in the film to that of the works of David Cronenberg. Like Whalen, Kristen Kim of "The Nation" observed similar elements, and wrote that it took "the body horror of the original to an unsightly new level. If the blood runs pretty in the old "Suspiria", it's urine here that trickles down the legs of a painfully contorted ballerina." Writing in "Variety", Owen Gleiberman compared certain visual elements of the film to "The Exorcist" (1973) and summarized it as a "gory but imperiously lofty matriarchal horror film", though he noted that the film would have benefitted from more shocks. "The Boston Globe"s Ty Burr described the film's finale as "Lovecraftian" but concluded that what it "mostly leaves behind is an acrid taste of having experienced something stylish but unfulfilling."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The "Los Angeles Times"s Justin Chang felt that the reimagining of witchcraft is "boldly absurd" and concluded: "By the time the phantasmagorical finale arrives, you are flooded with blood and viscera, yes, but also something even more unsettling — a sudden onrush of feeling, a deep, overpowering melancholy. It's the most startling of the movie's transfigurations, and it returns us to the primordial theme of motherhood." Anthony Lane of "The New Yorker" wrote a favorable review of the film, concluding: "The first time I saw Guadagnino's "Suspiria", I came out pretty much covered in gore, and confounded by the surfeit of stories. Can a splash be so big that it drowns the senses? How does such a film cohere? The second time around, I followed the flow, and found that what it led to was not terror, or disgust, but an unexpected sadness." David Ehrlich, who gave the film an A−, commented in "IndieWire" that ""Suspiria" is a film of rare and unfettered madness, and it leaves behind a scalding message that's written in pain and blood: The future will be a nightmare if we can't take responsibility for the past." "Slant Magazine"s Greg Cwik praised the cinematography, but expressed disappointment for what he felt was a lack of cohesion: ""Suspiria" is a largely befuddling accumulation of shots and sounds that never coalesce."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The film's length and pacing were noted by several critics who had varying opinions: David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" criticized the film for being "unnecessarily drawn out" with "too many discursive shifts to build much tension," while Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" described it as "more an MA thesis than a remake...  determinedly upscale and uppermiddlebrow, with indigestible new layers of historical meaning added." Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" criticised the pacing and runtime, writing: "As the first hour of "Suspiria" grinds into the second and beyond (the movie runs 152 minutes), it grows ever more distended and yet more hollow. Unlike Argento, who seemed content to deliver a nastily updated fairy tale in 90 or so minutes, Guadagnino continues casting about for meaning, which perhaps explains why he keeps adding more stuff, more mayhem, more dances." "Telegraph" critic Robbie Collin, however, praised the film for being a "slow burner," awarding it five out of five and stating that he considered it a better film than the original. Chris Klimek of NPR alternately deemed the film "a confounding and often punishing experience...  simply keeping up with the plot, despite its pokey pace, is ultimately exhausting." William Bibbiani of "IGN" echoed this sentiment, summarizing the film as "an interesting intellectual exercise, too ambitious to be ignored yet too overbearing to be enjoyed." Travers conceded that "Guadagnino's reach far exceeds his grasp," but concluded: "to watch him excavate evil to find a sorrowful truth is something you won't want to miss."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Numerous critics commented on the themes of German history and the Holocaust. Brian Truitt of "USA Today" wrote that the subtext and subplots were "bound to alienate some," but that "those with a penchant for the new wave of psychological horror and a healthy respect for B-movie camp will love this thing to the crazy last dance," while Stephanie Zacharek of "Time" criticised the political backdrop as "an extra layer of needless complication." This sentiment was reiterated by Richard Brody, writing for "The New Yorker", who felt that the filmmakers "shoehorn the Holocaust into the film with a conspicuously effortful shove...  The movie has nothing to say about women's history, feminist politics, civil violence, the Holocaust, the Cold War, or German culture. Instead, Guadagnino thrusts some thusly labelled trinkets at viewers and suggests that they try to assemble them. The result is sordid, flimsy Holocaust kitsch, fanatical chic, with all the actual political substance of a designer Che T-shirt."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Commenting on the performances of the cast, Kim Selling and Joule Zelman of "The Stranger" praised that of Swinton, but deemed Johnson miscast in the role of Susie, while Chang noted Swinton's performance as "one of her more restrained". Michael O'Sullivan of "The Washington Post" alternately considered Swinton's performance a "tour-de-force". Klimek praised the performances of all involved, while Ehrlich found Johnson's performance "thrillingly unrepentant". Truitt noted that Johnson "navigates [her role] with grace, and...  captures just the right physicality in the various modern dances that ground the movie with a primordial weight and sexual energy." Sandy Schaefer of "Screen Rant" described Johnson's performance as "engaging" and Goth as "equally strong".


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: The film's elaborate dance sequences were largely praised by critics. Gleiberman praised the dances, writing that they have "so much snap and thrust and rhythm you might call it an art-conscious cousin of the pop choreography of Bob Fosse...  the movement is even more jutting and explosive, but it erupts from the women's souls." "The New York Times" stated in an article about the film's choreography: "finally, a film that gets dance right", while "BBC" reviewer Nicholas Barber says "the company's choreography is woven into the story. It's all deeply impressive." Alonso Duralde of "TheWrap", however, negatively compared them to the dance sequences in "Showgirls" (1995) and "Lost Horizon" (1973), deeming the sequences "unintentionally hilarious pieces of choreography. The ludicrous terpsichorean display isn't helped by the costuming; the dancers all wear bright-red ropes tied in what appear to be Japanese Shibari bondage knots." Burr alternately praised the choreography, describing it as "propulsive...  and ripe with the sight and sounds of exploding body parts."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Argento panned the film, stating that "it did not excite me, it betrayed the spirit of the original film: there is no fear, there is no music. The film [underwhelmed] me", but he did call the film's design "beautiful".


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: On September 27, 2018, it was reported that the film's American distributor, Amazon Studios, was being sued for copyright infringement by the estate of artist Ana Mendieta. The suit, filed in a federal court in Seattle, Washington, alleged that two images present in the film's teaser trailer were plagiarized from Mendieta's work. The first is an image of a woman's hands bound with rope on a white table, allegedly derived from Mendieta's "Untitled (Rape Scene)", and the other is the red silhouette of a body imprinted on a bedsheet, which was claimed to have been derived from her "Silueta" series. A cease-and-desist letter had been delivered to Amazon in July over the images, and they were not included in the subsequent theatrical trailer released the following month. According to the suit, both images had been excised from the film, but an alleged eight others bore notable similarities to other works by Mendieta. On October 24, 2018, two days before the film's U.S. release, it was reported that Amazon Studios and the Mendieta estate had reached an undisclosed settlement.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: "Suspiria" had the working title of "Suspiria: Part One", with Guadagnino and Kajganich conceiving it as the first half of a bigger story. They planned "Part Two" to explore the origins of Madame Blanc and Helena Markos and the future of Suzy Bannion. The subtitle was dropped so that "Suspiria" would be thought of as a standalone work.


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: Guadagnino said he would be interested in developing "Part Two" if the film were a commercial success. He expressed interest in making a prequel about Markos, set hundreds of years before the first film, saying, "I have this image in my mind of Helena Markos in solitude in the year 1212 in Scotland or in Spain. Wandering through a village and trying to find a way on how she can manipulate the women of the village. I know she was there. I know it was six to seven hundred years before the actual storyline of this film."


title: Suspiria (2018 film)

text: In 2020, Guadagnino said a sequel was impossible, as "Suspiria" had been "a disaster at the box office".


Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach (alternatively known as Five Nights at Freddy's 9) is a 2021 survival horror video game developed by Steel Wool Studios and published by ScottGames. It is the ninth main installment in the "Five Nights at Freddy's" series and the thirteenth game overall, taking place after the events of "". The game differs from other installments in the franchise, featuring only one night instead of five and having free-roam gameplay. The player takes the role of a young boy named Gregory, who must evade hostile animatronic characters and a female night guard in a large shopping mall, unveiling its morbid secrets while trying to survive until morning.


title: Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach

text: The game was released digitally on December 16, 2021, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, with ports for other platforms planned to be released at later dates. The physical release for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 was released on April 1, 2022. Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S versions of the game were released on November 22, 2022. The game earned praise for its aesthetic appeal, graphics, story, and gameplay, but was criticized for its bugs and technical issues, while the restrictive save system divided opinions. A free DLC expansion titled "Ruin" was announced for release in 2023.


text: The player takes control of a young boy named Gregory, who is locked in Freddy Fazbear's pizzaplex filled with murderous animatronics and must complete numerous missions to survive the night in order to escape. The 1980s- or "Glamrock"-styled animatronics found throughout the mall include Glamrock Freddy, Glamrock Chica, Montgomery Gator, Roxanne Wolf, the Daycare Attendant, the Glamrock Endoskeletons, the Wind-Up Music Men, and DJ Music Man. Gregory will also encounter other types of enemies, such as Vanessa, the security guard; Vanny, a corrupt and murderous woman in a rabbit suit; and the S.T.A.F.F. robots that can alert enemies to Gregory's location if spotted/offer him a map if the S.T.A.F.F. robots are a map provider.


text: Unlike previous iterations where Freddy is a prominent antagonist, Glamrock Freddy helps Gregory evade his fellow animatronics. Freddy has a compartment in his stomach that is "reserved for oversized birthday cakes and piñatas" that Gregory uses to hide in. While inside Freddy's "birthday cake hatch", Gregory can see through Freddy's eyes and can use him to get past most other animatronics without trouble; this will not fool the enemies Moon and Vanny, however. Also, Freddy has limited battery power, and if he is low on it, he will need to recharge at a charging station, as he will malfunction and kill Gregory if he is inside of him when his power runs out. Freddy receives hardware upgrades throughout the game's progression, and can acquire two extensions to his battery life as well as the abilities to overload voice-activated locks and stun other robots, break open chain-locked fences, and locate collectible items. Freddy can also give Gregory advice, shortcuts, or warnings about the challenges and enemies he will face in the mall.


text: All enemies will get stronger as the night progresses, so the player must adapt to their surroundings in order to survive. Gregory can hide to avoid enemies or knock over objects to distract them. Running drains stamina and if it's low, Gregory will not be able to move fast. Some confrontations will require the use of strategy in order to avoid being caught. Gregory has a flashlight that he can use to see in dark places and carries a device called a "Faz-Watch" on his wrist, where he can access the missions, camera system, and his location in the mall, as well as communicate with Freddy. However, the flashlight has limited power and needs to be recharged frequently. There are also two kinds of weapons that can be used to temporarily stun some enemies: the "Faz Camera" and the "Fazerblaster". The Faz Camera can stun all susceptible enemies in front of the player, but it has a lengthy recharging time between uses. The Fazerblaster can be fired more frequently than the Faz Camera, with six shots before needing to recharge, but only stuns one animatronic or S.T.A.F.F. and only with a successful shot to the head.


text: There are multiple paths and endings depending on the choices made throughout the game. Office escapes are also featured. Unlike previous games, this game allows free roaming and combat, features boss battles (with some being optional), and instead of five nights, the entire game takes place in a single night that lasts six in-game hours, with time only progressing alongside the story. Minigames are also featured as arcade games.


text: In Freddy Fazbear's Mega Pizzaplex, a large shopping mall centered around its animatronic mascots, Glamrock Freddy Fazbear (Kellen Goff), Glamrock Chica (Heather Masters), Montgomery "Monty" Gator (Cameron Miller) and Roxanne "Roxy" Wolf (Marta Svetek) are getting ready to perform for an audience. During the performance, Freddy suffers a technical malfunction and shuts down, collapsing on the stage and cutting the performance short.


text: Freddy awakens back in his room in Rockstar Row, where he discovers that a young boy named Gregory (Marta Svetek) is hiding inside his stomach compartment. Vanessa (Heather Masters), the female security nightguard and only human on staff for the night, orders all animatronics and employee robots - most of which have mysteriously become aggressive unbeknownst to her - to search for Gregory. However, Freddy's malfunction and Gregory's fear of Vanessa causes him to disobey the guard's orders and instead guide Gregory to the Pizzaplex's lobby, only for the mall to lock down for the night, trapping Gregory inside. Freddy continues to help Gregory survive the night until they find another way out or the front doors re-open at 6:00 a.m. After eluding Vanessa and the animatronics and taking refuge in a security office, Gregory manages to gain access to the mall's surveillance system. In an effort to obtain high-level security badges in order to access certain areas of the mall, Gregory enters the mall's daycare and encounters the Daycare Attendant (Kellen Goff) in his friendly but overbearing Sun form. A power outage forces Gregory to confront Sun's hostile alter ego, Moon. Gregory manages to restore power to the daycare, but Sun kicks Gregory out for turning the lights off and alerts the animatronics of his location before he is rescued by Freddy.


text: Gregory is captured by Vanessa and is later confined in a Lost & Found room. Suddenly, Vanny (Marta Svetek) – a woman in a white patchwork rabbit costume who was responsible for reprogramming the animatronics to kill Gregory – approaches him, and he escapes before reuniting with Freddy. Gregory and Freddy venture into the basement, where Moon ambushes them and captures Freddy. Gregory proceeds throughout the basement and avoids animatronic endoskeletons, before finding Freddy being interrogated and threatened by Vanessa. Vanessa states that there is no record of Gregory in the mall database, and accuses Freddy for colluding with Gregory. Once Vanessa leaves and he frees and repairs Freddy, Gregory is faced with exploring the Atrium's attractions in order to battle either Monty for his claws or Chica for her voice box to upgrade Freddy with, acquiring a tool that can temporarily disorient animatronics and S.T.A.F.F. along the way. After installing Monty's claws or Chica's voice box, Gregory and Freddy evade the large DJ Music Man and forcefully takes Roxy's eyes to further enhance Freddy.


text: 6:00 a.m. arrives shortly after the ocular upgrade is completed, and the doors open, but Vanessa broadcasts a message urging Gregory to meet her for a reward. The "reward" is revealed to be several recorded messages of Vanessa and an unknown woman undergoing therapy sessions. Gregory has the choice of either leaving the mall, staying to continue exploring the Pizzaplex's secrets and trying to solve the remaining mysteries, or confronting Vanny, who was also responsible for several missing children cases within the Pizzaplex.


text: A total of six endings exist for the game, each marked with one to three golden stars upon their final cutscenes.


text: On August 8, 2019, on the first game's fifth anniversary, Scott Cawthon posted a new teaser on his website, teasing the eighth installment for the series. The teaser depicts a modern shopping mall containing '80s-style versions of Freddy, Chica, and two new animatronics playing for an excited crowd. Throughout the following months, various characters in the game were shown throughout several teasers such as the new animatronics and the character Vanny from "". On April 21, 2020, the characters' names were leaked from Funko's list of upcoming products and the title was revealed to be "Five Nights at Freddy's: Pizza Plex". The following day, Cawthon confirmed the leaks, but that the title is not official. Cawthon also announced that the game was scheduled to be released in late 2020.


text: On September 16, 2020, a teaser trailer for the game was launched during the PlayStation 5 Showcase event, revealing new rooms along with the main lobby and new animatronics. At the end of the presentation, it was announced that the game would be released on PC, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, and may come to other platforms at a later date. However, on November 17, Cawthon announced that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and new additions to the game, the game had been delayed to early 2021.


text: On February 25, 2021, during Sony Interactive Entertainment's State of Play live stream, the first gameplay trailer was released, showcasing various areas and characters in the game.


text: On September 1, 2021, Steel Wool launched a new website, titled "Security Breach TV", to host new teasers for "Security Breach". Just a week later on September 7, the first video teaser was posted on "Security Breach TV" in the style of an old-fashioned cartoon, called "Freddy & Friends: On Tour!", featuring the main four characters from the original game. Throughout the following months, the website was updated with more video teasers containing secret images and teasers inside the videos.


text: During a PlayStation State of Play on October 27, 2021, the final trailer was showcased, featuring the other Glamrock animatronics as well as gameplay, cutscenes and mechanics. The game's release date was also revealed to be December 16, 2021. Ports for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S is slated for a November 22, 2022 release.


text: An update was released on February 28, 2022, which fixed many glitches and bugs present in the game, while also making the difficulty of the game easier.


text: On April 28, 2021, Cawthon announced that, due to the unexpected size of the game, its release was delayed further. As compensation for the players, Cawthon released a freeware beat 'em up spin-off game titled "Security Breach: Fury's Rage".


text: Before the release of "Security Breach", on October 30, 2020, Funko released a line of action figures of the Glamrock animatronics and collectible mystery minis. On May 20, 2021, Funko also released two 12" statues: one of Glamrock Freddy and Gregory hiding from Vanny and the other of Vanny and the night guard Vanessa on opposite sides of a potted plant.


text: "Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach" received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. "Jeuxvideo.com" gave a mixed review, praising the atmosphere and the originality of certain gameplay sections, but criticizing the bugs and technical issues. "The Escapist"s Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw was more critical of the game, praising the visuals, but criticizing the bugs, design, and restrictive save system.


text: The "Freddy & Friends: On Tour!" animated teasers on the "Security Breach TV" website were nominated in October 2022 for a Streamy Award for Brand Engagement.


title: Brad Garrett

text: Bradley Henry Gerstenfeld (born April 14, 1960), known professionally as Brad Garrett, is an American actor and stand-up comedian. Possessing a distinctive deep voice, he has appeared in numerous television and film roles in both live-action and animation mediums.


title: Brad Garrett

text: Garrett was initially successful as a stand-up comedian in the early 1980s. Taking advantage of that success in the late 1980s, Garrett began appearing in television and film, in minor and guest roles. His first major role was Robert Barone on the CBS sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond". The series debuted September 13, 1996, and ran for nine seasons. In 2002, he gave an Emmy-nominated and critically lauded performance as Jackie Gleason in the television film "Gleason".


title: Brad Garrett

text: Garrett's film roles include "Casper" (1995), "A Bug's Life" (1998), "An Extremely Goofy Movie" (2000), "Stuart Little 2" (2002), "Finding Nemo" (2003), " " (2004), "The Pacifier" (2005), "Ratatouille" (2007), "Tangled" (2010), "Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil" (2011), "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone" (2013), "" (2016), and "Christopher Robin" (2018). Garrett also played the leading role of Eddie Stark on the Fox sitcom "'Til Death" from 2006 to 2010. From 2006 to 2014, he played the Easter Island Head in the "Night at the Museum" trilogy of movies. From 2018 to 2020, he starred in the ABC sitcom "Single Parents". In 2021, Garrett also helped create Disney+'s "Big Shot" with David E. Kelley and Dean Lorey. He is also known for voicing the Big Dog on "2 Stupid Dogs".


title: Brad Garrett

text: Garrett has won three Primetime Emmy Awards, with three other nominations. He is still prominent within stand-up comedy and owns a comedy club at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, called Brad Garrett's Comedy Club, where he performs regularly.


title: Brad Garrett

text: Bradley Henry Garrett was born to Barbara and Alvin "Al" Gerstenfeld in Oxnard, California. He is Jewish. Garrett has two older brothers, Jeff and Paul. He attended George Ellery Hale Middle School and graduated from El Camino Real High School, both in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles, California. Garrett attended UCLA for less than two months before dropping out to pursue his comedy career.


title: Brad Garrett

text: Before comedy Garrett was known for being on the cover of ELO's eighth studio album "Discovery". In the early 1980s, he started doing standup at various comedy clubs in Los Angeles, including The Improv in Hollywood and The Ice House in Pasadena. In 1984, he became the first $100,000 grand champion winner in the comedy category of the TV show "Star Search". This led to his first appearance, at age 23, on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", making him one of the youngest comedians ever to perform on the show. His appearance with Carson brought Garrett more national attention, and soon he was appearing as an opening act for such headliners as Diana Ross and Liza Minnelli. He also opened in Las Vegas for Frank Sinatra, David Copperfield, Smokey Robinson, Sammy Davis, Jr., the Beach Boys, The Righteous Brothers and Julio Iglesias.


title: Brad Garrett

text: After achieving a strong measure of success with stand-up comedy, Garrett began performing on TV. From 1985 to 1986, he was the voice of Hulk Hogan (in a voice similar to Rodney Dangerfield) for the cartoon series "Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n Wrestling", He was featured on "Family Feud" during Ray Combs's tenure in a "Funny Men vs. Funny Women Week" during November sweeps. He also appeared for a week on the game show "Super Password" in 1987. He also appeared on "Hollywood Squares" including a moment when he impersonated Bill Cosby during a question about Jell-o. He then appeared in the short-lived summer comedy "First Impressions" (CBS, 1988), in which he was a divorced father who makes a living doing impressions, in a one-time spot as a bank loan officer on "Roseanne" (ABC), and "The Pursuit of Happiness" (NBC, 1995–96), in which he was the hero's gay best friend. Prior to these roles, Garrett had also had a minor part on "Transformers", voicing the Decepticon base Trypticon in season three and as an ill-fated thug in "Suicide Kings". He soon won the role of Ray Romano's brother Robert Barone on the long-running family-oriented comedy hit "Everybody Loves Raymond", and in 1998, he and Romano appeared together in their respective roles on a Season 1 episode of "The King of Queens", titled "Road Rayge", in which Robert is jealous of his brother spending so much time with Doug Heffernan (the main character played by Kevin James). Garrett has also made an appearance on "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" playing a hitman who attempts to kill Will Smith's character.


title: Brad Garrett

text: Garrett also works as a voice actor, such as on "Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series", "2 Stupid Dogs", "The Spooktacular New Adventures of Casper", "Project Geeker", "Biker Mice from Mars", "Steven Spielberg Presents: Toonsylvania", "A Bug's Life", "Finding Nemo", "Ratatouille", "Asterix and the Vikings", "", and "Justice League" as Lobo.


title: Brad Garrett

text: His role on "Everybody Loves Raymond" won him five Emmy Award nominations, and the 2002, 2003 and 2005 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In 1990, Garrett appeared as a semi-regular panelist on the revival of "Match Game". On the May 2, 1996 episode of the sitcom "Seinfeld", called "The Bottle Deposit", Garrett played a rogue auto mechanic who steals Jerry Seinfeld's car.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In 2003, he was also nominated for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or Movie for "Gleason". With his "Raymond" castmates, he won the 2003 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series. He won the fifth season championship of "Celebrity Poker Showdown", and played in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 World Series of Poker. Garrett was hoping to do a spin-off with his character Robert Barone from "Everybody Loves Raymond" when the show ended its nine-year run in 2005, but he withdrew in October 2005 due to inaction from CBS that led to a number of the writers from "Raymond" leaving and taking other jobs.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In 2005, Garrett appeared on Broadway playing Murray the Cop in the revival of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" with Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick. He understudied Lane in the role of Oscar Madison, and substituted for him in January 2006, during Lane's illness. That same year, he starred in "The Pacifier" opposite Vin Diesel. In 2006, Fox network announced they would pick up a new sitcom called "'Til Death" starring Garrett in the lead role. The plot revolves around a long married couple whose new next door neighbors are a pair of feisty newlyweds. Joely Fisher plays Garrett's wife in the series. He also appeared onstage on "American Idol" season six (2007) during judging on week 11, to which Ryan Seacrest said, "And the next person off "American Idol" is—Brad, you're out."


title: Brad Garrett

text: In the fall of 2008, Garrett starred in, and was the executive producer for, an online reality show called "Dating Brad Garrett". In 2008, Garrett hosted a celebrity roast of Cheech & Chong, which was aired on TBS.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In 2009, Garrett entered the main event at the World Series of Poker, losing on the second day of the event. Garrett has starred in commercials for 7-Up, where he portrays a more happy, cheerful version of himself because of the soda.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In June 2010, he opened Brad Garrett's Comedy Club in the Tropicana Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. In December 2010, he was one of the narrators during performances of the Candlelight Processional at Epcot.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In June 2011, "I Kid with Brad Garrett", a candid kids show, premiered on TLC. On December 12, 2011, Garrett closed his club at the Tropicana. He started a new club with the same name across the street at the MGM Grand, and is active as of April 2016.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In the summer of 2013, Garrett played Chug in the movie "Planes", marking the fourth time he starred in a movie with John Ratzenberger. In the fall of 2013, Garrett played a recurring character in "The Crazy Ones". In May 2016, he was confirmed to appear as the voice of Krang, in the sci-fi action comedy film "".


title: Brad Garrett

text: In November 2016, Garrett portrayed Frankenstein's monster in a Christmas commercial for Apple's iPhone 7. As of 2017, the ad has received over seven million views. In 2018, Garrett voiced the character Eeyore in the live-action film "Christopher Robin", based on Disney's "Winnie the Pooh" franchise, and in a cameo in the animated film "Ralph Breaks the Internet". He previously voiced the character in the 1995 video game "".


title: Brad Garrett

text: When asked whether he would do a revival of "Everybody Loves Raymond", he stated:You know. There's no show without the parents. That's really the bottom line. Doris and Peter were such a huge part of the show. I miss them but some things you don't go back to, you know. We could never recreate that.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In 1998, Garrett proposed to his then-girlfriend, Jill Diven, on the set of "Everybody Loves Raymond", and they were married on May 18, 1999; together they have two children, a son and a daughter. Garrett and Diven separated in 2005, and Diven filed for divorce in July 2006. The divorce was finalized in November 2007.


title: Brad Garrett

text: In 2008, he began dating actress IsaBeall Quella, whom he met at a Vose art gallery in Boston. They were engaged in December 2015, and the couple married on November 11, 2021. Right as his acting career had started Garrett won a battle against alcoholism, later admitting he was a "high functioning alcoholic".


title: Ted (film)

text: Ted (stylized as ted) is a 2012 American comedy film directed by Seth MacFarlane (in his directorial debut) and written by MacFarlane, Alec Sulkin, and Wellesley Wild. The film stars Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, with Joel McHale and Giovanni Ribisi in supporting roles, and MacFarlane providing the voice and motion capture of the title character. The film tells the story of John Bennett, a Boston native whose childhood wish brings his teddy bear friend Ted to life. However, in adulthood, Ted and John's friendship begins to interfere with the progression of John's relationship with his girlfriend, Lori Collins.


title: Ted (film)

text: MacFarlane's feature-length directorial debut, the film is produced by Media Rights Capital and distributed by Universal Pictures. It was released in theaters in the United States on June 29, 2012, and was a box office hit, grossing $549.4 million against a $50–65 million budget. "Ted" was the highest-grossing comedy film of 2012, is the second highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time (behind "The Hangover Part II") and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. It received generally positive reviews, and successfully launched a franchise, with a sequel released in 2015, and a prequel television series currently in development.


title: Ted (film)

text: In 1985, eight-year-old John Bennett is a friendless only child living in Norwood, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, who wishes for his new Christmas gift, a jumbo teddy bear named Ted, to come to life and become his best friend. The wish coincides with a shooting star and comes true, much to the brief horror of his parents; word spreads and Ted briefly becomes a celebrity.


title: Ted (film)

text: 27 years later, John, now 35, and Ted are still living in Boston, and are still staunch companions enjoying a hedonistic life. John is dating Lori Collins whom he met at a dance club. As their fourth anniversary approaches, Lori hopes to marry John, but feels he can not move forward in life with Ted around. John is hesitant about making Ted leave, but he is persuaded to act when they find Ted at home with a group of prostitutes, with one defecating on the floor, after their anniversary dinner.


title: Ted (film)

text: John finds Ted his own apartment and a job at a grocery store, where Ted begins dating his co-worker Tami-Lynn. Lori learns that John has been skipping work, using her as an excuse, to reluctantly continue to spend most of his time with Ted. John and Lori are invited to a party put on by Lori's womanizing manager Rex, but Ted lures John away to a party at his apartment with the pressured offer to meet Sam J. Jones, the star of their favorite film, "Flash Gordon". John intends to stay only a few minutes, but gets caught up in the occasion. Lori finds John there and tearfully breaks up with him. A furious John blames Ted for ruining his relationship with Lori and disowns him.


title: Ted (film)

text: John and Ted confront each other about their ruined friendship and then fight, but manage to reconcile after a violent brawl in John's hotel room (resulting in John being crushed by a television). To repair John's relationship with Lori, Ted arranges for an old lover, singer Norah Jones, to help by having John express his love for Lori with a song during her concert that Lori and Rex attend. He does an off-key rendition of the "Octopussy" theme song, "All Time High", by Rita Coolidge and is booed offstage. Lori is touched by the attempt and returns to her apartment, where Ted confesses to his role in John's relapse and offers to leave them alone forever if she talks to John.


title: Ted (film)

text: Lori is persuaded, but Ted is kidnapped by Donny, a mentally unstable stalker who idolized Ted as a child. Donny plans to make Ted into his brutish son Robert's new toy. Ted manages to reach a phone to contact John, but is immediately recaptured by Donny and Robert. Realizing that Ted is in danger, John and Lori locate Donny's residence and track him to rescue Ted. The chase leads to Fenway Park, where John punches Robert, knocking him out, but during the chase, Ted is damaged and falls onto the field, ripped entirely in half. A police car arrives, forcing Donny to flee. John and Lori gather Ted's stuffing and Ted relays his wish that John be happy with Lori, before the magic in Ted fades away making him a normal teddy bear again.


title: Ted (film)

text: Unwilling to lose Ted, a distraught John and Lori rush back to her apartment and unsuccessfully attempt to repair Ted. Feeling sad about her part in the incident, Lori makes a wish on a shooting star while John is asleep. The next morning, Ted is revived as a result of the wish (though he pretends to be brain dead at first) and reunites with John and Lori, encouraging them to resume their relationship. John then finally proposes to Lori and she accepts. Sometime later, John and Lori are married (with Sam Jones as the presiding minister), and Ted comfortably accepts having a life of his own, as he and Tami-Lynn continued their love affair.


title: Ted (film)

text: As the narrator of the film further stated: Sam Jones attempts to restart his career and moves into a studio apartment with Brandon Routh (who starred in the "god-awful Superman movie"). Rex gives up his pursuit of Lori, falls into a deep depression, and dies of Lou Gehrig's disease. Donny gets arrested by the Boston Police Department for kidnapping Ted, but the charges are dropped because the situation was not realistic. Robert hires a personal trainer, loses a significant amount of weight, and goes on to become Taylor Lautner.


title: Ted (film)

text: Seth MacFarlane's directorial debut is a live-action effort, with computer animation handled by visual effects facilities Tippett Studio and Iloura. MacFarlane wrote the screenplay with his "Family Guy" colleagues Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild. In a "behind the scenes" video, it was revealed that MacFarlane originally wanted to make "Ted" into an animated television show, much like his previous works "Family Guy", "American Dad!", and "The Cleveland Show".


title: Ted (film)

text: Originally, 20th Century Fox was offered to finance and distribute the movie, given its collaboration with MacFarlane for shows like "Family Guy", "American Dad!", and "The Cleveland Show". However, MacFarlane wanted a $65 million budget for the movie, which Fox considered the price to be too high for the R-rated comedy film, let alone for a first-time director, and was skeptical about the film's future success. They also wanted it to have a PG-13 rating instead of an R, which MacFarlene, Sulkin, and Wild ended up writing a version of. However, despite this, Fox backed out and MacFarlane began to take the project elsewhere. On April 12, 2010, Universal Pictures announced that it had acquired the full rights to "Ted" after it agreed to the $65 million budget he requested and to direct the R rated version of the script.


title: Ted (film)

text: On October 26, 2010, Mark Wahlberg joined in the project as the lead actor. Two months later on December 14, Mila Kunis, the voice actress for Meg Griffin from "Family Guy", also joined the cast. On February 23, 2011, Giovanni Ribisi joined Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis in "Ted". Filming began in May 2011 in Boston, Norwood and other locations in Massachusetts. Based on the standings on the left-field scoreboard, the climactic scene in Fenway Park appears to have been filmed on or around May 24, 2011.


title: Ted (film)

text: The film was scheduled for release in the United States on July 13, 2012, but it was moved up to June 29, both to avoid competition with "" and following the delay of "". Internationally, the film was released in Australia on July 5, 2012, and on August 1, 2012, in the United Kingdom and Ireland.


title: Ted (film)

text: The film's soundtrack was released by Universal Republic Records on June 26, 2012. It features the score by Walter Murphy and songs by various artists such as Norah Jones and Queen. Seth MacFarlane co-wrote the opening theme "Everybody Needs a Best Friend" with Murphy. The song was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 85th Academy Awards.


title: Ted (film)

text: Other songs which do not appear on the soundtrack but are featured in the film include songs from Queen's "Flash Gordon" soundtrack: "Football Fight", "Battle Theme", and "The Hero", as well as the "Knight Rider Theme" by Stu Phillips, "Stayin' Alive" by "Bee Gees", "Kiss Kiss" by "Chris Brown" and "The Imperial March" by John Williams. The film trailers used the songs "Best Friend" by Harry Nilsson and "How You Like Me Now?" by The Heavy.


title: Ted (film)

text: To promote the film, Universal Pictures teamed up with Axe in a marketing campaign that involved the title character and the brand's hair care product Axe Hair. In one commercial, Ted takes a woman on a date to a fancy restaurant, where he brings her to orgasm under the table before handing another man a box of Axe Hair gel.


title: Ted (film)

text: To promote the film in Japan, United International Pictures teamed up with Spike Chunsoft in a marketing campaign that involved the title character and "Danganronpa" bear mascot Monokuma, in which while watching the film, Monokuma says: "Wow, Ted is so sexy and hot... I wonder if he thinks I'M hot!?!?!? This movie is really fucking funny, thanks Seth MacFarlane. I can't wait to show this movie to my good friend Super Mario when I get into "Super Smash Bros." "Ted", Rated R15+. Available now!"


title: Ted (film)

text: In February 2013, Wahlberg and MacFarlane (as Ted) made an appearance at the 85th Academy Awards, which MacFarlane himself hosted.


title: Ted (film)

text: "Ted" grossed $218.8 million in North America and $330.6 million overseas for a total gross of $549.4 million, against a budget of $50 million. It was Universal's highest-grossing film in 2012, ahead of "Snow White and the Huntsman" and "Battleship" (the only one to pass $400 million), and the 12th-highest-grossing film of 2012.


title: Ted (film)

text: "Ted" debuted in first place in Taiwan and got the best comedy opening ever there. It also debuted in Hong Kong, with $1.4 million, and grossed $571,000 in its first week in South Korea, eventually grossing $8 million, $3.8 million and $1.8 million respectively. It also grossed $2.1 million in both Indonesia and Singapore, and $1.4 million in Thailand.


title: Ted (film)

text: In January 2013, the film opened at number one in Japan, its final market, with $4.5 million, the best start ever for an R-rated comedy there. In comparison, it grossed more in its opening weekend than "The Hangover Part II" made in its entire run. The following weekend, it retained the No. 1 spot for the second consecutive frame, grossing $3.6 million at 137 dates, for a 10-day market cumulative total of $11.2 million. By its third weekend, the film stayed at the No. 1 spot for a third week, with earning down less than 10%, pushing "Ted"'s overseas total past the $300 million mark, and making it the top grossing R-rated comedy of all time in Japan. It then had its fourth consecutive weekend at No. 1, drawing another $3 million at 354 locations in the country. Its cumulative total stands at $44 million grossed.


title: Ted (film)

text: "Ted" debuted with $14.3 million in the United Kingdom, making it the third-best debut ever for a Universal film behind "" and "King Kong", eventually grossing over $48.9 million in the country. "Ted" was released in cinemas across the United Kingdom on August 3.


title: Ted (film)

text: The film had a $7.4 million launch in Germany, holding #1 spot for three-straight weeks, eventually grossing over $31.4 million.


title: Ted (film)

text: In Spain, it opened with $2.3 million, which is the highest ever for an original R-rated comedy there, eventually grossing over $14.3 million.


title: Ted (film)

text: The film also had the best Hollywood comedy debut ever in Russia, grossing $5.5 million, eventually grossing $17 million.


title: Ted (film)

text: "Ted" spent its first 4 weeks atop the weekend box office in both the Netherlands, and Austria, eventually grossing $8.4 million, and $6.2 million in those countries respectively. The movie also opened at No. 1 in Belgium, with


title: Ted (film)

text: In Italy, the film had a second place start, grossing $3.3 million in its opening weekend there, moving up to no. 1 on its second week, with $4.2 million grossed. It has since grossed $14.1 million there.


title: Ted (film)

text: In France, the film debuted at No. 2, grossing $3 million in 348 theatres during its opening weekend, eventually grossing $11.5 million in the country.


title: Ted (film)

text: "Ted" earned $2.6 million in midnight showings in the United States and Canada. For its opening day, "Ted" scored one of the best R-rated comedy debuts ever since "The Hangover" with an estimated $20.2 million. The film earned a total of $54.4 million in its opening weekend, well over second-place R-rated "Magic Mike"s $39.2 million. Its overall weekend gross set a record for the highest original R-rated comedy opening in history. It was the first time two R-rated films grossed more than $21 million each during a weekend.


title: Ted (film)

text: In Mexico, the film debuted in first place with $2.1 million,<ref name="09/18">"Around-the-World Roundup: 'Resident Evil' Slays With $49.6 Million Debut". "Box Office Mojo". IMDb. Retrieved March 11, 2022.</ref> grossing $13.4 million.


title: Ted (film)

text: "Ted" also debuted at No. 1 in Australia and New Zealand, grossing over $35.5 million and $3.5 million respectively. Its $13.1 million opening in Australia, of which $4.5 million were from previews, was Universal's biggest opening ever in the country. In Australia, "Ted" was rated MA 15+, whereas in New Zealand, it was rated R13 for its theatrical release and R16 for the DVD/Blu-ray release.


title: Ted (film)

text: In Brazil, the film opened with $1.4 million at 273 sites, moving up to 1st place in the country on its third week of release. It has since grossed $8.8 million there.


title: Ted (film)

text: The film also grossed $4.6 million in Argentina, 2 million in Chile, 1.9 million in Peru, and 1.7 million in Colombia.


title: Ted (film)

text: On Metacritic, the film has an average score of 62 out of 100 based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Ted (film)

text: Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, citing the film as "the best comedy screenplay so far [this year]," also praising the film on the fact that it "doesn't run out of steam."


title: Ted (film)

text: Nathan Rabin of "The A.V. Club" gave the film a "B" grade. Brent McNight of "Beyond Hollywood" commented on the jokes: "Some of these jokes hit, some jokes miss." On the other hand, A. O. Scott of "The New York Times" called "Ted" "boring, lazy and wildly unoriginal."


title: Ted (film)

text: The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United States on December 11, 2012, by Universal Studios Home Entertainment. Both formats featured an unrated version of the film (112 minutes) and were also released in Australia on November 21, 2012, in an "Extended Edition". It was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2012.


title: Ted (film)

text: On May 3, 2016, "Ted vs. Flash Gordon: The Ultimate Collection" was released on Blu-ray plus Digital HD, featuring "Flash Gordon" and the unrated versions of "Ted" and "Ted 2".


title: Ted (film)

text: During the 2012 "American Dad!" Comic-Con panel, MacFarlane stated that he would be open to a sequel to "Ted". In September 2012, chief executive Steve Burke said that the studio would be looking to make a sequel to "Ted" "as soon as possible".


title: Ted (film)

text: On "Anderson Live", Wahlberg confirmed that a sequel was in the works and that it would be the first sequel in his career, while also revealing that he and Ted (as voiced by MacFarlane) would appear at the 85th Academy Awards.


title: Ted (film)

text: In February 2014, "Deadline" reported that Amanda Seyfried had been cast as the female lead, and that Kunis would not return. On July 8, MacFarlane announced that work had officially begun on the sequel. "Ted 2" was released in the US on June 26, 2015.


title: Ted (film)

text: In June 2021, it was announced that a live-action prequel television series of the film had been ordered at Peacock. It will be a co-production between Universal Content Productions, Fuzzy Door Productions and MRC Television with MacFarlane and Erica Huggins as executive producers. The series will center on John and Ted as teenagers in 1993. In April 2022, it was announced that Giorgia Whigham, Max Burkholder and Scott Grimes were cast as series regulars, in addition to MacFarlane reprising the voice of Ted. In May 2022, Alanna Ubach joined the cast as a series regular.


title: Billie Jean King

text: Billie Jean King (née Moffitt; born November 22, 1943) is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. King won 39 major titles: 12 in singles, 16 in women's doubles, and 11 in mixed doubles. King was a member of the victorious United States team in seven Federation Cups and nine Wightman Cups. For three years, she was the U.S. captain in the Federation Cup.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King is an advocate of gender equality and has long been a pioneer for equality and social justice. In 1973, at age 29, she won the "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match against the 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. King was also the founder of the Women's Tennis Association and the Women's Sports Foundation. She was instrumental in persuading cigarette brand Virginia Slims to sponsor women's tennis in the 1970s and went on to serve on the board of their parent company Philip Morris in the 2000s.


title: Billie Jean King

text: Regarded by many as one of the greatest tennis players of all time, King was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1987. The Fed Cup Award of Excellence was bestowed on her in 2010. In 1972, she was the joint winner, with John Wooden, of the "Sports Illustrated" Sportsman of the Year award and was one of the "Time" Persons of the Year in 1975. She has also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the "Sunday Times" Sportswoman of the Year lifetime achievement award. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1990, and in 2006, the USTA National Tennis Center in New York City was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. In 2018, she won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2020, the Federation Cup was renamed the Billie Jean King Cup in her honor. In 2022, she was awarded the French Legion of Honour.


title: Billie Jean King

text: Billie Jean Moffitt was born in Long Beach, California, into a conservative Methodist family, the daughter of Betty (née Jerman), a housewife, and Bill Moffitt, a firefighter. Her family was athletic; her mother excelled at swimming, and her father played basketball and baseball, and ran track. Her younger brother, Randy Moffitt, became a Major League Baseball pitcher, pitching for 12 years in the major leagues for the San Francisco Giants, Houston Astros, and Toronto Blue Jays. She also excelled at baseball and softball as a child, playing shortstop at 10 years old on a team with girls 4–5 years older than she. The team went on to win the Long Beach softball championship.


title: Billie Jean King

text: She switched from softball to tennis at age 11, because her parents suggested she should find a more 'ladylike' sport. She saved her own money, $8, to buy her first racquet. She went with a school friend to take her first tennis lesson on the many free public courts in Long Beach, taking advantage of the free lessons offered by professional Clyde Walker, who worked for the City of Long Beach. One of the city's tennis facilities has subsequently been named the Billie Jean Moffitt King Tennis Center. As a kid playing in her first tennis tournaments, she was often hindered by her aggressive playing style. Bob Martin, sportswriter for the Long Beach, "Press-Telegram" wrote about her success in a weekly tennis column. One of King's first conflicts with the tennis establishments and status-quo came in her youth, when she was forbidden from being in a group picture at a tournament because she was wearing tennis shorts (sewn by her mother) instead of the usual white tennis dress.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King's family in Long Beach attended the Church of the Brethren, where the minister was former athlete and two-time Olympic pole-vaulting champion Bob Richards. One day, when King was 13 or 14, Richards asked her, "What are you going to do with your life?" She said: "Reverend, I'm going to be the best tennis player in the world."


title: Billie Jean King

text: King attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School. After graduating in 1961, she attended Los Angeles State College now California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA). She did not graduate, leaving school in 1964 to focus on tennis. While attending Cal State, she met Larry King in a library in 1963. The pair became engaged while still in school when Billie Jean was 20 and Larry 19 years old and married on September 17, 1965, in Long Beach.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King's French Open win in 1972 made her only the fifth woman in tennis history to win the singles titles at all four Grand Slam events, a "career Grand Slam". She also won a career Grand Slam in mixed doubles. In women's doubles, only the Australian Open eluded her.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King won a record 20 career titles at Wimbledon – six in singles, 10 in women's doubles, and four in mixed doubles.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King played 51 Grand Slam singles events from 1959 through 1983, reaching at least the semi-finals in 27 and at least the quarterfinals in 40 of her attempts. King was the runner-up in six Grand Slam singles events. An indicator of her mental toughness in Grand Slam singles tournaments was her 11–2 career record in deuce third sets, i.e., third sets that were tied 5–5 before being resolved.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King won 129 singles titles, 78 of which were WTA titles, and her career prize money totaled US$1,966,487.


title: Billie Jean King

text: In Federation Cup finals, she was on the winning United States team seven times, in 1963, 1966, 1967, and 1976 through 1979. Her career win–loss record was 52–4. She won the last 30 matches she played, including 15 straight wins in both singles and doubles. In Wightman Cup competition, her career win–loss record was 22–4, winning her last nine matches. The United States won the cup ten of the 11 years that she participated. In singles, King was 6–1 against Ann Haydon-Jones, 4–0 against Virginia Wade, and 1–1 against Christine Truman Janes.


title: Billie Jean King

text: As Billie Jean King began competing in 1959, she began working with new coaches including Frank Brennan and Alice Marble, who had won 18 Grand Slam titles as a player herself. She made her Grand Slam debut at the 1959 U.S. Championships at age 15. She lost in the first round. She began playing at local, regional, and international tennis championships. Sports Illustrated already claimed her as "one of the most promising youngsters on the West Coast." She won her first tournament the next year in Philadelphia at the 1960 Philadelphia and District Grass Court Championships. At her second attempt at the U.S. Championships, King made it to the third round, losing to Bernice Carr Vukovich of South Africa. Also in 1960, she reached the final of the National Girls' 18 and Under Championships, losing to Karen Hantze Susmen. Her national tennis ranking improved from number 19 in 1959 to number 4 in 1960. Despite the success, Marble terminated her professional relationship with King, for reasons stemming from King's ambition.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King first gained international recognition in 1961 when the Long Beach Tennis Patrons, the Century Club, and Harold Guiver raised $2,000 to send her to Wimbledon. There, she won the women's doubles title in her first attempt while partnering Karen Hantze. King was 17 and Hantze was 18, making them the youngest team to win the Wimbledon Doubles Title. King had less luck that year in the 1961 Wimbledon Women's Singles, losing to fifth-seeded Yola Ramírez Ochoa in a two-day match on Centre Court. Despite these performances. she could not get a sports scholarship when later that year she attended Los Angeles State (now California State).{"Billie Jean King", The Wall Street Journal, August 14, 2021}. For the 1962 singles tournament at Wimbledon, King upset Margaret Court, the World No. 1 and top seed, in a second round match by attacking Court's forehand This was the first time in Wimbledon history that the women's top seed had lost her first match. That same year, King and Hantze repeated their doubles victory at Wimbledon. In 1963, King again faced Margaret Court at Wimbledon. This time they met in the finals with Court prevailing.


title: Billie Jean King

text: In 1964, King won four relatively minor titles but lost to Margaret Court in the Wimbledon semi-finals. She defeated Ann Haydon-Jones at both the Wightman Cup and Fed Cup but lost to Court in the final of the Federation Cup. At the U.S. Championships, fifth-seeded Nancy Richey Gunter upset third-seeded King in the quarterfinals. Late in the year, King decided to make a full-time commitment to tennis. While a history major at Los Angeles State College King made the decision to play full-time when businessman Robert Mitchell offered to pay her way to Australia so that she could train under the great Australian coach Mervyn Rose. While in Australia, King played three tournaments that year and lost in the quarterfinals of the Queensland Grass Court Championships, the final of the New South Wales Championships (to Court), and the third round of the Victorian Championships.


title: Billie Jean King

text: In early 1965, King continued her three-month tour of Australia. She lost in the final of the South Australian Championships and the first round of the Western Australia Championships. At the Fed Cup in Melbourne, she defeated Ann Haydon-Jones to help the United States defeat the United Kingdom in the second round. However, Margaret Court again defeated her in the final. At the Australian Championships two weeks later, she lost to Court in the semi-finals in two sets. At Wimbledon, she again lost in the semi-finals, this time in three sets to Maria Bueno. Her last tournament of the year was the U.S. Championships, where she defeated Jones in the quarterfinals and Bueno in the semi-finals. In the final, King led 5–3 in both sets, was two points from winning the first set, and had two set points in the second set before losing to Court in straight sets. She said that losing while being so close to winning was devastating, but the match proved to her that she was "good enough to be the best in the world. I'm going to win Wimbledon next year." She won six tournaments during the year. For the first time in 81 years, the annual convention of the United States Lawn Tennis Association overruled its ranking committee's recommendation to award her the sole U.S. No. 1 position and voted 59,810 to 40,966 to rank Nancy Richey Gunter and King as co-U.S. No. 1.


title: Billie Jean King

text: Six of King's Grand Slam singles titles were at Wimbledon, four were at the U.S. Championships/Open, one was at the French Open, and one was at the Australian Championships. King reached the final of a Grand Slam singles tournament in 16 out of 25 attempts and had a 12–4 win–loss record in those finals. In the nine tournaments that she failed to reach the final, she was a losing semifinalist twice and a losing quarter finalist five times. From 1971 through 1975, she won seven of the ten Grand Slam singles tournaments she played. She won the last seven Grand Slam singles finals she contested, six of them in straight sets and four of them against Evonne Goolagong. All but one of her Grand Slam singles titles were on grass.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King's Grand Slam record from 1966 through 1975 was comparable to that of Margaret Court, her primary rival during these years. One or both of these women played 35 of the 40 Grand Slam singles tournaments held during this period, and together they won 24 of them. During this period, Court won 31 of her career 64 Grand Slam titles, including 12 of her 24 Grand Slam singles titles, 11 of her 19 Grand Slam women's doubles titles, and eight of her 21 Grand Slam mixed doubles titles. Court reached the final of a Grand Slam singles tournament in 14 out of 25 attempts and had a 12–2 win–loss record in those finals. Court won seven of the 12 Grand Slam finals she played against King during these years, including 2–1 in singles finals, 4–1 in women's doubles finals, and 1–3 in mixed doubles finals.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King was the year-ending World No. 1 in six of the ten years from 1966 through 1975. She was the year-ending World No. 2 in three of those years and the World No. 3 in the other year.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King won 97 of her career 129 singles titles during this period and was the runner-up in 36 other tournaments.


title: Billie Jean King

text: In 1966, King defeated Dorothy "Dodo" Cheney (then 49 years old) for the first time in five career matches, winning their semi-final at the Southern California Championships 6–0, 6–3. King also ended her nine-match losing streak to Margaret Court by defeating her in the final of the South African Tennis Championships. She also won the women's singles in the Ojai Tennis Tournament. At the Wightman Cup just before Wimbledon, King defeated Virginia Wade and Ann Haydon-Jones. After thirteen unsuccessful attempts to win a Grand Slam singles title from 1959 through 1965, King at the age of 22 finally won the first of her six singles titles at Wimbledon and the first of twelve Grand Slam singles titles overall, defeating Court in the semi-finals 6–3, 6–3 and Maria Bueno in the final. King credited her semi-final victory to her forehand down the line, a new shot in her repertoire. She also said that the strategy for playing Court is, "Simple. Just chip the ball back at her feet." At the U.S. Championships, an ill King was upset by Kerry Melville Reid in the second round.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King successfully defended her title at the South African Tennis Championships in 1967, defeating Maria Bueno in the final. She played the French Championships for the first time in her career, falling in the quarterfinals to Annette Van Zyl DuPlooy of South Africa. At the Federation Cup one week later in West Germany on clay, King won all four of her matches, including victories over DuPlooy, Ann Haydon-Jones, and Helga Niessen Masthoff. King then successfully switched surfaces and won her second consecutive Wimbledon singles title, defeating Virginia Wade in the quarterfinals 7–5, 6–2 and Jones. At the Wightman Cup, King again defeated Wade and Jones. King won her second Grand Slam singles title of the year when she won the U.S. Championships for the first time and without losing a set, defeating Wade, DuPlooy, Françoise Dürr, and Jones in consecutive matches. Jones pulled her left hamstring muscle early in the final and saved four match points in the second set before King prevailed. King won the singles, women's doubles, and mixed doubles titles at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Championships, the first woman to do that since Alice Marble in 1939. King then returned to the Australian summer tour in December for the first time since 1965, playing seven events there and Judy Tegart-Dalton in six of those events (winning four of their matches). King lost in the quarterfinals of the New South Wales Championships in Sydney to Dalton after King injured her left knee in the second game of the third set of that match. However, King won the Victorian Championships in Melbourne the following week, defeating Dalton, Reid, and Lesley Turner Bowrey in the last three rounds. At a team event in Adelaide, King won all three of her singles and doubles matches to help the U.S. defeat Australia 5–1. To finish the year, King lost to Dalton in the final of the South Australian Championships in Adelaide.


title: Billie Jean King

text: In early 1968, King won three consecutive tournaments to end her Australian tour. In Perth, King won the Western Australia Championships, defeating Margaret Court in the final. In Hobart, King won the Tasmanian Championships by defeating Judy Tegart-Dalton in the final. King then won the Australian Championships for the first time, defeating Dalton in the semi-finals and Court in the final. King continued to win tournaments upon her return to the United States, winning three indoor tournaments before Nancy Richey Gunter defeated King in the semi-finals of the Madison Square Garden Challenge Trophy amateur tournament in New York City before 10,233 spectators. The match started with Gunter taking a 4–2 lead in the first set, before King won 9 of the next 10 games. King served for the match at 5–1 and had a match point at 5–3 in the second set; however, she lost the final 12 games and the match 4–6, 7–5, 6–0. King then won three consecutive tournaments in Europe before losing to Ann Haydon-Jones in the final of a professional tournament at Madison Square Garden. Playing the French Open for only the second time in her career and attempting to win four consecutive Grand Slam singles titles (a "non-calendar year Grand Slam"), King defeated Maria Bueno in a quarterfinal before losing to Gunter in a semi-final 2–6, 6–3, 6–4. King rebounded to win her third consecutive Wimbledon singles title, defeating Jones in the semi-finals and Dalton in the final. At the US Open, King defeated Bueno in a semi-final before being upset in the final by Virginia Wade. On September 24, she had surgery to repair cartilage in her left knee and did not play in tournaments the remainder of the year. King said that it took eight months (May 1969) for her knee to recover completely from the surgery. In 1977, King said that her doctors predicted in 1968 that her left knee would allow her to play competitive tennis for only two more years.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King participated in the 1969 Australian summer tour for the second consecutive year. Unlike the previous year, King did not win a tournament. She lost in the quarterfinals of the Tasmanian Championships and the semi-finals of the New South Wales Championships. At the Australian Open, King defeated 17-year-old Evonne Goolagong in the second round 6–3, 6–1 and Ann Haydon-Jones in a three-set semi-final before losing to Margaret Court in a straight-sets final. The following week, King lost in the semi-finals of the New Zealand Championships. Upon her return to the United States, King won the Pacific Coast Pro and the Los Angeles Pro. King then won two tournaments in South Africa, including the South African Open. During the European summer clay court season, King lost in the quarterfinals of both the Italian Open and the French Open. On grass at the Wills Open in Bristol, United Kingdom, King defeated Virginia Wade in the semi-finals (6–8, 11–9, 6–2) before losing to Court. At Wimbledon, King lost only 13 points while defeating Rosemary Casals in the semi-finals 6–1, 6–0; however, Jones upset King in the final and prevented King from winning her fourth consecutive singles title there. The week after, King again defeated Wade to win the Irish Open for the second time in her career. In the final Grand Slam tournament of the year, King lost in the quarterfinals of the US Open to Nancy Richey Gunter 6–4, 8–6. This was the first year since 1965 that King did not win at least one Grand Slam singles title. King finished the year with titles at the Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles, the Stockholm Indoors, and the Midland (Texas) Pro. She said during the Pacific Southwest Open, "It has been a bad year for me. My left knee has been OK, but I have been bothered by a severe tennis elbow for seven months. I expect to have a real big year in 1970, though, because I really have the motivation now. I feel like a kid again."


title: Billie Jean King

text: In 1970, Margaret Court won all four Grand Slam singles tournaments and was clearly the World No. 1. King lost to Court three times in the first four months of the year, in Philadelphia, Dallas, and Johannesburg (at the South African Open). Court, however, was not totally dominant during this period as King defeated her in Sydney and Durban, South Africa. Where Court dominated was at the Grand Slam tournaments. King did not play the Australian Open. King had leg cramps and lost to Helga Niessen Masthoff of West Germany in the quarterfinals of the French Open 2–6, 8–6, 6–1. At Wimbledon, Court needed seven match points to defeat King in the final 14–12, 11–9 in one of the greatest women's finals in the history of the tournament. On July 22, King had right knee surgery, which forced her to miss the US Open. King returned to the tour in September, where she had a first round loss at the Virginia Slims Invitational in Houston and a semi-final loss at the Pacific Coast Championships in Berkeley, California. To close out the year, King in November won the Virginia Slims Invitational in Richmond, Virginia and the Embassy Indoor Tennis Championships in London. During the European clay court season, King warmed-up for the French Open by playing in Monte Carlo (losing in the semi-finals), winning the Italian Open (saving three match points against Virginia Wade in the semi-finals), playing in Bournemouth (losing to Wade in the quarterfinals), and playing in Berlin (losing to Masthoff in the semi-finals). The Italian Open victory was the first important clay court title of King's career. Along the way, she defeated Masthoff in a three-set quarterfinal and Wade in a three-set semi-final, saving two match points at 4–5 in the second set. The twelfth game of that set (with King leading 6–5) had 21 deuces and lasted 22 minutes, with Wade saving seven set points and holding sixteen game points before King won. In Wightman Cup competition two weeks before Wimbledon but played at the All England Club, King defeated both Wade and Ann Haydon-Jones in straight sets.


title: Billie Jean King

text: Although King won only one Grand Slam singles title in 1971, this was the best year of her career in terms of tournaments won (17). According to the International Tennis Hall of Fame, she played in 31 singles tournaments and compiled a 112–13 win–loss record.


title: Billie Jean King

text: She started the year by winning eight of the first thirteen tournaments she played, defeating Rosemary Casals in seven finals. King's five losses during this period were to Françoise Dürr (twice), Casals (once), Ann Haydon-Jones (once), and Chris Evert (in St. Petersburg). At the time, King said that retiring from the match with Evert after splitting the first two sets was necessary because of leg cramps. But in early 1972, King admitted that cramps associated with an abortion caused the retirement.


title: Billie Jean King

text: At the tournament in Hurlingham, United Kingdom in early May, King lost a second round match to an old rival, Christine Truman Janes (now 30 years old), 6–4, 6–2. But King recovered the next week to win the German Open in Hamburg on clay. Four weeks later at the Queen's Club tournament in London, King played Margaret Court for the first time in 1971, losing their final. At Wimbledon, King defeated Janes in the fourth round (6–2, 7–5) and Durr in the quarterfinals before losing unexpectedly to Evonne Goolagong in the semi-finals 6–4, 6–4. Two weeks after Wimbledon, King won the Rothmans North of England Championships on grass in Hoylake, United Kingdom, beating Virginia Wade, Court, and Casals in the last three rounds. She then played two clay court tournaments in Europe, winning neither, before resuming play in the United States.


title: Billie Jean King

text: In August, King won the indoor Houston tournament and the U.S. Women's Clay Court Championships in Indianapolis. King then switched back to grass and won the US Open without losing a set, defeating Evert in the semi-finals (6–3, 6–2) and Casals in the final. King then won the tournaments in Louisville, Phoenix, and London (Wembley Pro). King and Casals both defaulted at 6–6 in the final of the Pepsi Pacific Southwest Open in Los Angeles in September when their request to remove a lineswoman was denied, eventually resulting in the United States Lawn Tennis Association fining both players US$2,500. To end the year, King played two tournaments in New Zealand but did not win either. She lost in Christchurch to Durr and in Auckland to Kerry Melville Reid.


title: Billie Jean King

text: King won three Grand Slam singles titles in 1972, electing not to play the Australian Open despite being nearby when she played in New Zealand in late 1971. King said, "I was twenty-eight years old, and I was at the height of my powers. I'm quite sure I could have won the Grand Slam [in] ... 1972, but the Australian was such a minor-league tournament at that time... More important, I did not want to miss any Virginia Slims winter tournaments. I was playing enough as it was." Her dominance was aided by rival Margaret Court's absence from the tour due to childbirth during most of the 1972 season.


title: Billie Jean King

text: At the beginning of the year, King failed to win eight of the first ten tournaments she played. She won the title in San Francisco in mid-January. But then King lost in Long Beach to Françoise Dürr (although King claimed in her 1982 autobiography that she intentionally lost the match because of an argument with her husband) and in Fort Lauderdale on clay to Chris Evert 6–1, 6–0. The inconsistent results continued through mid-April, in Oklahoma City (losing in the quarterfinals); Washington, D.C. (losing in the second round); and Dallas (losing to Nancy Richey Gunter after defeating Evert in the quarterfinals 6–7(4–5), 6–3, 7–5 and Evonne Goolagong in the semi-finals 1–6, 6–4, 6–1). King won the title in Richmond; however, one week later, King lost in the semi-finals of the tournament in San Juan. This was followed in successive weeks by a loss in the Jacksonville final to Marie Neumannova Pinterova and in a St. Petersburg semi-final to Evert (6–2, 6–3).